(upbeat music)
- Magic: The Gathering is a brutal game.
The whole point is your pitted against your friends
in a life or death battle of wits and magic
where you draw your power from different worlds
known as planes.
Despite being a game played with buddies
that revolves around little pieces of cardboard,
the lore of Magic is actually incredibly deep,
complex, and occasionally really fucking dark.
I meet plenty of players who are only into Magic
because they like the strategy,
or because they saw a sexy elf,
or a kick ass looking dragon,
got hooked, and never looked any further
into the stories.
But for me, the best parts of Magic
are the intense stories and intricate lore
that gives life to the cards we play.
For those of you who know nothing about Magic,
these stories can serve as a jumping off point to dive into.
For those of you who already play,
you might be surprised to learn
just how fucking dark some of the lore
behind your favorite characters really is.
The first set of Magic cards was released in 1993
and with several new sets being released each year,
along with novels, comics, short stories published online,
and the flavor text on the cards themselves,
the lore has grown deeper and wider each year.
I've searched through these resources
to present to you, the four darkest stories
lurking within Magic: The Gathering.
Number one, Urza and the Phyrexians.
No, it's not the name of an indie band
you've never heard of.
It's the first stop on our journey
through the brutality of MTG lore.
Urza was one of the first characters
to capture the attention of MTG players.
And his story spanning tons of card sets
has had far reaching effects on the Magic multiverse.
I've distilled his saga into the most brutal,
messed up tale of revenge gone wrong
you've ever heard.
Urza was a wizard born into nobility
and hungry for power, just like his brother Mishra.
The two boys grew and laughed and frolicked.
Just kidding, they started a devastating war
against each other,
which decimated their plane,
gave rise to beings like this monstrosity,
and ended with Urza's discovery
that his brother had been turned into a being
of oil, machinery, and evil
by a scourge of artificial lifeforms
known as the Phyrexians.
Phyrexians themselves are the most brutal race
in the MTG multiverse.
Beings of metal and necrotic tissue,
their beliefs are simple.
All life is an abomination
and only machines created by machines are perfect
and worthy of existence.
Their home plane of Phyrexia is a hellscape
of nine concentric spheres,
filled with birthing pods, unspeakable horrors,
and one boiling, glistening sea of oil.
Even a drop of which spreads the mind numbing corruption
of the Phyrexian doctrine.
After the death of his brother,
Urza dedicated his life to the destruction
of the Phyrexians.
Making massive sacrifices.
Including an entire plane created by angels.
Urza's centuries long battle with the Phyrexians
left a wake of blood, betrayal, death,
corrupted mind and bodies,
and decimated worlds, all in the name of conquering
this foe which has destroyed his family and his home.
That's brutal enough in and of itself,
but the true tragedy of the story is
when Urza finally mounted an assault
powerful enough to destroy Phyrexia,
he found himself unable to pull the trigger.
His eon spanning obsession had turned into fascination
and even admiration and he bowed to Phyrexian rule.
What a dick.
Number two.
The tragic love of Elspeth and Daxos.
If you thought we were done with the Phyrexians,
we're not.
The macabre mechanicals went on to conquer
and control huge swaths of the multiverse.
Their story would continue for a long time
in Magic's history.
Years after the first introduction of these brutal
techno-magical subjugators,
the damage they inflicted would set off
a seriously messed up Romeo and Juliet story.
Born on a nameless world ruled Phyrexians,
the planeswalker Elspeth was raised in a prison hospital
where she was used as essentially a therapy dog
for insane machines.
She escaped when her planeswalker spark ignited.
And Elspeth, only 13 years old,
began stumbling from plane to plane seeking refuge.
Through her travels she befriended Daxos of Meletis,
who's best summed up as a sexy Greek warrior guy.
Elspeth didn't have an easy time.
Fighting Phyrexians, seeing friends die at their hands,
and fighting the demons of her past.
But she found family in Daxos
and found purpose when the Sun God Heliod
chose her to be his champion.
They gave her a hope and stability she'd never had.
A reason to keep fighting that was greater
than hate and anger.
Anyways, I think you know this doesn't end happily for her.
The very night they admitted their love for each other,
Elspeth was tricked into murdering Daxos.
An evil satyr duped her into seeing him
as a Phyrexian torturer and she attacked
and killed the only man she'd ever loved.
Because of her deeds the Sun God Heliod
became convinced that Elspeth was a traitor.
She'd lost everything.
Burdened with a broken heart
and being hunted by the God she had devoted herself to,
long story short,
Elspeth made her way to the underworld
to take revenge on the evil satyr.
With Heliod hot on her trail.
She killed the trickster but just as everything
looked like it would turn out okay,
Heliod ran her through with her own blade.
At the last minute in a bargain
with the ruler of the underworld,
she exchanged her soul for Daxos' soul.
But Elspeth should've known better than
to bargain with a god.
In a final tragic twist,
Daxos was brought back as a faceless zombie.
Now he roams the world endlessly searching for Elspeth,
not knowing that she's eternally trapped
in the underworld and that they can never be reunited.
Fuck!
Number three.
Liliana's family drama.
Liliana Vess, one of Magic's most famous,
or infamous characters.
She's appeared on tons of cards
and has been featured heavily in the recent story arcs.
This fappable queen of the dead
has flip flopped from being a villain to a hero
and back again.
And that all stems from a gruesome and tragic backstory
darker than the empty eye sockets of the zombie hordes
she commands.
Though, now a sexy necromancer and planeswalker,
she was once a young girl with a promising future.
Studying diligently to be a healer,
hoping to cure wounds and ailments,
and make the world a better place.
All that changed the day enemy forces
tore down upon her family's lands.
Her brother Josu had been injured in the fight.
As he lay dying, Liliana desperately
searched the woods for a certain root
which could heal him.
Only to find the spot where they grew
had been burned by the skin witches
of the invading troops.
Yeah, that's right, I said skin witches,
they're witches who strip the skin right off you
and offer to their demon lord.
Brutal.
Anyways, a mysterious man appeared to Liliana,
encouraging her to release the dormant power within.
The power of a badass necromancer.
She unleashed her power,
bringing the shriveled roots back to life.
But when she fed her beloved brother the potion
she'd made from them,
things didn't turn out the way she'd hoped.
Liliana watched Josu shrivel and turn gray
before her eyes.
His soul lived and animated his body
but it was trapped in a void of agony.
Gah!
You know, regular family stuff.
Josu damned for eternity and blaming Liliana
went on a rampage and was about to kill Liliana
when she used her latent necromancy
to summon an army of corpses to swarm over him.
Liliana soon left her plane and went on
to other dark adventures,
but her greatest regret,
the secret shame that she held for centuries,
was that she had damned her brother
to unspeakable agony then had him killed
at the hands of the zombies she'd summoned.
Too bad they don't have therapists for planeswalkers,
'cause
that's a lot to deal with.
But the story gets even darker.
Centuries later Liliana would return to her home
in an attempt to save it from an even greater evil,
only to find that Josu hadn't been torn to pieces,
he'd become a living horror.
Her beloved brother had become a powerful lich,
leading unholy troops to terrorize and destroy
everything that had once been beautiful
and good in their world.
So, she had to kill him all over again!
Whoa!
Number four, Emrakul's influence.
Our final story centers not on a person
but on an entire plane.
The world of Innistrad was first introduced
to Magic fans in 2011
and it's always been a scary place.
It's a gothic horror plane full of zombies,
vampires, werewolves, and stitched together monsters.
But the terrors were mostly kept at bay
by the plane's guardian, Avacyn,
and her army of angels,
as well as some noble humans.
But with the introduction of the
Shadows Over Innistrad card set in 2016,
this weird plane started to get even weirder.
Unbeknownst to the people there,
the ancient multidimensional horror
known as Emrakul was exerting her influence
over all of Innistrad.
The murderous things haunting the woods
became even more violent.
People started disappearing
and strange twisted monoliths began appearing
and exerting a troubling power
over the formerly sane citizens
and formerly righteous angels.
Slowly monsters became even more horrible,
archangel Avacyn became holy corrupted
and started just straight up slaughtering
those she was created to protect.
Fun stuff.
Most brutal and horrifying of all,
the people of Innistrad began to lose their minds.
What started as whispers in the night
grew to full blown paranoia,
escalating into mind rending insanity.
And as their minds became corrupted,
their bodies began to change as well.
That's a big no thank you on the calamari arms.
The plane was eventually saved
by the MTG version of the Avengers.
But this story stands out as one of the most brutal
and tentacly times in Magic's history.
Now that I've read this list out loud,
I don't know what it says about me
that this is my favorite game.
Anyways,
thanks for watching.