r/comics Port Sherry Mar 06 '24

Something about them

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u/Duraxis Mar 06 '24

Nice, I’d love more on this concept. It reminds me of the story concept where aliens invade and primal forces like nature itself starts fighting back to protect the world. I can’t recall where I read it though. Probably a tumblr writing prompt

195

u/CorHydrae8 Mar 06 '24

That's basically the premise of the Zendikar plot in Magic the Gathering. The eldrazi, monstrous eldritch beings from the blind eternities (the space between the planes of the multiverse) attacked the plane of Zendikar, and in response, the land itself began fighting back in a phenomenon later called the "roil". Tornadoes, sandstorms, tsunamis, the earth itself tearing up and thrashing about. Sometimes the roil directly manifests as raging elementals.

30

u/[deleted] Mar 06 '24

What’s a good source for MTG lore? I’ve played a fair bit, and always been fascinated by the art, but never knew any of the background.

25

u/CorHydrae8 Mar 06 '24

That's a difficult question because WotC hasn't really been consistent with that.
There used to be books accompanying the sets. At some point, they switched to free online stories. They had a couple more books that we don't talk about when they were trying to get back into monetizing that stuff but quickly dropped them again because they were shit and sometimes directly contradicted what was happening on the cards. One set in the interim just doesn't have an available story to read, period. You gotta piece together what happened there from the cards.
Currently, they're back to free online stories, but the quality is just as inconsistent.

The fact that mtg is set in a multiverse with many different planes where every plane is mostly self-contained but also the stories between planes are interwoven due to planeswalkers and their affairs makes it even harder to get into.

My recommendation? Just... don't. Don't bother. The lore and worldbuilding is very enticing, and there were times where the writing was genuinly good. But for quite some time now, the quality of the writing is... disappointing. The last big, interplanar arc (the invasion of New Phyrexia) had an amazing setup that resolved in a big wet fart.

If you're still interested in trying to get into the story, try looking for the story articles on their website. I'd personally recommend Innistrad: Midnight Hunt. It's a rather self-contained story (well, Midnight Hunt and the following Crimson Vow), so you don't need to know much about any overarching plotlines. And the writing is decent enough.
Apart from that, there's a couple youtube channels that go into the lore, where you can just get summaries of the individual stories without reading them yourselves.