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.

Text Me Maybe, or, How I Became a Gamer

A funny thing happened on the way to Draenor.

I was give access the beta for the new World of Warcraft expansion, and I spent a lot of time testing stuff, and...well, I pretty much did everything new in the expansion twice, so when the time came to actually buy it, I went ‘Wait, now I have to spend money to do everything a third time?’

So I didn’t buy it. I’m not saying Warlords isn’t good. It is really good. It’s just...old news to me. But, I have to get my daily rpg fix somewhere. So I’ve gone all the way back to the beginning. It’s a game called Lusternia, Age of Ascension. Its....well...actually, it starts before that.

In 2003 I came across an advert for a game named Achaea. It was a text-based role-playing game that you played in your browser. I had never  heard of a text-based game before, but it was free (not something very common back then), so I tried it out. To my eternal shame my first character was a dwarf named Battleaxe. The dwarf part was fine but it was very quickly pointed out that I should change my name to something that sounded like an actual dwarf name.

 

Dwarf from Lusternia. Battleaxe not included.

See, Achaea is what they call an enforced-role-playing game. You have to role-play. If you stood in the middle of a town square and say ‘Hey guys! This game is great! And you don’t even need a good graphics card to play!’ the players around you will look at you with sympathy, suggest that perhaps you have spent too much time in the sun and need a quiet lie-down, and whisper the word ‘lunatic’ to each other when they think you’re not looking at them. (Also, don’t call them players.)

That’s not to say that OOC (out-of-character) is completely forbidden. If it was, you wouldn’t be able to ask for help if you get stuck and can’t work out what to type to do something. ‘Newbies’ are given considerable leeway. Everyone understands there’s a pretty steep learning curve for someone who has never done text games before. You just have to be subtle, like keeping the OOC to messages instead of speaking aloud.

So anyway, there I was, a new dwarven Runewarden, learning for the first time how a text game works, how an RPG game works, and how to role-play, all at the same time. Fortunately there is a system in place that unites players towards a common goal, and thus make people want to help you.

Achaea’s system had two components - cities and guilds. (The guilds no longer exist in Achaea, but they were very important back when I played) A guild is a group of players, all with the same class, that (mostly) also belong to the same city. Some classes, like the Runewardens, had only one guild. Other classes had multiple guild you could join - there were five mage guilds, for example, one in each of the five cities. People from your guild and city would help you, even to the extent of giving out free equipment - because if you eventually became powerful, the whole city would benefit.

Runewarden with dual runeblades and a trained falcon.

Each class had three skillsets you could learn. Runewardens had Chivalry, Runelore and Forging. Druids had Groves, Metamorphosis and Potions. If you ever played WoW near the beginning, you may recognise this three-skillsets-per-class idea. (Achaea, by the way, was using it back in 1994, long before WoW even existed).

There is something else that Achaea did first (or so they claim). They were the very first online game that was free-to-play, but supported by micro-transactions. Now before you flee in terror, this is not your Candy Crush-style micro-transaction. Those sort of games have a  resource-based system where you run out of ‘energy’ and need to buy more with real money. Essentially they force you to stop playing the game if you don’t give them money. Which I think is the worst idea ever. Why would you want people to ever not be playing your game? They might end up playing a game that they like more!

Instead, Achaea has a thing called credits. Credits can either be converted into lessons that you can learn more skills with, or can be used to buy powerful magical items called artefacts. That sword you just made? It’s a really good sword. It has great stats on it. Just look at that speed value! But...what if it was a little bit better? Another 5 to its speed? There’s an artefact that does that. Just buy it and attach it to your sword. But, hey, wouldn’t it be nice if you were a bit stronger?  If you were, your sword would hit harder. Not a lot harder, mind you, but just enough to give you an edge. There’s an artefact for that. And how about that annoying mage who keeps jumping you and killing you? He’s a grook, you know. They’re frog-people. Weak to lightning. So...what if half of your sword’s damage was actually converted into lightning damage? There’s an artefact that does that too.

That damned grook who keeps jumping you.

Ok, ok. It’s probably...a way more insidious method than those Facebook games. But Achaea is still going, decades after text-games supposedly died, so it must work.

I played Achaea for a while, and got to about level 60 (out of 100), but struggled to advance any further. I died too much, and dying is really really bad, cause you lose a significant chunk of experience. But then Lusternia was released...and...

I have, as usual, spoken about so much other stuff, that I haven’t even gotten to Lusternia. So Part 2 is coming.