fandomhigh | 5 Times Urza Ruined Everything, Thursday, Per 1

5 Times Urza Ruined Everything, Thursday, Per 1

Liliana was once again leaning against the front of her desk; hardly the position when one wanted to command the respect and attention due a professor, but this barely counted as a class. It was more a vehicle for her ranting, with the very thin sheen of 'history' to make it seem like a credible academic topic. So she was just going to lean, sipping her heavily honeyed tea that Ignis had provided her to soothe her throat after her generally long lectures, waiting until the clock ticked over to nine. As soon as it did so, she began today's...discussion, sure.

"Officially, the war between Yotia and the Fallaji is called the Antiquities War; however, since the war was actually between Urza and Mishra and they were using the armies of both countries like little toy soldiers, it is more commonly known as the Brothers' War. And by 'more commonly known,' I mean that if you ask someone what the Antiquities War was, the more scholarly and educated would eventually remember what you're referring to. If you ask damn near anyone on Dominaria what the Brothers' War was, even the most illiterate peasant could tell you, probably after spitting first. That's because the effects of the war impacted the entire plane, both in its immediate aftermath and for centuries - millennia, really - later. The war itself lasted from 28 AR to 64 AR, when Urza ended it in a truly spectacular and definitive fashion that we'll be discussing next week."

That's right! This grand fight over rocks sparked a war that lasted almost forty years!

"Roughly two generations of Terisiarans were born, grew up, and fought in this wasteful, wanton war. Three generations of the same family could end up fighting along side - or even against - one another on the field. Scholars have generally given up attempting to calculate the number of deaths resulting directly from combat, wartime actions, or war-related civilian deaths, declaring it an impossible task. The conservative estimate is several tens of millions." Reaching behind her, she grabbed a small sheaf of papers to hand out to everyone, printed copies of a hand-drawn map though Ignis' had raised lines and textures to indicate borders and other notable features. "The continent of Terisiare, roughly at the time of the start of the Brother's War." She looked forward to comparing it next week to the map of modern Terisiare, and making everyone guess what had happened to it. (Hint: The answer was Urza.) "To give you an idea of the scale, Terisiare is roughly the size of the combined landmass of Canada and the United States, while Argoth, the smaller subcontinent to the lower right, generally seems to be on par with Australia. Lat-Nam, on the other side of Terisiare, seems to be comparable to India, if one counts only the greater landmass and ignores the outlying islands.

"The College of Lat-Nam is one of the reasons that we have so much information about Urza and Mishra and what was happening at the time. It was the very first college of magic on Terisiare and made great strides to understanding the nature of mana and how spellcasters used it. The college attempted to stay neutral during the conflict. In 45 AR, when it became obvious that Mishra was coming to destroy Terisia City, there was an organized evacuation via secret tunnels moving people - especially wizards and scholars - as well as records, relics, and artifacts, across the Lat-Nam Straits to the College, and thence to other islands and continents away from Terisiare and, hopefully, the brothers and their war-machines. The College's neutrality did not protect it; it was attacked and destroyed sometime between 46 and 54 AR, and we genuinely don't know which side did it. No records of the fall of the College exist, nor were there any survivors, and the site of the college itself was a desert of poisoned glass for four thousand years. What fragments of information scholars collected from the areas around the College say it was visited by 'terrible retribution', that it was 'laid to waste', and that 'all the knowledge of Lat-Nam could not protect its sages.'"

She paused and drank some more of her tea. Look, there was a lot to cover, okay?

"While millions of people died to Urza and Mishra's war machines and the battles between Yotia, the Fallaji, and every other country that got sucked into the war as it expanded, we believe that the civilian casualties were significantly higher. Both sides practiced absolute warfare, where the only acceptable victory is the complete annihilation of one's opponent, accomplished through the rapid and intense application of force and with no limits on potential targets, the appropriation of resources, or the potential damage and destruction on one's own side in the pursuit of complete victory. We know that in some areas, youths as young as thirteen, were conscripted into the armies of whoever held the territory at the time, regardless of gender. Famine ran rampant through the war, even affecting the soldiers of both armies. Neither Urza nor Mishra were content to simply burn the fields of their enemy - or their own fields to deny them to the enemy - they deliberately poisoned and ruined them so nothing could grow and any living creatures who existed on the land would sicken and die from the effects. They did the same to waterways, to deny water and potential transportation avenues. Whole areas that had been vital for feeding Terisiare were turned to dust or slagged from the attacks of the war machines. The Sword Marches, disputed territory that was the ostensible reason for the start of the war was reduced to blackened glass and was completely uninhabitable."

All this. Over. Godsdamned. Rocks.

"Furthermore, Mishra and Urza were not mages, they were artificers. They built things, which meant that they needed resources. The areas they didn't deliberately ruin to harm their enemies, they strip-mined for the wood or stone or anything else they needed. Urza and Mishra made the land itself a casualty of the war. All those forests on the map? They were gone by 55 AR. Completely gone. Nothing replanted for the future, just harvested and abandoned. Ronom Lake was so badly polluted that you were said to be able to walk from one side to the other on the bellies of the dead fish, and in the summer it stank so bad that it could be smelled as far as Tornakul. The air in the Sardian Mountains was said to be unbreathable on days there was no wind, as the mountains were plundered for their resources and turned into workshops cranking out war machines. Many of the people who didn't die of starvation or from violence died instead to the various diseases that sprang up in the wake of ecological devastation."

Honestly, it was a wonder there was anybody left on Terisiare by the time Urza used his ultimate weapon.

"Argoth is perhaps the perfect encapsulation of this," she continued. "Populated by elves, the druidic descendants of the few Thran refugees that made their way there after the fall of the Empire, and a semi-sentient forest, it was an unspoiled natural wonder. For all that it appears very close to Terisiare itself, it had managed to hide itself from the outside world for several thousands of years. Harbin, Urza's son, discovered it towards the end of the war when he crash landed there in a storm. Once he managed to repair his ornithopter, he rushed home to tell his father about the wealth of natural resources that he'd found. Urza immediately brought his side to Argoth to begin to harvest the resources. Mishra was not far behind, and began doing the same thing. The island's residents, including the very forests and the creatures that lived within them, spent six years attempting to repel both invaders from their shores. The destruction of the land drove the druids mad as it corrupted and broke their links with the forest.

"Now, in Dominaria, every wood, from a sprawling forest or a shady grove, has a spirit or avatar that keeps the site safe: these creatures can be befriended with the right magic and are called maro. Sometimes, incredibly powerful elemental manifestations of the land can arise, either brought about by strong magic or of nature's own will. These are called Maro-Sorcerers and they are basically forces of nature with consciousness. Argoth's Maro-Sorcerer was named Titania. Both sides tried to convince her to side with them, but she refused to aid anyone who had harmed the forests of Argoth. After six years of devastation and depletion, however, she had weakened significantly, since her power was tied directly to the land. Urza, tired of Argoth's native peoples defending themselves and their land, sent his Colossus of Sardia after her during the Battle of Argoth. Titania, unable to fight the Colossus off in her weakened state, drew on the power of Gaea, Dominaria's Worldsoul, and became a living Avatar. Although this made her powerful enough to defeat the Colossus, it also drained the land's last remaining life, leading to the mass extinction of all but a small fraction of Argoth's natural lifeforms. And, as we will discuss next week, this mass extinction did not actually matter in the grand scheme of things."

Because...you guessed it! Urza!

Now she settled back to open the floor to any questions and comments folks might have, especially after throwing concepts like 'Worldsoul' and 'Maro-Sorcerer' out there.

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In nature!

Ignis Scientia

~~Atton~~ Jack Rand

Cal Kestis

Stark

Jonathan Sims

Could it really be called a lecture at this point? A verbal dissertation? A diatribe? Harangue?

Whatever, you'd signed up for it, you were listening to it. Maybe you can entertain yourself by keeping track of how many times Liliana gets really mad during it and has to rein herself in.

Also a good place to ask questions or make general comments!

Edited 2025-07-17 11:04 (UTC)

Ignis knew exactly what he'd been signing up for with this class, and was mildly impressed (although utterly unsurprised) that Liliana continued to surpass those expectations.

And with his recorder taking his notes for him, that allowed him a little more time to explore the map with a deep frown of consternation in his face as his fingers drifted over it, already able to discern some of the more devastating effects and changes compared to the one he was far more familiar with.

It might seem like Cal would have had his fill of war stories, but hearing about wars in other places was fascinating. It helped that BD-1 was keeping track of all the names so he didn't have to.

Stark was quiet while listening. Grimacing occasionally, of course.

He perked up at the idea of the semi-sentient forest and its guardian. Until the inevitable unfortunate end of that story, of course.

He'd have to ask about Maro-Sorcerers, sometime.

No time like the present, Stark.

That was true. And Liliana was going to be unable to converse in words for a while...

"Could you tell me more about the maro? And Maro-Sorcerers?" Stark asked after looking at Liliana for a moment.

"Of course, darling," Liliana said. "Is there anything in specific you want to know?"

"I'd just like to understand more," Stark said.

He liked knowing the hows and whys of things.

"Do you have any experience with them yourself? How do they manifest? What sort of magic lets someone see or speak to the spirits or do the spirits choose? Any of that. Or anything else. Just...more. Please."

"The Caligo had one, we called him the Old Man of the Forest," Liliana said softly. "Supposedly, he looked like a gnarled willow tree, bent and crooked, with a long beard either made of hanging moss or a flowering bush, with great antlers on either side of his head. Though," she added with a small laugh, "they also say that no maro looks the same twice, so it's less of a perfect description and more like a general amalgamation of all of them. As a nature elemental, the maro does not have a body in a traditional sense. Whenever it requires a corporeal form, it borrows what it needs from nature, created from whatever natural elements are around when it forms itself. When it moves any distance, it allows the body to fall apart and the spirit itself dives back into the green ley lines and reforms itself at its new point."

She shook her head. "I never saw him. Being nature spirits, they're most aligned with green mana, and are most likely to appear to green mana users. They can choose to be seen by anyone, usually when their site is in more danger than they can take care of alone, though there are some stories of maro coming out to protect children or good caretakers of the land. Many of them are servants of the Worldsoul, in one capacity or another, so they may also manifest according to her will."

Jon spent the entire lecture scowling more and more and more.

With a brief bit of looking uncomfortable at the word "avatar".

Does Urza sound like any figures from the history of your plane/world/galaxy/dimension/whatever? Are those people generally considered heroes or villains?

What do you think it means that Liliana is covering the ecological devastation of an entire continent in the very first class? (Last week didn't count, that was learning about Urza as a person, not one of the Five Times He Ruined Everything.)

"You know," Ignis mused at some point in the ensuing conversation, "it's interesting..." emphasized as if that was not quite the best word for it, but the word he would choose anyway, "...to, naturally, think of this in the context of my own war, the war of the Niflheim Empire against Eos, and the Lucian kingdom in particular. Hundreds of years in the making, but the most devastating in those last few decades, about the length of this Antiquities War, that last decade in particular, but still, even with the decimation of all its major cities, even with the devastation of the Long Night, I almost feel grateful that it never quite reached levels this catastrophic. Not to discount how ruinious the war was to Eos, of course, but the perspective is a little staggering.

"Although it should also be noted that this war, too, was also over a rock, spurned from a deep contention between brothers."

Almost like certain tropes were pervasive and prominent in certain types of fiction, or something. Wild.

What a crazy random happenstance!

"Was it?" Liliana asked, having really only gotten snippets of things here and there. "What happened there?"

Did this involve Ravatogh? Asking for no reason.

Oh, no, that was quite a different battle over a rock, actually.

"I suppose calling it a rock," Ignis admitted, "is a bit reductive, really. A crystal isn't technically a rock, but it certainly was the source of all our woes, as well as our salvation. The crystal chose one brother to lead Lucis to an age of glory; the other brother usurped it, and everything that shaped the war, as it turned out, was the result of the scorned brother's revenge thousands of years later..."

In a...vague nutshell, carefully told, to keep his own...personal connection with some of these historical events as guarded and removed from the explanation as possible.

Fortunately, they had spent their entire relationship honing their ability to hear what remained unsaid. "Ah," Liliana said. "Was the crystal blessed by the gods with sapience? Or was it that one brother could use the magic of said crystal and the other could not?"

She raised an eyebrow. "And how did the second brother live so long? Or was this more of plots and plans coming to fruition from beyond the grave?"

"The Starscourge," Ignis said, an answer he was sure would mean very little, if anything at all, to anyone here but Liliana. "He was, in those first days of the Kingdom of Lucis, a healer. It infected the populous like a plague, and he would cure them by taking it in for himself. It granted him immortality, but at the cost of being ultimately rejected by the same Crystal, a gift from the Astrals themselves to make Eos alive and fertile, that would have chosen him otherwise to lead Lucis into their first glorious age."

All of this had, of course, been scrubbed from the annals of history, but when they took his sight, the Lucii had also given Ignis their vision.

And the Lucii knew.

Oh, how they knew.

Hey, when were they heading back to Eos? No reason, Liliana was just planning an itinerary, don't even worry about it.

"Mmmm." Liliana could see how that could lead to someone nursing a hell of a grudge, but that didn't sound like a helpful comment at the moment. "Gifts from the gods often come with heavy and unexpected prices. Did his brother manage a glorious age?"

"Indeed he did," said Ignis, with a particularly dry drawl, and a wave of his hand as if the answer was to be expected. "He and the Oracle worked with the Six Astrals to clear Eos of the plague of the Starscourge. From the ruins of Solheim," a name that might ring familiar to Liliana, who had seen some of those ruins for herself, "he then built up the Kingdom of Lucis and the Astrals departed to leave the world to humanity..."

"Leaving the brother to think about everything he didn't get to do and didn't get to have," Liliana surmised. "Feeding his resentment over millennia until he choked on it."

Her fingers ghosted over the back of his hand, around to the inside of his wrist, and before it fell back to her side.

"The fall from grace of a man who would be king. Tragic, in the literary sense of the term."

Edited 2025-07-17 16:13 (UTC)

Ignis was quiet for a moment, after that. It was, in part, just to savor that small bit substantial touch, and to hold back the urge to draw her hand back into his with the reminder that they were in class. But it was also to think about if there was anything more to be said, when she had put it so perfectly.

"Yes," he finally said, "a resentment festered enough to destroy an entire world for it."

A slight pull upward in the corner of his mouth, more sadness than mirth, but with a certain thread of smug determination in it.

"Or at least try to, at any rate."

If you were going to create a drinking game in the style of "take a drink, when" to be used for the rest of the summer session, what would you put on it?

See! We have fun in this class!

Jon wasn't sure, but he definitely wanted a drink. "I can't believe nobody killed them both! Or at least tried. Or just flat-out refused to do what they wanted."

"Why are you assuming nobody tried?" Liliana asked, curious.

Jon frowned. "Good point. I had assumed you would mention it, if only to critique their failure."

Liliana just shrugged. "There's not much to say about them," she admitted. "There were multiple. Most of them were from either side, but sometimes they were from other countries before they were absorbed. But Urza and Mishra had incredible machines on their side; imagine being a regular person and going up against people in...tanks? I think they're called?"

Jon grimaced. "I'm familiar with the phenomenon." Even if his own tanks were eldritch entities. "It does make me feel a little better that they did try, though."

"Not as many independent attempts as you'd like, I'm sure," Liliana clarified. "Both sides were unstoppable forces, happy to devour anything in their way, as we see with Argoth. It was at least marginally better to ally yourself with one side or the other than simply being steamrolled."

Jon shrugged uncomfortably. "I can't exactly blame them for that against those odds, either. I'm just glad they didn't all roll over and accept these two arseholes doing that to their world."

Because that would suck. Shut up.

As she was clutching her life-giving honey tea. Though it would be really great if it had alcohol in it, too.

[Ignis' thread comes last in chronology, pls!]

And, of course, once everyone else had all but cleared from the classroom, Ignis gathered his things and went to meet Liliana, offering out his thermos for more hot tea should she be near the end of her own.

Not a drop of alcohol within it, however, alas. But perhaps his other arm seeking to slide into place around her waist would offer some small compensation for it.

"Rather sobering return to form, I must say," he noted, sounding thoughtful and introspective and a bit relieved to be there at her side again.

"What do you mean, my darling?"

Said response was slightly delayed in favor of a very long drink of the offered tea. And also by a kiss, that was as necessary and restorative as the tea has been, too.

And it wasn't so much that she was confused by what Ignis meant so much as she could imagine several different possibilities and wished clarification on which one(s) he was referring to.

"The shift," Ignis sighed slightly, leaning into Liliana just that slightly bit more, "from a delightful week of indulgent gratification to all too fresh memories of war is a bit...jarring. And grounding. Not a critique, by any means, just a mere observation, although I'm sure I'd hardly need to justify to you why today's lesson might have left me a bit more somber than I have been as of late."

"Indeed," Liliana murmured, her arms wrapping around him. "Had I realized how deep the overlap was, I would have warned you ahead of time. I..."

Look, even being engaged didn't make apologies any easier or more desirable.

"I...regret...that I didn't do so." Close enough, okay?

"But, no, you needn't justify nor explain your mood to me, my darling. If nothing else, you're dreadfully overdue for some melancholy if we're trying to keep the distribution fair." A faint trace of a smile, more tender than amused. "Perhaps I will cancel my office hours today. We can go home and curl up together? Or if you'd find more comfort in staying busy..."

Ugh, was she going to do this?

Yes, sigh, she apparently was.

"...I could assist you with preparing lunch? I am a deft hand with a knife, after all."

Edited 2025-07-17 14:05 (UTC)

Ignis had come into this class expecting to find parallels, and even he had not been quite prepared for some to run so deep. Hardly anything she should expect to have anticipated if even he hadn't predicted as much. And he felt himself being slightly...torn...because while curling up worked as a soothing balm for Liliana's more somber moods, Ignis felt that it lead him to only dwell and delve deeper into his. He would rather manage it by distraction, by doing something productive, but he knew he had to be careful not to lose himself in something like that entirely.

Thankfully, as he was trying to come around to a good middle ground, Liliana reached it first.

"I'd like that, 'Iana," he said, a smile floating onto his face as he turned his head to press a kiss against hers. "I would enjoy that immensely."

Edited 2025-07-17 14:26 (UTC)

"So long as you understand that I'm drawing the line at sifting," she declared. "I may love you but I have--"

Whatever Liliana might or might not have was going to have to remain a mystery because where there had been a black-haired woman in his arms, there was now a black-furred cat.

"Mrow?"

And here Ignis was just trying to conceive of a good recipeh that would require a substantial threat of said sifting, when his attention was entirely diverted, firmly, in an altogether different direction.

"...ah," he said, while the situation caught up with him entirely, his hold on Liliana shifting to immediately hold her and scratch behind her ears a little. "Well. I understand your aversion to the task, my darling, ut this seems like a rather extreme way to avoid even the possibility, even for you..."

And with a small tug in his chest for the prospect of whipping up a lunch together disappearing quicker than a snap of his fingers, he started to think that perhaps Liliana's offer of just curling up for a bit might be in order now after all...

Liliana shifted, pressing herself against his chest and tucking her head under his chin, purring loudly.

No, it wasn't the same, but she was trying, okay? This form was fairly limited. But at least she could remind him that he was loved, even if she couldn't use words to do it.

...Gods, she really was going to owe him all the sifting he wanted once she turned back.

Ignis would never truly press upon Liliana the toil of sifting, no matter how many perfectly lovely lunch preps may be thwarted by unexpected animalling.

In fact, though he did find himself releasing the sigh he couldn't quite help, the nuzzle and the purring managed to drag that smile back out of him, all the same, albeit a bit softer than a moment before.

"I suppose," he reasoned, "one of us were overdue for one of these, anyway. This does, at least, give me a good direction for the menu, although, if it's all the same to you, 'Iana, I think I'll take a rain check on that prep work."

It's true. Who had turned into a foxicorn just a few months ago? At least he was conscious when she'd transformed!

She nuzzled her face against his, still purring. Don't you worry, Ignis. She was gonna hunt and kill something so good for dinner.

Ugh. Look at this guy's face. He's so punchable.

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