On the Stack 11: Yasova Dragonclaw and the story of Core Set 19.

The story for Magic the Gathering's Core Set 2019 is a series of flashbacks telling the origin story of two of Magic's recurring characters: the evil Elder Dragon planeswalker Nicol Bolas and his enigmatic rival Ugin, known as the Spirit Dragon. While both of these characters have been in Magic Story for years, the flashbacks stand on their own as a tale of sibling rivalry writ extremely large across planes and millennia. But their framing device relies on the story of three Magic sets from almost five years ago, and as a result, if you're new to Magic and its lore, it may be hard to follow.

I started playing during the set after all of this, so I didn't see it as it happened. But here's what I've learned from reading flavortext and the wiki.

Tarkir Block

The real problem with Tarkir block is that its story is about time travel. Officially, the story of the first set in the block did not happen. All we have from this timeline is the time traveler himself, Sarkhan Vol.

Khans of Tarkir (the one that didn't happen)

The plane of Tarkir is ruled by five clans with human leaders. They are constantly at war over scarce resources. Long ago, the clans shared the plane with five vicious broods of dragons, who were born from massive storms that circled the plane. But the storms stopped and the dragons died out hundreds of years ago.

The clans are:

• The Abzan Houses
• The Jeskai Way
• The Mardu Horde
• The Sultai Brood
• The Temur Frontier

Sarkhan, a Mardu warrior, is obsessed with dragons, and his Planeswalker spark ignited after an encounter with a dragon spirit. He pledges himself to the service of the first dragon he meets, who turns out to be Nicol Bolas, and helps him attempt to regain his pre-Mending power on the plane of Alara. They fail, and Sarkhan starts to go insane. After several more adventures, it turns out that the constant whispering causing Sarkhan's mental illness is a message from Ugin, who was killed by Bolas in a fight over a thousand years before, ending the dragon storms and unbalancing the plane's magic. Sarkhan finds a way to travel back in time, interrupt the fight, and save the world.

Fate Reforged

It's twelve hundred years earlier. The clans are constantly at war with the dragons. Sarkhan, acting on Ugin's instructions, meets Yasova Dragonclaw, the current leader of the Temur, who's acting on Bolas' instructions and the promise of a future in which her descendants will no longer have to fear the dragons. Bolas mortally wounds Ugin and leaves him for dead, but Sarkhan heals him with an enchanted artifact he found on his adventures. Meanwhile, the leaders of the clans plot to trap and kill the dragonlords, but are betrayed by one of their own and forced to surrender.

Dragons of Tarkir

The plane of Tarkir is ruled by five clans, each led by a dragonlord and its brood, who are born from massive storms that circle the plane. 

• The former Abzan are ruled by Dromoka;
• the Jeskai, by Ojutai;
• the Mardu, by Kolaghan;
• the Sultai, by Silumgar;
• and the Temur, by Atarka.

They are constantly at war over scarce resources, including food and tribute for the dragonlords. Humanity (and other species of person) are probably worse off now than in the other timeline as a result of the dragonlords' tyranny, but Sarkhan doesn't care because there are dragons now. And Ugin is alive, though he's been in a coma for hundreds of years at this point. And Bolas doesn't control the future of Tarkir anymore. So that's good, right?

The story of Tarkir block clearly ends with a win for the good guys on the grander scale: Ugin isn't dead, and he gives the current Magic Story protagonists a reason to team up against Bolas, so Bolas will eventually have to stop doing whatever he wants. And it's good on the scale of our human protagonist: Sarkhan's madness has been cured, and he's made friends with Narset, a planeswalker from the Ojutai clan (and one of my favorite characters in all of Magic, but that's another story). But on the scale of Tarkir itself, it's not an especially happy or satisfying ending. There's more to do here, and the framing device for Core 19 looks like it's beginning to set up what comes next.

Magic Core Set 2019

The story of Ugin and Bolas' ancient rivalry is told as a series of visions seen by Temur and Jeskai shamans. The first chapter is narrated by Bashiya, the shaman granddaughter of Yasova Dragonclaw, who is the last khan of the Temur (and a major character in Fate Reforged), showing her the birth of Ugin and Bolas on a plane that's probably Dominaria and telling her to go to the place she knows as Ugin's grave (where he is, as far as we know, not actually dead).

Along the way, Yasova and her granddaughters meet Tae Jin, a young Ojutai mystic (and master of ghostfire, a now-illegal Jeskai magical tradition associated with Ugin) who has risked his life to find her and tell her the rest of the story, which has been passed down from teacher to student for generations. Tae Jin's story describes Ugin and Bolas' first interactions with humans and other dragons, leading Ugin to become patient and philosophical and Bolas short-tempered and obsessed with revenge, and ends with Ugin's planeswalker spark igniting, taking him first to the Meditation Realm (now better known as Bolas' fortress of solitude) and then to Tarkir, where he may or may not have created all life on the plane (but is definitely responsible for the dragons).

Tae Jin's recitation is interrupted by the arrival of Dragonlord Atarka, who promises to let our friends live if he tells a good story. He starts to tell the story of the defeat of the khans, but is interrupted by a psychic message from Bolas and is instead forced to describe the start of the Elder Dragon War on Dominaria from the perspective of Bolas' clumsy, self-praising propaganda. The story is violent enough to please Atarka, and she leaves, letting our heroes hurry onward to Ugin's grave, where Yasova reveals to her granddaughters the crucial role they play in preserving Temur history and traditions. While there, Bashiya has a vision of Ugin's travels around the Multiverse and his failed attempts to talk sense into Bolas.

He's Already Here

Temur history is supposed to be preserved by a community of shamans hidden from Atarka by the magic that lingers around Ugin's grave. When Yasova and her granddaughters arrive, though, they're gone, replaced by Bolas himself disguised as one of the shamans (likely a trick he learned from his sibling Chromium Rhuell). Bolas gets the attention of Naiva, the one of Yasova's granddaughters who isn't a shaman and has always been jealous of her sister Bashiya's abilities, telling her his version of the events described in Ugin's visions and offering her the glory and power she thinks she deserves in return for helping him kill Ugin. (Naiva's crush on Tae-Jin absolutely works to Bolas' advantage, since she sees her sister as a rival.)

Bolas' presence on the plane explains a lot: over the course of this story, he's developed the ability to plant thoughts in others' minds, inspiring doubt, fear, and hate in both humans and dragons and using the chaos as an opportunity to take control. Remember how vicious the dragonlords have been to the people of Tarkir, and how everyone appears to be worse off in this timeline? That's not just because Tarkir's dragons are inherently cruel; in fact, they should be the opposite, since they were created by Ugin the pacifist philosopher. Rather, it's at least partly because Bolas psychically egged them on, with help from a spell Yasova cast while she was working for him.

Continuity

Yasova rescues Naiva from Bolas' influence. Bashiya has one last vision of Bolas chasing Ugin all over the multiverse and Ugin hatching a complicated plan to trap Bolas and keep the multiverse safe from him. Of course, the plan failed because Bolas and Yasova turned Tarkir's dragons against Ugin, allowing Bolas to kill him (or so he thought). Yasova tricks Bolas into leaving Tarkir alone by convincing him that she is still loyal to him and warning him away from Ugin's nonexistent trap, and she and her granddaughters return to their tribe to find an artisan already making a carving of their story.

That carving is probably the most important part of all of this. This whole adventure has been about preserving history, traditions, and identity in the face of powerful people who want to destroy or restructure them. On the larger scale, Bolas and Ugin fight for control of history through propaganda, even going so far as to use time travel to rewrite history. On the smaller scale, the Temur keep carvings of their legends and traditions hidden near Ugin's grave, where Atarka can't find him or destroy him. Bashiya will eventually return to Ugin's grave along with this new carving to see if Ugin has any more messages for her. And Naiva and Tae-Jin will have descendants who will continue to preserve Temur secrets.

Conclusion

So what do I want from all this? Here's where I think (or at least hope) future Tarkir stories will take us. A rebellion against the dragons, led by Atarka's servants with help from Narset (another local Planeswalker) and whatever ghostfire masters remain. More help, maybe, from Chandra Nalaar, who has some experience with successful rebellions; and from Sarkhan, who understands dragons better than other kinds of people, but can be persuaded that what the dragonlords are doing is wrong, and maybe even to mediate. Some kind of future for Tarkir where neither dragons nor humanity et al are trying to wipe each other out.

As long as the Temur remember, there's hope.