This is a telling worth the subscribe. Yawgmoth's story, the early setting of dominaria and the brother's war, are fantastic bits of the MtG lore. Great job!
Old Magic Lore is such a work of genius. It deals with technology, industrialisation, war, environmental devastation (Antiquities, Urza's Saga/Destiny), the societal collapse succeeding as the climate begins cooling (The Dark, Fallen Empires) and then, finally, the resulting Ice Age. Phyrexia originally started out as a hell where artifacts and machines go after they are destroyed, which is an interesting idea in its own right, before it then evolved into this horror of technology. In this sense it is a fantasy version of dangerous, synthetic legacies such as nuclear technology (a dreadful legacy that will last for millenia, even if buried) and biotechnology creating a sentient and infectious weapon, something we have yet to witness come to be in our world. Modern Phyrexia, by contrast, is competently designed and does everything right on paper but somehow misses the impact of its admittedly sometimes goofy 90s version. It lacks the philosophical interest.
wow, I really appreciate your fascination with this stuff haha I personally love old lore because there often aren't clear heroes and villains (Ashnod is very interesting to me because of this) can I ask for a source for Phyrexia being a hell for lost machines? I think that's extremely cool and I'm surprised I haven't run across it with research for this video also completely agree, whilst modern Phyrexia is still designed to be disturbing, I feel there is just something raw about a lot of the old Phyrexian art - wanna talk about that in a video eventually
Agreed. They don't tell stories like this anymore. Villains are villains are for a reason. You read a story like this and you can easily identify themes and concepts. Mtg old lore is some of the best story ever told. Long live Magic
@@annietemple11 Hi again! :) The old Duelist Magazine is a great source for all things Old Magic. WotC uploaded them onto the internet archive. When reading the early Duelist there are plenty articles about lore and columns dedicated to answering player questions. Somewhere in there I read a line about Phyrexia being hell where machines go after breaking. Reading them in order you get an idea of how and when the Magic lore evolved. The first set (Alpha) featured cards like Shivan Dragon and Serra Angel. Those epithets were meant to provide flavour but had no actual lore behind them. (Shivan being derived from 'Shiva' and Serra being derived from 'serrated', which developed into the place Shiv and the character of Serra in the follwoing sets.) Anyhow, Alpha similarly introdcued the names Urza and Mishra. In Antiquities they were expanded upon as artificer brothers that faught a terrible war and to my knowledge this is also where Phyrexia and Yawgmoth were first mentioned in card names but no flavour text or explanation is offered, similar to Serra Angel and Shivan Dragon before them. The story as told by the cards remains very vague with only few details added over the following sets, so the nature of Phyrexia and the identity of Yawgmoth remained speculative for a long time. The first time the story was fully fleshed out was during Urza's Saga Block in the Artifact Cycle Books, one of which is The Thran. When writing the series, the authors went back to the Antiquities set and sought to include the depicted artifacts in the story. That is how we got Tocasia, Ashnod, Feldon... The Thran are mentioned only on a single card: Su-Chi. From the looks of it, the idea of Phyrexia came about because the designers of the Antiquities set needed to solve a problem: The color black has little relation to artifacts in flavour and mechanics. The four cards in question (Gate to Phyrexia, Phyrexian Gremlins, Yawgmoth Demon and Priest of Yawgmoth) are attempts at making generic black flavour and mechanics work with artifacts. You have a demon and a priest in service of some greater evil called Yawgmoth, a gate to some dark place and a few gremlins/devils from that place. I agree that Ashnod is a very interesting character. So is Urza and his autism-resembling traits. There is also Kayla, Urza's wife and Magic's take on the princess trope: An heiress in a patriarchal society, married to Urza not by her volition but on her father's behest. Urza cares little for her, he only seeks to marry her for the access to resources and an ancient tome that kingship provides. Kayla is deeply lonely and struggles for love but grows into her own as the world around her begins to burn and then, finally, becomes a leader in the wake of the devastation as the ice age sets in and hope fades. The are many unconventional characters in the old lore. I love that the story of Urza and Mishra at its core is about sibling relationships, it took Disney many more years to make Frozen. Old Magic is quite mature and rather 'woke'. The story of Homelands is worth checking out, too: It fleshes out the character of Serra and deals with loss, grief, healing, but also power, abuse and toxic family ties. One of the greatest stories relating to the Brother's War is the short story Loran's Smile. Please check it out, it can easily be found online. I could go on writing pages upon pages. The lore and its history used to be my all-consuming special interest for the longest time. Let me know you want to know anything else. :)
@@annietemple11 I wrote a long reply but it doesn't show up. Anyhow, the Magic story evolved and was fleshed out subsequently. You can trace the evolution through the Duelist magazine which WotC has uploaded to the Internet Archive. Also on the archive you will find the 4-part comic Antiquities War, detailing an early version of the story. Basically the story evolved from tiny details and names in the early sets being fleshed out through several iterations.
I really hope this video gets more attention. Yawgmoth is easily one of my favorite fictional villains. Especially as eugenics is having a bit of a moment again as folks forget the horrors associated with it, yawgmoth provides a highly exaggerated fictional example of how medical sciences can be misused to pathologize humanity by folks who see themselves as the inherently superior. Yawgmoth isn't terrifying for all the specific horrors he committed which would only be possible in fiction, he's terrifying because there are real men who would do just the same if they could
This is a telling worth the subscribe. Yawgmoth's story, the early setting of dominaria and the brother's war, are fantastic bits of the MtG lore. Great job!
thank you lots! ^^
Brother's war is awesome, it's what got me into the lore originally
Old Magic Lore is such a work of genius. It deals with technology, industrialisation, war, environmental devastation (Antiquities, Urza's Saga/Destiny), the societal collapse succeeding as the climate begins cooling (The Dark, Fallen Empires) and then, finally, the resulting Ice Age. Phyrexia originally started out as a hell where artifacts and machines go after they are destroyed, which is an interesting idea in its own right, before it then evolved into this horror of technology. In this sense it is a fantasy version of dangerous, synthetic legacies such as nuclear technology (a dreadful legacy that will last for millenia, even if buried) and biotechnology creating a sentient and infectious weapon, something we have yet to witness come to be in our world. Modern Phyrexia, by contrast, is competently designed and does everything right on paper but somehow misses the impact of its admittedly sometimes goofy 90s version. It lacks the philosophical interest.
wow, I really appreciate your fascination with this stuff haha
I personally love old lore because there often aren't clear heroes and villains (Ashnod is very interesting to me because of this)
can I ask for a source for Phyrexia being a hell for lost machines? I think that's extremely cool and I'm surprised I haven't run across it with research for this video
also completely agree, whilst modern Phyrexia is still designed to be disturbing, I feel there is just something raw about a lot of the old Phyrexian art - wanna talk about that in a video eventually
Agreed. They don't tell stories like this anymore. Villains are villains are for a reason. You read a story like this and you can easily identify themes and concepts. Mtg old lore is some of the best story ever told. Long live Magic
@@annietemple11 Hi again! :) The old Duelist Magazine is a great source for all things Old Magic. WotC uploaded them onto the internet archive. When reading the early Duelist there are plenty articles about lore and columns dedicated to answering player questions. Somewhere in there I read a line about Phyrexia being hell where machines go after breaking. Reading them in order you get an idea of how and when the Magic lore evolved. The first set (Alpha) featured cards like Shivan Dragon and Serra Angel. Those epithets were meant to provide flavour but had no actual lore behind them. (Shivan being derived from 'Shiva' and Serra being derived from 'serrated', which developed into the place Shiv and the character of Serra in the follwoing sets.)
Anyhow, Alpha similarly introdcued the names Urza and Mishra. In Antiquities they were expanded upon as artificer brothers that faught a terrible war and to my knowledge this is also where Phyrexia and Yawgmoth were first mentioned in card names but no flavour text or explanation is offered, similar to Serra Angel and Shivan Dragon before them. The story as told by the cards remains very vague with only few details added over the following sets, so the nature of Phyrexia and the identity of Yawgmoth remained speculative for a long time. The first time the story was fully fleshed out was during Urza's Saga Block in the Artifact Cycle Books, one of which is The Thran. When writing the series, the authors went back to the Antiquities set and sought to include the depicted artifacts in the story. That is how we got Tocasia, Ashnod, Feldon... The Thran are mentioned only on a single card: Su-Chi. From the looks of it, the idea of Phyrexia came about because the designers of the Antiquities set needed to solve a problem: The color black has little relation to artifacts in flavour and mechanics. The four cards in question (Gate to Phyrexia, Phyrexian Gremlins, Yawgmoth Demon and Priest of Yawgmoth) are attempts at making generic black flavour and mechanics work with artifacts. You have a demon and a priest in service of some greater evil called Yawgmoth, a gate to some dark place and a few gremlins/devils from that place.
I agree that Ashnod is a very interesting character. So is Urza and his autism-resembling traits. There is also Kayla, Urza's wife and Magic's take on the princess trope: An heiress in a patriarchal society, married to Urza not by her volition but on her father's behest. Urza cares little for her, he only seeks to marry her for the access to resources and an ancient tome that kingship provides. Kayla is deeply lonely and struggles for love but grows into her own as the world around her begins to burn and then, finally, becomes a leader in the wake of the devastation as the ice age sets in and hope fades. The are many unconventional characters in the old lore. I love that the story of Urza and Mishra at its core is about sibling relationships, it took Disney many more years to make Frozen. Old Magic is quite mature and rather 'woke'. The story of Homelands is worth checking out, too: It fleshes out the character of Serra and deals with loss, grief, healing, but also power, abuse and toxic family ties. One of the greatest stories relating to the Brother's War is the short story Loran's Smile. Please check it out, it can easily be found online.
I could go on writing pages upon pages. The lore and its history used to be my all-consuming special interest for the longest time. Let me know you want to know anything else. :)
@@annietemple11 I wrote a long reply but it doesn't show up. Anyhow, the Magic story evolved and was fleshed out subsequently. You can trace the evolution through the Duelist magazine which WotC has uploaded to the Internet Archive. Also on the archive you will find the 4-part comic Antiquities War, detailing an early version of the story. Basically the story evolved from tiny details and names in the early sets being fleshed out through several iterations.
This video so well shows the true horror of yawgmoth of people of humanity.
I really hope this video gets more attention. Yawgmoth is easily one of my favorite fictional villains. Especially as eugenics is having a bit of a moment again as folks forget the horrors associated with it, yawgmoth provides a highly exaggerated fictional example of how medical sciences can be misused to pathologize humanity by folks who see themselves as the inherently superior. Yawgmoth isn't terrifying for all the specific horrors he committed which would only be possible in fiction, he's terrifying because there are real men who would do just the same if they could
thank you, I hope so too haha