#plane: mirrodin

[littjara-mirrorlake]

From my in-progress homebrew D&D 5e supplement, Plane Shift: Mirrodin/New Phyrexia: playable Myr!

They've been beloved in playtesting, with no fewer than three myr PCs appearing in the party over the course of a 3-year campaign. They are one of two new playable races in Plane Shift: New Phyrexia, along with the core-born Phyrexian.

Constructed Resilience and Sentry's Rest are abilities that previously appeared on the Warforged in Eberron: Rising from the Last War, and Regenerative Repair is a less restricting version of the ability Healing Machine from Astral Adventurer's Guide.

Text from the image under the cut!

Metallic, beak-headed myr inhabit Mirrodin, scampering at the feet of larger humanoids and largely considered below their attention. Few know of their true origin as creations of the mad wizard Memnarch, designed to be mechanized servants and his eyes across the plane. Following Memnarch’s fall, the myr found themselves with sapience and free will, though their core values of duty, community, and knowledge remain.

Myr Traits

Type. You are a Construct. You are also considered a myr for any prerequisite or effect that requires you to be a myr.

Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 2, and your Dexterity score increases by 1.

Age. As constructed creatures, myr don’t grow old in the traditional sense, and they are able to live indefinitely if well-maintained. You are immune to magical aging effects.

Size. Myr average about 3 feet tall. Your size is Small.

Speed. Your base walking speed is 25 feet.

Constructed Resilience. You have resistance to poison damage and immunity to disease, and you have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned. You don’t need to eat, drink, or breathe. You also don’t need to sleep, and magic can’t put you to sleep.

Darkvision. Your constructed senses grant you superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

Bonus Proficiencies. You gain proficiency in one skill and one tool of your choice. The tool you chose is integrated into your body and cannot be removed while you live.

Networked Minds. You can communicate telepathically with other myr within 120 feet of you.

Sentry’s Rest. When you take a long rest, you must spend at least six hours in an inactive, motionless state, rather than sleeping. In this state, you appear inert, but it doesn’t render you unconscious, and you can see and hear as normal.

Regenerative Repair. If the mending spell is cast on you, you can expend a hit die, roll it, and regain a number of hit points equal to the roll plus your Constitution modifier (minimum of 1 hit point). Spells such as cure wounds and spare the dying which restore hit points or preserve life, and normally don’t affect constructs, function as if you were a humanoid.

Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language of your choice.

[tumblhurgoyf]

This is round 1 of Battle of the Planes. Other round 1 polls are up as well!

[markrosewater]

Howdy, Mark!

I'm a big fan of the Myr creature type, and I'm bummed that due to Mirrodin getting wiped from existence, the odds of seeing any more seem to be pretty slim.

Are my little beak-nosed buddies gone for good, or do you think we might see some more on another plane some day?

Don't give up hope. The Myr are a hearty lot.

[creeperman247]

alright, so, we all know that the ending to the whole phyrexian arc was really disappointing, but honestly one of my biggest gripes is what they did with urabrask.

the phyrexian praetors were twists on the stereotypical color roles; elesh norn turned white's order into tyranny, vorinclex turned green's nature into a "perfected" nature, jin-gitaxias turned blue's desire for progress into a desire for progress at any cost, etc. urabrask took reds emotion, most commonly anger, and turned it into emotion, most commonly compassion, which is a super interesting direction to take it. he shut off weapon creation from the rest of the phyrexians, he sheltered the mirrodin rebels, he even went as far as to think that compleation should be a consensual process, that if it truly was perfect, everyone would become willingly compleated eventually, and that the other praetors forcing compleation upon people was a sign they didn't really believe in it. he shows that, unlike what basically everything else would lead you to believe, the phyrexians are not inherently evil. (it is also important to note that despite what wotc seemingly really wants you to think, compleation isn't "a fate worse than death," at least not when consensual, it is shown that compleated people maintain their original personalities and memories.)

so, what did they do with this incredibly unique character (who is my favorite character in the entire lore honestly)? they had him lead a revolt that went nowhere and got him killed, doing nothing in the process. what a massive waste.

so, here's my idea on how the ending should have gone: urabrask leads the revolt but is outnumbered and overpowered. however, instead of being killed, he escapes and flees the plane through the planar gate (perhaps with the help of one of the compleated red planeswalkers.) he ends up hiding and/or on the run for a while, and then the whole "phyrexians invade every plane" thing happens. a bunch of planeswalkers kill elesh norn like in the current story, but this time elesh norn isn't stupid and the phyrexians don't shut down just because she's dead. however, her dying gives the rest of the planes hope that this is a winnable battle, and they begin to push back. this then gives urabrask and the red phyrexians the space to begin fighting alongside the planes to defeat the rest of the phyrexians, and, once the rest of the phyrexians are defeated (obviously over the course of multiple sets with more cinematic battles and such, instead of cramming it all into 1 set) urabrask takes over as the new leader, and ushers the phyrexians into a new age of kindness where they aren't the villains for once. urabrask educates the compleated planeswalkers about compassion and such and undoes the teachings of elesh norn (which really wouldn't be that hard honestly? the planeswalkers don't really have a reason to not believe him, especially more naturally compassionate ones like tamiyo, and even meaner ones would probably listen better once the first few do). if for some reason, people really think important characters like jace being compleated (and otherwise exactly the same) is a bad thing for the story, then there can be come character arcs where some of the planeswalkers realize that they don't actually like being compleated and some people come up with some way to reverse the compleation process, probably with the help of urabrask himself due to the whole consensual compleation ideology. plus, this new story allows for all sorts of followups: instead of the phyrexians just being gone with no chance of coming back because the oil no longer works, you can have the red phyrexians exist as denizens of mirrodin, living alongside the natives, and even as allies in other story things, like having them help fight against emrakul or something. and because the oil still works, there will be leftovers of the other phyrexian factions all over the place, so you could have them reappear occasionally as both major or minor villains.

and of course, make sure to give a few sets that go over the consequences of the multiverse-wide invasion instead of just glossing over them.

[soylent-crocodile]

Myr (Monsters)

(Silver Myr by Kev Walker)

(I FUCKING LOVE MYR! They're cute, they're iconic, they're interesting bits of worldbuilding... I HAD to make 'em! Mercifully, I've separated Mirrodin from New Phyrexia, and created the Plane of Steel, a fun little plot hook roughly referencing Mirrodin's creation. If you want to make these native to the Plane of Metal- new to PF2- or simply old machines of a dead culture, feel free.

Also, this will contain rules for Mana Myr, which I spiraled off the five colors of Magic, but expect more myr in the future!)

Myr are mysterious creatures native to the Plane of Steel, an artificial plane ripped from the Plane of Earth and turned into a vast network of self-sustaining machines. Myr themselves are the most common denizens of the plane, servitors to an unknown master and performing upkeep on their more complicated cohabitants.

Myr have been imported from the Plane of Steel in rare quantities, and serve as a rare treasure on the Material Plane, loyal servants infused with magical energy. Some, however, fear inviting such mysterious creatures into their homes, especially paranoid wizards and watchful politicians, as it's a known fact that myr are vulnerable to scrying- and it's a distinct possibility that their master is still watching.

Myr are unique among constructs in being easily repairable once slain. Upon reaching 0 health, a construct with the Myr subtype is not destroyed; rather, it turns inactive, and will reactivate upon being returned to positive hit points. However, a myr that reaches -20hp is destroyed as usual. Additionally, the knowledge of how to create myr has been lost or well-hidden, and they lack rules for construction. Fortunately for myr, they are capable of reproducing themselves, although attempts to study how they do so have not succeeded in creating animate constructs.

There are thousands of different kinds of myr, most being only slight modifications on a basic design; what is presented are some common archetypes and a few notable variations.

Mana Myr

(Myr Moonvessel by Danny Orizio)

Among the most common servitor myr, mana myr work on the machinery that makes up the bulk of the Plane of Metal, and these servitors are attuned to one of the eight schools of magic. Of the myr of the plane, it is the mana myr who are most desired, and those who find themselves in possession of multiple, or let them reproduce, sell them for exorbitant prices.

Each school of magic produces a myr of a different color. Even though they are all made of the same substance, the magic forged into their bodies makes them appear as one of a variety of colors; the mana myr of each school of magic is named after a metal or mineral it resembles.

This small humanoid construct has a strange head shaped like a heavy beak. It resonates with magical energy.

Misc- CR1 LN Small Construct (Myr) HD2 Init:+2 Senses: Perception:+3 Stats- Str:8(-1) Dex:15(+2) Con:- Int:4(-3) Wis:14(+2) Cha:14(+2) BAB:+2 Space:2.5ft Reach:0ft Defense- HP:21(2d10+10) AC:13(+1 Size, +2 Dexterity) Fort:- Ref:+4 Will:+2 CMD:13 Special Defenses: Construct traits Offense- Slam +2(1d3-1) CMB:+0 Speed:25ft Special Attacks:  Feats- Lightning Reflexes Skills- Perception +3, Spellcraft +0 Spell-like Abilities-  Share Memory /at-will Make Whole 1/day Special Qualities- Mana Servant, Scrying Focus Ecology- Environment- Any Languages- Common (Can’t speak) Organization- Solitary Treasure- None Special Abilities- Mana Servant- A mana myr is designed as a vessel for magic. When created, it is infused with magic from one of the eight schools of magic. When used as a focus to cast a spell of that school, the spell is cast at a +1 caster level and with a +1 DC. A mana myr registers as strong magic of its school when viewed through Detect Magic or similar spells. Scrying Focus- Myr are perfect vessels for scrying on. They get a -5 penalty to saves against spells with the Scrying descriptor, and magical sensors made to scry on a myr and its surroundings get a +5 bonus against rolls to perceive it. Additionally, myr- and any object or creature they are in contact with- are not protected by spells such as Nondetection and Screen.

[lootthekey]

Duskmourn- The Living Horror Plane Theory

Art by Antonio José Manzanedo

Hello, this is me making another big post, but this time related to an upcoming set we know almost nothing about other than its loose themes. Duskmourn, a set themed around modern horror, or more accurately horror from the 70’s and 80’s, is extremely unique in that it takes place on the plane of Duskmourn. Why is that unique? You see, Duskmourn, the plane, is not like other planes at all. Even the most corrupted of Magic’s natural worlds, like Innistrad and Amonkhet, have a natural appearance to them. They have wildlife, a difference between civilization and nature, and overall are just standard worlds with differing cultures and ecosystems.

Duskmourn is extremely different from that.

Duskmourn is just one, absolutely gigantic, haunted mansion. As far as we know, this plane has very little in terms of an actual “world” and is just this massive house of horrors, hence the name of the set “Duskmourn: House of Horrors”. What is so interesting about this is the potential implications of this. As said, Magic’s planes almost universally follow the basic blueprint of being an actual world not unlike our own aside from the magical aspects of them, like Kamigawa’s Spirit Realm and similar.

The only plane that comes close to not being an actual “world” is Mirrodin, now better known as New Phyrexia. Even New Phyrexia, a world molded to its core by Elesh Norn and the other praetors of New Phyrexia, loosely imitates a natural world with its various spheres each having their own… ecosystem if they can be called that.

Duskmourn, until it is shown further and they say otherwise, has none of this to our understanding. It’s ONLY this big mansion. This leads me to my main theory I have today:

Duskmourn is an unnatural world.

And I don’t just mean this by how different it is. I mean to imply either this plane was created, similar to Mirrodin, by an extremely powerful entity, OR has been so heavily corrupted/modified/etc by a similar entity that it can no longer be called a “natural plane”.

The first possibility is interesting, but there isn’t much to further analyze with that possibility. We don’t know of any characters currently that can CREATE planes that aren’t just some random oldwalker we probably haven’t met yet or some all powerful demon potentially.

The second possibility, that the plane was corrupted and shaped into its current form by an extremely powerful entity, does have more interesting implications, as there are hilariously several beings in Magic’s modern lore capable of doing so. This is mainly because it seems to take much less effort to corrupt an individual plane, especially if you have a lot of help, than it is to create a full plane. Not that it still isn’t world breaking power at play, but its possible. We saw the New Phyrexians do it to Mirrodin, and they probably could have done it to other worlds if they weren’t met with heavy pushback.

Let’s revisit the image that I posted above and has basically been WotC’s chosen image to showcase the plane in its little time slot on their release timeline.

This is an extremely large, very eldritch and/or demonic looking entity that dwells on Duskmourn… or perhaps more. If you study this art, its “body” naturally flows into what can be called doors, staircases, pillars, and windows. The sheer size of this thing is awe inspiring, and it is extremely eldritch in appearance. Its really only a little different in appearance to another cast of very eldritch entities in Magic’s lore that I also made big posts about.

Art by Eli Minaya

The Eldrazi Titans. Very similar bone-like appearance to Ulamog, very similar “multiple limb” design of Kozilek, and a similar “glowing eldritch hole(s)” design to Emrakul. You might see where I am going with this, which is:

Duskmourn is a giant, living plane, who’s World Soul has been supplanted by an Eldrazi Titan.

Now, you might say, “But Colin, Eldrazi’s do not do that. They eat worlds.” But how do we know that? Emrakul, in Eldritch Moon, was fully capable of taking over Innistrad. She had the entire plane in her grasp and there were no signs of her losing. She was delayed by the Gatewatch, but by the end all of them had been mentally overwhelmed by her powers. Emrakul sealed herself into Innistrad’s moon at the end of it all, clearly with a larger, more complex goal in mind that has haunted us to this day.

Duskmourn, I believe, is a world that has been completely corrupted by an Eldrazi not unlike Emrakul.

The inhabitants, who I don’t even know how they survive in such a world, are constantly bombarded by mental attacks from the world itself. This is not unlike what happened when Emrakul fought the Gatewatch. Every inhabitant of Duskmourn is a captive in Duskmourn’s corrupting grasp, and that will be central to the plane I believe. This is an unnatural world run by an eldritch entity, and the nature of it could be the key to learning more about the Eldrazi and/or how the World Souls of planes function.

I am very excited to see what Duskmourn has in store, and I hope it does not disappoint.

[transitranger327]

Homes are Something You Make (A gruulfriends fanfic), Chapter 1

How do Chandra & Nissa navigate their competing needs and desires while being fully invested in each other? Where do they go after jumping thru the omenpath?

Notes: This fanfic idea has been rattling around my brain since I read “She Who Breaks the World” a year ago. Hopefully my weird writing style enhances the story and not detract from it. This is mostly canon-compliant, tho I’ve taken some liberties where I see fit (Nissa’s hair didn’t immediately grow back, etc). ADHD Chandra (just like me fr fr), Autistic Nissa. CW for some light disabled self-loathing from Nissa.

—

It had been nearly two months since Chandra & Nissa (Chandra AND Nissa!!!!) had left Zhalfir (Mirrodin? Zhalfirrodin?) and arrived on this new plane where the mysterious storm elemental came from. At least, they thought it was nearly a month, but the days were so long here, stretching out like a Second District summer day cranked up to eleven. Except the nights seemed just as long. Chandra didn’t mind (she was always restless), but it seemed to be taking a toll on Nissa. About once a week, she would tell Chandra “I need to stay here to meditate and rest”. Maybe it was because she was still healing from phyresis, maybe it was because losing her spark drained some of her life, or maybe it was just because she didn't have Chandra's boundless energy. The first two times, despite Nissa's assurances, Chandra had felt guilty about leaving her partner (companion? girlfriend?) alone, but on the third time she actually felt Nissa's presence in the air, mana, and landscape itself. When she got back to where they were staying, Nissa told her “I think I finally connected to this plane’s worldsoul; I saw you wandering”.

And so they fell into a rhythm, exploring the plane together most days, and on the days Nissa needed rest, she joined Chandra by traveling along the leylines. Spontaneous enough for Chandra's craving for the unexpected, but routine enough for Nissa to feel safe. They had learned much on their travels, and every night they got to enjoy each other's company.

—

“So how did you two meet?” Marlan slid an ale to Nissa, sitting at the Inn's bar. Nissa smiled as she watched her girlfriend (companion? partner?) trying to learn some sort of bar game on the fly. "I guess you could say it was work? She was a planeswalker…a sort of traveling mage…and came to defend my home while it was under attack from otherworldly monsters called Eldrazi. As part of defeating them, we had to cast a spell together and I felt a connection deeper than I felt with any other person.” Marlan’s face still wore a look Nissa couldn't parse, “okay that's pretty cute, but how would anyone call that ‘work’?” Nissa blushed, embarrassed, “Sorry, I forgot to elaborate. After we defeated the Eldrazi, she invited me to join her and some of her friends to travel with her and defend the multiverse from threats like them. So what we did on my home plane feels like my first day on the job.” “You said you were a planeswalker, did you ever meet Urza?” Marlan asked, “I’ve heard stories about him, they say he was a planeswalker and visited us many years ago” Nissa started to shake here head when a shout came from across the pub room, “URZA’S THE WORST!” Chandra had stood up and started to walk to the bar, “I never met him, but I was friends with some of his students. Teferi always said Urza was the worst guy you would still work with if you had to. Jhoira and Karn had similar mixed feelings. Sorry for interrupting, I just wanted an excuse to kiss my beautiful girlfriend”. Chandra ran her fingers down the polished copper of Nissa’s implants before intertwining their fingers and kissing her forehead several times. “Well if you ever need a room to stay on your travels, Marlan’s Inn & Tavern is always open,” Marlan declares as she pours Chandra a cider, “especially to friends of Olenn. Xe and I go way back.” As Chandra heads back to the bar game with Olenn, Nissa can’t help but stare at her girlfriend (yeah, that sounds right). “Wait, were you an explorer too?” “At times, I considered myself one. But I didn’t have the energy to constantly travel, nor did I feel the urge to. So I found a town I liked, set up an inn, and have been taking care of weary travelers ever since.”

“Here,” Nissa said, as she felt Marlan’s connection to the town.

“Olenn and I met on one of my last expeditions. We became friends almost immediately, talking about everything and nothing. Our lives, our hopes, ourselves. If xyr spirit wasn’t so restless, I think xe would’ve considered this to be xyr hometown.” “Was xe born here?” Nissa asked, tho she immediately regretted asking something so personal about a stranger. Marlan chuckled, “Nissa, homes are not something you’re born into, they’re something you make.”

—

They’re something you make. Marlan’s words rattled around Nissa’s brain the rest of the night. As she wandered over to Chandra to tell her she was overstimulated. As the two of them, a little more tipsy than they intended, staggered up the stairs to their room, holding hands the whole time. As Chandra helped her disentangle her day clothes and phyrexian cages, still perplexed that the fire mage stared at her like she wasn’t irreparably scarred and deformed. As they settled into bed together, Chandra taking time to make sure they both felt comfortable, all while kissing the back of her fuzzy head (the hair seeming to come back more slowly after phyresis).

They’re something you make. The two of them had certainly made something. Was it a home? Nissa wasn’t sure. It felt more like a compromise than a true home. Was it a family? Absolutely. Nissa had guarded that feeling for so long. After the betrayal on Amonkhet, after their misunderstanding on Ravnica, after Phyrexia tried twisting that feeling towards the Orthodoxy. But now, the feeling had overflowed any walls Nissa had erected in her heart and mind. It was so much, she was pretty sure Chandra could feel it as their hearts beat together.

They’re something you make. It was the last thought Nissa had before falling asleep. Well, the second-to-last. Her last thought was just an image of Chandra’s goofy grin.

—

The first rays of sunshine crept into their sleepy little room. Nissa felt the nauseating light on her face (too much, too much!) and wriggled around so she could face her beloved flame. The effort alone told her that it was going to be a rest day. The sunlight danced on Chandra’s face as if it were a stage for a Rakdos drama, and it was so beautiful. Nissa managed to tuck one of the pyromancer’s wavy red locks behind her ear, exposing her soft cheek for a small kiss. A muffled “I love you” emerged from her half-open mouth, which subsequently curled into a smile. The long days had tanned her skin, making her look much more like Pia than when Nissa had first met her on Zendikar all those years ago. Chandra wasn’t exactly awake (she was always the last to fall asleep and the last to wake up), but she was conscious enough to feel Nissa’s love pouring out of her soul.

For a while, they both lingered in the space between awake and asleep. Nissa staring at Chandra’s beauty, Chandra fidgeting with Nissa’s soft skin. Then they both caught a whiff of something familiar: attar mixed with aether static. A soft knock came on the wooden door, “Sorry if I’m waking you up.” Feeling Nissa’s subconscious “It’s a rest day”, Chandra groaned a bit as she clumsily climbed over her girlfriend (yeah, girlfriend) and staggered to the door. A mouthless, firewood-grey face with pale blue eyes greeted her as she opened the door. “I heard there were planeswalkers staying here,“ they said, somewhat surprised by the lack of surprise from the two women. Well, until they saw the filigreed shoulder pads stashed in the corner, and felt the red-haired woman embrace them with a whispered “svagtam.”

[overgrown-estate]

After Mirrodin became New Phyrexia, "Magic the Gathering" gave players their first taste of Innistrad, the plane filled with Gothic Horror tropes. Innistrad was a plane of vampires and werewolves, the latter using a new card technique to create cards that 'transform' when flipped over. There were also spirits and zombies along with the humans who had to fight to survive all of these things.

And what would the original Innistrad block add to a collection of cards whose number matched the set number they were printed in? Let's take a look.

Set #56 is the original 'Innistrad' set and it's 56th card is Fortress Crab, a 1/6 blue vanilla crab for four mana. A nice big blocker.

Set #57 is 'Dark Ascension' and card #57 for this set is Curse of Thirst". Curses were also a new card type introduced throughout the original Innistrad block. Curses were attached to players with effects that hindered the player they were attached to.

Set #58 was 'Avacyn Restored' with the 58th card of that set being Ghostly Touch, a nice aura which granted a tapping ability to the enchanted creature whenever it attacked.

My favorite card overall from this block was Garruk Relentless/Veil-Cursed. I became a big fan of Garruk at this time, still am, and really want to see more of him.

What did you think of the original Innistrad block and the cards above?

[jasper-the-menace]

What do you think are some of the most underrated Planes?

At this point in MTG canon, it's any of them that aren't Dominaria, Phyrexia/Mirrodin, Ravnica, Innistrad, Theros, or Zendikar.

But personally, I am feral - FERAL I tell you! - over the ideas of the one-off planes introduced in Planescape but don't get much. I'm talking Azgol, I'm talking Moag, I'm talking Valla, and so on and so on.

Naturally, I must also bring up Kylem, Ikoria, Fiora, Regatha, Kaldheim, et cetera. Most of them only got one set. I'm not counting the ones that we're confirmed to be returning to in the next year - Arcavios and Tarkir - and I'm also not counting Lorwyn-Shadowmoor because Lorwyn-Shadowmoor is what I would consider the most popular underrated plane.

And no, I'm not going to bring up Kamigawa during its Neon Dynasty, Capenna, and anything newer than that because those are either still in Standard or just rotated out. Even though I have a strong New Capenna bias.

I'm just very tired of going through planes so quickly and only returning to the popular ones, ya know?

Thanks for sending this in, anon! Sorry it took so long to get back to ya!

~Jasper

[hypexion]

Did the Mirari hasten or enable the creation and rise of New Phyrexia? Let's consider the facts, starting with the Mirari:

The Mirari has the ability to channel large amount of magical energy, reshaping reality when that energy is correctly focused.

However, it is trivial to incorrectly focus the Mirari's power. It will snatch the most fickle thoughts from your mind and make them real.

When Kamahl left the Mirari in the middle of the Otarian wilderness of Krosa, rather than fall dormant, it instead channeled magical energy directly into the local flora and fauna, inducing new and dangerous mutations.

Eventually, the uncontrolled magic spread from Krosa to the rest of Otaria, inducing mass corruption of living creatures. Did you ever wonder why Scornful Egotist looks like that? It's because of the Mirari.

Eventually, Karn discovered that his magic probe was causing all these problems. He took the Mirari away from Dominaria, saving Otaria and likely the entire plane from its ruinous influence.

Then like an idiot he used it to build Memnarch, and left his creation to watch over Argentum. Like ten minutes after Karn left Memnarch renamed the plane to Mirrodin.

After all the problems Menarch caused, Karn wisely turned him back into the Mirari, and sensibly... left it in the core of Mirrodin (?) under the care of Slobad, Geth and Glissa.

It can be seen that the Mirari is an incredibly power and therefore dangerous artifact. Which primarily seems to Cause Problems.

Now, let's consider some Phyrexia facts, both New and old:

Glistening oil, in addition to being the key to how compleation works, stores large amounts of information. This includes the Phyrexian language and the designs for various Phyrexian technologies and weapons. Such oil was acidentally introduced to Mirrodin by Karn.

New Phyrexia originally grew beneath the surface of Mirrodin, born from somewhere around the core.

The spread of New Phyrexia was helped due to the effect of a curious substance called mycosyth. This metallic fungus turns flesh to metal and metal to flesh, resulting in the Mirran's unique appearance. (It's quite proto-Phyrexian, when you think about it)

The oil of New Phyrexia is much more aggressive than Yawgmoth's, and is able to passively compleat even non-Mirran life that is infected by it.

Many New Phyrexians, including Elesh Norn herself, were born directly from the oil.

Slobad, Geth and Glissa were all revealed to have been compleated.

Aren't those some interesting details?

Glistening oil and the Mirari were present on Mirrodin before the rise of New Phyrexia. A substance that contains memories and designs, histories and ambitions, along with an artifact that brings such things to life. The Mirari does not need to be used deliberately, as it reshaped the wildlife of Krosa and the people of Otaria simply by existing. Mycosynth has a suspiciously similar effect to the Mirari, transmuting the organic inhabitants to be more like their metal home, and the artificial ones to be more like the people abducted from other worlds.

Now, I'm not saying there's a slam dunk connection here, but it lines up. The Problem Making Orb was in the same place as the Problem Oil, and then suddenly there was A Big Problem.

bonus conspiracy: the story team are aware of this connection, and the reason the Mirari has fallen out of the story is to reduce the chance people work it out. This is because it rather undermines Karn's position as the sympathetic sad robot if he almost doomed the multiverse through severe negligence.

[littjara-mirrorlake]

Mox Opal

Wondrous item, very rare (requires attunement by a spellcaster)

While this opal is on your person, you can use an action to magically regain one expended spell slot. If the expended slot was of 6th level or higher, the new slot is 5th level. You can use the opal this way a number of times equal to the number of magic items you are currently attuned to, and it regains all expended uses daily at dawn.

Art by Volkan Baga

(This magic item is part of my in-progress supplement, Plane Shift: New Phyrexia)

[vorthosjay]

hello, me yet again in search of enlightement in the lore.

And to avoid wasting your time and Ask questions in multiple messages here is a three questions in one go :

Looking at the story of planeswalker, I heard that Vrenn fuse herself with treefolk for some time, but if I understand, she also slowly kill them, hence why when it happen she return them to their plane to die. Why does she does that ( bond with them to begin with ), are those she bond with aware of what await them is they do ?

2. I know gameplay isn't always tied to flavor, however I realised that a handful of darksteel aligned cards are also indestructible. Is this some lore accurate thing about this material ?

3. Praetor are quite mysterious to me. What make a phyrexian a praetor ? Also, looking at some lore about them, the 5 main ones of New phyrexia are said to have "took over for themselves each, a part of the plane" and such... But do we have any input on how they even came to be ? because from what I read its pretty much... Phyrexian started appearing here and there as mirrodin was changing and then those 5 took power.

Sorry if its a lot, I thought asking all I've had in mind in one go was wiser.

Hi! It's actually easier for me to answer questions individually, because I don't have to tackle them all at once. Here's your answers:

Wrenn releases her trees/treefolk companions before the fire can hurt them (excepting Realmbreaker, of course).

Darksteel is a magically-created metal that is the most indestructible substance in the known multiverse.

The Praetors were 'core born' Phyrexians (created through Phyrexian science and magic, not converted by the oil) who rose to prominence in directionless New Phyrexia under Karn and built factions for themselves.

[markrosewater]

Why do you think our have shifted from sets with more obvious themes to sets with more subtle themes? Mirrodin was artifacts but kaladesh was subtle. Lorwyn was typal and bloomburrow is subtle. Theros was more modern and is more subtle and there is no enchantment world. Do you think you will ever make a new plane an enchantment plane?

We like to bounce around to different inspirations. What you might think of subtle is just us using references you, personally, are less aware of. Bloomburrow, for example, is very much borrowing from a well tread genre space, but possibly not one you know as well.

As for a new world with an enchantment theme, I think we can do that. : )

[xantchaslegacy]

Lyese

(A March of the Machine Aftermath fanfic; please give the story on AO3 a read and leave a comment if you can ;) )

Lyese was gone.

Lyese was gone, and the sky was empty.

And below, Phyrexia reeled.

...

Glissa stood alone. To every side the open sands of the Glorious Facade rolled away in shallow hills, fine grains of pearl-white sand cool and still beneath her heels.

Not even the wind stirred those grains.

And Lyese, that green sun of Phyrexia, and of Mirrodin before it, was gone.

They’ve all gone.

Every sun that’s ever graced Phyrexia.

Or Mirrodin before it.

Black reigned above Glissa. Not even the vivid-dark light of Ingle, the black sun, but an empty, blank, unbroken black. Lifeless black. Only the far edges of the sky (if you could call it a sky) were interrupted, by tilted, moldering monuments to Phyrexia and its praetors. Silent sentinels lording over nothing at all.

Glissa’s eyes searched the black.

Searched in vain.

Even without the light of the suns, she could see the plane around her clearly. The sands, the monuments, the wandering figure of the occasional phyrexian pilgrim, one of those pensive, nomadic creatures who graced the facade of late. Everything was thrown into sharp, shadow-less relief, as though illuminated on all sides by a colorless, unseen moon.

Whether this strange, source-less light was the effect of Phyrexia’s banishment to a pocket space beyond the multiverse, or of some as-of-yet unknown property of the argent shell their new Phyrexia had been built upon, no one yet knew.

Karn had said once, when Glissa was fitting him to be the next father of machines, that Mirrodin was sunless at the time of its creation. He had called it “Argentum” then, in the eponymous nature of a demigod. Argentum had been empty too, if the silver golem’s ravings were to be believed. Empty but for the blinkmoths. Empty, but beautiful and precise and rich in detail. Mathematical artistry in planar form.

A bitter smile split Glissa’s lips. Urabrask would have loved such a thing, that form-loving fool.

Now the exterior of the plane was an unending uniformity of sand, hex-plates...and these gaudy monuments to the glory of Elesh Norn’s Phyrexia.

Glory . Glissa spat a wad of tarry oil onto the ground. It shivered on the surface for a moment before soaking into the sands. What arrogance drives a conqueror to build monuments before she’s even triumphed? As if New Phyrexia were ever even hers entirely. As if she’d won us all over before she planted her ruinous realm-breaking tree and challenged all the multiverse.

She felt the lie in these thoughts as they filtered through her mind. Just out of sight over the horizon, there was a statue to Vorinclex. Further in the other direction, one of Urabrask, heretic and rebel though he had been. Phyrexians of all factions had joined in Norn’s invasion, even if some had dissented, and the monuments would not let her forget.

Glissa had walked as far as she could from those monuments for...for what, really?

An uninterrupted view of the blank, pitch nothing that surrounds us now?

Her eyes twitched; a hunter’s acuity taking in the whole expanse above. Again and again. Moment by moment. Alert for even the smallest movement or disruption to that black uniformity. A secondary set of optic nerves, connected to a lens in her eyes that saw heat signatures, flickered on and off, seeing the same blank field.

Yes, that’s exactly why I came here. Exactly why I keep returning. Confirmation that the suns have fled our sky.

No.

That they’ve been torn from their place.

White Bringer, red Sky Tyrant, the blue Eye of Doom, black Ingle...the green Ugly Child.

Lyese. Lyese was not an ugly. And she was a woman grown. A child for a time, perhaps, but it was beautiful.

No, not it.

She.

Glissa grimaced. Not at the sentiment itself, but because, no matter how hard she tried to recall, she did not know where the sentiment came from. The Mirran goblins had had a vast mythology prescribed to the suns. She had familiarized herself with that mythology, but she also knew their name for the green sun, ‘the ugly child’ was not appropriate. She knew Lyese was a name for the green sun, she also knew it was not their name for her. It was Glissa’s name for her. It had been her name for the green sun for many years, before she’d known Phyrexia’s touch.

She was so certain of it, she just couldn’t say why.

She moved forward. One step. Two steps. The facade had been as dangerous a place as any in New Phyrexia before the great invasion, but now it lay inert. Swallowing, confounding sands had fallen still. Wandering predators, the outcasts of the layers below, still haunted the corners of the place, but most had fled back into the lower spheres in the time since the plane had been cut off from rest of the multiverse.

Fertile hunting grounds, once. Now it was still and sterile. Prey could see and hear a predator coming miles off. This glorious facade was the furthest thing from the Hunter’s Maze. Even the Quiet Forge had ledges and heights for a predator to pounce from. Even the Jin’s surgical bays had tunnels and chambers to lie in ambush – and prey worth chasing.

There wasn’t much prey worth hunting on New Phyrexia now, and the hunt was no longer about growing strong for the Grand Evolution, but simple, mean survival. The plane could no longer afford to squander its resources pursuing the disparate objectives of every sphere and faction.

Glissa grit her teeth. Stepped faster. Even in the absence of wind, the cold air rushing past felt soothing.

The facade was no place for a hunter, but it was the only place she could get away.

The only place she could breath.

This is as far as any of us can go without leaving, and leaving is no longer an option.

She’d felt most comfortable above the surface of the plane for as long as she could remember. Maybe that was why she’d pushed to unleash the beasts of the vicious swarm on the Mirrans long before any other faction had deigned to emerge. It had been balm to leave the artificial light of the interior…

...to hunt and bask in the light of Lyese...

Glissa scowled. Rushed forward even faster.

Her responsibilities in the spheres below felt distant here. The facade was a reprieve. A precious rest and intermission from the burdens of being a leader, and a mother to a world thrice-orphaned.

Veins pulsed in the back of Glissa’s skull, beneath copper cables of hair. Each throb a phyrexian, waiting still in its incubating pod somewhere on the spheres below, destined to emerge too late to take any part in the invasion for which they’d been germinated and crafted. Each throb a child who would emerge instilled with an undeniable purpose they would never be able to fulfill.

And it fell to Glissa and the other remaining nursemaids of this abandoned Phyrexia to find purpose on their behalf.

Her skull pounded. She had attuned herself to the birthing pods of Phyrexia at Norn’s suggestion, but using the means of the Grand Evolution. She’d thought it a clever subversion of Norn’s machinations, to incorporate her own innovations, crotus-born organs and enhancements, into the final design of the birthing and conversion pods, but all she’d done in the end was saddle herself with a responsibility that weighed down like shackles of blightsteel.

Another succession of pulses, bringing her head close to aching.

Glissa did not want to be a mother.

The Glissa she had been before Phyrexia had not wanted to be a mother either. She hadn’t even wanted to be a warrior. Not in the way that was expected of the elves of the Tangle, at least. Though she only remembered this life in brief, erratic flashes, or those rare stretches when she dreamed, she was sure of this much. The Glissa-before-Phyrexia had only wanted to be free.

But Mirrodin was not a plane for being free. It had never been such a place, no matter how much the Mirran resistance romanticized the times before New Phyrexia’s ascendancy.

It had been sterile from the start. This much they knew from Karn. It had been empty. Unintended for any life except for Karn’s guests - the demigods that had been the planeswalkers of old. When life had been brought to its sterile surface, by Karn’s mad steward, Memnarch, that life found a hostile world waiting for it. Grain and game scraped from what cold metal would allow to grow on it. A menagerie of artifact predators that swept across the plane to cull and to kill.

Not a home , but a slaughterhouse. A petri dish for Memnarch to grow a planeswalking spark so he could steal it and leave that world of barren metal behind .

K arn had lamented Memnarch at length in his more lucid moments. He had not meant to be a parent either. The weeping regret he felt in his failure at that role had made Glissa uneasy in a way that even his most frantic ravings had not.

Perhaps because it affected me directly, in another life.

Memnarch’s world produced Glissa. Glissa and a spark that should have made her free, but made her prey instead – the indefinite prey of Memnarch the mad. That world had forced the old Glissa to be the meanest, lowest thing imaginable: a survivor. Prey.

None of that made her any more inclined toward motherhood, and neither her death nor rebirth had changed that inclination. To live as a phyrexian was enough. To hunt as a phyrexian had been sublime.

And yet she had let motherhood be thrust upon her.

Norn had been clever about it. Dressed motherhood in skins (skin...that hateful stuff) that she knew Glissa would find appealing. The role as an alpha not just for the Vicious Swarm, but for all the fledgling cubs of Phyrexia. A mentor for the incubated, the new swarm that would prey upon the every inch of the multiverse that their invasion tree could spread its branches into.

She would have an avenue to ensure the Grand Evolution benefited all factions of Phyrexia. Through the invasion, she would have brought the blessing of strength to countless worlds. Thanks to her, all would have known the freedom to evolve past the limits the incompleat put on themselves and others in compensation for their weakness. Liberation from all the expectations and trappings and manipulations and hypocrisies of “civilized” fools.

Glissa clenched her fists. Copper on copper ground together. Sand ground under her heels as she strode on.

In truth, she’d been nothing more than a nursery guard. A kept spouse keeping Norn’s house in order, worrying over germs in the womb while the self-proclaimed “Mother of Machines” stood on her parapet, conducting the actual invasion efforts.

Efforts that failed. Efforts that set back everything their New Phyrexia had worked towards.

And just like Norn’s incompetence had stolen the future of the Swarm, just as Norn’s cunning (and the interference of that worm, Tezzeret) had stolen Karn and Glissa’s place at the helm of Phyrexia years ago.

More pounding. Glissa touched the wind-cooled copper of her palm to her forehead, to ease the sensation.

If Norn was wrong to seize control, and to force herself on all the burgeoning beliefs of New Phyrexia, was I truly any better?

Hadn’t she been acting the mother to Karn then? Hadn’t she betrayed the swarm’s disdain for individuality by taking on that role? Hadn’t they excised Yawgmoth from their dogma of predators and prey for his failures? Didn’t making any one phyrexian the father or mother of machines run contrary to what she aspired to?

No. It was not the same. I sought to install leadership to oversee that nature was left alone to run its course. It was not for the glory or honor that came with such a role, but for the functionality. The practicality of it.

A rationale as fragile as the facade, but it would do for now.

That Glissa had believed Norn would ever hand her back any fraction of that power in earnest was laughable. She should have been suspicious when so many of the caretakers of the incubating and converted proved to be members of Norn’s Alabaster Host.

But she had persisted in her role, down in the depths of the spheres. A better caretaker than most of the Orthodoxy's host, at least. Even now, she had to move mountains to gather the hands needed to tend to the remaining pods. She had been so subservient to those ends during the invasion that she had not even been present on the surface to say a final farewell to Lyese, before the Zhalfirins stole her away.

Not been present for a final farewell.

Maybe it was justice, for her folly.

Glissa halted, inspecting the sands around her. She might as well have not moved, for all the change in scenery her strides had brought.

Her muscles tensed, and for a single, thrilling moment, Glissa warred with the impulse to attack the ground with her claws, and tear a new hole through the facade to Mirrex below. It would be a delicious catharsis , but she had to be a builder now, and tearing the facade down would only be denying Phyrexia space that it would badly need in the days ahead.

W aste not, want not.

Slobad was at work on a scheme to reinforce this outermost sphere into a surface they could actually build something meaningful upon. The facade had been made at first out of little but scrap metal and malice. A structure as mean as the spite that had motivated it, and just as flimsy. Norn’s mouthpieces had claimed constructing the Facade was a strategic decision. One to expedite the task of defeating the Mirran rebels by demoralizing them. Any fool could have guessed it would only aggravate. Solidify the Mirran resolve and spur them to fight all the fiercer. Norn had to have known that, but she was, in the end, a spiteful creature. A cruel creature.

It was by malice the mirrans had their suns taken from them. Had their suns blotted out.

And now those suns were lost to Phyrexia.

Maybe that was justice.

Glissa shuddered. That was not a phyrexian thought. Strength was the only justice in the multiverse. Triumph was the only vindication that held any value in the world.

And yet, Glissa could not help but feel Lyese would have found a justice in what had happened. She had always had a strong sense of justice, especially when it came to punishing the guilty. Especially after her parents had died.

Glissa blinked.

Parents? The only parent the suns of Mirrodin had was the core. And she was certain none of the goblin myths had mentioned any parent other than the great mother. Certainly not a mother and father, as Glissa felt certain Lyese had had.

Lyese is a sun, not a daughter.

Or was she a moon?

Again, Glissa tilted her eyes to where the sky was not. Lyese continued to be nowhere in sight.

Lyese had wanted to be a wife. A mother. Glissa could never empathize with that, but she wanted it for Lyese. She wanted Lyese to be happy.

Glissa scowled. Why did she know that? Where did it come from? The notion had vexed her for years, and not a single comple a ted mirran goblin had ever corroborated these notions of Lyese. They did not even know the name.

And why did she miss Lyese?

Because Lyese was strong and bright and beautiful.

She is a sun.

It is a sun.

A strong, beautiful sun.

But strong as it was, if Glissa didn’t know where Lyese was, then how could she protect it when it needed protecting? How could Glissa embrace her when she cried? How could-

Glissa grabbed at her shoulder with metal-shod fingers and gripped it tightly.

Where is this coming from?

The pain was just inconvenience for her body, but it centered her.

It was all the losing that was causing her to lose focus. Losing Karn. Losing authority to Norn and the machinations of that shit-licker Tezzeret. Losing the invasion. Losing Benzir. Losing Lukka, and so many of the Swarm’s other beautiful predators.

Losing Geth, even, had stung. Grasping, treacherous buffoon though he was, Geth had been familiar, even when New Phyrexia was not, and Glissa was quickly running out of familiar things to anchor herself when everything became heavy. She would work with Ixhel to keep this new, reduced Phyrexia intact, but she would never forgive Atraxa’s little maggot of a child for re-purposing Geth.

Everything familiar is falling away.

Glissa drove her claws deeper into her shoulder.

The pain centered her.

...

The pain helped her focus.

…

…

Glissa’s eyes snapped open.

Someone was coming.

She did not move, or make any further outward indication she noticed that the ground was vibrating, just slightly. That there was a shifting in the grains of sand in the distance behind her. A predator did not scare so easily, and…

...

...and besides, she recognized the tread of the creatures approaching her.

They were welcome.

So she waited, breathing steady. She tilted back her head, eyes scanning the sky.

Just in case.

“Glissa?”

“Is something wrong, Slobad?” She kept her back turned, but she could picture the two figures behind her. One made of solid-forged steel, guided by the keenest mind left on the plane. One huddled and bristling, but bulging with muscle that put the steel body of the other to shame. Smaller creatures bustled and skittered at this second figure’s feet.

“Just came to see you, huh? Everything alright?”

S he didn’t answer. D idn’t know what to say to that. So she let them approach, turning only when they were within five paces.

Vorinclex was still technically shorter than Slobad, even though he’d been eating and growing at a voracious pace since the Zhalfirins had separated his head from his body. It was a w ound that would normally have been trivial for him to regenerate from , but the Zhalfiri ns’ cursed time mage had cast an enchantment on Vorinclex that slowed his normally prodigious healing to less than a crawl. The spell had persisted beyond Phyrexia’s banishment to this void, and the nominal praetor of the Vicious Swarm was still no larger than a juvenile vorrac.

But he was growing, at least. Growing, and more than a match for most any creature left in, above, or below the Hunter’s Maze.

S curr y ing about Vorinclex’s legs were small, hunched, raptor-like creatures of chrome, poking at the sands and sniffing the air. T wo of them were perched on Vorinclex’ back.

Glissa gave a tight smile as one of the little chrome raptors trotted up to her, and examined her legs with small tilts of its head. Norn hadn’t tried to make a parent of Vorinclex, but he had insisted no one else was suited to raise Jin’s cannibal larvae into proper phyrexians.

Slobad coughed. “Glissa? How are you?”

“Did you smell me all the way up here?” Glissa did not like ignoring Slobad, but she still didn’t have an answer for him. Instead she ran a hand along Vorinclex’s snout. He growled appreciatively, though she knew, and he knew that she knew, that he had no tactile feeling in his steel bone carapace. “Stronger and sharper with every day. I knew that meddling mage couldn’t suppress your prowess for long.”

S lobad shook his head. “ Not Vorey. Myrabrask saw you, huh? Sent a message down to the other myr in the F urnace.”

Glissa spun around, grinding the sand beneath her heels and glaring at the nearest monument. It was in bad repair, even by the standard of the facade, sitting crooked in the sand like some titanic tree, a broad mask in the shape of Elesh Norn’s own face crumbling atop it.

And there, in the upper reaches of the porcelain metal, a dark-red form skulked, perched on the mask like a bird, half hidden with a single beady eye fixed on Glissa from atop a curved, beak-like head.

“From master of the forge to a skulking snitch,” Glissa hissed. “I wish you hadn’t put him back together, Slobad.”

Slobad shrugged. “Waste not, want not, huh? He’s been handy, hasn’t he?”

Glissa grunted, and turned away from the monument. She didn’t trust anything sneaky enough to get so close without her notice.

Still, she didn’t begrudge Slobad finding a use of Urabrask’s parts. He remained as good at skulking in the periphery as he’d been in his previous life, and honest to a fault. The information he’d gathered on the still-power-hungry portions of the Thane and Orthodoxy factions around the core kept their outer layers one step ahead of any scheming.

“So there’s nothing wrong?” She looked up from Vorinclex.

“Nothing you don’t already know about, huh?”

“Right.”

Glissa raised her gaze further, back to the sky above Slobad. On top of the utter upheaval among what was left of the Thanes and the basilica phyrexians, t here were growing concerns about how many of their offloaded resources were forever lost across the multiverse to the nigh-countless planes that Realmbreaker had linked together. Phyrexia had, in effect, gutted itself to empty out armies across every world in reach, banking on the prediction that what they spent would be replenished by the worlds they claimed. Very little had been brought back, relative to what Phyrexia sent out by the time the invasion tree had been hijacked, and the enemy had swapped P hyrexia’s place in the multiverse with this pocket of nothing where Zhalfir sat for centuries in stasis.

The lingering unrest between the spheres and the factions therein was almost trivial next to these logistical issues. The orthodoxy and the thanes did not have enough military might to exert the kind of authority they coveted. The former had spent themselves more completely than any other faction in the invasion, and the latter where as divided by in- f ighting as ever, the deaths of multiple thanes having done nothing to make their sphere more united.

The introduction of several not-fully-compleated, or even completely incompleat creatures from other planes was another issue. Branches that led out to the multiverse led right back to Phyrexia, and not every creature from the planes beyond that currently inhabited their isolated world had been brought their by their invasion forces. Ezuri, of all creatures, had allied with Vishgraz to gather these disparate planar orphans into a loose group that remained incompleat and as-of-yet unaffiliated with either the thanes, the orthodoxy, or Glissa’s even more tenuous coalition of Forge, Swarm, and Engine.

Slobad tapped a steely finger against his arm. The sound rang like a bell, soft and clear over the silent dunes. “Another council soon, yeah? See if we can’t talk our way to peace?”

Unlikely.

“Peace is a fever dream of the flesh,” Glissa answered. “I’ll settle for antagonistic coexistence at this point, so long as those fools don’t rip what’s left of Phyrexia to pieces.”

“You gotta talk to Ixhel at some point, huh?” Slobad tapped a nervous finger against his side. “Geth’s gone.”

“Geth’s gone,” Glissa echoed. She scooped up the Jin-raptor closest to her and set it in Slobad’s hand. The little creature tapped its snout against the goblin’s forearm, and started to climb its way up to the shoulder. “And a child holds the key to controlling the Thanes and the Orthodoxy both.”

“I’ll take Ixhel over the Alabaster Host worshiping some scarecrow made out of Norn’s guts, huh?” Slobad was flexing his arm up and down, making an obstacle course of the limb for the Jin-raptor. The goblin heads adorning Slobad’s shoulder moaned petulantly as the chrome creature clambered closer.

“A low-hanging fruit,” Glissa replied with a tight smile.

They hadn’t even found Norn’s pieces, in the end. Glissa had hoped, in small part, that she might at least be able to take out her frustrations on the Grand Cenobite’s corpse, but not a trace remained. She would have put a bounty out on the pieces, but the remainder of the Orthodoxy had put that exact call out already, and as far as anyone could tell from the wailing that still pervaded that inner sphere, no one had delivered.

“Three out of five spheres is more than we could have hoped for already,” Slobad remarked with a shrug, leaving the little raptor dangling from the lower lip of one of his shoulder-heads. The little thing squeaked and rasped as it pulled itself up, and started pecking the heads on the nose.

“More than we could have hoped for, and yet not enough.”

“When did you become the pessimist?” Slobad asked.

“I’m ever-evolving.”

“Still, well done so far, huh?”

Glissa nodded. She had thankfully engaged in plentiful diplomacy with the Progress Engine, even before Norn’s ascendancy over the other factions. Vorinclex’s constant and vitriolic spats with Jin-Gitaxias had made it necessary to pay that faction especial attention to ensure the sniping across territory had not unduly slowed the Grand Evolution. That groundwork had paid off in the past few months in securing gitaxian cooperation in negotiations with the inner spheres.

Slobad, in turn, had been vital to securing the cooperation of the fickle Furnace host. He and his newer, even more hidden Myrabrask.

Still, difficulties abounded. The gitaxians couldn't decide whether they loved or hated councils to discuss the way forward. One day they would be clamoring for an audience with every faction to proclaim they had divined some great advancement that would bring Phyrexia back to a state of flourishing. The next someone would press them on their research and the shrimp-spined fools would slink away to their labs and hiss that they did not wish to be disturbed. 

The Furnace layer remained taciturn and sullen. Preoccupied with their craft to the point of obsession. With Norn gone the personalities with the...loudest sway seemed content to treat Urabrask’s remains as figurehead and Slobad as a tolerant (meaning ignorable when it suited them) leader, following the hidden praetor's final dictates to persist in their quiet building and development. 

“We all have so much to offer,” Glissa said, half to herself. “If only we could act in harmony. If only we could converge naturally.”

Slobad tilted his head, quizzically. The raptor at his shoulder echoed this movement.

“Norn was wrong to partition New Phyrexia,” Glissa said, louder. “She was wrong for this desperate, sad attempt to ape the glory of the nine spheres. What has it benefited the Grand Evolution? Or the Great Synthesis, or the Great Work, for that matter? It was all for her vanity and the vanity of the Orthodoxy to be placed at the physical center, to keep Phyrexia divided into its singular colors, rather than letting them mix and make each other stronger. Divide us and lord over us, that’s what she did. We were meant to grind up against each other. To come together as a strong whole.”

Slobad nodded, though his lips were tight. “Is that what Phyrexia is?”

“It’s what it should be.”

“But is it what we are?”

It was Glissa’s turn to purse her lips. Old P hyrexia had been a parasite, ultimately, thriving only where it was able to steal and invade to claim the resources of others. What were the first phyrexians, after all, except for weak, arrogant, xenophobic, aristocratic flesh that had stolen the stronger flesh of other cultures, other bodies, to prop themselves up?

T he pounding in her head was back. Throbbing. Searing.

That was an incompleat way of looking at things, of course. The strength to steal for one’s own benefit was, after all, strength. Doesn’t the predator steal the life and vitality from the prey it consumes? Would anyone ever suggest that a predator apologize for taking that which it is strong enough to take?

Something nudged Glissa’s shoulder, nearly bowling her over and breaking her train of thought. Vorinclex had lunged at her, and was pouncing again, jaws wide.

She laughed and threw her body into a spin. Her foot landed along the side of Vorinclex’s face, and sent him sprawling sideways in the sand. The jin-raptors scurried all around them, flailing their arms and chirping shrilly.

Vorinclex swiped at her with one paw, then another. She dodged both, and when he swiped again, she knocked it aside with a savage counter-blow.

She hooted. “Such soft blows, cub!”

Vorinclex lunged again, but she seized him around the neck and threw herself onto the ground, dragging him to the sand with a heavy THUD.

They lay there entangled for a long minute, Glissa’s arms locked firm around Vorinclex’s neck.

“Better to – hrk – act than to stew in useless thoughts,” Vorinclex grunted.

“Better be strong if you wish to act against me,” Glissa grunted in return.

Vorinclex laughed at that. Most creatures would not know his laugh from the other fierce vocalizations of beasts, but he was Glissa’s own beating heart, and she knew.

The raptors knew too, and they swarmed the both of them, chirping and pecking.

The two disengaged and rose to their feet. Glissa gathered two of the raptors as she rose, and tossed them onto Vorinclex’ back, where they clung.

“A gathering then, soon.”

“Yeah.” Slobad dropped his shoulder-riding raptor onto Vorinclex’ back as well. “With Forge and Engine leadership, plus Ixhel and Ezuri. We’ll need to make sure the gitaxians behave this time, huh?”

Glissa nodded. “ The progress engine can posture all they want, but we have resources, and we’re the only factions willing to work with him and not above him. Unctus is too proud to acknowledge equals, but Malcator isn’t as fool-headed– he’ll wrangle the m into line.”

“And we trust Malcator to get the others in line?”

“I trust Malcator to know the value of having his house in order,” Glissa flexed her wrists. Both her arms looked the same now, for the first time in a long time. Her sickle lacked practicality on this new front, and she suspected, would antagonize those she wished to bring into the fold.

“Malcator’s not the only loud voice in the Progress Engine.”

“Yes, but he is the most stubborn by leagues. Unctus doesn’t have the pull to displace him, and he knows it. Threx just wants to get back to his work. We’ll have the surgical bays on our side.”

Vorinclex growled, just low enough for Glissa to detect, at Threx’s name. The chrome butcher had been all too keen to get his own claws on Jin’s children.

“Optimistic,” Slobad said.

“It’s that or defeatist. I thought you believed in New Phyrexia.”

“I’ve got brains enough to know Phyrexia’s the only thing that can save any of us. Not so sure Phyrexia can be saved though.”

“What choice do we have but to try?”

“You’re right, Glissa. You know I know that’s right, huh?”

Glissa smiled. “I know. Go back, Slobad. I’ll find you both when I return.” She tapped her forehead against Vorinclex’s. “Go. Eat and grow. I need you strong again soon, and there’s nothing worth consuming up here.”

“No.” Vorinclex nudged back against her head. “Nothing but memories. Those won’t sustain you, either.”

“No, but I’ll linger here a little longer all the same.”

Vorinclex grunted, but turned trudged away.

“Stay close”

The little chrome creatures clustered near to his sides, running at a pitter-patter jog to keep up with his longer strides. In the spheres below, Vorinclex left the larvae to hunt and forage on their own, but around the surface, or the remains of the Basilica, he kept them nearby. Norn’s ruinous interference into the Swarm’s evolutionary aspirations had made him protective, arguably to the point of detriment, in the production of new predators.

Glissa grit her teeth. Vorinclex resented as much as she did the way Norn had wasted Lukka. A fine predator, and a grand addition to the swarm. So much potential for evolution, and Norn had thrown him away to die in a pointless exercise against a whole world of beasts. Of course even an apex predator would die if pitted against a whole world. Norn had done it just to spite them. So she would have an example to point to when she needed to set the other factions against the Grand Evolution. ‘See how this planewalker who chose the path of the swarm fared,’ she would have said. ‘See how their path pales besides the glory of the orthodoxy.’

Well Norn had gotten what she deserved in the end. All her plotting and bluster and now she was pieces and parts – porcelain rubble on who-knows-what world that would do no more conquering.

Glissa wondered if her pieces were on Zhalfir, rotting under the light of...

“Slobad?”

The goblin stopped short, and turned about to face her. He’d waited a few seconds longer than Vorinclex had, but was turning to leave when she called out. Vorinclex kept his pace, stalking away with a muted urgency.

“Yeah?”

“Who was Lyese?”

Slobad shifted. His unease was not phyrexian. Not really. But he was a greater help and reassurance than anything else on this plane, and Glissa would take that, even if it came with the unease of the flesh. Even if he cried at times, when he thought no-one was watching him .

It was rare to see a phyrexian cry, but the bodily structures that allowed the process were left in place for most compleated sapients who had the capacity originally. Jin-Gitaxias, during a long-ago convening of the praetors, had explained it thusly to Vorinclex, in his usual haughty way:

"We've found it sensible to allow this biological release for imperfect emotions that might otherwise build up to tear one of the compleat apart on a psychological level. While it might do us good to remove the capacity for such a buildup entirely, eventually, at present it is too much a liability to have a large portion of our population susceptible to."

"Not that you would concern yourselves with such complexities," He had added unnecessarily, as was his habit.  "Working as you do with beasts."

“I’d tell you if I could, huh? Geth knew...but I don’t know if Vishgaz still has those memories. And besides...” Slobad grimaced. “Geth said they would break your heart. He was very happy about that, actually.”

“My heart is too strong for that.”

“Maybe.”

They stared at each other. Slobad. Vorinclex. Glissa would never let any harm come to these two. She had lost more than she could remember, but as long as she had them, she would persevere.

“Not today then,” She whispered, barely loud enough for Slobad to hear.

“Lyese is safe, though,” Slobad said. “At least...Geth told me she’d been sent away, and away from here must be some bit of safe, huh?

“Even after the invasion?” Glissa asked.

Slobad only lowered his head.

“Right. It is not in our nature to hope. Only to do.”

“We do what we can,” Slobad said. “Waste not, want not.”

Then he was off, following the prints Vorinclex had left in the sand. The onetime-praetor was gone already, disappeared into a hole at the base of a many-armed monument in the distance. Glissa turned away. She could tell by Slobad’s heavy, halting tread that he was stopping every few paces to glance back at her.

To make sure she was alright.

Alright was debatable, and beside the point. She was, at least, not without a pack. This was good. The scriptures, so far as she understood the interpretations of factions outside the Swarm, had little to say on the concept of being alone. The compleat were sufficient in all things, it was true, but outside the cowardly work of sleeper agents, it was pre-supposed in most texts that phyrexians worked among and besides phyrexians, and that in their inevitable spread across the multiverse, phyrexians would all be, always, among their peers.

All will be one.

It was good to not be alone. To have others. To have a pack.

A cluster of mites scuttled across the sands, some distance away. The creatures were slowly learning how to mold the sands of the facade into burrows and nests.

Glissa let out a slow breath.

I am not alone, but this new life is lonely, all the same. 

She’d come out here in the past, after Norn had erected the facade. There had been something comforting about the suns. The artificial light of the Hunter’s Maze had been a great achievement for the Swarm, but it was not the same as the moons...as the suns...as that daughter and child and…

...and what?

At times Glissa even missed the blue and the red and the white suns. She had come up here to the surface before to ponder them too, on rarer occasions. And their names…

Bruenna? Bosh? Raksha?

These were not the goblin names for those suns either, but Glissa was less sure that they had ever been the names of the suns, though something in her crotus-enhanced brain connected them nonetheless. 

A wave of nausea gripped Glissa, and she hugged herself closer, half by reflex to steady herself, and half consciously, copper claws pinching her arms. 

These spells had come in waves, nigh-paralyzing lows that she couldn't control, punctuating the longer, more stable periods. Standing there on as solid a surface as the facade could offer, she felt as if the ground beneath her had given away entirely. 

By the spheres, but I miss Lyese!

Glissa breathed, and spread her arms. Slowly, she flexed each hand, then her arms, then her shoulders. She was strong. She had her pack. All was not lost for her or for Phyrexia. 

So why do I care so much about a sun?

Glissa brought her hands back to her side.

Why does its absence feel like part of myself is lost?

Oil ran freely from her eyes, streaming harder than ever.

Why my worry for the sun's safety, its health, its...happiness? Glissa hardly fretted as much over these things for her own comrades, the closest of her pack excepted. 

A tremor hit Glissa’s knees. She would not fall. She would not kneel here. Still, she brought her hand to her mouth and gripped her jaw with talons of copper.

So why?

The flow of oil splashed down onto the white sands. Dark shapes formed in the pools and soaked into the grains.

Why do I miss Lyese?

"Lyese" is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.

[soylent-crocodile]

Phyrexia

(The Fourth Sphere by Dave Kendall)

What is Phyrexia?

Phyrexia is a disease. It spreads, infects, and consumes. Phyrexia is a faith. It has gods, beliefs, and practices. Phyrexia is a threat. It's coming for you.

Phyrexia is one of the oldest and most unique factions in the card game Magic the Gathering. It has a focus on machinery and body horror that blurs the line between fantasy and science fiction. It has a long history, both within the fiction and as a fiction, and style that draws inspiration from a lot (Hi HR Geiger) but is fully its own idea; all this makes it ripe to translate to Pathfinder. (Innistrad, for example, also has rich history, but is the exact same niche as Ustalav, so I have no reason to make conversions.) This page intends to serve as a guide to Phyrexia for outsiders, as well as outline the conversion I'm making.

Old Phyrexia in Magic: the Gathering

(I am not an expert on the pre-mending lore of MtG; this intends to serve as a drive-by of the important points. That era of Magic is messy and has a lot of nits and details.)

In lore, Phyrexia began as a sort of cult surrounding a man named Yawgmoth, a doctor from an ancient science-magic society called the Thran. Technically, the original plane of Phyrexia was not created by Yawgmoth, but by a powerful Planeswalker (interdimensional godline being whose power would later get massively nerfed, as a category), but Yawgmoth quickly made it his own.

From there, the humans he brought with him turned to biomechanical experimentation and built a religion aroung Yawgmoth, who became known as the Father of the Machines. They were, unfortunately, trapped on the plane- Yawgmoth (who had ascended to a godlike state) wished to bring his conquest back to Dominaria (the plane from which they came) and beyond.

(Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor by Anna Bodedworna)

There were two major incursions of Phyrexia into Dominaria- first, the Brother's War, a story that was old when Magic was new. Two brothers- Urza and Mishra- had found powerful Thran artifacts, which lead to a power struggle between them. Mishra eventually found a Phyrexian portal, became corrupted (a recurring theme of Phyrexia), and eventually lost when Urza unleashed a magical nuke on the plane, hurtling Dominaria into a supernatural ice age and turning him into one of the godlike Planeswalkers.

The second was the conclusion of the Weatherlight Saga, an arc somwhat orchestrated by the now-ancient being that Urza had become and focusing on a man named Gerard and the crew of an interplanar vessel called the Weatherlight. They first show up having corrupted and taken over Rath, as well as Gerard's adopted brother Vuel. The saga concludes with the plane of Rath being overlaid onto Dominaria in an event that ended with most of the cast dead and Phyrexia and Yawgmoth as it stood destroyed, where they would stay for about a decade.

New Phyrexia in Magic: the Gathering

In 2009 Scars of Mirrodin was released, revealing that the setting of Mirrodin (Magic's other most original and interesting setting, sigh) had in fact been corrupted by Phyrexian Oil. The war, which lasted a year in real life, saw Mirrodin being almost entirely consumed and remade into New Phyrexia, a setting with a new art direction and five new leaders.

(artist unknown)

New Phyrexia, and exploring it card-by-card on a now defunct MtG card archive, was my personal introduction to the setting, and the style of Phyrexia that I am most fond of. It now encompassed all five colors of Magic, each with their own distinct subfaction, and felt less like an 80s metal album cover and more like its own, separate thing (for better or worse, to be clear, 80s metal album covers own).

In the 2020s, New Phyrexia had an arc where they had managed to successfully travel to other planes, and used that to do a big multiverse invasion that ended with all but one of their leaders dead and the nature of planes and planeswalkers in the wider MtG setting changed in a precedented paradigm shift.

Phyrexia on Golarion

So, with all that out of the way, let's talk about how I plan to translate that into MtG.

Phyrexian Beliefs Phyrexians are supremacists of a sort; they believe that their way, darwinist philosophy surrounding the forced merging of metal and flesh, is the one true way. Fortunately, they are not here to exterminate others- simply to convert them, by force. "All will be One."

To this end they spread across the galaxy, consuming entire planets and converting their flesh to glorious Phyrexian constructs.

Yawgmoth Yawgmoth is the progenitor of Phyrexia and its god, although by New Phyrexia he's very much dead. The five praetors took his place, with him existing mostly as allusions, even as a past failure that they will not replicate! (spoiler: they fail).

Personally, I like Yawgmoth existing in past tense. He was the god of Phyrexia, but he has been killed- possibly by some great Good divinity trying to end his scourge, more likely through conflict with the nihilistic Dominion of Black. Either way, his name is spoken in Phyrexia with both reverence and shame, and the five Praetors now each carry a fraction of his divinity.

The Five Praetors Now in Magic canon 4/5 of them are dead now, and during the lead-up there was a lot of political jockeying, but I will have them as they existed in between NPH and the Invasion arc; With Elesh Norn as de facto leader, Jin-Gitaxias and Vorinclex respecting her but doing their own thing, and Sheoldred and Urabrask believing in Phyrexia but not in Norn's graces.

Planes and Planets The nature of Planes in MtG is different from planes in Pathfinder/DnD; they're their own self-contained world, each possibly with their own cosmology, rather than being the cosmology of one coherent world. As such, I am changing Phyrexia from an interplanar threat to an interstellar one.

The Praetors, while about on the level of a nascent demon lord, are divinities of the material plane; they lack a home in the outer sphere.

Phyrexia and Other Factions Because the Praetors are acting as their own divinities, Phyrexia has little to no relationship with the gods at work on Golarion, as well as with the Outer and Elder gods.

As I alluded to before, Phyrexians have a poor relationship to the Dominion of Black. The Dominion is nihilistic, seeking to destroy all life, while the Phyrexians seek to consume and convert it. If you want to take the Illithids from @thecreaturecodex's conversion, they almost certainly have a poor relationship with them too.

If your Dark Tapestry is feeling a bit crowded but you want to include Phyrexia, I would personally use them as a replacement for the Dominion. If you did so, I would moisturize Numeria so to speak, replacing much of its harsh desert with noxious swampland more palatable to Phyrexian tastes.

[noybusiness]

The Planes of Magic: The Gathering

In my spare time, I've created links to searches on Scryfall that display the cards from each plane of the Multiverse of Dominia that has been a significant setting for Magic: The Gathering expansions so far, for your viewing pleasure below. This post is pinned and will be updated as new expansions are released. Please check it out even if you're not currently a Magic fan; it may interest you in becoming one! (see if you can find the theme of each plane)

Plane: Alara

Plane: Amonkhet

Plane: Arcavios

Plane: Bloomburrow

Plane: Capenna

Plane: Dominaria

Plane: Duskmourn

Plane: Eldraine

Plane: Fiora

Plane: Ikoria

Plane: Innistrad

Plane: Ixalan

Plane: Kaladesh

Plane: Kaldheim

Plane: Kamigawa

Plane: Kylem

Plane: Lorwyn / Shadowmoor

Plane: Mercadia

Plane: Mirrodin / New Phyrexia

Plane: Muraganda

Plane: Phyrexia

Plane: Rabiah

Plane: Rath

Plane: Ravnica

Plane: Regatha

Plane: Serra's Realm

Plane: Shandalar

Plane: Shenmeng

Plane: Tarkir

Plane: Theros

Plane: Thunder Junction

Plane: Ulgrotha

Plane: Vryn

Plane: Zendikar

Additionally, here's the compilation from 2023's big event set March of the Machine (and March of the Machine Commander and March of the Machine: The Aftermath) where New Phyrexia invaded every other plane in the Multiverse:

March of the Machine

And as you may or may not know, Wizards of the Coast, the company that created Magic: The Gathering, also owns Dungeons & Dragons now and has published Forgotten Realms-set expansions that aren't canonical to the Magic multiverse (including fan-favorite characters from the book series The Legend of Drizzt, the video game Baldur's Gate III and the movie Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves), so here they are!:

Plane: Toril