Pity they didn't show pictures of that moment. They did animate it in the second trailer after all.

It seems like if Teferi was moving from town to town and avoiding using magic to outrun his reputation, he would have also considered changing his name at some point. I guess that would have been too confusing. Maybe he changed it back after a while.

I hope you all have been enjoying the story as much as I have. Been super busy (literally been reading the story 'graphs at a time) but I like it a lot.

Same here. I guess the nostalgia helps even to the stories some I may find a bit BLAH to go through if they were riddled with totally new no back reference characters.

Today's UR (Magic Story): RETURN TO DOMINARIA: EPISODE 8

So wait, Mother Luti was Jaya all along? I.... I have such conflicted feelings about that. I love that Prossh was brought into the story though. I wonder how Kher Keep's "god-dragon" stacks up in lore to Darigaaz or the Bladewing Clan.

Quick point of order: So if Jaya is actually Mother Luti all along, how is it that Chandra never sensed her "aether trail" before? Also, how did Jaya get so far ahead of Chandra with the soldiers when Chandra walked right to where Jaya last was and left her behind at the temple, but Jaya was actually days ahead of her fighting off a dragon? And then days more ahead meeting up with Karn?

Maybe Jaya is friends with a Doppelganger, who poses as Luti when she needs to be doing Planeswalker things? No, wait, not even that would explain everything. But I'd call it par-for-the-course plot holes at this level.

Same here, I've been struggling to make time to even read them lately, let alone discuss them properly, which is really a shame (I'm here now, but I should be doing actual work instead...). In a nutshell, I think last week's story was pretty cool and did some desperately needed gap filling. The two stories before that had some real issues, especially the one about Urza's weird dungeon thing. And it's just really evident to me that the short story format is working less than ever for this set. Especially with episodes 5 an 6, everything felt more like summaries of random snapshots of outlines of scenes stapled together in no particular order and without much of a meaningful connection, spiced up with an extra dose of irritating vagueness. And that's not even talking about the issues with the actual content of said stories. Who ever thought the sheer number of characters, plot threads, worldbuilding and background information (or lack thereof) in Dominaria could be crammed into 12 short stories??? That's insane! That said, I still enjoyed even the weaker and messier stories on some level, simply because they provide a glimpse of what my favourite plane looks like today (which is doubly useful because I'm still determined to run that D&D campaign eventually). And you really have to give it to Martha Wells that she didn't promise too much when she said her goal was to make the returning old fan favourites feel "seamless" by capturing their voice and personality. Sure, you could always look at the general outline of the story and question why character X has or doesn't have motivation Y, but as far as their actual appearance on screen is concerned, characters like Teferi or Jodah felt spot on to me. Heck, Jodah only had a measly cameo, but he felt more like Jeff Grubb's Jodah in that one scene he was in than he did on any page of Planar Chaos.

...but boy, Martha writes a godawful Chandra. Granted, everybody does these days, so I guess at this point that counts as a seamless experience. This story was a complete mess. So, Chandra somehow sensed a planeswalker entering Dominaria (which isn't how this works anymore post-Mending), realised it was a pyromancer and then jumped to the conclusion that a) this was totally Jaya Ballard, who, as far as she knows has been dead for ages, and b) that it was a good idea to just ramble incoherent things at her friends and run off in the general direction of Maybe-Jaya? I call BS. And how the heck does she just know exactly where she is when she follows the trail back to Dominaria? Also, yeah, the timeline and logistics don't seem to make sense here if Jaya is Mother Luti. Add that to the plot hole that she should have recognised Jace when he appeared on the Weatherlight, because she's seen him before at Keral Keep when he and Gideon came to drag Chandra to Zendikar. I don't really have a problem with the general idea of Jaya being Luti, but they have to be really careful how they execute things from this point onwards.

When it comes to the trail tracking issues, I didn't mind because the narrative wasn't trying to get us to join in on the ride and the conclusion was always easy to guess (even if this was the only thing you ever read from MtG).

It, however, did no favors for Chandra in my eyes. Her thoughts veered toward (bad) stereotypical teenager too often for my liking, and her speaking ability was that of a petulant child.

I don't so much mind the "I can sense a certain kind of 'Walker has been here." as much, though it seems a little too convienently used here and will likely be forgotten about when we get around to why Garruk isn't using said power to track down and kill people or Bolas isn't getting hints of various 'Walkers he wants to take care of as he pops around the Multiverse.

What I do mind is that, while it was nice to have the "Mother Luti/Jaya" thing somewhat confirmed, it was done in a way that just doesn't make chronological sense. Jaya can't be ahead of Chandra and fighting a dragon with a bunch of soldiers if she is also at the temple on another plane when Chandra leaves her behind to follow her 'Walker aether trail.

Yeah, that seems to be not just one author, but the "Voice" they intend her to have and it's freeking annoying because she's NOT a highschooler, she's supposed to be 26 (or older now? I'm trying to find an exact source), or in other words a decade older than she acts. I'd totally take it, maybe even enjoy it, if Chandra was canonically in the 16-18 bracket but those intervening years should change a LOT.

As it stands, I'd really hope she follows Nissa out of the plot (literally or not; I'd take anything from new abbot of Keral Keep since the old one has interplanar messes to clean up, to retires and becomes a beekeeper, to vanishes down Yargle's gullet never to be heard from again.) and leaves us with Jaya to do Pyromancer things going forward

Chandra is supposed to the youngest of the Gatewatch: I'd guess 21 or 22. I don't remember if we've gotten explicit establishment of that beyond "all the Gatewatch are (or look to be) in their twenties". As for the timeline, the whole story takes place over several days and the troops Jaya was with had clearly left Argivia before Chandra even arrived; possibly even a day or two before. There's plenty of time in there for Jaya to be traveling with the soldiers, pop back to Keral Keep briefly to encounter Chandra, return to the soldiers and do some dragon-fighting, then finally Chandra catches up and we have the climax at the end. As for the aether trails, we've seen things like them before. We already know that planeswalkers can track, find, and follow each other. It also provides a neat explanation for what Project Lightning Bug is detecting and measuring. For that matter, Garruk probably is following exactly those as he hunts from plane to plane. Same for Nicol Bolas. Probably they decay with distance and time, so you do have to be following someone for it to be really useful.

Also Jaya was definitely only pretending to not recognize Jace to mess with him because she loves to mess with people. Especially self-important part-blue mages.

Nobody does? That's why they make art books now? Also there's an entire set of cards that has a lot of that too?

EDIT: On closer reading, the troops had horses. So yeah, they're moving much faster than Chandra is on foot. She even comments on it.

Holy ****.

In regards to the trailing, its simply possible that Chandra never associated the two. And if IRC Jace and Gideon didn't meet anyone at Keral Keep besides Chandra.

They say in the story here that Luti spends a lot of time not at the temple. Pretty sure they even mentioned it at the start of BFZ, and it was why Chandra became the head of the temple or whatever.

As for the "aether trail" thing, it was used in Agents of Artifice and was how they explained that everyone knew where Dominaria was.

Time discrepancies can be handwaived away by saying that the trail was cold, and Karn and Jaya already met up.

Agree, the short story format really sucks for this style of story - a cast this large is going to get crammed out of a TON of stuff. Even when it was just the Gatewatch League it seemed like they just plan out skipped a bunch of opportunities for character development because of story space.

Today's UR (Magic Story): RETURN TO DOMINARIA: EPISODE 9

Quick question:


That's not right....right? Urza didn't make that cylix, right? Wasn't it given to him or he found it or some such?

The Cylix was ancient, far beyond urza. When it was uncovered in the Brothers' War, its provenance was traced by its inscriptions to a place of which no historical records exist.

It was also destroyed much later, though Karn might reasonably not know any of this.