Pattern Recognition #81 - Liliana

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

30 August 2018

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Hello everyone! My name is berryjon, TappedOut.net's resident Old Fogey, purveyor of opinions contrite and contrary! Because I don't care about being right, I care about generating discussion and mutual understanding. Or maybe I'm just saying that because my Crystal Ball has failed me and I'm working on Intuition.

Today I'm going back to one of my own personal cycles, and talking about individual Planeswalkers - and today's choice is someone who is thematically appropriate given our return to Return to Ravnica.

So I'm going to talk about Liliana Vess.

Now, let's get something out of the way first. Vess' name is indeed an anagram of "A Villainess", but that was not an intended thing as Mark Rosewater had pointed out a few times. And I'm inclined to agree. Sometimes a coincidence is just that, nothing more and nothing less.

Anyway, about our lovely queen of Mono-Black. She was first published as Lilianna Vess as part of the initial cycle of Planeswalkers back in Lorwyn alongside Ajani Goldmane, Jace Beleren (sigh), Chandra Naalar, and Garruk Wildspeaker. And beacuse of this, she's had nine versions of her printed over the years.

Although to be fair, four of those came in the last two years thanks to having two versions in each of Amonkhet and Core Set 2019.

Unlike all the others that came with her, Vess is one of the few pre-Mending Planeswalkers to have survived to the present day of the story - the others being Nahiri, Sorin Markov, Ob Nixilis, Teferi, Nicol Bolas, Karn and Jaya Ballard. Of course, she had her card first despite being the youngest of this august company having ignited her Spark less than a century before the Mending.

The story of her ignition is one of tragedy. Born on Dominaria in the nation of Benalia, Vess was a budding Necromancer - a job in a nation so firmly affixed to the mana colour of that the two are practically synonymous. Seriously.

So you can see how this might be a problem.

Anyway, one day her brother, Josu, came down with an illness, something implied (but I disagree with the in-universe source of this information) to be caused by the enemies of the Vess patriarch. Going into the wildreness to locate the cure for her brother, she found the only place she could go in time to save Josu destroyed. Here, she met The Raven Man, who gave the above explanation, and informed her that there was still a way to save her brother from death at the hands of this poison.

Namely, she would have to perform necromancy on one of the trees from which the cure grew, and use that restored fruit to concoct the antidote. However, he warned her that if she was found out, bad things would happen.

Heedless of this consequence, she returned home and prepared the cure. And it worked! However, the cure was tainted by necromancy, and instead of restoring Josu to full health, she was horrified to discover that he had become an insane monster!

Desperate to defend herself as her family was slain around her, Vess threw all of her energy into reanimating every last body on the Vess estate and ordered them to kill her brother.

The trauma and the effort forced her Spark to ignite, and she went to the Plane of black magic and undead - Innistrad.

While there, she came to grips with her new power, and studied further the arts of Necromancy from the undead of that realm. During this time, Sorin Markov found her, and dueled her in a very one-sided battle. After his victory, he warned Liliana to be on her best behavior lest her hunt her down and kill her for disturbing his realm.

Once she felt she was ready, she returned to Dominaria to hunt down and kill the Raven Man. She found her home in ruins, but this did not dissuade her. She found the Raven Man and attacked him, but he escaped and she could not follow him.

Living her own life on Innistrad, she was taken unaware by the Mending, and the sudden shock of being depowered by it served to change her goals in life away from mastering Necromancy. But more importantly for her, given her ego and her power before, she took little care in her body. Worse that losing her Spark, she had lost her youth. She went from youthful beauty to a decrepit old crone at the end of her natural life.

She began to look for a way to restore her power. During this search, she had her first encounter with Nicol Bolas, who impressed on her that what she lost was insignificant compared to what he had. But, they struck a deal. Bolas would broker several deals with demons that he knew, each to empower Liliana. In exchange, she would help him out with the end goal of restoring both of their powers to pre-Mending status.

For Nicol Bolas, this was very much a win win situation. He gained some measure of control over the demons by providing them with a Planeswalker who would owe them, and he would secretly watch over and aid Liliana to garner more trust from her and to keep another pawn available to use in the future. Liliana was marked with the physical manifestation of her deals, which you can see as lines on her body.

As part of these deals, Liliana would have to perform tasks for the four demons. The first deal was from the demon Kothophed, who tasked her with retrieving The Chain Veil. She did so, earning the ire of Garruk Wildspeaker in the process. However, on impulse she turned the Chain Veil on him, turning him from Garruk Relentless  ^Flip and cursing him into Garruk, the Veil-Cursed  ^Flip, and altering his colour identity from to . She then used the power of the artifact again to help in her next task before concluding that she could do better - use the power of the Chain Veil to kill the demon that bound her.

She was successful, but the markings placed on her by the demon began to drain her life. There, she located the body of the oldest person who knew about the creators of the Chain Veil - the Onnake. Raising the dead body, she found that she could not control it, and in doing so, she had drawn the attention of several nearby settlements who set out to kill her.

They traced her to the abandoned farmhouse where she was hiding, and set it aflame. Unable to Planeswalk out, the corpse she was trying to pry information out of changed its features and revealed its identity - the Raven Man. He taunted her with vague riddles about her life, but acted to save her life - curing her of the affliction caused by breaking the deal with Kothophed, and this allowed her to repay him by stabbing him and Planeswalking away and leaving him to the fire.

Now on the active hunt, she returned to Innistrad where another of her Demonic masters resided. However, Griselbrand had been trapped inside the Helevault thanks to the efforts of the Archangel Avacyn. Looking to unseal the vault, she found that she could not do it herself, and had to resort to threatening Thalia, a Cahtar in the service of Avacyn to help her break the seal on both angel and demon.

With both freed, the demon fled from her and she traveled the plane to search for him eventually finding and killing him with the power of the Chian Veil and escaping from the wrath of Avacyn. However, this use of the artifact caused her to start hearing voices from the Chain Veil, and seeking an answer to this next annoyance from the source of power, she went back to the temple on Shandalar where she found the veil in the first place.

In doing so, she was confronted by another Angel, one who warned of the Onnake and the Chain Veil's power. Dismissing the warnings, Liliana tried to replace the veil on the altar on which it rested, but no matter what she tried, she failed. During one of these attempts, the spirits of the Onnake taunted her, showing the fall of their civilization and implying that the Raven Man was - if not responsible - then he was a vital part of it. They added that the Veil was one of deceit, and she would learn its truths as a vessel in time.

Deciding that a personal break was in order because she could really use one, she traveled to Ravnica where she met up with and tried to seduce, bribe and cajole Jace on the grounds of their prior relationship to help her kill the other two demons she was contractually bound to.

Oh, what prior relationship? Well, the novel Agents of Artifice, while mostly rendered Exiled from the story of Magic, has kept the plot point that Liliana met Jace on Ravnica and they developed a mutual relationship. You know, between consenting adults and all that. Despite her being at least 4 times his age.

Jace turned her down, and during their dinner, Gideon Jura showed up and openly asked for Jace's help to deal with the Eldrazi on Zendikar. He agreed, and in a tirade that helped inspire my opening for my article about Gideon, she demanded to know why he was helping Gideon and not her.

Jace replied that it was because Gideon was being honest about why he was asking, and was straightforward about it. He left to Zendikar.

Furious at being dumped, she wandered the streets of Ravnica, and was taunted by the Raven Man, who warned her that Jace was unreliable. Liliana returned to Innistrad to fume.

Soon thereafter, Jace came to Innistrad, and asked for her help in locating Sorin Markov so that he could learn more about the Eldrazi and how the ancient Planeswalker worked on his solution millennium ago.

Liliana saw that this was a horrible idea, but agreed to help him on the mental justification that if she really wanted to kill her demons without drawing overmuch on the power of the Chain Veil, she would really need allies, and working with Jace would be a good idea to convince him to help her.

So she took him to Markov manor, where they saw the devastation caused by Nahiri as part of her vengeance. However, Jace was afflicted by the madness of the Cryptoliths and assaulted Liliana. The voices in the Chain Veil and the Raven Man encouraged her to kill Jace, but she held back, talking him back to his senses for a short period of time.

Jace fled, and a Geistmage by the name of Dierk offered to help purge the Chain Veil of the spirits within it, but failed. He was killed by the Eldrazi horrors on the plane, and was raised as a zombie by Liliana as part of her growing army to fight the Eldrazi with.

She challenged Emrakul and her horrors at the site of their greatest power - Thraben. She was successful in holding off the vast majority of the attacking horrors, giving time for the living defenders and the Gatewatch to rally. However, during this battle, she drew on the power of the Chain Veil far more than she ever had before, and she was rendered comatose.

After Emrakul had been sealed away, she was tended by the Gatewatch, and when she awoke, she saw that they would serve her well against the last demons, and took the Oath of Liliana to help with her manipulations.

A few months later, Liliana and the Gatewatch were approached by Dovin bann of Kaladesh, who asked for their help in dealing with rebel factors in the lead-up to the Inventor's Fair. Liliana, being the only person there who had any practical experience with diplomacy pointed out that the purpose of the Gatewatch was to deal with extraplanar threats - Eldrazi, other Planeswalkers and the like. While the Gatewatched turned down his request, she also took the time to encourage Chandra to return to her home plane and investigate herself, journeying with her to help manipulate the pyromancer.

They investigated, and discovered that Chandra's mother was the leader of the renegades on Kaladesh, and that the leader of the government forces wasn't Baan himself, but a person known to Liliana - Tezzeret. Discovering this, Liliana urged Chandra to retreat back to Ravnica to get Jace and the others to deal with this.

Chandra decided that immediately helping family with the help of Nissa (who followed the two because she didn't trust Liliana) while Liliana did what she wanted. Jace and Gideon agreed to help and all three went back. And here, she leaves the plot of Kaladesh and Aether Revolt, except to provide a large distraction, and to interrogate Tezzeret as to the location of Nicol Bolas.

With that information in hand, she argued with the Gatewatch that they should go to Amonkhet to track down Nicol Bolas (or rather, the third of her Demons). Flush with victory, they agree to do this despite the warnings of Ajani Goldmane - the only person in their company who had actually dealt with Bolas as an enemy.

Going there with the rest of the Gatewatch (save Ajani, who left to get more backup), Liliana was delighted to find that the undead of the plane had been domesticated as servants. Of course, she still helped investigate, an her efforts helped uncover the assistance of the Demon - Razaketh - in the perversion of the plane to Bolas' will. Jace, discovering this, accused her of manipulating the Gatewatch to her service. She agreed, but pointed out that she had very good reasons for doing so.

But before that argument could be settled, Razaketh appeared as part of the foretold Second Sun and the return of Nicol Bolas, the God-Pharaoh. Taunting and challenging Liliana, the demon invoked a hidden measure in her contract, and took control of her body. Thankfully, Jace realized that this meant that Liliana was telling the truth (from a certain point of view) and the Gatewatch attacked, hoping to cut off the problem at the source. They distracted the demon long enough for Liliana to escape his control and she summoned the dead creatures in the river Luxa to kill the demon.

This didn't solve anything as Nicol Bolas then arrived to collect his army of Eternals. While this was going on, he took some time out to completely demolish the Gatewatch, and Liliana took his offer to leave unharmed.

From there, she and Gideon were the first to arrive on Dominaria, where Ajani wanted everyone to meet up and organize a proper response to Bolas.

Heading for her home, Liliana found that it was now the staging ground for a Lich - her brother Josu. With the help of Gideon, she was able to destroy her brother without resorting to the full power of the Chain Veil. With her personal issues in order, she agreed to work with Jhoira and the Weatherlight crew to deal with the last demon - Belzenlok - who had set himself up as the single great evil of Dominaria's history, and was attempting to conquer the plane.

Working with Gideon, they recovered the Blackblade, a weapon that had slain Elder Dragons like Bolas in the past, and killed Belzenlok. Yes, it was as simple as my writing it, really.

With her demons dead, she was ready to uphold her end of the bargain, and planned to go to Ravnica to prepare for the arrival of Nicol Bolas there. However, as she tried to Planeswalk out, an image of Bolas appeared before her and told her that with her demons dead, the contract that empowered her defaulted to him, and now he was her master. He had orders for her, and with no ability to resist and stay alive, Liliana followed Nicol Bolas away to a new and as yet unknown fate.

So, that's the history of Liliana Vess. You may have noted that her story is far longer than Jace or Chanda or Gideon. That's because she actually has a character, and a multifaceted one at that. In this way, I think of Liliana as one of the best Planeswalkers as a character, despite Wizard's running problems with Black characters in general.

Her basic character trait that has been completely consistent over the years is that Liliana wants her power back, and unlike Nicol Bolas, who has the exact same goal, because she is a viewpoint character and we see her efforts to achieve the goal, she is a far better representation of in that regard.

You see, one of the fundamental concepts of is the question of "What are you going to sacrifice for the sake of your goals?" In Liliana, we see this in her contracts with the demons, and the compromises of her ethics and personal choices as she gets involved with the Gatewatch despite most of them being people she would rather not deal with at all. It's a personal sacrifice for her personal goals.

Unlike Bolas, who keeps winning with no effort at all.

When she joined the Gatewatch, she was intended to be the, to quote TV Tropes here, the Token Evil Teammate. But here's the thing. She wasn't. Yes, she had goals that would cause the team problems, but she was willing to work with them and not just use them to achieve what she wanted. Yes, she certainly had troubles doing that as doesn't make friends easy, but she at least put the effort into it, earning some small friendship with Chandra thanks to going with her to Kaladesh, and much to her confusion, the help of Gideon when by her measure, he should have walked away from her.

Although that's probably a better point in favour of Gideon than Liliana.

I think this is why I like her as a character so much. She's made the effort, but hasn't always succeeded - unlike more high profile characters (JACE, NICOL BOLAS) who never seem to fail in any meaningful manner.

She also joins the ranks of the very few protagonists in the game. Which seems to be a problem with Wizards creative as while they have made the effort in the past, it is hard to conceive of a 'hero' who follows 's philosophies. And while Liliana is a good try, she isn't up to the level of Toshiro from Kamigawa.

I just hope she makes out of the Ravnica-totally-not-a-block-we-swear alive and well. She doesn't have to rejoin the Gatewatch, but she deserves at least one honest win. And the chance to have her character developed even more.

After all, if Black always loses, what's the point?

Join me next week when I look at her cards, and why they are one of the best representations of her colour - unlike others that I could name.

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job, but more income is always better. I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!