Whoever you are, reader, I hope you have good reason for reading this. This memoir was written solely out of necessity, but if the time has come for it to be read, I fear it is already too late. I have here transcribed as best I can secrets that no man should have ever learned, secrets that have claimed countless lives; I write them in the hope that they will save yours, but I fear that will not the be the case.
Like you, I lived the majority of my life in ignorant bliss, but that turn ended on the 28th of February 2010, with the news of my uncle’s death. My uncle had been a Magic player of no small repute, and not without his share of enemies, but the police had recorded his death as accidental – he had, allegedly, slipped on a loose card, to his death. I could not help but suspect that the card in question was a vendetta. As my uncle’s next of kin, his collection had been delivered to me, and along with it a diary whose unsettling contents I will now relate.
My uncle’s last draft before an abrupt retirement had been during Time Spiral block. He had been joined at the table by a stranger with dark hair and wild eyes, and carrying a walking stick described fancifully as ‘braided with the teeth of dragons’. Although others in the store had dismissed him as an eccentric aficionado, his presence had an inexplicable effect on my uncle. That night, he took every copy of Ghostfire passed his way – apparently choosing it first pick over a Tarmogoyf – and stored them cryptically in his deckbox. When paired against the mysterious newcomer, my uncle sided in every copy of the card, but the stranger merely laughed and put five 4/4 red Dragon creature tokens with flying onto the battlefield. No-one was quite sure what had happened, but the significance was clear.
My uncle became a recluse after that confrontation, and even his diary is largely devoid of entries during this period. The next event of note was the announcement of Zendikar on the 25th of March 2009, which apparently prompted my uncle to flee the country altogether – a scribbled note under this date read ‘it will begin in Washington’. My uncle took up residence in Rome – it was, perhaps, the furthest place he could think of – and he lived in relative peace for months before November’s world championships brought Zendikar rudely to him. The majority of holidaymakers were either drunk or otherwise caught in a Lethargy Trap, but my uncle eventually found a coherent drafter and received the information he had been dreading: the next set would be Rise of the Eldrazi.
My uncle’s hurried return to America was well-received by his old team, but rather than indulge their ill-fated tinkers with Lotus Cobra, my uncle had each player report to him on any untoward visions or dreams that might trouble them. This line of investigation must have seemed desperate even to my uncle, but it eventually bore fruit: one meek rookie by the name of Bobert had, after a particularly intensive block constructed session, experienced some night-terror he could barely articulate. The only coherent references were to Ugin’s eye and the dragon’s servant, corroboration to my uncle’s greatest fears.
My uncle died apparently in the middle of his investigations, but the fact that Wizards of the Coast publicly unveiled the first Eldrazi the very next day seems beyond coincidence. I had the task of continuing my uncle’s work quite unexpectedly thrust on me when, in my his absence, I was delivered Bobert’s last testament: a journal of his experience at the pre-release.
Bobert had arrived at his pre-release under a cover of dark clouds. The forecasters attributed it to a freak gust blowing the Icelandic ash over the Atlantic, but Bobert had had reason to suspect otherwise. My uncle had apparently warned him against attending the pre-release, but he had felt it a matter of duty to gather whatever information he could about the events beginning to unfold. It was immediately clear that his darkest fears had been confirmed: instead of the expected vista of exuberant gamers, there was a palpable fear present throughout the hall, seeming to emanate from a singular figure seated calmly behind a peculiar oaken table. Bobert’s account of him was identical to my uncle’s own from years ago: he was shaggy and fearsome, and he carried that draconic cane that suggested a power not of this world.
Surrounding the stranger’s table was a smattering of catatonic players, who clutched maternally to them their carefully constructed sealed decks as one might hold a recently deceased relative: desperately and with ineffable grief. The man paid them no heed, for he had his final opponent seated before him, an unfortunate local player whose name I was unable to track down. Bobert recorded their match from a safe distance with a morbid fascination, and although at the time I could not accept his account, I present it now as some indication of the Eldrazi’s subtlety. The stranger apparently won the die roll and lead with a basic forest and a Joraga Treespeaker(5C). His opponent, possibly reassured by the normalcy of this, played his own forest and passed the turn. It became immediately apparent that something far from normal was transpiring, however, because the stranger proceeded to play an island and a Training Grounds, level up his Elf, and tap it to cast Nest Invader(3C). Bobert took particular interest in the tokens the man produced to mark his level counters; their geometry, he claimed, was all wrong. Where one would expect a convex, they were instead greeted by a concavity, and at times they beads appeared to resemble eyes, though not the eyes of a human.
The stranger’s opponent, whose bravery or stubbornness must have been deserving of some note to continue unfazed, played a plains and a Wall of Omens with his turn, little realising the inadequacy of his defence. The man used his to turn to play an island, an Echo Mage, and a Growth Spasm fetching a further island, requiring the sacrifice of his lone spawn (1C)– the symbolism in this sequence seems unlikely to have occurred without artistic embellishment, but I can only conclude it is factual. Bobert’s account at this point degrades somewhat into incoherency, and loses track of the opponent’s futile actions, but he can hardly be blamed for this: the transcription suggests an air of sheer insanity descending as the match continued, until ultimately the bizarre game being played out before him was the only remnant of his own familiar world.
What is known is that the next turn brought a fourth island followed by four counters for the Echo Mage, catapulting it to a potency quite unlike anything that should rightly be seen at a pre-release. The stranger laid down his last card as a Prophetic Prism, then used it to cast the Mortician Beetle he had drawn (0C). Even despite the abject horror the man projected into Bobert, it must have been difficult to fathom what nefarious machinations he could execute with the pieces he had assembled. The answer came next turn when the man cast See Beyond and copied it twice – all the while muttering, Bobert noted, obscene and unfamiliar phrases relating to the same visions of sheer fire that had plagued Bobert’s dreams only weeks before. Once he had finished constructing his new hand the stranger cast Brood Birthing to multiply his blasphemous spawn’s presence. (2C)
It was after this point that Bobert’s account truly left the realms of human plausibility and entered that darker sphere that now has inexorably overlaid our own. On his next turn the stranger drew all the power he could from his lands, his elf, and even the fragile lives of his spawn, and triggered a Reality Spasm that Bobert insisted could be felt physically shuddering through the hall. The Echo Mage of course copied it, and an infinity of dread vibrations threaded from the building, producing tremors that propagated psychically across the globe, producing intense nightmares in sensitive individuals like Bobert. When eventually the shaking subsided and Bobert was able to take stock of his surroundings, a sight far beyond sight presented itself to him; his every sense was filled by the monstrous presence whose cardname read Spawnsire of Ulamog. Although it is the least herald of the least Eldrazi, the force of its existence was so profound as to drive any remaining sanity from its witnesses – Bobert, indeed, died a quite mute lunatic some days after the event.
The stranger reportedly spent some time phasing spawn in and out of existence with the dread creature, their meaningless sacrifices feeding the strength of the Beetle, which had already accrued some strength from the lesser rituals. When it was suitably bloated, and he began to bore of the affairs of mortal creatures, the stranger finally called upon his dark gods – I shall not begin to attempt a description of their coming, for I am sure no mortal tongue yet has come close to accuracy in that respect. Unwilling to have any lesser creature rival his masters’ own powers, the stranger cast a Momentous Fall for his beetle, drawing as a result every card in his library. Bobert reported that the cards spilt from his hand as the great ones began their unstoppable motions – and every one appeared to be Not of This World.
Although your continued existence and my ability to write this journal may indicate to you that some chance intervention prevented the spread of the Eldrazi, I am afraid to say that this is not the case. Although I do not know the fate of the mad servant, isolated accounts from across the world indicate the subtle presence of the three infinite monstrosities he summoned. What cosmic alignments do they wait for? What unknowable plans motivate their gelatinous intelligences? If you are reading this, perhaps the time of their action has come, and if this is the case I can only hope that their disregard for human life is such that the end will come quickly. I do not know if my life will end as my uncle’s did, at the blade of some spy, but I have no intention of surviving to see the black dawn that must surely follow humanity’s long dusk.
“Yes, I was a crib swap baby,” she told us, her perfect Kinsbaile accent belying her origins. “It was tough at first; all the other Kithkin at school always teased me about how weird I looked, which I thought was unfair given that they had squashed faces.
Whether it is to a Merfolk or Goblin family, whether raised by Faeries or Giants, crib swap babies can blossom into responsible and high-achieving adults with, if anything, a wider range of career options open to them than other people. Crib swap babies today can be found employed as Advisors, Allies, Archers, Artificers, Assassins, Assembly-Workers, Barbarians, Berserkers, Brushwaggs, Citizens, Clerics, Cowards, Deserters, Drones, Druids, Elders, Flagbearers, Knights, Mercenaries, Minions, Mongers, Monks, Mystics, Ninjas, Nomads, Pests, Pirates, Rebels, Riggers, Rogues, Samurai, Scouts, Shamans, Soldiers, Spellshapers, Survivors, Warriors, and, of course, Wizards.
But what of the untold devastation Kozilek is reported to have wreaked across this and all other planes? “Well, we all have our red mist moments, don’t we?” Kozilek’s communication seemed to approximate laughter, with a sensation like a childhood memory spoiling.
