Magic Story: the Two Guardians
Lore forum
Posted on Sept. 30, 2020, 6:57 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
This week's magic story has been posted.
I was really hoping that the story would end happily, and everyone would reconcile their differences, but I suppose that it was too much to expect that; clearly, WotC plans to make the reconciliation between Jace, Nissa, and Nahiri a long-term plotline.
How could Nissa be giving Nahiri such a challenge, when Nahiri has centuries more experience than does Nissa?
TheRealSpecialK says... #3
Zendikar has always been portrayed as being more sentient then any other plane, and Nissa has been portrayed as the liaison between Zendikar and others. Zendikar almost pours its mana and emotion into Nissa. In addition to this, Nissa's magic is really tied to the leylines of planes, so on planes where they are weakened (such as on Ahmonket), she is much less powerful. These two factors (Nissa's connection to Zendkair and the leylines) combine so that on Zendikar, Nissa is more powerful than she is on other Planes.
If fact, it allows her to be so powerful that she can kill Eldrazi titans with it. Even though it was Chandra who pulled the trigger, it was Nissa's magic that allowed Chandra to kill the Titans. Read the story excerpt from Chandra's perspective below, just after she attempted to burn the Titans on her own. She unleased flame at them and then...:
"—and instantly she knew it wasn't right.
The torrent of fire touched the contorted Eldrazi mass, but it wasn't nearly enough. Her fire could barely scratch the titans even when they were finite, discrete beings. She couldn't burn their epic entirety now, any more than she could burn an entire plane.
Chandra felt a hand resting softly on her shoulder.
And then she felt the mana of an entire world streaming into her.
The leylines. Nissa had been the focus for all of Zendikar's fury, and now, with Nissa's touch, that fury poured into Chandra instead."
If Nissa can channel the power of Zendikar into a being with enough force to obliterate Titans (which Nahiri could not beat even as a pre-mending walker), it doesn't seem like a stretch to me that Nissa could beat Nahiri and Jace at once on Zendikar. Besides, it wasn't even her that Nahiri was fighting so much as it was Zendikar itself. Nahiri was fighting elementals that were portrayed as having emotions tied to the plane - Nissa just encouraged them on.
October 1, 2020 12:14 p.m. Edited.
DemonDragonJ says... #4
TheRealSpecialK, in that case, why was the plane siding with Nissa, and not Nahiri?
October 1, 2020 12:27 p.m.
MindAblaze says... #5
Maybe the plane got tired of Nahiri ghosting it while she was locked in the helvault?
October 1, 2020 1:11 p.m.
The entire story basically came down to a deus ex machina--the laziest possible way to end a story. The stone they were fighting over that could destroy Zendikar? Eh. It also had the power to calm Zendikar while leaving the elementals alive, allowing both Nahiri and Nissa to be happy, and Jace to be able to safely stay in the middle.
That is lazy writing, clearly designed to (a) preserve the characters without any meaningful repercussions and (b) ensure that they can just keep Zendikar the exact same next time we revisit the plane.
Sure, there is going to be some long-term drama between Nahiri, Jace, and Nissa, but, ultimately, they all got something they wanted, and there was really no lasting damage done as a result of their little scuffle. Nahiri and Nissa are never going to be friends, but they are currently in a position where they can work together angstily moving forward.
All told, we got nothing other than some interpersonal drama that did not overly advance any of the main characters. The only real consequences were to some side characters, and they're not Planeswalkers so those consequences are unlikely to have any real importance until Zendikar 4.0.
This is made all the worse since the earlier parts of the story did a good job showing that both Nissa's and Nahiri's positions were on relatively equal moral grounds. Nissa was fighting for the present, at the expense of those who had to live with the Roil; Nahiri was fighting for the past, at the expense of the current iteration of the plane's soul.
Neither was fully right; neither was fully wrong. That kind of moral grey area is where a good story can really develop, particularly since you can deal with the fallout of one side "winning."
Instead, they decided to make no decision at all.
October 1, 2020 1:23 p.m.
TheRealSpecialK says... #7
DemonDragonJ Like a sentient being, Zendikar seems to grow and evolve and change more apparently than other planes. Nissa says it best when she tells Nahiri,
"You are what Zendikar once was, Nahiri. I am what it is now."
Nahiri doesn't acknowledge the fact that Zendikar can change. She is trying force it to look like the Zendikar in her mind - the Zendikar of 1000s of years ago. While that was Zendikar then, it is not Zendikar now. That is why Zendikar sides with Nissa - she is in tune with the plane now.
When Nahiri took the core to begin with, elementals (Zendikar itself) attacked her and tried to take it away (not Nissa). Furthermore, while she could feel the core whispering to her, she couldn't understand it. Contrast that to Nissa, who almost immediately understood the core, and knew that it was Zendikar talking to her.
October 1, 2020 1:54 p.m.
Caerwyn got it in one.
The conclusion is literally just Nissa believing in herself and using a magic rock to fix everyone’s problems...
October 1, 2020 6:23 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #9
Caerwyn, I will admit that I have seen other stories in which the writers seem to be afraid of taking risks and greatly changing the status quo (obviously not counting series such The Simpsons or Family Guy, which have literally no continuity between episodes), such as Dragon Ball Super, where no arc ever has permanent consequences and the situation returns to normal after the story is resolved. I find that practice to be very annoying and insulting to the intelligence of the audience, so I was hoping that this story would avoid it.
October 1, 2020 11:08 p.m.
DragonSliver9001 says... #10
there is definitely at least "some" continuity to the simpsons and family guy. they both mention events from previous episodes numerous times.
October 1, 2020 11:22 p.m.
RicketyEng says... #11
This set's story does have lasting consequences. They may not seem that large in scale (for some folks it's probably a welcome change of pace following the Bolas arc), but they do exist. Zendikar's healing has been given a massive jumpstart and it suggests that the plane will be stronger than ever when we next see it. The more overarching consequence is the damage done to Nissa's relationship to the Gatewatch and specifically Jace. Jace intends to try to apologize and make things better with Nissa, but her trust in him and others has been damaged on a very deep level.
I liked when Nissa finally stopped asking herself what Gideon would do and starting doing what Nissa would do.
October 6, 2020 12:08 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #12
RicketyEng, I personally do not like it when two or more heroes lose their ability to trust each other, as that goes against the very idea of heroism and being a hero, in my mind, so I do hope that Jace, Nissa, and Nahiri can all reconcile, eventually.
October 6, 2020 10:14 p.m.
DemonDragonJ - I disagree that heroes losing trust in one another goes against the idea of heroism. People, even very good people, are going to have disagreements and those disagreements can cause trust to dissolve. To ensure all your heroes always trust one another you would need to have a group of boring, flat characters who don't act in a realistic manner.
Let's take a moment to go back to where the "very idea of heroism" comes from--at least in the Western Canon--The Iliad.
The plot of The Iliad stems from a disagreement between two heroes. Agamemnon and Achilles get into a disagreement--Agamemnon takes some of Achilles' war spoils away and Achilles gets upset and refuses to fight. Achilles' refusal to take the field results in the Greeks losing substantial ground to the Trojans, with countless men dying on both sides due to Achilles' little hissy fit. Achilles does eventually take to the field again, but that's not because he reconciles with Agamemnon, but because his best friend (and possible lover) is killed.
It's kind of hard to say that losing trust goes against the idea of heroism when the oldest written work in Western literature is centered around that very concept. Now, that's not to say heroes can never reconcile (Even The Odyssey is centered around Athena and Odysseus falling apart and reconciling at the end)--merely that if they never fell apart or had personal issues, they would not make for very interesting characters.
I_Want_To_PlayAllTheDecks says... #2
I read this weeks story but ahven followed the long term storyline. That aside, I think the most likely answer would be either her force of will or possibly her connection to the plane being more primal in raw in the Zendikarś current state.
September 30, 2020 8:12 p.m.