Pattern Recognition #261 - The Life of Mishra, Artificer

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berryjon

3 November 2022

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Good day everyone! My name is berryjon, and I welcome you all to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut's longest running article series. I am something of an Old Fogey and a definite Smart Ass, and I have been around the block quite a few times. My experience is quite broad and deep, and so I use this series to try and bring some of that to you. Be it deck design, card construction, mechanics or in-universe characters and the history of the game. Or whatever happens to catch my attention each week. Which happens far more often than I care to admit. Please, feel free to talk about my subject matter in the comments at the bottom of the page, add suggestions or just plain correct me.

With The Brother's War on the horizon, about two weeks away, I think it's time for me to look into one of Magic's most important secondary characters, and their affect on the story and on the mechanics of the game itself. Because while their influence on the game has been lesser than others over the years, it is no less important.

So, without further ado, let us talk about Mishra.

Born on the last day of 912 PF... ah, hold on a moment. So, Dominaria has had a few different calendars over the years, and PF is the system that marks the founding of the city of Penregon, capital of Argive. So, the nation of Argive had existed for 912 years at this point. But Dominaria's year isn't 365 days like an Earth year. It's 420. So, Mishra was born, effectively, on 31 December of the year. He was the second son to his unnamed father and mother, and his older brother, Urza, was born on the 1st day of 912, effectively 01 January.

This was seen by many as an ill omen for the family, and especially the two brothers. We do not know much about the early childhood of Mishra or his brother, but we can infer that they were both well educated, quite intelligent, and each were driven in their own ways.

However, the omen of doom upon the Brothers and their family soon came to pass. Their mother passed away of some unknown cause, and their father remarried another member of the Argive aristocracy. If there were any more children from that union, we are never told.

What we do know is that the new wife saw the Brothers as obstacles, children that were in her way one way or the other. And so it was, that in 922PF, the Brother's father sent them away from their home, and into the apprenticeship of Tocasia, Dig Site Mentor. Now, you have to understand, this was, in no way a punishment. The Brothers were not being tossed out because of the stressful family life they had. Tocasia was a friend of their father, and a known and respected archaeologist for Argive who specialized in the study and recovery of Thran artifice. Sending the Brothers was akin to having them go to a Summer Camp. Completely normal, and something that both Brothers had an interest in, so why not?

Tocasia lived in the deserts that encompassed the old lands of the Thran, and moved from site to site as her digs took her from place to place in search of more information and artifice to uncover. Her presence was ... tolerated by the native peoples of the desert, the Fallaji. These people were deeply spiritual, and thanks to some lingering knowledge and history regarding the Thran and their fall, they held a deep mistrust and wariness where artifice and artifacts were concerned. To them, Tocasia - and the other archaeologists - research was something to be wary of, but as long as they were respectful and didn't do anything stupider than getting themselves killed, they could live with the presence of the artificers.

The Brother's first season with Tocasia was nothing less than an unmitigated success. They found something that they loved to do, something that made them feel and be better than they were before. And because of this, they spent more and more time at Tocasia's side over the next few years, something that they shared as Brothers. However, the differences between the Brothers would also start to become apparent over these same seasons and years. Mishra, Excavation Prodigy was more a young man of action, eager for the next dig. He learned to observe the desert, so spot the hidden signs of buried ruins and artifice from the surface, in contrast to his more studious and plotting brother.

Mishra was also a people-person, who was known at all the camps, and even among the Fallaj for his name and his face. He led from the front at as many sites as he could put his foot on, and wherever he went, everyone knew that he was going to bring with him an energy very few could match.

And these differences caused the brothers to argue incessantly. They argued over everything to the point that Tocasia sometimes wondered if this was how they loved each other, as some reflection of the homelife they were escaping from.

But all that would end, as all things to.

It was Urza who spotted it, thanks to his plots and plans. And Mishra confirmed it when his brother came to him and Tocasia with his findings, seeing for himself what Urza had discovered. You see, Urza had plotted all the sites of major Thran ruins and artifice, and discovered that they existed in circles. Or rather, one large circle that had an epicenter. He proposed that they travel to this location and scout it out, to determine if there was anything there. Mishra and Tocasia agreed, and they departed in an Ornithopter that they had excavated and refurbished several years earlier, an event shown in Take Flight.

The three Artificers flew towards Urza's proposed center, and Mishra was the first to spot it, given his experiences with the desert. Great ruins lay under the sand, the signs showing their existence clear to his eyes from the sky. He was forced to admit that his Brother was right, and Urza named this ruined city Koilos, which was a joke on his part, as that word meant "Secret", and this was a secret city no one had found before him. In truth, this was the ruins of the flying city of Halcyon, capital of the Thran. Mishra did not like his Brother's attitude, but kept his peace out of respect for Tocasia. They landed, and made their way towards the center of the city, closer to Urza's predicted location because he wasn't about to let the scale of a continent make him have a margin of error on the scale of a couple hundred meters.

They found the Caves of Koilos, and underground, they were separated from Tocasia but not themselves. In a place known later as the Hall of Tagsin, the two Brothers found a working Thran artifact of unknown make and purpose. While investigating it, the Brothers put their hand on the Thran Powerstone that empowered the device.

It exploded.

When they came back to their senses, the Brothers held in their hands two halves of the Powerstone. Stunned, they retreated from the Caves and met up with Tocasia, who flew them back to their basecamp to recover. Mishra, while he rested, discovered that his Powerstone could drain the energy and vitality from things around him, living or artificial. This newly named Weakstone allowed him to better control and contain potentially dangerous artifacts, something that the Fallaj seemed to approve of. After all, a stone is a stone, but a machine? Not so much.

But his rest was not easy. In his dreams, his nightmares, he saw a place, a place beyond the machine he and his brother disrupted. Where life was mechanical and all served the will of some ineffable master. He dreamed, and saw Visions of Phyrexia. And it wanted him. This... did not do his mental state any good, as he could not think for himself. He grew more irritable with everyone around him, but especially his brother, whom had the other half of the Powerstone they had broken.

Mishra took to drinking to try and put the nightmares away, but it didn't work, and one evening, in this state, he accosted his Brother. The Brothers argued, screaming at one another insults both real and imagined, they grappled with each other with their words, their hands, and eventually their fists. The whole of the camp was woken by the quarrel before them, some seeing it as the natural end point of their relationship, others as a way for them to clear the air. But Tocasia would have none of it, and she interjected herself between the Brothers to try and get them to stop fighting, to take a break and cool their heads (and get sober in one case).

But she was too late. Urza and Mishra both wanted the stone that the other possessed, each wanted to have that power whole and not incomplete, both correctly surmising that the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. They struggled over the Mightstone and the Weakstone, and when Tocasia put her hands on both of them to pull them apart, they reflexively held tighter to their prizes. The two stones touched, and the force of power between them exploded outwards. The Brothers were protected by the stones they held, but Tocasia was not. Mishra looked on in horror as the one person in the world he could consider himself to have loved, died because of him.

But Tocasia was dead, and Mishra fled, his Overwhelming Remorse sending him out of the camp, and into the desert. He ran until he could run no more, then ran some more. He found himself heading for Koilos, though he knew he would never make it there without supplies, it was still calling to him, drawing him to that place under the sands and that machine....

He would not make it there.

Join me next week when I continue to talk about Mishra, and how his ending came about because of nothing he was involved in. Or maybe it was inevitable?

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