#and the reveal was anything other than ‘Nahiri Did It’

[saltineofswing]

Embroiled in a lore revamp for Innistrad to remove as many of the problems with the worldbuilding as possible. Wanna see?

[I turn over my whiteboard to show a single post-it note that says ‘PLANESWALKERS RUIN EVERYTHING]

[vorthosjay]

We Were Gods, Once

Nicol Bolas has a recurring phrase that he likes to say after the Mending. He’s always reminding people that once, planeswalkers were gods. Everything he’s done after the Mending has been in service to regaining his lost godhood, by any means necessary. It’s been a central theme for Liliana, too, but to a lesser extent as she’s found the cost to be somewhat high.

Cruel Ultimatum by Todd Lockwood

Bolas, Interrupted

It’s unclear exactly what Bolas was up to prior to the Mending. His rule as God Emperor of Madara was suddenly interrupted, but we can glean a couple things:

First, he probably knew about Alara and the coming Conflux prior to his death. It was only a few days or maybe weeks between his revival and the Mending, and he merely used that information after he knew the Mending was coming. The plots he put into motion on the Shards seemed like they were established more than the roughly 40-160 years between Mending and the Conflux.

Second, he showed up on Tarkir 1,280 years ago to kill Ugin - something he’d been plotting long enough to co-opt Yasova. We still have no idea why. Was Ugin a real threat to his power? Bolas didn’t just kill other planeswalkers willy-nilly. Most weren’t even close to a threat to him, so for him to go out of his way to personally assassinate Ugin - on Ugin’s home turf, no less - seems like it must have been important. And the only important thing we know that Ugin did was seal the Eldrazi, something Bolas had a hand in undoing, later.

Elder Schemes

Bolas has his claws in a lot of things, but there are six key schemes we know Bolas to have been involved in following the Mending:

Brokering Liliana’s Four Demonic Pacts

Regaining the Infinite Consortium

Engineering the Alaran conflict to fuel the Maelstrom

Engineering the release of the Eldrazi

Investigating the threat posed by New Phyrexia

Tezzeret’s Mission on Kaladesh

The Unknown plan for Amonkhet

Let’s break them down one by one.

Demonic Tutor by Scott Chou

Liliana’s Demons

When we learned in The Fourth Pact that Bolas had acted as an intermediary for Liliana’s Demonic Deals, it brings up and answers some important questions. It answered why Liliana went to Bolas in Agents of Artifice for help freeing herself of the deals. But it brings up another one: why did Bolas help Liliana? She’s not one of his thralls like Sarkhan was or Tezzeret is. Does he value her as a free agent somewhat in his debt? Negotiating four demonic pacts is an awful lot of work for the Elder Dragon, especially to do personally as seems to be the case. He wouldn’t have done it out of the goodness of his hearts (he’d have to have more than one to function, right?). So what was his price? And we know Razaketh is from Amonkhet, where Bolas is God Pharaoh. So maybe Bolas has more influence over these demons that it seems at first glance, which leads me to believe he got something else out of the bargain. 

The Infinite Consortium

Bolas is later a part of Liliana’s proposed plan to regain the Infinite Consortium, in exchange for help ridding herself of her demons. Even though technically Bolas gets everything he wanted, Liliana didn’t deliver it to him, and so he does not help her. Bolas regains his minion Tezzeret, whom he sets about restoring, and the rival faction of the Consortium is destroyed. I don’t think there’s anything going on behind the scenes in this story that isn’t explicit in the books, but it’s possible that Bolas doesn’t want Liliana to be free of her deals.

Why would that be? It’s a theory for a future piece, but it’s possible that Bolas is ultimately behind Liliana’s encounter with the Chain Veil. He knows and has influence with Kothophed, so maybe he instigated the recovery of the Veil in the first place. After all, Kothophed is a plane-bound demon who sent Liliana after the Veil on Shandalar, which doesn’t seem to be where he’s from. So how did Kothophed even know about the Veil, or why didn’t he get such a dangerous artifact himself? With the Veil’s power and unknown purpose, it could be yet another way Bolas intends to recover lost power.

The Maelstrom

Bolas’ scheme on Alara is fairly straightforward. Instigate plane-wide conflict to fuel the Maelstrom created from the planar convergence, then drink down that power like a big gulp. He succeeds, but is prevented from flexing his muscles by destroying Alara because Ajani intervenes, using a sliver of leftover power to summon a soul duplicate of Bolas. While Bolas still isn’t as powerful as he was pre-Mending, the fact that he was going to destroy Alara just to test his newfound strength means the Gatewatch is probably biting off more than they can chew.

Art by Igor Kieryluk

The Eldrazi

The biggest mystery is why Bolas engineered the Eldrazi’s release. He placed Sarkhan on Zendikar following Alara, and put Chandra and Jace on the path to the eye themselves. He’d tried to kill Ugin 1,2800 years earlier, but why wait to free the Eldrazi if that was his intent? I’ve got a couple ideas.

He could have been looking to flush out Sorin and Nahiri, other rival oldwalkers who might pose real threats to him. Given how powered down they both are, however, that’s unlikely. It’s doubtful that he’d consider them threats now, and he definitely knows where Innistrad is, given he brokered Liliana’s deal with Griselbrand. He could have just showed up and slaughtered Sorin at any time.

Far more likely is that the Eldrazi may be the solution to fixing the Mending itself. In my piece What Are the Eldrazi, I pose that the Eldrazi are a kind of interplanar clean-up crew, restoring and renewing dying planes. It stands to reason that Bolas wanted them as a back-up plan when he first went after Ugin. After the Mending, he may want them free to fix the damage caused by the Time Spiral Crisis. With the exception of the Talon Gates (caused by battle involving Bolas), every rift on Dominaria during the crisis would have occurred after the Eldrazi were imprisoned. Maybe, in an ordinary cycle of events, the Eldrazi would have arrived once the damage was extensive enough and wiped Dominaria clean, negating the need for the Mending.

Maybe they could still fix it.

Or maybe Bolas just wants the opportunity to take their power.

Tezzeret’s Plans

On Mirrodin, Tezzeret was tasked with ensuring the New Phyrexians didn’t unite behind a leader, and to surveil their practices and make sure they wouldn’t rival Bolas’ power. Tezzeret instead attempt to gain control over them, but failed.

When we see him on Kaladesh, he’s focused on the planar bridge. He couldn’t have known that Rashmi was developing the bridge, but it was an area of specialization he wanted focused on. To what end? It’s unclear, but either the Bridge was to help Bolas, or to be used against him (duh). Still, Tezzeret’s presence on Kaladesh is largely a mystery, and his acquisition of Planar Bridge technology seems more like a happy coincidence for him than his secret plan all along.

Amonkhet

Which brings us to Amonkhet. I’ve speculated a lot on Amonkhet already, but what Bolas is doing there: the five ‘gods’, the Worthy, potentially Tezzeret and the Planar Bridge, is soon to be revealed. Doug Beyer mentioned in the first Official Story Team Podcast that we’ll see Bolas finally have a more direct hand on Amonkhet, no longer working in the shadows like we’ve seen over the last eight years. And hopefully, they mysteries that have plagued his appearances will finally be revealed.