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)
fandomhigh2025-07-24 10:15 am
deathsmajesty) wrote in fandomhigh2025-07-24 10:15 am
5 Times Urza Ruined Everything, Thursday, Per 1
Liliana was once again leaning against the front of the desk, wearing a man's button down shirt that hit her at mid-thigh and a wryly amused expression. "Good morning, class," she said. "I'm sure you're all as thrilled as I am to be having class today." She genuinely was thrilled was the thing. She had not been best pleased about being a cat in general, but losing an entire class was insupportable. "Today we're covering the end of the Brother's War, the discovery of the Phyrexian infiltration, and the activation of the Golgothian Sylex."
Truly an auspicious introduction.
"So when last we left Urza and Mishra, they had defoliated most of the island of Argoth, the druids had been maddened by the destruction of the land, and a good ninety percent of the remaining life had been killed off in a mass extinction event as Titania, the Maro-Sorcerer of Argoth, had drawn upon it to take on the form of an Avatar of Gaea to stand against Urza's Colossus of Sarpadia. You might understandably be thinking that this was the worst of it, but you are underestimating the scale of Urza's fuckery." Apparently, whatever guardrails she'd had on her language before had been obliterated, either by her week as a cat or her disdain for Urza. Possibly both. "By this time, Urza and Mishra were in their 60s, though they hadn't laid eyes on one another since the start of the war, nearly forty years prior. A duel was called between them, Mishra and his strongest dragon engine, versus Urza with his strongest creation. They battled and during the battle, Mishra mocked Urza for how old he'd gotten, which was when Urza realized that Mishra hadn't aged in years. Possibly even a decade or so. He pressed his attack and Mishra was badly wounded, only beneath his skin was not blood and bone, but machine parts and gleaming oil. It was then that Urza finally understood that his brother was no longer simply Mishra, but had instead been transformed into a Phyrexian, in a process known as compleation.
"As an incredibly brief aside for context, compleation entails the replacement of much of a person's organic parts with artifice, which typically causes the death of their original organic body. I am not one to particularly care about 'holiness' as a concept, but using 'unholy' to describe Phyrexians and the process of compleation would not be inaccurate. The compleated being retains its memory and personality, but loses its soul and is indoctrinated with a fanatical desire to serve Phyrexia in any way that Phyrexia desires. Phyrexia is an artificial plane of mechanical and biomechanical "life", an ecosystem comprised of metal, death, and tissue. A Thran eugenicist named Yawgmoth was brought there along with the people that he had infected with phthisis. On this artificial plane, he was able to experiment on those people to his heart's content, replacing their weak flesh with artifice. Yawgmoth gave Phyrexian organisms a purpose: to thrive, to grow beyond the confines of Phyrexia and into the rest of the Multiverse, starting with Dominaria, since that was where Yawgmoth and his people had been exiled from. Their first invastion attempt brought down the Thran Empire and resulted in the gate being closed by the powerstone that Urza and Mishra had found. The Brothers' War was their next attempt, infiltrating and compleating much of Mishra's army and Mishra himself. Their singular goal is to spread and compleat the entire Multiverse, turning it towards the glory of Phyrexia. Urza was horrible, but Phrexians are horrors.
"After Mishra's compleation became obvious, he merged with his dragon engine and began wreaking havoc on the field. Realizing he was losing, Urza reached for the ultimate weapon: the Golgothian Sylex. It's unknown if he would have used that if he hadn't realized that he was ultimately fighting Phyrexians, though that does beg the question why he had it on the field in the first place. Either way, he used the Sylex and in doing so, irrevocably changed the face of Dominaria." At this, she handed out another map of Terisiare to be compared with the one from last week. To really hammer it home, the modern map could overlap the previous for a direct comparison of the two. "It was catastrophic - we literally refer to it as the catastrophe. It is the second--" A beat. "Third most devastating calamity in Dominaria's recorded history. The outburst of energy from this instantly vaporized all but a fraction of Argoth, and sent a massive shock wave across Terisiare that reached as far as the Ronom Glacier. It also destroyed the tectonic plate beneath Argoth. And it is because of this that we cannot tell how many people died in the war - the Sylex Blast obliterated so many people and so much land, it is impossible to keep an accurate count."
She took a deep breath. "I'm sure most of you have an idea of what that means. Earthquakes rocked the plane. Coastal cities on all continents were hit by devastating tidal waves that dragged them into the sea. Across the plane, the vast majority of our major civilizations collapsed, unable to handle the pressures as the land and seas seemingly went mad. From the end of the War to about 450 AR, Dominaria entered what we call the Dark Age, named for the almost-extinguishing of magic's torch during that period. It was a time of persecution and corruption when it seemed as if the end of the world was at hand. Zealots and despots rose up, calling for the outlaw of magic and artifice, people slaughtering mages and burning down schools of magic and higher learning. The people were broken into factions, and each rose against the others--the destruction of the plate shifted our climate colder and resources dwindled, whole species of plants and animals going extinct as their habitats shifted. Around 450 AR, the Dark Age gave way to the Ice Age, which lasted until about twenty-five hundred years. The population of the plane dropped to what would be the lowest in history and would hold that record for almost two thousand years...don't worry, we'll be discussing the events that unseated that record in a class or so."
Because of course Urza was (partially) to blame for it. "The Blast is said to have disintegrated both armies, including Urza and Mishra. However, in the explosion, Urza's spark ignited, turning him into a Planeswalker. Planeswalkers are--" She paused, and started again. "In those days, Planeswalkers were immortal, our physical bodies no more than a manifestation of our will. With the ignition of his spark, the blast did, indeed, destroy his body, but he was able to recreate it with a thought; the only thing he did not anticipate was that the two halves of the powerstone fused with him, turning into his eyes, one glowing red and the other green. Seeing through these eyes, Urza realized what horrors he had unleashed onto his home plane and Planeswalked away. He returned six years later to to say a final farewell to his student and good friend Tawnos." She pursed her lips. "During this time, he asked Tawnos to carry his farewells to Kayla, who had become Queen of Penregon, attempting to care for the survivors of Terisiare, while also mourning the loss of their son, who had died in the blast. Urza had other things to do - specifically, declaring vengeance on Phyrexia for their corruption of his brother."
Because suddenly Mishra mattered to him or something.
"Two additional side effects of the Sylex Blast that went unknown and unnoticed for centuries were the creation of a time rift, a fracture in the planar fabric of Dominaria itself, and the formation of the Dominarian Nexus and the Shard of Twelve Worlds. The latter only affected Planeswalkers, and the former...well, we'll talk about the former during our final class. Any questions?"
Truly an auspicious introduction.
"So when last we left Urza and Mishra, they had defoliated most of the island of Argoth, the druids had been maddened by the destruction of the land, and a good ninety percent of the remaining life had been killed off in a mass extinction event as Titania, the Maro-Sorcerer of Argoth, had drawn upon it to take on the form of an Avatar of Gaea to stand against Urza's Colossus of Sarpadia. You might understandably be thinking that this was the worst of it, but you are underestimating the scale of Urza's fuckery." Apparently, whatever guardrails she'd had on her language before had been obliterated, either by her week as a cat or her disdain for Urza. Possibly both. "By this time, Urza and Mishra were in their 60s, though they hadn't laid eyes on one another since the start of the war, nearly forty years prior. A duel was called between them, Mishra and his strongest dragon engine, versus Urza with his strongest creation. They battled and during the battle, Mishra mocked Urza for how old he'd gotten, which was when Urza realized that Mishra hadn't aged in years. Possibly even a decade or so. He pressed his attack and Mishra was badly wounded, only beneath his skin was not blood and bone, but machine parts and gleaming oil. It was then that Urza finally understood that his brother was no longer simply Mishra, but had instead been transformed into a Phyrexian, in a process known as compleation.
"As an incredibly brief aside for context, compleation entails the replacement of much of a person's organic parts with artifice, which typically causes the death of their original organic body. I am not one to particularly care about 'holiness' as a concept, but using 'unholy' to describe Phyrexians and the process of compleation would not be inaccurate. The compleated being retains its memory and personality, but loses its soul and is indoctrinated with a fanatical desire to serve Phyrexia in any way that Phyrexia desires. Phyrexia is an artificial plane of mechanical and biomechanical "life", an ecosystem comprised of metal, death, and tissue. A Thran eugenicist named Yawgmoth was brought there along with the people that he had infected with phthisis. On this artificial plane, he was able to experiment on those people to his heart's content, replacing their weak flesh with artifice. Yawgmoth gave Phyrexian organisms a purpose: to thrive, to grow beyond the confines of Phyrexia and into the rest of the Multiverse, starting with Dominaria, since that was where Yawgmoth and his people had been exiled from. Their first invastion attempt brought down the Thran Empire and resulted in the gate being closed by the powerstone that Urza and Mishra had found. The Brothers' War was their next attempt, infiltrating and compleating much of Mishra's army and Mishra himself. Their singular goal is to spread and compleat the entire Multiverse, turning it towards the glory of Phyrexia. Urza was horrible, but Phrexians are horrors.
"After Mishra's compleation became obvious, he merged with his dragon engine and began wreaking havoc on the field. Realizing he was losing, Urza reached for the ultimate weapon: the Golgothian Sylex. It's unknown if he would have used that if he hadn't realized that he was ultimately fighting Phyrexians, though that does beg the question why he had it on the field in the first place. Either way, he used the Sylex and in doing so, irrevocably changed the face of Dominaria." At this, she handed out another map of Terisiare to be compared with the one from last week. To really hammer it home, the modern map could overlap the previous for a direct comparison of the two. "It was catastrophic - we literally refer to it as the catastrophe. It is the second--" A beat. "Third most devastating calamity in Dominaria's recorded history. The outburst of energy from this instantly vaporized all but a fraction of Argoth, and sent a massive shock wave across Terisiare that reached as far as the Ronom Glacier. It also destroyed the tectonic plate beneath Argoth. And it is because of this that we cannot tell how many people died in the war - the Sylex Blast obliterated so many people and so much land, it is impossible to keep an accurate count."
She took a deep breath. "I'm sure most of you have an idea of what that means. Earthquakes rocked the plane. Coastal cities on all continents were hit by devastating tidal waves that dragged them into the sea. Across the plane, the vast majority of our major civilizations collapsed, unable to handle the pressures as the land and seas seemingly went mad. From the end of the War to about 450 AR, Dominaria entered what we call the Dark Age, named for the almost-extinguishing of magic's torch during that period. It was a time of persecution and corruption when it seemed as if the end of the world was at hand. Zealots and despots rose up, calling for the outlaw of magic and artifice, people slaughtering mages and burning down schools of magic and higher learning. The people were broken into factions, and each rose against the others--the destruction of the plate shifted our climate colder and resources dwindled, whole species of plants and animals going extinct as their habitats shifted. Around 450 AR, the Dark Age gave way to the Ice Age, which lasted until about twenty-five hundred years. The population of the plane dropped to what would be the lowest in history and would hold that record for almost two thousand years...don't worry, we'll be discussing the events that unseated that record in a class or so."
Because of course Urza was (partially) to blame for it. "The Blast is said to have disintegrated both armies, including Urza and Mishra. However, in the explosion, Urza's spark ignited, turning him into a Planeswalker. Planeswalkers are--" She paused, and started again. "In those days, Planeswalkers were immortal, our physical bodies no more than a manifestation of our will. With the ignition of his spark, the blast did, indeed, destroy his body, but he was able to recreate it with a thought; the only thing he did not anticipate was that the two halves of the powerstone fused with him, turning into his eyes, one glowing red and the other green. Seeing through these eyes, Urza realized what horrors he had unleashed onto his home plane and Planeswalked away. He returned six years later to to say a final farewell to his student and good friend Tawnos." She pursed her lips. "During this time, he asked Tawnos to carry his farewells to Kayla, who had become Queen of Penregon, attempting to care for the survivors of Terisiare, while also mourning the loss of their son, who had died in the blast. Urza had other things to do - specifically, declaring vengeance on Phyrexia for their corruption of his brother."
Because suddenly Mishra mattered to him or something.
"Two additional side effects of the Sylex Blast that went unknown and unnoticed for centuries were the creation of a time rift, a fracture in the planar fabric of Dominaria itself, and the formation of the Dominarian Nexus and the Shard of Twelve Worlds. The latter only affected Planeswalkers, and the former...well, we'll talk about the former during our final class. Any questions?"
Questions or Comments?
I'm on vacationLiliana had been a cat, she hadn't come up with a clever activity or questions to ask you.Re: Questions or Comments?
"He blew himself up, along with everything else, but somehow the stones fused back within him? Without prompting, because he was busy 'awakening' his spark and most likely did not have the presence of mind to pick them up and put them in his skull on purpose while this was all going on."
"This thing was cursed in the first place, right? There's some sort of compulsion on the stones to reunite, and damn anyone or anything in the way." And how had no one noticed before it got to planes-wide destruction?
Re: Questions or Comments?
"That's a good theory and a widely debated possibility, but no one is sure," Liliana said, giving Illyana a proud smile. "We don't know anything about its origins. It would make a good reason for everything, but that then abrogates some of Urza and Mishra's responsibility for the horrors they wrought. They were powerful magic items, though, so it's entirely possible. Also, sparks are snuffed after true soul death, which is why undead cannot become Planeswalkers and why Planeswalkers are immune to Phyrexian compleation--" they'd laugh about this later "--but with Urza's spark igniting in the midst of this blast of incredible amounts of magic, who knows how that could have influenced things? We simply do not know. Too many variables and not enough information."
Re: Questions or Comments?
She had not been at fault for the deaths of the X-Men that died in Limbo when she was a child, that was on Belasco, but it had happened because of their connections to her. Responsibility did not care about circumstances.
"This is what happens when you let scientists play with magic."
Sorry-not-sorry, Science-Types.
Re: Questions or Comments?
"Don't worry," she said dryly. "After becoming a Planeswalker, Urza was able to use mana as well."
Re: Questions or Comments?
Because everything she was hearing was reminding Yana of one of the barn cats on the farm when she was little -- mean, aggressive, destructive, with a desperate need to be in charge of everything around him. He didn't change once her parents had trapped him to get fixed by the traveling vet, but it had prevented him from creating more problems of one particular type.
Re: Questions or Comments?