, it is a curiosity in being technically canon, but in many ways self-contained and different from the decades of Magic lore to follow.Taking place in the city of Estark on the plane of Dominaria, the story follows Garth One-Eye in his quest to avenge his fallen house and get revenge on the Master of the Arena.
- '90s Anti-Hero: Garth is pretty much as much as one can be in a fantasy story, being scarred, selfish, a womanizer and doused in heavily doses of Plot Armor. He'll occasionally Pet the Dog to show he's not so bad deep down, and he does prove loyal to a few friends, but his quest for Revenge kills many who don't deserve it.
- Adaptational Badass: Noreen is clearly based on the Benalish Hero, and explicitly wants to become one. In the game, a Benalish Hero is a pretty weak 1/1 creature with Banding. In the book, Noreen is a quite deadly warrior, even if she has the misfortune of being surrounded by extremely powerful wizards.
- Big Bad: Kuthuman, the master of the Arena himself, who seeks to kill any potential planeswalkers as to eliminate competition.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: On one hand you have a terrorist as the main protagonist, on the other exceptionally corrupt villains. To drive the point home both use Black and Red mana, although it's mentioned Garth's ancestors preferred Blue and Green.
- Bread And Circus: It's mentioned that the Blood Sport in the arena functions as both for the desperate and impoverished citizens, with the wizarding houses dropping prizes and wealth into the stands. As time goes on and the crowd gets more and more behind Garth, it's less and less effective.
- Card-Carrying Villain: All of the antagonists are frankly pretty bluntly evil:
- Kirlen is an old woman obsessed with looking beautiful and hoarding mana.
- Varnel is lustful to the point of being surrounded by women engaging him sexually in public.
- Jimak might as well be a magpie, obsessed with shiny trinkets to the point of suicide just to keep his possessions.
- Tulan is glutonous and constantly eats and drinks.
- Kuthuman is a cackling maniac, fitting for the Big Bad.
- Dark Is Not Evil: An interesting case. Black and Red mana are explained to technically not being evil, but wizards aligned with both or either are generally the first to burn peasants. Most if not all villains are associated with both, but Garth himself uses Black and Red spells, though given he's Ambiguously Evil himself it only makes things murkier.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Where to even begin?
- The story flat out names spells and creatures that are actual cards. While this would persist for a while, most Magic fiction quickly shifted towards spellcasters simply casting spells normally as in most fantasy. This is actually referenced in the Garth card when it was finally published in 2021.
- Black and Red, while not necessarily evil per se, are depicted far more negatively than in modern stories.
- A major plot point is that planeswalkers are actually any wizards that get powerful enough, when Magic lore would go on to render them entirely unique and born with a spark, which cannot be manufactured.
- The leader of house Bolk uses ice spells that happen to be Green. Nowadays, Green rarely gets ice spells unless there are set-specific snow themes.
- Fat Bastard: Tulan, who is gluttonous and constantly eating to boot.
- Foreshadowing: Garth senses early on that his street guide was once able to wield mana, and there are many hints to his true identity as a former steward to the Oor-Tael who hid himself to survive. It's only a bit less obvious that Garth himself was the orphaned son of the leaders of Oor-Tael, come back to avenge his family on their murderers.
- Genius Bruiser: One of the mightiest mages of Kirlen's house is a musclebound giant of a man who hasn't fully mastered the language everyone else uses, but he's a skilled magician and a cunning fighter. He takes over the house in the ending.
- Token Good Teammate: Oor-Tael was the only house of Estark to not be evil, even acting as a charity. Naturally they were targetted and exterminated by Kuthuman.
