MTG: Lore of the Multiverse – Everything You Wanted to Know About 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 Venser’s sacrifice that Karn was able to regain his spark and escape the clutches 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.
Incursions across the Realms
The first incursion happened in Kaldheim, a region of mystical gods and home to The World Tree, a large tree that controlled the interplanar Omenpaths. By riding these Omenpaths, the residents of Kaldheim could cross between planes or travel to different parts of their home plane. Though these paths were powerful, they were unstable and dangerous for ordinary mortals. The praetor Vorinclex was sent to discover their secret. However, the trip through the Blind Eternities nearly killed him, decimating his biological parts. He became more feral as he healed, and the planeswalker Kaya began to hunt him. He eventually escaped, taking a small amount of sap from The World Tree back to Elesh Norn.
New Capenna and Kamigawa were similarly invaded. Urabrask was sent to New Capenna to discover the secrets of Halo, and Jin-Gitaxis was sent to Kamigawa to capture the Wandering Emperor. Urabrask instead sided with Elspeth, seeking freedom over Norn’s idea of control. He escaped during Ob Nixilis’s coup, but what awaited him in New Phyrexia was much worse. Jin-Gitaxis, on the other hand, was able to successfully compleat the planeswalker Tamiyo while maintaining her spark, a feat thought impossible before. He returned to New Phyrexia with his prize, and Elesh Norn put the final steps of her plan into motion.
The Invasion of Dominaria
Back on Dominaria, no one was the wiser about what was happening. Karn was leading a dig on an old Phyrexian battle site to learn about their history. However, as he delved deeper, he found a large cave where a remnant of the Society of Mishra was tending to a wounded Sheoldred. Karn was driven off, and when he tried to warn the coalition of Dominaria, sleeper agents across the plane were revealed as Phyrexian spies. Even the planeswalker Ajani had been taken, a massive blow to Dominaria’s strength. Karn was taken back to New Phyrexia by Ajani and Sheoldred, and he was used as the heart of Norn’s grand design.
A strike force of planeswalkers led a charge to New Phyrexia to recover Karn and stop the praetors. Thinking they would catch the Phyrexians unawares, they were surprised when they were scattered across the plane by Norn’s defenses. Several of their number were slain, and more compleated, including the elf Nissa. Elspeth was scattered across the Blind Eternities, and Elesh Norn believed her greatest threat had been killed. Kaito and the Wanderer escaped to warn the Gatewatch of what they had seen, but things had never looked more dire. What hope did the Multiverse have if a spark was no defense against compleation?
The Trap is Sprung
At long last, all of Norn’s careful planning was coming to fruition. By combining the sap Vorinclex stole from Kaldheim with Jin-Gitaxis’s innovations from Kamigawa, she created a facsimile of the World Tree that she named “Realmbreaker”. She used the completed Nissa to control the tree, and set Karn’s disassembled body at the heart. Under Nissa’s command, the tree sent branches to every plane in the Multiverse, breaching countless worlds and raining oil and Phyrexian monstrosities down on them. The unprepared defenders had little hope against the monstrosities, but they fought on all the same. However, it would be Elesh Norn’s own vanity that would spell her doom.
The Fall of New Phyrexia
Elesh Norn preached of a universal oneness, to unite all realms in glorious Phyrexian equality. However, by placing herself at the head of this new order, she displayed hubris and ambition, making her anathema to her own design. Her fellow Praetors saw this, but when they tried to rise against her, they were destroyed. Only Jin-Gitaxis remained, by watching and waiting for his moment. That moment came with the Mirran Planeswalker Kord, and the enraged Chandra began to assail her citadel.
As they kept Norn’s eyes fixed on them, the dryad Planswalker Wrenn was shepherded to the Realmbreaker. She bound herself with the heart of the tree, wresting control from Nissa. This allowed her to return the lost plane of Zhalfir and layer it over Phyrexia, unleashing the full force of the Zhalfiran army on the Phyrexian home plane. Finally, Elspeth returned, her essence reformed by Serra and the angels, and struck down Norn. In his final act of defiance, Karn unmade his failed creation, while Jin-Gitaxis was devoured by his own creations. Wrenn swapped the planar locations of Zhalfir and Phyrexia, locking the latter into the Blind Eternities forever.
