#custom planeswalker

[niuttuc]

Arega: Story Summary up to 2024

Alright, you voted for it, so let's delve in, this will be quite a block of text, but I'll space it with cards to make it a bit less daunting.

Their story starts with a Lorwyn Changeling sparking, and ending up on Ravnica. While Changelings are self-aware and capable of speech, they're fairly simple creatures.

Ravnica was very overwhelming to them, thankfully a kind soul rescued them from the streets, and contacted a local Simic researcher to return what they assumed to be an escaped experiment of some kind, of the name of Jova.

Now, Jova was a relatively private researcher recently recruited as a potential creator for a budding Guardian Project. She's also one that had been experimenting with illegal cytoplasm, the technology passed down to her by her grandmother, who believed the blanket ban on cytoplasm was short-sighted. It is capable of great harm, but also is incredible medicine and bio-technology in the right hands.

(For anyone unaware of original Ravnica block, Cytoplasm was a blue-green goo that could be grafted to anyone and replicate the function of pretty much any body part or organ, better in some cases. It was used as replacement for missing limbs and organs, or augmentations.

Then the leader of the Simic at the time, Momir Vig, called it all back as part of a megalomaniacal plan, fusing it all back into Kraj having "learned" connected to so many people's nervous systems, in an attempt to make the perfect being, killing or injuring thousands if not millions that relied on those cytoplasms. When Zegana rebuilt the guild, cytoplasms were banned and forbidden across the board.)

After growing fond of the little changeling, and trying to understand it and where it came from better (and maybe for other reasons she was more ashamed of later), Jova eventually decided to try to "improve" the changeling's cognition with a cytoplastic augment.

This... Went wrong. While the changeling eventually somewhat stabilized, it was incapable of supporting the cytoplast by itself. Jova saved it by putting it in a Simic nourishing pod that would keep it alive (and sedated, until she figured something else out.)

Her eventual solution was to take advantage of the network of aligned cytoplasms with the one in the changeling's body. In theory, if she lined up artificial bodies with ones connected to it, and with some extra modifications, the changeling would be able to inhabit those different bodies and use them as their own, even when their original one was stuck in that pod.

And it worked! The first body she connected it to was one of her first wholly artificial Guardian designs, one intended (eventually) for reconnaissance and infiltration. It wasn't fully matured yet (and certainly not "aware" in any way. When they first opened their Guardian eyes, they had no memory of their life as a changeling or anything before then.

Jova adopted the young Guardian as a pupil and child, named them Arega, and raised them for a few years. While she kept secret their origins and original body from them, she did teach them about how they worked, cytoplasms, and how that had to stay a secret. To help with that, Jova and Arega intentionally reported inefficient or bad numbers to the Guardian Project, so that Arega's design would be considered a failure and not explored in too much detail.

Arega learned incredibly fast and well, likely partly because of their previous life. Less than four years after Jova took them in, they had most of an education and were capable of assisting Jova with bio projects. But they might not have been fully emotionally mature yet.

Jova died. A lab accident with a Krasis that escaped, nothing to do with Arega. It did bury Jova's lab under it, and with it the pod in which Arega's original body was stored. Arega panicked. Beyond the grief they felt, they'd now be put in the care of another Simic scientist, they were technically property of the guild. Ravnica's laws can be fucked up.

Their "solution" was to pretend Jova didn't die. They quickly cloned a body of Jova laced with cytoplasts for them to control, and "Jova" claimed she was just injured and disoriented in the accident. It was to only be temporary while Arega signed their own emancipation papers, but "just one more day" turned into a number of years, almost having their dead mom back.

This is where Arega was at when they were first created as a character! The starting point. I did warn it'd be a bit of a hike.

During those years, Arega matured a bit and learned even more. Appearing as a human by day did give them a different perspective on things. But the next big development would happen during the one day War of the Spark.

"Jova" died. Unbeknownst to them, Arega was a planeswalker, since the changeling sparked so long ago, and an Eternal tracked the echo of that spark into Jova's body and tried to rip it out. It didn't work, it was just a proxy, but it did destroy the body, and sent Arega in a renewed bout of grief and anger.

They take revenge on a few Eternals in a more combat-focused body, before being approached by another planeswalker. With her help, Arega follows the exposed connection to their spark to the ruins of Jova's old lab (still not cleared out, the Gruul have been keeping construction crews busy and simic labs tend to have long quarantines when they fall.)

There, they discover their original body, and with some help over the next few days, they piece together most of what happened to them. Sadly they aren't the only one to notice everything, and the rest of the Simic finally catches on to their shenanigans. And they didn't like them.

While the specifics remained a secret from most of the Combine (and Ravnica at large), the Speakers, the guild's leadership, debated on what to do with this deceitful creature. Worries about them becoming (or already being) a new Kraj were raised. Zegana championed the side of being careful in those debates, having seen the results of the last Kraj, to put Arega in stasis and remove the cytoplasm from them. Safely if possible, but the chances of that being an option seemed low.

On the other side of the debate, Vannifar was more opportunistic. Not really in defense of Arega, but they turned out to be a planeswalker. War of the Spark made their existence public on Ravnica and heightened the interests of the Guilds in other planes, both as threats and opportunities. Any planeswalker affiliated to the guild was a very precious asset, worth taking some risks for. With Vannifar as Prime Speaker, this side won out at the time. Arega would be monitored and precautions would be taken, but they'd be allowed to remain alive and active, working for the guild.

For the next few years, they'd work at studying other planes and their unique ecosystems and forms of life for the Simic, a few weeks to a few months at a time. There were a number of planes visited: Ikoria, Eldraine, Zendikar, Geonne, Ixalan and more...

Which brings to the forefront the specifics of Arega's planeswalking. While they most of the time defaulted to their Guardian body (and it's in fact the one they recognized as themselves), they didn't think they could planeswalk with it without severing the connection to their original body, essentially killing the Guardian. Their original body was the only one they could planeswalk with, along with some life-supporting technology to set up on the other world on arrival. They'd then set up a covert lab on site while they performed their work, coming back to Ravnica regularly for reports.

Which is also one of the major precautions the Combine had against Arega. While on Ravnica, their original body stayed within armed Simic guard. While in their original body, their Guardian one was kept secured and hostage in the same way.

During that time, a team was put in charge of studying how Arega's connection worked, and determined a few things. First, extracting the cytoplasm from the changeling was impossible without destroying who Arega was pretty much completely. And second, potential ways to affect them with access to an active part of the cytoplastic network, a body they'd currently be using.

Despite the situation, with them being kept partly hostage, Arega still loved the Simic, their ideals and understood the fear that motivated them against the cytoplastic creature. They were happy to help, even if the situation was worrying at times. Of course, they could have planeswalked away during their work at any time, but it would mean abandoning their "real" body. Not that they wanted to anyway. But their mission on Eldraine marked a turning point.

On Eldraine, they set up and worked in the Wilds. They first welcomed Arega, a shapeshifter, a changeling, recognizing it as kindred. But they were also a scientist. Trying to measure, quantify, define. That was antithetical to the chaotic nature of the Wilds, and Arega's experiments never produced any results, certainly not replicable ones.

To put it simply, months of work on Eldraine produced pretty much nothing of worth to report. The reprimands that came next (and a few conversations on Eldraine) did make Arega realize fully the situation they were in, though. Kept hostage, made to work, a disappointment or change of regime away from being deemed too much of a risk and killed. They may have understood why the Combine felt like it had to act like that, but that doesn't mean they thought they should, it went against most of the guild's ideals Arega believed in.

It's after this long work on Eldraine that they started seriously thinking about possibilities to get out of the situation they were in. Most of them ranged from stupid to suicidal, or would have required them leaving their body behind. They did consider leaving it behind, maybe make a new one for themself, but this was a no-go. This body of theirs represented too much for them, mainly as how Jova knew them. Made them.

In those years, that Guardian body also finally pupated into full physical maturity, and while that came with a few changes, most of them didn't help their escape plans much. The planning in general ended up less important than an opportunity that presented itself to them, and they felt like they had to seize: The Phyrexian Invasion!

In the chaos of the Invasion, Arega finalized a risky idea, but a possible one. With the guard over their original body lightened by the war effort (and Arega's general compliance over the years), they took advantage of it to sneak and sedate their way into the complex, steal themselves, and try to planeswalk at once with both their bodies through the openings of other worlds created by Realmbreaker.

It worked! Not without hitch, but they were free. And back on Eldraine, dealing with its own Invasion. They hid in the Wilds, settling and removing the various contingencies the guild had left in their bodies in case of their escape, not wanting to test their luck on whether they'd work across planes.

Hidden back in their field lab, and soon after they settled, it wasn't a Simic affliction that got them. The Wicked Slumber spread, and while it would take months to affect most of Eldraine, Arega was a stranger to the plane, one of the targets for it. Only a couple days after they arrived, they fell to the Slumber until Kellan finally lifted it, months later.

Upon understanding what happened, they were very worried. Any headstart they might have had on people the Simic would have sent after them was long gone. And they couldn't really planeswalk away anymore, so they were stuck on Eldraine for the time being. Of course, exploring and discussing, they learned about Omenpaths, both a relief and a source of concern. This meant that the Combine didn't have to hire planeswalkers to chase them, any agents would do, but it also meant Arega had ways off-plane if they wanted. They set off in search for a way for them to planeswalk more reliably, as a way to be able to evade any pursuers.

(Of course, nobody was actually on Arega's trail. While a few Simic contacts or planeswalkers may have been told to keep an eye out, after the Invasion, the Simic's resources were strained way too thin on rebuilding and gaining back trust. Arega was on another world, and another world's concern, a secondary one for the guild for the time being. And leadership had learned to know the changeling a bit better by then, and thought they were at relatively low risk in the short term. Probably. If whatever plane they ended up on could handle a phyrexian invasion, it could probably handle a rogue Arega)

Arega finally found something that could potentially help them on the plane of Geonne. A local ritual to magically fuse together two organisms, for better survival. It took them a while to study the phenomenon and build confidence, both that it could work in their case and probably wouldn't kill them. But when they finally tried it, it worked, mostly without hitch!

They combined together their Guardian body and their original body (well, with its cytoplasts), into something mostly resembling the former externally (as the changeling body wasn't able to survive on its own exposed to the world already). Their internal biology is probably somewhat closer to changeling? They do not understand it, or what they are now. They can still inhabit other bodies, but they're more interested in experimenting with this one for now. A new form of life is something to be explored and researched!

Their new body appears to slowly shapeshift to adapt to tasks and environments it is put in, which is fascinating to them. Able to planeswalk, confident they can escape capture and eager to rediscover themselves, that's roughly where they are at nowadays!

After this, they wrote a letter to both Zegana and Vannifar they got delivered onto Ravnica, apologizing and pleading them not to come after them, and that maybe someday they'd be able to rejoin the guild? But on more favorable terms? Addressing them differently. Sadly, by the time the letters were delivered, one of their recipients was unable to receive it.

[hwdesperado]

Sometimes you get a dumb idea and you have to make it a reality. Many thanks to my friends @citrine-shards and @conjuredcrow for these perfect illustrations! My Gruul Lesbian Elemental Commander deck would be incomplete without them.

[mlp-mtg]

Moving onto the main character, two of the twilight's are riffing on the learn mechanic in an indirect way due to the nature of commander cube.

[loreholdlesbian]

Card transcription

Tibalt, Gibbering Agent 1B P/B/R R Legendary Planeswalker- Tibalt [mythic] Compleated (P/B/R can be paid with B, R, or 2 life. If life was paid, this planeswalker enters with two fewer loyalty counters.) -1: You may sacrifice an artifact or creature. If you do, each opponent loses 3 life. -2: Create a 1/1 red Phyrexian Devil creature token with "When this creature dies, it deals 1 damage to any target." -3: For each opponent, incubate X, where X is the amount of life that player lost this turn. Loyalty 7

End transcription

Art link: https://www.deviantart.com/steamhat/art/Tibalt-Vanguard-of-Pain-573385109

[mtg-epsilon-butterfly]

Androphit, The Omniscient Trial-Keeper

Race: Sphinx

Birthplace/Homeplane: Amonkhet

Status: Alive (Standing Azorius Guildleader in the 38th district)

**Backstory Summery:** Originally an Amonkhet sphinx Androphit went by their dead name of “Travophit”. Travophit worked in the Trial of Knowledge and under Kefnet as trainer of new viziers. Travophit sparked after finding a small group of their new vizier’s had lost their minds after experimenting with scrolls that Kefnet had hidden away. Travophit saw this opportunity to ditch their old identity. Adopting the name Androphit, Now She attempted to hide within the Kaldadeshi Wilderness of Peema in the small river village of “Combondi”. This is where she was given the identity of “The Keeper of Combondi” by the villagers who saw her as a guardian. She in turn would set up her own trials of knowledge nearby in honor of her old god. Here she would teach the members of the village skills she taught to prepare for the trials. She eventually would have a run in with the planeswalking aetherborn bounty hunter, Srinavas after a bounty was placed on her head by the planeswalker and head of the consulate Dovin Baan. To escape she would cast an invisibility spell upon herself and planeswalk away. Androphit followed the strong Aether to Arcavios, and more specifically the college of Strixhaven, Here she would study at Strixhaven academy. During her studies there she majored in Extraplanar Observations. During her studies she witnessed the Hour of Devastation. Androphit quickly returned to Amonkhet to help how she could yet it was far too late. This is where she found that Ravnica was Nicol Bolas’ ultimate goal. She rushed over to Ravnica, she wanted to help prepare the city for the incoming war. Androphit was quickly welcomed into the Azorius Senate and promoted to standing guild leader after showcasing her plan to build a series of trials specifically made for Ravnica. During the war of the spark thanks to her preparations and the help of her magically bolstered group known as “Crop Akh-Id”. The invasion within the 38th was expertly handled. Allowing Androphit and Domahelix to assist the 10th district in their standoff. During which she had a fortunate encounter with Srinivas, Who was weakened by some magical force. Here she would ambush Srinivas, stealing nearly all of his essence. Androphit left Srinnavas a withered blip of an Aetherborn with just a few hours left to live. After the war ended Androphit returned to the now liberated Kaladesh. Returning to Combondi to revisit and explain her departure and her wishes for the Combondi trial of knowledge. Androphit, along with the village a combination of Mathmagic, ancient Amonkhetan sorcery, and good old fashioned Kaladeshi ingenuity they created Treskhet’kophit, The Knowledge-Born. After the completion of the Magitech Sphinx Androphit returned to Ravnica to resume her position as the Omniscient Trial keeper.

[mowu-moment]

of course who else would make an appearance in All Will Be Un than curse guy? doesn't seem to like his phyrexian coffee

[thatonebjp]

Blue commons

[gregor-never-leaves-the-house]

So I built this Magic the Gathering Cube that has no Combat Damage in it, and because that was not enough I made proxy cards of existing cards to represent my characters and my storyline.

[dravidious]

Was thinking about removal and came up with what I think are some reasonable costs for common removal effects and also counterspells

[shittycustommtglegendaries]

Gods bless DeviantArtists for helping me give life to my shitty creations.

[beatsandskies]

(p)Reconstructed: Intros, Planeswalkers and reimagined Commander decks oh my!

As it happens there’s a lot of M15 framed stuff today. As in it’s all M15 stuff. Not sure how that happened exactly as unless this is the very first post of mine you’ve read then you’ll understand that I’m all about premodern era Theme Decks. And, reusing the same “well actually I do know how” type framing which I’m pretty sure I overuse consistently: the newer the cards the easier they are to…

[niuttuc]

Fanwalker friday seems like a good time to introduce the latest addition to the roster, Jaspar (pronounced closer to Yaspar, he’s Kaldheimr).

He’s a Kaldheimr shadow elf who’s magic is not quite necromancy, or depending on who you ask, is barely necromancy. He can call upon the echoes and imprints of life in objects and materials that once lived and no longer do, to manifest aspects of themselves or have them temporarily act as living creatures.

It's pretty versatile but also reliant on what he has access to. For example, into the back of his clothes are sown insect wings they can use their magic on to allow him to fly. The reptilian molts worn by elves he can animate to act like a living snake (regardless of missing most of it) or have it protect him as a snakeskin veil. Soil is full of formerly living material, but it's very mixed, it requires a lot of focus for him to assemble something out of it but he can conjure small creatures made of earth that way. Another use could be for example to coax a wooden chair made from an apple tree to grow an apple, and there’s a limited amount of psychometry he can perform with those objects to recall stuff they experience when they lived.

He carries around a "sword" fashioned of an antique fang of Koma, the discovery of which (and the understanding of its nature he gained while trying to read its echoes) was the source of Jaspar's sparking to Amonkhet, out of awe and reverence. He basically never uses it as a sword, and he wouldn't think of filing it down to make it more useful as one, but people ask less question that way and he can carry it hidden in its sheathe. The hilt he fashioned has a Lazotep core, which proved very effective on carrying his magic and allowing him to channel the fang’s magic without touching it directly. He believes the fang is what allows him access to the "Far Realms" that are the rest of the Multiverse, using it to cut open omenpaths to the farther reaches of the Cosmos.

As far as why he travels the Multiverse, he understood that those far realms are out of reach of the Skoti usurpers, so he's looking through them for the secret to become the first Einir in centuries. He wants to be the one to bring that part of their culture and the associated power and glory back to his people, the Skoti having purged Skemfari elves of the knowledge and tradition associated with them.

If you have any question about him, feel free to ask on this post or in a separate ask!

[markrosewater]

Hey Mark, I just wanted to say you've always seemed like a really cool guy. I've played magic for over 4/5ths of my life, since the early 2000s when I was only five years old, I even met most of my long time friends through it. But I think I finally feel alienated enough by it to drop it entirely.

I always enjoyed every aspect of this game, from the deckbuilding, to the flavor, to the color pie and the possibilities it presented. I loved the fantasy of it, of planeswalkers and wizards, dragons and castles.

Universes Beyond really was the end of it, all the way back then. When i heard the announcements I was terrified, I knew where it would lead even then. I loved the world of Magic, and it feels silly to say about a card game but I truly felt immersed in the world when I played, even with the different planes, everything cohered to an internal set of rules that seemed unbreakable.

For a while I continued, our local scene created a variant format that banned Universes Beyond cards so I was able to ignore them, but then came Neon Dynasty. It felt strange to me, like it was breaking what I had come to expect out of the game. Most people disagreed, said it was still Magic enough, but I wondered just how far it would be pushed before Magic lost any identity of its own, anything that separated it from Fortnite or any other crossover soup known entirely for the things it borrows rather than the things it is.

When I saw the first spoilers for Duskmourn, I think that was the straw that broke the camel's back. When I play at the table with my friends, I enjoy the fact that all the cards feel like part of one larger universe. And when I see cards with televisions and smartphones in them, with modern clothing and internet references, I just can't fit them together in my mind. It seems like a cool world, much like a lot of the crossovers are cool worlds, but I play Magic for well... Magic. If I wanted to play Fallout or Warhammer 40k, or watch Insidious or Walking Dead, then I would. But when I play Magic, I want to see magic.

And it's canon, just as canon as Innistrad or Alara. We can't excise it like we can Universes Beyond, and if we can't, then what's even the point of trying to "protect the tone" with those bans? What tone are we protecting, that's already been shattered from within?

More and more it feels like the game just isn't for me, doesn't want the kind of player that feels strongly about cohesion and immersion. And that's fine, it doesn't have to cater to me, and the current approach seems to bring in more people than it drives away. But it still just makes me sad, on a deep personal level, to give up on what has been such a major part of my life.

In all likelihood, I'm an outlier, and you could easily say that Magic getting even broader in what it covers is only a positive thing. Take my critiques only as the lamentations of a single person. But when you can put anything in a piece of media, when there's no unifying idea of what is and isn't possible, then it just starts to feel meaningless.

I'm sorry, I know you'll probably never read this, I mostly just needed to get it off my chest- and you're the closest thing to a human face Magic the Gathering has. Thank you for all the work you've put into it over the years, and I'm sorry that I can't enjoy it anymore.

Thanks for writing. From a big picture, Magic excels at creating variety and does poorly at consistency. The core idea of a trading card game is we make lots and lots of pieces you can play with and then you, the player, customize your game as you see fit. History has shown us, the wider we spread the potential of what Magic can be, the more people find something they enjoy and are attracted to the game.

Think of it this way. Each player has a different sense of what Magic is to them. There's no cutoff point where we make the majority of players happy. In fact, for many players, it's the ever-expanding quality to the game that they enjoy most.

This does mean though that we might make choices that don't connect with what you personally enjoy, and I respect that. If Magic isn't providing what you want out of it, that's okay. My only recommendation is don't get rid of your cards. Many Magic players rotate in and out of the game, and the number one complaint I hear from players who rotate back in is them having gotten rid of everything when they rotated out.

Magic might not be what you need right now, but maybe a few years from now you've changed in ways which makes it something you will enjoy. Or maybe Magic will evolve in a way that speaks to you. The only constant I know is you and Magic will both change. Just leave yourself the possibility of reconnecting.

Thanks for playing all these years, and I hope to see you again.

[urabrask-the-hidden]

Xalior

Xalior is my own little custom plane in the multiverse of Magic: the Gathering, my beautiful baby worldbuilding project ready to be shared to the wonderful world of tumblr dot com. It is a three-color faction plane, where all ten shards and wedges are present. As well, the primary color of each faction is the last color in WUBRG order, much like how in Khans of Tarkir, the wedges were centered in the first color. 

The factions, called “Domains”, are regions shaped by the magic of one of Xalior’s dead gods, with which they share a name. The Domains of Xalior are as follows:

Khelos, Domain of Domination

Morax, Domain of Destruction

Rystan, Domain of Survival

Adient, Domain of Radiance

Ebrius, Domain of Enlightenment

Zalsu, Domain of Eternity

Igovic, Domain of Invention

Nyduul, Domain of Mystery

Orathir, Domain of Conquest

Venhi, Domain of Imagination

The Domains are led, in one way or another, by ancient, powerful beings known as the Chosen, favored by their god in life. 

There is no peace on Xalior. While some Domains are friendlier than others, and alliances are often a necessity, such relations are tenuous. The Domains are, as a rule, enemies.

A HISTORY OF XALIOR

Countless ages ago, a mighty planeswalker named Qol of Five Spirits breathed life into the Blind Eternities, and Xalior was born. Ten stewards they created, tasked with overseeing this infant plane and building upon it as they saw fit. But Qol did not depart into the Multiverse; for reasons yet unknown, they remained, binding themselves to Xalior as its Worldsoul. 

For millennia, Xalior was a simple, unremarkable plane, humbly occupying its small corner of the Multiverse. There was peace then; conflict, too, but it did not hold sway. The gods lived, and mortals were free. 

THE DIVINE WAR

This peace did not last. Could not last, some say. Centuries before the Mending, war broke out between the gods of Xalior. How or why it began was unknown even then, yet that did not stop the war from spilling into the mortal realm. None could escape this most dreadful of conflicts. 

Most modern myths and legends are set in this time, recounting the acts of the gods and their champions. Few tales from the Domains agree with one another, and each has their own story of how their god met their fate. Perhaps they died steadily over the course of the war. Perhaps it was all at once. All that is known is that they started the war, and paid the price. 

THE GREAT RESHAPING

Gods are not meant to die. They were an integral part of the world, and so when they fell, they essentially became the Domains, changing leylines and geography, forming these physical regions of the mortal realm which embodied some version of what each god stood for. The Chosen came to take power in their respective Domains, guiding its people in accordance to their god’s- or their own- will. 

And so Xalior has been rendered nigh unrecognizable, its lands shattered and people divided. It sits now at what many see to be a tipping point; time shall tell if hope remains, or if it shall succumb to the doom of its pantheon.

Xalior/Khelos/Morax/Rystan/Adient/Ebrius/Zalsu/Igovic/Nyduul/Orathir/Venhi/Hinterlands

[sylvan-librarian]

Nissa's Pilgrimage Part I: Worldwaker

Preface: 

Hi there! My name is Steven; I recently wrapped up a master’s degree in library science and am doing my best to segue careers. Since my terminally long job hunt has left me with more down time than I ever wanted to have, I decided to put my English degree to good(?🤷) use by writing a bunch of personal essays on Magic the Gathering, as it is a topic I have been obsessed with for around a decade now. I didn’t intend to share these ramblings at first, and I began this whole project for my own edification, to keep my brain active, and to prevent myself going insane from boredom. However, I thought it couldn’t hurt to throw these online and see what comes of it.

This particular piece is part 1 of ???. I have a lot of notes in my drafts and even more thoughts in my head, so it may just go on indefinitely until someone (finally) gives me a dang job.

TLDR: I’m a deranged MTG Vorthos and former English major with a lot of thoughts and even more time on my hands, so I began a handful of English major-y essays on my pet topics. I’m posting them here for now.

Introduction:

Almost every Magic player who began learning the game after the planeswalker card type was introduced in the Lorwyn expansion in October, 2007 can tell you a story about the first planeswalker card they fell in love with. It might have been because the mechanics on the card melded perfectly with their preferred strategy of play, it might have been because they kept up with the story and were invested in the represented character’s journey, or it might have simply been because they thought the art looked cool.

For whatever reason under Mirrodin’s five suns a Magic player first became attached to a planeswalker and their cards, the character often become symbolic for our love of the game itself. These symbols grow beyond simple loyalty abilities on a piece of cardboard and become inexorably intertwined with our own personal Magic experience.

For me, this planeswalker was Nissa Revane.

You see, in March of 2014, I started working at The Game Closet in Waco, Texas. I had just finished getting a master’s degree in English, so of course, my first job out in the real world was to become a clerk at my local game store (really putting my humanities education to work). Having grown up in a small Louisiana town, I never had a chance to play Magic. I entered the tabletop gaming world through my obsession with Dungeons & Dragons, Shadowrun, and sundry other RPG’s. 

Nevertheless, as Magic players made up the majority of the store’s customer base, I took it upon myself to learn the game. The Theros block was wrapping up at the time with its third set, Journey into Nyx, and a bunch of friendly players were more than happy to unload all of their bulk commons and uncommons to me (Journey into Nyx was famously underpowered, after all), so I tried to make a standard deck out of all this draft chaff and run it at Friday Night Magic. 

It didn’t go too well.

However, I was happy with the overall direction of the deck, and I immediately discovered that I loved green decks, specifically green ramp strategies.

I was enthralled with the idea of accelerating mana so that you can play flashy, intimidating creatures and cool, game warping spells far earlier than you have any right to, so I continued to tweak the deck until I made a functioning version of the Theros Standard Mono Green Devotion deck. Even though I wasn’t good enough at the game in my early days to consistently win (even at the local level), I had a lot of fun with it! It was fast and explosive, but for some reason, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was missing something.

However, not a few months later, the Magic 2015 Core Set gets released, and the chase mythic rare in the set’s early days was exactly the kind of card I was looking for: Nissa, Worldwaker. I had no idea who this Nissa character was supposed to be — though I did think the art looked pretty cool — but I was in awe of the card’s abilities! It was precisely the kind of fuel I felt my standard deck needed at the time, and it turns out I was right! My Magic the Gathering “competitive” “career” begins and ends with a handful of first place rankings at my local game store’s standard FNM events, but as small a victory as those are, nearly all of these top rankings were due to Nissa, Worldwaker. 

Needless to say, I became devoted to the character overnight.

Exploration:

But who is Nissa, really? Let’s start with the basics. Nissa is an elf planeswalker from the plane of Zendikar, a largely untamed wilderness where the land itself has a will of its own, causing unforeseeable (un)natural disasters called “the roil” by Zendikari locals. According to the recently-released Magic The Gathering: The Visual Guide by Jay Annelli, Nissa is in her 60s and she is 5 feet, 2 inches tall, making her the smallest of the original four members of the Gatewatch (five if you count Liliana). Nissa has a mystical connection to the land and can sense a plane’s leylines, giving her a measure of control over the ground she walks on; this allows her to animate the very land itself to fight her enemies, a narrative element that has been expressed mechanically time and time again on Nissa’s cards throughout the years. 

Ostracized from the elven clan she was born in, the Joraga, for the crime of having this connection to the land (a rare brand of sorcery called “animism” in the lore of Magic), Nissa spent large stretches of years alone with only the spirits of the natural world as companions. This has made her socially awkward to a fault, and the issues she has in communicating with her friends (and later, lovers) has been a fairly consistent plot point throughout all of the (canon) story arcs she has played a part in. 

In a fictional universe that contains ageless elder dragons, a man-eating toad, a sentient robot who literally created a planet from scratch, and a wizard who once phased an entire continent out of the time stream, Nissa Revane’s eternal struggle to express simple feelings to people she shares a bond with always seemed to me the most human element in the Magic canon. Additionally (big surprise), that’s something I have in common with her. While other Vorthoses have made the argument that Nissa is on the autism spectrum, that is something I have neither the personal experience with nor the education of to speak about. That is certainly a valid lens to view this character through, however, so if that interests you, I’d encourage you to search up these pieces on your own.

What I can speak on with a certain level of expertise, however, is the personal struggle of being a shy, withdrawn introvert in an extroverted world. As a lifelong wallflower with a vivid imagination and a rich inner world, I can deeply relate to a character who doesn’t know how to put her intense feelings to words. For example, in the final story of the Kaladesh arc, Renewal, Nissa tries to express to her companion Chandra just how deeply she wants to be “friends” with her:

Nissa swallowed past the desert in her throat. "I don't speak often. I lived alone for...decades. Zendikar was my companion. We understood each other at a level deeper than words. I...I don't know how to talk to you. I'm trying to learn." Chandra looked up, eyes wide and startled. "You don't know how to talk to me?" "I will make mistakes," Nissa said. "Pick the wrong words. Misunderstand yours. I'll act strange and won't know that I am. But if you can be patient with me, I would like to be..." Waves of sky-song memory welled upward, symphonies of color and warmth, resonant movement and shared breath. She stilled them, reduced them, and forced out angular words shaped in a pallid shadow of acceptable truth. "...your friend." Chandra's hands leapt out to enfold hers, warm as a bird's nest. "I dunno," she sniffled, one corner of her mouth quivering upward. "I think you're pretty good at picking words." "It took all afternoon to decide how to say this."

While this section of Renewal is a cornerstone of Nissa’s and Chandra’s future romantic relationship, that is a topic big enough to warrant its own essay in order to do it justice. For now, though, let’s focus on this bit: “‘I would like to be…’ Waves of sky-song memory welled upward, symphonies of color and warmth, resonant movement and shared breath. She stilled them, reduced them, and forced out angular words shaped in a pallid shadow of acceptable truth. ‘...your friend.’” Nissa’s never ending struggle to use words grand enough to communicate the intensity of the feelings in her heart has stuck with me since Renewal was posted on Magic’s website in 2017. I doubt I’m the only one, either.

Heroic Intervention

Nissa was already the character I was most invested in back in 2017, but observing her deep well of emotions she didn’t know to express and her entire lifetime's worth of interests and experiences she didn’t know how to talk about helped me, I think, come to terms the previous two-and-a-half decades of my own life that I spent cowering in corners at parties, being as unobtrusive as possible in the lives of my friends and family, and holding myself back because I didn’t think anyone would ever want me around - as a friend, as a lover, or even as a coworker. This section, from later on in Renewal, really gutted me at the time: 

What would she do, if she had the time again? If she didn't flinch at light, noise, and touch, or speak in gestures and movements strange and off-putting to others? How could she tell this new life to laugh and weep without reservation or regret; to sing to the stars and waters, or to nothing at all; to love unreserved and unguarded; to treasure every moment with those beloved; to forgive any regretted trespass; to dance when moved to; to savor long silences in warm company; to greet each dawn, each face with the thought, this will be an adventure; to be brave, and kind, and trusting, and... ...like Chandra. The aetherborn waited, flickering. But why would anyone find her thoughts on the matter of value, anyway? Don't be afraid to follow your heart, Nissa told them. ...Why would that be scary? Halfway across Ghirapur, her body exhaled a laugh into the deepening twilight. May it ever puzzle you.

It wasn’t too long after this story was published that I began my own journey from hiding in the shadows to living my life in a way I was proud of. I moved away with the woman I was dating at the time, and even though that relationship ended up not working out, I spent five long, fun, life-altering years learning to

laugh and weep without reservation or regret; to sing to the stars and waters, or to nothing at all; to love unreserved and unguarded; to treasure every moment with those beloved; to forgive any regretted trespass; to dance when moved to; to savor long silences in warm company; to greet each dawn, each face with the thought, this will be an adventure.

I wonder to this day if the courage Nissa displayed during her own pilgrimage helped nurture in me the courage I needed in my own…

Conclusion

If you made this far, thanks! I’m not sure who, if any, will be interested in these endless ramblings, but if you're here, I hope you found something in it to enjoy!

Further entries in this little series will cover who Nissa is as a character, how she has been treated by various writers in Magic's various seasons, and why that matters (to me at least). The next longform piece I post will go over Nissa’s dual origins, why she was retconned from an incompetent xenophobe into the cinnamon roll with baggage we know today, and what both the Magic Story Team and its fans have made of this shift over the years.

References

Annelli, J. Magic The Gathering The Visual Guide. DK Publishing

Li, M., Digges, K., Luhrs, A., Beyer D., & L'Etoile, C. (2017). Renewal

[dial-p-for-placey]

Got commissioned to draw this sketch in thr customer's book of Planeswalkers in Magic the Gathering. They let me pick whoever I wanted (aside from a few that were already in the book) and saw Vivien and knew I had to draw her 😍🤩