Night of Rime
by Razel.Korr is an exploratory Magic: The Gathering fanfic trilogy stemming from a single question — how can you lose a match, "die", and come back again? There are three parts — Night of Rime, Cataclysmic Variable, and Planar Remnant.
Razel Korr is a Planeswalker who spends his free time doing random things as random individuals. When one of his expeditions implies that he might need a break, he leaves a duplicate of himself to watch over his affairs on Ravnica, but things don’t quite go as he hopes. What follows is a series of terrible choices and the consequences of those choices.
This Fan Fiction series contains examples of:
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Ravnica’s Undercity is huge, literally being the space between layers of the city’s crusts. Yes, plural.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: When Razel decimates the festival, the Druids try enlarging a Dire Bear to stop him. 50 Foot Bears don’t quite make 50 Foot piles of meat…
- The Bad Guy Wins: Rohki and the Phyrexian scouting party end up completely overwhelming the plane of Foundry.
- Big Bad: The Academy is the overarching presence for the story, but with Rohki and the Phyrexians in ‘’Night of Rime’’ and Razel’s own Novus in ‘’Cataclysmic Variable’’, then Impulse of Thought in ‘’Planar Remnant’’ they aren’t lacking for competition.
- Blood Magic: Sudaj is noted to use his bodily fluid for various divination and offensive techniques, including summoning a Wurm.
- Body Horror: Phyrexians are involved. This is assumed.
- Chekhov's Gun: Rohki’s dislike of the Eldrazi is touched on, but only comes in handy at the end. See Pull a Rabbit out of My Hat below.
- City Planet: Ravina is established in-canon as an Ecumenopolis.
- Corrupt Church: The story opens with an Orzhov ‘Contract Evaluation’, which involves far less courtesy than you would expect from a cleric."Derrin, the Church has sent me to gauge the profitability of your little business venture. We allow you to use this space to sell your goods on the condition that your fees are covered in full. Lately, you haven’t kept up your end of the deal."
- Die or Fly: As noted, this is a key part of a Planeswalker's spark igniting.
- When Razel ignited, he was being chased by a polar predator and fell into a Glacial Chasm.
- When The Inquisitor ignites, he’s at the end of his rope after fleeing Razel, who was trying to reabsorb him.
- From a Single Cell: Razel's justification for summoning Eldrazi to consume Foundry in its entirety. Considering they've been conquered by Phyrexia...
- Fusion Dance: When Razel creates a duplicate, it is expressly to re-join with it at a later point, thus gaining their experience and knowledge as his own.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Played with concerning Razel. At one point in ‘’Cataclysmic Variable’’ he explains any apparent aptitude as nothing but assumption and expectation:"Technology, Art, accidental emergent design, all of it is just a means of directing your intent to a specific end. The finer point of the means is a matter for those who don’t warp reality. You see a complex device — I see an overly complicated lens."
- A God Is You: At first glance this looks like a simple self-insert fic, but when the
Fridge Logic kicks in and you realize that every Magic player is playing a self-insert...Razel just wrote his story down. - Gods Need Prayer Badly: In-story justification for destroying the festival of O'las, initially at least."I don't care for the 'walker involved, so I suppose the next several appearances were more out of pettiness than loyalty."
- HammerSpace: The main characters have pouches that seem to hold everything, although considering their power levels they may simply be bags of holding.
- High Priest: While on Ravnica you have the Orzhov Pontiff, Pomas, on Foundry you get both Exarch Kun and the Phyrexian Priests of Norn.
- An Ice Person: Razel himself, although he tries to avoid the puns.
- It's Probably Nothing: Garrus manages to convince Razel he was just being paranoid, even though he wasn’t.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Not so much Laser-Guided as Icicle-Drilled.
- Loose Canon: The story dismisses the central events of ‘’Time Spiral’’ by explaining it as an Anomaly with a limited radius – a large one, but inevitably limited."It is Planeswalkers like you that caused the Dominia Anomaly. Would you wish all of your kind a half-life such as that? Losing their longevity? Cursed with power but no time to learn to control it? Trapped in a single form for their entirety? You are a propagator of misery and destruction."
- Magic Meteor: Razel gets one to the jaw in the finale thanks to Rohki.
- Meaningful Name: Sudaj is an anagram for Judas. Rohki was named entirely for the Pull a Rabbit out of My Hat gag.
- Mind Rape: Common in this story. You even get a couple first person scenes with it!
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Several times.
- On Ravnica, Razel lets loose his duplicate, who goes insane from his missing memories and runs, even Igniting just before he is absorbed.
- In ‘’Cataclysmic Variable’’, Razel gets himself kicked out of the Bordello for dismembering one of the Spymasters.
- Later he ‘’accidentally’’ destroys the Maggiore Knowledge Matrix when Ophelia startles him.
- THEN there is the book on IPL 1138, stuck in his robes when he explodes.
- Followed by the Prison Ship ARCONA, flooded when they flee.
- Arguably Razel’s first death counts, since it all stems from his own actions.
- Obake:In Planar Remnant there is a variety of sequences set on Kamigawa, Magic's resident Feudal Japan.
- Older Than They Look: Planeswalkers in this story do not age normally, since their body is nothing more than a projection of what they feel they should look like. This goes both ways though, since if you aren’t aware of this or are otherwise inept with it, you are unable to shapeshift.
- Power of the Void: Razel is fond of Damnation, which more or less opens a sphere of nada and sucks you into it.
- Pull a Rabbit out of My Hat:"Really? All the clichés available and you go with that? That trick never works. What, is there nothing up your sleeve?"
- Pyrrhic Victory: Sure, Razel stopped Phyrexia and Rohki, but knowing who the sleepers are means knowing what you need to do to them.
- Scrapbook Story: The background exposition is handled through Journal Entries written well after the fact, peppered throughout the narrative.
- Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: Played straight with 'Trix and his fabulous fabric, subverted with Razel and Ophelia, who have control enough over their bodies to generate clothing as well.
- Strapped to an Operating Table: The Planeswalker being held on Foundry is discovered strapped to a table.
- Volcanic Veins: Rohki, being a Vulshok, naturally has this going on.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: This is why the Academy exists — to teach those with reality warping power how to control themselves before they become liabilities.
- World of Pun:"In a reversal of odds, 'Trix managed to duck a fist and grab it forcefully, wrenching it loose from the shoulder already weakened by his caustic phlegm. Now armed and dangerous, the Nezumi began to wail on the golem unmercifully with its own limb."
