Finding the Path: Artifacts of Great Power

While Pathfinder has a lot of guides to creating customised magic items, from mixing and matching weapon special abilities, to the rules for building intelligent items, sometimes you want something that just doesn't have any rules similar to what you actually want. And as cool as the Janus Trident and the Angelheart Vial are, they are not the first things that spring to mind when thinking about artifacts from Magic: the Gathering.

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

Finding the Path: Zendikar's Origins

Zendikar is one of Magic's oldest planes, with the first Eldrazi invasion taking place just over a thousand years before the birth of Urza on the plane of Dominaria (an event generally used as year 0 in Magic chronology). However, Zendikar's great age is retroactive, as the plane was first referred to in The Purifying Fire, a novel only published in 2009.

While we know how far back the history goes, we know relatively little about that history. We know that the first Eldrazi invasion took place 6000 years before the present day. The Eldrazi are a mysterious extraplanar race, based partly on HP Lovecraft's Cthulu, that devour entire planes of existence by consuming the mana in the land, leaving behind nothing but lifeless wastes. The most dangerous of them are the three Eldrazi titans - the all-consuming Ulamog, the reality-warping Kozilek and the nigh-invincible time-bending Emrakul.

Finding the Path: Priceless Treasures

Magic: the Gathering has always had powerful items known as artifacts. The MtG world of Zendikar, being partly based on D&D, was supposed to be full of very dangerous locations filled with amazing treasures and items of great power. It even used the tagline "Deadly Perils, Priceless Treasures".

Which meant that, if I was running a campaign on Zendikar, there had to be some really cool, powerful treasures for people.

The first magical item I made as a cool reward was the Trident of Ula, a +1 guided trident, meaning it had a +1 bonus to attack and damage, and used the wielder's wisdom modifier instead of the usual strength modifier. It is somewhat unclear whether guided property is a legitimate Pathfinder rule or not, but, hey, I am the GM, and I can do whatever I want. Yes, it is a rather powerful and expensive weapon to give a low-level character, and generally, giving that to a single character can easily make them outclass the rest of the party, which is bad, as every player should get moments to shine. However, I was giving it to Dhamiran's merfolk cleric, Ler Mimir, who was not really supposed to be stabbing things in close combat. He had to pick his moments, and either use it to counter a charging enemy, or as a way to finish off an enemy already wounded by the other party members. It would be difficult for him to outclass the damage-dealers, and the party seemed to enjoy his trident-stabbing shenanigans anyway. Here is the trident I made:

Janus Trident
Aura: moderate evocation and necromancy
Caster Level: 10th
Slot: Wielded
Price: 18000gp
Description
Few know the truth of the connection between the gods Ula and Ulamog, and virtually none have heard whispers of how Ula takes the dark weapons of Ulamog, and bends them towards the light. The Janus Trident is a +1 conductive guided trident made of gleaming white coral and pink pearl that is inscribed with a faintly glowing symbol of Ula. As a standard action, the wielder can transform it into a +1 vicious guided trident made of chalky grey coral and black pearl inscribed with the symbol of Ulamog. The trident can be transformed back again as a standard action.

Well...that's not quite what I said it was. I may not have been completely honest with my players about some of their items. See, one of the major villains of the campaign, Lucrecia, has been planting cursed items in the path of the heroes, in order to gain an advantage if she is forced to fight them directly. This has included a ring that can bring the wearers fears to life, a hammer that casts daylight at inopportune moments, and the Janus Trident - originally a Trident of Ulamog under an illusion that made it appear to belong to Ula. But something (or Someone) has subverted Lucrecia's plans, and the illusion has somehow become reality.

Though the Janus Trident was something I planned out beforehand, the second item was something I had to throw together quickly when it became apparent that (with Dhamiran temporaily absent for a few weeks due to work) the group needed more healing than a few potions could provide. Originally I planned to give the party a wand of mass cure wounds, however, it turns out that such a thing does not actually exist, due to it being an item that is far too powerful to allow. The only thing that would be able to duplicate such power would be some sort of artifact. Enter one of my favourite cards from Zendikar: the Angelheart Vial.

Initially, the vial, which I had to quickly invent in a couple of days, was just a 10-charge wand of mass cure light wounds. (I limited it to 10 because, it really is an immensely powerful ability for low level characters.) The archangel Iona would appear and gave it to Sir Eleassar without explanation. However, I decided I could do better than that. Due to the fact that Sir Elessar was suffering from rolling really bad will saves against fear, and ended running away from enemies quite a lot, which was bad cause he was supposed to be the groups tank, I decided to make something that boosted his will save, gave me a panic button to press if he still failed, gave the group an extra way to deal with the upcoming enemy ghosts, and tied into his characters backstory, allowing his superiors in the Order of the Reliquary to go 'Well done on obtaining a powerful relic, here, you are promoted to knight-captain.'

I trawled through Ultimate Equipment for the rules about building intelligent items, and constructed a pretty powerful artifact with some powerful abilities and a really cool backstory. Sadly, none of my players have yet tried to work out what exactly the angelheart vial is, and why she seems to be able to cast spells of her own accord. The party has also consistently stymied my attempts to reveal this, by ensuring that Elessar never meets anyone who would recognise what she is, meaning her true nature has remained a secret. So then, here, for the first time, are the full stats and backstory of Numa's Heart:

Numa's Heart
Purpose: To defend the interests of Numa.
Aura: Strong Abjuration
Caster Level: 11th
Slot: Stone
Price: 25000gp
Stats
Alignment: neutral good
Ego: 11
Senses: 30ft
Intelligence 13, Wisdom 14, Charisma 11.
Communication: empathy (Common, Celestial)
Description 
The archangel Numa was slain by Emrakul during the fall of the city of Nal-Kashel, but her diamond heart was recovered by Linvala, and Iona fashioned it into the most powerful angelheart vial ever made. Despite her power, Numa's Heart was kept secretly in the Sky-Ruins of Emeria during the second Eldrazi War. For reasons known only to herself, Iona gifted the vial to Sir Elessar of the Reliquary to aide him and his companions in their battle with a demonic barghest. Unlike most intelligent items, Numa's Heart is secretive, and prefers to conceal her true nature, demanding very little of her wearer, only using her spells and voicing her opinion in dire circumstances. Numa's Heart grants the wearer a +1 sacred bonus to their Will save and functions as a wand of mass cure light wounds with 10 charges. She can be used as an abjuration implement by occultists and knights of the Reliquary. In addition, Numa's Heart can cast spells of her own accord.

Spells
11th level divine caster:
3/day - remove fear
1/day - spirit-bound blade
at will - call spirit (purpose only)

Finding the Path: Storm, Fire and Shadow

Paizo recently announced that the next 'season' of the Pathfinder Society will be called the Year of the Stolen Storm, and will feature many trips to the various elemental planes (air, water, fire and earth). The geniekin races linked to each plane will also be playable character races. This gives me the perfect opportunity to do a blog post full of pictures by my favourite freelance artist, Jesper Ejsing.

But what exactly are planes in Pathfinder, and how do they work? It is fairly complicated, so let us start at the beginning.

A djinni of the Air Plane. Illustration by Jesper Ejsing.

What we would define as reality - the world around us, and the material objects that exist or live in it - is called the Material Plane in Pathfinder. You could say that the Material Plane is in the middle, and the other planes are found around or above it - but not in a directional sense, as you can't point and say 'that way to the fire plane'. You can usually only travel to the other planes using magic.

But even that is a simplification. The Material Plane is only one half of the 'middle'. The other half is a place called the Shadow Plane, a sort of darkened reflection of the Material Plane, sharing it's geography, but with muted colours and sounds, different nations and cities, and populated with a worryingly large number of undead things. This makes sense, as the Shadow Plane is actually powered by a small plane called the Negative Energy Plane which sits at it's centre, and is the source of unlife. Conversely, the Positive Energy Plane is the source of life, and is in the centre of the Material Plane - though, again, these are figurative rather than physical centres.

Sometime in the past, a number of humans found themselves trapped on the shadow plane. After generations of exposure to the planes unusual umbra, they have changed to the point that they are now a separate race to humanity - known as the fetchlings, their skin and hair are various tones of grey, and their pigment-less irises are pale yellow.

A marid of the Water Plane. Illustration by Jesper Ejsing.

The Material and Shadow Planes are connected together by a third plane - the Ethereal Plane - which is not really a full plane, as it overlays the other two and has no geography as such. In Pathfinder, the Ethereal Plane is the place your mind goes while you are asleep, and dreaming people reshape the plane around them subconsciously.  Spellcasters also make use of the plane - spells like blink, for example, can partially shift the caster into the Ethereal Plane, causing weapons to pass harmlessly through their form. Alternately, it's overlapping nature can be used as a means to travel between the Material and Shadow Planes.

Around this core of Material-Ethereal-Shadow are the four elemental planes - Air, Earth, Water and Fire. Each of these planes have unique geography - the air plane is composed entirely of sky with no true land - unique inhabitants, and even entire civilisations. The most well known elemental inhabitants are the outsiders known as genies. There are four kinds - one on each plane.

Air is home to the djinn, the most well known of the four, and the only kind that are good-aligned. Djinn famously have the ability to grant wishes to those of the Material plane. Like many other outsiders, djinn have mixed with humans, giving rise to an elf-like geniekin race called the sylph, lithe and clever but carefree humanoids, with an affinity for air magic, and a penchant for spying and eavesdropping, which they do not out of maliciousness, but from sheer curiosity about everything.

An efreeti of the Fire Plane. Illustration by Jesper Ejsing.

Fire is home to the evil efreet, also known for wish-granting, though wishes granted by them often have a way of going awry, leading to the famous phrase 'be careful what you wish for'. Their humanoid descendants, the ifrit, are often mistaken for tieflings, as they often have horns, fiery hair or black-scaled skin on their arms. They tend to be passionate about everything, and fiercely independent.

Unlike djinn and efreet, realtively little is known about the marid of the Water Plane, or the shaitan of the Earth Plane. They are generally neutral, not taking sides in the battle between good and evil. They also have humanoid descendents - the undine, who look very similar to the legged merfolk of Magic: the Gathering, and the stubborn and stony oread who, it is said, only get along well with the dwarves.

All the planes I have mentioned so far make up what is called the Inner Sphere - there are actually another nine planes termed the Outer Sphere, which is where things like angels and archons come into the narrative. But I have gone on long enough. I will just mention that the planes have been a slight problem in adapting Pathfinder to Magic, as the term 'plane' has a very different meaning in Magic. It's not quite as easy as just saying 'there are no ethereal or elemental planes', as a lot of mechanics make reference to these planes - including the spell blink making you shift rapidly between the Ethereal and Material Planes, and the large group of beings called outsiders that are very tied to the planar mechanics. It is something I am still working on moving across.

A shaitan of the Earth Plane. Illustration by Jesper Ejsing.

Finding the Path: Psychic Thoughts

I don't like the sorcerer class. I understand that they are more flexible in battle than wizards, but having access to a very limited number of spells that you can't increase by adding scrolls to a spellbook...just feels bad to me.

So in theory, I shouldn't like the psychic class either, as it is similar in many ways. But I've been playing a psychic for a while now, and I am really enjoying it.

Illustration by Tomasz Chistowski

The main reason I wanted to try playing one is a spell called Burst of Adrenaline, which gives a massive boost to a physical score (Strength, Dexterity or Constitution) for one round, with the drawback of being fatigued on the next round. It's like a mini version of the barbarian's rage, and is one of the few spells in Pathfinder that you can cast as an immediate action (an instant spell for those of you who play Magic). Just by itself, it made me want to try out the new 'psychic magic' rules.

Like a sorcerer, the psychic is a full nine level spellcaster with a bad attack bonus. It also has a sorcerer-bloodline-like feature called a psychic discipline, that grants a small number of bonus spells and spell-like abilities. Like the sorcerer, their magic is innate rather than learned. But unlike a sorcerer, who uses charisma, their magic is keyed off of intelligence.

The psychic is very much a master of the mind, and even though they have innate magic, there is the feeling that it is not just handed out to them - it still requires intense study and discipline to pull off the the things they do. And perhaps that is part of the reason I like them so much, as it doesn't quite feel like your character just won the genetic lottery.

Illustration by Rogier van der Bank

Psychics have another class feature, borrowed from the sword-and-sorcery magus class - a  phrenic pool they can spend to amplify their spells, though, theirs is less flexible than the magus' arcane pool.

The psychic has a number of advantages over the sorcerer. Many sorcerer spells require the sorcerer to actually aim at the target, requiring an attack roll. These 'ray' spells usually ignore armour, but even with that bonus, a sorcerer can miss and waste the spell. Psychics hardly have any ray spells, most of their stuff just hits, because, they're messing directly with the opponent's head. Couple that with the fact that their signature spell mind thrust easily out-damages magic missile, and they start to look rather scary.

The sorcerer's arcane magic has verbal and somatic components - basically, you need to be able to speak the magic words and move your hands in the correct manner to cast your spells. All very Harry Potter. This means that sorcerers can't wear much armour, which restricts movement, and if you can silence them or stop their hands moving you can shut them down completely.

But the psychic uses psychic magic instead of arcane magic, which requires thought and emotion components. Tying up a psychic's hands is ineffective, and casting silence on them does nothing to stop their magic. In fact, psychics can actually cast silence themselves, and it's actually a good strategy for them drop a zone of silence if they find themselves duelling a wizard. In addition, they can wear full plate armour without it messing up their spells.

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

This all seems pretty powerful - and it is - but psychics do have weaknesses. Like the witch, their reliance on mind-affecting spells means that they struggle against stuff that is immune to mind magic, like plants, vermin, constructs and - undead. And you tend to fight a lot of undead in Pathfinder. While they can circumvent the undead thing by learning an ampification, it's still something they have to spend extra resources on doing, and they still get stuck being useless against the other mindless stuff.

They are also lacking in the AOE department, not having access to things like fireball, lightning bolt, or the ever-popular burning hands. The only decent spell they have for this is sonic scream, which has it's own drawbacks.

Their spellcasting can be shut down by anything that messes with their emotions, like the rather common monster ability to cause fear, and their thought components make concentration checks nearly twice as difficult unless they spend actions clearing thier mind. Good like with casting that spell defensively.

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

Overall, I think the class is really well made and pretty balanced. In addition, it doesn't feel like any other Pathfinder class (even though it heavily borrows ideas from a few) and so carves out it's own little space. And it's a really fun space. Did I mention you get to make heads explode?

Finding the Path: Off the Chain

In my previous posts about the classes of pathfinder, I mentioned a few of the classes had flaws: the rogue is often bad in combat, the fighter is a bit boring, and the barbarian requires far more maths than you should have to think about when playing a melee smasher with anger problems.

On the flip side, there is the summoner, a class I have barely mentioned. Mistakes were made. They gain their arcane spells more slowly than wizards, witches and sorcerers, to make up for the fact that they have an animal-companion-like creature called an 'eidolon' that is very good at fighting. But, their spell list grants them many arcane spells at a lower level than the other arcane casters, which defeats the entire idea of gaining spells more slowly. The summoners early spells also let them do crazy things like make wands of haste, a spell that is normally too high level to put in a wand. And when you start hasting an eidolon, everyone else in the party may as well just go home.

Magic & Pathfinder: The Vampires

When I was developing the racial rules for Pathfinders of Zendikar, I had to decide what to do with vampires. They are Zendikar's major black mana race, but straight up Pathfinder vampires are way too powerful to be used by players. Fortunately, there was a possibility - the dhampir race. Dhampir are half-human half-vampires, technically living, but treated as undead for the purposes of healing magic. I had a way to make the dhampir fit - but I had to pull out an old pet theory of mine. But lets go back a few years, to when I first started playing Magic.

Illustration by Adi Granov

Finding the Path: Not From Around Here

Those of you who read my post on the classes of Pathfinder may have noticed that I left out a rather important core class: the monk. Monks have been a part of RPGs for a long time, but, being based on the Shaolin monks of China, they don't quite fit in with the rest of the base classes. And Pathfinder has acknowledged this to a degree - Sajan Gadadvara, Pathfinder's iconic monk character, is from the far land of Vudra, come to the Inner Sea in search of his missing sister. He is very much a stranger in a strange land. But...he is not the only one who has traveled far from home to the Inner Sea. The ninja Reiko walks beside people who think ninja only fairy-tales, while the ronin samurai Nakayama Hayato sticks to the code of 'honour is strength' despite his exile from his homeland. Both hail from Minkai, a place on the other side of the world to the Inner Sea.

Magic & Pathfinder: The Maftet

Sometimes I get strange ideas in my head that I just can't let go. Case in point: the sphinxborn. It was pretty easy to get the five characteristic races for each of the colours of magic, as four and a half of them already existed in Pathfinder. (If you're counting, it's human, merfolk, vampire, goblin and elf.) But I wanted some sort of representation of the iconic creatures too. (Again, if you're counting, it's angel, sphinx, demon, dragon and hydra.)

For the white and black iconics it's pretty easy, as aasimir (humans with a bit of angel blood) and tieflings (humans with fiendish heritage) both have a storied history in Pathfinder. But the others were much harder. I'm still not sure how to pull off dragon and hydra (or if I should even try), but in preparing a Mul Daya related stuff for this week's Pathfinders of Zendikar I came across something interesting, called a maftet.

Finding the Path: The Races of Zendikar

The major challenge of running a Pathfinder game set on the world of Zendikar, is making the world the players are in feel like Magic: the Gathering, and not just 'Pathfinder but on Zendikar'.

The first thing I had to do was work out what races the players are allowed to play. Zendikar doesn't have many of the fantasy staples - no dwarves, gnomes, halflings or orcs. This cuts out over half of the core Pathfinder races. Fortunately the original Zendikar had a bit of tribal theme to it, making the selection of player races pretty obvious - kor, merfolk, vampire, goblin, elf and human. Elf and human were the only core races on this list.

Finding the Path: A Class Act

Pathfinder has a lot of classes to choose from. Some would say there are too many. When running a campaign, I have to decide which classes I am going to let people use. Some I leave out because they make little sense in the setting (such as monks or gunslingers) whilst others I ban due to them being far too powerful (cough-summoner-cough). I have come up with a list of twenty one classes that I am always fine with people playing. Here is a brief summary of each one.

Core Classes

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

Barbarian
Full Attack * Strength, Constitution
If you want to deal stupidly vast amounts of damage with a very large weapon, and be useless at virtually everything else, then the barbarian is your class. For a small number of rounds per day, the barbarian can go into a berserker-like rage, vastly increasing their strength and constitution, allowing them to wreck everything. Sadly, barbarians are fueled by math, as rage changes so many stats, and you will also be charging and power attacking which changes stuff even more. So be prepared for a lot of addition and subtraction.

Finding the Path: Lessons from a new GM

I know there are some people out there thinking of being a GM (that's gamesmaster to those who don't know the lingo, the person that creates and runs a ropeplaying game campaign). But it can be a scary thing to do. So here are ten lessons I have learnt during my first campaign (which I am still running) called Pathfinders of Zendikar. Hopefully they will be useful, and maybe encourage you to take the leap into running your own.

Here are my players:
Sir Elessar - human cavalier (Richard)
Gwahir - loyal apex hawk
Ler Mimir - merfolk cleric of Ula (Dhamiran)
Tic-Tac - goblin rogue (Andrew)
Atlas - mul-daya elf sorcerer (George)
Lithios - human paladin (Matt)

Illustration by Tim Kings-Lynne

1. The players never do what they are supposed to.

It became incredibly apparent in the very first session that my players were not going to follow the carefully laid out progress in the adventure book I was using. They were supposed to hang around in the town of Stoneforge and help the residents with a number of annoying problems, from goblin raids to giant crab attacks. Instead, they immediately rushed off to Emeria (which was pointless) and wanted to go raid the main goblin base (which would have gotten them killed). They ignored every in-game attempt on my part to get them to stay in the town, until I had to out-of-game say 'please stay in the town guys'. Which is not the best way to GM.

The Loremaster: Nahiri, the Lithomancer

The colours of magic each have a staple creature type: Green has elves, Red has goblins, Black has vampires, Blue has merfolk, and White has soldiers. One of these is not the same as the others.

The powers that be have tried to fix the soldiers-are-not-a-race a number of times. One of the more successful attempts is the kor, a slender, agile, pointy-eared race with pale blue skin, white hair, and a strong sense of wanderlust.

Many roam the plains of Zendikar and Dominaria, driven to explore (or as they prefer to call it, returning to lands forgotten). They are excellent rockclimbers, skilled in the use of hooks and ropes. They are also considered to be excellent blacksmiths, though their methods of forging weapons are unusual.So are thier choices of weapons - they are as likely to fight with their rock climbing gear as they are with swords. A kor wielding hooks and rope in battle is surprisingly effective.

The Loremaster: The Nightwalker

You may have noticed I've said a lot about Leshrac lately. The reason is, I had made a custom commanderwalker card of him to hand out at the ICON by the Sea Commander game, as a sort of promotional come-play-Commander-at-the-Unseen-Shoppe sort of thing. He is obviously, not a real card (it says so), has no actual value, and can only be played at the casual Commander games I host at the Unseen Shoppe.

Sadly, the printed Leshrac cards were not as good quality as I was hoping due to various circumstances. But hey, there's always next year.

Why Leshrac though? I wanted a planeswalker I could link to the Unseen Shop that made sense. Leshrac is the Nightwalker, the background unseen force behind Lim-Dûl's rise to power and has links to a sort of dimension called the Nether Void, which has associations with the shadow mechanic. I patterned him after Freyalise and company and tried to give him abilities that both worked well in commander and made sense based on his character. Thus, he will give everyone power (for a price), can make creatures 'unseen', and will unleash great destruction in the pursuit of power.

What Price Shandalar?

Note: The following story is based on the MtG comic Ice Age by Jeff Gomez and Rafael Kayanan, and published by Armada

Dominaria, the Ice Age. 2900 years after the Brothers War.

Leshrac Nightwalker hovered slightly above the surface of Dominaria's Null Moon, wisps of shadow trailing from his midnight black cloak. Four balls of corrupted fire orbited his bone-white hair, while the hair itself wavered like a pale flame, wisps of smoke even seeming to curl from his eyebrows. Apart from his leathery, grim face and hands, the planeswalker seemed barely human, composed entirely of contrasting light and shadow.

In front of him stood an ornate metallic structure. It looked suspiciously like a temple. Perhaps the old wizard has finally gone mad, thought Leshrac. But he did claim to finally have an answer to why their ability to planeswalk had been reduced to a mere twelve planes. Twelve planes, cut off from the rest of the multiverse. ‘The Shard of Twelve Worlds’ it had been named. Probably by Faralyn, mused Leshrac. Pretentious bastard. He glided inside.

It was not often that a Gathering was called. Leshrac immediately sensed the fivefold energies of Taysir, supposedly the most powerful planeswalker that ever lived. Not that he ever did anything useful with his vaunted power. He was as stuck here as the rest of them. He stood on a balcony, wearing his infamous purple turban. His lover, Kristina of the Woods, stood next to him, pale skinned and freckled, seeming to Leshrac like waves of tranquil green power. Leshrac frowned. She was stronger than last time they clashed…but no. Not her. There was second figure, winged, hovering in the shadows, emanating similar energy. But the green didn't quite manage to stifle her fiery core. She must be the upstart half-elven planeswalker, Freyalise. Hmm. She had…potential. Yes.

The Loremaster: The Goblin Tinker

At first the five commanderwalkers of Commander 2014 seem to be quite a mixed bag. Freyalise and Teferi had been around for most of Magic's history, bearing the affectionate title of 'oldwalker'. Nahiri and Ob Nixilis we knew of as much more recent creations, being introduced a few years ago in Zendikar's storyline. And Daretti was a completely new character.

But then, as stories were filled out, it turned out that these five had more in common with each other than initially thought. The imprisonment of the Eldrazi on Zendikar had taken place far, far earlier than we realised - at least a thousand years before the Brother's War - making Nahiri, if she still lived, significantly older than Freyalise and Teferi. Ob Nixilis is also rather ancient. By virtue of the fact that he must have fought Nahiri at sometime before she left Zendikar, he has to be an oldwalker as well.

Though we now have a lot of story involving the other four, we still know very little about Daretti. He is, of course, a goblin. He is from the High City of Paliano, on the plane of Fiora, the setting of the Conspiracy sets. He was a gifted artificer, employed at the Academy of Palino. Though he held high rank, many of the other artificers viewed him with disdain, possibly due to the fact that he was a sort of 'repurposer', building his cogwork contraptions out of scrap metal and broken artifacts.

The Loremaster: Teferi, Time Lord

Teferi of Zhalfir. Arguably the most powerful time wizard in the history of Magic, he probably disagreed with Urza more than any other planeswalker of the time. The central conflict between the two was that Urza was obsessed with destroying Phyrexia at any cost, while Teferi cared more about protecting people from Phyrexia than winning a possible future war.

Teferi has been a part of Magic for a very long time. He first appeared twenty years ago, during the Mirage block, already a fully fledged planeswalker. Mirage took place on the continent of Jamuura in Dominaria. Jamuura, consisting of Femeref, Suq'Ata and Teferi's homeland of Zhalfir, was Magic's version of Africa. Now Mirage block wasn't perfect. It did have some...shall we say...racial stereotyping in it. But it also had a very powerful good-aligned planeswalker who was not only black-skinned, but very African in tone. Which is pretty cool. Teferi was also a rather more sympathetic character than Urza, and genuinely cared about his homeland and people.

But if we are to start at the beginning, we must go forward a few sets to the Urza's Saga block, which takes place chronologically before Mirage.

The Loremaster: Ob Nixilis and Garruk Wildspeaker

Most of the original five planeswalker cards had their ups and downs in standard. There were times when they were really good, and times when they were terrible. Only Garruk Wildspeaker was consistant. Never amazing, but never bad, just always good. It says a lot that he is the only planeswalker ever reprinted in a Commander set.

Of course, he's not the only walker found in a Commander set. Commander 2014 feaured five new planeswalkers, specially designed for the format. But they messed up a bit with their announcement. Revealing Teferi without further comment created the expectation that it would be a whole cycle of pre-Time spiral walkers (known as 'Oldwalkers'). I certainly, was very excited at the possibility of Freyalise in green, and to a lesser extent, Leshrac for black.

The Loremaster: Freyalise, Phyrexia and the End of Time Itself

This is part two of a look at the life of Freyalise. Part one can be found here.

Last week, we left the story with Freyalise casting the World Spell to end Dominaria's Ice Age. We are not sure what Freyalise did for the next 1000 years, apart from the fact that she spent at least some of the time on Shandalar. This is mostly due to Wizards cancelling the comic book line so they could focus on the Weatherlight Saga. Prepare for lots of Urza in the spotlight.

Urza, obsessed with defeating Phyrexia, would spend the same thousand years on Dominaria concocting overly complicated plots involving time travel experiments, genetically engineering super soldiers, uniting Dominaria into a massive Coalition, and crafting a number of powerful artifacts that would eventually combine to form the Legacy Weapon.

Just before the Phyrexians invaded Dominaria, Urza seemed to remember that he was not the only planeswalker who cared about Dominaria, and set out to sway a number of them to his side. They would be called the Nine Titans. Besides Urza, the Titans included the panther warrior Lord Windgrace, Kristina of the Woods, Taysir and his daughter Daria, Freyalise and - of all people - Tevesh Szat. Teferi had been invited as well, but refused due to his numerous disagreements with Urza's methods.

The Loremaster: Freyalise and the Ice Age

When it was revealed that Commander 2014 would include older planeswalkers like Teferi, I said something a bit silly. 'If they don't make Freyalise,' I said, 'I will quit Magic.'

Fortunately, they did make Freyalise and I did not have to make good on my threat. But it did open a can of worms. Because Freyalise died during the events of the Time Spiral block. And part of the justification for her death was that Wizards wanted planeswalkers to have cards - she belonged to the older generation of near-omnipotent planeswalkers, and therefore was too powerful to have a card.

And yet here we stand with a Freyalise planeswalker card.

It is somewhat difficult to relate the early part of Freyalise's life. The comics that tell of it were written before the concept of a planeswalker 'spark' existed, and...well, frankly, they are a mess that makes very little sense. But I will try regardless.

Freyalise was a pyromancer living in Storgard, on the plane of Dominaria, during the Ice Age. Storgard was the last of the Fallen Empires, located in the terminal morraine of a vast glacier, and therefore constantly under threat of the growing ice. Freyalise was a bit of an oddity - she was a half-elf, something seen very rarely in the lore of Magic.

The Loremaster: Nicol Bolos, Elder Dragon

MtG: Commander was originally called Elder Dragon Highlander. Highlander, because there can be only one. Elder Dragon, after a cycle of cards printed in Magic's third expansion set, Legends. They were dragons. They were big. They were splashy. They were three colours. They were...mostly not very good. But in Commander, it's ok to be bad if you're a powerful dragon from the dawn of Magic.

In the beginning were the Elder Dragons, who ruled the plane of Dominaria 25 000 years ago. Being dragons, they made war upon each other, until only five were left - Nicol Bolas, his brothers Arcades and Chromium, his sister Palladia-Mors, and their cousin, Vaevictis Asmadi. The other Elders were slain, or cast down and stripped of their power.

The children of Bolas and his relatives were also considered to be elders, though lesser in power. It is said these lesser elders gave rise to all the dragons of Dominaria. The cast down Elders were no longer even called dragons, and their children became the drakes and wurms.

Because scarves are cool.