MS: Hour of Eternity
Lore forum
Posted on July 12, 2017, 12:09 p.m. by GoldGhost012
The Eternals are unleased, and death and destruction fill the city.
AgentGreen says... #3
An evil malevolent planeswalker, with an army of mindless armored undead at his disposal
If he unleashes this army on the multiverse it's all over for the good guys
July 12, 2017 1:31 p.m.
This timeline is screwed up. I hope we don't finish the block without it being fleshed out. Otherwise, we'll be left with quite a few questions, but still not as many as Fate Reforged. Or - dare I say it - commander precon commanders? Damn it, Freyalise.
July 12, 2017 3:56 p.m.
How is the timeline screwed up DarkLaw? I think the commander precon commanders are more-or-less snapshots of the commanders. Freyalise died to seal a time rift and Teferi gave up his spark to seal another time rift. Both cards are depictions of them before they sealed their respective rifts.
July 12, 2017 4:32 p.m.
Still waiting for eternalized double striking kitty to show up and ruin the gatewatch... or at least dreaming of the day despite the fact that it won't happen.
Also wondering what Samut djeru and hapatra are doing.
I'm starting to feel like the story is getting scattered; this whole set has been constantly changing perspectives with the perspective's holder dying more often than not, which makes sense for an apocalyptic plot line, but it is starting to leave me wondering which main characters I'm supposed to care about.
So far I'm really only invested in Nissa and Samut... and we don't get much of Samut in this set, nor any of Nissa.
Also wondering what bolas intends to do with this army. Sure it's impressive, but I doubt it's enough to conquer ravnica, let alone dominaria, phyrexia, and the rest of the multiverse.
July 12, 2017 5:32 p.m.
MindAblaze says... #8
It's years and years of stone coated zombies, I think they could be a formidable threat. Now he just needs Rashmi's teleporter. Too bad Tezzeret screwed the pooch on that one. He had one job...
July 12, 2017 6:47 p.m.
AgentGreen says... #9
MindAblaze years and years of developing an army of mindless killing machines
But I do recall Tezz said along the lines of him going down does not slow Bolas down. What if he already has a way to take his eternalized army across the Blind Eternities?
July 12, 2017 6:52 p.m.
I mean... lifeless objects can survive travel thru the blind eternities... undead warriors might be a loophole in the rules of transportation. I still don't think that this eternalized army is a match for all 10 guilds though. Sure bolas would tip the scales, but at the point of attacking ravnica you also bring vraska and ral zarek into the fight, along with the jacestice league. Ugin might even be present just by necessity of stopping a threat to the multiverse. Might be a good way to show the damage that jace's frequent extended heiatus' have had on the plane.
July 12, 2017 7:20 p.m. Edited.
Either way, we'll see. I'm just saying I'm not convinced that stone scarab zombie army is bolas' endgame. It seems underwhelming for such a grand villain.
July 12, 2017 7:25 p.m.
It's unlikely the Eternal Army is the final phase of Bolas' current plot. Remember, he came to Amonkhet, searching for a plane with very specific characteristics, abandoned all pretense of forethought and careful puppeteering, opting instead for extreme violence. He did this all immediately following the start of the mending as his omnipotence began to fade. This was absolutely critical for him, and his only motivation from then on was finding a way to subvert or undo the results of the mending upon himself. A zombie army, in and of itself, doesn't do that.
He may very well require an army to achieve something greater, which could then allow him to once more achieve apotheosis. And given the way the story is going, and the events the card arts depict, his army isn't going away. We'll meet them again to discover their true purpose.
July 12, 2017 10:24 p.m.
RicketyEng says... #13
I'm sorry if this ends up sounding like a rant. Maybe it is.
I would like to address the comment above that referred to this set's stories feeling too disjointed because they are all told from different points of view. This opinion frustrates me because the opposite method of storytelling is to focus on a few main characters and tell the story from their perspectives. That is what the Gatewatch was created to do! In this forum it seems there is no end to the Gatewatch hate, yet here we find a complaint about the alternative storytelling method. There just seems to be no pleasing people as they constantly dissect the Magic lore as though they expect it to be literary gold.
Now, I haven't done my due diligence to check other threads looking for DuTogira's opinion of the Gatewatch. If he or she has previously complained about the story having too much focus on the Gatewatch and has now complained about a lack of focus then I call shenanigans. There is also a chance I'm getting frustrated by thinking conflicting opinions are coming from the same people when they actually aren't.
Tl;dr - Why can't people just enjoy the stories for what they are instead of complaining about them so much!?
July 13, 2017 12:21 a.m.
I can't speak for the playerbase, but as someone who HAS complained about both the gatewatch and this alternate method of storytelling, let me take this opportunity to fully articulate my stance on WotC's storytelling.
Tl;dr: I know that I personally have presented seemingly conflicting critiques across these lore forums. My intent is not to type rants just to hear the sounds of my keys clicking, but to express my reactions to a story that I so badly want to be able to immerse myself in, and the reasons why I was or was not able to do so. I seek to do this in as civil a tone as possible so as to provide useful suggestions rather than rants should anyone who worked on the lore read one of my comments. While I won't apologize for having my own opinions, if my comments have ever been insensitive or uncivil and have offended anyone, I apologize, as that has never been my intent. I simply seek to express myself.
July 13, 2017 4:02 a.m. Edited.
Ryjo Pre-mending walkers were supposed to be godlike. Sealing the time rifts was still before the mending. So why are the two planeswalkers so weak? Well, not in terms of power level - more in terms of ignoring mana cost strength. Like, they were probably pretty close to the Eldrazi Titans in terms of power, but their cards don't really reflect that. Wizards was probably just willing to overlook it so that we get cards of old planeswalkers, which I'm actually fine with. I still want to see a card representing the demon leviathan planeswalker that a much younger Bolas fought.
Anyway, the thing is, that leads to many questions about flavor and timelines and stuff. To a lesser extent, you could say the same about other commanders - Atraxa and Ezuri, for example, give off an ominous vibe of the phyrexians winning and a not-so-ominous vibe of not actually learning anything about the conflict since we last took more than a glancing look at the plane. For all we know, the phyrexians already tore themselves apart because of mana colors other than black and so there's nothing to "worry" about. This also leads to some questions.
As for any block like this including considerable reference to past events, well... There will always be questions. They could actually explain most of them with decent storytelling though.
TLDR: Magic's story isn't very coherent anymore, since it's so back and forth. Luckily, nobody minds so long as we get some sweet new cards and the occasional cool character moment.
July 13, 2017 4:29 a.m.
I for one feel this story is pretty good. I actually appreciate the perpectives of the regular people on the ground experiecing this first hand, although this story doesn't really move the story of the block along. It would have been nice to get some of these perpectives sprinkled throughout the other stories, like where someone other than the gods and legendaries had to fend off the locusts, or some of the fighting in the streets when the zombies poured into the city outside of Hapatra riding on her scaly horse. I mean there were a couple instances of this in the last example, but still. Also how do the devoted believers of Bolas play into all of this? Aren't there cards that depict two factions of the surviving natives? One that believe the horrors are in fact a trial and those who know they are betrayed? I thought there was infighting and some powerful warriors on Bolas' side before he even shows up.
dbpunk says... #2
That was interesting. Like you're beginning to understand the true horrors of the eternal while reading it. Although there should be some speculation on who the woman in the end is.
July 12, 2017 12:55 p.m.