The Loremaster: Tezzeret

Tezzeret was born in Tidehollow, on Esper, one of the shards of Alara. Unlike most planeswalkers, Tezzeret has no surname. In fact, he didn't even have a name until, as a boy, he stabbed a bully with a shiv - tezzeret being the local slang for an improvised weapon. Tezzeret is a highly-intelligent gifted artificer. However, he has a rather explosive temper, and when he loses it, people tend to end up dead.

When he was seven years old, his mother was killed, run over by a guildmaster's carriage. That was when Tezzeret decided that he would do anything he could to become a powerful mage, so no one could ever take something from him again. To that end he began stealing small amounts of the rare, expensive and highly-in-demand magical alloy etherium, a metal that only a group called the Seekers of Carmot knew the secret to making. He was helped in this endeavor by discovering he had a natural talent for rhabdomancy, the magical ability to locate metal. With the money he earned from this, he joined the Machinist Guild, and at the age of 19, amputated his right arm, replacing it with an artificial limb made of etherium filigree. The guild immediately elevated Tezzeret to master status.

Using his newfound status, Tezzeret joined the Vectis City Academy, and applied for entry into the Seekers. In order to gain entry, he had to best Silas Renn in a dual, which he was unable to do. The Seekers denied him entry. Tezzeret worked hard to get a second chance, but kept being passed over. Finally, he had enough and broke into the Seeker's vault to steal the Codex Etherium...only to find that the pages were blank. The Seekers didn't know how to make etherium. No one did.

Unfortunately, this time Tezzeret got caught. When the Seekers tried to kill him to cover up their lies, his spark ignited, and he planeswalked to the shard of Grixis. There he met Nicol Bolas - who offered him power if he would work for Bolas.

For some unknown reason, Nicol Bolas appears to actually care about Tezzeret. Most of his minions find themselves discarded and killed if they fail him, rebel against him, or just outlive their usefulness. But Bolas has spent great effort and considerable rescources to bring Tezzeret back in line when he strays (which has happened multiple times).

Tezzeret, for his part, deeply resents Nicol Bolas for his role in creating the Seekers, as he spent much of his life working to become one, only to find that their teachings were all lies. But, Nicol Bolas did promise him power, and has delivered on that promise.

Tezzeret was placed in charge of one of Bolas' organisations, the Inifinite Consortium, which exploited the power vacuum on Ravnica in the aftermath of the original Ravnica storyline. He repaid Bolas by assassinating everyone who knew the Consortium answered to Bolas, and taking it for himself. It worked, for many years Tezzeret operated with impunity - until Liliana, who was secretly working for Nicol Bolas, manipulated him into starting a war with Jace Beleren. The war ended with Jace erasing Tezzzeret's mind, cutting off his etherium arm, and leaving him in the hands of the nezumi on the plane of Kamigawa.

Bolas managed to retrive Tezzeret and spent months rebuilding his mind and body. He then sent Tezzeret to New Phyrexia to keep an eye on the Phyrexians, and sabotage their leadership structure. At some point after this, he was ordered to relocate to Kaladesh, where he infiltrated the government (known as the Consulate) and was eventually appointed Grand Consul. He used his power to seize control of a powerful artifact Bolas needed - the Planar Bridge - and despite the fact that Jace and the Gatewatch blew it up, Tezzeret escaped with the core, allowing him to rebuild the Bridge, and later, use it to transport another powerful artifact - the Immortal Sun.

Both artifacts seem to be of great importance to Bolas' decade-spanning plans, though exactly what he plans on doing with them is still unclear. One thing is for sure, when Bolas enacts his endgame, Tezzeret will be right there too.

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.

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.