Shadowmoor Previews: Grin & Bear It 
The Plane of Grimneath
On the plane of Grimneath, Unblinking Bleb would be an eye. Elsewhere in the Magic universe, he isn’t, despite all apparent evidence to the contrary.
This isn’t surprising, really. In Magic’s history, there has been a long tradition of almost-but-not-quite-actually-eyes. There have been artifact eyes, creature eyes, land eyes, and enchantment eyes. There have been spells that you’d fairly expect to shower you in an explosion of eyes. But there have been few actual eyes.
In fact, there are exactly two creatures with the creature type Eye in all of Magic: the infamous Evil Eye of Orms-By-Gore and his modern cousin from Urborg. Despite their modest numbers, these ocular bogeymen represent an archetype, one with an uncanny ability to evoke an emotional response. They’re mysterious and menacing and memorable, because ultimately, well, eyes are creepy. Specifically, disembodied eyes are creepy. Gigantic, man-sized eyes are especially creepy, and gigantic, malevolent disembodied eyes are perhaps creepiest of all.
For this reason, I’ve always found them strangely compelling. So when I set about designing my world for the Great Designer Search 2, I was drawn to the sordid realm of Orms-By-Gore for inspiration. What might a Magic world populated by eyes look like? Well, it would be dark. Oppressive. Based on the meager available precedent, it would seem that eyes don’t play nicely with other creatures. I pictured them as captors, subjugating other races. Perhaps they’d oversee a mining operation. An underground plane seemed like a natural setting.
And thus Grimneath was born. Though I unfortunately didn’t make the latter rounds of the GDS2, I did continue working on the set for my own edification. From the beginning, it felt like a set that I’d be excited to play with, and I’m pretty happy with the results. The entire 200+ card set is linked below—follow the link below for a brief visit to the world of Grimneath. And remember that if you see a bleb there, it probably really is an eye.
