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With the return of web fiction, many Magic fans are celebrating the return of their favorite characters to the rich, exciting format that fed the rich boom of Magic fandom such as it was in 2016. What better time to do some character analysis?
Spoilers ahead for Episode 1: In the Heart of the Skyclave.
Read here: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-story/episode-1-heart-skyclave-2020-09-02 written by @AtGreenblatt (2/?)
Read here: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/magic-story/episode-1-heart-skyclave-2020-09-02 written by @AtGreenblatt (2/?)
It has been a long time for these characters, both to grow in story, and for the fans to keep up with out of story. Nahiri is an oldwalker, a planeswalker born before the Mending (an event 60 years ago in canon that dramatically changed the Multiverse and those with sparks) (3/?)
Episode 1 of Zendikar Rising begins with Nissa and Nahiri meeting on Zendikar, their shared home, and discussing how Zendikar has been gravely injured by the Eldrazi's presence. Their conversation is a foundation for showing who these planeswalkers are today, (4/?)
revealing how the past has morphed their ideologies and particularly their relationship with guilt and protection.
Both characters view themselves as Zendikar's guardian. This identity is essential to the choices they've made all their life, (5/?)
Both characters view themselves as Zendikar's guardian. This identity is essential to the choices they've made all their life, (5/?)
and it is directly tied to the Eldrazi threat, be it 6000 years ago or just a century ago. Let's look at the beginnings of this self-imposed duty and focus on Nahiri this week. (6/?)
Nahiri sparked and found herself at Sorin's mercy. Planeswalkers used to be ever more dramatic and dangerous in the old days, godlike in power and territorial of their worlds. There were strict protocols to enter other people's worlds, and intrusions were met with distrust. (7/?)
Sorin and Nahiri trained together, and became friends, though Nahiri knew she could not fully trust him. They embarked on fantastic and tragic journeys spanning decades to fight the eldrazi, and in that time, Sorin trained a deep distrust in Nahiri. (8/?)
Even so, he was the closest thing she had to a friend. Despite their at times antagonistic friendship, they both appreciated the other and were relieved to see each other was doing well upon their reunion. (9/?)
Nahiri had worried for him, and he was pleased to see her, even dropping his brooding exterior enough to joke and clasp her shoulder. (10/?)
Their time together highlighted her belief in what it meant to be a protector. She saw herself as Zendikar's, and together they tried to protect the Multiverse so the Eldrazi wouldn't harm their home planes. (11/?)
Nahiri views her part in all of this as one who must protect all life. Watching even one settlement suffer on a foreign world causes her heartache, and she strives to instill hope and provide comfort and safetyâeven in their last minutes. (12/?)
She is ridiculed by Sorin, told by himâand later Uginâto "think of the bigger picture". Nahiri is 1000 years Sorin's junior, and informed that Ugin is even older than him, (13/?)
and they treat her as a child for her idealistic worldview of preventing all harm, allowing no one to suffer needlessly. She follows their plans however, respecting Sorin's judgement. (14/?)
When Ugin presents his plan, it is to trap the Eldrazi on a plane that meets the requirements Zendikar does. To find another world would take time, and Nahiri has seen the devastation the Eldrazi wreak. (15/?)
She reluctantly accepts this hardship on behalf of her plane because she believes in Zendikar's strength, and Ugin points out that Zendikar has a protectorâherâthat can take care of the world while it holds onto the sealed titans. It's the right thing to do, (16/?)
and she acknowledges she couldn't handle the guilt of shoving away the responsibility onto another plane. (17/?)
Five millenia pass, Nahiri sleeping within the world of Zendikar and keeping vigil over her prisoners. At this point, she has spent nearly all of her existence toiling to keep the Eldrazi at bay so the Multiverse may live in peace. (18/?)
Sorin, Ugin, and she worked together for a few decades setting up the trap, and she had some time with Sorin before that, but she has dedicated 5000 years to holding the Eldrazi for the benefit of the Multiverse because that was the best way to ensure her beloved home (19/?)
Zendikar survived. She still viewed time under the constraints of mortality during the hedrons' construction. (20/?)
In her sleep, the kor misremembered her words about the titans, making a prophet out of her. Vampires have begun to roam Zendikar, and they disrupted the hedron alignment enough to release Eldrazi broods against Zendikar once more. (21/?)
Nahiri deals with this resurgence and the people who brought it upon them, though it is difficult, and she must do it alone. She had agreed to sleep away her life within Zendikar, promised that should she ever need Sorin or Ugin's help, they would aid her. (22/?)
Worry blossoms in her, and she is moved to help her friend, Sorin, if he is unwell. It feels good to give in to overpowering emotion again, having fallen into an apathetic halflife during her vigil. She seeks to bring meaning to her long slumber. (23/?)
Her reunion with Sorin begins alright, he is clearly pleased to see her and she is relieved he is doing well; however, she becomes wary, uncertain, as to what could possibly have kept Sorin away from fulfilling his promise to come to her aid. (24/?)
This is also a pivotal moment in how she sees herself in relation to other planeswalkers; she realizes that they are now much closer in age than when she entered sleep and are something akin to equals rather than student and mentor. (25/?)
When she inquires why he didn't come, he reveals his magic protecting Innistrad may have possibly prevented her call from reaching him. (26/?)
He speaks to her patronizingly, and she realizes the possibility that he chose his plane over hers and left her to rot, having used her for her service to the Multiverse. (27/?)
They're argument escalates to blows as Nahiri's pain at being used sharpens into anger. She trusted Sorin. She allowed Sorin and Ugin to use her home, and sacrificed so many years of her life to protect the Multiverse. (28/?)
Sorin still sees her as a child planeswalker and won't even come back to Zendikar like he promised to make sure their work doesn't go to waste. (29/?)
She spends a thousand years trapped in the Helvault, lost in a sea of darkness and demons. Nahiri gave everything for the Multiverse, and her thanks is to be threatened with madness as she wastes away in a void. (30/?)
She comes to realize Sorin is a monster that she should have never trusted, and she isn't the only being wronged by him. His own creation, Avacyn, has wound up in the Helvault and Nahiri recognizes her to be twisted with hate, and Sorin's puppet. (31/?)
When she is finally broken out of the Helvault, she returns to Zendikar, a thousand years since she first realized the hedron network was being messed with, and finds her home to be a husk of what it once was. (32/?)
She knows what titans can do to a plane, eating the mana and corroding the land to such a degree the world itself cracks. She resigns herself to the fact that she can't destroy them herself, (33/?)
that Sorin's selfishness has led to the destruction of her home and all the Multiverse, and that she intends to take revenge on Sorin first. (34/?)
In these six millenia, we see Nahiri give everything, even her sense of self, for the protection of Zendikar. She is thought naĂŻve and a bleeding heart for her unconditional care for those who walk all the planes of the Multiverse. (35/?)
She is routinely told by her mentor, her friend, her ally, that she must focus on the big picture. She is told that she is sacrificing herself for the greater good, to keep balance, and she is congratulated in this endeavor after decades of hard work. (36/?)
When she wakes up from a watch that lasts thousands of years? Her response is to relish in emotion because she has let herself be encased in stone for so long. She laughs through pain because it's so novel, and she thinks of her friend who should be helping her. (37/?)
Nahiri worries for his safety, wonders if he has come upon a similar fate as she had, vows that she will bring love and laughter to his life once more as she dreams of walking through markets and experiencing life again.
His betrayal is a knife in the back. (38/?)
His betrayal is a knife in the back. (38/?)
As far as Nahiri is concerned, his words all those centuries back were hollow. He never considered the pain she may be in, nor the fact she may not hear her call for help, as he rose defense around his home. (39/?)
She saves Zendikar from its first Eldrazi resurgence and rushes to save her friend, only to find he has moved on and doesn't care about her. (40/?)
In a Multiverse where she has failedâthe Eldrazi have escaped and will eat all of creation one way of the otherâshe has nothing to lose. She only has hope that she can exact revenge, and buy as much borrowed time for Zendikar while she does. (41/?)
She knows from her work with Sorin and Ugin that the Eldrazi can be directed, and will ignore other planes in their path. (42/?)
Nahiri destroys Sorin's bloodline, his home, and traps Sorin in rockface, leaving him captured in rockface so he cannot planeswalk away. She leaves him to watch the destruction of everything he holds dear. She leaves him trapped like he left her. (43/?)
Innistrad is no longer her concern, she's been gone from Zendikar too long. Zendikar had been her salvation to get her through her millenia-long jailing, imagining it in its entirety. Her duty to Zendikar becomes forefront once more, having written off Innistrad, (44/?)
and she is dismayed by just how much has changed in her absence. While the Gatewatch trap Emrakul and halt the Eldrazi threat, Nahiri is focused on how she can help her beloved world, afflicted by the Roil. (45/?)
Her whole life has been dictated by duty. She sees Zendikar as hers, because when she walked the Multiverse before her slumber, planes belonged to the planeswalkers that claimed them. It is also her obligation to fix what has become wrong because in her absence, (46/?)
her work has irrevocably changed Zendikar and its inhabitants. Her words have been twisted into idolization of the Eldrazi and her hedrons have become a sacred piece of kor spirituality.
Through episode one of Zendikar Rising, Nahiri is easily angered. (47/?)
Through episode one of Zendikar Rising, Nahiri is easily angered. (47/?)
Her guilt is expressed through fury, because she sees her work on Zendikar as failure. Skyclave fell, and the world is so unstable she can barely get through a short conversation without the world trying to swallow her. When the Roil was new, (48/?)
she likened it to a scab festering over a wound, and it seems 6000 years has only made her disgust of it more severe.
She speaks to Nissa with the same casual dismissal that Sorin and Ugin treated her to, because all her very long life, (49/?)
She speaks to Nissa with the same casual dismissal that Sorin and Ugin treated her to, because all her very long life, (49/?)
older planeswalkers treat younger planeswalkers as children. She manipulates conversation to put herself in a place of knowing and leading, not revealing everything so that Nissa must follow if she wishes to aid. (50/?)
She has spent so long trying to protect Zendikar, and she is willing to do anything to have back the Zendikar that she remembers. To return the Skyclave to the kor. (51/?)
To return Zendikar's stone to the peaceful earth it was before she let herself be duped by an elder dragon and vampire she thought was her friend.
She grieves the world she left behind, unable to see the beauty of the world that she now stands in. (52/?)
She grieves the world she left behind, unable to see the beauty of the world that she now stands in. (52/?)
On Innistrad, she thinks to herself that a thousand years in the Helvault is rest enough for several lifetimes, and her rage has been building in all that time, rekindled after she let herself fall apathetic for too long. (53/?)
The sacrifice of some elementals--of even a person or two as we saw in the trailer--is worth it for The Bigger Picture, that she has been taught to seek. (54/?)
We will have to wait and see how the story unfolds and how her fury carries her through.
Check out #Magicstory next week Wednesday for episode 2, and I will be following up on Thursday with a character analysis of Nissa!
https://magic.wizards.com/en/story (54/54)
Check out #Magicstory next week Wednesday for episode 2, and I will be following up on Thursday with a character analysis of Nissa!
https://magic.wizards.com/en/story (54/54)
