Core Set 2019 Story

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

Yesterday, regular Magic: the Gathering story instalments restarted on the Wizards of the Coast website, with the first of eight short stories to be shared for the Core Set 2019 story arc.  Previously, Wizards had been producing stories ‘in-house’ with the R&D Narrative Team, and on the whole, these were very good.  With Return to Dominaria, author Martha Wells was engaged to produce a whopping 12 short stories.  Considering what a herculean effort it was to pen this, it really did make sense for Wizards to work with a professional author, and have the Narrative Team focus on creating a canvas, characters, and major plots to mesh with the cards created for each set.

Continuing to employ outside resources, Wizards had tapped author Kate Elliott to generate 8 stories for the Core Set 2019.  Kate was introduced to us on June 7, 2018, during a Twitch Video ‘Weekly MTG’ which featured Mark Rosewater, M19 Story Author, & Beta Booster Pack Opening.  We’re uncertain about the ‘weekly’ term for the moment, but were very happy to have watched the video.  Kate Elliott is the pen name of American fantasy and science fiction writer Alis A. Rasmussen, who currently resides with her husband Jay Silverstein currently live in (the non-exploding part of) Hawaii.  Here is her first Magic: the Gathering story, as linked below -

Chronicle of Bolas: The Twins, by Kate Elliott
18 years after the events of Fate Reforged, Yasova (formerly Yasova Dragonclaw) leads her granddaughters and a hunting party into the wilderness. There her granddaughter is visited by mysterious vision, telling her the story of the birth of none other than Ugin the Spirit Dragon and of Nicol Bolas himself.

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Had you not read this great first installment, we suggest you do, before we move along, as we are hitting / highlighting some rather interesting details presented as they unfold on Tarkir.

Yasova (previously Yasova Dragonclaw), is a grandmother.  Her granddaughters, twins Naiva (more a hunter) and Baishya (more a shaman) have been given a message from the Windfolk (some sort of Elemental beings) who communicate with the human ‘whisperers’ with shamanic gifts.  This message seems to be from the Spirit-Dragon, Ugin.  The stage now appears to be set upon a path to find the (corpse or spirit) of Ugin.
Other items of interest folded into the story concern Dragons.  We appreciate the literary device (?) used to capitalise letters indicating the story section about dragons, and dragon-speech.  We are shown what appears to the Ur-Dragon, the primordial essence of all Dragonkind, with its avatar speeding across the skies of an un-named plane of existence, essentially dropping dragon eggs.  The first wave of eggs include Palladium, Chromium, Arcades, Ugin, Nicol, and Merrivia Sal, but two other dragons are stillborn and fall to the ground.  The dragons are born sentient / intelligent and knowing such things as their names.
The big bombshell here (for us at least) is that, not only is Ugin an Elder Dragon, but he's also Nicol Bolas' brother.  These newborn twins witness the death of a ‘sibling’ dragon Merrivia Sal, whose scales had yet to harden, who was killed by a pack of human hunters.  We learn quite a bit from this event which assists us in understanding the character of each of these two creatures.  Where Nicol Bolas is full of fury, wanting to avenge the death of Merrivia by destroying all the hunters, Ugin appears more practical in calculating potential risk (the ‘long game’).

Looking very much forward to Kate Elliott’s next stories.

For now, you should know that the Core Set 2019 card image gallery is now up to be populated with new previews as they happen.

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