| 1 | !![[center:[- '''[[Characters/MagicTheGathering Main Character Index]]'''-]]][[center:[-'''Planeswalkers:''' [[Characters/MagicTheGatheringPlaneswalkersPreMending Planeswalkers who ignited Pre-Mending]], [[Characters/MagicTheGatheringPlaneswalkersPostMending Planeswalkers who ignited Post-Mending]]: [[Characters/MagicTheGatheringPlaneswalkersPostMendingAM A-M]], [[Characters/MagicTheGatheringPlaneswalkersPostMendingNZ N - Z]]-]]][[center:[-'''Planes and their peoples: Factions''', [[Characters/MagicTheGatheringOtherCharacters Other Characters]] ([[Characters/MagicTheGatheringDominaria Dominaria]], [[Characters/MagicTheGatheringPhyrexiaRathAndMirrodin Phyrexia, Rath and Mirrodin]], [[Characters/MagicTheGatheringInnistrad Innistrad]], [[Characters/MagicTheGatheringRavnica Ravnica]], [[Characters/MagicTheGatheringTheros Theros]], [[Characters/MagicTheGatheringTarkir Tarkir]], [[Characters/MagicTheGatheringZendikar Zendikar]]), [[MagicTheGathering/{{Planes}} Planes]]-]]] |
| 2 | |
| 3 | These are the tropes that apply to entire factions in ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' flavor, such as the Shards of Alara, the Guilds of Ravnica, the five color factions of New Phyrexia, and the Clans of Tarkir. They're not the five colors (for that see MagicTheGathering/ColorTropes) and they aren't creature types or characters either, but each has a cohesive flavorful and mechanical identity. |
| 4 | |
| 5 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 6 | |
| 7 | !Phyrexia, Rath, and Mirrodin |
| 8 | [[folder:Phyrexia]] |
| 9 | ->[[BadassBoast Life is ephemeral. Phyrexia is eternal.]]\ |
| 10 | --'''[[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=221557 Spread the Sickness]]''' |
| 11 | |
| 12 | Perhaps the most iconic, notorious, beloved, and horrifying bad guys of the whole franchise, Phyrexia began in ''Magic'''s early days as a flesh-hating cult, and since then has been fleshed out as one of the most disturbing and complex factions of the Multiverse. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | Phyrexia was originally a dying but initially paradisiacal plane designed by a human planeswalker assuming the form of a dragon. Later came [[BigBad Yawgmoth]], which alongside the members of Thran Empire that were banished alongside him after a series of events in his homeworld of Dominaria, turned the plane into a world of nine layers that can best be described as {{Hell}}. The Phyrexian civilization was a well-structured, organized dictatorship that had a vicious, semi-religious philosophy that declared that flesh was imperfect and should be replaced by metal in various manners of BodyHorror, turning the altered creatures into unrecognizable monstrosities. [[MachineWorship Worshipping machines]] (but only those made by Yawgmoth; the rest are heretical mockeries), the Phyrexians tried to take over Dominaria but were ultimately defeated and their plane destroyed. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | However, the process of phyresis required an oil created by Yawgmoth himself, an oil that infects creatures and changes their minds, making them want to become Phyrexians. Karn's "heart" had a bit of this oil in it, and it infected his created plane Mirrodin. It infected the guardian of the plane, [[MadScientist Memnarch]], leading him to become insane, and once he died, the organisms of the plane became vulnerable to the oil's influence, resulting in the rebirth of Phyrexia. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | And even if New Phyrexia dies, [[ParanoiaFuel all that is needed to create a new one]] [[FromASingleCell is a single drop of the oil]]... |
| 19 | |
| 20 | ---- |
| 21 | |
| 22 | * AssimilationPlot: Generally their ''modus operandi'', as all must be "compleated", though it varies. Old Phyrexians resorted to brainwashing/lobotomy and then employing the BodyHorror; New Phyrexians simply inject people with their oil, though the descriptions for the White and Blue factions imply that they still opt for "Au naturale" conversions before administering the oil. To this end, it's worth noting that New Phyrexia's CatchPhrase of sorts is "All will be one". |
| 23 | * BlackSpeech: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7ixdHQj3O4 Can be heard in all its creeptastic guttural glory right here.]] |
| 24 | * BlueAndOrangeMorality: |
| 25 | ** As disturbing as they are, the Phyrexians and even Yawgmoth himself all seem to [[WellIntentionedExtremist genuinely, sincerely believe]] that turning all living things into brainwashed semimechanical abominations is a '''good''' thing. |
| 26 | ** Yawgmoth's "scientific" view of life is incompatible with the Thran (and, later, Dominarian) conception of magic. |
| 27 | * BodyHorror: The original Phthisis disease sucked bigtime, like supernatural leprosy or something. The "cure" is surgically cutting out, reshaping, and rearranging organs, bones, skin, muscle, etc. and combining them with machine parts, oil, and brainwashing. And Phyrexians don't believe in anesthesia. Their language has one word that means both "pain" and "improvement." |
| 28 | * BreakoutVillain: The faction as a whole is this. Early on in the history of ''Magic'', they were a relatively unimportant faction. Then, they became a veritable threat only to be halted. Nowadays, with Mirrodin [[TheBadGuyWins firmly converted into New Phyrexia]] and their agents infiltrating plane after plane, they seem primed to return as the new {{Arc Villain}}s of the franchise, replacing the fallen Nicol Bolas. |
| 29 | * CyberneticsEatYourSoul: Their specialty. Through the process of compleation, Phyrexia replaces the entirety of an organism's body parts with mechanical parts, not only causing them to become irreversibly and fanatically loyal to Phyrexia, but also ''literally'' causing them to lose their soul via the destruction of their original body. |
| 30 | * TheDreaded: It really says a lot that by the time of ''Streets of New Capenna'', long after the first invasion, they're still capable of frightening both angels and archdemons alike. |
| 31 | * EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: |
| 32 | ** The [[http://multiverseinreview.blogspot.com/2015/01/shattered-chains.html earliest apparence]] of Phyrexia depicts it as a hell for artifacts, as in "demons and gremlins will grab Wall-E and fuck him up". A bit of a far cry from the assimilatory biomechanical nightmare it is in modern flavor. |
| 33 | ** Other than sleeper agents Phyrexia was not as focused on assimilation in early flavor; its main threat was more existential, as in they kill everyone. Old Phyrexia compleated as [[PragmaticVillainy deemed necessary]], but New Phyrexia is all devoted to the goal of infection and this adds a level of horror only barely hinted at in the old days. |
| 34 | ** In ''Planeswalker'' Phyrexians are depicted more as tragic citizens of a dictatorial regime, with Xantcha being the one to break free. Soon after that, however, their alienness and evilness was ramped up until they were [[AlwaysChaoticEvil unambiguously corrupt beings]], though sympathetic traits still show up in the Red-aligned ones like Urabrask and even other praetors on New Phyrexia (all being Xantcha's distant descendants) have moments of humanity, [[MadScientist for]] [[ReligionOfEvil the worse]]. |
| 35 | * FleshVersusSteel: Surprisingly [[ZigzaggedTrope ZigZagged]]. As much as Phyrexians preach about the weakness of the flesh and the superiority of the machine, most of them are actually almost as offended by totally inorganic machines as they are by fully organic lifeforms. They will replace metal with flesh and flesh with metal until the ratio is to their liking. |
| 36 | * GreaterScopeVillain: To ''Streets of New Capenna''. While Capenna's current state as a Mafioso-ran hellhole is induced by its resident demons, an invasion from Old Phyrexia was the very thing that drove them all to the brink in the first place. |
| 37 | * HiveMind: Generally averted, as phyrexians are granted autonomy to act their functions as needed. However, Yawgmoth was present in all Phyrexians and could easily take over any of them to speak or better enforce his will, and Elesh Norn has a mental link to all White-aligned Phyrexians. |
| 38 | * KeystoneArmy: In both of its incarnations. When Yawgmoth and Elesh Norn were defeated, their respective forces on other worlds shut down once they were no longer receiving their masters' orders. |
| 39 | * MachineWorship: As a general rule, the Phyrexians worship machinery and seek to become one with it, although new interpretations of "compleation" have emerged in New Phyrexia. |
| 40 | * ManchurianAgent: A favored tactic of Phyrexia, both new and old, is to hide sleeper agents among enemy populations to covertly serve Phyrexia's interests while being completely unaware that they are Phyrexian at all. Old Phyrexia's sleeper agents were homegrown in Phyrexia, while New Phyrexia's sleeper agents are compleated from other species. |
| 41 | * NinjaPirateZombieRobot: Phyrexians can most easily be summarised as undead magical cyborgs. |
| 42 | * NoBiologicalSex: Old Phyrexians didn't have actual sexes (unless they were compleated people, in which it was a remainder of their former lives). Gix in particular enjoyed projecting a male identity on his underlings, in what was described as outright rape. |
| 43 | * OutsideGenreFoe: The majority of ''Magic'''s settings are various takes on HighFantasy. Enter Phyrexia, a faction of evil biomechanical cyborgs which would be far more at home in sci-fi. |
| 44 | ** Ironically, on high-tech worlds like Kaladesh, Kamigawa, and Capenna, they are still this, as their use of necromancy makes them appear more traditionally fantastical by comparison. |
| 45 | * {{Plaguemaster}}: Yawgmoth-era Phyrexians used pestilent magic (often in conjunction with [[GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke bio-engineered diseases]]) as one of their primary combat strategies. New Phyrexia has continued this legacy, particularly the Progress Engine and Seven Steel Thanes. |
| 46 | * PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Are gleeful practitioners of eugenics, the whole civilization starting as Yawgmoth's idea of perfecting his favoured Thran high castes. Nowadays the Green phyrexians technically still do it... [[TheSocialDarwinist via survival of the fittest]]. |
| 47 | * RecurringElement: Despite being next to Black on the color pie, Red mana inevitably does more harm than good to Phyrexia due to its chaotic and individualistic nature. Xantcha ended up betraying the cause, Tsabo Tavoc was a sadist who didn't hesitate to kill her own troops for her pleasure and Urabrask is an oddity among the Praetors for his unpredictable behavior. |
| 48 | * ReligionOfEvil: Despite their lack of comprehension of spirituality or the soul, Phyrexians are strongly religious. Old Phyrexia was oriented around the worship of Yawgmoth, and while religion is primarily represented in New Phyrexia by the Machine Orthodoxy, New Phyrexians of all colors have a bit of a religious bent to them. In either case, Phyrexian religion invariably revolves around nasty things like the removal of flesh, the assimilation of the unwilling, and the killing of those they deem unworthy. |
| 49 | * TheSoulless: [[OurSoulsAreDifferent Souls]] are objectively, provably real things in the ''Magic'' multiverse. Phyrexians, old and new, have theirs removed during Compleation. |
| 50 | * UnnecessarilyCreepyRobot: Phyrexia upholds practicality and efficiency as virtues, but many of their designs tend towards BodyHorror rather than practicality. |
| 51 | * XenomorphXerox: Creator/HRGiger's design sensibilities clearly have massive influence on all incarnations of Phyrexia. In particular, famous and powerful Phyrexian monsters like the [[https://scryfall.com/card/dde/1/phyrexian-negator Negator]] and [[https://scryfall.com/card/nph/68/phyrexian-obliterator Obliterator]] having silhouettes that are clearly meant to evoke the Xenomorphs themselves. |
| 52 | [[/folder]] |
| 53 | |
| 54 | [[folder:Rath]] |
| 55 | |
| 56 | A barren plane of rock and stunted vegetation, Rath was artificially created by Yawgmoth as a staging ground for the Phyrexian invasion of Dominaria. Rath was ruled by a human evincar who served as Yawgmoth's governor and grand marshal. To provide food, conscripts, and slave labor, not to mention more land for the ever-growing plane, the evincars used planar gates to abduct whole tracts of land and their inhabitants from other planes, including two human tribes (the Vec and Dal), kor from Zendikar, the elves of Skyshroud Forest, the Rootwater merfolk, and all kinds of monsters. Some of these abductees served the evincars (like Greven ''il''-Vec and the mogg goblins), but most were brutally oppressed. |
| 57 | |
| 58 | When the Phyrexian invasion began, the plane was literally overlayed over Dominaria: the smaller plane merged with Dominaria's fabric, centered on Urborg, and the two worlds became one, instantly transporting Yawgmoth's troops directly to the battlefield. In the wake of Yawgmoth's defeat, the surviving people of Rath have integrated with Dominaria. |
| 59 | [[/folder]] |
| 60 | |
| 61 | [[folder:Mirrodin]] |
| 62 | |
| 63 | The world of Mirrodin is a mishmash of life and metal, populated by as many or more machines as organic life. Even the creatures there have metal within them. Since metal is colorless, the plane finds its mana sources in its suns/moons, five giant glowing satellites that glow with each of the five colors. |
| 64 | [[/folder]] |
| 65 | |
| 66 | [[folder:New Phyrexia]] |
| 67 | |
| 68 | After its infection began to spread, many of Mirrodin's natives gathered in the lower layers of the world, and transformed themselves into Phyrexians. After a long period of time rebuilding, they emerged and battled the Mirrans, sparking a war that ended with the [[TheBadGuyWins compleation of Mirrodin into New Phyrexia]]. |
| 69 | |
| 70 | Unlike the mono-Black Old Phyrexia, this one has all colors of Magic under its control, and has factions for each color, each of them with a '''Praetor''' guiding it. The Machine Orthodoxy ([[LightIsNotGood White]]) rules over the plane as [[ReligionOfEvil high priests]], the Progress Engine (Blue) is the Phyrexians' [[MadScientist R&D department]], the Quiet Furnace (Red) is responsible for the mass production of weapons (and is [[TokenGoodTeammate secretly hiding the surviving resistance members]]), while the Vicious Swarm (Green) and the Steel Thanes (Black) each control some of Phyrexia's most powerful forces but apply them to different purposes: the Swarm wants to turn the plane into a savage realm [[TheSocialDarwinist where only the strong thrive]], and the Thanes spend much of their time [[TheStarscream trying to usurp power from the other factions (and each other)]]. |
| 71 | |
| 72 | To see the tropes for the Praetors individually, you'll find them under the "New Phyrexia" heading of the [[Characters/MagicTheGatheringPhyrexiaRathAndMirrodin Phyrexia Rath and Mirrodin]] page. |
| 73 | !!Tropes that apply to New Phyrexia as a whole: |
| 74 | |
| 75 | * TheAssimilator: The Oil constantly seeks to fold new powers into itself, taking spells, schematics, memories, and organisms it has conquered and recombining them in nauseating, novel ways. |
| 76 | * TheBadGuyWins: The New Phyrexian praetors are so chillingly competent at their job, that they had been getting away with victory over victory, non-stop, to a point that they would give Yawgmoth a run for his money. |
| 77 | ** The ''Scars of Mirrodin'' arc ends with the utter victory of the Phyrexians, the crushing defeat of the Mirrans and the successful, through and unopposed ''compleation'' of Mirrodin. Welcome to New Phyrexia, folks. |
| 78 | ** It gets worse in ''Kaldheim''. [[spoiler:Vorinclex infiltrates the plane and orchestrates a distraction by blackmailing Tibalt when Alrund shows up, successfully diverting Kaya and the Skoti's attention to Tibalt's Doomskar. With everyone falling for it, he takes the time to sneak in and lay waste to Esika's sanctum, leaves the goddess dying, and successfully returns to New Phyrexia with a sample of tyrite. New Phyrexia's plans advance uninterrupted...]] |
| 79 | ** In ''Neon Dynasty'' it becomes ''even worse''; Jin Glitaxas enters the plane trying to [[spoiler:compleat a Planeswalker with help from Tezzeret...and '''succeeds in it'''. He met active resistance from the Wanderer, Kaito and Tamiyo and actually got cut down by the Wanderer, but still successfully gets Tamiyo turned into a Phyrexian...just because Tezzeret woke up at the wrong place and the wrong time.]] |
| 80 | ** In ''Dominaria United'', Sheoldred's sleeper agents manage to [[spoiler:capture and compleat Ajani, and she manages to bring Karn back to Elesh Norn with help from the compleated Planeswalker.]] By this time, the [[spoiler:preparations of the grand Phyrexian invasion across the multiverse is almost complete.]] |
| 81 | ** A set with a name like ''Phyrexia: All Will Be One'' kind of ''has'' to end in their favor. [[spoiler:They lose the Sylex, but gain even more compleated Planeswalkers, including Nahiri, Vraska, Lukka, and - [[AnyoneCanDie most surprisingly]] - ''Jace'' and ''Nissa''. The invasion has begun, and the multiverse is ''heavily'' on the back foot.]] |
| 82 | * BigBad: Elesh Norn, the White Praetor, is this as the closest thing the New Phyrexians have to a central leader. |
| 83 | * BizarreAlienBiology: They spread through the glistening oil in a manner that is similar to that of a virus, yet they are way more structured and intelligent. They are also able to blend metal with organic matter, and to recombine already existing creatures. Imagine ''Film/{{Alien}}'' meeting ''Film/TheThing1982'' meeting ''Film/TetsuoTheIronMan''. |
| 84 | * BlueAndOrangeMorality: While most old Phyrexians are this, New Phyrexia takes it to a new level. Not only are the Praetors' values are incomprehensible for the Mirrans, the Praetors have trouble understanding ''each other'''s philosophy. Their conquest against the multiverse is also taken by them as less of an invasion and more of a ''crusade'' against what they believe is "imperfection". |
| 85 | * BodyHorror: Traditional Phyrexian mutilation now comes in five new flavors, such as the white faction's religious obsession with flaying everybody. |
| 86 | * TheBrute: Vorinclex. He's interested in nothing beyond hunting and killing, and is much more a monster than any sort of leader. |
| 87 | * CastOfSnowflakes: Ironically, considering their obsession with [[TheAssimilator unity]], no two Phyrexians look the same, with each one being a unique expression of the Oil's eternal quest for perfection. |
| 88 | * CharacterCatchphrase: "ǩaπa š’iimashaǩ", Phyrexian for "All will be one." |
| 89 | * CoDragons: [[TheEvilGenius Jin-Gitaxias]] and [[TheStarscream Sheoldred]] share equal power amongst themselves. |
| 90 | * ContrastingSequelAntagonist: They're this to the previous inter-planar threat, Nicol Bolas. |
| 91 | ** Nicol Bolas tends to invade planes and enslave them with brute force, and he tends to play sadistic games or tricks in the midst of it for the sole reason of flaunting his superiority. In the other hand, if a Phyrexian praetor invades a plane, they don't play any games or participate in any unnecessary sadistic streaks themselves. They'll just grab the target, compleat things, and bail. |
| 92 | ** Nicol Bolas's goal is to harvest the Sparks of every Planeswalker and regain his godhood, something that is inherently selfish in nature. The New Phyrexians, in the other hand, legitimately believe that their multiversal conquest is a noble goal to perfect all lifeforms. |
| 93 | ** Nicol Bolas never treats his subordinates, like Tezzeret and the Gods of Amonkhet, as anything but pawns. The New Phyrexian factions will team up to achieve a goal if it's needed, even if it's TeethClenchedTeamwork. Jin-Gitaxias in particular can be highly tolerant of his underlings' mistakes, as long as they learn from them. |
| 94 | ** While Planeswalkers tend to struggle in even scraping Nicol Bolas, the Wanderer did cut down Jin-Gitaxias and Dominaria is shown to be evenly matched against Sheoldred's forces. However, they'll still get the thing done anyways. |
| 95 | ** Unlike Nicol Bolas who often makes snide remarks when confronting enemies and is in general as hammy as he can be, the Praetors never do small talk as they fight and, even if they have their own kind of gravitas, showmanship is their least concern. |
| 96 | * DeathWorld: New Phyrexia is an absolute death trap for anyone who isn't Phyrexian. The environment is permeated with glistening oil, a highly virulent substance where even the slightest infection can snowball into you being converted into a fanatical Phyrexian. |
| 97 | ** Even if you ''are'' already a Phyrexian, Phyrexia does ''not'' believe in ApeShallNotKillApe. So while the Oil itself is no longer a direct threat, you are almost certainly going to be eaten, dissolved, or [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness scrapped for parts]] sooner or later. |
| 98 | * EasilyThwartedAlienInvasion: Heavily downplayed. Spread thin across the Multiverse, the Machine Legion was able to compleat [[AMillionIsAStatistic several unseen planes]], and inflicted lasting damage on multiple established worlds (particularly Kaldheim, Theros, and Eldraine), but were largely beaten back by the defending forces, and in a few cases completely routed. Note that "completely routed" does not mean "had no effect at all"; There are few if any worlds that do not bear deep scars from New Phryexia, and a long list of [[NominalImportance named, be-carded characters]] left dead, powerless, or both in their wake. |
| 99 | * EnemyCivilWar: |
| 100 | ** New Phyrexia primarily fights against the Mirran Resistance, but the Praetors sometimes fight each other for the position of top dog. Unfortunately for the Resistance, this conflict is largely settled by the end of the ''Scars of Mirrodin'' block: Elesh Norn has forced her way to the top, Jin-Gitaxias and Vorinclex bowing to her command, and Sheoldred and Urabrask each left facing UncertainDoom (though later turning up alive and subservient to Norn, [[TheStarscream while still pursuing their own agendas]]). |
| 101 | ** The intra-Praetor conflict resurfaces in ''March of the Machine'': Elesh Norn orders Sheoldred and Urabrask captured and executed for their insubordination while she consolidates power. When the Multiverse invasion goes south, Norn and Jin-Gitaxias (and their respective armies) turn on each other while the former is in the throes of a VillainousBreakdown and the latter makes a move to seize control. |
| 102 | * EqualOpportunityEvil: In contrast to the eugenicist ways of Old Phyrexia, anyone will be accepted as a Phyrexian under Norn no matter their origin, gender or species... as long as they make it through compleation. If someone doesn't survive the process, or comes out defective, then they should be ''proud'' to be stripped for parts and recycled into something more useful. |
| 103 | * EvilCanNotComprehendGood: The Praetors of New Phyrexia can't understand why [[HopeSpringsEternal the Mirrans continue to fight against them even though they lost their home to them]]. |
| 104 | * EvilEvolves: Phyrexia is continually gaining new capabilities as it [[TheAssimilator assimilates]] more of the Multiverse. In particular, the [[TheVirus Oil]] itself has been iterated on over time, becoming more caustic, virulent, and durable. |
| 105 | * EvilVirtues: Both old and new Phyrexians are hard-working, scientific, organized, adaptive, and highly efficient. |
| 106 | * EyesDoNotBelongThere: There are eyes implanted everywhere in the Surgical Bay, in both the buildings and the Phyrexians themselves, reflecting how the Progress Engine wants to study everything to find perfection. |
| 107 | * FiveManBand: The Praetors who rule New Phyrexia -- Elesh Norn, Jin-Gitaxias, Sheoldred, Vorinclex and Urabrask -- form one, one for each color. |
| 108 | * FourTemperamentEnsemble: Elesh Norn is Choleric, Jin-Gitaxias is Melancholic, Sheoldred is Phlegmatic, Vorinclex is Sanguine, and Urabrask is Supine. Appropriately, the praetors of opposed temperaments dislike each other. |
| 109 | * FromASingleCell: A single drop of glistening oil is enough to infect an individual and turn them into a Phyrexian if left unchecked. While ways to contain or prevent phyresis exist, they came too late to save Mirrodin, which provided ideal conditions for the infection to spread -- the oil reached the core of the world itself, turning it into a fertile breeding ground for an invasion from within. |
| 110 | * FrontlineGeneral: The Praetors of New Phyrexia are directly deployed to its target planes to get the required materials and research required for their multiversal conquest. |
| 111 | * GeneticMemory: New Phyrexians can't remember Yawgmoth or the old Phyrexia, but the glistening oil imprints a vague sensation of who they were. Sheoldred in particular subconsciously mimics Yawgmoth's Phyrexia. |
| 112 | * HijackedByGanon: Just like Nicol Bolas, the Praetors are very prone to doing this. It's especially obvious in ''Kaldheim'' and ''Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty'', where they're blatantly medding with the plane personally. The Doomskar in Kaldheim is a distraction staged by Vorinclex and the Futurists vs Imperials conflict in Kamigawa is put out of focus in favor of the Wanderer, Kaito and Tamiyo's fight against Jin-Gitaxias and Tezzeret. |
| 113 | * InvincibleVillain: See their entries for TheBadGuyWins and NoNonsenseNemesis. New Phyrexia suffers setbacks, but it's not until ''March of the Machine'' that they meet actual defeat. Tellingly, their advantages have become so overwhelming by then that their final defeat comes in large part from various contrivances on the Phyrexians' side, such as Elesh Norn turning them into a KeystoneArmy, the impossibly virulent glistening oil simply going inert on her defeat, and most of the other Praetors being [[UncertainDoom removed from the plot]] by the sort of injuries they'd previously been shown to survive. |
| 114 | * {{Irony}}: Phyrexia's rebirth on Mirrodin caused it to be warped by the plane's rich mana, creating divided factions based on color alignments that resulted in New Phyrexia fracturing into civil war for a time due to [[NoTrueScotsman clashing ideologies of a "perfect" Phyrexia]]. In the end, Elesh Norn's Machine Orthodoxy consolidated power... Her ''white'' aligned faction, the primary enemy color of Phyrexia's classical black alignment. |
| 115 | * LayeredWorld: Mirrodin was once a HollowWorld, able to support life on both its exterior and interior. The original exterior (the Mirrex) still exists but has been rendered barren. After their takeover, the Phyrexians built a network of temples and monuments (the Monumental Facade) in the skies above the Mirrex, and filled in the hollow center to suit their needs. Each faction has established their own layer: the Autonomous Furnace (Red), the Hunter Maze (Green), the Surgical Bay (Blue), the Dross Pits (Black), and the Fair Basilica (White) at the center surrounding the Mycosynth Gardens and its Seedcore. |
| 116 | * LikeFatherLikeSon: More or less consciously, the five factions mirror different aspects of Yawgmoth himself. |
| 117 | ** The Machine Orthodoxy takes after his need for a strict and quasi-religious hierarchy. Unfortunately for them, Elesh Norn [[AGodAmI proves to be as megalomaniac]] as him. |
| 118 | ** The Progress Engine carries on his cold and logical mindset that clashed with Thran worldview, to the point they consider Yawgmoth himself to be obsolete, although a necessary step towards perfection. |
| 119 | ** The Seven Steel Thanes are the most directly related to his ambition and Machiavellism, which are essential to survive among the constant backstabbing. |
| 120 | ** The Quiet Furnace expands his idea of phyresis as constant renewal. Ironically, they also struggle with Yawgmoth's least visible facet: his human feelings. |
| 121 | ** The Vicious Swarm blows his dispassionate view of conflict and evolution into a blatantly Social Darwinistic survival game. |
| 122 | * LovecraftianSuperpower: Old Phyrexia mostly relied on technology and plagues. These ones, attuned to all colors of mana, have found truly unique warped forms of magic, from the white-aligned phyrexians controlling shards of porcelain and bone to Vorinclex's take on green mana being to assimilate people. |
| 123 | * NoBiologicalSex: The Phyrexian reproduction is markedly asexual, yet every named Phyrexian so far has been gendered and two praetors have a distinctively feminine body shape. Since even compleated creatures tend to retain some past traits, both physical and mental, those elements are probably vestigial. Its worth noting that old Phyrexians were literally genderless on an identity level, with only those that were compleated still retaining genders; the fact that core born phyrexians now have gender identities is a change. |
| 124 | * MuggingTheMonster: They are the "mugger" during much of ''March of the Machine'', finding themselves invading [[DeathWorld Death Worlds]] like [[AlienGeometries Xerex]] and [[{{Mordor}} Azgol]] with little to no advanced intel to operate on. |
| 125 | * NoNonsenseNemesis: Their agents are nowhere near as physically powerful as Bolas, but they make it up for being ''incredibly competent'' and could easily pull off things that even Bolas or Yawgmoth could only dream of succeeding. In particular, Tezzeret notes that not even ''Bolas'' has managed to get Ajani despite the dragon constantly and obsessively schemes against him, but these guys ran all over him and made them their servant without breaking much of a sweat. |
| 126 | * OffscreenVillainDarkMatter: In the few short years since their conquest of Mirrodin, New Phyrexia's accumulated enough soldiers and materiel to stage an invasion of dozens upon dozens of planes at once, all from a relatively small plane whose surface is the size of Tanzania. Part of it is that they've hollowed out their world for materials and are very good at efficiently using resources, part of it is that the [[TheCorruption oil]] can quickly corrupt invaded planes and convert them into more resources for their war, and part of it is that they're hyper-efficient killers that don't have the same needs as regular human soldiers. |
| 127 | * ThePerfectionist: Each praetor is obsessed with reaching their perfect view of Phyrexia. |
| 128 | * ReligiousHorror: The Machine Orthodoxy plays heavily on the concept of martyrdom and the mortification of the flesh in order to become one with God -- that is, the Father of the Machine and, by extension, the whole New Phyrexia. |
| 129 | ** There are echoes of this among the Seven Steel Thanes, with a particular focus on using ritual and decorum to conceal blatant [[{{Realpolitik}} political maneuvering]]. |
| 130 | * RockBeatsLaser: Machine Legion failed to conquer Ergamon and Muraganda -- primeval worlds with no advanced tech or mystical magic to protect it. Local lifeforms were enough. On Theros and Ixalan traditional methods of warfare worked perfectly fine against invading forces. Zigzagged with Ikoria, where Phyrexians have to face mutated Kaiju like behemoths. |
| 131 | * ScaryDogmaticAliens: Different factions mix togethet different takes on this trope, but all share the obsession with expansion and conversion that characterizes this trope. |
| 132 | * SealedEvilInACan: [[spoiler: The entire plane of New Phyrexia was [[PhantomZone phased out of reality]] by a coalition of Planeswalkers, angels, and Zhalfirin knights at the end of ''March of the Machine''.]] |
| 133 | * SigilSpam: During the Phyrexian invasion, Phyrexian symbols ("Φ") began appearing ''everywhere'', long before Phyrexian forces actually began their march. |
| 134 | * StrongAsTheyNeedToBe: The oil's effectiveness varies across its portrayals. In certain portrayals, getting even a small scratch infected dooms you to compleation. At other times, dinosaurs have been known to kill and eat Phyrexians invading their home with no apparent consequences. |
| 135 | * TeethClenchedTeamwork: While the praetors work together to conquer the whole of Mirrodin, they clearly despise each other's vision of New Phyrexia. Vorinclex and Jin-Gitaxias stand out the most. |
| 136 | -->'''Jin-Gitaxias:''' I despise Vorinclex and his slobberings about ‘evolution.' Only I know true progress.\ |
| 137 | '''Vorinclex:''' Dead or alive, my creations are stronger than Jin-Gitaxias's septic minions. |
| 138 | * UncannyValley: Both in-universe and for the audience. |
| 139 | ** In-universe, the first steps of compleation have the subject still aware that they are changing, until their minds are overwhelmed and their bodies are mutated. They end up retaining traits of their old personality, although they are bent towards serving New Phyrexia. Even more than openly horrified, their previous acquaintances are put off by the result. |
| 140 | --->'''Danitha Capashen:''' He may look like my father, but the man I knew and loved is gone. |
| 141 | ** In general, New Phyrexians are designed to evoke this IntendedAudienceReaction, with their blending of metal and flesh in still recognizable humanoid or animal forms. What is perhaps even more alienating, however, is that they possess intellect and even positive emotions... declined in their own way. |
| 142 | * UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans: Especially from Elesh Norn and Jin-Gitaxias's point of view. |
| 143 | ** Possibly also [[MadArtist Urabrask]], with the caveat that his idea of utopia is diametrically opposed to theirs. |
| 144 | * VillainWorld: After they destroy the Mirrans, they transform Mirrodin into a lightless nightmare of metal, flesh and pain. |
| 145 | * VillainousValor: They are many things, but surely not cowards. Even if they prefer scheming, the Praetors themselves will directly face any kind of menace to their plans if necessary. |
| 146 | * TheVirus: Phyrexian oil can be absorbed through the skin through prolonged contact, or enter through wounds or mucus membranes. Once that has happened, transformation into a Phyrexian is all but inevitable. |
| 147 | * WeHaveReserves: One of Phyrexia's innumerable advanced in warfare is their ability to endlessly recycle biomass, both their own and their enemies. If left undisturbed, they will transform a battlefield full of corpses into a fresh new regiment of monsters with gruesome efficiency. |
| 148 | * WorldTree: In ''Phyrexia: All Will Be One'', [[spoiler:New Phyrexia plans to cultivate Realmbreaker, a tree made from the sap of Kaldheim's world tree that will link Phyrexia with all planes in the multiverse]]. |
| 149 | * XenomorphXerox: HiveMind structure, Gigeresque biomechanical bodies, poisonous fluids, EyelessFace in some cases, abundance of sharp teeth and so on. |
| 150 | * YouCantThwartStageOne: The planeswalkers tried to foil the Praetors' incursions into Kaldheim, Kamigawa and Dominaria, with little success. Afterwards they launch a mission into New Phyrexia itself to destroy its core, [[spoiler:which goes completely sideways and results in at least half of the planeswalker strike team dead, compleated, or both]]. Unlike Nicol Bolas in Amonkhet, it's not because any of the Praetors are inhumanly strong, it's because they're just ''that'' competent with a bit of dumb luck. |
| 151 | !The Machine Orthodoxy |
| 152 | |
| 153 | The faction of New Phyrexia aligned with [[LightIsNotGood White mana]], the Machine Orthodoxy grew into the largest, most organized, and most aggressively expansionist of the factions, under the leadership of the ambitious and narcisistic Praetor [[DarkMessiah Elesh]] [[HiveQueen Norn]]. |
| 154 | |
| 155 | By the time the plane of Mirrodin has been completely and irrevocably transformed into New Phyrexia, the Machine Orthodoxy had taken up residence in the innermost of the inhabited [[LayeredWorld Spheres]], dubbed the Fair Basilica. |
| 156 | |
| 157 | The Machine Orthodoxy is transformed into the Alabaster Host during Elesh Norn's invasion of the multiverse, and take an almost completely indiscriminate approach to spreading Phyresis, [[ReforgedIntoAMinion compleating]] just about anything they could get their claws on. |
| 158 | ---- |
| 159 | * AngelicAbomination: Phyrexian angels are among the Machine Orthodoxy's most iconic and terrifying servants. |
| 160 | * BecameTheirOwnAntithesis: In a sense. Yawgmoth's Phyrexians were so strongly aligned to [[TheDarkArts Black Mana]] that exposure to concentrations of [[HolyHandGrenade White Mana]] was physically dangerous to them. Then the Oil [[EvilEvolves mutated]] under the influence of Mirrodin's suns, and now, the white-aligned faction is easily the strongest and most influencial of the five. |
| 161 | * CreepyDoll: Most white Phyrexians are covered in porcelain (or a [[FantasyMetals Fantasy Metal]] that resembles porcelain), and many also have visible joint hinges and [[WhiteMaskOfDoom expressionless masks]], making them resemble gore-covered ceramic dolls. |
| 162 | * HiveMind: The Alabaster Host have the least autonomy of any Phyrexians, with some lower-ranking legionarries literally [[DesperatelyNeedsOrders going completely innert without instructions from higher up]]. Many priests from the Singularitan sect believe that even ''this'' is too chaotic, preferring instead to transform the entire multiverse into a literal, physical [[TheDividual bodily extension of Elesh Norn]]. This tendency ends up screwing things up for Phyrexia as a whole, since it drove Norn to make her invasion forces a KeystoneArmy [[BondVillainStupidity completely dependent on her survival to function]]. |
| 163 | * HumanoidAbomination: Alabaster Phyrexians are the most likely of their kind to retain a mostly humanoid silhouette. This serves to make them [[UncannyValley among the most generally unnerving of all Phyrexians]]. |
| 164 | * LiteralMinded: PlayedForHorror. At some point, they seem to have encountered some kind of StockAesop about ThePowerOfFriendship and, rather than using it as a guideline for building communities, took it to mean that [[BodyOfBodies physically suturing all life together into a single mega-organism]] would be the most practical way to [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans achieve universal peace]]. |
| 165 | * MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily: White-aligned Phyrexians tend to be absolutely bristling with [[BodyMotifs teeth]], not all or even most of them actually being in any kind of mouth. |
| 166 | * PathOfInspiration: Admittedly, one would have to be a pretty hardcore NightmareFetishist to overlook their gruesome aesthetics, but their rhetoric about belonging and togetherness, mixed with their fanatical CultOfPersonality towards Elesh Norn, eerily mirrors many real life cults. |
| 167 | * PuppetKing: For a while, the nominal authority of the Machine Orthodoxy lay with an imprisoned [[StopWorshippingMe Karn]], with Elesh Norn merely acting as an interpreter for his will. Even after Karn was freed and Elesh Norn openly [[EgocentricallyReligious rebuilt the faction around herself]], their holy texts are still the Argent Etchings, ostensibly transcribed from the words of Karn himself. |
| 168 | * TunelessSongOfMadness: The Machine Orthodoxy has a vast canon of hymns to pull from, and every one of them sounds like migraine-inducing atonal beeping and scraping to uncompleated ears. |
| 169 | * WorldOfSilence: Given that the Machine Orthodoxy isn't big on things like "free will" or "change of any kind", territory dominated by them tends to be [[SaltTheEarth barren]] and devoid of activity. |
| 170 | |
| 171 | !The Progress Engine |
| 172 | |
| 173 | The faction of New Phyrexia aligned with [[SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic Blue mana]], the Progress Engine is arguably the most specialized of the factions, being almost entirely devoted to {{Magitek}} R&D for the rest of Phyrexia, with some espionage and sabotage thrown in for good measure. Their Praetor, [[EmperorScientist Jin-Gitaxias]], was probably the most [[OnlySaneMan level-headed]] and [[PragmaticVillainy pragmatic]] of his siblings. |
| 174 | |
| 175 | As Mirrodin was reconfigured into New Phyrexia, what remained of the Quicksilver Sea was drained into the layer in the exact middle between the surface and the core, becoming the [[PunnyName Surgical Bay]], where the Progress Engine would run their most complex and ambitious experiments. |
| 176 | |
| 177 | During the invasion of the Multiverse, those blue Phyrexians who participated were known as the Chrome Host. They were deployed extremely selectively, primarily on worlds where Jin already had a fair bit of prior intel. |
| 178 | ---- |
| 179 | * EyesDoNotBelongThere: Chrome Host Phyrexians are expected to document ''everything'' for further study. To this end, they tend to be absolutely covered in [[CombatTentacles writhing mechanical eyestalks]]. |
| 180 | * FantasticDrug: Like the vedalken and Neurok they conquered, the Progress Engine supplements its research with [[HigherUnderstandingThroughDrugs Blinkmoth Serum-induced visions]]. |
| 181 | * ForScience: The Progress Engine expects its adherents to be ready to do anything, no matter how horrific, to advance their knowledge base. Given that this is [[DeathIsCheap Phyrexia]], even if a dangerous experiment kills you, your overseer can just [[WetwareCPU salvage what they need from your memory banks]] and then [[HumanResources send the rest of your remains off to be reprocessed]]. |
| 182 | * FullConversionCyborg: Of the five factions, Chrome Host Phyrexians are among the least likely to have any visible organic components at all. |
| 183 | * MetallicMotifs: Almost every surface in the Surgical Bay appears to be dripping with liquid mercury. |
| 184 | * MyBrainIsBig: One of the most popular and gruesome forms of [[BioAugmentation Bio-Augmentations]] in the Surgical Bay, especially among compleated vedalken. |
| 185 | * NonActionGuy: To an extent. Very few of the Progress Engine's activity outside their own sphere is overtly martial, focusing more on [[TheSneakyGuy subterfuge]] than combat. |
| 186 | * SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic: It is the job of the Progress Engine (and specifically the Metatect caste) to find workarounds for minor obstacles like [[BeyondTheImpossible not being able to compleate spirits or needing to transport organic life through the Blind Eternities]]. |
| 187 | * TentacledTerror: Given how many eyestalks and robot tendrils tend to extend from them, most Chrome Phyrexians have at least a roughly cephalopoid sillhouete. |
| 188 | * WetwareCPU: One of the Surgical Bay's premiere projects is "The Meldweb", a massive complex full of stolen human and [[ProudScholarRace vedalken]] brains that they use for augury and calculation. |
| 189 | |
| 190 | !The Seven Steel Thanes |
| 191 | |
| 192 | The faction (or rather, factions) of New Phyrexia aligned with [[TheDarkArts Black mana]], the Thanes were among the first Phyrexians to consolidate power on Mirrodin, as the Mephidross fell almost without resistance and became ground zero for the new Phyrexian infection. |
| 193 | |
| 194 | The Seven Steel Thanes are the least unified of the five factions, being comprised of seven-ish quasi-feudal territories under the control of a Thane, all of whom vied for enough power and influence to extend their influence beyond the Mephidross. For most of its history, the most powerful and prominent of the Thanes was [[TheSpymaster Sheoldred]], who acted as the faction's Praetor (although that position seemed [[KlingonPromotion subject to change]], unlike the other factions). |
| 195 | |
| 196 | When Mirrodin was fully reconstructed into New Phyrexia, the remains of the Mephidross were transformed into the Dross Pits, the Sphere directly above the Fair Basilica. As Elesh Norn began to centralize power, the Thanes collectively waned in influence over Phyrexia as a whole. Sensing a sea change, just over half the Thanes (including both Sheoldred and Geth) aligned themselves with Urabrask's rebellion against the Machine Orthodoxy in an attempt to break Norn's grip on power. The rebellion failed, and the rebel Thanes were executed. |
| 197 | |
| 198 | The remaining Thanes were given control over the remaining forces of the Dross Pits, just in time to send them out across the multiverse as the Etched Host, the most intentionally cruel and destructive of the invading Phyrexian armies. |
| 199 | ---- |
| 200 | * BigCreepyCrawlies: Most Phyrexians encountered in the Dross Pits at least have insectoid legs, if not an entirely arthropoid body plan. |
| 201 | * ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: Emphasis on the "chronic disorder" part. The Thanes all knew that none of their fellows could be trusted to uphold an alliance, meaning that while the Mephidross hosted many of the plane's most individually powerful Phyrexians, they were never able to coalesce into anything more than [[WeAREStrugglingTogether a mess of competing sub-factions]] that were ultimately routed or subdued by the Machine Orthodoxy. |
| 202 | * FauxAffablyEvil: The Thanes are noted to maintain a [[WickedCultured perverse sense of decorum]] in their dealings with one another, although this is a courtesy that is obviously never shown to non-Phyrexians, non-Mephidross Phyrexians, and [[BadBoss their own underlings]]. |
| 203 | * HollywoodAcid: The Dross Pits are criscrossed by rivers of glowing green acid. The Thanes like to use this as an [[MundaneUtility etching solvent]]. |
| 204 | * HufflepuffHouse: To a degree. They are associated with the same color as Old Phyrexia, meaning that a lot of "generically Phyrexian" traits have come to be associated with the Etched Host specifically. |
| 205 | * TheNecrocracy: Multiple Thanes and other high-ranking Etched Phyrexians were/are compleated undead as opposed to [[UterineReplicator vat-grown]] "native" Phyrexians, including Vraan (a [[OurVampiresAreDifferent vampire]]) and Geth (a [[OurLichesAreDifferent lich]]). |
| 206 | * NotInThisForYourRevolution: About half of the faction joins the Autonomous Furnace in open rebellion against Elesh Norn, but unlike the Furnace, the Thanes are motivated exclusively by self-interest rather than ideology. |
| 207 | * SwampsAreEvil: The Thanes' domain, the Mephidross, was a reeking cesspit full of biomechanical abominations and poisonous fumes before Phyrexia even touched the place. By the time anyone noticed that the newest Mephidross monstrosity was something a bit more insidious than your average [[OurZombiesAreDifferent Nim]], there was basically nothing Mirran there left to save. |
| 208 | * VillainousLegacy: The Thanes count among their ranks some of the only figures in New Phyrexia that actually care about honoring and doing right by [[MonsterProgenitor Yawgmoth]]. Contrast to the Machine Orthodoxy (who claim to be following the dictates of [[AGodIAmNot Karn]] instead) and the other three factions (who are all more-or-less iconoclastic and don't care about their predecessors one way or the other). In particular, Sheoldred herself was TheFundamentalist who refered to her doctrine as "the True Scriptures" and believed that Dominaria was the only invasion target that truly mattered. |
| 209 | |
| 210 | !The Quiet Furnace |
| 211 | |
| 212 | The faction of New Phyrexia aligned with [[EntropyAndChaosMagic Red mana]], the Quiet Furnace is probably the most complex and enigmatic of the five factions. Led by the heretic Praetor [[DefectorFromDecadence Urabrask]], the faction was originally dedicated to construction, manufacturing, and other industrial labor. |
| 213 | |
| 214 | The Sphere inhabited by the Quiet Furnace was once known as the Furnace Layer and, unlike the other Spheres, was actually constructed long before Phyrexia had even reached the surface of Mirrodin. From here, they supplied the rest of Phyrexia with their handiwork, but were also the last faction to establish any sort of foothold on the surface. |
| 215 | |
| 216 | This is probably at least partially a result of the Furnace's most distinctive trait: namely that [[ThePowerOfLove Red mana]] is actually pretty disruptive to normal Phyrexian functioning, instigating the development of [[WhatIsThisFeeling emotions]], [[RogueDrone individuality]], and even [[HumanityIsInfectious empathy]]. As a result, most sapient Red-aligned Phrexians are deeply conflicted and withdrawn, and take the least aggressive approach to conversion of any faction, compleating almost exclusively willing converts. |
| 217 | |
| 218 | Indeed, by the time Mirrodin at last fell, the Mirran Resistance fleeing the corrupted surface found themselves at the mercy of the Furnace Layer and its inhabitants. To the shock of all involved, Urabrask made a vanishingly rare appearance to announce that [[PetTheDog his underlings were not to harass the Mirrans as long as they didn't interfere with the Furnace's normal operations]]. |
| 219 | |
| 220 | By the time of the invasion of the Multiverse, Urabrask's show of mercy to the Mirrans has been discovered by Phyrexia as a whole, and he is held in contempt by the other Praetors. Attempts to annex the Furnace Layer (which has become the ''outermost'' of the inhabited Spheres) by the other factions in order to exterminate the remaining Mirrans have pushed the Furnace into open rebellion, rechristening themselves the Autonomous Furnace and largely severing their ties with the rest of Phyrexia to focus inward. However, Elesh Norn crushes the bulk of the rebellious forces and finally takes the Furnace, forcing Urabrask to fully align with the remaining Mirrans in one last doomed show of defiance. |
| 221 | |
| 222 | Not all Furnace Phyrexians shared their Praetor's convictions, however. Once Elesh Norn had the Furnace within her grasp, she reforged its remains into the Furnace Host, unleashing a leaderless horde of red Phyrexians devoid of Urabrask's ideals to spread mayhem and destruction accross the multiverse. |
| 223 | ---- |
| 224 | * BeautyEqualsGoodness: To a degree. Of all the factions, Furnace Phyrexians tend to have the least overt BodyHorror elements, largely lacking the gory invasive implants and infected cancerous growths that characterize the other factions. |
| 225 | * DecapitatedArmy: The Furnace Host lacked a central leader during the invasion of the Multiverse. Given how little red Phyrexians seem to regard the chain of command, it doesn't seem to have stopped their effectiveness as an invading force. |
| 226 | * EternalEngine: The Furnace Layer resembles nothing so much as an industrial foundary the size of a small planetoid. |
| 227 | * EvilIsBurningHot: DownplayedTrope. The majority of Furnace Phyrexians are [[PowerGlows literally glowing with heat]] and many of them appear to be [[MagmaMan leaking molten metal at all times]]. However, while still definitely evil in objective terms, they tend to showcase EvilVirtues that make them ALighterShadeOfBlack relative to the rest of Phyrexia. |
| 228 | * IntriguedByHumanity: While the Mirran Resistance was hiding in the Furnace Layer, many red Phyrexians developed an eerie tendency to get within eyeshot of a Mirran encampment and just... [[StalkerWithoutACrush watch, with what appeared to be rapt curiosity]]. |
| 229 | * MadArtist: Inhabitants of the Furnace are inclined to see everything as an art project to be reshaped to their aesthetic preferences. When the creative impulse and their burgeoning sense of empathy conflict, the artistic drive almost always wins out. Luckily for the rest of the Multiverse, most of them also happen to find the Machine Orthodoxy aesthetically distasteful. |
| 230 | * MortonsFork: To be clear, the Furnace's preference for willing converts means they prefer to not literally hold someone down and douse them in Glistening Oil until they're compleat. They have no compunctions about {{Terraforming}} an area until it is all but uninhabitable for non-Phyrexians, in which case the inhabitants can either 1) accept compleation and join the Furnace willingly or 2) refuse, die from the conditions, and [[HumanResources be recycled into a new Phyrexian anyway]]. |
| 231 | * OurOgresAreDifferent: Ogre menials are compleated ogres that make up a sizeable chunk of the Furnace's military and labor base. |
| 232 | * PunchClockVillain: Those Phyrexian laborers aware enough to comprehend Phyrexia as a whole often come to resent it, but usually prefer to [[SafetyInIndifference bury themselves in their work]] rather than seriously consider open rebellion. |
| 233 | |
| 234 | !The Vicious Swarm |
| 235 | |
| 236 | The faction of New Phyrexia associated with [[LifeEnergy Green mana]]. Attempting to assign a specific role or function to them is an exercise in futility, as their Praetor [[ExtremeOmnivore Vorinclex]] believes that any thoughts or agendas not related to predation are a waste of time and energy. |
| 237 | |
| 238 | This is not accounting for the [[DragonInChief actual authority within the faction]], the [[FallenHero compleated elf Glissa]], who shares Vorinclex's goal of [[DontThinkFeel eliminating sentience entirely]], but acknowledges that [[StartXToStopX some degree of thought and planning are necessary to get there]]. To that end, she has personally created multiple forms of self-perpetuating pseudo-life that can be used to create and alter Phyrexians with no conscious input from anyone, allowing the faction to inhabit a nauseating parody of a functioning ecosystem. |
| 239 | |
| 240 | The Swarm's Sphere, the [[HungryJungle Hunter's Maze]], is an endless tangle of fungus and biometallic trees below the Autonomous Furnace. It is exceedingly dangerous, even to other Phyrexians, and as such unintentionally acts as a bulwark between the Furnace and the rest of Phyrexia. |
| 241 | |
| 242 | The Green-aligned Phyrexians that spread out across the multiverse during the invasion were known as the Copper Host. In keeping with the faction's [[TheSocialDarwinist Darwinist]] leanings, whatever process they used for compleation was incredibly dangerous and inefficient, meaning only the strongest and most durable converts survived. |
| 243 | ---- |
| 244 | * EvilLuddite: They despise tool use and conscious thought in general, so you can probably guess their stance on advanced technology. |
| 245 | * EvilIsVisceral: Green Phyrexians tend to have less visible machinery in them than other Phyrexians, instead tending towards shambling piles of mismatched biomatter with a thin layer of copper on top. |
| 246 | * FesteringFungus: In addition to the omnipresent biometallic Mycosynth, Glissa developed a fleshy, highly infectious fungus called [[MeatMoss lamina]] that both coats the Hunter's Maze and is used as a base to create new predators. |
| 247 | * HorrorHunger: Despite lacking any kind of [[TheNeedless metabolism that would require them to eat]], ravenous all-consuming hunger is one of the few impulses that remain in Swarm Phyrexians, driving them to kill and ingest just about everything they come across. |
| 248 | * MakeThemRot: The Hunter's Maze (far from the best organized of the Spheres) is home to some heretics that think maybe green Phyrexia can be about more than destroying all sentience. Among them are the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Rotpriests]], a sect of corrupted [[{{Druid}} Druids]] who see decay as a sacred process to be protected and spread by any means necessary. |
| 249 | * MixAndMatchCritters: Many green Phyrexians are visibly made from the limbs and hides of multiple unrelated animals awkwardly bound together with cancerous flesh. |
| 250 | * MorePredatorsThanPrey: The only thing Copper Phyrexians are made to do is hunt and eat eachother, under the logic that a hypercompetetive ecosystem that weeds out all non-predation related traits should eventually produce an undefeatable superpredator. |
| 251 | * PrehistoricMonster: The Tangle was once home to creatures known as [[TRexpy Tyrranaxes]]. Vorinclex seems to have taken a shine to them, as they seem to have been used as the base for some of the Hunter's Maze's most vicious apex predators. |
| 252 | * TheSocialDarwinist: Except go ahead and de-emphasize the "social" part, considering that the Swarm considers any interaction other than killing to be a waste of time and energy. |
| 253 | * WhoEvenNeedsABrain: In keeping with their contempt for conscious thought, most victims of the Swarm have their entire nervous system ripped out and replaced with [[FesteringFungus lamina]]. |
| 254 | |
| 255 | [[/folder]] |
| 256 | |
| 257 | [[folder:The Mirran Resistance]] |
| 258 | Over time, [[FiveTokenBand all of Mirrodin]] unites against Phyrexia, except those already infected. The Mirran faction becomes smaller, but, as one might expect, individual Mirran cards become stronger against infect decks. For planeswalkers on the Mirran side, check out the planeswalker section. |
| 259 | |
| 260 | Traditional Mirran mechanics such as imprint and artifact interaction remain, with first strike and double strike being more Mirran than Phyrexian to the end. |
| 261 | |
| 262 | ---- |
| 263 | |
| 264 | * BodyHorror: A much milder example than what the Phyrexians revel in; the Mirrans will amputate and subsequently burn infected limbs, rather than become Phyrexian. |
| 265 | * TheImmune: At some point, Melira discovered how to grant others her own immunity to phyresis. Virtually the entire Resistance is now inoculated. |
| 266 | * TheMissingFaction: There are almost no Black-aligned Mirran resistance members in ''New Phyrexia''. Most if not all of them have fallen to the Phyrexian contagion. |
| 267 | [[/folder]] |
| 268 | |
| 269 | !Houses of Estark |
| 270 | The very first factions in the ''Magic'' canon, portrayed in the 1994 novel ''Literature/{{Arena}}''. They were the ruling houses of the city of Estark on Dominaria, keeping the populace docile for the master's rule. |
| 271 | |
| 272 | ---- |
| 273 | |
| 274 | * AristocratsAreEvil: The houses were nearly all hilariously corrupt. |
| 275 | * BreadAndCircuses: To keep the population docile the houses were complicit in gladiatorial games. |
| 276 | * CardCarryingVillain: With the exception of Oor-Tael, each house was led by a person whose vices were pretty much out in the open. |
| 277 | * SevenDeadlySins: Well four, since the house number is implicitly in accordance to ''Magic'''s color pie and one of the houses is good, but the remainder are almost caricatures of the Christian sins. |
| 278 | |
| 279 | [[folder: Oor-Tael (Turquoise, possibly Green-Blue)]] |
| 280 | The most benevolent of the five houses, fighters within this house were obligated to go on a pilgrimmage and help and understand the people. They were slaughtered in the Great Fire, leaving the sole survivor, Garth One-Eye, to seek revenge. |
| 281 | |
| 282 | ---- |
| 283 | * TokenGoodTeammate: The only house to foster benevolence and humility. They got purged for that.[[/folder]] |
| 284 | |
| 285 | [[folder: Kestha (Gray, possibly White-Black)]] |
| 286 | A house of unrestrained opulence, its leaders gluttonous and its headquarters bearing magnificent statues to celebrate their might. |
| 287 | |
| 288 | ---- |
| 289 | * FatBastard: Tulan. Who never stops eating to boot. |
| 290 | * VillainousGlutton: Gluttony is one of their primary vices, along with some greed.[[/folder]] |
| 291 | |
| 292 | [[folder: Ingkara (Purple, possibly Blue-Red)]] |
| 293 | A house primarily concerned with greed, albeit in a more bizarre manner than the opulent Kestha. |
| 294 | ---- |
| 295 | * CloudCuckooLander: Its leader, Jimak, essentially behaves like a corvid, being obsessed with shiny trinkets and having almost animalistic manneirisms. |
| 296 | [[/folder]] |
| 297 | |
| 298 | [[folder: Fentesk (Orange, possibly Red-White)]] |
| 299 | |
| 300 | A house whose members are very lustful, constantly surrounded by women in sex acts. |
| 301 | |
| 302 | ---- |
| 303 | * BrightIsNotGood: Alignment aside, they preffer vivid color palletes dominated by eye catching reds and oranges, and are no less corrupt than the other houses.[[/folder]] |
| 304 | |
| 305 | [[folder: Bolk (Brown, possibly Black-Green)]] |
| 306 | A house located in a semi-subterranean fortress. Their leader at least is very prideful. |
| 307 | ---- |
| 308 | * GreenThumb: Their fondness for green spells is quite apparent, using both plants and beasts.[[/folder]] |
| 309 | |
| 310 | |
| 311 | |
| 312 | !Shards of Alara |
| 313 | |
| 314 | Many aeons ago, Alara was a single, whole plane. Then, a cataclysmic event known as [[NoodleIncident The Sundering]] occurred, which ended with the plane fractured and stripped of all its mana. Over time, the plane fractured and separated into five sub-planes, known as the Shards. Each of the five Shards regained mana over time, but with a twist. Only three of the five colors of mana returned -- one dominant color and its two allied colors. Each Shard is defined not only by what mana they have, but the traits of the other two colors they ''don't'' have. Throughout the events of the ''Shards of Alara'' block, the planes drifted back together, bringing massive culture shock with conflicting ways of life and finally all-out war. |
| 315 | |
| 316 | [[folder:Bant (White, with Green and Blue)]] |
| 317 | [[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/obelisk_of_bant_7844.jpg]] |
| 318 | [[caption-width-right:300:Light and Justice]] |
| 319 | |
| 320 | [[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/peace-love-and-understanding-2008-10-06 Bant]] is a world where White mana reigns supreme -- its own virtues, combined with the absent forces of chaos and selfish ambition, have made this Shard an exemplar of law and order. The architecture is straight out of a MedievalEuropeanFantasy, complete with Knights in Shining Armor, glory and honor in battle, and expansive castles. The planeswalker Elspeth Tirel discovered Bant and soon made it her adoptive home, never desiring to planeswalk ever again. Because it lacks black and red mana, there is no unnatural death, no disease, no natural disasters, and no anarchy. However, there is also little creativity, and almost no offensive magic (there ''is'' nighttime on Bant and the people have enough access to heat and fire to warm their homes, cook their food, and forge their weapons, but that's about it). Bant is divided into five nations; the three Inner Nations of the prairies -- Akrasa, Topa and Eos -- and the two coastal nations of Jhess and Vhaleron. |
| 321 | |
| 322 | Because of the importance placed on honorable combat, Bant's keyword ability is [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Exalted Exalted]], which makes creatures more powerful if they attack alone and with other Exalted creatures staying behind. |
| 323 | ---- |
| 324 | * {{Arcadia}}: Bant is mostly composed of rolling fields, well-tended orchards, pastoral towns and shining castles, and its societies are harmonious and all but devoid of crime and strife. What "wilderness" exists is mostly non-threatening; even the forests resemble well-maintained gardens. |
| 325 | * BadassBookworm: The human monks and the rhox ascetics, who study deep philosophical texts and train their bodies through practice of the martial art called "Halcou". |
| 326 | * BeastMan: Bant is home to the rhox, a race of humanoid rhinos, and the aven, a race of humanoid eagles. |
| 327 | * CombatByChampion: This is the main form of combat on Bant. It's even reflected in their exalted mechanic. |
| 328 | * TheChewToy: With the exception of Naya, all of the shards turn their aggressive energies towards Bant after the conflux. |
| 329 | * CulturalRebel: |
| 330 | ** The Unbeholden, people who disagree with the caste system or who simply prefer to pursue a criminal lifestyle. |
| 331 | ** The nation of Jhess is known for being much more freewheeling and flamboyant than the Inner Nations, with a "shockingly radical" level of social mobility between castes. |
| 332 | * DuelsDecideEverything: When monks and/or ascetics disagree, they engage in Halcou "duels", striving to perform the most elaborate displays of athleticism they can; the challenger with the most grace and skill is determined to have the deepest philosophical understanding. |
| 333 | * FantasticCasteSystem: Twice over; one for the angels, one for the humans. |
| 334 | ** The angels divide themselves into the Asura (the smallest caste, made up of the seven members of the Court of Orderly Contemplation, which rules over all angels), the Amesha (embodiments of the grandest ideals; honor, justice, truth and courtly love), the Mahra (angelic bureaucrats) and the Celebrants (lowest-ranked and responsible for protecting the day-to-day lives and ideals of the lower castes of humanity). |
| 335 | ** The humans divide themselves into the Blessed (rulers), the Sighted (priests, subservient to the Blessed), the Sigiled (direct servants of the Blessed and Sighted), the Mortared (the peasantry), and the Unbeholden (rebels and outcasts). |
| 336 | * GeometricMagic: Sigils, markers of support and allegiance, channel magical energy, and can grant various boons depending on the precise sigil in question, are ubiquitous throughout Bant. |
| 337 | * HonorBeforeReason: Justified. Since Bant lacks [[CombatPragmatist Black]] or [[UnstoppableRage Red]] mana, the thought of doing something dishonorable or underhanded is literally unconceivable for Bant natives. Knights ''don't wear armor on their backs'' because no one would be so dishonorable as to stab someone in the back, right? Needless to say, this comes back to bite them hard when the shards start merging. |
| 338 | * HorseOfADifferentColor: The leotau, a plains-dwelling beast that resembles a powerful horse with the head and tail of a lion. It's used as a steed by the Inner Nations, and distantly related to Naya's leonin. |
| 339 | * KnightInShiningArmor: All over the place, with Rafiq of the Many as the exemplar. Ironically, Rafiq tends to be highly unpredictable, almost mercenary; thanks to his need to balance out his many sigils, he may fight for both sides of the same conflict in the same battle. |
| 340 | * LawOfChromaticSuperiority: Leotau come in three breeds, distinguished by color; the white-coated Orisils are favored by members of the Blessed caste, the golden-furred Mherva are considered the swiftest breed, and the calico or dappled Ghrom are the largest and strongest. |
| 341 | * LetsFightLikeGentlemen: Taken to its logical extreme; combat on Bant is so honor-bound that suits of armor don't even have coverage on ''[[BackStab their backs]]''. |
| 342 | * LightIsGood: Bant is probably the most conspicuous example of this trope being played straight since the Weatherlight Saga. It's not a utopia, but it's still the safest place to live in pre-Conflux Alara. |
| 343 | * OurAngelsAreDifferent: More willing to charge into battle; fits in with the holy justice theme of the Shard. |
| 344 | * RedshirtArmy: The nations' armies are primarily "Mortared caste" (commoners who have yet to earn a sigil). Subverted with Akrasa; its leotaur-mounted nights are made of trained, skilled Mortared warriors. |
| 345 | * ReligiousBruiser: Many of the Rhox. |
| 346 | * SigilSpam: Because they serve as a focus for GeometricMagic, medallions emblazoned with arcane designs -- called "sigils" -- are extremely common in Bant. Bearing a sigil marks one as a member of the Sigiled caste, superior to the Mortare caste. Furthering the spirit of this trope, many Sigiled actively try to get as many sigils as possible, because not only does each sigil hold its own magical boon, greater numbers of sigils convey greater rank amongst their caste. |
| 347 | ** Rafiq of the Many is legendary for how many sigils he has won. |
| 348 | * WarriorPoet: The Rhox, rhino-people who are part-philosopher-part-martial-artist. |
| 349 | [[/folder]] |
| 350 | |
| 351 | [[folder:Esper (Blue, with White and Black)]] |
| 352 | [[quoteright:314:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/esper_obelisk_1801.jpg]] |
| 353 | [[caption-width-right:314:Logic and Reason]] |
| 354 | |
| 355 | An intellectual's dream come true, the Blue-dominated Shard of [[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/striving-perfection-2008-11-17 Esper]] is all about the pursuit of knowledge and technological advancement. However, the absence of green and red mean that emotion and instinct are completely under the control of Blue. Even the natural parts of Blue are controlled and documented like pieces of data; the night sky resembles a star chart, with every subtle nuance documented and accounted for, as are the tides and the winds (in fact, there are only 23 possible wind currents on the plane). White lends its desire for order and structure, but it also brings in the subversion and deceptive techniques of Black. The pride of the plane is a highly malleable and durable metal known as Etherium, which oftentimes is implanted into a body in place of the much-maligned flesh...and the supply is running out. Tezzeret calls this plane home, but stumbling upon an ancient conspiracy led to his near-death...and the ignition of his planeswalker spark. Esper doesn't have a keyword mechanic to call its own; its main gimmick is that every creature native to Esper is an artifact creature (this also introduced the notion of colored artifacts to ''Magic''). |
| 356 | ---- |
| 357 | * AlienSky: The skies of Esper are divided into an orderly grid, and filled with clouds neatly sliced into parts. |
| 358 | * AncientConspiracy: "The noble work of our order is to infuse all life on Esper with etherium. Our goal will be reached more rapidly if new life is... suppressed." Also, the discovery that the Seekers of Carmot can't forge new etherium despite their claims leads to the shock that makes Tezzeret ascend to Planeswalkerdom and seek answers elsewhere. |
| 359 | * {{Arcadia}}: Due to lacking the chaotic influence of Red Mana, and to a lesser extent Green Mana, nature is highly structured and artificially controlled in Esper. The one exception is the weather; it still has violent and unpredictable storms, and consequently very rough seas. |
| 360 | * BloodMagic: Sangrite, one of the key ingredients of etherium alongside carmot, turns out to be the petrified blood of dragons from Jund. This is why no new etherium could be forged on Esper - it is implied that Crucius, the one who created etherium in the first place, was in fact a planeswalker who traveled to Jund on a regular basis to harvest the ingredients he needed to make etherium. Fortunately, the reunion of Alara has made it possible to harvest sangrite (and carmot which is also from Jund) without a planeswalker. |
| 361 | * TheFundamentalist: Whilst the Ethersworn strives to complete "The Noble Work", the process of infusing all life with some degree of etherium in order to help them achieve spiritual perfection, a small and [[TheHeretic oft-regarded as heretical]] splinter sect called "The Ignoble Flesh" is defined by its extremist view. Arguing that flesh itself is inherently impure and fallible, they believe mortals should strive to completely discard it in favor of a body of pure etherium. They turn themselves into monsters called "aether-liches", and it was the horrified response to them which turned Crucius into a pariah, ultimately driving him to vanish. |
| 362 | * HappinessInSlavery: The Telemins are humans who, being incapable of magic themselves, have sought social security by selling themselves as living instruments to a mage. These "mage dolls" voluntarily sacrifice their wills, allowing their wizardly master to use their MindControl spells to control the Telemin as a living puppet to perform tasks. |
| 363 | * HollywoodCyborg: Use a [[{{Unobtainium}} metallic substance with numerous useful properties called etherium]] in making themselves human/mechanical hybrids. |
| 364 | * HowTheMightyHaveFallen: Crucius, the sphinx who created etherium and who pioneered the philosophy of integrating it into the body, was turned against when the first members of the Ignoble Flesh heresy arose and became the first aether-liches; the Esperians denounced him as "Crucius the Mad", and eventually he disappeared due to the hostility directed against him. This turned out to be a disaster for Esper, as he was the only being who actually knew how to make more etherium. |
| 365 | * MagicAIsMagicA: Due to how widespread magic is, humanity in Esper has developed a wide array of magical specializations, including Arcanists (masters of secret knowledge and lost lore), Stormcallers ([[PowerOfTheStorm weather manipulators]]), Mechanists (artificers who build {{magitek}}), Clockworkers ({{Time Master}}s), Mentalists (mind-readers and manipulators) and Tidemages ([[MakingASplash masters of sea and tides]]). |
| 366 | * TheMagocracy: Esper is brimming with magical power, to the point that wizards act as the knights here, and magical power is positively and ''strongly'' associated with one's social status on this plane. |
| 367 | * OurGargoylesRock: Gargoyles in Esper are a kind of {{golem}}, created by adding etherium to statues to help channel magic to animate them. |
| 368 | * OurLichesAreDifferent: Aether-liches are mad Esperites who have replaced almost the entirety of their body with etherium, maintaining control over the whole by binding their soul to a metallic phylactery called an Immortal Coil. |
| 369 | * OwlBeDamned: One of the more dangerous native creatures of Esper are the striges, a species of etherium-infused, ashen-colored screech owls with deep black-on-blue eyes. A strix is a psychic vampire, which derives nourishment by sucking the thoughts and memories out of others. |
| 370 | * RiddlingSphinx: Sphinxes are the most powerful and revered of creatures on Esper, due to their wisdom and arcane might. It was a sphinx named Crucius who created etherium, and with it the belief system of incorporating it into living beings. |
| 371 | * SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic: This is the philosophy of the vedalken, who strive to observe and understand... well, everything, but especially magic. |
| 372 | * UncannyValley: InUniverse, the homunculi are noted for disturbing the vedalken greatly due to their resembling chibi versions of themselves. |
| 373 | * WeatherDissonance: Despite the rest of the world's natural phenomena being uncannily orderly and controlled, the weather still escapes their power to restrain. |
| 374 | [[/folder]] |
| 375 | |
| 376 | [[folder:Grixis (Black, with Blue and Red)]] |
| 377 | [[quoteright:314:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/grixis_obelisk_3644.jpg]] |
| 378 | [[caption-width-right:314:Death and Despair]] |
| 379 | |
| 380 | After the Shards developed their mana deficiencies, the people grew desperate and lost hope. With the rise of demon lords and death spreading, one king attempted to [[DealWithTheDevil barter]] with the new dark lords. This ended [[EvilIsNotAToy predictably]] (the last of the civilized nations were overrun). Thus, the shard was given the name "[[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/looking-out-number-one-2008-10-20 Grixis]]", after an old-language word meaning "traitor." Without the presence of new life energy (green) and protection (white), the necromancers and demons of Grixis make use of beings that have died over and over in their armies, leading to their special keyword ability [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Unearth Unearth]]. |
| 381 | ---- |
| 382 | * BodyHorror: In a world dominated by the darkest kinds of magical energy, you better believe that there're some horrifying mutilations of the human body to be seen. |
| 383 | ** Living humans sometimes become victims to swarms of banewasp larvae, enormous scavenging maggots that burrow into and infest the body, bloating it all out of proportion |
| 384 | ** Fleshbags are boneless masses of humanoid flesh that have been sewn together, stuffed full of live vermin, and then animated as grotesque minions and portable storehouses of vis. Fleshdolls are a more powerful variant created when a humanoid ghost is used to animate a fleshbag; they can be the size of ''giants''. |
| 385 | ** The Incurable suffer from grotesque mutations and hideous, incurable diseases. |
| 386 | * CorpseLand: One could be forgiven for thinking that the landmass of Grixis is made of these. The most repulsive are the Bone Heaps, enormous mounds of picked-clean bones assembled by the native kathari from their victims, and the Dregscape, a vast swamp where degeneration has slowed to a crawl, reducing it to an enormous morass of noxious ichor and slowly decaying corpses. |
| 387 | * CrapsackWorld: As a world in which the spiritual concepts of "life" and "community" don't exist, Grixis is well and truly deserving of the name "hellhole". The dead and the damned hunt the living to preserve their own existences, and those who die are brought back to suffer and die once more, again and again. Everything's crumbling into absolute nothingness as the Shard devours itself to the last, life itself is going extinct, and even the demons and the undead are being wiped out as their world disintegrates around them. It's very ''VideoGame/DarkSouls''. When the Shards are re-amalgamated, things start to get better. A little. |
| 388 | * DealWithTheDevil: Demons like to tempt mortals into bargaining with them, as it makes it easier for them to steal the mortal's vis and more enjoyable for them to consume. |
| 389 | * DeathWorld: Even if you're ''undead'', this place will eat you alive. Entropic energy constantly lashes the plane, literally sucking it clean of life, forcing the residents to struggle to preserve their own existences. Whilst being re-merged into the reborn Alara has undone its spiral into entropy, it's still an enormously hostile place. |
| 390 | * DemonLordsAndArchdevils: Grixis has loads of powerful demons running around. |
| 391 | * DespairEventHorizon: Once the last of the human nations fell, that was it. |
| 392 | * FeatheredFiend: The kathari, an aven variant who look like deformed humanoid vultures and who feed on the flesh of anything they can catch, including humans. Mind you, the Vithians will eat them too. |
| 393 | * LaResistance: The Vithian holdouts, who use red and blue magic to try to survive and to fight against the fiends and undead ruling their plane. |
| 394 | * LiquidAssets: The essence of life itself has been established as a quantifiable, if immaterial substance in Grixis, called "vis". It is, pun unintended, the lifeblood of the plane; every undead, fiend and even {{necromancer}} devotes their existence to securing a supply of vis, squeezed (rather literally) from vitals (non-black mana-tainted mortals), without which they can't survive. |
| 395 | * MeaningfulName: "Grixis" means "traitor" in the ancient Vithian tongue. It was named this after the last of the Vithian kings, Sedris, sold out his people to a demon lord in exchange for being turned into a lich. |
| 396 | * {{Mordor}}: Not only is Grixis [[CrapsackWorld an absolutely nightmarish place to live in]], it also has the look of this trope: dark, sunless, crawling with all sorts of monstrosities... |
| 397 | * MorePredatorsThanPrey: The core of Grixis's problems. Without green or white magic, there is no way to add new ''vis'' into the system, and so everything on Grixis has to try and prey on everything else. |
| 398 | * NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Thraximundar, "He who paints the earth red." A hulking undead BlackKnight, Thraximundar wanders the plane, seeking out battles, where he plunges into the fray and kills indiscriminately, consuming the vis of whomever he slays. |
| 399 | * {{Necromancer}}: Understandably, these are ''everywhere'' in Grixis, and the tie-in manual "The Planeswalker's Guide to Alara" proclaims that there may be more variants of necromancy to be found on this plane than on any other in the multiverse. Named specialities include Fleshcrafters (who construct specialized minions and unliving tools from flesh & bone), Lethemancers (who prey on the minds of others by stealing their thoughts), Ghostslavers (who focus on binding ghosts to their bidding), and Gale Mages (who focus on destroying things by invoking the entropic winds that scour their plane of life). |
| 400 | * NightOfTheLivingMooks: Zombies, skeletons and other necromantic constructs make up the vast form of "life" in Grixis. |
| 401 | * OurOgresAreHungrier: The Incurable are a tribe of ogres who tried to cure themselves of a curse-born plague, only to make it even worse. They suffer from incurable diseases and horrific mutations, leaving them pain-wracked, insane, and dangerous. |
| 402 | * OurVampiresAreDifferent: Most of the vampires on Grixis are suffering as the supply of vis dwindles ever sharper. Most are starving, skeletal wretches, reduced to little better than ghouls as a result of their lack of food. The few who have managed to stay well-fed are aware of their world's approaching destruction, and desperate to save it. |
| 403 | ** Yes, Grixis is ''so horrible'' that among the worst the '''monsters''' are the heroes trying to save the world. |
| 404 | * VampiricDraining: Anything that has an affinity for black mana can somehow drain the vis from vitals, be it by mystical means, drinking blood, eating flesh, or stealing thoughts. Indeed, part of the reason why Grixis is such a hellhole is because VampiricDraining has become the foundation of its ecosystem - with nothing outside of that to replenish itself. Thusly, the supply of vis steadily gets smaller and smaller, and its native ecology cannibalizes itself. |
| 405 | * WorldHalfEmpty: As bad as things are, it's slowly getting ''worse''. Because it lacks the ability to replenish and sustain life due to its mana deficiencies, the black mana that dominates this plane is also consuming it, leeching it of what little life remains -- ultimately, the natives will all be destroyed as the plane devours itself utterly. Their every effort is just trying to deny the inevitable. Averted after Grixis is reunited with the other shards of Alara; the corrected balance stops its inevitable descent into oblivion. |
| 406 | * ZombieApocalypse: Grixis has been completely overrun by the undead, which have torn down all semblances of society. Now it consists of just enormous armies of undead minions that clash with each other endlessly at the whims of the necromancer-lords, demons and liches who control the plane. |
| 407 | [[/folder]] |
| 408 | |
| 409 | [[folder:Jund (Red, with Black and Green)]] |
| 410 | [[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/jund_obelisk_155.jpg]] |
| 411 | [[caption-width-right:300:Tooth and Claw]] |
| 412 | |
| 413 | On [[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/following-your-heart-2008-12-01 Jund]], natural selection is the order of the day. On Jund, only the strong survive. The savage Shard of Jund is cruel and merciless, and each living being acts as a food source for something else. Living to see another day means killing something that was going to kill you first. Civility? Order? Those will not help you (and don't last long on the plane anyway). Getting stronger from consuming prey is the hallmark of Jund's keyword ability, [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Devour Devour]]. At the very top of this food chain? Dragons. They are the ultimate predator, whose power and majesty ultimately drove the planeswalker Sarkhan Vol to the plane, where he wished to worship them akin to gods. |
| 414 | ---- |
| 415 | * BloodKnight: A very large portion of Jund's inhabittants like to fight for the hell of it. Everything is hyper aggressive and constantly mad. |
| 416 | * DeathWorld: Jund is a land of ruthless predation and constant competition, where everything wants to eat you and the landscape itself is volatile and dangerous. Every day is a struggle for survival, and a single moment of weakness or distraction will likely see you devoured by a carnivorous plant, hacked to pieces by a rival clan, infected with some horrific parasite, scooped up and devoured by a giant predator, sucked into a tar pit or incinerated in a volcanic eruption. Not once in the shard's history has anyone there died of old age. |
| 417 | * HollywoodPrehistory: Jund is a land of primal jungles, swamps and tar pits, all dominated by constantly-erupting volcanoes, home to constantly warring primitive tribes and ruled over by massive reptilian predators. |
| 418 | * LetsMeetTheMeat: The goblins of Jund consider it an honor to be eaten by mighty creatures. |
| 419 | * {{Mooks}}: Devour, which makes the creature larger depending on how many other creatures you sacrifice when casting it, and can do other things. Your smaller creatures are quite expendable. |
| 420 | * OurDragonsAreDifferent: Giant, ferocious dragons sit firmly atop the Jund food chain. |
| 421 | [[/folder]] |
| 422 | |
| 423 | [[folder:Naya (Green, with Red and White)]] |
| 424 | [[quoteright:314:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/naya_obelisk_291.jpg]] |
| 425 | [[caption-width-right:314:Woods and Wilds]] |
| 426 | |
| 427 | If Green were allowed to have its way and follow it to its logical conclusion, nature would grow completely unchecked by opposing forces. That's exactly what happened on [[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/searching-within-2008-11-03 Naya]]. Similar to Jund, only the strong survive; but with white in place of black, there is reverence in place of bloodlust. Several sentient races live among the massive jungles of Naya, their rank primarily determined by what part they live in. Humans live among the jungle floor, the Nacatl (a race of catlike warriors) take up the middle, and elves sit high in the treetops. This is the start of the journey of the planeswalker Ajani. (Indeed, [[https://scryfall.com/card/ala/154/ajani-vengeant this version]] of Ajani is him when he is young. When he meets Sarkhan Vol, he leads him to Jund, where his desire for vengeance and retribution lead him to awaken a stronger power in him, triggered by a volcanic ritual, which gives him access to red mana.) Like Esper, there isn't a keyword ability for Naya to call its own. However, its theme is big creatures, the bigger the better; specifically, creatures with power 5 or higher. |
| 428 | ---- |
| 429 | * BiggerIsBetter: Naya's associated creatures are much, much stronger than is normal for Green Mana creatures, which represents how absolutely massive they grow. |
| 430 | * {{Mayincatec}}: Naya's human culture and society is pretty strictly based on the more hedonistic aspects of Aztec culture, with the obligatory HumanSacrifice to the beasts mixed in. Notably, as Naya's civilizations are gone, tons of Mesoamerican ruins lay about. |
| 431 | [[/folder]] |
| 432 | |
| 433 | !Guilds of Ravnica |
| 434 | |
| 435 | Note: as stated several times [[WordOfGod even by the staff]], [[GreyAndGrayMorality "guilds exist in layers"]]. The following are the most common tropes, but do not cover all individuals. For tropes regarding specific individuals, [[Characters/MagicTheGatheringRavnica see here]]. |
| 436 | |
| 437 | [[folder:Azorius Senate (White and Blue)]] |
| 438 | [[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/azorius_logo.png]] |
| 439 | [[caption-width-right:220:Order and Control]] |
| 440 | ->''Enter the Senate, the seat of justice and the foundation of Ravnican society.'' |
| 441 | -->--'''[[https://scryfall.com/card/rtr/237/azorius-guildgate Azorious Guildgate]]''' |
| 442 | |
| 443 | ->'''Guildmaster:''' Lavinia (Pro Tem) |
| 444 | ->'''Former Guildmasters:''' Azor (Parun)[[note]]Planeswalker, left Ravnica shortly after creating the Guildpact[[/note]], Numerous [[note]]Augustin I, Augustin II, Augustin III, Konstantin I, Konstantine II, Leonos I, Lucian I, Lucian II, Lucian III[[/note]], Augustin IV [[note]]Assassinated by Guildmaster Szadek of the Dimir[[/note]], Leonos II [[note]]Abdicated[[/note]], Isperia [[note]]Assassinated by Vraska[[/note]], Dovin Baan [[note]]Agent of Nicol Bolas, deposed by Guildmaster Lazav and Chandra Nalaar[[/note]] |
| 445 | |
| 446 | Logic & Power (Blue), and/or Law & Order (White). The [[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/slow-and-steady-2006-05-01-0 Azorius Senate]] is the legislative body of Ravnica. Their goal is to control the city with law-magic and maintain order -- at any cost. The status quo is prized above all else in the Azorius Senate, and thus its first Guild mechanic, [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Forecast Forecast]], allows them to use weaker variants of its spells without actually losing or casting them. |
| 447 | |
| 448 | Similarly, in ''Return to Ravnica'', the Azorius Senate uses the [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Detain Detain]] mechanic, which allows them to stop cards on the field from doing anything for a turn. |
| 449 | |
| 450 | In ''Ravnica Allegiance'', they gain an ability word in ''[[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Addendum Addendum]]'', which augments the effects of instant spells when they are cast during the player's main phase. |
| 451 | ---- |
| 452 | * AncientConspiracy: It's revealed in the ''Return to Ravnica'' block that Azor I created the Implicit Maze in the case that the original guildpact should ever be broken. The Izzet League's discovery of said maze through the block sets in motion the events that lead to the endgame presented in ''Dragon's Maze''. |
| 453 | * BigBrotherIsWatching: Under Grand Arbiter [[TyrantTakesTheHelm Dovin Baan]], the Azorius institute a program of mass surveillance at an unprecedented scale. |
| 454 | * ByTheBookCop: Guild members that enforce the laws themselves qualify for this. They even practice their own branch of law magic. Contrast the CowboyCop attitude of the Boros Legion. |
| 455 | * CallingYourAttacks: Forecast in a nutshell. |
| 456 | * CorruptBureaucrat: Overlapping with CorruptPolitician; many members of the Senate are in it for their own power and advancement. |
| 457 | * TheEvilsOfFreeWill: Firm believers in this trope. They think that Law should dictate how people act. |
| 458 | * EvilPowerVacuum: [[spoiler: Isperia's murder allows Dovin to take her place.]] |
| 459 | * FaceHeelTurn: [[spoiler:After Isperia tries to quench guild paranoia, she is murdered, and the Azorius fall into Bolas's control.]] |
| 460 | * InstantRunes: As seen in spells like Righteous Authority. Apparently, an entire runic alphabet was designed for the Azorius. |
| 461 | * KnightTemplar: Any means is justified to prevent any non-static activity on Ravnica. Their first guild mechanic, Forecast, allows them to maintain the status quo by re-using the same spell every turn. |
| 462 | * LawfulStupid: They are this according to the Izzet. Possibly {{Invoked}}. The vast and obstructive bureaucracy is ''designed'' to be vast and impenetrable so that no change ever happens and order is enforced. |
| 463 | * LightIsNotGood: Augustin IV was from this guild and one of the antagonists in the ''Ravnica'' novels. The rest of the guild are not really that much better; they're only in check because their obsession with bureaucracy keeps them perpetually occupied. |
| 464 | * MeaningfulName: The Azorius Senate takes its name from Azor, the sphinx planeswalker who taught them the arts of hieromancy and founded the guild system. This is a subtle forewarning of the fact they share Azor's LawfulStupid nature and obsession with Law over people. |
| 465 | * MoralSociopathy: Rather chillingly obsessed with laws and order and not the least bit caring for the people of Ravnica. This is a trait they inherit from their parun, Azor I. |
| 466 | * ObstructiveBureaucrat: Cemented by their guildhouse's flavor text. |
| 467 | -->''[[https://scryfall.com/card/dis/177/prahv-spires-of-order Prahv, where much work is done to make sure nothing is accomplished]]''. |
| 468 | * PoliceCodeForEverything: PlayedForLaughs in a Rakdos Cult story. Code 3435-T is the use of explosive material in a confined space. |
| 469 | * PrecrimeArrest: They make extensive use of [[PolicePsychic Police Psychics]] and {{Seers}} so as to catch crime before it happens. |
| 470 | * PrinciplesZealot: They live for the Law. |
| 471 | * StoneWall: Azorius combines white's enchantments with blue's counter-spells to make a strategy built around defense. |
| 472 | * VastBureaucracy: They are apparently aware of this, as the Azorius's symbol is designed as a maze, representing how their bureaucratic processes intentionally draw things out and ultimately accomplish nothing, preserving the status quo. |
| 473 | * {{Whatevermancy}}: They practice "hieromancy", which is literally fueled by and relating to law. |
| 474 | [[/folder]] |
| 475 | |
| 476 | [[folder:House Dimir (Blue and Black)]] |
| 477 | [[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dimir_logo.png]] |
| 478 | [[caption-width-right:220:Secrecy and Silence]] |
| 479 | ->''Enter and become a mastermind of spies, lies, and deception.'' |
| 480 | -->--'''[[https://scryfall.com/card/gtc/241/dimir-guildgate Dimir Guildgate]]''' |
| 481 | |
| 482 | ->'''Guildmaster:''' None |
| 483 | ->'''Former Guildmasters:''' Szadek (Parun) [[note]]Executed and imprisoned in Agyrem[[/note]], Lazav[[note]]Believed dead in the Phyrexian invasion[[/note]] |
| 484 | |
| 485 | The Blue-Black [[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/pretty-sneaky-sis-2005-11-07-0 House Dimir]] are basically the Illuminati, full-stop. They're not interested in sharing information. In fact, they like secrets so much that they decided to conceal their very existence. As far as most of Ravnica's citizens know, there are only nine guilds, and that's just the way their leader, the mind-leeching vampire Szadek, likes it. As master mind mages, the Dimir have domain over both players' hands and libraries, with the ability to manipulate spells before they're even cast by discarding, rearranging, or milling them. Their guild mechanic [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Transmute Transmute]] is just one example, allowing Dimir mages to exchange spells in their hand for other spells from their deck. |
| 486 | |
| 487 | ''Gatecrash'' introduced to the House Dimir the ability to encode their [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Cipher Cipher]] spells in creatures, making copies of those spells whenever the encoded creature sneaks through their opponent's defenses. |
| 488 | |
| 489 | In ''Guilds of Ravnica'', the Dimir's quest to uncover the secrets of the force influencing the other guilds is represented by the [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Surveil Surveil]] mechanic, which lets you view the top of your library, keeping the cards you have use for and culling the rest. |
| 490 | ---- |
| 491 | * BlatantLies: For centuries, even the existence of House Dimir was a carefully-guarded secret, and citizens of Ravnica were told that there were only nine guilds. After the very public defeat of Szadek, the cat was out of the bag and the Dimir's existence became widely known, but the guild was left weak, leaderless, and disorganized, they ''swear''. |
| 492 | * TheChessmaster: The favored modus operandi of both Szadek and, later, Lazav. House Dimir works behind the scenes, quietly manipulating the other nine guilds. |
| 493 | * DarkIsEvil: A Black-aligned guild thoroughly associated with shadows, and the only one of the guilds of Ravnica to not have a civic purpose or sympathetic characters, something even the ''Rakdos'' have. |
| 494 | ** In ''Return to Ravnica'', this is subverted a bit. They are still assassins and knowledge brokers, but without Szadek at their helm, they've also branched out into running [[{{Irony}} public libraries]] and courier services. |
| 495 | * DarkIsNotEvil: [[spoiler:Despite sharing two of Bolas's colors, they do not ultimately fall under his control and actively work against his machinations despite not knowing who he is.]] |
| 496 | * TheDreaded: Before knowledge of the guild's existence went public, Dimir was the bogey-man of Ravnica. When they were revealed and started to provide public services like the production of libraries, they are still feared for providing less-than-savory services such as espionage. |
| 497 | * EldritchAbomination: Numerour skittering, tentacled, many-eyed ''[[StarfishAlien things]]'' with the Horror creature type make their home in Dimir territory and appear on cards with [[PaintingTheMedium Dimir watermarks]]. It's unclear to what degree the Dimir actually control these beings, and to what degree they are just [[SummonBiggerFish dangerous ancient beings the Dimir have just gotten good at surviving around]]. |
| 498 | * KnowledgeBroker: House Dimir trades in secrets. Once they formally revealed their existence to the public, this was the face they chose to present, offering a network of couriers, spies, and informants for hire. And with creatures like psychic vampires and mindleech masses, they often steal knowledge literally. |
| 499 | * MatrixRainingCode: This is apparently how their mind reading magic manifests, as depicted on [[https://scryfall.com/card/grn/193/notion-rain Notion Rain]]. |
| 500 | * MilkmanConspiracy: Since its existence was exposed, Dimir has taken great pains to portray itself as a cowed and reformed organization, made up of clerks, shopkeepers, librarians and couriers. That nice barista that serves you coffee just the way you like couldn't ''possibly'' be a superspy capable of rewriting your memories on a whim, that would be ridiculous! |
| 501 | * MindRape: Cards like [[https://scryfall.com/card/rav/234/szadek-lord-of-secrets Szadek]] (the Dimir leader) and [[https://scryfall.com/card/rav/208/glimpse-the-unthinkable Glimpse the Unthinkable]] are this in spades. |
| 502 | * OnlySaneMan: Dimir is the only guild that isn't violently insane, politically extremist, or suffering from backstabbing over in-guild leadership. Unfortunately, they're also the guild where the rather ''[[Film/JamesBond Bond]]''-esque DiabolicalMastermind spawned from. |
| 503 | * OurGhostsAreDifferent: Their ghosts are employed as spies, cutpurses, and assassins. |
| 504 | * OurVampiresAreDifferent: Go after your minds instead of your blood. |
| 505 | * OutsideContextProblem: The Rakdos are this to them, as keeping secrets is anathema to what the Cult believes. In the ''Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica'', the Rakdos's view on the Dimir is "There's nothing they can learn by eavesdropping that we won't shout freely at the top of our lungs." Conversely, the Dimir view on the Rakdos is "Use them as a distraction, but don't bother with them beyond that." |
| 506 | * SinisterSurveillance: Needless to say, when House Dimir has its eyes on you, "safe" is the very opposite of how you feel. |
| 507 | * TheSneakyGuy: Members of House Dimir are Ravnica's spies, informants, assassins and secret operatives. Their ranks include creatures who fit this theme such as vampires, shapeshifers and small winged faeries. |
| 508 | * SneakySpider: They essentially operate as Ravnica's [[TheSpymaster Spymasters]], {{Knowledge Broker}}s, and {{Professional Killer}}s, and their symbol is a heavily stylized eight-legged spider with a [[SinisterSurveillance single big eye]] on its back. They were, in fact, so sneaky that for the longest time, [[NoSuchAgency most people believed there were only 9 guilds on Ravnica]]. |
| 509 | * VoluntaryShapeshifter: House Dimir includes doppelgangers amongst its members, who have the ability to assume the form of other people, which comes in handy for a guild of spies, thieves and assassins. Lazav, Szadek's successor, is a doppelganger too. And then there's the Lupuls... |
| 510 | * TheWormThatWalks: The Lupuls; colony-minded swarms of blue-white flesh-eating worms. They are vulnerable to the powers of a PestController, but are a lot smarter than you'd think; they're also capable of [[YouAreWhoYouEat assuming the forms of other creatures they have devoured]]. One featured in the ''Ravnica'' novel, and the card [[https://scryfall.com/card/rav/215/mindleech-mass Mindleech Mass]] depicts a Lupul in the game. The creatures were presumed destroyed, but secretly some survived and were brought into House Dimir by Szadek. |
| 511 | [[/folder]] |
| 512 | |
| 513 | [[folder:Cult of Rakdos (Black and Red)]] |
| 514 | [[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rakdos_logo.png]] |
| 515 | [[caption-width-right:220:Laughter and Carnage]] |
| 516 | ->''Enter and indulge your darkest fantasies, for you may never pass this way again.'' |
| 517 | -->--'''[[https://scryfall.com/card/rtr/244/rakdos-guildgate Rakdos Guildgate]]''' |
| 518 | |
| 519 | ->'''Guildmaster:''' Rakdos (Parun) |
| 520 | |
| 521 | The [[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/hedonism-attitude-2006-08-14-0 Cult of Rakdos]] is what you would get if you combined a CircusOfFear with an S&M dungeon in a particle accelerator. For them, the pursuit of pleasure is the highest calling. Led and founded by the demon Rakdos the Defiler, this guild is a sadomasochistic cult that thrives on causing pain and chaos just for the thrill of it, and is responsible for running most entertainment establishments in Ravnica, including nightclubs and circuses. Their hedonistic outlook leads them to care very little about how many cards they need to discard or creatures they need to sacrifice to do what they want. This is exemplified in their [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Hellbent Hellbent]] mechanic -- when you've exhausted all the cards in your hand, that's just an excuse to party even harder! And by "party" we mean "kill people". |
| 522 | |
| 523 | The Cult of Rakdos's second keyword is [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Unleash Unleash]], which allows you to send its own creatures into a reckless rampage, making them stronger at the cost of being unable to block. |
| 524 | |
| 525 | The third Rakdos keyword is [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Spectacle Spectacle]], found in "Ravnica Allegiance". It allows cards to be cast for a different mana cost if an opponent lost life that turn - sometimes a lower cost, sometimes a higher cost but with additional effects. |
| 526 | ---- |
| 527 | * ALighterShadeOfBlack: Ironically, despite the fact they're a AxCrazy, torture happy, BigRedDevil worshipping {{Cult}} made up mostly of serial killers, they're rarely actively trying as a whole to take over or destroy Ravnica itself like the other guilds tend to do. |
| 528 | * AlwaysChaoticEvil: They're never shown doing anything but atrocity after atrocity. |
| 529 | ** Supposedly, there are some more reasonable members of the guild, it's just we largely only see the ''really'' wild and crazy ones because those tend to be the fighters, who of course are more likely to have relevance in the plot or be shown on the cards. |
| 530 | ** Their tendency toward ''chaotic'' evil meant that they were the only guild in the original ''Ravnica'' story that wasn't trying to either conquer or destroy the world. Rakdos even risks his own life to save the entire plane. |
| 531 | * AxCrazy: Almost a requirement to be recruited in Rakdos. |
| 532 | * TheBerserker: Their ''Unleash'' mechanic gives creatures more power and toughness, but makes them unable to block. |
| 533 | * ChainedByFashion: Rakdos attire usually involves this and a lot of other [[SpikesOfDoom painful]] implements that would hurt the wearer as much as their enemies. And that's not even getting into what the cultists use as weapons! |
| 534 | * CircusOfFear: Their cards have a circus motif, and the leaders of individual Cult groups are even called "Ringmasters". |
| 535 | * CombatSadomasochist: Perhaps best exemplified by [[https://scryfall.com/card/dis/38/bond-of-agony Bond of Agony]]. They like torture so much that they'll torture themselves along with their victims. Torture for everybody! |
| 536 | * CutLexLuthorACheck: They make legitimate money as Ravnica's entertainment industry, from circuses to ''cuisine''. Apart from this, they also provide the manual labor force for Ravnica, by working in, or providing slaves for, the mines and workshops. |
| 537 | * DarkIsNotEvil: [[spoiler:Despite being a cult of literal demon-worshippers, and sharing both their colors with Bolas, they are one of the five loyalist guilds.]] |
| 538 | * EvilIsBurningHot: Many Rakdos creatures are either weaponizing fire, or on fire themselves. Rakdos himself takes this into the extreme, because his lair and resting spot is a giant pool of lava. |
| 539 | * AFeteWorseThanDeath: A circus-themed organisation who regularly throw parties where even the members aren't guaranteed to survive, and the audience's chances are worse. |
| 540 | * ForTheEvulz: A Rakdos will do whatever they want, no matter how atrocious. |
| 541 | * GlassCannon: Most Rakdos creatures are strong attackers and don't need much mana to play, but they tend to have low toughness and if they get a +1/+1 counter via Unleash, they can't block. |
| 542 | * TheHedonist: The Cult of Rakdos is all about pursuing pleasure, no matter the cost. |
| 543 | * ItAmusedMe: Because the Cult believes in pursuing individual desires whatever the cost, they always do whatever amuses or interests them. Even if they don't survive afterwards... |
| 544 | * LifeOfTheParty: ...or rather the "[[TheUndead unlife]] of the party". |
| 545 | -->''"If your ears bleed, it's a party. If your eyes bleed, it's a Rakdos party."'' |
| 546 | * MadArtist: They are the center of the Ravnican arts and entertainment industry. Surprisingly, they actually back a lot of reputable establishments! But yeah, if you're looking for the freaky stuff, they've got your number. |
| 547 | * OurDemonsAreDifferent: Rakdos demons are usually inexpensive but powerful fighters, with some exceptions, like Rakdos himself, who has high power and toughness. |
| 548 | * PsychoForHire: One of the reasons Ravnica puts up with this guild's existence is that it provides other guilds with people to do their dirty work. RTR has them settling into an "entertainment industry" niche, [[CutLexLuthorACheck providing additional income]] and [[VillainWithGoodPublicity bolstering their PR]]. |
| 549 | * RedAndBlackAndEvilAllOver: The Rakdos are easily one of the most violent and evil guilds. In addition to their mana colors, many cultists wear red-and-black-patterned clothing as part of the circus motif. |
| 550 | * ReligionOfEvil: Well, they are a cult, and they do murder people as part of being a cult. |
| 551 | * TechnicianVsPerformer: The ''Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica'' suggests that the Rakdos see the relationship between their guild and the Izzet League as a literal instance of this trope. |
| 552 | -->"Every performance benefits from prop masters and pyrotechnicians. They can be useful backstage, but they lack the charisma for the spotlight." |
| 553 | * TheSacredDarkness: This is how the more philosophical, less psychotic members view their worship of Rakdos; an acceptance of the inevitability of death and a reminder of others to embrace life whilst they have it, because it won't last forever. |
| 554 | -->''"Rakdos performers do not grow old in the ring," Rinni said. "They go on exactly as long as they are meant to. They acquire skills. They acquire scars. Their movements may be hampered, they may slow down, but it is all part of the dance. They play the role they were meant to play. To make people laugh. To remind them how precious and how fleeting our lives are, no matter how harsh or short. Our lives are a gift."'' |
| 555 | * StrawNihilist: "All ends in obliteration—love in hatred, life in death, and light in empty darkness." |
| 556 | -->-- '''[[https://scryfall.com/card/dis/50/nihilistic-glee Nihilistic Glee]]''' |
| 557 | * TooKinkyToTorture: Sadomasochism is the expected norm for a Cultist. |
| 558 | * TwoFaced: Their emblem from ''Return to Ravnica'' onward is a demon's head that's half black and half red. |
| 559 | [[/folder]] |
| 560 | |
| 561 | [[folder:Gruul Clans (Red and Green)]] |
| 562 | [[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gruul_logo.png]] |
| 563 | [[caption-width-right:220:Savagery and Chaos]] |
| 564 | ->''Enter and leave the shackles of society behind.'' |
| 565 | -->--'''[[https://scryfall.com/card/gtc/243/gruul-guildgate Gruul Guildgate]]''' |
| 566 | |
| 567 | ->'''Guildmaster:''' Borborygmos (Assumed) |
| 568 | ->'''Former Guildmasters:''' Cisarzom (Parun), Domri Rade[[note]]Planeswalker, killed by desparking[[/note]] |
| 569 | |
| 570 | If you fused Conan the Barbarian with the Unabomber in Frankenstien's labratory, the result would probably go on to found the Red-Green [[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/aaaargh-2006-01-30-0 Gruul Clans]]. They're a collection of loosely-organized barbarian tribes who scorn civilization, preferring to live free in what's left of Ravnica's wilderness. The original Guildpact originally stipulated them as the wardens of the wilderness then existent, to keep the city's spread from getting in there. Unfortunately, thanks to the typical political machinations, not only did the wilderness get completely breached, their duties wound up divvied among the Selesnya and Simic, leaving them little to do but seek vengeance. They're not much for inaction, which is why their guild mechanic [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Bloodthirst Bloodthirst]] rewards players who take an active role in the game, actually drawing blood from their opponents instead of sitting around thinking about it. |
| 571 | |
| 572 | The second guild mechanic introduced in ''Gatecrash'' is [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Bloodrush Bloodrush]], which mixes Green's love for huge creatures with Red's love for instant rewards, turning cards in hand into ways to quickly power-up attacking creatures. |
| 573 | |
| 574 | The third guild mechanic from ''Ravnica Allegiance'' is [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Riot Riot]], allowing creatures to choose between haste or a +1/+1 counter when they enter the battlefield. |
| 575 | ---- |
| 576 | * AnarchyIsChaos: They're essentially Ravnica's equivalent of anarchists with the ultimate goal of destroying civilization and returning the world to its natural state, where only savagery and the law of the wild matters. |
| 577 | * AsskickingLeadsToLeadership: The Gruul are not much for order or a proper hierarchy, and leadership of a clan usually falls to the strongest, biggest and angriest of the bunch. |
| 578 | * BarbarianHero: This is the hat of the Gruul as a whole, as its humanoid members are invariably physically powerful "primitives" who shun the civilization of the rest of Ravnica. |
| 579 | * BarbarianTribe: The Gruul are a loose coalition of clans and tribes whose lifestyle chiefly consists of taking over an area, pillaging it for all it's worth, and squatting in the ruins until all resources are exhausted, at which point they move to a new area and repeat the process. |
| 580 | * TheBeastmaster: As a Green-affiliated faction, they make heavy use of all kinds of beasts, monsters and animals. |
| 581 | * ChaoticStupid: The Orzhov Syndicate sees them this way. |
| 582 | -->'''Teysa:''' ''(regarding [[https://scryfall.com/card/gpt/103/borborygmos Borborygmos]])'' It's easy to see why those Gruul dirtbags follow him -- the only orders he gives are "[[https://scryfall.com/card/gpt/139/wreak-havoc Crush them!]]" and "[[https://scryfall.com/card/dis/90/protean-hulk We eat!]]" |
| 583 | * DishingOutDirt: Several of their cards have flavor text related to the ground and/or uses land cards to attack. |
| 584 | * DontThinkFeel: Green Mana is instinct, Red Mana is emotion. Naturally, a Guild based on the fusion of the two is not much for long-term thought and strategy. Deconstructed, as this is called out as one of the Gruul's biggest weaknesses. |
| 585 | * EcoTerrorist: The purpose of the Gruul clans, as defined by the guildpact, is to preserve the wild places of Ravnica and keep civilisation in check. As Ravnica has expanded, and the Gruul have found themselves marginalised and forced to squat in the city's rubble-belts, they now seek to bring down Ravnican civilisation and restore the wilderness to what it once was. |
| 586 | * TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: The Gruul believe in their own version of the apocalypse called ''The End-Raze'', during which their boar-god, Illharg the Raze-Boar, will awaken and raze the entire city of Ravnica into dust and reclaim the world for nature. [[spoiler:Domri ascending to the position of leader of the Gruul Clans and the growing unrest between the guilds as of ''Ravnica Allegiance'' are seen as SignsOfTheEndTimes.]] |
| 587 | * FullBoarAction: They worship a boar-god, adorn themselves with tusks and boarskulls, have several boar-themed spells and frequently use them as mounts and beasts of war. [[spoiler:With Domri's ascension to leader of the Burning Tree and unofficial guildleader, this motif has become extremely prevalent, to the point Domri is seen as the one heralding in the return of their boar-god.]] |
| 588 | * HandicappedBadass: The Scab Clan is exclusively made up of these, as all its members have been maimed, tortured, crippled and mutilated by the organizations of civilization. They're notable for cooperating with each other to make up for their physical deficiencies, and for being the single most violent clan amongst the Gruul. |
| 589 | * LargeAndInCharge: Borborygmos, the unofficial leader of the Gruul. |
| 590 | * MeaningfulName: Borborygmos is derived from borborygmus, which is the growling and rumbling noises that one's stomach and intestines make. |
| 591 | * NamedAfterTheInjury: The Scab Clan exclusively recruits {{Handicapped Badass}}es from those who have been maimed, crippled or tortured by the other guilds. Their leader is a giant called Narbulg Nine-Fingers. |
| 592 | * NatureIsNotNice: One of their core beliefs. Also the source of much contempt for the Selesnyans, who they believe revere an idealized and domesticated version of nature. |
| 593 | --> "The Selesnya would coddle a wolf, teach it to fetch sticks, and call it a dog. We prefer to starve the wolf, let it hunt for its food, and make it a stronger wolf." |
| 594 | * ProudWarriorRaceGuy: As Red/Green Mana hybrids, the Gruul take great pride in embracing the natural cycle of predator and prey, whilst striving to become the greatest predators in the world. |
| 595 | * TheQuincyPunk: Reinvented as such for the new Ravnica storyline, fitting their anarcho-primitivist leanings. They even got Cockney accents. |
| 596 | * SkeletonsInTheCoatCloset: Since they shun man-made materials, they commonly craft weapons and armor from bone. |
| 597 | * SlaveRace: How the Orzhov Syndicate think of them. |
| 598 | * WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer: They are really good at smashing stuff, so that's pretty much how they solve all of their problems. |
| 599 | * WhosLaughingNow: This is the main reason why the Gruul Clans are so violent. The guild was originally created to protect the environment of Ravnica, but after it was destroyed save for a few pockets of wild for the sake of city expansion, the members of the guild were no longer treated like citizens and instead are treated as slaves. This made the Gruul Clans vengeful towards anything that has to do with Ravnican civilization, and they aren't above raiding and destroying the city to reclaim land for the wild. |
| 600 | * WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: Their ancestral homes destroyed, their purpose usurped by political rivals, their people enslaved or exploited, the guild as a whole globally reviled (moreso than the psychotic murder cult); a lesser guild would have been rendered [[DespairEventHorizon despondent]]. The Gruul are ''furious.'' |
| 601 | * WorthyOpponent: As revealed in the [[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/planeswalkers-guide-gatecrash-part-2-2012-12-12 Planeswalker's Guide to Gatecrash]], they respect the Boros League's fighting prowess. |
| 602 | -->'''On the Boros:''' "We respect the Boros! So their heads adorn our pikes instead of plugging the gutters." |
| 603 | * YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters: Seen by most of Ravnica as simple barbarians, brutes and savages that only want to mindlessly destroy. The Gruul themselves naturally don't share this view, and see it as rising up against their oppressors, enslavers and restoring the world to its natural state by destroying civilization so that the wilderness can return. |
| 604 | [[/folder]] |
| 605 | |
| 606 | [[folder:Selesnya Conclave (Green and White)]] |
| 607 | [[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/selesnya_logo.png]] |
| 608 | [[caption-width-right:220:Unity and Harmony]] |
| 609 | ->''Enter and rejoice! The Conclave stands united, open to one and all.'' |
| 610 | -->--'''[[https://scryfall.com/card/rtr/246/selesnya-guildgate Selesnya Guildgate]]''' |
| 611 | |
| 612 | ->'''Guildmaster:''' Mat'Selesnya (Parun), Various Speakers[[note]]Chrous of the Conclave, Hich Council, Trostani[[/note]], Emmara Tandris (Informal) |
| 613 | |
| 614 | The [[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/group-think-2005-10-03-0 Conclave]] loves to help one another. An all-encompassing nature-based religion, the Selesnya Conclave dedicates itself to the renewal of Ravnica's wild places and the spiritual enrichment of its citizens. However, the bright and friendly face the guild puts on belies a power structure that relentlessly crushes heresy and insubordination, and many of its followers can be safely be considered "brainwashed". In the original Ravnica block, their mechanic was the ability [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Convoke Convoke]], which allows creatures to help players cast spells by reducing the cost of a spell with Convoke by one mana of a creature's color for each creature tapped when casting it. This returns as their mechanic for ''Guilds of Ravnica''. |
| 615 | |
| 616 | In ''Return to Ravnica'', they gained the [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Populate Populate]] mechanic, which allows them to copy creature tokens to swell their ranks. |
| 617 | ---- |
| 618 | * AssimilationPlot: The Conclave's ultimate goal is to reduce the entire world - plants, animals and sapient beings alike - into a singular hive-minded collective organism, where any individual is merely a cog in the greater machine that is the world itself, and ultimately replaceable. |
| 619 | * BrainwashingForTheGreaterGood: Oh yes. The Song of the Conclave was an outright plane-wide brainwashing spell, making the Gateless more docile, which, once the spell was broken, led them to lynch the Selesnyans. Their new incarnations presumably still do things of the sort, but they've learned their lesson. |
| 620 | * CorruptChurch: Always a religious commune with the intent of spreading peace and harmony, at some point in their history they've converted with a brainwashing cult, their song keeping the masses docile and killing dissenters via their "quietmen". They seemingly grew out of it by their second return, though they're hypocritical and willing to sacrifice the lives of lower-ranking members for the greater good. |
| 621 | * CrystalSpiresAndTogas: Special emphasis on the ''[[CrystallineCreature crystal]]'' part [[ArtEvolution in original Ravnica block]], although the casual dress and architecture of the Conclave still echoes this trope. |
| 622 | * TheEvilsOfFreeWill: As a result of combining green mana's focus on instinct over thought and white mana's focus on community over individuality, the Selesnya Conclave has come to the belief that individual personalities are one of the blights that they must cure. |
| 623 | * GardenOfEvil: Zigzagged. At first glance, the peaceful gardens and orchards of the Conclave seem paradisaical, with myriad races living in perfect harmony with each other, and with the plants and animals likewise considered part of the greater community. Get on the Worldsoul's bad side, however, and every single creature in the location will immediately turn on you and attack you with suicidal zeal, mindlessly giving their lives to either bring you down or delay you until some of the Conclave's bigger nasties - like the ElementalEmbodiment of the garden itself - can arrive to destroy you. |
| 624 | * GreenThumb: Not surprising, considering it's a green guild. |
| 625 | * HiveMind: All the members of the Conclave can hear its song in their heads. |
| 626 | * HonorableElephant: The guild is home to the majority of Ravnica's [[BeastMan loxodon]] population, and are generally of the GentleGiant persuasion. |
| 627 | * LightIsGood: To an extent. [[spoiler:Despite the guild's shady history of attempting to assimilate Ravnica into massive garden with one mind, they ultimately do not fall into Bolas' machinations, and in fact are among the first of the guilds to join the fight for Ravnica in ''War of the Spark''.]] |
| 628 | * LightIsNotGood: Notice a pattern yet? Although white and green are the stereotypically "good color" combination, Selesnya at its worst is willing to create a WorldOfSilence. |
| 629 | * MultipleHeadCase: Trostani is a three-headed dryad. |
| 630 | * TheNeedsOfTheMany: The core philosophy that both Green Mana and White Mana share is a focus on the safety and sanctity of the group rather than the individual. As a fusion of both mana types, the Conclave thoroughly believes in doing good, but defines "good" as "benefits the greater group." |
| 631 | * OurCentaursAreDifferent: Centaurs that are in this guild tend to be healers and warriors. |
| 632 | * OurElvesAreDifferent: A good portion of the guild is made out of elves. |
| 633 | * PathOfInspiration: Ostensibly; while well-intentioned, they still reduce or outright demolish individuality and are rather hypocritical about their means and goals. |
| 634 | * SelfDuplication: The Populate mechanic creates copies of creature tokens that are on the playing field. |
| 635 | * WeHaveReserves: Their rather {{hypocrit|e}}ical battle strategy is to line up lots and lots of foot soldiers and let them die to buy time to summon larger elementals. |
| 636 | * WellIntentionedExtremist: To achieve their AssimilationPlot, they brainwash, indoctrinate and murder. Why? Because they believe that this will ultimately create a utopia in which there will no longer be suffering, sorrow, or need, and to that end, whatever they do is justified. Especially since, by their own beliefs, individuality isn't anything to get excited about anyway. |
| 637 | [[/folder]] |
| 638 | |
| 639 | [[folder:Orzhov Syndicate (White and Black)]] |
| 640 | [[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/orzhov_logo.png]] |
| 641 | [[caption-width-right:220:Wealth and Eternity]] |
| 642 | ->''Enter to find wealth, security, and eternal life … for just [[BlatantLies a small price]] up front.'' |
| 643 | -->--'''[[https://scryfall.com/card/gtc/244/orzhov-guildgate Orzhov Guildgate]]''' |
| 644 | |
| 645 | ->'''Guildmaster:''' Teysa Karlov |
| 646 | ->'''Former Guildmasters:''' Obzedat Ghost Council (Parun)[[note]]Assassinated by Kaya Cassir[[/note]], Kaya Cassir[[note]]Planeswalker, usurped during Phyrexian Invation[[/note]], Tomik Vrona[[note]]Acting in Kaya Cassir's absence[[/note]] |
| 647 | |
| 648 | The [[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/playing-their-own-rules-2006-03-27-0 Orzhov Syndicate]] is what would happen if a ghost became one of those money-hungry Christian televangelists. Because it turns out that in a world of necromancy and undead spirits, you ''can'' take it with you. A "religious" organization which resembles a [[TheMafia crime family]] more than a church, they long ago abandoned the worship of anything other than wealth. The Orzhov control virtually all the banks and finances in the city, and they are ruthless in their collection of debts, which can extend even into the debtor's afterlife: their ability [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Haunt Haunt]] is emblematic of the permanent, inescapable nature of the guild's contracts, repeating a card's effect a second time when the creature the card haunts dies. The Syndicate disdains flashy demonstrations of force or power, preferring to slowly bleed their enemies dry. |
| 649 | |
| 650 | In ''Gatecrash'', the Orzhov Syndicate has gained the [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Extort Extort]] keyword, which allows the Orzhov player to, whenever they cast a spell, pay one black or white mana for each permanent with Extort they control to steal that much life from each opponent, strengthening themselves while slowly whittling everybody else down. |
| 651 | |
| 652 | In ''Ravnica Allegiance'', the Syndicate's ghostly elements take prominence once again, with the [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Afterlife Afterlife]] mechanic - which allows a creature to produce Spirit tokens when it dies. ([[ActuallyFourMooks Creatures with an afterlife rating of more than 1 generally represent multiple individual creatures to justify the number.]]) |
| 653 | ---- |
| 654 | * AndIMustScream: Failure to [[LoanShark pay off an Orzhov debt]] before one's death results in the [[OurGhostsAreDifferent soul]] being [[YourSoulIsMine held as]] [[MadeASlave a thrall]] while the body is [[HumanResources repurposed]] in the creation of [[FleshGolem thrulls]]. On paper, they're merely [[BlackmailIsSuchAnUglyWord indentured servants]], but service usually [[TimeAbyss lasts as long as the (frequently also undead) slavemaster wants it to]]. |
| 655 | * BatOutOfHell: Bats are often used as fighters by the Orzhov. |
| 656 | * BlackEyesOfEvil: Orzhov's angels have given in to feelings of cynicism, resulting in pitch black eyes. |
| 657 | * ChurchOfHappyology: Membership in the church revolves heavily around paying "tithes", which is natural given it's a basically one giant crime family. |
| 658 | * CorruptChurch: It's a church on the outside, a crime organization on the inside. |
| 659 | * DamageOverTime: The core strategy of the Orzhov is the "bleeder" deck, which tries to slow down the game and slowly drain the opponent's life away with cards like [[https://scryfall.com/card/gpt/100/agent-of-masks Agent of Masks]], [[https://scryfall.com/card/gpt/131/souls-of-the-faultless Souls of the Faultless]], [[https://scryfall.com/card/gpt/125/pillory-of-the-sleepless Pillory of the Sleepless]], [[https://scryfall.com/card/gpt/102/blind-hunter Blind Hunter]], and of course, ''Gatecrash''[='=]s Extort mechanic. |
| 660 | * DarkIsNotEvil: Plays both this and LightIsNotGood, with the main organization being assholes but with some members like Teysa Karlov being more decent people. Of course, given the nature of the guild, LightIsGood and DarkIsEvil are also present. |
| 661 | ** With [[spoiler:Kaya]] now the Guildmaster and their coup resulting in the forgiveness of debts held by spirits, the meta has doubled down on this trope. |
| 662 | * FleshGolem: One of the guild's signature creatures are thrulls, unthinking golems made out of flesh that carry out tasks such as fighting and giving messages for the guild's higher-ups. |
| 663 | * LifeDrain: White is the master of gaining life; black is the master of taking life. Thus, Orzhov is the master of the Lifelink mechanic, as well as other ways to take others' life. |
| 664 | * TheMafia: Undernearth their religious coating, they're ''the'' face of organized crime in Ravnica. |
| 665 | * MalevolentMaskedMen: The thrulls of Orzhov wear faceplates that resemble golden masks. |
| 666 | * MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily: Some thrulls have leech-like jaws. |
| 667 | * MyRulesAreNotYourRules: On Ravnica post-Dragon's Maze, the word of the Living Guildpact is law. [[spoiler:The Obzedat has a chamber exempted from the Guildpact's rules, as Teysa discovers in her attempt to overthrow the Obzedat.]] [[spoiler:It doesn't save them from ''Kaya.'']] |
| 668 | * OurGhostsAreDifferent: The Orzhov had a council of ghosts as its leading body. |
| 669 | * OurGargoylesRock: Orzhov gargoyles are carved out of [[SiliconBasedLife living stone]], an incredibly painful process that leaves them [[HellIsThatNoise screaming continuously]] for the rest of their existence |
| 670 | * ReadTheFinePrint: As expected from TheMafia. See [[https://scryfall.com/card/gtc/161/executioners-swing Executioner's Swing]] and [[https://scryfall.com/card/gtc/220/immortal-servitude Immortal Servitude]]. |
| 671 | * ReligionOfEvil: The organization that comes closest to it on Ravnica. |
| 672 | * SinisterMinister: Good luck finding one who doesn't look evil. |
| 673 | * SoulPower: Both White and Black are the colors most associated with spirits, so naturally these guys have complete mastery in this type of magic. It's led by ghosts, for crying out loud! |
| 674 | * TeethClenchedTeamwork: A prominent conflict within the guild's philosophy is that it cannot fully integrate White's need for community with Black's compulsion to look out for itself at the expense of others. It ''tries'' to compromise by way of smaller, insular groups, the members of which view the clique as an extension of themselves. But in practice, all that means is that each member wants desperately to rid themselves of the group but can't risk the immediate loss of their power base that would entail, so while the member continues to work towards the group's motivations, nobody actually ''trusts'' anyone. |
| 675 | [[/folder]] |
| 676 | |
| 677 | [[folder:Izzet League (Blue and Red)]] |
| 678 | [[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/izzet_logo.png]] |
| 679 | [[caption-width-right:220:Intellect and Ingenuity]] |
| 680 | ->''Enter those with the vision to create and the daring to release their creations.'' |
| 681 | -->--'''[[https://scryfall.com/card/rtr/242/izzet-guildgate Izzet Guildgate]]''' |
| 682 | |
| 683 | ->'''Guildmaster:''' Ral Zarek |
| 684 | ->'''Former Guildmasters:''' Niv-Mizzet (Parun)[[note]]Assassinated by Nicol Bolas, resurrected as Living Guildpact[[/note]] |
| 685 | |
| 686 | The [[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/creative-differences-2006-02-27-0 Izzet]] are the most respected scientists and researchers of Ravnica. Most importantly, they are responsible for maintaining and upgrading Ravnica's public utilities such as plumbing, power and heating. They even have exclusive dominion over something called meta-magic (the study of how magic itself functions). Through this, they have the ability called [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Replicate Replicate]], which allows an instant or sorcery spell to be copied over as many times as a player can pay the mana cost. This combines Blue's knowledge of magic and Red's love for instant gratification, to the point that they usually, to quote a particular [=YouTuber=], "discover what they invent ''after'' inventing it". The guild's leader and founder is the [[InsufferableGenius vain but brilliant]] Niv-Mizzet the Firemind, who used to be "the last dragon", a status which is no longer true by the time of ''Return to Ravnica''. |
| 687 | |
| 688 | In ''Return to Ravnica'', the Izzet League gained the ability to [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Overload Overload]] its spells, combining Blue's knowledge and Red's impulsiveness to transform a single-targeted spell into a powerful, widespread one. |
| 689 | |
| 690 | In ''Guilds of Ravnica'', their meta-magic skills are now represented by the [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Jump-start Jump-start]] mechanic, which lets them discard cards in hand to recast previously cast spells. |
| 691 | ---- |
| 692 | * AbsentMindedProfessor: This is the Izzet League's hat, as this archetype represents the most common flaw of the Red/Blue Mana fusion; extremely sharp focus ''when'' focused, but erratic and unpredictable in one's abilities ''to'' focus. |
| 693 | * CloudCuckoolander: All other Guilds have a goal (even Gruul). The Izzet do crazy stuff [[https://scryfall.com/card/gpt/107/cerebral-vortex like this]] ''to themselves'' [[ItAmusedMe for the lulz]] (and [[ForScience science]]). |
| 694 | * CuriosityIsACrapshoot: Like the Simic, the Izzet fell in large numbers to Phyrexian corruption during Elesh Norn's invasion of Ravnica due to sheer curiosity about the [[TheCorruption Oil]]. Unlike the Simic, though, both their current and former Guildmasters are ''very'' active in the defense of the plane. |
| 695 | * DiscardAndDraw: Izzet has a few cards that let the player draw cards from the deck but then have to discard cards. However, some of their cards actually utilize the discarded cards, such as [[https://scryfall.com/card/grn/178/hypothesizzle Hypothesizzle]] (which converts the discarded card into 4 damage) and the Jump-start mechanic (discarding a card with Jump-start to jump-start another spell actually allows you to cast that card later anyway). |
| 696 | * ElementalEmbodiment: It's no surprise that several of their creatures are elementals, being a [[PlayingWithFire red]] and [[MakingASplash blue]] guild. They also created Weirds, a breed of elementals that [[ElementalFusion combine]] [[OxymoronicBeing two opposing elements]] (example: fire and ice) together into one creature. |
| 697 | * ExactWords: Mentioned in [[https://scryfall.com/card/gpt/132/stitch-in-time Stitch in Time]]. |
| 698 | -->Quyzl was told by his mentor to "make more time" for his studies. |
| 699 | * FaceHeelTurn: [[spoiler:Not that they were anything other than mad scientists, but Niv-Mizzet has left and now Bolas controls the guild via [[TheMole Ral]]. Ral, it turns out [[HeelFaceRevolvingDoor had only pretended to betray Niv]] and had been working for him the entire time.]] |
| 700 | %%* ForScience: Their main motivation. |
| 701 | * GadgeteerGenius: They are the primary source of Ravnica's SchizoTech, creating everything from [[SpiderTank Spider Tanks]] to [[LightningGun Lightning Guns]]. |
| 702 | * GameplayAndStorySegregation: {{Downplayed}}. Various designers have bemoaned the fact that, despite acting as TheEngineer for nearly all Ravnican technology, the Izzet don't actually have many cards that interact with artifacts. |
| 703 | * TheHeavy: In the ''Return to Ravnica'' set, much of the new hostilities are kicked off by the Izzet retreating from the public eye after redirecting all their efforts towards the search for... ''something''. Not even the Dimir seem to know exactly what. This, naturally, makes all of the other guilds nervous. It is eventually revealed in the final set of the block that this was in order to locate the Implicit Maze and eventually end all the guild struggles on Ravnica by having one member of each guild walk it, ensuring that whoever wins will gain the power to secure one guild's dominance over the others once and for all, which is far preferable to all-out war. |
| 704 | * InsufferableGenius: Niv-Mizzet is known for his incredible knowledge as well as for his unquenchable vanity. |
| 705 | * ItGetsEasier: Leighbet recall his experience euthanizing lab rat back in his day working in lab |
| 706 | * MadScientist: The Azorius has several words to justify this view. |
| 707 | -->'''[[https://scryfall.com/card/rav/135/mindmoil Mindmoil]]''': ''"My criticism of the Izzet is that their impulse for learning seems too much like impulse and too little like learning." --Trigori, Azorius senator''\ |
| 708 | '''[[https://scryfall.com/card/rtr/103/pyroconvergence Pyroconvergence]]''': ''The Izzet are an equation that turns lunacy into explosions. --Leonos, Azorius arbiter'' |
| 709 | * MathematiciansAnswer: Implied by the Izzet [[https://scryfall.com/card/dgm/141/izzet-cluestone cluestones]]: "It holds within it an unsolvable riddle. A creative answer yields an invitation to the guild." |
| 710 | * OurMonstersAreWeird: The weirds' forms range from [[https://scryfall.com/card/rtr/211/blistercoil-weird vaguely-humanoid blobs of mercury]], to [[https://scryfall.com/card/dgm/71/fluxcharger winged djinn made out of electricity]]. |
| 711 | * OxymoronicBeing: They specialize in creating weirds, entities that combine two opposing elements -- typically a Red element such as fire, lightning or rock and Blue one such as ice, mist or water -- into a single creature. |
| 712 | %%* ProudScholarRace: They're [[MadScientist much more eccentric than most cases]], but still count.%%How? |
| 713 | * ShockAndAwe: Some of their sorcery cards are electric-based attacks. |
| 714 | * SpaceMaster: Their forays into cutting edge magical research often take this form, giving them a near monopoly on time- and space-based magic. |
| 715 | * {{Steampunk}}: As a combination of blue's association with [[MakingASplash water]] and red's association with [[PlayingWithFire fire]], the Izzet often make use of steam-powered machinery; See [[https://scryfall.com/card/rtr/247/steam-vents Steam Vents]] and [[https://scryfall.com/card/gpt/159/izzet-boilerworks Izzet Boilerworks]]. |
| 716 | * SquishyWizard: Izzet sorcery and instant spells can turn the tables on the opponent when the Overload cost is payed, but most Izzet creatures are physically weak and are made with spells in mind. |
| 717 | * StuffBlowingUp: The Izzet care about two things: blowing shit up and [[Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick arcane power]]. |
| 718 | * TimTaylorTechnology: Their Overload mechanic in ''Return to Ravnica'' lets them put more mana into a spell to make it hit ''everything''. |
| 719 | [[/folder]] |
| 720 | |
| 721 | [[folder:Golgari Swarm (Black and Green)]] |
| 722 | [[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/golgari_logo_5.png]] |
| 723 | [[caption-width-right:220:Decay and Rebirth]] |
| 724 | ->''Enter those who are starving and sick. You are welcome among the Swarm when the rest of Ravnica rejects you.'' |
| 725 | -->--'''[[https://scryfall.com/card/rtr/239/golgari-guildgate Golgari Guildgate]]''' |
| 726 | |
| 727 | ->'''Guildmaster:''' None |
| 728 | ->'''Former Guildmasters:''' Svogthir (Parun)[[note]]Overthrown by Sisters of Stone Death[[/note]], Sisters of Stone Death[[note]]Overthrown by Savra and Svogthir[[/note]], Savra[[note]]Assassinated by Szadek of the Dimir[[/note]], Jarad vod Savo[[note]]Imprisoned and assassinated by Vraska[[/note]], Vraska[[note]]Agend of Bolas. Compleated and presumed dead[[/note]] |
| 729 | |
| 730 | The Green-Black [[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/life-and-death-2005-10-24-0 Golgari Swarm]] has embraced the dichotomy of life and death. Life and death are a natural cycle, and the Golgari see {{Necromancy}} as an extension of that cycle. The graveyard is just another resource to the Golgari, a philosophy which manifests itself in their guild mechanic, [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Dredge Dredge]], which allows them to harvest and re-use spells from their graveyard while simultaneously cultivating that graveyard with new spells to dredge. Of course, their role in Ravnican society is more than just raising zombies: they're also farmers who supply most of the food for the rest of the plane. ([[MundaneUtility And they always have very good fertilizer.]]) |
| 731 | |
| 732 | Its second guild mechanic from ''Return to Ravnica'' is [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Scavenge Scavenge]], which allows the Golgari to combine Black's tendency for using the dead as a resource with Green's love of empowering the living. |
| 733 | |
| 734 | In ''Guilds of Ravnica'', their mechanic is ''[[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Undergrowth Undergrowth]]'', which indicates cards that scale in power in proportion to the number of creatures in your graveyard. |
| 735 | ---- |
| 736 | * TheBeastmaster: The Golgari's affinity for Green Mana allows them to tame and control various kinds of animals, which helps them in their farming. Whilst they are most famous for their affinity for [[PestController insects, spiders, rats and other vermin]], any kind of urban creature is feasible; the Golgari Brownscale, for example, is a lizard the size of a rhino. |
| 737 | * BigCreepyCrawlies: Insects the size of carts or the size of small houses are common Golgari creatures. The Kraul are a sapient race of humanoid bugs who tower over normal humanoids. |
| 738 | * BizarreAlienReproduction: Gravid kraul females reproduce by attacking giant invertebrates and implanting their fertilized eggs into the body of this "surrogate". They then leave the surrogate and never go back; some mind-altering chemical injected in the process compels the surrogate to find a safe place and defend itself as the larval kraul hatch and cannibalize its flesh. By the time they pupate, they are fully cognizant, and the surrogate has been reduced to an empty husk of exoskeleton, which the kraul nymphs will use as a shelter. To add to the weirdness, graul think of their dead surrogate as their Mother, and treat its corpse with love and affection, even though they do know that they are not biologically related -- but their biological mother has no interaction with them after laying their eggs. Downplayed, in that whilst the kraul's methodology is odd given their sapient status, it actually is quite common in nature. Its also not mentioned in the original trilogy, implying that only some kraul castes do this. |
| 739 | * CannibalismSuperpower: [[InvertedTrope Inverted]]. Golgari with "scavenge" advertise the ability to have their corpses to essentially bestow as many +1/+1 counters as they had power points when sent to the graveyard to any creature who has basically eaten their dead body. |
| 740 | * ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: Guild leadership in the Golgari is always contested. |
| 741 | * TheCorruptible: The Golgari had their Guildmaster, Vraska, compleated before Norn's invasion had even begun. When Vraska led the invasion of her home plane, she began in the Undercity and converted her own kind first -- compleated Golgari came swarming up from the Undercity and laid waste to the surface. |
| 742 | * DarkIsNotEvil: While in the story the Golgari suffered from ChronicBackstabbingDisorder among their leaders and Savra actually was a pawn in Szadek's plans, the truth is that most Golgari were merely the Ravnican analogue of farmers and were otherwise barely involved with the larger conflict. Eventually, their leader was replaced by a much more decent person, Jarad, who reformed the group's ways alongside his son (albeit with some level of racial bias). Also, they're stated to feed the poor and outcasts and help them. |
| 743 | * FaceHeelTurn: When Vraska is at the helm, and on the wrong end of the HeelFaceRevolvingDoor. They fall under Bolas's influence during the ''Guilds of Ravnica'' storyline, and are the Guild most thoroughly compromised by Phyrexian influence during ''March of the Machine''. Naturally, five years after the Invasion they're still branded as pariahs and have yet to fully rebuild. |
| 744 | * FantasticRacism: As stated in Vraska's backstories on the Wizards of the Coast website, the Golgari may be the bottom of the barrel as far as the rest of Ravnica is concerned, but even they have an internal pecking order. Most notably, gorgons are treated as {{Living Weapon}}s, expected to shut up and stay away from people until they're needed to fight, and the Kraul (necromancer-priest bug-people) are treated as little better than the non-sapient bugs they herd by Jarad's elves. This leads to the Kraul's plans to rebel against Jarad in the story [[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-story/pride-kraul-2017-05-31 Pride of the Kraul]]. In fact, this has been implied as far back as the original trilogy, with the Gorgon Sisters taking over due to gorgons being second class citizens; [[FullCircleRevolution under their rule, Devkarin elves became the oppressed, and they went right back to oppressing gorgons when Jarad dethroned the Gorgon Sisters]]. |
| 745 | * GardenOfEvil: The rot-farms and dripping jungles; sinister places full of FungusHumongous, parasites, zombies, bugs and other Golgari-spawned nasties. |
| 746 | * GreenThumb: Due to their connection with Green Mana, Golgari mages often have the ability to magically manipulate plants, from encouraging them to grow at insanely fast paces to transforming them into [[WhenTreesAttack aggressive predators in their own right]]. However, due to their connection to Black Mana, Golgari tend to eschew the traditional form of this magic for a specialist variant based on [[FesteringFungus fungi, lichen, mold, and moss]]. |
| 747 | * HumanResources: Their ability [[CannibalismSuperpower "Scav]][[LetsMeetTheMeat enge"]], as [[ImpliedTrope implied]] in their official [[http://youtu.be/kZ0YMjIsRWU R&D video.]] |
| 748 | -->'''Brady Dommermuth:''' The Golgari have an important function in Ravnica. They take care of the dead, in their own way, and they provide food for the poor. [[FridgeHorror What is]] [[HumanResources that food]] [[{{Squick}} made out of?]] [[YouDoNotWantToKnow That's not to ask. That's Golgari business!]] |
| 749 | * LetsMeetTheMeat: The fact that many Golgari creatures fully know they will be eaten in time is brought up in various sources. |
| 750 | * MakeThemRot: Given the Golgari's magic is a mixture of Black and Green, they have a natural affinity for inducing rapid decay in others. They even have an associated spell called Abrupt Decay, which requires a mixture of Green and Black Mana to be cast. |
| 751 | * MeaningfulName: Golgari is derived from Golgotha. |
| 752 | * {{Medusa}}: Ravnican medusae - or "gorgons", in the game's parlance - are exclusively found amongst the ranks of the Golgari. Little is known about them, save for a few hints presented here and there, and mostly deduced from the backstory of Vraska, a Ravnican gorgon planeswalker. Unlike the [[SnakePeople serpent-bodied]] gorgons on other planes, such as Theros, Ravnican gorgons are scaly-skinned bipeds, who have [[PrehensileHair at least partially prehensile manes of tentacle-like serpent tails]] instead of the traditional hissing snakes heads. They're also subject to FantasticRacism, as their petrifying gaze (which they can turn on and off, but which functions indiscriminately when on) manages to intimidate even other Golgari, so they're treated as little more than living weapons. |
| 753 | * MushroomMan: The Golgari make heavy use of Saprolings, humanoid fungi that they cultivate from corpses. They even have a card based on this practice, called ''Golgari Germination''. |
| 754 | * {{Necromancer}}: The Golgari combines green's control of life with black's control of death, making a guild full of these. Because of this unusual combination of Mana, Golgari zombies are often animated by infestations of vermin or fungus instead of simply being animated by magical energy itself. |
| 755 | * NightOfTheLivingMooks: They're not the only faction that makes use of zombies, but they get a particular focus on it. |
| 756 | * OurLichesAreDifferent: Some of them are liches of the corpse-possession variety, including the guild's leader Jarad. |
| 757 | * OurZombiesAreDifferent: Let's see... [[PlantPerson plant Zombies]]... [[BigCreepyCrawlies insect zombies]]... [[OurElvesAreDifferent Elf zombies]]... the list doesn't end there... |
| 758 | * SwampsAreEvil: In a sense, at least. Being that Ravnica is a CityPlanet, it doesn't have "real" swamps. However, the Golari tend to live in the {{Absurdly Spacious Sewer}}s of Ravnica, where they exploit the abundant moisture to grow dense mats of fungus, mold, moss and lichen, which gives them a very "swampy" feel. Why do they do this? Because they're a Black Mana-aligned Guild, and swamps are associated with Black Mana. The trope is zigzagged in that these "rot farms" are a vital resource for food and pharmaceuticals to the denizens of Ravnica. |
| 759 | * WeHaveReserves: Understandable when your combatants consist of [[NightOfTheLivingMooks zombies]], [[BigCreepyCrawlies bugs]], and [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs zombie bugs]]. |
| 760 | [[/folder]] |
| 761 | |
| 762 | [[folder:Boros Legion (Red and White)]] |
| 763 | [[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/boros_logo.png]] |
| 764 | [[caption-width-right:220:Peace and Justice]] |
| 765 | ->''Enter with merciful hearts. Exit with battle cries.'' |
| 766 | -->--'''[[https://scryfall.com/card/gtc/239/boros-guildgate Boros Guildgate]]''' |
| 767 | |
| 768 | ->'''Guildmaster:''' Aurelia |
| 769 | ->'''Former Guildmasters:''' Razia (Parun)[[note]]Assassinated by Szadek, acting on behalf of Augustine IV[[/note]], Lannos Nodov (Acting)[[note]]Dead in the destruction of Prahv[[/note]], Feather[[note]]Deposed and imprisoned by Aurelia, eventually freed[[/note]] |
| 770 | |
| 771 | The [[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/disorderly-conduct-2005-12-05-0 Boros Legion]] are responsible for much of the law enforcement in Ravnica. They combine White's desire for order with Red's passion, creating a passion for justice as they see it. Being of the law, they have to go by the rule "if it affects one, it affects all". And so, like modern law, they will arrest and execute anything they see as a danger, and empower anything they see as helpful (regardless of what that being is fighting for). This is reflected in their guild mechanic, [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Radiance Radiance]]. Through it, the guild can affect everyone/everything that shares a color with the target. |
| 772 | |
| 773 | In ''Gatecrash'', under the guidance of their new guild leader, the Boros Legion takes a much more active role on the battlefield with a focus on amassing huge armies to defend their ideals, which translates to their new mechanic ''[[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Battalion Battalion]]'', which rewards you whenever the creature with Battalion and at least two other creatures attack. |
| 774 | |
| 775 | In ''Guilds of Ravnica'', the Boros have a focus on training up their members to prepare for whatever may come. This is represented by the [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Mentor Mentor]] mechanic, which allows creatures with Mentor to put +1/+1 counters on creatures with lesser power. |
| 776 | ---- |
| 777 | * AlwaysGetsHisMan: Agrus Kos will do anything it takes to bring someone to justice. |
| 778 | * AntiHero: Even if they're a guild of WellIntentionedExtremist [[KnightTemplar Knight Templars]], they're the closest Ravnica has to a police force/military, and their goals in mind is to protect the weak from being exploited. The fact that there are frequent in-group conflicts doesn't help their image. |
| 779 | * BadassArmy: The Boros Legion is the closest thing to an official military in Ravnica, and as such will stand up to anything the plane throws at them, from demon-worshipping murderous thrill-seekers to zombie plagues to giant monsters to ravening tribes of cannibals. |
| 780 | * CowboyCop: The CowboyCop to the Azorius's ByTheBookCop. |
| 781 | * TheCavalryArrivesLate: PlayedForDrama at the end of ''Ravnica'', when [[spoiler:the Dimir and Golgari team up to try and take over the world]], Sunhome and all the angels [[spoiler:mysteriously disappear]], and aren't seen again until [[spoiler:the end of ''Guildpact''. [[ColonyDrop Crashing into Prahv]]]]. |
| 782 | * HeWhoFightsMonsters: Their means to prevent guild warfare? [[StartXToStopX Creating guild warfare]]. |
| 783 | * HeroWithAnFInGood: See the above, although this is a bit [[DownplayedTrope downplayed by comparison]]. The Boros are generally ''very'' good at their job at preventing civilian casualties, but it's their [[KnightTemplar extreme passion for justice]] that makes them appear little better than the rest of the Guilds, regardless of their [[WellIntentionedExtremist well-founded ideals]]. |
| 784 | * KnightTemplar: Among other things, they are excessively violent and several members in the original trilogy are perfectly fine with the idea of a {{police state}}. As a matter of fact, they're the most notorious of the White-aligned guilds in this regard; due to Red's [[TheMcCoy driven sense of emotions]], this ends up leading to Boros being [[TautologicalTemplar excessively antagonistic and self-righteous about their ideals]]. Their new leader Aurelia has even gone overboard enough [[EvenEvilHasStandards that some angels within the Boros have decided to quit and go aid the Gateless instead]]. |
| 785 | * LightEmUp: Less common than the [[PlayingWithFire Fire]] and [[ShockAndAwe Lightning]], but light-based attack spells are part of the Boros' arsenal of offensive magic. |
| 786 | * LightIsNotGood: The guild is half-white, but can overtly be violent and hypocritical. While it's debatable whether or not they're the ''worst'' example of the White-aligned guilds on a moral basis (since the Orzhov Syndicate exists and all), they're easily the most notorious examples of [[KnightTemplar Knight Templars]] in the setting. At least as of the ''Return To Ravnica'' set, their new incarnation are basically an army of vigilante ''mercenaries'', and dubbed by the Azorius as "their worst enemy" when they're in bad terms. |
| 787 | * MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch: Feather, one of the protagonists from the original Ravnica trilogy, was pretty much the most compassionate and sane angel "on-screen". She was briefly the leader of the guild, before being overthrown by the far more warlike Aurelia. It goes without saying that [[GreyAndGreyMorality all guilds have good apples amongst the bad ones]], but like any other guild, the Boros Legion is more than capable of producing genuine heroes like [[KnightInSourArmor Agrus Kos]], who represents the best of the Legion's ideals. |
| 788 | * OurAngelsAreDifferent: The Boros's angels act as the guild's leaders and are always hungry for warfare in the name of justice. |
| 789 | * PlayingWithFire: A lot of their cards have a fire motif. |
| 790 | * PoliceBrutality: On their absolute worst days, they're little better than thugs dressed as police officers. Many FantasticRacism statements from the original trilogy come from them, and lately their own internal prejudices have been revealed. |
| 791 | * ShockAndAwe: Several of the more iconic Boros burn spells marry White's love of light and Red's long-standing dominion over lightning. |
| 792 | * WellIntentionedExtremist: For all their religious zealotry and militant leaders, they still hold true to the core philosophy of any Red/White deck (Nobilis of War aside): the upholding of justice and fairness. Many Legionnaires genuinely want to keep the peace and protect the weak from the strong, even if they do a [[HeroWithAnFInGood pretty]] [[KnightTemplar poor]] [[HeWhoFightsMonsters job]] in conveying those ideals. |
| 793 | [[/folder]] |
| 794 | |
| 795 | [[folder:Simic Combine (Green and Blue)]] |
| 796 | [[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/simic_logo.png]] |
| 797 | [[caption-width-right:220:Evolution and Growth]] |
| 798 | ->''Enter and comprehend the perfection of orchestrated life.'' |
| 799 | -->--'''[[https://scryfall.com/card/gtc/246/simic-guildgate Simic Guildgate]]''' |
| 800 | |
| 801 | ->'''Guildmaster:''' Vannifar |
| 802 | ->'''Former Guildmasters:''' Simic (Parun), Momir Vig[[note]]Killed by Agrus Kos, possessing Savra[[/note]], Zegana[[note]]Stepped down voluntarily[[/note]] |
| 803 | |
| 804 | The [[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/improving-upon-nature-2006-05-22 Simic Combine]] Blue's lust for knowledge and "improvement" and Green's love of life. Like other Green-based guilds, they focus on creatures more than anything else. Their ability, [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Graft Graft]], allows strength and life to be moved to any incoming creature. Once a creature is complete, they are sellable to the mass market. But, like the Izzet, they aren't satisfied with just one; or rather with just one type. So, they continue to create new and "improved" versions of nature. |
| 805 | |
| 806 | As of ''Return to Ravnica'', the Simic returned to their druidic roots, embracing long lost holism. This also translates to their new keyword: Members of the Simic Combine can now [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Evolve Evolve]], strengthening themselves whenever another stronger ally enters the battlefield, demonstrating Green's love of life instead of Blue's detachment, like their old mechanic did. |
| 807 | |
| 808 | Their ''Ravnica Allegiance'' mechanic, [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Adapt Adapt]], is a tweak on the "monstrosity" mechanic from Theros block, allowing Simic creatures to gain +1/+1 counters - but only if they don't have any such counters on them at present. Since the Simic also have effects allowing them to remove +1/+1 counters for various effects, adapt allows them to constantly grow to fit the situation. |
| 809 | |
| 810 | On a more mundane level, the Simic Combine is also responsible for providing most of Ravnica's non-magical medicine and healthcare. |
| 811 | ---- |
| 812 | * AdaptiveAbility: Their Evolve mechanic makes their creatures grow stronger when a stronger creature is played. |
| 813 | * BadBoss: As the flavor text for the [[https://scryfall.com/card/dis/92/simic-initiate Simic Initiate]] card reveals, standard Simic Combine procedure is to use rookie members of the guild as test-subjects for BioAugmentation experiments. The lucky ones come away with useful new mutations or grafts. The unlucky ones dissolve into protoplasmic slime. |
| 814 | -->''Simic initiates begin their training as experimental subjects. Failures are flushed to the undersewers.'' |
| 815 | * BioAugmentation: This is the Combine's stock in trade. The Combine's experiments in this field vary from physically grafting organs or limbs to creatures, to the magical equivalent of [[LegoGenetics gene-splicing]]. Cytoplasts, an alchemical slime that absorbs traits from a "donor" creature and can then infuse those traits to a host-organism it is subsequently bonded to, was their biggest breakthrough in this field prior to the ''Return to Ravnica'' storyline; Mormir Vig tried to forcibly apply cytoplasts to Ravnica's population, which made it impossible for them to legitimately sell it afterwards. |
| 816 | * BlobMonster: They do like their Oozes. Momir Vig's ultimate creation, Experiment Kraj, was a gargantuan oozelike mutant that could leech away the abilities of other creatures. |
| 817 | * CloserToEarth: Than the Izzet. [[MadScientist This isn't saying much.]] Now truly straight as of RTR. |
| 818 | * {{Druid}}: The Simic Combine began in the ancient past as holistic healers who sought to understand the natural order and gently guide life to its potential. Along the way, they lost track of this and became {{Mad Scientist}}s of the EvilutionaryBiologist variety. After ''Return to Ravnica'', they have officially rediscovered their roots and are trying to return to their holistic practices, whilst still maintaining their love of bio-tinkering. |
| 819 | * EvilutionaryBiologist: This is the basic hat of the Simic Combine as a whole; being biology-focused {{Mad Scientist}}s, they are obsessed with tinkering with life, constantly mutating existing creatures and breeding new ones from scratch. |
| 820 | ** Momir Vig, the former Guildmaster of the Simic Combine, whose experiments include attempting to breed a strain of cytoplast that would force BioAugmentation upon Ravnica's population, attempting to exterminate said population to recreate all life from scratch on a "blank canvas", and creating Project Kraj. |
| 821 | * GardenOfEvil: The "nature preservers" of the Combine may look innocent, even ideal at first glance. But they're biological testbeds used as part of their evolutionary experiments. The nicest ones are merely full of whatever bio-engineered horrors the local Combine branch has created. The nastiest ones are [[HungryJungle hellish ecosystems-in-miniature]], where everything is preying on everything else in a constant Darwinian free-for-all. |
| 822 | * GoneHorriblyRight: Project Kraj, a BlobMonster {{Kaiju}} created by Momir Vig, which forcibly absorbed every single cytoplast on Ravnica (maiming and/or killing everyone hosting one in the process) and leveled the Simic Combine's guildhall. The trope was mocked in the card's flavor text: ''"Of course it will grow beyond control—it was designed to choose its own evolution."'' |
| 823 | * GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke: Cytoplasts, which are magical gene-splicing lumps of alchemically engineered slime, and which were rejected by Ravnicans as a whole. Played with in that, prior to Project Kraj's rampage, the biggest issue was more aesthetic than moral - Ravnicans objected to having lumps of shiny blue-green slime permanently stuck to their bodies. After the cytoplast-based Project Kraj went on the rampage, nobody trusts cytoplasts anymore. |
| 824 | * GreenThumb: They mostly focus on flesh and blood creatures but have this power as well, though it isn't used too often in combat and is mostly utilized in terraforming the land to create environments and habitats their creations can thrive in. Gameplay-wise this ability tends to be manifested as drawing additional cards or playing extra lands (Vigean Intuition, Urban Evolution) or even animating the land itself (Hydroform). |
| 825 | * JustThinkOfThePotential: As opposed to Izzet's ForScience. |
| 826 | * MadDoctor: Officially, they're Ravnica's medical guild, but they often use their doctoring as an excuse to experiment on their patients. |
| 827 | * MadScientist: They're the "obsessive" kind, instead of the Izzet's "[[PlayedForLaughs amiable madman]]" kind. |
| 828 | * MagikarpPower: Their Evolve mechanic in a nutshell. Creatures with this ability often feature high costs and poor or average stats... initially. Once they start getting counters and making use of their more powerful abilities, they become some of the strongest creatures in the game. Probably the best example is their [[https://scryfall.com/card/gtc/160/elusive-krasis Elusive Krasis]], which deals its damage to the opponent directly and hits the field with a whopping ZERO attack points. Unevolved, it's a near worthless meat shield, but if the player can protect and nurture it for a few turns, it can quickly become the card that ends the game. |
| 829 | * MakeMyMonsterGrow: The Evolve ability makes smaller creatures bigger as stronger creatures are played. |
| 830 | * MakingASplash: Some of their cards have a water flavor. |
| 831 | * TheMedic: Their original purpose, which they re-embraced as of RTR. |
| 832 | * MightyGlacier: Between small creatures with Evolve and mid-range fatties, Simic's strategy focuses on the late game in which it can lock down the game with an array of strong creatures and spells, but may not always live long enough to reach it. |
| 833 | * MixAndMatchCritters: The new Simic love these more than ever (the old Simic employed bizarre unnatural mutants), although they claim to use "[[PureIsNotGood purer]]" methods to make them now. [[https://scryfall.com/card/rna/206/sharktocrab It rises to laughable extremes in Ravnica Allegiance.]] |
| 834 | * NiceMeanAndInbetween: The three Guildmasters that have led the Simic since its introduction fall pretty neatly along these lines: |
| 835 | ** [[GreaterScopeVillain Momir]] [[SocialDarwinist Vig]] was the Mean, what with being an [[OmnicidalManiac Omnicidal]] EvilutionaryBiologist and all. |
| 836 | ** [[RedeemingReplacement Zeganna]] was the Nice, being a ReasonableAuthorityFigure who is the only leader they've had that spends more time working on [[NatureHero conservation]] than PlayingWithSyringes. |
| 837 | ** [[BlobMonster Vannifar]] is the In-Between. She doesn't have a real EvilPlan like Vig, but she is motivated primarily ForScience and seems to be broadly taking the Guild in a more [[SuperSoldier militant]] direction. |
| 838 | * OrganicTechnology: The Simic Combine does make use of this to some extent, but precisely how much is unclear. The only card really focusing on this aspect is the [[https://scryfall.com/card/dis/103/assault-zeppelid Assault Zeppelid]], a dirigible-like vehicle made from a lizard. |
| 839 | * OurElvesAreDifferent: Simic elves are more gaunt and alien than the standard model, and focus on transmutation magic combined with biomancy. |
| 840 | * OurMermaidsAreDifferent: The driving faction of the new Simic. Also, those merfolk were thought to be extinct until only recently. |
| 841 | * PeopleJars: These can be seen in the background of several of their cards. Eventually, a card called Krasis Incubation was released that allowed the players themselves to do this by removing their creature from the battle for a bit in exchange for a small permanent power boost. |
| 842 | * ProfessorGuineaPig: The Simic Combine's members readily experiment on themselves, just as they do on their patients; interesting grafts, splices or mutations can be the key to advancing in the Combine's ranks. There are even cards dedicated to this side of them, such as the [[https://scryfall.com/card/dgm/54/beetleform-mage Beetleform Mage]] and the [[https://scryfall.com/card/dis/107/coiling-oracle Coiling Oracle]]. |
| 843 | * TheQuisling: Many Simic become enamored with the Oil during the Phyrexian invasion, and willingly side with the invaders. |
| 844 | * RedeemingReplacement: The guild's previous leader, Momir Vig, was an obsessive madman who wanted to cleanse Ravnica of life and start over. His replacement, Zegana, has restored respect to the Combine by rejecting Vig's excesses and bringing a respect for nature and balance back to the Simic. |
| 845 | * ScaryDogmaticAliens: The new Simic give off this vibe, although the "aliens" are merfolk from the deep. |
| 846 | * TheSocialDarwinist: In the original Ravnica set, Simic's leaders weren't above creating plagues to kill all life on Ravnica, save for those who are rich enough to buy vaccines that they made, to start life on the plane all over. |
| 847 | * UnwantedAssistance: Cytoplasts were not popular outside of the guild; whilst they could grant their hosts all kinds of benefits, such as increased intelligence or strength, they also left their hosts looking disfigured, as cytoplasts were visibly distinct as either tumor-like growths of shiny blue-green meat on the host's body, or a slick layer of blue-green slime. Momir Vig was so convinced that cytoplasts were the key to the future of Ravnica's biological evolution that he attempted to develop a strain of cytoplasts that would seek out hosts and apply itself by force. |
| 848 | * WellIntentionedExtremist: They will make your life better (for a certain value thereof) whether you like it or not. |
| 849 | [[/folder]] |
| 850 | |
| 851 | !Clans of Tarkir |
| 852 | |
| 853 | [[folder:Abzan Houses (White, with Black and Green)]] |
| 854 | [[quoteright:124:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/clan_symbol_abzan_61.png]] |
| 855 | [[caption-width-right:124:Enduring Scales]] |
| 856 | |
| 857 | Worshipping the endurance of the dragons of old, the symbol of the Abzan Houses is that of the scale of the dragon. Their keyword is [[http://magiccards.info/query?q=o%3AOutlast&v=card&s=cname Outlast]], which not only lets them slowly buff up their creatures, but also support each other. In Fate Reforged, Outlast is replaced by [[http://magiccards.info/query?q=o%3ABolster&v=card&s=cname Bolster]], which simulates the Abzan bringing up their weakest. |
| 858 | ---- |
| 859 | * BaseOnWheels: They have a few mobile fortresses drawn by extremely large elephants. |
| 860 | * BirdPeople: Abzan aven tend to resemble vultures. |
| 861 | * BodyMotifs: Represented by the scale of the dragon. |
| 862 | * TheClan: It's the importance of family that makes them more than just another bunch of heavily armed assholes. |
| 863 | * FantasyCounterpartCulture: Based aesthetically on Persia and Mongolia. |
| 864 | * HappilyAdopted: "Krumar" are adopted from conquered territories and raised as members of the Abzan families. Most of those shown on cards seem quite happy about it. In particular, this is how orcs make it into the Abzan. |
| 865 | * OurOrcsAreDifferent: Orcs are part of the Abzan armies. They're Black and focus on offensive skills, but are still completely loyal to their family. |
| 866 | * MightyGlacier: Their "Outlast" mechanic gradually makes their creatures bigger and stronger as the game goes on. |
| 867 | * ThickerThanWater: Family is the most important thing to the Abzan... |
| 868 | * TrueCompanions: ...but that family need not be exclusively based upon biological relationships. |
| 869 | --->''The bonds of family cross the boundaries of race.'' - flavour text, Incremental Growth |
| 870 | * WarElephants: Their intro pack rare, for example. |
| 871 | * WolfMan: The ainok dog-men are also part of the Abzan armies. |
| 872 | [[/folder]] |
| 873 | |
| 874 | [[folder:Jeskai Way (Blue, with Red and White)]] |
| 875 | [[quoteright:124:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/clan_symbol_jeskai_3924.png]] |
| 876 | [[caption-width-right:124:Cunning Eyes]] |
| 877 | |
| 878 | Worshipping the cunning of the dragons of old, the symbol of the Jeskai Way is that of the eye of the dragon. Their keyword is [[http://magiccards.info/query?q=o%3AProwess&v=card&s=cname Prowess]], which supports using spells and creatures in tandem. |
| 879 | ---- |
| 880 | * BareFistedMonk: As well as an array of more eccentrically equipped monks. |
| 881 | * BirdPeople: With a falcon theme, in contrast to the vulturelike Azban aven. |
| 882 | * BodyMotifs: Represented by the eye of the dragon. |
| 883 | * EnlightenmentSuperpowers: What their entire culture is centered around. |
| 884 | * FantasyCounterpartCulture: Based on Shaolin monks, Tibetan monks, and [[WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender air nomads]]. |
| 885 | * HorseOfADifferentColour: For the Jeskai, "Mantis style" means riding a literal giant mantis. |
| 886 | * KiManipulation[=/=]SupernaturalMartialArts: The Jeskai revere the five colors of mana as metaphysical elemental forces called "fires", which seem to function much in the same way as Ki. |
| 887 | * TheTrickster: Enforced by their theme. Their mechanic even gives their creatures a boost for resolving a noncreature spell, making combat tricks that little bit trickier. Played straight in their lore with the Kaisham Wanderers school of enlightenment, which encourages the playing of harmless tricks on outsiders with the intent of making them question their beliefs or learn to enjoy the absurdity in life. |
| 888 | * UnstoppableRage: Fighters with mastery of the bloodfire (red mana) are able to channel their TranquilFury into this, effectively becoming [[NighInvulnerability invincible]] [[TheBerserker killing machines]]. |
| 889 | [[/folder]] |
| 890 | |
| 891 | [[folder:Sultai Brood (Black, with Green and Blue)]] |
| 892 | [[quoteright:124:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/clan_symbol_sultai_3550.png]] |
| 893 | [[caption-width-right:124:Ruthless Fangs]] |
| 894 | |
| 895 | Worshipping the ruthlessness of the dragons of old, the symbol of the Sultai Brood is that of the fang of the dragon. Their keyword is [[http://magiccards.info/query?q=o%3ADelve&v=card&s=cname Delve]], which makes their spells easier to cast at a cost of exiling cards from their graveyard. |
| 896 | ---- |
| 897 | * BodyMotifs: They're represented by the fang of the dragon. |
| 898 | * CatFolk: The Rakshasa, demons resembling humanoid tigers, are closely tied to the Sultai. |
| 899 | * DealWithTheDevil: Again, the rakshasa. |
| 900 | * TheEmpire: If they're not already this, they certainly imagine themselves making all of Tarkir into this with themselves at the helm. |
| 901 | * FantasticRacism: The [[SnakePeople naga]] do ''not'' think highly of their human subjects, and generally make up the bulk of the upper class. It's suggested it's fueled by envy of [[WasOnceAMan the humanity they lost long ago]]. |
| 902 | * FantasyCounterpartCulture: Based on Indonesia and the Thai Empire. Additionally, their architecture heavily resembles that of the Khmer Empire's Angkor. |
| 903 | * MightyGlacier: Oddly for a Black-focused clan, Sultai encourages and features creatures with high toughness. The most obvious example being Meandering Towershell, a 5/9 that is so slow it takes a turn or more to attack. |
| 904 | * OurDemonsAreDifferent: The Sultai frequently make deals with the Rakshasa, a race of tiger demons. |
| 905 | * OurZombiesAreDifferent: The Sultai are necromancers that use zombies for everything, including ''furniture''. |
| 906 | * PowerBornOfMadness: Their use of the Delve mechanic means that a strong Sultai mage will have heavy reliance on self-mill, which mechanically represents driving yourself crazy in order to fuel things with the bits of shattered sanity you left behind. |
| 907 | * SharkPool: Or rather, crocodile pits that the frequently use for executions. |
| 908 | * SnakePeople: Have a number of these, called naga, in their ranks. They sharply fill the upper class as well. |
| 909 | [[/folder]] |
| 910 | |
| 911 | [[folder:Mardu Horde (Red, with White and Black)]] |
| 912 | [[quoteright:150:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/clan_symbol_mardu_844.png]] |
| 913 | [[caption-width-right:150:Swift Wings]] |
| 914 | |
| 915 | Worshipping the speed of the dragons of old, the symbol of the Mardu horde is that of the wing of the dragon. Their keyword is [[http://magiccards.info/query?q=o%3ARaid&v=card&s=cname Raid]], which encourages always being on the attack by giving you bonuses for playing cards after you attacked. In Fate Reforged, Raid is replaced by [[http://magiccards.info/query?q=o%3ADash&v=card&s=cname Dash]], which allows you to quickly play creatures, have them attack, and then return to your hand. |
| 916 | ---- |
| 917 | * AttackAttackAttack: Their "Raid" mechanic rewards attacking with creatures as much as possible. |
| 918 | * BloodKnight: They live for war. |
| 919 | * BlowYouAway: Mardu shamans often have power over the harsh winds of the steppe. |
| 920 | * BodyMotifs: Represented by the wing of the dragon. |
| 921 | * BornInTheSaddle: There ''are'' Mardu infantry, but the clan is best known for its deadly cavalry. |
| 922 | * DeathOrGloryAttack: The Mardu leave nothing in reserve. |
| 923 | * TheDragonslayer: The most effective at killing Tarkir's dragons back while Tarkir ''had'' dragons. Of course, the three colours with the most kill spells are black, red, and white, so it was probably inevitable. |
| 924 | * FantasyCounterpartCulture: The most stereotypically Mongolian of the clans. |
| 925 | * HitAndRunTactics: The "Dash" mechanic from ''Fate Reforged'' in a nutshell. |
| 926 | * OurGoblinsAreDifferent: They're treated like bright dogs, basically. |
| 927 | * LukeNounverber: "War names" are taken by Mardu who come of age after their first big battle. Zurgo's war name, for example, is Helmsmasher. Subverted with Alesha, Who Smiles at Death, whose original chosen name was in fact "Alesha". The second part was given to her much later, after she had already become a prominent member of the Mardu. |
| 928 | * MageMarksman: "Dakla" is an art based on a mixture of archery and shamanic magic. |
| 929 | * MakeMeWannaShout: Mardu war shrieks are also used to channel magic. |
| 930 | * OurOrcsAreDifferent: Have quite a few orcs in their ranks, most notably their leader, Zurgo Helmsmasher. |
| 931 | * OurOgresAreHungrier: They have sharp things lashed to their hands, and are occasionally set on fire. |
| 932 | * ProudWarriorRaceGuy: While they do have a civilian class, they lack the infrastructure to provide for themselves without war. They also abide by an admittedly brutal code of honour. |
| 933 | * YoungAndInCharge: Alesha is only 19 when named Khan. |
| 934 | [[/folder]] |
| 935 | |
| 936 | [[folder:Temur Frontier (Green, with Blue and Red)]] |
| 937 | [[quoteright:124:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/clan_symbol_temur_7564.png]] |
| 938 | [[caption-width-right:124:Savage Claws]] |
| 939 | |
| 940 | Worshipping the savagery of the dragons of old, the symbol of the Temur Frontier is that of the claw of the dragon. Their keyword is [[http://magiccards.info/query?q=o%3AFerocious&v=card&s=cname Ferocious]], which gives bonuses if you control creatures with over 4 power. |
| 941 | ---- |
| 942 | * ArchetypalCharacter: Temur adopt clan roles that [[{{Pun}} bear]] constant names from generation to generation, and view it as a way of getting in touch with their ancestors. |
| 943 | * BearsAreBadNews: The one-ton bears of the Temur tundra are definitely bad news to the Temurs' enemies... |
| 944 | * BearyFriendly: ... but are this to the Temur themselves. |
| 945 | * TheBerserker: "Awakening the bear" causes warriors to fly into a killing rage where they can no longer tell friend from foe. |
| 946 | * BiggerIsBetter: Their mechanic is based on an altered version of Naya's high-power-matters theme. |
| 947 | * BodyMotifs: Represented by the claw of the dragon. |
| 948 | * FantasyCounterpartCulture: Of Mongolia and Siberian peoples. |
| 949 | * FluffyTamer: Bear Companion, for example, brings along a bear that weighs a ton when he enters the field. |
| 950 | * HadToBeSharp: Their home is so cold and unpleasant that they have to be tough, or they die. |
| 951 | * AnIcePerson: The heart of Temur magic lies in ice and their ancestors. |
| 952 | * MentalFusion: The "Wide Whisper" is a psychic link shared between all of the Temur shamans, allowing for each Temur tribe to communicate with each other across huge distances. |
| 953 | * NiceJobBreakingItHeroine: [[spoiler:Yasova Dragonclaw is responsible for present-day Tarkir, as she helped lead Nicol Bolas to Ugin to end the Dragons' reign on Tarkir.]] |
| 954 | * OnlySaneMan: Chianul, Who Whispers Twice seems to be the only person on Tarkir who realises how incredibly screwed up Tarkir has become since the Clans drove the dragons to extinction. |
| 955 | * PantheraAwesome: The Temur from 1000 years often fought alongside Sabertooth cats. |
| 956 | * ThickerThanWater: Second only to the Abzan in the importance of family. |
| 957 | * UnPerson: Those who perform particularly heinous actions are drowned in swift streams, sending their bodies off to be eaten by wild animals, and their names are not spoken. |
| 958 | [[/folder]] |
| 959 | |
| 960 | !Broods of Tarkir |
| 961 | |
| 962 | After Sarkhan's altering of Tarkir's past, the Clans of Tarkir surrendered to the Dragon Lords. Clans and Khans are no more, having been absorbed into the Dragon Broods. |
| 963 | |
| 964 | [[folder:Dromoka's Brood (White and Green)]] |
| 965 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dromoka.jpg]] |
| 966 | [[caption-width-right:350:Members of a her family]] |
| 967 | |
| 968 | The descendants of the Abzan clan in the new timeline, having dropped their necromancy and surrendered to their dragonlord Dromoka. Their keyword is Bolster, which carried over from Fate Reforged. |
| 969 | ---- |
| 970 | * ALighterShadeOfBlack: Make no mistake, being within the clan isn't particularly fun when the dragonlord is a KnightTemplar. However, it's still the most safe and merciful of all Tarkir clans, and one of the most equal (aside, ironically, from the Silumgar). |
| 971 | * BlackMagic: Dromoka has strictly banned the practice of the old black-aligned necromancy, but some of the clan still practice it in secret. |
| 972 | * BodyMotifs: The scale of the dragon. |
| 973 | * CrapsaccharineWorld: The Dromoka clan looks superficially like a rather nice community, but according to the planeswalker's guide, it's still a meritocracy where your lack of use is rewarded by being the broodlord's lunch. A more down-to-earth but depressing Green/White bad system than the Selesnya's [[TheEvilsOfFreeWill assimilation thing]]. |
| 974 | * TheCorpsIsMother: Dromoka tend to think of themselves as children of their clan. |
| 975 | * DishingOutDirt: A number of Dromoka spells manipulate sand into weapons or shields. |
| 976 | * EmancipatedChild: Each Dromoka community collectively raises all its children. |
| 977 | * FantasticRacism: Played with: the Dromoka are specifically noted to promote the value and accomplishment of ''all'' the clan members, draconic and humanoid alike. However, they no longer allow for the practice of [[HappilyAdopted krumar]], and as such have wrestled out orcs from the clan. |
| 978 | * LightEmUp: Dromoka dragons have a ray of searing light for their breath weapon. |
| 979 | * LightIsGood: Played with. On the one hand, it's the safest of the Tarkir broods. On the other, it's still a blatant dictatorship. |
| 980 | * MightyGlacier: Most Dromoka magic is focused around healing and protection, though they have a nice line in searing light and sandstorms. |
| 981 | * NighInvulnerable: Dromoka dragons are famous for their incredibly resilient scales. |
| 982 | * TheSocialDarwinist: They're generally rather merciful, but Dromoka herself eats whatever "weak link" she can find. |
| 983 | [[/folder]] |
| 984 | |
| 985 | [[folder:Ojutai's Brood (Blue and White)]] |
| 986 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ojutai.jpg]] |
| 987 | [[caption-width-right:350:Students of his word]] |
| 988 | |
| 989 | The descendants of the Jeskai clan on the new timeline, having been forcibly taken over by Ojutai and remade into a fanatical cult. Their keyword is Rebound. |
| 990 | ---- |
| 991 | * AnIcePerson: Ojutai dragons breath freezing gases. |
| 992 | * BirdPeople: Aven are part of Ojultai's followers and often serve as dragonspeakers, the dragons' personal translators. |
| 993 | * BodyMotifs: The eye of the dragon. |
| 994 | * FantasticRacism: Ojutai dragons don't regard mortal lives at all, harshly punishing them for minimal infractions and getting away with murdering them if they want to. |
| 995 | * FantasyCounterpartCulture: Much like the Jeskai they displaced, their practices take heavy cues from Tibetan and Shaolin monasticism. |
| 996 | * KungFuWizard: Ojultai's followers use both martial arts and magic. |
| 997 | * LightIsNotGood: They're partly White, but still a quite oppressive, elitistic faction. |
| 998 | * {{Reincarnation}}: They believe that particularly enlightened mortals are reborn as dragons. |
| 999 | * RenownedSelectiveMentor: Ojutai dragons occaisonally tutor mortals who have been proven especially talented. The most able become dragonspeakers, who act as translators to other humanoids. |
| 1000 | * TheTheocracy: Officially, the dragons do not rule the clan. They simply offer guidance and since dragons are the most wise, powerful and oldest beings on Tarkir, humanoids are only right to turn to them to become enlightened and eventually be reborn as dragons themselves. |
| 1001 | [[/folder]] |
| 1002 | |
| 1003 | [[folder:Silumgar's Brood (Black and Blue)]] |
| 1004 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/silumgar.jpg]] |
| 1005 | [[caption-width-right:350:Scavengers for his hoard.]] |
| 1006 | |
| 1007 | The descendants of the Sultai on the new timeline, once Tasigur gave over the clan to Silumgar. Their keyword is Exploit, which gives you bonuses when you sacrifice a creature. |
| 1008 | ---- |
| 1009 | * BodyMotifs: The fang of the dragon. |
| 1010 | * DarkIsEvil: They're one of the most evil clans (the other being the Atarka), and primarily Black-aligned. |
| 1011 | * DoWellButNotPerfect: The key to survival in Silumgar's Brood. Members must strike a delicate balance of securing power within the brood without gaining so much that Silumgar deems them a threat to his rule. |
| 1012 | * PoisonIsAcid: The poisonous breath of the Silumgar dragons is often described as corrosive or acidic. |
| 1013 | * PoisonousPerson: Silumgar dragons exhale clouds of poisonous gas. |
| 1014 | * SnakePeople: Nagas are among Silumgar's followers. However, they don't hold much influence within the clan. |
| 1015 | * VillainHasAPoint: Despite the clan's heinous and amoral tendencies, Silumgar's Brood recognizes people by their talent rather than their race -- as such, it's the only brood in Tarkir where humans may rule over dragons. |
| 1016 | [[/folder]] |
| 1017 | |
| 1018 | [[folder:Kolaghan's Brood (Red and Black)]] |
| 1019 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kalaghan.jpg]] |
| 1020 | [[caption-width-right:350:Soldiers of her conquest]] |
| 1021 | |
| 1022 | The descendants of the Mardu on the new timeline after Alesha decided to follow Kolaghan. They gave up their sense of order and community, going from a ruthless but honourable horde into murderous, cannibalistic fools. Their keyword is Dash, which carried over from Fate Reforged. |
| 1023 | ---- |
| 1024 | * AxCrazy: The members of the Kolaghan clan feel what they call the "crave", an irresistible compulsion to attack something -- including fellow Kolaghan, if nothing else is available. |
| 1025 | * BloodKnight: Kolaghan will fight anything that happens to be in their way. This includes fellow clan-members. |
| 1026 | * BodyMotifs: The wing of the dragon. |
| 1027 | * HitAndRunTactics: The Dash keyword, which allows creatures to attack swiftly then return to the hand. |
| 1028 | * ImAHumanitarian: The "blood-chins", a particularly psychotic subset of the Kolaghan notable for their practice of cannibalism. |
| 1029 | * ShockAndAwe: Kolaghan dragons can breath lightning bolts. |
| 1030 | * SuperSpeed: Kolaghan and her dragons are ''fast''. |
| 1031 | [[/folder]] |
| 1032 | |
| 1033 | [[folder:Atarka's Brood (Green and Red)]] |
| 1034 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/atarka.png]] |
| 1035 | [[caption-width-right:350:Hunters for her hunger]] |
| 1036 | |
| 1037 | The descendants of the Temur in the new timeline, after Yasova gave up and decided to strike a deal with Atarka. Now arguably the most dangerous of the clans, they conquer lands to feed their ravenous dragonlord, lest they themselves be eaten. Their keyword is Formidable, which gives you bonuses when the combined power of your creatures is 8 or greater. |
| 1038 | ---- |
| 1039 | * BanOnMagic: Atarka fears the elemental power of the Temur shamans and eats them if she can find them. Luckily, a few of the youngest shamans were able to disguise their powers, and shamanism has been practiced in secrecy ever since. |
| 1040 | * BodyMotifs: The claw of the dragon. |
| 1041 | * ConditionedToAcceptHorror: Lampshaded on ''Planeswalker's Guide to Dragons Of Tarkir Part 2'': anyone in the same situation as them (i.e. being worth nothing but Atarka's personal feeders, [[JerkAss with her definitely going out of her way to remind them of that]]) would be driven to despair, but they take it in stride. |
| 1042 | * HadToBeSharp: Even more so than their Temur counterparts; only those who are worth more to Atarka alive are spared from becoming her next meal. |
| 1043 | * {{Irony}}: They're primarily Green aligned, yet they're the biggest threat to Tarkir's wildlife and nature. |
| 1044 | * TheSocialDarwinist: Only the strongest survive, lest Atarka eat them. This applies even to dragons of her own brood, as she did not punish Surrak for killing and eating one of those dragons when it became weak. |
| 1045 | [[/folder]] |
| 1046 | |
| 1047 | |
| 1048 | !Ixalan Factions |
| 1049 | |
| 1050 | In the world (and continent[[note]]Both the continent and the world are called Ixalan. There are other landmasses within the plane, however, such as Torrezon and an unnamed polar landmass.[[/note]]) of Ixalan, four factions vie for control of the Immortal Sun, a mystical artifact. |
| 1051 | ---- |
| 1052 | * CoolVsAwesome: A four-side battle royale between pirates, shaman merfolks, vampire conquistadores and dinosaur-riding {{Mayincatec}} warriors. |
| 1053 | * GrayAndGreyMorality: Almost all of the factions have legitimate reasons to battle each other. The Sun Empire wants to recover its former glory and be left alone, the vampires want eternal life for everyone, and the pirates want to take back their stolen homes, while the merfolk want to prevent everyone else from abusing their power. |
| 1054 | |
| 1055 | [[folder:The Sun Empire (White, Green and Red)]] |
| 1056 | The dinosaur-riding humans native to Ixalan, the Sun Empire (or one of their many precursor civilizations), originally built the lost city of Orazca. Though driven out of the jungles by their ancient rivals, the River Heralds, the Sun Empire has been recently emboldened by a string of military victories that sparked a cultural renaissance and have struck out in search of Orazca once more. They are aligned with red, green and white mana. |
| 1057 | ---- |
| 1058 | * TheBeastmaster: Dinosaur exclusive, strengthening their connection to these animals and sending them to battle. |
| 1059 | * GoldAndWhiteAreDivine: One of the theories as to why they do not use gold in their decorations. As the metal of the Sun, it is too sacred for normal use. |
| 1060 | * LightIsNotGood: More sympathetic than the vampires and pirates, but they're still an expansionist faction of their own and will gladly feed their enemies to ravenous bird-reptiles. They took Ixalan from the merfolk, and are at war with them as well. [[spoiler:And now their emperor wants to TakeOverTheWorld...]] |
| 1061 | * MagicalNativeAmerican: Downplayed. They are foremostly portrayed as realistic human beings, but their connection with dinosaurs and their sun-based spirituality are treated as rather pure compared to the religion of the vampires and the arcane magic of the pirates. |
| 1062 | * {{Mayincatec}}: [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed]]. The Sun Empire is mostly Aztec-inspired, in contrast to the more Maya-esque River Heralds, but it still has some Inca influences (such as mountainside terrace farms and their very Quechua-sounding capital of Pachatupa). |
| 1063 | * ThePowerOfTheSun: They worship the plane's sun in three aspects: |
| 1064 | ** White Kinjalli is the Wakening Sun, who created humans from clay and baked them in the sun's warmth. |
| 1065 | ** Red Tilonalli is the Burning Sun, associated with ferocity, fire, and passion. |
| 1066 | ** Green Ixalli is the Verdant Sun, who fosters growth in all things. |
| 1067 | * TerrorDactyl: Wild pterons are known for snatching people (and vampires) away like giant birds of prey. |
| 1068 | [[/folder]] |
| 1069 | |
| 1070 | [[folder:The Brazen Coalition (Red, Black and Blue)]] |
| 1071 | Refugees displaced from Torrezon after the Legion of Dusk's brutal conquest of the continent, the Brazen Coalition has survived on the sea for countless generations on a combination of wit, pluck and ruthlessness. They consist of humans, orcs, goblins and sirens. The recent rush to find Orazca has given the pirates that make up the Coalition a renewed focus: finding the Immortal Sun may be the key to fighting the Legion of Dusk and returning to their homeland. They are aligned with blue, black and red mana. |
| 1072 | ---- |
| 1073 | * ActionGirl: There are plenty of female pirates in the Coalition. In fact, the closest thing the Coalition has to a singular leader is Admiral Beckett Brass, an elderly but ferocious and well-respected female pirate. |
| 1074 | * BornUnderTheSail: Even before fleeing to Ixalan, their ancestors came from a series of coastal city-states and made their living from sea trade. By the setting's present, the pirates have led an almost entirely maritime existence for more than most of them have been alive: while a few have claimed permanent island forts, most live almost exclusively on their ships as they sail on Ixalan’s seas. They don't have any leadership beyond their captains and admirals, their ships and fleets serve as the basis of their society's organization, and their only permanent settlement, High and Dry, is a CityOnTheWater made of hundreds of ships lashed to one another. |
| 1075 | * CityOnTheWater: The closest thing they have to a capital, High and Dry, is a collection of derelict ships lashed together and kept afloat. It originally grew around two ships that became hopelessly entangled after ramming into each other, with more and more ships being added to over time until it became a full-sized settlement. It usually floats off of Ixalan's northeastern coast, and serves as neutral "ground" for the pirates to meet, unwind and strike deals with each other. |
| 1076 | * DarkIsNotEvil: Of Ixalan's two Black-aligned factions, the Coalition is the more sympathetic one by a lot. They are [[PragmaticVillainy pragmatic]] survivors who follow a rough form of HonorAmongThieves and are the most likely of all the factions to offer captives the opportunity to JoinOrDie rather than just killing them. |
| 1077 | * FantasyGunControl: One of the first [[AvertedTrope Aversions]] in the 25-year history of the game. Cannons are used extensively and a couple of members are even pictured with primitive handheld firearms. |
| 1078 | * InvadingRefugees: Their ancestors originally came from a collection of city-states on the continent of Torrezon. When the Legion of Dusk's conquests reached these cities, their natives were forced to flee across the Stormwreck Sea, eventually reaching Ixalan's shores and coming in contact with the Sun Empire. It's noteworthy that, unlike the Legion, the pirates don't really want to be in Ixalan -- their main reason for seeking out the Immortal Sun is so that they can use it to gain an edge on the Legion and reclaim their old homes on Torrezon. |
| 1079 | * {{Pirate}}: Though non-pirates presumably exist on their floating capital city, High and Dry, all members of the Coalition shown thus far have been pirates. |
| 1080 | * RagtagBunchOfMisfits: They are the most racially diverse of the factions, counting humans, [[OurGoblinsAreDifferent goblins]], [[OurOrcsAreDifferent orcs]] and sirens among their numbers. As such, the planeswalkers Angrath (a minotaur) and Vraska (a gorgon) had little trouble becoming pirate captains, despite their races not being native to the plane as far as we know. |
| 1081 | * WalkThePlank: Apparently a common practice among the Brazen Coalition. It's even represented on a card. |
| 1082 | [[/folder]] |
| 1083 | |
| 1084 | [[folder:The Legion of Dusk (Black and White)]] |
| 1085 | The iron-fisted empire that controls all of the continent of Torrezon, the vampires that make up the Legion of Dusk were the original holders of the Immortal Sun, before someone (or something) took it and hid it in Orazca. Equal parts church and royal military, the Legion believes that the Immortal Sun is the key to turning their cold undeath into true immortality. They are aligned with white and black mana. |
| 1086 | ---- |
| 1087 | * ActionGirl: The legion has many female knights, like their commander Vona. |
| 1088 | * AngryGuardDog: They use enormous mastiffs to watch over camps, just like real life conquistadors did. |
| 1089 | * BlingOfWar: Golden armor with ornate fabric that doesn't suit the weather. As vampires have SuperToughness and prefer to fight at night, it's justifiable. |
| 1090 | * CreepyCatholicism: They employ many aesthetics associated with it, given they are an fantasy counterpart to the Spanish Empire, which was fiercely Catholic. |
| 1091 | * CorruptChurch: They are a religious order (well, several religious orders and a kingdom) that are run by the parasitic undead. It's ultimately revealed at the climax of the Ixalan storyline that their beliefs about vampirism's purpose have... drifted what their founder originally intended them to be. [[spoiler:When Saint Elenda is awoken, she is horrified to find out how the church has twisted her message, and sets out to force a reformation.]] |
| 1092 | * DarkIsEvil[=/=]LightIsNotGood: |
| 1093 | ** Black/White aligned and generally the least sympathetic of the four factions. Combine the legendary arrogance of Conquistador-era Spaniards with the need for blood of vampires, and you have the Legion of Dusk in a nutshell; they more than match up the atrocities of their inspiration. |
| 1094 | ** In the official storyline ''[[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-story/unbowed-part-1-2018-08-29 Unbowed]]'', we see that their civilization back in Torrezon is even worse. The non-vampire denizens of Torrezon are slaves in everything but name, living in desperate terror of being convicted of a crime and sentenced to be drained to death, reduced to selling their life's blood drop by drop as currency for their vampiric masters. The vampires themselves regard slowly torturing animals to death as the highest form of artistic entertainments. |
| 1095 | ** Both tropes are [[spoiler:inverted with [[FriendlyNeighborhoodVampire Saint Elenda]], founder of the religion, herself, however. She is a nearly completely straight JeanneDArchetype who is ''absolutely mortified'' to discover what Torrezon has become in her absence, and promptly starts leading a resistance movement.]] |
| 1096 | * DashingHispanic: They dress like conquistadors and have several Hispanic-sounding names. They are definitely an evil example since they are tough as nails and styilish yet brutal. |
| 1097 | * DoomedByCanon: The [[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-story/rivals-ixalan-magic-story-alternate-endings-2018-02-21 official alternate endings article]] reveals that, if the Legion had won control of Orazca, [[spoiler:Saint Elenda]] would have left Vona, TheButcher of Magan, to claim the city as her own... and Vona would have been promptly eaten by a monstrosaur after the other vampires had left. |
| 1098 | * TheDreadedDreadnought: One of their vessels is a massive dreadnought that utterly dwarfs the other ships next to him, possibly a reference to the ''Santísima Trinidad'', the giant Spanish warship that was reportedly the biggest beast of the Age of Sail. |
| 1099 | * {{Egopolis}}: A variant; Torrezon was originally the name of the province where the monastic order that became the Legion of Dusk originated. After seven centuries of war, they conquered the entire continent and renamed it after their original homeland. That said, the story ''[[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-story/unbowed-part-1-2018-08-29 Unbowed]]'' shows that the capital city of the vampire's kingdom is called Luneau. |
| 1100 | * FantasyCounterpartCulture: To the early Spanish Empire, spiced with the usual Spanish Black Legend tropes. |
| 1101 | * EvilColonialist: Like their real-life inspirations, they are fanatical and greedy conquerors, with the added bonus of being undead freaks. |
| 1102 | * ForeverWar: Because the vampires of the Legion are legally only allowed to feed on the "deserving", they are forced to constantly seek new opponents to wage war upon in order to have a continuous supply of blood. This is why they conquered Torrezon, and would have probably sent them to Ixalan even if they hadn't been in pursuit of the Immortal Sun. |
| 1103 | * ALighterShadeOfGrey: Inverted; the Legion of Dusk is typically portrayed as the darker shade of grey to the rest of the Ixalan factions. Alternately, you can say it's played straight in that the other factions are the lighter shade of grey to the Legion of Dusk. |
| 1104 | * NobleDemon: Zigzagged. Playing the trope straight, they view vampirism very differently than most vampires; to the Legion of Dusk, vampirism is a holy sacrifice, intended to allow one to serve the faith as an undying agent beyond the limitations of mortal life, with the need for blood being a form of martyrdom. Rather than be bloodthirsty hunters that prey on humans, they strictly drain blood from convicted criminals or other individuals they deem deserving. [[GameplayAndStoryIntegration This is reflected by having the first instances of pure White vampires in Magic history.]] The subversion comes because the vampire's morality is ''thoroughly'' questionable; beyond the fact that whether you're "deserving" is often decided by the vampires, occasionally at the moment they drain your blood, it's made clear that many vampires are in it for power alone, and their theology has shifted away from "vampirism as martyrdom" to "vampirism is an imperfect form of immortality that must be transcended through the Immortal Sun". Their culture is also arrogant and horrifically barbaric, as demonstrated in ''[[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-story/unbowed-part-1-2018-08-29 Unbowed]]''. |
| 1105 | * NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed: |
| 1106 | ** Many a vampire soldier bears a basic resemblance to stereotypicals depictions of UsefulNotes/HernanCortez and other figures from the Spanish Conquest of America. Vona and the female vampire soldiers seem also based on real life Spanish conquistadoras like María de Estrada or Beatriz Bermúdez. |
| 1107 | ** Queen Miralda the Pious is an obvious reference to [[UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs Queen Isabella the Catholic]], under which the Spanish Conquest started (the name also reminds of the Giralda of Seville, a city that was an instrumental center of navigation and trade for the era). Miralda seems to be an infinitely less humane character than Isabella, though. |
| 1108 | ** There's a female explorer surnamed Aguirre, although unlike UsefulNotes/LopeDeAguirre, she at least looks sane (for now). |
| 1109 | ** Bartolome del Presidio is a humorous reference to Creator/BartolomeDeLasCasas which also turns the character on its head -- where De las Casas was a zealous defender of the indigenous, Del Presidio is an unapologetic vampire. |
| 1110 | * OldSoldier: Some soldiers of the Legion are describen to be veterans of hundreds of years of conflicts, echoing how many conquistadors were veterans of the conquest of Granada and the endless UsefulNotes/ItalianWars. |
| 1111 | * OurVampiresAreDifferent: Gray-white in skin, [[ReligiousVampire deeply religious]], and pointy-eared, in this case. |
| 1112 | * PayEvilUntoEvil: By the end of the ''[[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-story/unbowed-part-1-2018-08-29 Unbowed]]'' storyline, the Legion's capital city of Luneau has been ravaged by a massive outbreak of dinosaurs and other beasts unleashed by the EcoTerrorist planeswalker [[Characters/MagicTheGatheringPlaneswalkersPostMending Vivien Reid]]. She did this in no small part as retaliation for the vampires' rapine attitude towards the creatures of Ixalan's wilderness, as they considered slowly torturing animals to death and stuffing them to be entertainment. |
| 1113 | * ReligiousVampire: Their entire hat. They're a theocracy that treats vampirism like a sacrament in itself. |
| 1114 | * ShoutOut: A vampire conquistador is named Clavileno, like the wooden horse featured in ''Literature/DonQuixote''. |
| 1115 | * StereotypeFlip: Typical Hollywood vampires (including [[Literature/{{Dracula}} the Count himself]]) are repelled by religious symbols and faith, especially of Catholicism. These ones are [[ReligiousVampire fanatically religious]] in the vein (pun intended) of the aggressive and devoutly Catholic Spanish conquistadors, living lives circumscribed by ritual and prayer. Most fictional vampires despise sunlight for various reasons, while these seek the Immortal Sun and use [[LightIsNotGood white-mana]] spells. |
| 1116 | * TokenEvilTeammate: It's made clear that whilst some vampires are genuinely devout, there are also plenty who see the Legion as a path to power and eternal life, or simply take pleasure in preying on those who can't stop them. The named character Vona, TheButcher of Magan, is a perfect example. |
| 1117 | * TheTragicRose: Their iconography uses both red and black roses to symbolize the price paid for their immortality. |
| 1118 | * WellIntentionedExtremist: Their campaigns of brutal conquest have all been undertaken with the end goal of creating a utopia with eternal life for all. This reflects loosely the real Spanish Empire's desire to Christianize America so they could save the natives' souls from Hell. |
| 1119 | * WhoWantsToLiveForever: Vampirism keeps them alive indefinitely, but at the cost of most of the pleasures that make life worth living. The main reason they want the Immortal Sun is because they believe it will allow them to transform their vampiric undeath into true immortality. |
| 1120 | [[/folder]] |
| 1121 | |
| 1122 | [[folder:The River Heralds (Blue and Green)]] |
| 1123 | The merfolk that live deep within the jungles of Ixalan, the River Heralds are the ancient enemies of the Sun Empire, driving them out of Orazca and onto the coasts. They lead a nomadic life in the wilderness of Ixalan and take great pains to ensure that no one discovers the true location of Orazca, not even them, as a prophecy states that its discovery will spell the end of their people. They are aligned with green and blue mana. |
| 1124 | ---- |
| 1125 | * ElementalPowers: They are consummate elementalists, adept at manipulating the natural forces of the jungle. |
| 1126 | * MagicalNativeAmerican: Full on: they are based off the depiction of the Maya as relictual, mystical shamans, and are definitely the most spiritual and magically powerful of the factions. |
| 1127 | * {{Mayincatec}}: Based on the Maya specifically, but with a name, Orazca, that evokes both Nazca and El Dorado. |
| 1128 | * OurMermaidsAreDifferent: They resemble tropical fish and have legs, a-la Zendikari merfolk. |
| 1129 | [[/folder]] |
| 1130 | |
| 1131 | !!Kaldheim |
| 1132 | [[folder:The Five Clans]] |
| 1133 | !!Omenskeers |
| 1134 | Blue-aligned nomadic explorers who sail Bretagard's seas, seeking paths to other realms. |
| 1135 | ---- |
| 1136 | * BoldExplorer: The Omenseekers spend most of their time sailing through the seas of Bretagard in a neverending quest to explore and discover, and put a great deal of effort in searching for ways to travel into and explore the other realms as well. |
| 1137 | |
| 1138 | !!Tuskeri |
| 1139 | Red-aligned fierce barbarians from the Tusk Mountains, the Tuskeri are obsessed with winning glory and honor in battle. |
| 1140 | ---- |
| 1141 | * BloodKnight: The Tuskeri are obsessed with battle and warfare, and don't need much of an excuse to go to war beyond being bored. They're extremely disorganized warriors, disregarding strategy and tactics in favor of enthusiastically throwing themselves into the thickest frays and attempting over-the-top heroics without paying much attention to what their fellows are doing. This gets them killed pretty regularly, but the Tuskeri see glorious death in battle as their highest calling in life anyway. |
| 1142 | |
| 1143 | !!Kannah |
| 1144 | A Green-aligned nomadic clan who wander the depths of the Aldergard forest, the Kannah were cursed to bring an endless winter with them whenever they leave. |
| 1145 | ---- |
| 1146 | * {{Curse}}: In the ancient past, the Kannah were cursed to forever remain trapped in the Adelgard. Ever after, Kannah expeditions who try to leave the forest are hounded by ferocious winter conditions that eventually force them to turn back. |
| 1147 | * EndlessWinter: When Kannah groups or individuals try to venture past the Adelgard, they are followed by bitter winter conditions and constant snowfall that never abate, which quickly make travel impossible and force them to head back into the woods. The site where they believe they were first cursed, the Cursed Tree at the Aldergard's edge, is covered in snow throughout the year. |
| 1148 | * RageAgainstTheHeavens: The Kannah despise the gods, both the ancient ones who first cursed them and the current ones who never bothered to ease their conditions, and anything related to them, including the Cosmos monsters. They aim to kill the Cosmos Serpent, which they believe will give them enough power to destroy the Skoti gods, end their curse, and claim Starnheim for themselves. |
| 1149 | [[/folder]] |
| 1150 | |
| 1151 | !The Five Colleges of Strixhaven |
| 1152 | On the plane of Arcavios lies the most elite magic university in the multiverse, Strixhaven. Made up of five individual colleges that each compete with their own takes on magic; each college is named after the Elder Dragon that founded it. |
| 1153 | ---- |
| 1154 | * BadassCreed: Each college has its own motto, exmplifying their philosophies. |
| 1155 | * GoodCounterpart: Each of the Elder Dragon founders of the Colleges form a mega-cycle with the Elder Dragons that rule Tarkir, forming the opposite color pairs, and as such the founders and their colleges can be considered this to the Dragonlords and their clans/broods. |
| 1156 | * OurDragonsAreDifferent: Arcavios' dragons were born from mana storms caused by two preceding planes colliding. Styling themselves guides to the "lesser" races, they founded the colleges to keep them from going into conflict. |
| 1157 | * RedOniBlueOni: Each college has two deans, each one representing one of the opposing colors the college is aligned with. |
| 1158 | * TeamMascot: Each college has its own mascot, which are used in Wizard Tower. |
| 1159 | * WizardingSchool: ''Magic''[='=]s take on one, though it's a university. Uniquely, rather than just studying magic itself, they study actual academic topics (i.e. history, mathematics), through magic. |
| 1160 | |
| 1161 | [[folder:Lorehold (Red and White)]] |
| 1162 | [[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lorehold_insignia.jpg]] |
| 1163 | [[caption-width-right:220:College of Archaeomancy]] |
| 1164 | ->"Leave no stone unturned." |
| 1165 | |
| 1166 | Lorehold is made up of passionate scholars and explorers who explore and study the past. |
| 1167 | ---- |
| 1168 | * AdventurerArchaeologist: One half of the Lorehold student body are made up of these. |
| 1169 | * CavalryOfTheDead: Their mascots are Spirits, which are represented as long-dead souls inhabiting statues that represent them. |
| 1170 | * {{Familiar}}: Lorehold students as detailed in the ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' crossover supplement for playing Strixhaven can summon an ancestral ghost to serve as this. |
| 1171 | * MilitaryMage: Not in the same way as Silverquill, but [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoplology Hoplology]] and Military Science are among their majors...that, and a number of their students like [[https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=513712 Quintorious Kand]] tend to come from [[https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=513495 military academies]]. |
| 1172 | * {{Necromancy}}: Of sorts. While they don't bring the dead back to life like Black does, their playstyle revolves heavily around the graveyard, with effects that happen when cards are removed from the graveyard, whether exiled or put in your hand. Flavorwise this is explained as manifesting spirits within effigies, using temporal magic somehow. |
| 1173 | * OrderVsChaos: A key subject for Lorehold, whose students differ on whether history should be seen as an orderly or chaotic series of events, with the deans Augusta (White, a human) and Plargg (Red, an orc) representing Order and Chaos respectively. |
| 1174 | * ThrowTheBookAtThem: They're on the Red side of the argument, but Scrollbashers and Tomewielders are known to literally bash people over the head with books whenever they're not using the words to cast really dangerous spells. |
| 1175 | * UltimateBlacksmith: They have a lot of Artificer students in their campus who use their magic to restore and/or recreate ancient artifacts they find. [[https://scryfall.com/card/c21/8/osgir-the-reconstructor?utm_source=mw_MTGWiki Osgir]] is very likely their teacher. |
| 1176 | [[/folder]] |
| 1177 | |
| 1178 | [[folder:Prismari (Blue and Red)]] |
| 1179 | [[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/prismari_insignia.jpg]] |
| 1180 | [[caption-width-right:220:College of Elemental Arts]] |
| 1181 | ->"Express yourself with the elements." |
| 1182 | |
| 1183 | Prismari mages focus on the artistic side of magic, creating art using elemental forces. |
| 1184 | ---- |
| 1185 | * ArtAttacker: Many of their elementals began life as paintings or sculptures before being infused with magic. |
| 1186 | * ElementalEmbodiment: Their college mascots are Elementals. |
| 1187 | * ElementalPowers: Their preference is for [[AnIcePerson ice]] and [[PlayingWithFire fire]]. |
| 1188 | * HarmonyVsDiscipline / TechnicianVsPerformer: Their internal argument is about the approach to art, Blue dean Uvilda (a djinn) being the Discipline and Technician, Red dean Nassari (an efreet) being the Harmony and Performer. |
| 1189 | * MadArtist: All of them are passionate artists with little regard for concepts like "safety" or "sanity". |
| 1190 | * MagicDance: Prismari teaches gesture-based magic, shaping mana through body motions and gestures. |
| 1191 | * YinYangBomb: They often combine Ice and Fire together. |
| 1192 | [[/folder]] |
| 1193 | |
| 1194 | [[folder:Quandrix (Blue and Green)]] |
| 1195 | [[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/quandrix_insignia.jpg]] |
| 1196 | [[caption-width-right:220:College of Numeromancy]] |
| 1197 | ->"Math is magic." |
| 1198 | |
| 1199 | Quandrix is made up of mathematician wizards who see math and magic as one and the same. |
| 1200 | ---- |
| 1201 | * TheEngineer: Unsurprisingly for a campus that's very centered on math magic, Engineering is among their majors. |
| 1202 | * FantasticScience: As far as Quandrix are concerned, ''math is magic''. |
| 1203 | * FormulaicMagic: They incorporate mathematics into their spellcasting. One of their students, [[https://scryfall.com/search?q=%21%22Zimone%2C+Quandrix+Prodigy%22+set%3ASTX&utm_source=mw_MTGWiki Zimone Wola]], is even the trope image. |
| 1204 | * MascotMook: They summon Fractals as their mascots, essentially math-elementals. |
| 1205 | * MotherNatureFatherScience: Green dean Kianne (an elf) is all about using magic to bring the formulas to life, while Blue dean Imbrahim (an owlin) represents the theoretical side of Quandrix. |
| 1206 | * OurMonstersAreWeird: A lot of their magic creates living fractals that are still somehow shaped exactly like animals. As a matter of fact, their mascots are ''called'' Fractals. |
| 1207 | * {{Terraforming}}: Being a Green-aligned school, it is unsurprising that Quandrix strategy revolves very heavily on land-search, allowing you to put down lands at an unprecedented rate. It is due to this reliance on lands that there are several cards that require you to have a large number of lands for them to activate their effects. |
| 1208 | [[/folder]] |
| 1209 | |
| 1210 | [[folder:Silverquill (Black and White)]] |
| 1211 | [[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/silverquill_insignia.jpg]] |
| 1212 | [[caption-width-right:220:College of Eloquence]] |
| 1213 | ->"Sharp style. Sharper wit." |
| 1214 | |
| 1215 | Silverquill specializes in verbal magic, from empowering poetry to biting arcane insults. |
| 1216 | ---- |
| 1217 | * AlphaBitch: Unsurprisingly, most examples of this trope end up here, as Silverquill creates a lot of bullies and elitists. |
| 1218 | * BadassBureaucrat: It really wouldn't be a surprise if you have a lot of lawyers coming from Silverquill, as Law is a major they offer. |
| 1219 | * BlobMonster: Silverquill's mascots are Inklings, creatures made of ink and magic. |
| 1220 | * TheBully: When your school's primary form of offense magic is hurling lethal insults at someone, being a bully is almost a requirement. One of the best examples is the creature card "Spiteful Squad" which shows a trio of Silverquill students harassing a poor first-year student and demanding them pay a toll to '''walk in that hallway'''! |
| 1221 | * DeaderThanDead: Being White-aligned, Silverquill has quite a few cards that exile cards, though these often target mono-colored cards. |
| 1222 | * {{Expy}}: Silverquill is the only college that directly parallels a [[Literature/HarryPotter Hogwarts house]], being based on the snide better-than-yous of Slytherin, though they aren't quite as antagonistic. |
| 1223 | * IntrepidReporter / ImmoralJournalist: Depends on which side of the Black/White argument they are on, but journalism is one of the majors Silverquill offers. |
| 1224 | * MascotMook: Silverquill students summon Inklings to their side, ink-elementals. |
| 1225 | * MilitaryMage: Due to having the fastest casting style via verbal magic, Silverquill is the favored college for combat magics. |
| 1226 | * RousingSpeech: They can empower others using these. |
| 1227 | * WarriorVersusSorcerer: In a way, with Black dean Embrose Lu (a human) being the Warrior, and White dean Shale Talonrook (an owlin) being the Sorceress, which reflects on their debate on whether words should be used to strike down enemies (Black) or to help allies (White). |
| 1228 | * WordsCanBreakMyBones: Their insults can ''literally'' cut you like a knife. |
| 1229 | * YinYangBomb: They have courses for specifically light and dark magic and most students use both, though they most frequently use ink magic instead. |
| 1230 | * YouFightLikeACow: How they harm opponents, literally insulting them to death. |
| 1231 | [[/folder]] |
| 1232 | |
| 1233 | [[folder:Witherbloom (Black and Green)]] |
| 1234 | [[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/witherbloom_insignia.jpg]] |
| 1235 | [[caption-width-right:220:College of Essence Studies]] |
| 1236 | ->"Get your hands dirty." |
| 1237 | |
| 1238 | Witherbloom contains nature mages capable of empowering nature… or exploiting it. |
| 1239 | ---- |
| 1240 | * {{Biomanipulation}}: The form their magic takes. |
| 1241 | * ChefOfIron: In a way, as Food Science is among the majors they offer, with teachers like Gyome the Troll chef specializing in this subject. |
| 1242 | * GreenThumb: Unsurprisingly for a campus that's affiliated with Green, quite a few of their spells manifest this way...and in fact, one of their majors is Botany. |
| 1243 | * MascotMook: Witherbloom's mascots are the Pests, ugly creatures that they mostly use as fodder to power their magic. |
| 1244 | * MagicPotion: Witherbloom teaches "component magic": potions and elixirs made out of harvested ingredients. |
| 1245 | * TheMedic: Fittingly enough for a college that focuses on life and death, Medicine and Anatomy are among the majors they offer. |
| 1246 | * LifeDeathJuxtaposition: Valentin (a vampire) is the Black dean, representing the Death side of Witherbloom, while Lisette the Green dean (a human) represents Life. |
| 1247 | [[/folder]] |
| 1248 | |
| 1249 | !Crime Families of New Capenna |
| 1250 | |
| 1251 | * CrimeConcealingHobby: Each of the five criminal families has plausible deniability for their crimes: the Brokers are a law firm (...that makes [[DealWithTheDevil demonic contracts]]), the Obscura are a detective agency (...that uses information to extort), the Maestros are art afficionados and museum keepers (...who also think murder is art), the Riveteers are construction and maintenance (...'accidents' may happen), and the Cabaretti are the entertainment and celebrities (...who are not above extortion, keeping politicians in their pockets, and intending to use a little girl as a sacrifice for the greater good). In practice, it's an open secret, and few people are actually fooled by their upstanding occupations. |
| 1252 | * FantasyCharacterClasses: The crime families of Capenna were descendants of former fantasy classes that existed prior to the plane's destruction [[spoiler:in the hands of phyrexians]]. Their specialities were also perverted versions of their former functionalities. |
| 1253 | ** The Brokers were formerly Paladins who protect Capenna, but unlike their ancestors they strongarm people into [[DealWithTheDevil signing contracts that turn them into sleeper agents]]. |
| 1254 | ** The Carbaretti were a Druidic faith who held nature festivals, but since that nature no longer exists their festivals evolved into hedonistic parties. |
| 1255 | ** The Maestros are former Nobles and artists who became [[MadArtist mad artists]] running the plane's MurderInc. |
| 1256 | ** The Riveteers are former artisans or blacksmiths and continue to perform this function in addition to forming street gangs since the plane's fall. |
| 1257 | ** The Obscura are former mages and wizards who now use their magic for surveillance, deception and blackmail. |
| 1258 | * EvilVersusEvil: While the extent of the evil may vary (the Riveteers probably being the relatively ''least'' wicked faction), all five families have more than a little blood on their hands. |
| 1259 | * OurDemonsAreDifferent: Each family is led by a member of another species infused with demonic powers granted to them by the original demon families of the plane. |
| 1260 | * VillainSong: Each one has a song on the official soundtrack for New Capenna, each written as an attempt to lure in new members (or maybe [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall make the player pick their decks?]]) |
| 1261 | |
| 1262 | [[folder:The Brokers (White, with Green and Blue)]] |
| 1263 | [[quoteright:150:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/brokers_logo.png]] |
| 1264 | [[caption-width-right:150:]] |
| 1265 | |
| 1266 | The self-proclaimed "Law and Order" of the City, the Brokers run a defense racket; whenever there is an accident, they arrive, strongarming people to sign contracts that ''force'' them to do the family's dirty work. Lately, they've been amassing a large amount of favors to cash in as they prepare for an upcoming war against an unknown foe. They are led by aven demon Falco Spara from the Nido Sanctuary. |
| 1267 | |
| 1268 | Their mechanic is [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Shield_counter Shield Counter]], which grants a one time prevention for either damage or destruction. |
| 1269 | ---- |
| 1270 | * AmoralAttorney: They’re lawyers and not very good people, just like everyone else on [[CrapsackWorld New Capenna]]. |
| 1271 | * BadassBureaucrat: As said before, they’re basically a law firm, and they're in a world of EvilVersusEvil, but they're not afraid to throw down. |
| 1272 | * BarrierWarrior: Their agents can cast shields to protect themselves and others, a holdover from when the clan was a legion of paladins. This manifests in gameplay as Shield Counters. |
| 1273 | * DealWithTheDevil: Their speciality, being a demonic law firm. Whatever benefits there are pale in comparison with what they get: a brainwashed sleeper agent. |
| 1274 | * LightIsNotGood: They are aligned with Green and White mana and are former Paladins, but they're a demonic law firm who not only makes you sign [[DealWithTheDevil deals with the devil]], but actually erases the memories of said deal, resulting in thousands of sleeper agents across New Capenna waiting to be deployed. |
| 1275 | * LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe: Their signature Shield Counters block one instance of damage or "destroy" abilities, after which they are removed, sort of like a single-use Indestructible. Effects such as Exiling and bouncing still work against creatures with them, however. |
| 1276 | * VillainSong: [[https://youtu.be/6zZIxM_Kxxg Deal You Can't Refuse]], [[AnOfferYouCantRefuse whose title]] [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin explains their recruitment methods pretty well]] |
| 1277 | ->''Make you a deal you can't refuse'' |
| 1278 | ->''Alone or safe with us, I'll let you choose'' |
| 1279 | ->''Make you a deal you can't refuse'' |
| 1280 | ->''So tell me what you've got to lose'' |
| 1281 | |
| 1282 | [[/folder]] |
| 1283 | |
| 1284 | [[folder:The Cabaretti (Green, with Red and White)]] |
| 1285 | [[quoteright:150:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cabaretti_logo.png]] |
| 1286 | [[caption-width-right:150:]] |
| 1287 | |
| 1288 | The partiers of the families, the Cabaretti are all about putting on a show in a semi-neutral space where the groups can intermingle. They operate of the Mezzio and are led by Jetmir, a leonin demon. |
| 1289 | |
| 1290 | Their mechanic is [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Alliance Alliance]], which grants you an effect when a creature enters your side of the battlefield. |
| 1291 | ---- |
| 1292 | * BitchInSheepsClothing: Their hat basically. They're warm, affectionate, fun loving... all masks to deeply ruthless people. |
| 1293 | * CatFolk: Most of their high-ranked members are feline, including their boss Jetmir, his right-hand woman Phabine, and the EvilDiva Kitt Kanto - all falling pretty squarely into CatsAreMean. |
| 1294 | * {{Druid}}: During the Kingdom Era, they were a druidic fellowship who held frequent nature festivals designed to connect their followers to the land. Of course, nowadays, with said nature essentially lost [[spoiler:due to the Phyrexian invasion]] their parties evolved into extravagant, bloated and hedonistic displays of glitz and excess instead. |
| 1295 | * EvilDiva: Kitt Kanto, '''[[RedBaron Mayhem Diva]]''' - a feline songstress whose voice apparently inspires people to violence. |
| 1296 | * LightIsNotGood: They're Green and White and they are former druids, but they are not above extorsion and imprisoning Giada to make Halo for them. |
| 1297 | * ObfuscatingStupidity: They purposefully cultivate an outward image of being nothing more than hard-partying hedonists both as a public front and to make the other four families not take them seriously, when in truth they are also exceptionally powerful mages. |
| 1298 | * VillainSong: [[https://youtu.be/6pP93HHiV0Y Join Us]], in which they present themselves as the ones who control the social ladder of the city and can fufill all your wishes due to their connections. |
| 1299 | ->''Join us at the top'' |
| 1300 | ->''Running the city streets'' |
| 1301 | ->''Nobody else has got'' |
| 1302 | ->''Got that thing thing you need'' |
| 1303 | ->''Join us at the top'' |
| 1304 | ->''Running the city's streets'' |
| 1305 | ->''Join us at the top'' |
| 1306 | ->''Join the family'' |
| 1307 | ->''That's right'' |
| 1308 | * WhiteAndRedAndEerieAllOver: They are aligned with white and red mana and pretty evil. A few do wear matching colors to boot (though green seems to be slightly favoured more). |
| 1309 | * ZergRush: With their Alliance mechanic, they are incentivized to fill up the board, they also have many effects that can create weak creatures or empower them. Best exemplified by their leader Jetmir, who empowers his troops in increments depending on the number of creatures on your side of the board, at his most powerful, he can grant up to +3 power, vigilance, [[ArmorPiercingAttack trample]] '''and [[SpamAttack double strike]]''' to your entire army. |
| 1310 | [[/folder]] |
| 1311 | |
| 1312 | [[folder:The Maestros (Black, with Blue and Red)]] |
| 1313 | [[quoteright:150:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/maestros_logo.png]] |
| 1314 | [[caption-width-right:150:]] |
| 1315 | The elite assassins of the city. They operate out of Park Heights and are led by Lord Xander, a vampire demon. |
| 1316 | |
| 1317 | Their mechanic is [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Casualty Casualty]], which allows you to copy your spell if you sacrifice a creature with power equal to or greater than what the mechanic calls for. |
| 1318 | ---- |
| 1319 | * DarkIsNotEvil: Played with. They are assassins and proud of that, but their POV characters are shown to be very nuanced and sympathetic, plus their love of art is genuine. |
| 1320 | * EvilCounterpart: In a sense, to Prismari College. The Maestros contain both of their colors, but also add black. So while they share a lot of themes, the Maestros are a decidedly darker take on an "artwork-based" faction. |
| 1321 | * MadArtist: Anhelo the Painter, a vampire assassin who creates deranged art from the remains of his victims. |
| 1322 | -->''Every work of art is a hit.'' |
| 1323 | * MenacingMuseum: The Headquarters is "The Museum," an archive of the plane's past curated by Xander himself. |
| 1324 | * MurderInc: The primary assassin's guild on a mafia-themed plane, you do the math. |
| 1325 | * OurVampiresAreDifferent: While not the standard bloodsuckers of other planes, the vampires of the Maestros are highly trained killers. |
| 1326 | * TragicMonster: [[AngelicAbomination Atraxa]] ends up [[ReforgedIntoAMinion Compleating]] almost all of the Maestros in an effort to absorb their knowledge of the plane's history. By the end of the Invasion, the vampire [[NonActionGuy portraitist]] Parnesse is strongly implied to be the LastOfHerKind on Capenna. Granted, the Maestros weren't exactly ''good'', but they certainly didn't deserve [[FateWorseThanDeath Compleation]]. |
| 1327 | * WickedCultured: Of all the families, the Maestros are the greatest appreciators of art. |
| 1328 | * VillainSong: [[https://youtu.be/AWblwl-rcH8 Old Money]], in which they promise to both make potential recruits members of high society and also let them stay forever at their prime as vampires. |
| 1329 | ->''Don't you want some of this old money?'' |
| 1330 | ->''Don't you wish that you could be somebody?'' |
| 1331 | ->''You could stay forever young and lovely!'' |
| 1332 | ->''Drink forbidden wine.'' |
| 1333 | * XtremelyKoolLetterz: Their emblem features two crossed daggers in the shape of an X, after their leader, Lord '''X'''ander. |
| 1334 | * YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Invoked with Casualty, which lets you sacrifice creatures in order to copy spells. |
| 1335 | [[/folder]] |
| 1336 | |
| 1337 | [[folder:The Riveteers (Red, with Black and Green)]] |
| 1338 | [[quoteright:150:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/riveteers_logo.png]] |
| 1339 | [[caption-width-right:150:]] |
| 1340 | A family made up of the lower-class workers in the city, they look to strike back against the wealthier families. They operate out of the Caldaia and are run by Ziatora, a demon dragon. |
| 1341 | |
| 1342 | Their mechanic is [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Blitz Blitz]], which lets you summon a creature for it's Blitz cost, gives it haste, and when it dies, you draw a card. The creature also dies at your end step. |
| 1343 | ---- |
| 1344 | * BlackAndGreyMorality: While they're probably the least evil of the clans and composed of lower-class members fighting back against their oppressors, most of them are still flavored as violent, reckless bullies. |
| 1345 | * {{Dieselpunk}}: They are the manufacturers of much of the {{Magitek}} that powers the city, including [[CoolCar hovering automobiles]] and [[FireBreathingWeapon plasma torches]]. |
| 1346 | * DiscardAndDraw: In a way; the ''Blitz'' mechanic allows you to grant ''Haste'' to the creature in question, and as soon as it dies, it is 'discarded' at the end of the turn to allow you to draw a card. |
| 1347 | * HufflepuffHouse: While yes, they are one of the major families of the plane, the Riveteers barely factor in to the main story. Ziatora is only seen giving a speech by Vivien, and their henchmen appeared but only after swearing loyalty to The Adversary. |
| 1348 | * RedOnesGoFaster: Unsurprising, being a Red-aligned faction, especially with the ''Blitz'' mechanic. |
| 1349 | * VillainSong: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_lwWvSv7rE Nails & Kneecaps]], a BadassBoast in which they present themselves as the backbone of the city and only family truly loyal to each other, and outright [[DareToBeBadass dare people to prove they are good enough to run with them]]. |
| 1350 | -> ''Show me what you've got'' |
| 1351 | -> ''if you're good enough or not.'' |
| 1352 | ->''Let me just remind you, kid'' |
| 1353 | ->''in case you forgot, that'' |
| 1354 | ->''Nails & kneecaps built this city!'' |
| 1355 | ->''Fists & hammers run this town!'' |
| 1356 | ->''Rolling with each pounch ain't pretty'' |
| 1357 | ->''but glitz & glamour gonna let you down...'' |
| 1358 | * WorkingClassHero: They were always ALighterShadeOfBlack, but they've been fully upgraded to this status during ''March of the Machine'', where they take the lead in the battle against Phyrexia and use their knowledge of the city to kill [[MouthOfSauron Atraxa]]. |
| 1359 | [[/folder]] |
| 1360 | |
| 1361 | [[folder:The Obscura (Blue, with White and Black)]] |
| 1362 | [[quoteright:150:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/obscura_logo.png]] |
| 1363 | [[caption-width-right:150:]] |
| 1364 | A group of magicians and mystics that use their talents to deceive and acquire blackmail on everyone within the city. They are led by Raffine, a sphinx demon. |
| 1365 | |
| 1366 | Their mechanic is [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Connive Connive]], which lets you draw cards and discard the same amount. Any nonland card you discard puts a +1/+1 counter on the creature. |
| 1367 | ---- |
| 1368 | * {{Cthulhumanoid}}: The cephalids are octopus-folk that can be found primarily in the employ of the Obscura. |
| 1369 | * DiscardAndDraw: Their ''Connive'' mechanic in a nutshell. |
| 1370 | * HypnoFool: Hypnosis is among their many practices. |
| 1371 | * ImmoralJournalist: PlayedWith. Supplemental material has revealed that most of Cappena's newspapers are [[IntrepidJournalist proudly independent from the five families]], but the Obscura have had the most success infiltrating and subverting them. |
| 1372 | * MagiciansAreWizards: Many Obscura mages appear to be stage magicians, and many of their spells can be passed off as party tricks. |
| 1373 | * RiddlingSphinx: All of Capenna's known living sphixes (including the Family's leader) are affiliated with the Obscura. |
| 1374 | * SinisterSurveillance: They have eyes everywhere in the city. |
| 1375 | * SpookySeance: Traditional [[{{Necromancer}} necromancy]] is virtually unheard of on Capenna, but the Obscura maintain the ability to contact the spirits of the dead through occult rituals. |
| 1376 | * VillainSong: [[https://youtu.be/Bd3U_truU0A Fortune Teller]], which tempts potential member with offer of finally taking control of their lives thanks to their divination powers |
| 1377 | ->''Don't you wish you were a fortune teller?'' |
| 1378 | ->''Pull the strings of fate'' |
| 1379 | ->''Don't you wish that you could see your future?'' |
| 1380 | ->''Save the date'' |
| 1381 | ->''Oh listen to the crystal ball's command'' |
| 1382 | ->''Endless hourglass of sand'' |
| 1383 | ->''Fortune teller, take my hand'' |
| 1384 | [[/folder]] |
| 1385 | |
| 1386 | ---- |
| 1387 | !''Unstable'' Factions |
| 1388 | During the development of ''Magic'''s third silver-bordered set, Mark Rosewater made a point of incorporating many of ''Magic''’s newer developments, including faction watermarks. The plane of Bablovia features five factions, each tapping into a different portion of the plane’s mad-science theme. |
| 1389 | |
| 1390 | * MadScientist: All five factions qualify in some manner: |
| 1391 | ** The League of Dastardly Doom are classical villainous mad scientists, using everything from death rays to zombies and even having predominantly brain creatures called "brainiacs". |
| 1392 | ** Crossbreed Labs are relatively benevolent but still insane biologists who splice creatures together. |
| 1393 | ** The Goblin Explosioneers are a bunch of reckless slap-dash [[BunglingInventor inventors]] whose contraptions all seem to be MadeOfExplodium. |
| 1394 | ** The Order of the Widget are a society of bizarre {{Cyborg}}s whose sole goal in life seems to be to transform themselves into transhuman superbeings ForScience (and who are weirdly obsessed with toast). |
| 1395 | ** The Agents of S.N.E.A.K have more interest in acquiring gadgets than actually spying, and some of their cards indicate they have something of a PsychoPsychologist streak to boot. |
| 1396 | |
| 1397 | [[folder:The Order of the Widget (White and Blue)]] |
| 1398 | [[quoteright:117:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/order_of_the_widget.jpg]] |
| 1399 | Suitably enough for a Blue-White faction, the Order of the Widget combines Bant-esque codes of honor with Esper’s emphasis on self-improvement. Throw in a healthy helping of ''Unstable'' silliness, and you have an order of knights who charge about the country on tank treads or motorcycle wheels, who replace their hands with lances or clamps or ice-cream scoops, who have bodies of bronze and hearts of gold. The Order’s symbol is a gear and a castle. |
| 1400 | ---- |
| 1401 | * ForScience: Their stance on augmentation is less "should you" and more "can you." After all, why have a hand when you can have a smoothie mixer? While you're at it, wouldn't your stomach be so much better if it was made out of Kevlar and could inflate like a balloon? And why not toss out these useless legs and replace them with tank treads! |
| 1402 | * FullConversionCyborg: Many of their members consist of little more than a head and a limb or two mounted on a clockwork or steampunk mechanical body. Their leader, [[https://scryfall.com/card/ust/131/the-grand-calcutron the Grand Calcutron]], is enhanced to the point that he's nothing more than a human head mounted on a gigantic, completely immobile machine; he no longer actually counts as even an Artifact Creature in game terms, but just an Artifact. |
| 1403 | * HollywoodCyborg: Many Order of the Widget members replace at least part of their bodies with machinery. Consequently, it has a large number of artifact creatures. |
| 1404 | * ManInTheMachine: Mixed with WetwareCPU. Their leader, the Grand Calcutron (formerly Calvin Granderson), has augmented himself so much that not even the game recognizes him as a creature anymore, just an artifact. |
| 1405 | [[/folder]] |
| 1406 | |
| 1407 | [[folder:The Agents of S.N.E.A.K. (Blue and Black)]] |
| 1408 | [[quoteright:147:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/agents_of_sneak.jpg]] |
| 1409 | A faction of super-spies who make use of elaborate gadgetry and a hilarious idea of stealth. The Agents of S.N.E.A.K. are constantly spying on others, especially other agents. Their symbol is a key-umbrella hybrid, and their colors are Blue and Black. |
| 1410 | ---- |
| 1411 | * BewareTheSillyOnes: They may be absolutely garbage spies, but their gadgets are every bit as dangerous as those of the other factions. |
| 1412 | * ComplexityAddiction: Agents are absolutely obsessed with loading down every inch of their person with pounds and pounds of gadgets of varying usefulness. In fact, the whole reason the organization went from job board to organized crime is because people needed to commit crimes to pay for their gadget habit. |
| 1413 | * FromNobodyToNightmare: "Nightmare" might be stretching it, but they're a massive criminal organization that started off as an ordinary job board. |
| 1414 | * FunWithAcronyms: Different cards' flavor texts give the full meaning of "S.N.E.A.K." as "Subpar, Notoriously Evil Agent-Killers", "Sinister Nerds Eliminating All Knowledge", "Serious, Nonstop Espionage and Kidnapping", "Spies Nimbly Eluding Adversaries' Knives", "Silent Ninjas Evading Any [[XtremeKoolLetterz Kapture]]", and "Skilled, Notably Efficient Assassin-Kickers". |
| 1415 | * HighTurnoverRate: The leader of the guild is whoever owns the golden ruler. This results in a constant change in leadership, since nobody can keep it from being stolen. |
| 1416 | * HighlyVisibleNinja: S.N.E.A.K., being an organization of stealth operatives, has a number of shinobi on the payroll. Of course, this being S.N.E.A.K., said ninjas are not very good at being ninjas. Except for [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=439449 one]], but they might be a touch ''too'' good. |
| 1417 | * MostDefinitelyNotAVillain: They are not good at hiding who they are. Their secret base even has a sign on it saying "Secret Base". |
| 1418 | * NebulousEvilOrganization: It's not clear what, if anything, S.N.E.A.K.'s long-term goal is. Not even the members know. |
| 1419 | * PoesLaw: One of the theories as to S.N.E.A.K.'s organizational purpose is that it's actually a prank by one of the other factions that got ''way'' out of hand. Nobody has been able to come up with conclusive proof one way or the other on that theory. |
| 1420 | [[/folder]] |
| 1421 | |
| 1422 | [[folder:The League of Dastardly Doom (Black and Red)]] |
| 1423 | [[quoteright:118:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/league_of_dasterdly_doom.jpg]] |
| 1424 | An entire faction of supervillains united in their love for overly-elaborate doomsday devices, whether those be hybridized zombie monsters, comically oversized lasers, or simply mechanical killbots. Their colors are Black and Red, and their symbol is an explosion inside of a lightbulb. |
| 1425 | ---- |
| 1426 | * ActuallyADoombot: Mary O'Kill has an ability that lets her switch with any Killbot on the field or in the hand. This means opponents who try to destroy Mary might find their removal spell wasted on a lowly Killbot. This also works the opposite way, as opponents who either ignore a Killbot or assign a weak creature to block it might find the vastly deadlier Mary coming in for the kill. |
| 1427 | -->''For all intents and purposes, the exchanged card is taking the place of the original card. Whatever its doing, the state it's in, whatever's attached to it—all of it stays the same. It's as if Mary O'Kill or one of the Killbots pulls off a mask to reveal they were actually the other one all along. Diabolical!'' |
| 1428 | * AristocratsAreEvil: The group is "lead" by Baron von Count, mostly because he's the one the most people agree is the most in-charge of the figures within the League. |
| 1429 | * CardCarryingVillain: You can't expect people in a group called "The League of Dastardly Doom" to think they're doing the right thing. |
| 1430 | * DeathRay: One of their cards is literally called [[https://scryfall.com/card/und/59/super-duper-death-ray "Super-Duper Death Ray"]]. It's even capable of causing Trample damage. |
| 1431 | * KillerRobot: One of their go-to creations are killbots. |
| 1432 | * LightIsNotGood: Their symbol is a light bulb. As indicated by the nuke inside it, they're also evil. They are also fond of using laser beams. |
| 1433 | * MixAndMatchCritter: Unlike Crossbreed Labs, theirs are more the stitched-together Frankenstien's Monster types. Grusilda in particular is a clear fan of them. This is translated into her card, where she is able to graft any two creatures together into the exact sum of their parts. |
| 1434 | * NotSoOmniscientCouncilOfBickering: Unlike the other factions, the League is led by a cabal of four people: Baron von Count, The Big Idea, Mary O'Kill, and Grusilda. The four of them wouldn't even be able to agree on what to have for breakfast. |
| 1435 | * ReportsOfMyDeathWereGreatlyExaggerated: Referenced by the card [[https://scryfall.com/card/ust/65/rumors-of-my-death- "Rumors of My Death..."]]. |
| 1436 | * ShoutOut: [[https://scryfall.com/card/ust/177/division-table Division Table]] is a clear reference to the iconic laser table scene from ''Film/{{Goldfinger}}''. |
| 1437 | * ThievesGuild: The League requires super villains to have permits, provides them with minions and interns, and helps them coordinate so their attempts at wrecking havoc don't interfere with each other. |
| 1438 | [[/folder]] |
| 1439 | |
| 1440 | [[folder:The Goblin Explosioneers (Red and Green)]] |
| 1441 | [[quoteright:176:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/goblin_explosioneers.jpg]] |
| 1442 | A loose coalition of Bablovian goblins with an even looser game plan, the Goblin Explosioneers have no more idea what they’re building then we do. Their "government" is a barely-functional mishmash of rule of the strong, rule of the stupid, and democracy. Sometimes they just follow the example of one goblin, sometimes they actually sit down and vote, sometimes the side that promises more hammers wins the seat. At any rate, they’re having far too much fun to stop, and they produce so many explosions... |
| 1443 | |
| 1444 | Their colors are Green and Red, and their symbol is a mortar bomb and two sticks of dynamite. |
| 1445 | ---- |
| 1446 | * AscendedExtra: Steamflogger Boss was originally just a JokeCharacter from Future Sight. Now, it's sprawled into an entire elaborate faction and the inspiration for a joke set. |
| 1447 | * AsskickingLeadsToLeadership: Ol' Buzzbark serves as the current alpha goblin, mostly because he's destructive enough to win popularity with the masses. |
| 1448 | * CargoCult: Ever since being introduced to hammers, the goblins are absolutely obsessed with them. There's an almost religious reverence for the tool goblins see as the reason they can create at all. They literally accepted hammers as payment during their employment to Steamflogger Industries. |
| 1449 | * CartoonBomb: Besides the stuff that explodes when they don't mean it to, the Explosioneers also make abundant use of intentional bombs. On their cards, these always look like the traditional black mortar bombs with long wicks that burn dramatically down to the spherical, shiny body of the explosive. |
| 1450 | * ExplosiveBreeder: The only reason the goblins haven't gone extinct is they breed faster than they can blow themselves up. |
| 1451 | * StuffBlowingUp: Their inventions and gadgets have a strong tendency to malfunction spectacularly, usually in ways that involve violent explosions. Of course, for the goblins, that's all part of the fun. |
| 1452 | * TurnedAgainstTheirMasters: There wasn't any sort of full-scale revolt, but the goblins weren't always the leaders. Originally, they were just workers hired to combat plummeting employment numbers at Steamflogger Industries, a steel milling company. After the goblins were allowed to have their own faction, the other workers and the management slowly abandoned the company and the goblins filled the power vacuums. |
| 1453 | [[/folder]] |
| 1454 | |
| 1455 | [[folder:Crossbreed Labs (Green and White)]] |
| 1456 | [[quoteright:146:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/crossbreed_labs.jpg]] |
| 1457 | Where the other four factions focus more on gears and gadgets, Crossbreed Labs enjoys reshaping the very fabric of life itself, splicing together wildly improbable creatures to create new and exciting species like the dogsnail, the hydradoodle, and the monkey-spider. Their colors are Green and White, and their symbol is a double-spouted beaker. |
| 1458 | ---- |
| 1459 | * BeYourself: Their whole philosophy is that people should be free to express themselves, especially when that involves gene splicing. |
| 1460 | * MixAndMatchCritters: Their philosophy centers around turning themselves into outlandish hybrids in order to reflect who they truly are -- do you feel than an animal truly represents who you are? Throw it in! As a result, their entire faction is composed of hybrid creatures of rather extreme complexity. |
| 1461 | ** The most extreme example of this would be their faction leader, Dr. Julius Jumblemorph, who has ''every in-game creature type at once''. |
| 1462 | ** There's even a dedicated in-game mechanic to represent this, Augment. You start with a host, a small and unremarkable creature you place on the battlefield same as any other, then add an augment creature from your hand, overlaying the two cards. The result is a unique, hybrid "card" you play by combining the host's and augment's rules text and with the combined strength and toughness of its components. |
| 1463 | * OverlyLongName: Their eagerness to hybridize themselves leaves their members with some hilariously complicated creature types, such as "Spider Monkey Scientist," or "Raccoon Lizard Bird," or even "Deer Bird Ape Druid." |
| 1464 | * ProfessorGuineaPig: They splice themselves as well as other creatures. |
| 1465 | [[/folder]] |
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/context.php
FollowingContext Characters / MagicTheGatheringFactions
Go To
- Show Spoilers
- Night Vision
- Sticky Header
- Wide Load
