Hello, spicy people of the internet. My name is StandUpPoet,
AKA a gargoyle come to life,
this is the Spice8Rack, and welcome to
Everything you need to know about the Magic: The Gathering storyline in slightly more than 10 minutes
(What a snappy title)
Number one:
The story of Magic: The Gathering is told in a number of places, but the most important events and characters
are often showcased on cards as spells, artifacts, planeswalkers, and creatures.
If a card is labled "Legendary", be it a land, creature, planeswalker or anything,
it is because the character, or object, or event on the card has some significance to that set's storyline.
Number two:
The "world" of Magic: The Gathering is a multiverse; set on different planes, a bit like planets,
separated by the Blind Eternities, a bit like space,
which all play out at the same time, a bit like our world, provided you've developed an understanding of object permanence.
Number three:
Each of these planes is unique in terms of size, society, demographics, technology, etcetera.
Most planes have humans, some planes have dragons. Some planes' magic looks like this, others planes' looks like this.
There are an infinite number of these planes, with infinite worldbuilding potential,
and so Wizards' only limit is their imagination,
and the number of historical cultures they can easily condense.
Number four:
Wizards of the Coast is the company that makes Magic: The Gathering.
That's not relevant to the story, but I didn't want to confuse anyone into thinking I'm talking about actual
wizards when I say "Wizards", until I do mean wizards when I say "Wizards", in which case I would mean wizards.
Wait, no, I've just confused everything, no, come ba-!
Number five:
Much like how regular living beings can't easily leave Earth, or traverse space,
nothing can leave its plane of origin or traverse the Blind Eternities, unless it is a planeswalker.
Or a powerful demon.
Or if they have an emulator.
Or a special boat.
Or they happen to be born in a-
Number six:
MOST things can't leave their plane of origin.
Number seven:
The many planeswalkers in the multiverse are often the driving force of Magic's storyline,
they are soldiers, sorcerers, and regular Joes, who, after some great emotional event befalls them,
have their planeswalker spark ignite, turning them into a being that can travel between the planes.
Gideon Jura was a soldier boy from the plane of Theros, but, after his hubris led to the death of all of his friends,
his spark ignited.
The antihero Liliana Vess was a nobledaughter of an old, Dominarian house,
but when she accidentally turned her brother into a zombie after some guy in the woods told her to,
her spark ignited.
Samut was a strong, independent sceptic of the gods of Amonkhet, and her spark ignited,
not when she watched her childhood friend killed before her eyes by a desert horror,
not when she barely saved her only other childhood friend from being brutally murdered by the god Hazoret,
but instead when "she saved Hazoret from the Scorpion God, and was overwhelmed by euphoria and joy
after being thanked by her deity.
Number eight:
Wizards of the Coast has dumb writing sometimes.
Number nine!
Planeswalkers pretty much used to be interplanar gods until the Mending,
which was when the central plane of the multiverse, Dominaria,
got all of its time holes Flex Sealed up in a huge, narrative balance-patch
that happened 60 years ago, back in 2007.
Number ten:
This thing exists!
Yep.
Take all of him in.
Number eleven:
Jumping back a bit, the first ten years of Magic's story predominantly focussed on Urza, Gerrard and their friends
on the plane of Dominaria, as they fought against continual Phyrexian invasions.
Urza was a planeswalker, Gerrard was his selectively bred son, Phyrexia was an
"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" style plane, ruled over by the mad god Yawgmoth,
and despite all of those people and places being canonically dead or destroyed hundreds of years ago,
their names and actions still hold relevancy to Magic, to this very day.
Number twelve:
Did I say Phyrexia was destroyed hundreds of years ago? I meant still alive, and worse than ever!
Karn, the second saddest robot in all of Magic: The Gathering,
forgot to wipe his feet after he killed Yawgmoth and traipsed a bunch of Phyrexian oil all over the carpet
in his perfect machine world of Argentum, which then became Mirrodin.
This oil blurred the lines between flesh and machines, and has since evolved the plane into New Phyrexia,
an even more "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream"-style hellscape.
Not to worry, though, the planeswalker Koth is single-handedly turning the tide in the Phyrexian invasion,
and providing a shining beacon to all Mi-
I'm just joshing with you. It's a lost cause, and everyone on Mirrodin is either dead, a cyber-man, or in some flavor of Womble hole.
Number thirteen:
Who's that in the distance?
Oh my go-!
Whoa, okay, back it up a bit.
Oh my god, it's Elder Dragon, turned planeswalker, turned ghost dragon, turned alive again, turned planeswalker again,
Nicol Bolas!
He's one of Magic's many villains, and certainly one of the most iconic.
He's always on some harebrained scheme to get rich quick or
to reclaim his lost omnipotence, even if it means sacrificing the life of every other living being
in the multiverse, and GOD help him, he will ENJOY doing it.
He's directly and indirectly ruined a whole bunch of planes, including Amonkhet, Zendikar, and many more,
he's got his fingers in lots of pies, and lots of planeswalkers owe him favours.
The Gatewatch; can they defeat him?
I hope so, I'm really bored of them.
Number fourteen!
Let's keep talking villains.
The Eldrazi Titans are three ineffable beings, presumably born from the Blind Eternities themselves,
who travel the multiverse, consuming entire planes for some unknowable and dastardly purpose.
Many years ago, Nicol Bolas' brother Ugin, the lithomancer Nahiri and Sorin Markov,
a weeb,
traps the Eldrazi on the plane of Zendikar, but wouldn't you know it, Nicol Bolas tricked a bunch of planeswalkers
into releasing the Titans, and they rampaged through Zendikar, killing countless people and irrevocably wounding the plane.
The planeswalker Nissa Revane had a chance to stop them, but she didn't.
She just chose not to.
Number fifteen:
That's right.
Every...
inch of him.
Number sixteen!
(It's hero time.)
The Gatewatch are an ever-changing group of planeswalkers that first formed for the purpose of
defeating the Eldrazi threat and protecting the multiverse, after the four founding members beat up
the demon planeswalker, Ob Nixilis.
The group went on to grow and shrink in size, besting many villains, such as Ulamog and Kozilek on Zendikar,
Emrakul on Innistrad, Tezzeret on Kaladesh, kind of,
and when they faced Nicol Bolas on Amonkhet, he ganked them so hard that Jace forgot he was a planeswalker
and Nissa threw a tantrum and left the group,
GOD, Nissa sucks.
The Gatewa- Pff, I ate my hair.
(Laughing in the background.)
The Gatewatch lost another member when Liliana's demonic contract defaulted to Bolas after she killed the fourth demon
she originally made it with.
Read those rent agreements, kids, you only have one future.
But Gideon, Chandra, Ajani, Teferi, and the newly un-amnesiad Jace and a bunch of other planeswalkers
are currently on their way to Ravnica for one final showdown with Bolas.
Can the Gatewatch do it? Again, I really hope so, I'm SO bored of their storyline.
Number seventeen!
Each set and block of Magic that's released into the game is chock-full of stories,
and I've only covered the major, multiverse-spanning characters and events,
and even then I've had to leave some stuff out.
(Burps in the background.) (Couldn't leave that out, could you?)
(Quack)
(Laughing)
There's lots of subplots, loose threads and rumors of Magic's storyline to talk about,
and lots of speculation about what's going to happen after the Gatewatch saga finally comes to a close next year.
Who is the Raven Man?
Where are the Eldrazi, now that their physical forms are gone?
Will Sidisi overthrow Silumgar and make Tarkir interesting again?
What will Elesh Norn do with her Phyrexian knowledge of other planes of existence?
How will Elspeth come back from the dead?
Will we ever go back to Lorwyn?
Please, God, say we're going back to Lorwyn, it's SO CUTE!
There are so many directions that the story could go, and Wizards are always retconning, reimagining and time travelling
through the narrative of this game.
It's vast, and silly, and there's so much to talk about that someone could make an entire YouTube channel
based around that niche alone. (Please subscribe, daddy wants a Patreon.)
Number eighteen:
My favorite bit of Magic: The Gathering's story is that in the canon of the game,
you, yes y- No, not you, but YOU, are a planeswalker.
Whenever you sit down to play Magic, you're not just playing cards with your pal,
you're dueling another planeswalker, casting spells, using mana to summon creatures and calling other
planeswalkers to your aid, so,
go nuts. Wear a silly hat to your next event. Make fun noises when you cast spells.
Magic is a complex, convolluted, two-part Silmarillion, eight-part Hollyoaks kind of story.
There's so much to talk about, so much to explore, and, in the videos I plan to make, I hope that I can make that exploration
a fun and interesting one, but it's no substitute for diving into the story yourself.
Look through some old cards, pick up a busted old book at a charity shop, have fun with this game,
and, if you see someone engaging with a game of Magic, laughing, or roleplaying, or wearing a silly hat,
let them have their fun. After all, they are, technically, a planeswalker, just like you.
Number nineteen:
He's always watching, you know.
Thanks for watching my video, guy, I hope you liked it, and if you did, please do leave a like, please do leave a subscribe,
if you want to leave a comment, any critiques, compliments, or advice for future videos,
please, please do, I'd love to hear from you guys, and I hope you guys have a wonderful day, thanks for watching,
and stay spicy, my dudes.