Liliana Vess (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
deathsmajesty) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomhigh2025-07-10 03:24 am
deathsmajesty) wrote in fandomhigh2025-07-10 03:24 am
5 Times Urza Ruined Everything, Thursday, Per 1
"Rocks," Liliana said with a sigh, perching on the edge of her desk at the front of the classroom. "I need you all to understand that everything that I'm going to describe over the next seven weeks happened because of a pair of bloody rocks. Yes, they were magical, but at the heart of all of the death, destruction, and depowering, were two brothers who couldn't share rocks. Our next six classes will skim the surface of the five most egregious failures and resultant disasters, and the one time it was still a tragedy, but it was at least an effective one. Which leaves today for providing some historical and personal background information about Urza, so you can understand a little more about the man behind the fuck-ups. This is not an attempt to get you to sympathize with him, but more so you can understand how absolutely committed this man was to ruining every facet of his life, and the lives of everyone around him."
Welcome to class! Hope you're prepared for seven weeks of Liliana ranting. Just know, should there be any tests, you could probably get by with just writing because Urza sucked, just like, so much for every question.
"Urza and his brother, Mishra, were born in the what the Argivian Reckoning, the calendar most of Dominaria uses, declares as year 0. For context, I was born in the year 4360. We are very lucky in that Urza and Mishra both rose to fame, power, and acclaim in their own lifetimes, leaving us a rich historical record, most of which even survived the consequences of their existence--although, amusingly enough, we do not know the name of the family they were born into, simply that they were a noble family from the city Penregon in the country of Argive, which was a coastal kingdom off the coast of the continent of Terisiare, back when it was mostly in one piece. Don't worry, we'll be covering what happened to Terisiare in a later class. But, I bring up this gap in historical record to make a broader point about scholarship: no historical record is sacrosanct. If something as basic and important as Urza's last name can be lost, what else might have been lost over the next forty-five hundred years? What might be incorrect? What might be technically correct, but presented with bias? I believe that I have made my bias perfectly clear, but there is no historical record that exists without some form of bias, even if only that of survivorship. There is no perfect record, no unimpeachable testimony, no undeniable truth to history, and, whenever possible, you should always be approaching information with an eye to who is saying it, why, where do they get the authority to speak on it, and what information they might, whether by ignorance, accident, or malice, be leaving out."
There. Liliana had provided her class with one (1) broadly useful lesson. She was now free to rant to her heart's content.
"When the boys were very young, their mother died and their father remarried a woman who reports paint as anywhere from merely indifferent to emotionally abusive. Because of the relationship between the boys and their stepmother, they were sent away at the age of ten to be apprenticed to a friend of their father's, the archaeologist Tocasia, and remained with her after their father's death. Under Tocasia's tutelage, the brothers became scholars of the ancient Thran Empire--" she gave a slight smile to Jonif he were there "--and master artificers, skilled in both the understanding and repair of Thran artifacts as, well as the creation of their own. Both boys were undeniably brilliant and gifted." From her expression, one might think the grudging compliment had left a foul taste in Liliana's mouth.
"In 20 AR, Tocasia's excavation team discovered the remains of Halcyon, the capital city of the Thran Empire. Calculating the site's position from previously discovered Thran ruins, they were able to determine the location of the Caves of Koilos, which had been known as the Caves of the Damned during the Thran Empire. Entering the tunnels, they discovered an unusually large Thran powerstone. Both brothers sought to claim it, it broke in half, and each of them took half, but neither would be satisfied until he possessed his brother's half as well. This desire for the other half of a rock led to three things." She held up three fingers. "First, was the death of Tocasia; one night, the brothers attacked each other and she was killed attempting to intercede. The second was the Brothers' War, which we'll discuss over the next two weeks. The third was reopening the rift to Phyrexia; the powerstone had been keeping the gateway between the two planes closed. Unknowingly, sure, but their greedy removal of that stone opened up the gateway that was then used in almost every Phyrexian infiltration and invasion of Dominaria.
"After Tocasia's death, Urza and Mishra went their separate ways; Urza moving to the Kroog, the capital of country of Yotia, the chief military might of eastern Terisiare, and becoming an apprentice clockmaker. Not long after his arrival, the king of Yotia announced that any man who could move a gigantic jade statue across a courtyard would be married to his daughter. Urza didn't give a damn about the daughter, Kayla, but was interested in the Thran tome being offered up as part of her dowry, and so built a gigantic machine that successfully moved the statue. Now, by all reports, Kayla bin-Kroog was beautiful, brilliant, charismatic, and a skilled and caring leader of her people. An absolute catch, all the way around. And yet, Urza saw her more as a burden than anything else. He gave her no support, no affection, no consideration. After consummating their marriage on their wedding night, Urza immediately left her bed to go to the royal vaults to study the Thran book, making Kayla a laughingstock in her father's court for being unable to keep her husband's interest even for a night. Rather than stand with her or attempt to shield her from ridicule, Urza agreed with the rumors and jokes and continued to pursue his ambitions as the newly-named Chief Artificer of Yotia. Now, granted, this was a political and arranged marriage, but it was one that Urza deliberately sought - she wasn't foisted upon him unknowingly and unwillingly! But rather than granting her the barest modicum of respect, he mostly ignored her, both in public and private, disregarded her advice and suggestions when offered, and appropriated several sources of funding for himself and his machines from various charitable works and social projects she had set up in Kroog and beyond.
"While Urza was setting himself up in Yotia, his brother Mishra had allied with the Fallaji Empire. Yotia and the Fallaji had a rocky and antagonistic relationship, clashing over territory, particularly a contested area called the Sword Marshes. A peace summit was called in 26 AR, with Mishra and Urza accompanying the king of Yotia and the Qadir of the Fallaji. Though their reunion was supposedly cordial in the beginning, it didn't take long for both brothers to begin sniping at one another and plotting to take the other's stone, thus amplifying the antagonism of both sides. When the Fallaji refused to cede their claim on the Sword Marshes, Urza used the war machines he'd brought with him to bomb his brother's great dragon-engine--also a war machine, also brought to their ostensible peace summit. The bombing of the dragon engine was considered an act of war, and the Qadir stabbed the king in through the chest, killing him. Urza returned home to inform Kayla that Yotia was at war with the Fallaji Empire and that he'd gotten her father killed, and then immediately returned to his lab to begin work on more automatons and war machines. He was barely seen at all in the following weeks, as Kayla coped with her grief and taking her place as queen. He attended his father-in-law's funeral, though his speech was more about the perfidy of his brother and the Fallaji people than the king himself, but nearly missed the entirety of Kayla's coronation, because he hadn't wanted to leave his lab.
"After proving to be a failure of a husband, getting Kayla's father killed, and dragging Yotia into war, he also succeeded at being a horrible consort, prioritizing his half of the powerstone over the lives and livelihoods of every person in Kroog. When the Fallaji came to Kroog for one last attempted peace summit, they proposed a treaty that would acknowledge the Sword Marches as sovereign Yotian territory, with several minor concessions on Yotia's part. One of those concessions was to hand over of Urza's half of the powerstone to Mishra. Urza flat out refused to consider this, and got into a screaming match with Kayla in front of the Fallaji delegation and her court, after she spoke up strongly in favor of the deal. Needless to say, there was no deal and four months later, Kroog was brutally sacked and left in ruins, Kayla barely escaping with her life and the life of her unborn child. This was the true start of the war that would last almost forty years and devastate both the land and the populations of the entire continent.
"Skipping over the war because we'll cover it later, let's talk about Urza as a father. Even though he and Kayla were reunited after the Fall of Kroog, he did not meet with his son, Harbin, until the boy was two. He was a neglectful and distant father, believing his son to be his brother's child and judging the boy for his dreams of becoming a pilot instead of an artificer. Harbin spent his entire life chasing after his father's approval, which Urza used to manipulate his son when he needed something, and otherwise generally ignored the boy. Harbin is said to have died in 64 AR, when Urza brought the war to an end via absolute devastation. Beyond his flesh and blood son, Urza created a sentient golem named Karn about thirty-three hundred. Although Karn was nearly indestructible, Urza designed him to experience pain and feelings, to better explain the effects of Urza's time travel experiments and also sending him through experimental planar portals. He had based Karn's design on an earlier war machine, with the express purpose of having Karn kill people who could prove a danger to Urza and his designs. When Karn chose a pacifistic lifestyle, Urza abused him horribly to try to force him to renounce his ideals. Eventually, however, he denounced Karn as a 'flawed experiment' and abandoned him in favor of new projects instead, returning to Karn only when he could make use of the golem in one way or another. As far as anyone can tell, Urza grouped people into three different categories: tools to be used when needed, annoyances to be ignored, and enemies to be destroyed."
Let's not get it twisted; that was an outlook that Liliana was quite familiar and comfortable with. But, like so many other things, Urza took it to unnecessary extremes.
"Most of the rest of the things he did we'll cover in later classes, but just to touch on a few, he: genetically engineered a clone army by infusing genetic stock with magic, making them consummate soldiers -and, having learned from Karn, he made sure they were obedient; he started the Bloodline Project, which was all about breeding 'the perfect child' that would the absolute pinnacle of human evolution so that he would have a worthy heir; he created weapons called 'soul bombs,' which could only be fueled by feeding them a truly astounding number of powerful souls; and then followed that up by intentionally recruiting a man named Tevesh Szat for his elite squadron because he knew that Szat would betray him and kill a number of Szat's squadmates, which would then be enough 'justification' to kill Szat and use his soul to fuel aforementioned bombs. And that's just the stuff that barely rates further mention, most of it completely overshadowed by everything else he did."
She gave them all a bright smile. "And that, my darlings, is plenty of background to begin understanding Urza's actions and atrocities during his lifetime. Any questions?"
Welcome to class! Hope you're prepared for seven weeks of Liliana ranting. Just know, should there be any tests, you could probably get by with just writing because Urza sucked, just like, so much for every question.
"Urza and his brother, Mishra, were born in the what the Argivian Reckoning, the calendar most of Dominaria uses, declares as year 0. For context, I was born in the year 4360. We are very lucky in that Urza and Mishra both rose to fame, power, and acclaim in their own lifetimes, leaving us a rich historical record, most of which even survived the consequences of their existence--although, amusingly enough, we do not know the name of the family they were born into, simply that they were a noble family from the city Penregon in the country of Argive, which was a coastal kingdom off the coast of the continent of Terisiare, back when it was mostly in one piece. Don't worry, we'll be covering what happened to Terisiare in a later class. But, I bring up this gap in historical record to make a broader point about scholarship: no historical record is sacrosanct. If something as basic and important as Urza's last name can be lost, what else might have been lost over the next forty-five hundred years? What might be incorrect? What might be technically correct, but presented with bias? I believe that I have made my bias perfectly clear, but there is no historical record that exists without some form of bias, even if only that of survivorship. There is no perfect record, no unimpeachable testimony, no undeniable truth to history, and, whenever possible, you should always be approaching information with an eye to who is saying it, why, where do they get the authority to speak on it, and what information they might, whether by ignorance, accident, or malice, be leaving out."
There. Liliana had provided her class with one (1) broadly useful lesson. She was now free to rant to her heart's content.
"When the boys were very young, their mother died and their father remarried a woman who reports paint as anywhere from merely indifferent to emotionally abusive. Because of the relationship between the boys and their stepmother, they were sent away at the age of ten to be apprenticed to a friend of their father's, the archaeologist Tocasia, and remained with her after their father's death. Under Tocasia's tutelage, the brothers became scholars of the ancient Thran Empire--" she gave a slight smile to Jon
"In 20 AR, Tocasia's excavation team discovered the remains of Halcyon, the capital city of the Thran Empire. Calculating the site's position from previously discovered Thran ruins, they were able to determine the location of the Caves of Koilos, which had been known as the Caves of the Damned during the Thran Empire. Entering the tunnels, they discovered an unusually large Thran powerstone. Both brothers sought to claim it, it broke in half, and each of them took half, but neither would be satisfied until he possessed his brother's half as well. This desire for the other half of a rock led to three things." She held up three fingers. "First, was the death of Tocasia; one night, the brothers attacked each other and she was killed attempting to intercede. The second was the Brothers' War, which we'll discuss over the next two weeks. The third was reopening the rift to Phyrexia; the powerstone had been keeping the gateway between the two planes closed. Unknowingly, sure, but their greedy removal of that stone opened up the gateway that was then used in almost every Phyrexian infiltration and invasion of Dominaria.
"After Tocasia's death, Urza and Mishra went their separate ways; Urza moving to the Kroog, the capital of country of Yotia, the chief military might of eastern Terisiare, and becoming an apprentice clockmaker. Not long after his arrival, the king of Yotia announced that any man who could move a gigantic jade statue across a courtyard would be married to his daughter. Urza didn't give a damn about the daughter, Kayla, but was interested in the Thran tome being offered up as part of her dowry, and so built a gigantic machine that successfully moved the statue. Now, by all reports, Kayla bin-Kroog was beautiful, brilliant, charismatic, and a skilled and caring leader of her people. An absolute catch, all the way around. And yet, Urza saw her more as a burden than anything else. He gave her no support, no affection, no consideration. After consummating their marriage on their wedding night, Urza immediately left her bed to go to the royal vaults to study the Thran book, making Kayla a laughingstock in her father's court for being unable to keep her husband's interest even for a night. Rather than stand with her or attempt to shield her from ridicule, Urza agreed with the rumors and jokes and continued to pursue his ambitions as the newly-named Chief Artificer of Yotia. Now, granted, this was a political and arranged marriage, but it was one that Urza deliberately sought - she wasn't foisted upon him unknowingly and unwillingly! But rather than granting her the barest modicum of respect, he mostly ignored her, both in public and private, disregarded her advice and suggestions when offered, and appropriated several sources of funding for himself and his machines from various charitable works and social projects she had set up in Kroog and beyond.
"While Urza was setting himself up in Yotia, his brother Mishra had allied with the Fallaji Empire. Yotia and the Fallaji had a rocky and antagonistic relationship, clashing over territory, particularly a contested area called the Sword Marshes. A peace summit was called in 26 AR, with Mishra and Urza accompanying the king of Yotia and the Qadir of the Fallaji. Though their reunion was supposedly cordial in the beginning, it didn't take long for both brothers to begin sniping at one another and plotting to take the other's stone, thus amplifying the antagonism of both sides. When the Fallaji refused to cede their claim on the Sword Marshes, Urza used the war machines he'd brought with him to bomb his brother's great dragon-engine--also a war machine, also brought to their ostensible peace summit. The bombing of the dragon engine was considered an act of war, and the Qadir stabbed the king in through the chest, killing him. Urza returned home to inform Kayla that Yotia was at war with the Fallaji Empire and that he'd gotten her father killed, and then immediately returned to his lab to begin work on more automatons and war machines. He was barely seen at all in the following weeks, as Kayla coped with her grief and taking her place as queen. He attended his father-in-law's funeral, though his speech was more about the perfidy of his brother and the Fallaji people than the king himself, but nearly missed the entirety of Kayla's coronation, because he hadn't wanted to leave his lab.
"After proving to be a failure of a husband, getting Kayla's father killed, and dragging Yotia into war, he also succeeded at being a horrible consort, prioritizing his half of the powerstone over the lives and livelihoods of every person in Kroog. When the Fallaji came to Kroog for one last attempted peace summit, they proposed a treaty that would acknowledge the Sword Marches as sovereign Yotian territory, with several minor concessions on Yotia's part. One of those concessions was to hand over of Urza's half of the powerstone to Mishra. Urza flat out refused to consider this, and got into a screaming match with Kayla in front of the Fallaji delegation and her court, after she spoke up strongly in favor of the deal. Needless to say, there was no deal and four months later, Kroog was brutally sacked and left in ruins, Kayla barely escaping with her life and the life of her unborn child. This was the true start of the war that would last almost forty years and devastate both the land and the populations of the entire continent.
"Skipping over the war because we'll cover it later, let's talk about Urza as a father. Even though he and Kayla were reunited after the Fall of Kroog, he did not meet with his son, Harbin, until the boy was two. He was a neglectful and distant father, believing his son to be his brother's child and judging the boy for his dreams of becoming a pilot instead of an artificer. Harbin spent his entire life chasing after his father's approval, which Urza used to manipulate his son when he needed something, and otherwise generally ignored the boy. Harbin is said to have died in 64 AR, when Urza brought the war to an end via absolute devastation. Beyond his flesh and blood son, Urza created a sentient golem named Karn about thirty-three hundred. Although Karn was nearly indestructible, Urza designed him to experience pain and feelings, to better explain the effects of Urza's time travel experiments and also sending him through experimental planar portals. He had based Karn's design on an earlier war machine, with the express purpose of having Karn kill people who could prove a danger to Urza and his designs. When Karn chose a pacifistic lifestyle, Urza abused him horribly to try to force him to renounce his ideals. Eventually, however, he denounced Karn as a 'flawed experiment' and abandoned him in favor of new projects instead, returning to Karn only when he could make use of the golem in one way or another. As far as anyone can tell, Urza grouped people into three different categories: tools to be used when needed, annoyances to be ignored, and enemies to be destroyed."
Let's not get it twisted; that was an outlook that Liliana was quite familiar and comfortable with. But, like so many other things, Urza took it to unnecessary extremes.
"Most of the rest of the things he did we'll cover in later classes, but just to touch on a few, he: genetically engineered a clone army by infusing genetic stock with magic, making them consummate soldiers -and, having learned from Karn, he made sure they were obedient; he started the Bloodline Project, which was all about breeding 'the perfect child' that would the absolute pinnacle of human evolution so that he would have a worthy heir; he created weapons called 'soul bombs,' which could only be fueled by feeding them a truly astounding number of powerful souls; and then followed that up by intentionally recruiting a man named Tevesh Szat for his elite squadron because he knew that Szat would betray him and kill a number of Szat's squadmates, which would then be enough 'justification' to kill Szat and use his soul to fuel aforementioned bombs. And that's just the stuff that barely rates further mention, most of it completely overshadowed by everything else he did."
She gave them all a bright smile. "And that, my darlings, is plenty of background to begin understanding Urza's actions and atrocities during his lifetime. Any questions?"
Sign In #1
Re: Sign In #1
Re: Sign In #1
Re: Sign In #1
Re: Sign In #1
AttonJack RandListen to the Lecture
myLiliana's long ass lectures, that's on you.If it helps, she doesn't seem to expect anyone to take notes! This is just an introduction to help you fully comprehend what a massive tool this guy was!
Re: Listen to the Lecture
On the other hand, for him, that literally meant just setting out a recorder on his desk and letting it run while he got to sit back with a faint grin on his face and enjoy the
rantlesson while the recorder did it thing for reference later.It certainly didn't hurt that it was all coming from his favorite voice to listen to, and that he could lay out some places on a mental map, as well.
But, at the end of all of it, in addition to adding a bit more to the center space of the Ardyn-Urza Venn diagram, he was left with one single, pressing question, though mostly for just himself: would it be wise, the next time he found it difficult to pull Liliana up out of her own laboratory to raise a cautionary reminder of who else clearly spent far too much time doing the same?
Surely, she only had herself to blame by bringing this into his life.
But, also, Ignis was not a stupid man.
Re: Listen to the Lecture
Maybe even something more complex than 'wow this guy is the worst.'
Questions or Comments
Also, she knows everyone in the class, so she's skipping introductions, but if you wanted to talk about why you've signed up for this class or something along those lines, neat!
Re: Questions or Comments
"Er...I am curious why Kayla didn't just divorce or kill him, depending on the common practice at the time," Jon noted. "Or at the very least imprison him and give the rock to his brother. Also what good half a powerstone would be. And, um. If the people in the Caves of the Damned were the ones who set it up to block that portal. And why whoever did set it up didn't put a label on it or something so this wouldn't happen."
He had so many questions.
Re: Questions or Comments
Like maybe it could have been sealed by a very traumatized and broken woman who then turned and gave herself up to be eaten away by the horrific gasses that Yawgmoth had unleashed against the city. Who could say?
"As for Kayla...honestly, I can't say for certain. Personally, I think that he was due for a healthy serving of glass shards with his breakfast porridge, but that's just me. Perhaps her father wouldn't allow her a divorce; Urza was the Chief Artificer, after all, and Yotia had a strong military force, but they were not invincible. It's possible that Kayla's happiness was considered a small price for having an Artificer of Urza's skill, and they didn't want to lose him. After her father was dead, Yotia was at war and their enemy had Urza's brother making artifact weapons to use against them. Urza was a terrible husband, father, and human being, but I can see how people would consider him indispensable to the war effort."
Joke was on them, considering how the war ended.
"And Kayla did, in fact, attempt to give the stone to Mishra. She got Urza drunk, stole the powerstone, and brought it to Mishra. Mishra then seduced her, and before either of them could leave, Urza discovered the plot and stormed into Mishra's room, finding them together in bed, which is why he doubted Harbin was his, even though he and Kayla did have a sexual relationship both before and after the affair."
Kayla bin-Kroog did nothing wrong.
"As for powerstones, I'm certainly no expert and most of them were created nine thousand years before I was born, but even broken in half, they still had tremendous power. The halves were called the Mightstone and the Weakstone respectively. Urza could use his half to empower and strengthen artifacts, and Mishra had the Weakstone, which could depower and even shut artifacts down."
Re: Questions or Comments
Sort of like "Head Archivist".
Re: Questions or Comments
Re: Questions or Comments
"Every. Single. Branch. And in such a way it becomes hard to believe it wasn't intentional," Liliana drawled.
Re: Questions or Comments
Re: Questions or Comments
Which, again, she vibed with, but the degree.
"You can do any number of horrific things if you think you're justified, no magic or Force necessary."
Talk to Liliana
Re: Talk to Liliana
"A mistake I do not plan to repeat," he added, soft smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.
Re: Talk to Liliana
Re: Talk to Liliana
Re: Talk to Liliana
Re: Talk to Liliana
It seemed a good time, really, for his hand to find her cheek, for his fingers to find her hair, and for his lips to find another, briefed, no less impassioned kiss.
"Yes. Quite. A good, meaty morsel to sink one's teeth into, to nosh on and ponder, while tugging at one's curiosity with the promise of things still to come..."
Then he let out a soft, thoughtful hum, as his grin grew further.
"Or perhaps...not so different answers after all..."
Re: Talk to Liliana
Re: Talk to Liliana
"I...admit," he said, sounding just a bit nonplussed about it, "I had missed that initial connection..."
Though that certainly did explain why the name strummed particularly familiar to him whenever it was mentioned. He may have missed it entirely, actually, had she not mentioned it, because he wasn't sure if there was ever a time when he'd thought of it as Kayla's Music Box.
It had simply become their music box.
And with this new perspective, there was another moment, as he turned it over in his mind and figured out what to make of it.
"And it certainly does," he confessed further, now that there was anything in that regard to confess, "but not, I should think, in any way that would inspire concern..."
Re: Talk to Liliana
Re: Talk to Liliana
"Well," he mused, "it certainly does add a feeling of a bit more weight to it, realizing just how deep its legacy runs. And a feeling of..." a moment to fish around for the right word, and his hand drifting up to hers, "gratitude, that here we are, with th3 opportunity to add to it our own. Not to mention that it awakens a dormant curiosity to simply know more. Was it something gifted to her? An heirloom? Perhaps even something crafted by her own hands? Was it something that gave her comfort, or joy? Or was did it bring more horror, or strife? Whatever the answer may be, however, I know that it just causes me to appreciate all that it's brought me that much more."
Re: Talk to Liliana
Re: Talk to Liliana
Re: Talk to Liliana
And then, dancing away from so much openness and sincerity, she teased, "Though now that Eos has been opened to you, perhaps I should take it back..."
Re: Talk to Liliana
Re: Talk to Liliana
"I suppose that might be an acceptable trade," Liliana mused. "And if they haven't been able to put something together in that vein, a donation to the arts program might not be out of line. I do adore being a patron of the arts."
Prestige and very flattering art for her all for the low, low price of money. Amazing trade.
OOC