Hello Zendikari fans! The long wait for spoilers of Zendikar Rising is over, as it's the first week of them!
Although it might be too soon to review everything from a gaming perspective, as you might know here we care mostly about story and setting, for the purpose of playing D&D in the marvelous world of Zendikar.
As such, this will be a "Vorthos" perspective: in Magic jargon, it's the type of player that cares mostly about the flavor of the cards, and the lore surrounding them.
So let's start from the beginning!
Back to Zendikar, without Eldrazi
As if the designers would have
listened to me specifically (which they didn't, which means the majority fo the fans are like me) they got rid of the Eldrazi not only as a physical threat (not even small drones or spawn remain, apparently! YAY!), but even in their lasting effects: we haven't seen a single land art for Zendikar Rising depicting the awful effect of the passage of Ulamog or Kozilek (the latter being less awful and more interesting, admittedly).
It might be too soon, but look how green Bala Ged seems to be:
Granted, this is a "sanctuary", but I suspect even the "recovery" was meant, originally at least, as the land recovering from Eldrazi influence, thanks to the Khalni Heart planted by Nissa during the Battle for Zendikar / Oath of The Gatewatch arc.
The flavor text and the art imply another meaning for recovery, but at least are quoted from a Bala Ged guide, meaning there are indeed still people from there, and going there. YAY!
About Bala Ged, one small/big complaint: this would be their depcition of its Tangled Vales?
If not for the hedrons, I couldn't think of a single place on Zendikar tame enough to have such a tame woodland. And on Bala Ged even less!
THIS is in my opinion the perfect depiction of the Tangled Vales, the home of the Joraga elves:
Beautiful, and already my go-to illustration for this verdant side of dark Bala Ged, which is the closest place to Central Africa or the Amazon in Zendikar.
We even have Sejiri depicted without the crazy bismuth-like formations left by Kozilek:
Beautiful art, although in Sejiri, for once, I am hoping they will keep some Eldrazi corruption, since it was mentioned (in the art book with writing by James Wyatt) that the excavation of the landscape by the Kozilek brood revealed more ancient ruins there... (And I think I know which... See next point)
Now, what else changed with the Eldrazi gone? My main concern was: how do we get an "enemy" or new adventuring sites in Zendikar? Do we just get to explore new secrets in the old sites? Do we just get new sites? Who will oppose adventurers? Just traps? And who built those old ruins, now that we know the Eldrazi for sure never built anything and were never a civilization to begin with?
It would have been a bit underwhelming to have them just repeat the feeling of the first Zendikar, because it's impossible to keep it fresh: it's a classic that just works as it is, and about which a few key points (the origin of hedrons and the ruins) have been retconned.
To be honest, I would have not been able to come up with such an elegant solution as they did...
Enter the Skyclaves
Turns out it was the Kor who built many of the now-ruins which show very high degrees of civilizations.
And we know now, because even Emeria, The Sky Ruin itself, turns out to be Kor, and not just a castle or something that flies due to Zendikar's Roil... But an actual flying city of sorts (hello, Miyazaki), which was always kept hidden from newer generations by Iona guarding it... But that since Iona abandoned guarding duties to battle the Eldrazi, adventurers have explored and tampered with... Activating no less than ONE PER CONTINENT, that laid dormant for a thousand of years or more, hidden by the impenetrable nature of Zendikar..!
These are the Skclaves: flying fortresses/cities through which the Kor, from their ancient capital of Makindi (always thought they were from there...) used to rule Zendikar with an iron (or stone, actually) fist..!
Now that's some great world-building. I don't know how much of this was supposed to be part of the original Zendikar history, as envisioned in 2008...
It's possible that they indeed have plans of whole flying cities and stuff, but made by "Eldrazi", when they had to retcon everything to make the cosmic horrors appear within Zendikar instead of in their own or different setting.
In this case, all they had to do is think who else could have built the things, and since Sea Gate itself seems to be made with advanced stone-forging magic, used by Nahiri to build the hedrons according to canon, well... Must have been the Kor, of the old times when Nahiri was born (how come she is immortal by the way..? Whatever)
In any case, here is their laying out of the Skyclaves within Zendikar, with my comments within bracketss:
- The Roil swallowed the Guul Draz outpost and drowned it in a swamp.
[I am betting the Hagra Cistern will be retconned or revealed to at have been at least part of this Skyclave, but no clue on this yet... Prediction made!]
- The elves of Bala Ged, led by a pre-spirit Obuun, revolted against their kor rulers and toppled their Skyclave.
[No major ruin site in Bala Ged seems to fit the bill of a clue for this, although I have two possible bets in mind: the Enatu Temple, never revealed to be in Bala Ged, or the Carnage Altar, which is not a unique thing, but I used it as a possible Bala Ged ruin in my "Zendikar Atlas" project... In any case, in Bala Ged vegetation is so dense that the Skyclave might have been rendered completely invisible by it. Or perhaps it sunk in Bojuka Bay, and in this case, having a bastion there looking like Sea Gate, as I have imagined in my old 13th Age adaptation might be fitting! Although it would be repetitive to have another Skyclave underwater because...]
- An enormous sea monster—perhaps an ancestor of Lorthos, the Tidemaker, or maybe Lorthos itself—dragged the Murasa Skyclave into the sea.
[Beautiful! Very fitting. And they say somewhere else or in the
same article, that now floating over Murasa, the Skyclave has been instantly covered by Murasa's especially powerful plant growth. Green-Blue/Green for the win!]
- Then civil war tore the empire in half; the Ondu Skyclave turned against the capital at Makindi. The city was destroyed (and its lands transformed into the trenches), and the Skyclave fell onto Jwar Isle.
[Standing ovation for whoever came up with this!! First of all, Jwar Isle really needed a big secret thing like this, being called the Island of Secrets for no particularly fitting reason otherwise... And then, the story of the Makindi VS Skyclave conflict sets up a history of different factions within the Kor which could be interesting even if old.]
- As the Empire crumbled, the Kargan tribes mastered the dragons of Akoum and rode them to victory against the kor, shattering the Akoum Skyclave.
[More importance for the Kargan tribes, and another secret in Akoum, which could have been hidden within the Teeth of Akoum, as many others, or maybe wherever the Tal Terig tower is, with it being perhaps part of the fortress!]
- The archangel Iona destroyed the Tazeem Skyclave, creating the Sky Ruin of Emeria.
[So she didn't just guard it from later discovery, she was the one responsible for its destruction, too! Nice.]
- The last Skyclave to fall was the one over Sejiri. When Sorin, Nahiri, and Ugin lured the Eldrazi to Zendikar to trap them, one of the Eldrazi titans appeared in Sejiri and destroyed the Skyclave with a thoughtless flick of a tentacle. The shattered sphere was encased in polar ice.
[And in this case, the Ikiral Ourpost might have been part of it. I was considering it gone after Kozilek's passage, but I guess we will know soon...]
______________
So now we have the places for adventurers to explore: inexplicably or not, they are full of working traps and live guardians which seem to have mutated in the meantime, like this one:
So adventure is served...
But as some of you may know, what I am really obsessed by is Zendikar's geography: although Zendikar's thing is the Roil, which has the landscape in an ever-changing mode, I retain that the continents and the key locations should have a more clear location, or at least be fully-acknowledged by the canon, instead of being just vaguely waved at, like during the Battle for Zendikar block.
Well, it seems like designers again heard a lot of feedback like mine, about this...
Zendikar Geo-Goodness Incoming!
First of all, a ton of lands depicting the iconic places are coming in the Modal Double-Faced Cards, already referred to as MDFCs...
The land side is underwhelming first of all because it's, as of now, always mono-colored (while I envision many of these places as dual-colored), and then because the land itself is just a normal mana-producing land. It gets some cool effect if you don't play it as a land, but as whatever it is on the other side.
As said, I am not really interested in the gaming aspect (although I will be sad if ZNR will go down in history as one of the least powerful sets ever, as it's starting to look like), but I am very hungry for geographical and geological details about the world... And I can confirm these people are basically producing an atlas like I am!
They included many obscure places, such as Blackbloom Lake (although just quoted in a land called Blackbloom Bog, admittedly fitting since they said the lake was marshy, in the original guide), and the Singing City, or the Silundi Islands, which were just theorized by me before, but evidently in a good call based on the lore...
All of this makes me happy, even if what would have made me even more happy would have been some minor effect on the land side, especially considering it enters tapped.
Other great things in no particular order:
- Sejiri confirmed to be the North sub-polar continent, instead of being just ambiguously sub-polar.
- In the same card that confirms this, also confirmed that Benthridix, the polar underwater Merfolk city, was pre-Eldrazi, or at least pre-worhsip of Eldrazi!
The Roil (thankfully) didn't stop with the Eldrazi going out of the picture! Good because half of my ideas for Zendikar D&D depend on it!
Valakut is indeed inhabited and not devoid of building either, hurray! (I put it as a possible background for characters in my Zednikar Atlas... Will have to point it's ideal for Kor other than Goblins, now!)
Sea Gate is rebuilt, although they kept the videogamey look of Battle for Zendikar, with the ridiculous, Hollywood-style light beam shooting into the sky... (At least some old-skool Gnarlids are posing in the foreground...)
- There's some crazy, and crazily-named legendary elementals out and about, which I don't particularly care for, but I guess can add some threats for adventurers, and the fact they are Legendary means they most probably also have some degree of intelligence.
Archons are bad guys, confirmed! (Really not liking the griffins I have seen until now...)
And that's it for the random trivia for now.
What I can conclude with is a general happy feeling for the respect towards the established geography, and on the logical expansion on it, but also a cautious disappointment in the art direction: some places are depicted in ways that don't match the flavor (Tangled Vale... I am looking at you...) and in general everything seems more in line with the cartoonish style of Battle for Zendikar (and most other sets nowadays, save perhaps for gorgeous Dominaria), rather than the epic but gritty style of the first Zendikar block.
I am cautious about this because anyway some of the cards are indeed beautiful and fitting. Silundi Isle is now my absolute favorite, not only thanks to great and very-Zendikar art styld, but because it opens my whole once-theoretical campaign idea of isles beyond the known ones!
Also: basic lands are true beauties, most of them, and the whole idea of Skyclaves is very welcome to me, although incredibly derivative. Thinking about it, Castle In The Sky by Miyazaki might have been a big inspiration even for original Zendikar, given that even the patterns on hedrons look like those on the anime's fortress of Laputa. So there's that: my favorite setting seems to be inspired by one of my favorite anime.
In the next post you will see how crazy I got with my Zendikar Atlas now that we have this new info, and how crazy I am with it in general...
One tiny preview: there is now some crazy symmetry in the number of territories per continent, colors per continent, and color distribution... It was like an impossible Rubrik Cube solving, but I think I nailed it! I am just on the lookout for possible swaps, especially to take out a few "placer" territories in favor of more iconic ones.
Till next post, and comments are welcome as usual!
