The Loremaster: Garruk Wildspeaker and the Holy Grail

SPOILERS.

Seriously, if you want to read The Wildered Quest without having anything spoiled, go buy it and read it first. It's only like, R75 for the e-book. I'll wait here.

Ok, so, what the hell was up with the magical cauldron that mysteriously appeared to save Will and Garruk from downing, cured Garruk of his curse, and then vanished without a trace?

Eldraine is in great part based on the legends of Camelot, and the cauldron is Eldraine's version of the Holy Grail. The writer could have set it up better, cause it seemed to mostly come out of nowhere, aside from a couple of previous offhand mentions of it having gone missing and that knight sometimes quest to find it. They could have made it a chalice instead of a cauldron, so the connection was a bit more obvious. So why did they turn the grail, which is usually some form of a goblet or chalice, into a cauldron, and why is it black rather than white? There is a good reason for it, and it lies in the origins of the grail stories.

It would be understandable to think that the stories of the grail started in the Middle East, made their way west to England alongside Christianity, and were subsequently incorporated into the legends of King Arthur. But that's not what happened.

The French writer Chrétien de Troyes (often considered the first novelist) seemingly invented the Holy Grail, and the knightly quest to find it, for his romance Perceval ou le Conte du Graal. But while he was the first to use that name, he actually seems to have drawn on old Celtic legends about the inhuman Tuatha de Danann – who are basically high-fantasy style elves. The king of the Tuatha owned a magical cauldron that could restore the dead to life (which could be considered a form of necromancy, which is within the black part of the colour pie - though which can do it too). When Christianity came to England, many old stories and traditions were altered to fit within the new anti-pagan rules imposed by the emerging Christian clergy. Thus, the ancient inhuman king with powerful warriors became the Christian King Arthur and his noble knights, the magical cauldron became a chalice powered by the blood of Jesus, and the ancient wizard Merlin became...ok, for some reason Merlin survived mostly intact.

So, the cauldron is the grail. Attention is not drawn to it in the novel, but it is Will's selfless act to try and save Garruk from drowning that causes the Grail to appear to him. (Proving him to have a 'pure heart' or whatever you want to call it. ) If it hadn't appeared, he and Garruk would most likely have drowned. But whyis it necessary to invoke such a powerful artifact to cure Garruk? Why has nothing been able to fix him until now?

Garruk's curse stems from a story called The Hunter and the Veil that came out when I first started playing Magic. In the story Garruk realises that the necromancer Liliana Vess is trying to obtain an artifact called the Chain Veil, a powerful magical artifact from the plane of Shandalar. The Veil houses the souls of an entire race of incredibly evil ogre wizards called the Onnake, who were thankfully destroyed many years ago. They have never told us what sort of stuff the Onnake did that makes them so incredibly evil, but the story assures us that, yes, they are indeed incredibly evil, and it's a good thing they are all dead, otherwise they would be doing incredibly evil things of an unspecified nature.

Garruk intercepts Liliana on what he thinks is her way to the Onakke Catacombs where the veil is hidden, but unfortunately, it turns out that she is actually leaving the catacombs, having already obtained it. Garruk is more powerful than her, and almost defeats her, until she desperately draws on the Veil's power to unleash a corruptive curse on him. She escapes as the curse begins to drive Garruk slowly insane, whilst black mana spreads slowly and painfully through his veins.

Later it was revealed that this is not the first time the Veil's curse has been used on a planeswalker – Ob Nixilis was originally a human who tried to use the power of the Veil but was instead cursed by it. As Nixilis proceeded to then turn into a demon, it has been assumed that Garruk's curse is also slowly transforming him into one.

So far the curse has been treated as pretty much unstoppable. We don't know much about it aside from it's effects on Nixilis and Garruk. Nahiri's lithomancy was able to suppress it in Nixilis (leading Jace to embed a hedron in Garruk to similar effect), but not cure it. Not even the immensely powerful Avacyn, who was able to cure madness, heal mortal wounds and cure many of the dual-nature werewolves by merging their savage and human halves together into the wolfir, was able to heal him. Unfortunately, we don't have a full explanation of why it has been so stubbornly hard to cure, which is why it would have been nice to have more of an explanation of where the Cauldron came from, and what it's exact nature and powers are. All we know is that it was originally looked after by Lochthwain, the black court, but vanished, and though many knights undertake a quest to find it, none have succeeded...or ever returned.

At any rate, there are still a lot of unanswered questions surrounding the Chain Veil and it's powers. Now that Bolas is dealt with, and Garruk is back to not-turning-into-a-crazed-demon, perhaps we can finally get some answers to those questions.