MTG: Lore of the Multiverse – Early Days of New Phyrexia
Yawgmoth was bad enough, but the second coming of Phyrexia almost wiped out the MTG Multiverse. Here’s everything you need to know.
Welcome in, Praetors and Planeswalkers! Of all the threats the Multiverse has faced, the Phyrexian invasion was one of the worst. Yawgmoth the Father of Machines was the first to try, invading the plane of Dominaria with his praetor Gix and his army of mechanical monsters. Once he was defeated, many believed that was the end of the Phyrexian threat. Of course, as anyone who has been playing the game recently knows, it was nowhere close to the end. But what gave birth to the deadly team of new Praetors? And where are they now?
Argentum: The Perfect Mistake
After the events of the Phyrexian War on Dominaria, the newly sparked automaton planeswalker Karn sought a realm of his own. Using the powerful Mirari artifact and his own reality-bending magic, he forged for himself a plane of Silver and metal like himself, calling it Argentum. He populated it with transplanted peoples from across the Multiverse, and left the golem Memnarch as its steward while he returned to Dominaria to address the effects of the Time Spiral. He set the Mirari within Memnarch’s heart, hoping to hide the deadly artifact from those who would fall victim to its curse.
However, the Mirari twisted Memnarch’s mind. It began to drive him mad with ambition for a planeswalking spark of his own. He began to bend Argentum to his own will, renaming it Mirrodin and trying to turn it into a conduit to steal Planeswalking. He was defeated by a team of heroes that had been set on the path by Karn himself, and the Mirari was removed from his body. However, something else leaked out of the golem’s body, something none of the heroes knew how to handle: black oil.
The Oil Takes Hold
Karn had been forced to sacrifice his spark to heal the time rifts, and it had disastrous consequences. Without the protection of his planeswalking, the Phyrexian heart at his core began to take hold of him. He returned to Mirrodin and immediately found himself in the thrall of the five new praetors. Elesh Norn stood out as the ringleader of these New Phyrexians, and claimed Karn as the new Yawgmoth. A war broke out that transformed the once idyllic plane into a hellscape. The black oil twisted the land to suit its dark masters, and the five praetors took hold of Karn’s mind.
It was only through the sacrifice of Venser that Karn was able to regain his spark and escape the clutchs of the Phyrexians. He abandoned his plane, hoping to stop the threat before it began. After all, Phyrexians couldn’t planeswalk. This act of hubris would spell the doom of countless worlds, and open the floodgates to a new Phyrexian war.
Tune in next week for the conclusion of the tale of New Phyrexia!
