The gods of Amonkhet roared and cursed, but no blow from their weapons would land. The trespasser's power was at least equal to their own. The dragon landed atop the tallest tower, closed his eyes, and began to channel a spell. The time for violent choices had come. The gods felt a surge of mana weave around the dragon as a tangle of malevolence. They grasped desperately for spells to protect and defend. But they were too slow. The dragon opened his eyes and every mortal old enough to walk dissipated into the sky. A brilliant white light engulfed Naktamun, and the seven gods fell to their knees in agony as countless souls vanished from existence.
— Nicol Bolas conquers the plane of Amonkhet in a single moment, "The Hour of Revelation
"
"Of all the threats faced by Dominaria and the rest of The Multiverse, whether in card form; print; or otherwise, these are the worst.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Planeswalkers
- Leshrac, the Nightwalker, is a cruel and ancient Planeswalker who sought to use his supremacy over black mana to become the mightiest of his kind in the Multiverse. Trapped on Dominaria during the Ice Age, Leshrac empowered the necromancer Lim-Dûl to build an undead army by wiping out the plane's remaining nations, and turned his pawn into a sapient ball of flesh when he failed. Returning centuries later during the temporal crisis, Leshrac dominated the recently ascended Jeska and forced her to close the rift over the nation of Zhalfir and causing it to be lost to time, relishing the suffering it caused the native Planeswalker Teferi. Ultimately seeking to ambush Nicol Bolas and stop him from closing the last rift, Leshrac would have let the entire Multiverse die to prove he was the mightiest Planeswalker in existence.
- Nicol Bolas, one of the most prominent villains, is an Elder Dragon Planeswalker over 25,000 years old who loses his near-limitless power when the nature of the Planeswalker Spark is changed, and dedicates himself to getting it back at any cost. A master of red, blue, and black magic, Bolas excels at breaking minds and bending people into submission. In his pre-Mending time he was already a genocidal sadist who by his own admission created entire races only to exterminate them for his amusement, but his atrocity pile increased when he lost a substantial amount of his god-like power in The Mending. The aftermath prompted him into a path to regain his former "glory", combining a brand new set of worlds ruined by his actions with the antagonism of several Planeswalker protagonists, with the best outcome being near-death experiences and the most common being mental abuse into being his slaves. Ultimately, Bolas masterminded the destruction of Amonkhet to use as a source for an undead army, trapped numerous other Planeswalkers on Ravnica, and sought to harvest their sparks to regain his omnipotence. Not caring that Ravnica was destroyed in the process, his defeat ultimately required the Heroic Sacrifice of his brother Ugin and many other heroes to seal Bolas away forever. A bona fide mass murderer and sociopath, he is a vile creature on both a personal and a cosmic scale.
- Ob Nixilis is a Planeswalker who was a cruel, despotic tyrant bent on conquering his home plane. Defeated by his enemies, Ob Nixilis summoned demons that fulfilled his heart's desire to end all life on his plane. The experience ignited his spark and he began scouring the life from every plane he wandered to. After being cursed into a demon, Ob Nixilis lost his spark on Zendikar trying to remove it. Ob Nixilis tried to devour Zendikar's soul to reignite his spark and succeeded by absorbing the Eldrazi titan Ulamog's prison. As a final act of spite, Ob Nixilis awakened the titan Kozilek to ensure Zendikar's doom. He would later travel to New Capenna to dominate the plane and take control of its Halo supply. Assembling his own crime family, Ob Nixilis would engineer the massacre of the other families and attempt to absorb the survivors to consolidate his power and satisfy his love of conquest.
- Tezzeret is a ruthless mage who believes power makes everything and is determined to never be weak again. Stealing etherium as a boy and incorporating it into himself, Tezzeret was known for murdering those who crossed him, or murdering their families to hurt them most. Later murdering his headmaster and crafting an etherium arm, Tezzeret began to serve the dragon Nicol Bolas, with designs to overthrow him after murdering numerous agents of Bolas to replace with loyal servants. Forced to be loyal to Bolas, Tezzeret opened the ways to Ravnica to kick off the War of the Spark and facilitated Bolas's atrocities there. Delighted at the dragon's fall, Tezzeret flees with plans to seize more power, and finds it by aligning himself with New Phyrexia. Guiding the Praetor Jin-Gitaxias to Kamigawa and helping him to abduct and compleat the Planewalker Tamiyo, he helps the nightmarish Phyrexians to finally have free reign of the Multiverse.
- Tibalt was once a normal human from Innistrad who kidnapped and tortured to death countless people to better understand and satiate his hunger for pain. Depraved enough to draw in devils, Tibalt's Planeswalker spark ignited when a spell went awry and fused his being with his fiendish audience, turning him into a half-devil. Wandering the planes spreading suffering for the fun of it, Tibalt was drawn to Ravnica during Bolas's harvest and led an army of fiends to torment the populace. Drawn to Chandra's misery over losing her beloved Gideon, he captures and tortures her mother to lure her in and feed off sadness and heartache. Later captured by Phyrexia and forced to spread chaos on Kaldheim, Tibalt did so gleefully by imprisoning and impersonating Valki to sows the seeds of conflict and spread war throughout the ten realms. Murdering a dwarven smith for a magic sword to travel between realms, Tibalt uses it to cause Ragnarok by unleashing hordes of demons to raze all of Kaldheim.
- Ashiok is a shadowy Planeswalker that uses their power over dreams to spread deadly nightmares throughout the Multiverse to discover the perfect embodiment of fear. Coming to the faith powered plane of Theros, Ashiok uses their nightmares to manipulate two different societies to war and drives the king of one city to suicide after Ashiok's crimes lead to the slaughter of his city. Becoming invisible to the gods in exchange for their previous actions, Ashiok spreads nightmares to create a false god as a test and ultimately creates a sleeping curse to force everyone on Theros into a never ending nightmare to feed off their suffering forever. When the curse is stopped, Ashiok travels to the plane of Eldraine affected by an unrelated sleeping curse. Ashiok sides with the witches causing it and creates nightmare creatures to hunt the survivors and reenact his eternal torture.
Other Characters
- Yawgmoth was born a normal Thran in Dominaria during the reign of the technologically advanced Thran empire, about 5,000 years before the birth of the inventor Urza. Yawgmoth was banished for his unorthodox beliefs regarding diseases and healing, but returned to the capital city of Halcyon to treat Glacian, the renowned engineer and inventor, who was suffering from an unknown illness after being attacked by an exiled leper named Gix. Though Yawgmoth was by trade and profession a medic, his ways went towards an unnatural fascination with the mechanics of the body. This fascination led to experiments with plagues and poisons, several of which caused widespread death among the various races that he had visited. Yawgmoth was also slowly draining Glacian's soul to fuel his own power. Yawgmoth later learned about planes from the wizard Dyfed, until he subdued her and gave her to his followers for dissection. Ruling his own realm, Yawgmoth plotted further conquest, corrupting and killing other heroes and innocents. When Yawgmoth invaded Dominaria, he killed millions of innocents before he was destroyed.
- Gix was the first ever compleated when he sacrificed his humanity and swore allegiance to Yawgmoth and became the Praetor of Phyrexia. First introduced as a diseased and murderous exile, Gix became Yawgmoth's right hand when he was cured and aided his master in destroying the Thran empire. The Praetor would be cast out of Dominaria with his master and returned millennia later to corrupt the artificer Mishra and escalate the brutal war with his brother Urza. His manipulations to weaken Dominaria directly led to an apocalyptic blast that would cause an early Ice Age and destroy most of the plane's civilizations. When a side effect prevented Phyrexia from invading, Gix was tortured until he could prove himself by horrifically mentally breaking humanoids into his sleeper agents that he used to spread chaos and war. Ultimately killed by Urza, Gix was the harbinger of all the horrors Phyrexia would unleash on the Multiverse.
- Tsabo Tavoc is the general of the Phyrexians and a consummate sadist who adores slaughtering everything she had. Leading the Phyrexians on a brutal, murderous campaign, Tsabo Tavoc captures many beings so she can have them vivisected agonizingly. This is ostensibly so they may be studied to improve the Phyrexians, but in truth just because she enjoys it. Gleeful at the chance to kill more, Tsabo Tavoc even kills thousands of her own troops just for the thrill of experiencing more deaths.
- Elesh Norn is the White Praetor and assumed control over New Phyrexia when she dominated her fellow Praetors and titled herself the Mother of Machines. Outwardly expressing beliefs of peace and unity through compleation, Norn truthfully is a theocratic dictator who seeks to shape Phyrexia to her own personal whims while corrupting the Multiverse to solely worship her. Norn would torture and execute her peers for defying her while tampering with Phyrexia's glistening oil to ensure anyone corrupted by it would follow only her commands. First overseeing the conquest and compleation of the plane of Mirrodin, Norn masterminded the creation of a corrupted World Tree called Realmbreaker that allowed her to launch apocalyptic invasions against countless planes, seeking to bend them to her thrall or destroy them. Megalomaniacal and selfish to the core, Elesh Norn proved to be a worthy successor to Yawgmoth's monstrous legacy.
Others
- Lim-Dûl was once a lowly soldier on Dominaria who became empowered by evils greater than himself to become the greatest threat of the Ice Age. First gifted magic by finding the ring of Mairsil the Pretender, Lim-Dûl was gifted the power of necromancy by Leshrac to raise an undead army to conquer the plane of Shandalar. Destroying much of human civilization at the end of the Ice Age, Lim-Dûl was eventually defeated by Mairsil's old rival Jodah and punished severely by Leshrac for losing his undead host. When his master was cast out of Shandalar, Lim-Dûl took to his newfound freedom by beginning his own conquest of the plane and proceeded to wipe out all life except in one last city. Ultimately defeated and sealed away on Shandalar, a piece of his soul left in Mairsil's Ring would become the enigmatic Raven Man, who tormented Planeswalker Liliana Vess for centuries.
- Strixhaven: School of Mages: Extus Narr was once a renowned warlock of Strixhaven whose great power was surpassed only by his monstrous ego. Passed over to be named the Oracle of Arcavios, he decided such an insult could only be repaid by destroying both the academy and the whole plane with it. Usurping control of the outcast mages of the Oriq, Extus used them and their soul-sucking Mage Hunters to lead a devastating assault on Strixhaven to massacre the innocent students and faculty. In truth, the attack was a diversion to allow him and his closest followers to initiate a summoning ritual in the heart of the academy. Sacrificing all his loyal agents in the process, Extus summoned a terrifying force of destruction known as the Blood Avatar to ignite an endless age of chaos and ruin to Arcavios, all in petty vengeance for his bruised ego.
