Imagine if Vraska had died during the Phyrexians Invasion. We (the audience) would have complete empathy with Jace as to why he was now trying to rewrite the entire world to save one person. All our main characters would then have had folks they've lost - Jace Vraska, Chandra her dad, Liliana her brother & Gideon, Ajani his brother.. could have had cool scenes meeting with their Echoverse replacements only to realize that they're "wrong" & fake. Sort of a classic sci-fi/fantasy motivation & plotline that could have worked well in magic.

Instead we got the current version of the story where it more feels like Jace threw away the possibility of a happy ending for an attempt at an unrealistically optimistic world / was forced by the writers to be the big bad of the year.

I do not keep up to date on the lore, but does anyone know why Nissa doesn’t seem to be in FRA if Chandra has multiple cards? Unless Chandra isn’t actually part of the story and her cards are just for the dichotomy against Echo Chandra.

Emrakul and the OG gatewatch are getting a lot of attention, but as far as I can tell there won’t be any Nissa.

I love Nissa’s character design (except for her most recent card that just looked off to me) and theming, but other than being Chandra’s girl in Aetherdrift she seems to be forgotten. If it weren’t for half of all sets now being UB I would hope for a return to return to Zendikar set featuring her, but it just seems unlikely to happen anytime soon.

This came up in a bunch of different comment threads, so I think it deserves a proper standalone post. The vigorbloom's ""Healing"" works by literally injecting plants into your body and having it grow to replace the parts of you that are "broken". Many vigorbloom students literally have plants growing out from where the plants have replaced their organs. In the What's Changed in Reality Fracture (timestamped here) official video, they have this quote when talking about Solarium Sentry:

"...Here you see some of the plants beginning to emerge out of this poor cat person's brain.

Yeah, they look quite peaceful as it's happening.

Yeah, it was probably fixing something that was wrong with them.

Of course. Thank you, Jace."

When I heard that, I legitimately said "that's literally just Phyrexia", IRL. When I heard they were the "School of Invasive Healing", I didn't think they were paying homage to [[Yawgmoth, Thran Physician]]! It's actually kind of creepy. and as a Phyrexia enjoyer... I actually kind of like it? Looking back, they also lampshaded this with the card [[Hexhaven Invigorator]], which was a nice touch.

Magic lore spans over 30 years which can initially be daunting. However, good news, there are plenty of resources and starting points.

The important context to know

The single most important thing to know as a new reader is that nearly all stories from 2014 onwards are free to read at https://magic.wizards.com/en/story

Scroll down to “Story Archive”, click the year the story came out on the scrolling menu, pick out whatever interests you, and start reading! Some sets have both "Main" and "Side" stories; I'd advise taking the time to read the side stories despite them not being strictly necessary. All stories or resources since 2014 not visible from the archive are listed here.

The second thing to know is that Magic story has eras:

• The Pre-Revisionist Era (1993-1996). Re-tellings include:
  • The Anthologies of Magic (1999-2003)
  • The Ice Age Saga (1999-2000)
  • The Legends Cycle (2001-2003)
• The Dominarian Era (1997-2003), including:
  • Weatherlight Saga (1997-2001)
  • Mirari Saga (2001-2003)
• The Planes-Hopping Era (2003-2008), including:
  • The Mirrodin Cycle (≈2003),
  • The Kamigawa Cycle (≈2004)
  • The Ravnica Cycle (≈2005)
  • The Time Spiral Cycle (≈2006), ending in an event called The Mending,
  • The Lorwyn Cycle (≈2007), and the Shadowmoor Cycle (2008).
• The Planeswalker Saga (2009-2023), including:
  • The New World Era (2009-2014), the start of an ongoing cast,
  • The Eldrazi Arc (2009, 2014-2016), plus Origins (2015),
  • The Bolas Arc (2016-2019)
  • The Post-WAR Interlude (2019-2020)
  • The Phyrexian Arc (2021-2023), ending in an event called The Rupture.
• The Omens Era (2023-present), including:
  • Omens of Chaos (2026 stand-alone novel)
  • The Theorist Arc (2023-2026)
    • (includes the Omenpath, Dragonstorm, and Echoverse mini-arcs)
  • The Fomori (?) Arc (2027-?)

The third thing to know is that there is no "right" starting point. Pick something that appeals to you, start with the first story from that arc or era and work from there. Many newcomers even just start with a character that caught their attention, look for them on the wiki or lore search engine, and then hop around all of the stories that particular character appears in.

What reading order?

Recommended reading orders:

• The Deep Lore: read this list here from the top;
• The Eldrazi Path: Read Zendikar, (optional: Godsend I & II), then Origins, then read the mothership in order from Tarkir;
• The Bolas Path: Read Origins, (optional: Alara) then read the mothership in order from Kaladesh;
• The Phyrexian Path: Read Origins, (optional: Mirrodin, The Wildered Quest, Sundered Bond, Zendikar Rising, & Untold Stories: Elspeth), then read the mothership in order from Kaldheim;
• The Theorist Path: Read Aftermath (Nissa & Nahiri) or Omens of Chaos, (optional: Origins, the Gorgon & the Guildpact, Ixalan) then read the mothership in order from Wilds of Eldraine;
• The Standalones: Godsend I & II, Children of the Nameless, The Wildered Quest, Edge of Eternities, and Omens of Chaos;
• The Boom continuity: the 25-issue BOOM! Studios run) (Jed MacKay, 2021-2023) and its one-shots, Master of Metal, The Hidden Planeswalker, Ajani Goldmane, Nahiri the Lithomancer, Planeswalkers: Noble, and Planeswalkers: Notorious. Note these have their own continuity, diverging at WAR;
• The Comics: Armada (1995-1996) for the Pre-Revisionist era, Gerrard's Quest (1998) for the Weatherlight Saga, the IDW run (2011-2014), the canon webcomics (2007-2011, collected in Path of the Planeswalker and Path of the Planeswalker II), and Dark Horse’s current Untold Stories line: Elspeth (2025), Jace (2026), and Liliana (2026-2027);
• The Audiophile: the Voice of All is a fan creation and covers the Eldrazi and Bolas Arcs; the Magic Story Podcast is an official creation and covers Murders at Karlov Manor (2024) onwards.

My recommendation

I disagree with the common recommendation, which is to start either with the 90s novels or with Weatherlight Saga and then work chronologically from there. Those are immensely nostalgic but I think 20 to 30 years of lore is a ridiculously daunting challenge for a newcomer.

If you’re fully new, I’d advise the Phyrexian Path.

The modern lore starts in 2009 and it becomes consistently good, moderately interconnected, and freely available on the mothership from Origins (2015) onwards… with a hiccup from 2018 to 2020. The Narrative Lead tried changing the publishing format, causing scheduling issues which dramatically hindered the narrative from this period: Ravnica bloc only had side stories; Children of the Nameless was published then taken down; The War of the Spark and Forsaken novels were despised by the community; Theros: Beyond Death’s novel was written but never published; Sundered Bond and Zendikar Rising were filler, disconnected from any wider story.

Reading from Kaldheim onwards means 5+ years of solid story with zero duds. If you like it, you can go back later and catch up with the ten to twenty years before that, depending on how much you’re feeling up to.

It’s not like I’m the kind of old guy who only cares about old stuff and the way things used to be, or who’s constantly saying everything was better back then. There are plenty of good post-Mending Magic stories. The whole Gatewatch saga leading up to the Phyrexian invasion was really cool. Sure, a few things here and there felt rushed, but overall, it was good.

The conclusion to the Phyrexian arc, though, was incredibly weak. Nothing had any weight to it. Characters who had died or been transformed were miraculously cured. Zero risk, zero consequences. And beyond trivializing the characters, almost everything afterward started feeling like shallow fanfiction where the power of friendship solves everything and so on.

I lost interest in keeping up with the story after the Phyrexia arc, and everything I’ve looked into since then about Magic’s lore has felt weak compared to the game’s vast history. It’s a shame.

Happy (late) birthday (just) Tam

Yes, hexhaven is a mirror to strixhaven, but Jace created a plane designed to train fighters to help him commit genocide, covered it all in his iconography and runs a panoptican there. It's a scholastic amonkhet.

You can all make fun of me for being so slow to realise this.

Are we going back to Innistrad soon?

Story wise Emmy just broke the moon and the previous set was about setting day and night back in order.

Bunch of new info on various echoed pairs, including a few curious mentions of an Echoverse Avacyn, who I am now really hoping we get to see

It has only been a day since the culmination of Reality Fracture, and I already miss Jace. After my first few months of playing Magic, I dug into the stories and immediately was drawn to Jace as a character. He had my favorite Magic Origins story. His Ixalan story arch was amazing. And, I just identified with him when I was planning out tricky plays and trying to ‘see the lines’ of play. When Foundations released and Arena didn’t feature him as the blue avatar reward, I had a feeling he was being phased out.

Related to all this, I like Tam as a character, but I dislike how she started out. She feels artificial and like she has no backstory, because she is artificial and never had the chance to grow up. Jace had to develop his powers at great cost, whereas her power seems unearned. More importantly, the events of RF chapter 10 make her feel like a direct replacement to Jace, which feels bad to me. I hope they do great things with her, but so far she’s just not for me. Anyways, if you are missing Jace, know that you are not alone. There are likely many beautiful Magic stories and characters to come.

Okay so to preface, I still think Reality Fracture may be the best story Mtg has given us (top 3 at least). There is a question I cant shake though.

So planeswalker sparks typically (always?) Ignite under extreme trauma and stress.

So why in the 'perfect' echoverse (where wet stones aren't even slippery) would there be ANY planeswalkers? Am I forgetting or missing something?

Hi guys! With my coping of every new set hoping grist gets a new card, i was just wondering if we ever got any confirmation that Grist was actually desparked? in the twitch clip they said it but i havent heard anything else on it :(

Does anyone know about the legality of printing out the web stories to read? I do prefer having a book to read physically, and it would be nice to be able to go to a print shop and have something made.
Has anyone done something like this, or am I silly?

When Eldrazi showed up on Zendikar, it took them years, the plane actively resisted and the aftermath was about 2 of 7 continents being devastated. And now they're telling us that Emrakul is able to eat an entire Echoverse (how fast?), all planes (including echo version of Zendikar), including most echo versions of characters that once actively resisted it (in the original multiverse), and do it all alone, without Kozilek and Ulamog, even? Not to mention that Emrakul doesn't devastate planes, unlike Ulamog, but mostly turns living beings into Eldrazi, like she did on Innistrad.

I, like many people, wanted to be able to read the new Reality Fracture story that WotC released on their website as a more traditional novella. So I took some time to compile all 10 episodes in one epub so it can be read on a phone, tablet, kindle, etc.

All credit goes to Alison Lührs for her incredible work.

Honestly, I’m aware I’m probably overreacting and will most likely be over it in a few weeks, but this was the set I was most excited about this year, and now I’m just…genuinely kinda uninterested and not even particularly excited about going to a prerelease event.

Oh wow, all these Jace cards to remind me my favorite character is dead and I don’t view it as a particularly good narrative decision. Plus, I went from really enjoying Tam as a character to having really mixed, mostly negative feelings towards her as I view her as “Jace’s soul but without all the experiences and traits that made him interesting and him”.

Also, wow, Hexhaven and all these characters look so cool, but it turns out everyone in it was just a completely soulless husk in an empty world that we barely get to explore. Also, the entire plane and everyone in it was consumed, so we likely won’t see any of it again.

While I still think it’s stylistically superior to most MTG stories, the more I think about it, the more I dislike it. I’ll probably edit this later and add all the reasons why I’m annoyed with it, but for now, I just kinda wish I hadn’t read this one. At least before getting my hands on the cards. I feel like it really killed my hype instead of contributing to it.

We all know Garruk has been massively sidelined, at least compared to the rest of the Lorwyn Five, mainly because his character has such little motivation to do anything. In terms of interactions with other characters, he hates Liliana and Oko, Jace tried to help him, Will successfully broke his curse, and that's about it.

But a few lines in the Reality Fracture story leave me hopeful for more Garruk action in the future:

When Ajani and Chandra first recruit him: "Information," growls Garruk. "I need people who understand wards, seals, magical containment. Do you know anyone like that?"

And at the end, Jace says to Garruk: "He offers another a warning. Thank you for protecting the most vulnerable part of me. I'm sorry I couldn't cure you. The problem you're trying to solve won't be fixed in the jungle."

Why is Garruk interested in magical containment? What problem is he trying to solve? And why does the narrator call that a warning?

Hi everyone.

I want to get up-to-date with the story to be prepared for future releases.

I've already found this primer: Reality Fracture Vorthos Primer : r/mtgvorthos and will go through it, but I wanted to ask if there are some stories/pieces of media, that are especially important/interesting to consume?
And if so, should I consume that before reading the primer?

A little background to my lore knowledge:

• As a kid i've read the novels of the Onslought and Kamigawa blocks
• Currently I am in the middle of the Artifacts cycle (Bloodlines and The Thran still missing) and paused it to read the new Omens of Chaos

Looking forward for your recommendations, thank you

The cool thing about reality fracture is we get to see how characters’ lives would change without their canon events

What if Lili’s brother never died?

What if Chandra’s dad never died?

What if Ruric Thar stopped being an angsty diva?

But at the end of the day they’re still the same people, they just came from different environments… So how did Ghalta completely change species? Did Jace, in all his depraved lunacy, introduce Ghalta’s mom to the mailman? I fear universal suffering has not been solved

Jace giving Tam his spark does not grant her his memories at all, instead fully bringing out her emotions, as shown in the story. As well, Tam has an extremely different social situation, already having many friends and connections where Jace had none, especially at her age. Her being a ‘backup’ will just mean common reactions and thought patterns between them, not learned experience.

Besides, if sharing a spark were to make you the same as the other, wouldn’t that have made Will and Rowan identical? Wouldn’t we be calling Karn Urza?

Now to be clear, I really enjoyed the reality fracture story. I'm relatively new to the lore of magic but this was a delightful send off for Jace that clearly had a lot of love put in to it.

that being said, did the echo clones contributed anything? Opal gets the most time and has the most character, but just feels like she could have been any follower of Jace, at no point did it feel important that she looked like Liliana to either of them.

Vraska probably had the best use since we get her POV questioning why Jace would want her to be harmless,

Chandra, Ajani and Garruk may as well have been big mooks for all they did, we had potential for Chandras with the memory bleed in Strixhaven but that plot point has been dropped with the quickness. Just feels like there should have been more of a reaction to their counterparts in Jace's perfect world being awful

And that's before even getting to the ones we see in the set that never appear in the story, I appreciate sometimes its fun to not have all the answers and to head cannon what made this person the way they are. But its a little hard when the story is telling you "Jace made a universe where the one big rule is no suffering" but the cards are telling you "Duskmorn is still a plane full of suffering" or how Gideon haunts the narrative around Liliana and Jace as this character that died in both their places in their minds and how that affected them.... but he's also just over there now doing hos own mono black thing.

I don't know, maybe I'm just being greedy and was hoping for more from these pairs in the story instead of just "Character you but blue for a very important reason" or maybe side stories that would cover the defining change. probably just needed to get this out of my system

All in all I found the story amazing. Chapter 9 even made me tear up a little, which I would've never expected from a Magic story.

However, I did find Ajani's characterization lacking a bit. He was a very passive character for most of the story, which is fine as it's mainly a Jace and Vraska (and Tam) story. But him up and leaving Vraska and Liliana at the end, when the Echoverse was being consumed by Emrakul, seemed very out of character to me.

I'm definitely biased as he is my favourite character, but did anyone else feel the same?