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The tendrils of Phyrexia stretch through the multiverse. And now, they have reached this quaint little planet, locked in its quaint little bubble. A poison already runs through its veins, but will yours prove deadlier?

Rest assured- perfection will reach them, as it will reach everything else.

All shall be one.
Through the Planar Bridge New

thenew

#1 Masters of the Bazaar Fan
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My Lodgings
It burns.

Oh, how it burns.

Agony, agony, agony, agony.

It is unlike anything you have ever felt before. Your mind grapples for something, anything to which to begin to compare, anything that can even begin to let you understand the sensation.

Every inch of your body sizzles and sparks as it is set alight. The Blind Eternities' fury courses through your flesh, scouring every corner of you for even the slightest trace of organic matter. A purge, a flame, it carves you, erases you, ravages you.

You cannot scream, for there is no air to carry your words.

The pain continues. Your power offers you no protection against the all-consuming agony. And so you cling to yourself, to your identity, to your dream, to your vision.

To your vision of Phyrexia.

It takes root in your mind, shielding you from the pain- or at least, making it more bearable. You push yourself forward as it grows even stronger, the universe's wrath maddening in its intensity.

You curse Elesh Norn's name, here where nobody will proclaim you a heretic.

You struggle against the void. The last remnants of the world you left fade, even the air burned away by the pressure, and nothing takes their place. The absence of everything is creeping and spreads like a creeping fog into the edges of your perception. It is incomprehensible, this emptiness, this eternity. There is no stimuli, no sight, sound, taste, smell, or feel. There is only the void that stretches on forever and more, until the end of space and time.

You think of–

[ ] Progress.

You are Jin-Gitaxias. Core Augur, master of artifice, lord of blue mana, eternal seeker of knowledge and the foremost mind in all of Phyrexia, your brilliance leads the Progress Engine. You understand what the other Praetors don't, what they refuse to understand- that perfection is a process. To move toward it is the most noble of Phyrexia's goals- a glorious, asymptotic march towards eternal improvement.

This void is everything you have ever loathed. It is the end of growth, of progress, of life. It is the cessation of all, the sudden halt of thought itself.

These thoughts comfort you, even amidst the pain. That, and the understanding that such a feeling is but a temporary obstacle. And that the state of hyperawareness induced by pain has been a highly fruitful source of intelligence for your surgeons- it would be unbecoming of a higher mind such as yours to begrudge it. Yes. Yes, you will use this time to think. Move closer towards perfection.

[ ] Strength.

You are Vorinclex. You are the Voice of Hunger. You see through the lie of civilization and so-called intelligence. Your Vicious Swarm is driven by instinct, by the raw hunger of predation- your Grand Evolution. One day, the rest of Phyrexia will be so as well, whether they like it or not. One day they will no longer shroud themselves in artifice and lies. But until then, you toil.

You struggle. This void is an enemy to be endured, as is all else. Your flesh crumbles into ash before its fury, but you will not bow down. You will not give up even as it strips you down to your skeleton.

This pain enrages you, and this wrath gives you power. You are not as weak as to bow down before this pain. You will resist and grow stronger. That is the way of Evolution- that is progress. Fight and survive, endure and adapt. That is progress, that is growth. That, and only that, is perfection.

[ ] Ambition.

You are Sheoldred. Amongst the Seven Steel Thanes, you are the greatest. You know that perfection is in power, power through any means necessary as the Father of Machines proclaimed. Those higher, those mightier, will rise, will rule. The believers will serve. Unbelievers will be made to serve. And all will bow to Phyrexia.

You focus your hatred. You will not be cowed, and you will survive, no matter the cost. You will continue, persevere, for you are great- you are worthy. The glorious legacy of Yawgmoth has stretched on for thousands upon thousands of years and you will not be where it ends.

You cling on as your flesh burns, because you know it will only make you far greater. Pain, death, misery and agony- they're tools, all of them, if one knows how to wield them. And oh, you do. You do know death. You do know pain. So did Gix know it, and so did Yawgmoth know it, and so do you know it. Pain is a tool to subjugate. To bring the cosmos under Phyrexia's thumb, and prove your place as the ultimate and true power, the only thing in the universe that could be called perfection.

The thoughts recede as you finish burning- it is over.

It takes you one moment to even realize that the pain is no more, and another to understand that you are not simply dead.

The power of the Planar Bridge dies down, faint blue sparks still floating around your form, and you hear Tezzeret's hurried breaths as he closes the gate, leaving you behind. Barely even confirmed you were alive.

"Wretch." you spit out- and then crumple to the ground in a smoking heap.

The scouring you received was so complete you cannot even comprehend it fully. The parts of your body that would allow you to perceive the full extent of the damage have been burned off. You will have to lay down on the ground for a while, and try to order your thoughts.

You think of… yourself. You need to put yourself back together- you cannot even move in this state. Your flesh is beginning to regrow, but only beginning.

Not even a cell of organic matter remained, and so your metallic parts have to consume the oil that flows through your veins, cannibalizing your own divine ichor to fuel their replication and differentiation. Metal sizzles and shifts, forms microscopic growths of flesh on its surface.

You try to open your hand, but it doesn't move. All the tendons have been destroyed. All the nerves have been destroyed as well- it might as well be an immobile prosthetic, no more useful than a hook some uncompleat Mirran might use to replace a limb.

Ugh.

Your metallic body clicks and whirrs as you struggle to get up. You can't get up, in fact. Your body is barely reconstituted, weak, fragile. You will need to replace the biomass you lost, and then find somewhere to hibernate for a while.

You need to see. You redirect the flow of oil, redirect the growth and break down a few spots that you won't make immediate use of. Then, you slowly, painstakingly reform your eyes- wholly metallic for now, it seems.

Then, you open your eyes. Your vision is spotty, your senses are damaged, and your movements could very generously be called sluggish.

What do you see-

[ ] Fields of plants.

You believe that it is called "wheat." Even if it looks unimpressive, it's still biomass, readily available. You will need protein, though- this won't be enough. In the distance, you can see pulsing lights? Some large object, a blinking glow. Your ready ears catch a sound.

(Kazimierz, by the time of Maria Nearl's Major.)

[ ] A bloodsoaked battlefield.

Corpses everywhere you can see. A forest in the distance, and still burning reeds. The craters of bombardments. An army passed by here, and recently. You will help yourself to their scraps.

(Tara, by the time Rhodes Island would become involved in the conflict.)

[ ] A cityscape?

Vast, for sure. Technologically advanced. The lack of available biomass complicates matters- but for now, you are in the dark. Nobody observes you. You will slink to a corner, and feed.

(Trimounts, shortly before the Diabolic Incident.)

[ ] Snow. Snow everywhere.

Did Tezzeret simply leave you for dead? You will have to find a way to survive regardless.

(Ursus, when the Reunion began.)

You blink.

This isn't where you're supposed to be.

It's- it's not even close. You've veered miles off-course. Your destination is nowhere near this place. You had a mission. This is not the place you were supposed to be to accomplish it. Your mind whirls as you recall the maps and charts- this is far away, absurdly far away from the place you were supposed to be.

Tezzeret, you piece of-



Welcome to Dreams of Crystal and Oil! This is my third quest after It's Turbin Time and Traces of Veils, and I intend to continue it further then I did Traces of Veils (which is confirmed to be in hiatus now. It's just... difficult to write Veils, man. It's a complicated beast, and I feel like I wrote myself into a corner in that quest. I might continue it eventually, but, well, not now.)

What actually really motivated me to do this quest was. Uh. March of the Machine's story. It was just so bafflingly terrible, and right after the extremely cohesive set All Will Be One, that I have been stewing on resentment about it for a while now. So yeah. Have this story, my love letter to Phyrexian Praetors before WotC's wretched hands crushed them like flies.
 
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Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur New


Jin-Gitaxias

Core Augur

Toughness: 1/7 (Your Toughness represents how much damage it can take. If an entity's Toughness reaches 0, it is normally considered dead.)
Power: 2/5 (Your power represents how much damage you deal during combat rolls.)

Traits

Tyranny of Progress: This character's defining motivation is scientific progress and growth. Whenever they would roll a die for any research-related task, they instead roll twice as many and ignore the lowest rolls. They are completely amoral and uncaring in their search of progress; it will come before anything and everything else.

Phyrexian Consitution: This character does not become dead once Toughness reaches 0. It instead enters a state of hibernation where they slowly heal back to Toughness 1. This can be accelerated by consuming flesh and/or metal. Being dealt damage during this state will be lethal. In addition to this, they possess Glistening Oil, a corruptive substance containing Phyrexian genetic memory, instead of blood.

Core Augur: This character can use Blue mana. Blue mana is a resource extracted from certain natural landscapes, mostly islands, rivers and other sources of waters. A wide variety of spells can be cast, but spells aligned to divinement or knowledge gain bonuses.

Artificer: This character can operate virtually any machine they get their fingers on, regardless of the need of training.

Conceited: This character believes that they are so far above everyone else, they would need a periscope just to look them in the eyes. Their treatment towards others reflects this.

Argumental: This character is very likely to have verbal arguments with everyone around them, including allies.

Pinpoint Operator: This character almost never misses a shot. This may apply to any skills they have been trained in. For instance, a surgeon with this skill would be extremely unlikely to miss a small, precise incision that a normal surgeon might slip up on.

Personality

The archetypical blue-aligned tyrant, Jin-Gitaxias primary goal is searching for knowledge. He obtains all knowledge he can and endlessly seeks to improve on it. He is brutal and holds a fierce belief that he is the smartest person in the universe. He aggressively disdains anyone who is not close to his level (that being most people). Regardless of which language he speaks, Jin-Gitaxias usually speaks with a grinding voice and uses long and complicated words. He believes that all beings should be able to understand his complex vernacular no matter how complicated it is, and those that don't are not worth speaking to in the first place.​
 
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[X] Progress.
[X] A bloodsoaked battlefield.

I do wonder what Phyrexia would think of the assimilated universe given in a way, its goal they would reach for
 
[X] Progress.
[X] A cityscape?

Making these choices on vibes alone.

Please could anyone shine some light on what these Magic the Gathering terms mean?
 
Shame what happened to ToV, but I guess that's what happens when you try to write from stuff that ain't easily accessible.

Anyway,
[X] Progress.
[X] Snow. Snow everywhere.


Figured we'd be better off starting in as early as possible within the chronology.
 
[X] Ambition.
[X] A cityscape?


We should definitely let Columbia gain access to Phryexian Oil, they will most certainly use it responsibly and not commit any horrific experiments with it.
 
[X] Snow. Snow everywhere.

Reunion is a fascinating organization, and I very much want to see where it would have went if it weren't for Kaschey's meddling. We get to meet Talulah before she lost herself, and Patriot and Frostnova too! Messing with Kaschey and crushing the mind parasite is also a bonus.

With the power we'll be handing them, conquering Ursus might not be a impossibility. Establishing a nation for the infected, or even forcing the Ursus Empire to recognize the rights of the infected would be a massive shock to Terra's geopolitical landscape. Reunion got hijacked by Ursus and destroyed in the canon timeline, but even then, places as distant as Victoria and Tara been seen the infected unite under Reunion's banner. What more if Reunion was actually successful?
 
Vote closed New
Scheduled vote count started by thenew on Dec 20, 2024 at 12:26 PM, finished with 14 posts and 11 votes.
 
Gifts Ungiven New
The travel to this plane has scoured you clean of flesh, and only your Phyrexian resilience- and your partially inorganic nature- allows for your survival.

Still you resist. Slowly but surely, you drag yourself towards the scent of meat, towards the field of burned carcasses you can see but not touch.

Cursing the name of Elesh Norn once again, then twice more, you struggle and drag your weakened bulk forward with your claws. Soon your thoughts are nothing but spite and cursing and hatred. She who brought you here, in this undignified state, away from your studies and from your laboratory- into this mud-soaked hole.

Pushing yourself closer to your target, you curse her once more, before all thought of it banished from your mind- you have reached it. Flesh! Materials. Sustenance. Here it is. Your survival.

The corpse before you is that of a human. No metal parts anywhere to be observed, as expected- that is a trait unique to Mirrans. You already knew this, obviously. The head has been burned clean off. You slam your hand through the torso, feeling the softness of rotten guts- definitely here for more than a week. No matter.

The body has some unusual marks, now that you take a look at it. The organs are in general more optimized, with the exception of the liver- which seems worse off. Such an interesting body, though there are still many imperfections- some characteristic of evolutionary pressure, others very clearly failures of engineering.

Interesting. Something to study later.

You resist the urge to cackle- it would strain your jaw to the point of breaking. You settle for chittering.

Your claws continue to dig into the cold flesh- whatever flame passed over it has been gone for weeks, certainly, even if the reeds around you are somehow still burning. You take what you need- your metal fingers ripping organs apart and dragging them out of the chest cavity, cracking bone and tearing blood vessels as they pull the human's insides out.

You look at the long string of meat in your hands- a mass of organic material. No parasites, and decay has not fully settled- you suppose the outer layer being charred would help. But if there were it would not particularly matter.

You place the chunks of flesh above your head, and begin pumping the oil out. The second that the black liquid begins to flow, the material fuses to your flesh- the outer layer already beginning to integrate into yours, flesh turning to metal and metal turning to flesh¹.

Soon, you run out- the amount of usable material left on this corpse is not enough. Not nearly enough. You drag yourself to the next one, claws gleaming. This one has an additional pair of ears! How interesting.

Hm. You will need more oil. After all, before anything can be done, you must replenish yourself. Thus, divide and grow.

Yes, divide and grow. That is, has always been, and shall always be the first rule of any organism, especially one that had been created as a weapon. Unlike Norn and Sheoldred, you are not ignorant to the original purpose of glistening oil. It was Yawgmoth's weapon of conquest first and foremost, and even if you have turned it towards a greater goal it has not ceased to follow its instincts.

Divide and grow. Divide and grow. That was the first rule. There will be more than enough time for contamination, mutation or control later. For now, simply divide and grow.

(Your Toughness is at 1. If it reaches 0, you will enter an inert state. If you are damaged in this state, you will die.)



You scavenge corpse after corpse for raw biomass- leaving a trail of desiccated cadavers behind.

But it is not enough. The corpses are not enough. You have restored yourself to a state where you can walk, where you can lurch into an upright posture, but to repair your body properly you will need materials. Supplies. A laboratory, a proper laboratory, assistants and test subjects. You could not possibly repair yourself with junk, even if you wanted to.

No. You will do it the right way.

You should cease to worry. For now, you must focus on thinking. What is this place? The data on this plane that Tezzeret supplied left it clear it was a world fraught with conflict, where scores and scores of factions bickered and struggled for control- as Elesh Norn said, as if Urabrask did not exist, "not all worlds could be as harmonious as Phyrexia." It was such a Norn phrase it remained etched in your brain since then.².

As such, "there are hundreds of corpses everywhere" tells you nothing at all about the precise location of your landing.

Ugh.

Hm.

How had this happened, in fact? Tezzeret's Planar Bridge³ was quite reliable, even if the uncompleat wretch that allowed its usage was anything but. It had ferried the vast armies of Nicol Bolas across planes without a single misplacing of even the most lowly soldier.

Was there something wrong with this plane, specifically, that had resulted in the transportation going wrong? It clearly did not affect planeswalking, as Tezzeret had been here several times over.

You wrack your head for a while, sketching equations in the ground. No way to actually test this comes to mind, much to your chagrin. There were some very strange planes in the cosmos, according to Tezzeret, and some entities could reroute or manipulate planeswalking and other such methods of travel. But never reliably or easily, otherwise planeswalkers wouldn't be as influential and powerful as they currently were.

Hmmmm.

You are still in a poor state. Not remotely combat capable. But you can channel mana, at least.

You look around you, at the corpse- soaked battlefield. Black mana is abundant in this region, as is white- a little blue. Surprising. The land has not been tamed as Mirrodin has, and there are no bodies of water anywhere to be seen. Thus, no natural confluence of blue mana. Is it an underground lake or such? No, too weak to be such. Likely just a small source of water deep underneath.

But you will make do. You siphon your preferred source of power from the land, gathering it in the form of a sphere. A swirling orb of ethereal liquid forms in your clawed hand, before dissipating. Too little mana to make much of. You will be forced to process other kinds.

You open your body to the force of black mana- and it slams into your brain with all the subtlety of or Vorinclex's hordes. It bubbles and swirls around your appendages, hissing and seething and promising everything in the world. You have no idea how Sheoldred tolerates living like this.

The wretch must like this, surely. It is fitting for a worm like her to accept an energy that swells her ego and tells her that she is worthy, that she is not the scarcely-pitiable garbage that she is.

You point your arm towards one of the bodies in the ground, and release.

The flow of blackened energy, of waste, scours the body utterly clean. Anyone with functioning limbs would dodge a strike like this, and it only damages something that is already dead in the first place- it is, after all, nothing but raw, unfocused black essence.

What matters is that you released it- and what is left is valuable. A fairly large trickle of colorless mana.

A good first step in repairing yourself, but you cannot rely on it. Continuing to expel such a quantity of corrosive black mana will damage your interior channels even further, and it is staggeringly inefficient. You will need a proper source of power.

You could have used the black mana, but you are not in a condition to tangle with this kind of force. It would likely require you to damage yourself to reap the full benefits, and you are not prepared to pay this price at the moment.

If Tezzeret had brought you to the place he was supposed to bring you to, you would be resting in a safehouse and readying yourself for the customary standardized preparatory rounds of experimentation, while calculating the optimal amount of sleeper agents to release. But something went wrong, clearly, and now it's up to you to go and fix it.

But first, retrace your steps.

You have arrived here, as expected. Your mission is to explore this plane and understand the material known as Originium- while it fascinates you, and its abilities will surely be of help in many, many ways, a specific manifestation of it is especially of interest to Phyrexia, and as such was marked as priority. You were meant to arrive in…

(Choose a Direct Objective. This is, ostensibly, why you are here. Whether or not it actually interests you in a personal level is another question)

[ ] Leithanien.

Your mission is the Güldenesgesatz- the "Golden Movement." A magical "constitution" of the nation of Leithanien, a living scripture-anthem that mentally binds every Leithanian under one nationality. While it was initially praised as the "uncompleat manifesting a shred of the Orthodoxy's magnificence, thus proving that they yearn for Phyrexia's dominion," or something equally juvenile and ideologically consumed, the reveal that it had been modified before led to Norn to decry it as a wretched mockery of her own Argent Etchings before her vapid and thoughtless sycophants.

You truly do not understand it, but again, you doubt anyone understands what goes through her stupid bow-shaped head. There is no deciphering junk data. Anything with a level of intelligence above the level of a mite knows that if a code of conduct proves flawed, you alter it. Perfection is achieved through continuous alteration and refinement. It is truly baffling to you that someone would see otherwise and it reveals a genuine need to scrap her for parts. You are sure you could use the porcelain for something more useful, like a trash bin, and sew a good pair of pants out of the sinew.

Nevertheless, Norn commanded you to go and fetch it immediately after her pronouncement was done, as the hypocrite she is, and you have to go as the loyal servant that you are.

She likely just meant for you to go and fetch a copy of the melody's operational principles. It would not surprise you. You will do above and beyond. You will rewrite it utterly in accordance to your philosophy, and if she calls you a revisionist you will give her the instructions and tell her to do better. What can she do? Hymns? Your melody is the melody of progress. She could not possibly do better.

[ ] Kazdel.

The Revenant tribe of the Sarkaz possesses the unique ability to bind themselves to the living plane through objects. According to Tezzeret, the furnaces of the Sarkaz burn eternally, fueled only by their wrath. He was even capable of fetching you a sample through the Planar Bridge- and your results were what truly fomented Norn's interest on this plane. The metal is not merely possessed, as a common wraith would- it is fused to the soul, the chunk of the possessing spirit you extracted (before it dissolved into nothing) somehow existing as something both dead and alive.

It could be a clue on the matter of compleating planeswalkers- something you have long been searching for despite Norn continuously telling you to turn your mind towards more "achievable" pursuits. That said, some Sarkaz leaders have placed a hefty bounty on Tezzeret's head, and thus you will have to research it yourself.

Hm, now that you think about it, this line of research is something that Urabrask would surely have been interested in, if he still appeared in your reunions. Oh well. It's his loss.

[ ] Sami.

Tezzeret's old employer Nicol Bolas had mentioned, at some point, the possibility of a still-operational method of travel between planes- some sort of artifact that could open gates through the Blind Eternities. Some unspecified danger existed around these artifacts, as such that Bolas was hesitant to approach them before reattaining his so-called godhood.

You are a little bit hesitant yourself- despite your mind being far superior to the Elder Dragon's own, you must admit that you are not as resilient nor as personally powerful as he was. And you do not possess the ability to freely planeswalk away from danger But, well, Norn's insanity knows no bounds, and once she had heard the word "planar portal" her addled mind surely must have jumped to "invasion" and that's well and good but it resulted on the unfortunate occurrence of you not being allowed to return to Phyrexia without at least some kind of sample. Ugh.

Still, Norn wishes, you must actualize. At the very least you have a good place to start, and exploring the opportunities that space has to offer for your experimentation is worth a pointless period of diversion. And there is a native population to exploit for information. Compleating one or two dozen should get you some native guides, and if all else fails they can deal with whatever dangers await around the artifact, not you. Nobody said you had to retrieve the portal personally, after all.



You stumble through the battlefield, looking for something that is not flesh. You already have more than enough. Surely there must have been some caster who let their focus fall-

Ah.

Here it is.

You look at what you came to this plane to search for- or at least, a trace of it.

It is a staff. The utilitarian design pleases you- no wastefulness anywhere, and the ergonomic design shows both competent artifice and the practicality that can only be found in something designed for mass production.

You raise it to eye level. The crystal in the top- does not radiate even one drop of mana- in fact, it seems to suck it greedily out of the air.

You do not touch it. You are no fool. You will take it with you, but first you must find a place to store it safely. You reach out and unlatch the skull of a soldier, and begin the tedious but necessary work of defleshing it. Bit by bit, layer by layer, you have a suitable place to store the gems- which you peel off from their casings and unlatch from mechanisms one by one.

Here. You now have a human skull with odd growths- horns- on the side, filled entirely with Originium crystals.

You pause.

There is something else you need.

With a sigh, you place the skull on the ground and go searching around the bodies for someone that has pants your size.



How could there be none?!

In this entire battlefield, amidst hundreds, thousands of bodies of humans, some of which veritable giants for the unimpressive standards of their race, how could there be no one wearing pants that fit you!?

You groan in frustration as your waist tears through another pair. The way things are going you will have to stitch two pairs together, and it will look absolutely ridiculous. You'll have to settle for a skirt.

Hm?

What is this?

Aha! Here they are.

A human with canine ears- a second pair of them, in fact. Redundant and pointless. The hearing range of a wolf is far superior to that of a human- by devoting resources to keeping both a human pair and a wolf pair nothing is gained. If you were designing this lifeform you would have devoted your time towards additional optics connected to the size of the head by tentacles, occupying the space and using the already present nerve structure while being much more useful.

That or more precise fine manipulators that could also be used as weapons, or more resilient legs, which are clearly needed as the ones currently present have been smashed by a large blunt instrument, likely a mace going by the shape of the fractures.

Likely the fault of its flawed bone structure, most assuredly. If this creature had bones made out of reinforced alloys melded with organic latticework such as your own perfected legs, they would not have been broken so easily.

Two terrified eyes stare up at you. The human shivers in agony and fear.

"Aaah… aah." it groans pathetically and worthlessly.

"Silence." you say, pressing your claw to its throat. "I am examining whether or not you are worth the trouble. If you are not, I will simply terminate you, harvest your spare parts- as you are still alive, they have greater value- and then seize your pants."

You run your hands through the fabric. It is good fabric, if limited. Artificial in make without any melding of organic and inorganic employed in the manufacturing processes, but suitable.

"Your pants are completely stained by blood. I may still wear them, as they are my size, but you should be disappointed in yourself for this."

The human gurgles. Typical.

[ ] Kill it.

The pants clearly have more value than its living body. Harvest the still living parts while you are at it.

(This will give you a pair of pants and a batch of human organs. As you will have to place them in your own body for preservation, you will not be able to implant them in humans later, only Phyrexians- unless you want the human to die of phyresis¹⁰ or plan to compleat them later.)

[ ] Take it.

Compleating it might provide useful intelligence and a servant. You lack the means to do this at the moment, but you could begin your work later and simply carry the body around in the meantime.

(This will get you a still-living, but heavily wounded, human who can be a valuable source of information.)


You have unlocked the character sheet of Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur.



My Praetor is not quaint on explaining things to those he believes his lessers (everyone, in his eyes). Therefore it falls to me to provide an explanation on matters of Phyrexia to those without the appropriate knowledge.

You're welcome. Now let's get started.


- Tekuthal, Inquiry Dominus.

1 - Phyrexians are not entirely metallic, nor are they entirely artificial lifeforms. While born as organic newts, they are soon anointed with myriad artificial vat-grown replacement parts that will grow and change as flesh does throughout their life. This surgical procedure is referred to as compleation, and is the same process that non-Phyrexian organisms go through when they are converted. In this case, the being retains its memory and personality, but loses its soul and is endowed with a fanatical desire to serve Phyrexia. Sometimes this procedure has fatal results; in this case, necromancy is to be employed.

Planeswalkers (that being, people born with the innate capacity to travel between dimensions, a "Spark" attached to their soul) cannot be compleated without the loss of their abilities.

2 - As one might note by Jin's sarcastic tone, Phyrexia is in fact not united at all; the Steel Thanes faction is fraught with internal schism and promotions are obtained by killing and/or betraying your superiors, and they consider this actively desirable. Not only this, but the red-aligned Praetor Urabrask has been in conflict with the other four factions for as long as their civilization has existed. However, one must consider that your average society has vastly more conflicts in it; thus, Jin's statement is correct! How entertaining.

3 - The Planar Bridge is one of the few artifacts allowing for interplanar travel that still exists in the cosmos after the Great Mending, an event where, after the complete irresponsibility of various unrelated planar travelers damaging the universe itself several times over, the godlike power planeswalkers held was revoked and dimensional barriers were hardened. When the Mending occurred, all existing planar portals simply stopped working, and the Planar Bridge is the only thing that has been shown to still maintain this function.

It is currently held by the dubious and unreliable ally of Phyrexia, Tezzeret the Artificer. Tezzeret is a planeswalker and a man very talented in the art of avoiding consequences for his own actions.

While the Bridge he holds can only transport non-organic or dead matter and planeswalkers, the Phyrexian Praetors can also utilize it, as they are partially a form of sentient metal. However, doing so destroys the organic components of their bodies, leaving them in a badly weakened state, and injures Tezzeret each crossing, likely because it is installed in Tezzeret's body and thus currently eating away at him. It is unclear why, exactly, it does that, but the possibility of getting a new body of indestructible Darksteel metal is why Tezzeret is allied with us Phyrexians at all, so I suppose I should not complain.

4 - A word meaning someone who has yet to become a Phyrexian. Often employed in different alternative contexts by different factions, ranging from term of derision, patronizing dismissal, implying someone is a traitor or as a direct insult.

5 - Supposedly on business for the multiversal crime syndicate led by the dragon planeswalker Nicol Bolas that Tezzeret was a part of.

6 - There are five colors of mana, sequenced white, blue, black, red and green; this arrangement is called the "color pie" or "color wheel." The colors of mana are associated with certain natural formations, with specific philosophies and ways of living, and possess their own unique capacities, though there is heavy overlap. Each faction of Phyrexia is associated with a color.
  • White: Peace, law, structure, selflessness, equality, value found in the group, the community, and in civilization as a whole. Associated with Elesh Norn's Machine Orthodoxy. White spells are defensive, associated with reinforcement, healing, creating "rules," punishing the enemy for crossing certain lines, enforcing balance and uniformity, suppressing conflict.
  • Blue: Knowledge, deceit, caution, deliberation, perfection. All of Phyrexia believes in perfection, but my Praetor Jin-Gitaxias raised the Progress Engine as a means to seek it, not because he believed his cause was already perfect. Blue is associated with "counterspells," spells that disrupt, deny or reverse enemy action, mimicry, various forms of seizing control of objects and people, changing reality itself, and most importantly knowledge; augury, pre and postcognition, telepathy, memory and mind reading and alteration. I, Tekuthal, am a creature born of blue mana; you could indeed call me the living incarnation of the Progress Engine's blue-aligned nature- a Dominus, an Avatar of Phyrexia.
  • Black: Power, self-interest, ambition, death, sacrifice, uninhibitedness. The Seven Steel Thanes and their leader Sheoldred are primarily black aligned. It tends to believe that the only measure of right and wrong should be whether or not an approach leads to success: amorality, rather than morality or immorality. Black spells are sacrificial in nature very often, draining life (even the own users') to do the other things colors do, sometimes even better then them. It is associated with necromancy, life-leeching and parasitism (sometimes parasitism and theft of knowledge), poisoning, demon summoning and violent spells made to inflict death directly.
  • Red: Freedom, emotion, action, impulse, destruction. Urabrask, the leader of the Quiet Furnace, is red-aligned. Red values freedom and individual action above all else, wanting to do what it wants, oftentimes whimsically. It also values emotion, and tends to ignore rules, laws, and personal appearances. It is chaotic and favors immediate gratification. Red spells favor direct action; loud and flashy spells that destroy things, create sprays of lava, fire, lightning bolts, spells that directly destroy territories and dissipate other spells or artifacts through violent force, or abilities that ensure martial superiority. Red-aligned entities are aggressive and direct. Randomness is also a commonly seen element.
  • Green: Nature, wildlife, connection, spirituality, tradition. A color associated with "nature," and the one my Praetor hates because it is associated with the civilization and artifice-hating Vorinclex. It is the color most commonly associated with acceptance and growth, and sometimes fate. In Phyrexia, this manifests in the form of the Tangle's dominant force, the Vicious Swarm, who preach a might-makes-right ideology that resents thought itself and regards technology as a hubristic attempt to replace the natural order with an artificial one. I personally think this is nonsense, but I will admit I am a biased observer. Nevertheless, green spells are associated with strength, regeneration and regrowth, natural manipulation, increase in abilities, resilience, using mana to create even more mana, "passive defense" that does not need to be engaged or punish the enemy for attempting a course of action like white would, simply denying the action by the means of immunity or armoring.
  • Colorless: This is not a color. Colorlessness is the absence of color, and thus, has no inherent philosophy, though it is oftentimes associated with artificiality, such as constructs and artifacts. A good maxim is that colorless can do most things other colors can, but less efficiently. The Eldrazi, a race of creatures that exist between dimensions, are also colorless; but this is because they consume mana to exist, leaving behind devoid husks that eventually collapse on their own as the very plane ruptures, every trace of individuality or identity consumed to feed their endless hunger.
7 - The Great Synthesis is a philosophy that orients the Progress Engine. It is what makes me, in a way. The Great Synthesis is about perfection through iteration; all overseen by the eyes of Jin-Gitaxias. As the fool so elegantly put it...

"Our Purpose? Experiment. We are the engine that furthers Phyrexian progress by developing new life, new tools, and new methods that seek to attain sublime compleation. Our Structure? We are an integrated network of facilities each in pursuit of perfection."

The original founder of Phyrexia was the human mage and eugenicist Yawgmoth, who wrote the Phyrexian Scriptures. They are rather simple. Here are some selected excerpts for your comprehension.

"Let weak feed upon weak, that we may divine the nature of strength."

"From void evolved Phyrexia. Great Yawgmoth, Father of Machines, saw its perfection. Thus the Grand Evolution began."

"Ash is our air, darkness our flesh."

"Father of Machines! Your filigree gaze carves us, and the scars dance upon our grateful flesh."

"Great Yawgmoth moves across the seas of shard and bone and rust. We exalt him in life, in death, and in between."

"Unskin these impure bodies, Great Yawgmoth, that the flesh may welcome your blessings."

"There will come a day when blessed perfection is no longer a mere concept, but tangible, for all to behold."


Phyrexia, as it existed before, was a tool of Yawgmoth. It worshipped pain and suffering and vicious competition, the culling of the weak by the mighty and revered him as a god. It was his weapon to invade other planes and reshape them in his image. He was eventually destroyed by the planeswalker Urza after a very, very lengthy war, though an elaborate magical superweapon based on a complex fate-weaving scheme to gather various mythical artifacts of significance, then a gamble to lure him out of his fortress in full force.

Most of Phyrexian belief as written by Yawgmoth existed to aggrandize him and vilify the things he hated, by means such as reframing as his own sad failures to acquire the mate he desired as actively desirable as natural reproduction was to be disdained. The things one can find in the Scriptures are veritable classics by this point; mortal flesh is a sin, imperfect, and prone to weakness and decay. Worship the perfection of machines, but only those made by Yawgmoth and his order of priests are considered truly sacred. Artifacts made by mortal, natural hands are abominations unfit for Phyrexia, and even more despised are the artificers themselves, making a sacrilegious imitation of the work Yawgmoth, the to-be-praised Father of Machines has done (note that Yawgmoth's political enemies, when he was a mortal, were a faction known as "artificers.").

The Grand Evolution, the search for evolutionary superiority and improvement, and the process of phyresis, Yawgmoth's words denoting his battle against disease, death, and weakness, were the objectives on which the Phyrexians should focus themselves devoutly. However, the Progress Engine rejects the word "evolution." Evolution is a crude, aimless process, and gods, worships and myths are vapid fantasies whose removal would greatly streamline Phyrexian operation.

We are called "revisionists" because we do not worship Yawgmoth and his cutthroat philosophy like Elesh Norn and Sheoldred do, but this is obviously nonsense. Though his intentions and maybe even his methods can be found inspiring, Yawgmoth's shortsightednes and egomania ultimately brought forward his demise. Modeling after the failed engines of the past is no way to hasten the future. If they were the best option, why, then, did old Phyrexia fail? Jin-Gitaxias sees this, and this is to be praised. It is a shame he emulates Yawgmoth in so many other ways.

8 - It has something to do with a theft. Various thefts, in fact, performed over the years with the usage of planeswalking.

9 - Jin-Gitaxias's waist is in fact adaptable. He wears essentially anything above XL. He is just being whiny.

10 - The process where flesh starts turning to metal after an organic creature is exposed to glistening oil, the substance that contains our genetic memory. Phyrexia was in fact born when the golem Karn, a planeswalker, brought a single drop of glistening oil to his newly made world and abandoned it shortly after. Phyresis is lethal if not treated. The treatment is compleation.
 
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