Pattern Recognition #62 - Phyrexia, Part 1

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berryjon

29 March 2018

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Hello everyone! My name is berryjon, and I am TappedOut.Net's resident Old Fogey and part-time Smart Ass. And welcome to another edition of Pattern Recognition, a series in which I talk about any subject I want, or which is suggested to me by you, my adoring fans.

Today's subject came from a comment made on another site. In which, in response to Dominaria spoilers, they asked if there would be any Phyrexians in the set, as they were looking for in-theme cards for their Infect deck.

Well, you know, aside from Phyrexian Scriptures. Because that's totally not a real card in the set.

I, true to my Smart Ass tendencies pointed out that thanks to the events in Time Spiral, there are Phyrexians from the events of the Invasion, and from their creation running around on Dominaria. And something else that I'm going to get into later.

So, that raised these questions in my mind: What is Phyrexia? What does being Phyrexian mean?

Well, for starters, let's talk about the History of Phyrexia. Please note that what you are about to read, what I am writing here, is only the most basic of summaries. There will be massive swathes that I am simply glossing over, but you have to understand that I am summarizing over five years of story into about ten minutes light reading, so some liberties will need to be taken.

Phyrexia began before the modern concept of magic having five colours appeared on Dominaria, though long after the Elder Dragon Wars that left Nicol Bolas ascending to Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker. The pre-eminent civilization on Dominaria approximately 9,500 years before the expansion set of Dominaria is set was the Thran Empire.

The Thran Empire was one based on artifice, most notably, the Thran Powerstones. Now, this specific artifact hasn't been introduced to the game yet, but we have had some inkling of what these did through the cards of Thran Dynamo, and the Worn Powerstone. We may get more in the Dominaria set itself, but I don't feel right talking about the Release notes here.

Born into this civilization was a man by the name of Yawgmoth. He was a physician whose passion and field of study could be best described as 'biological mechanics', which is to say, he studied how the body acted while in motion or while under stress. At this time, there was a civil war in the Empire, between the Republicans and the Loyalists.

Yawgmoth came into the camp of the Republican forces as a eugenicist, where he was tasked with making people better. However, long before any of his work could come to fruition, the Republicans were bested, and he, along with many others, were exiled from the Thran.

After being cast out from his people, Yawgmoth wandered the world. As he did so, he continued his experiments by expanding his subject nature from just the human body to non-human bodies and into diseases. And in the process, he goes completely overboard in his methodology. He created diseases to see how the afflicted responded, he vivisected the healthy, the sick and the dying, just to see even one more iota of information about how the body worked, about life and death.

Now, while he was doing this, back in the Thran Empire, there was a new sickness spreading, though it was focused mainly on the capital city of Halcyon. It afflicted one of the leaders of the Thran, and in response, the call went out to any and all physicians to try and cure it, regardless of their personal standing. Yawgmoth responded, returning from exile. His investigations led him to start calling the sickness Phthisis. This Thran word has no real English equivalent, but the closest phrase or context I can provide was that it means "unwholeness of body", that the body itself was simply not working properly.

According to the book "The Thran", the disease broke down the inner workings of the body, not just the organs, but the cells themselves, causing it to fail, piece by piece. It was, based on the descriptions of the symptoms and later the source of the disease, more in line with cancer than anything else. And it was through these symptoms that Yawgmoth was able to track down the vector of the infection back to its source - the Mana Rig that mined the materials for and produced the Thran Powerstones.

With this information, and after consulting with other physicians and the like, Yawgmoth was able to formulate a ... well, it wasn't a cure, but it was a treatment for the progression of the disease. He observed that the damaged organs couldn't simply be replaced for starters. There were too many people afflicted, and there was no guarantee that the new ones weren't already affected. But what they could be was augmented. He created a serum that would allow the body to incorporate metals into the body, metal that could not be affected by the sickness.

This was the first version of that which would eventually be called the Glistening Oil. And it was the first step in the process of replacing the biological with the artificial that he would call Phyresis. For in the language of the Thran, where Phthisis meant unwholeness, Phyresis meant "completeness of body", that being the body was working as intended without flaw or blemish.

In recognition for his work, his crimes were forgiven and Yawgmoth was elevated to the ruling council of the Thran, placed in charge of the portfolio of Public Health. He soon started to use the power of the position to consolidate political power, removing opponents and rewarding the loyal.

During this time in politics, he met the Planeswalker Dyfed, to whom he talked to about his ideals and his goals. In response, she took him to an artificial plane, one that was created by a recently deceased Planeswalker of unknown providence. It was a plane of artifice, where even the grass was made of metal and the animals competed with each other to emerge as the best.

Yawgmoth found heaven.

However, all was not well in the realm of the Thran. Representatives from all the nations Yawgmoth had visited and experimented in arrived in the capital and demanded that he be handed over to face punishment for his crimes. The Thran ruling council (you know, the one Yawgmoth was on?) narrowly voted against agreeing to their demands, though it wasn't Yawgmoth who cast the tie-breaking vote.

The Thran went to war.

While this was going on, Dyfed, still under the sway of Yawgmoth, created for him a permanent portal from Dominaria to the plane that would be called Phyrexia, if only so that she didn't spend all her time playing ferry-walker. Dyfed powered this portal by carefully breaking a Thran Powerstone in half, and using the pieces to hold it in place.

Even as the war progressed, Yawgmoth spend more and more time in Phyrexia, eventually taking up residence and binding himself to the core of the demi-plane to act as its god. In turn, he was worshipped by the ever growing population of Thran who followed him into Phyrexia, each seeking further and further Phyresis. These people became the first true Phyrexians, and helped to defend the Thran from their enemies, even those who were not like them.

But Dyfed soon broke with Yawgmoth, no longer willing or able to tolerate his experiments and his goals. In response, he stabbed her with a knife made of Powerstone, the specialized tool preventing her from thinking, and thus, from Planeswalking away.

You see, in his studies, Yawgmoth came to understand the body perfectly. He knew how all the parts fit together, how new factors could have predictable results. But one thing eluded him, despite knowing that it existed.

Yawgmoth became obsessed with the Planeswalker's Spark.

And so he gave Dyfed's still-living body to his loyal people, and told them to find the spark so that he may have it, or copy it for himself. They searched. They looked. And they could find no organ, no twist of neurons, no anything that they could not account for.

Concurrently to this failure to advance his goals, the war had turned against the Thran. Their defensive control centre, the Null Sphere, was sabotaged by Thran who did not agree with Yawgmoth and his Phyrexia. It was launched from outside the capital into orbit, becoming Dominaria's only artificial satellite. Denied of their ability to coordinate their massive armies of artifacts, the Thran lines began to collapse.

In the Caves of the Damned, where the portal to Phyrexia was, the two stone-halves that kept the portal open were cast aside, cutting Phyrexia off from Dominaria. No matter what they did, Phyrexia could not reach Dominaria, and without the Spark, Yawgmoth was forever trapped there.

So the Thran died.

Five thousand years later, Phyrexia had not waited without preparation. Under the command of one Gix, they crafted infiltrators to prepare to scout ahead. They found nearby planes, which they exploited for resources, but Dominaria itself was barred to them by powers unknown.

But all that changed when two brothers made a fateful discovery. In what were then called the Caves of Koilos, two young archaeologists and artificers sifted through the ruins of the long-dead Thran civilization for scraps, resources and ideas.

Their names were Mishra and Urza.

In those caves, they came upon two stones. Each took one, and together, they reactivated long-dormant machinery, but had to leave before they could see the results of their work. These stones, two halves to a powerstone, were given names. Mishra held the Meekstone, while Urza held the Mightstone.

The machine they activated was the portal to Phyrexia. It was small at first, little able to send more than an individual at a time. No armies, but Gix's preparations were perfect for the opportunity. Phyrexians began to explore and manipulate the local politics to destabilize them. One of these efforts was directed at Urza and Mishra, and the two brothers were soon turned against each other, each thinking that the other coveted their half of the powerstone and wished them dead.

Arguments began conflict, and so began the Brother's War. Urza against Mishra. Artificer against Artificer.

Gix, having arrived in person, soon found himself personally involved in the Brother's War, siding with Mishra over Urza, as he concluded that he would be better for Phyrexia. But Phyrexia did not seek to end the war quickly. They wanted it to expand and keep going, to better weaken both sides and to better establish Phyrexia's position on Dominaria.

Gix's assistance, and Urza's own works helped keep the war at a stalemate, each side drawing in more and more resources and peoples in order to seek some advantage, the ebb and tide of war playing to Gix's advantage from behind the scenes.

The culmination of this assistance was where Gix allowed Mishra to find a Dragon Engine, a Thran war machine that could destroy cities.

But Mishra was dying. Of old age. Of Phthisis thanks to his use of the broken powerstone. Gix then made the last offer to Mishra, one freely given, a choice that was no choice. He offered Mishra a chance to become Phyrexian.

Against the Dragon Engine, Urza knew he had little chance. He had to end the war, one way or the other. At the final battle of Argoth, Urza confronted his brother on the field of battle, and in the process, injured him. Mishra was transformed, and Urza despaired, even as he struck the thing that wore his brother's face down.

In response to the horror his brother had become, Urza was confronted by the totality of the machinations of Gix, how everything had been done to further Phyrexia's design. In anger and despair, Urza tapped into the power of the Golgothian Sylex, and Urza's Ruinous Blast, the Sylex Blast, rang the goddamned plane like a fucking bell.

You may think I'm kidding, but I'm not. The cards don't give a sense of the scale of the damage done. It ripped Dominaria's largest continent apart, leaving behind a gap in the world. If you look at modern maps of Dominaria, and wonder why there's so much water, it's because Urza blew most of it up.

The only thing you I can say is that Sylex Blast was so powerful, that it can wipe out an entire expansion.

But Urza, at the center of the detonation, did not survive. He was killed, but the energies of the blast at the same time also ascended him as a Planeswalker. Urza Planeswalker was born in agony, and sure, pure hatred for Phyrexia and all it stood for.

Gix, before the portal in the Caves of Koilos collapsed for good, retreated back, and reported his loss. Yawgmoth was enraged, for in this, all his plans now had one singular common enemy. A Planeswalker, who possessed the Spark he so craved now opposed him, one who could match him, artifice for artifice. It was a personal affront.

Having never met, Yawgmoth and Urza became mortal enemies, and they went to war.

Dominaria did not recover. The Blast trapped the plane, and nearly a dozen other nearby ones into a self-contained segment of the multiverse known as the "Shard of Twelve Worlds". There was no Planar travel to or from the Shard, leaving Urza and Phyrexia outside. This would cause many problems across the multiverse which will not be discussed here.

While the official story is that being cut off from the multiverse is what caused it, I personally subscribe to the theory that the Dominarian Ice Age was in fact a multi-millennia nuclear winter caused by the Blast, not something more esoteric.

Phyrexia and Urza went to war, hunting eachother across the Multiverse. At one point, Urza attacked Phyrexia itself, ripping a gash in the plane nearly halfway to the core before being driven back. Injured, he fled to Serra's Realm, the home of Serra Planeswalker, who created the angels that still bear her name. He sought her help, and while she agreed to heal him, she would not help him in his war, sending him away after he had recovered.

Three thousand years of this passed, Urza and Phyrexia fought their shadow war. Neither side could gain advantage over the other, despite the best efforts of all involved.

The next stage in Phyrexia's story came when Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury was able to break the Ice Age on Dominaria, with The World Spell. This opened up the Shard of Twelve Worlds and both sides made moves immediately. Urza held the advantage here, as he could access Dominaria directly. He founded the Tolarian Academy to lead the research into Phyrexia and how to fight them.

Phyrexia attempted to attack again through the Caves of Koilos, destroying the Academy in the process, but Urza drove them back, casting Gix through a temporal portal.

This also caused Teferi, Hero of Dominaria to become a Planeswalker, so I can forgive Phyrexia for that. :)

After the failure of subtlety, Yawgmoth switched to a different plan. Phyrexia developed the substance of Flowstone and created the micro-plane of Rath to act as a staging ground for his next attempt on Dominaria. This Plane was created adjacent to Dominaria, but well hidden. However, its creation drew in resources amd eventually peoples from other planes, including the Slivers and most surprisingly, the people of Kor from Zendikar.

Yeah, Eldrazi or Phyrexians. Not exactly an improvement either way

Rath was ruled by Evincars, which culminated in Volrath the Fallen and then Crovax the Cursed, the Ascendant Evincar. From Rath, the Phyrexians, having reverse engineered the Thran portals, deployed Planar Portals into the skies of Dominaria.

Why yes, I just glossed over the entirety of the Weatherlight Cycle in two paragraphs. That's how much lore I have to cut out.

The Invasion had begun.

Phyrexia's forces, under the leadership of Tsabo Tavoc, wreaked havoc across Benalia and Yavimaya before being beaten by Gerrard Capashen and Karn, Silver Golem at the Caves of Koilos, where they were making another attempt to re-establish the permanent portal there.

But this wasn't a failure. It was a diversion. The real purpose of the portals was not to be the entry point for the invasion forces, but rather to act as anchor points for the real Invasion.

Rath, the whole of the plane, was planeshifted into Dominaria, centred on Urborg.

Another apocalypse hit Dominaria as a new continent overlaid onto an existing one, and the whole host of Phyrexia invaded.

They were winning, the defenders overwhelmed, even as Multani, Maro-Sorcerer teleported the whole of the Yavimaya forest to the edge of Urborg/Rath to try and stem the tide.

Phyrexia was winning, so Urza decided it was time to destroy the plane of Phyrexia before it could piggy back on Rath into Dominaria. He led a group of Planeswalkers into the hole he made previously with the intent to use the rip as leverage to destroy the plane.

He failed. His assault was torn asunder from within, and the survivors fled, but Urza was drawn deeper into the realm. He listened to Phyrexia's whispers, pointing out just how similar they were. They were both masters of Artifice, each seeking perfection. As he descended, Urza encountered what he thought was Mishra, being punished for his failures. Urza's Guilt left him, discarding his mercy.

Yawgmoth promised to add his knowledge to Urza's own, for Urza to be the Planeswalker that Yawgmoth wanted, and Urza bowed his head.

Phyrexia had won.

With this victory, Yawgmoth emerged into Dominaria, but no longer as anything recognizably mortal. Yawgmoth, the Lord of the Wastes, the Father of Machines, the Ineffeble, poured into Dominaria as a cloud of undeath, slaying all in his path and returning them as undead to fight for him.

In response, Gerrard took the Skyship Weatherlight into orbit behind the Null Sphere, now called the Null Moon after spending 9000+ years as a White Mana Battery collecting energy, and dove through it. This absorbed mana was channelled through the Weatherlight's engine and into a beam of pure light, the Legacy Weapon. It burned away the cloud, but did not kill Yawgmoth thought it wounded him gravely. Yawgmoth retorted by killing the Weatherlight.

Karn then, took the final pieces of the Leagcy into himself, including Urza's Planeswalker spark, and in the moment of his ascension, slew Yawgmoth, turning the site of that final confrontation into Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.

Seeing their god die, all that remained of Phyrexia committed suicide, leaving nought but bodies behind.

Join me next week when I talk about Phyrexia in a more abstract manner, where it worked, where it didn't work, and why some people only think they are Phyrexian, but are not.

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!