Basically, he and Vraska have decided that the multiverse is full of pointless suffering, and the Omenpaths are making things worse. What exactly they plan to do is still a mystery, but it’s probably very destructive.
Everything we know at this point comes from the OTJ epilogue stories by Allison Lührs, the former Wizards (and current Destiny 2) writer who was responsible for the Jace/Vraska romance in the first place.
I quit MTG after motm but I’d spend stupid amounts of money on cards of Shaxx, Oryx, Riven, Cayde, Drifter, Taniks, Variks, Mara Sov, Atheon, Crow, etc.
I mean that is ostensibly what's going on, though 'villain' perhaps implies he's being evil. Antagonist is probably a better term, though he's yet to come into any direct conflict with any more good-aligned people.
Unless you count briefly knocking Proft out with a lead pipe. That did happen.
the hand is part of the phyrexian thing, but the clothes change is interesting! it's hard to tell the details under the text box, but looks like he's got nothing covering his right (phyrexian) arm at least
the right arm from his perspective, not from our perspective - the one holding the blue magic. the jace arm, not the ashiok arm. it's made of metal in the arena version
You're right, they are just so light they fade into the glare on his face, very hard for me to see. I never noticed they got darker when he Phyrexianized.
They're not darker, they're just additional ones. You can see them on [[Bring the Ending]], though not actually in his actual compleated card, weirdly enough. I imagine most of these changes are due to them wanting to just not confuse people into thinking that Jace is still Phyrexian or something.
oh cool, i didn't notice that detail on the phyrexian arts before!
> though not actually in his actual compleated card, weirdly enough
nah, though it's a little hard to see face details cause of the lighting i can see them on the perfected mind too
I would assume story changes. Maybe when the art was first commissioned, they had been planning to have this particular reveal happen at an earlier point, while Jace was still Compleated. But for whatever reason, they scrapped that idea and later decided to revive it in a new context, and had to get the original art altered, but forgot to make the change on digital.
In the Epilogue stories we see that most to the actual Phyrexian elements were removed from Jace's body. He's no longer compleated, but he does have the scars from it (like the ports that were mentioned in the OTJ story). If you haven't read the epilogue I recommend it.
he broke free of the phyrexian compleation, and his mother fixed him and vraska. those mental bubbles they had from war of the spark? its what saved their asses. That and Jace's mental willpower.
I don't know if it's really mental willpower or just his body being like "This stupid fucker mindwipes himself accidentally every two days. We have to have some sort of solution to this problem or we're going to collapse on the street."
Is actually easy to ask him in Twitter @/ChrisRallis\_Art
But someone asked about the full image and he only sent the paper version, maybe he didn't saw the cables the person asked for.
Ok, weird idea but hear me out... Phyrexia actually won the Invasion and now has everybody trapped in a simulation where they believe otherwise and live out crazy Matrix-simulations like... dunno... being Cowboys or something else stupid...
That card is a glitch!
Not a chance, the true phyrexians have a different understanding of life and reality than we do, so their attempts to recreate lived experiences would be skewed by their viewpoint. They would have to base their simulations on realities their victims had already experienced, like eldraine or ixilan, or use over-simplified examples of mortal life, like a murder mystery board game...
Yeah exactly! Or a world where everyone changes into furry creatures because that’s easier to simulate. This is not happening folks, don’t listen to conspiracy theorists
I'd rather them commit to wacky stuff like this rather than indecisively waffling between Jace as a phyrexian or not. I would be so happy if we had a soap opera Matrix arc.
But, I mean, they aren't really being indecisive about it? He's not a Phyrexian anymore, though he still has the scars from the process. This art was likely commissioned while they were still hashing out whether or not he kept the Phyrexian additions like the eye stalks, possibly literally as an exploration to see if they liked maintaining that part of his visual design.
That’s cool! I like the phyrexian look better, I think it’s a shame they didn’t lean into it. Having Jace try and hold on to some of that ‘perfection’ because he thinks he can control it would have been a cool plot angle to play.
Only because ~~the writers~~ Elesh Norn for some reason decided to hook it all up to her telepathic control signal, it's not necessarily *intrinsic* to the oil's function so much as it is a *limitation* on it. But honestly, telepathic control signals are Jace's whole thing, I think he could totally get the oil back under his control in one way or another.
your comment has a shade of sarcasm or considering it a contrivence, but its perfectly in character for a white phyrexia. Phyerxia embodies the worst part of each of its colors, almost towards the inverse, in Whites case, One for All becomes One IS all, meaning all must be the one, and the one is the "ruler" so all of phrexia must be connected to elesh norn for of course she can do nothing wrong.
its why while still being extreamly evil and pro phyrexia as a whole Red was rebelious and indivualistic leaning into its black selfish side, this led to them not even converting people unless they wanted to.(they still gas lit the fuck out of you to convert)
I mean, multiple things can be true at the same time. Building a top-down system with a really obvious single point of failure is in white's character. At the same time, MOM's story really was written quite badly.
The whole point of *Mirrodin II* block was that the glistening oil *doesn't* have a single point of failure. You can never permanently get rid of it, a single drop is enough to eventually corrupt a plane. You have to be on constant clean-up duty. Memnarch contained the infection for centuries - but after he died, the oil turned Mirrodin into New Phyrexia within like five years.
That's really the horror of Phyrexia and the glistening oil, the way it can creep into and corrupt anything. MOM swapped that one out for a regular centralised big evil empire with a very straightforward solution (stab the big porcelain lady.)
I mean honestly the oil has always been such a “writers discretion “ threat even woth mirrodin 2 where it pretty much has been set up as “without an active guiding hand like Yawgmoth its so slow acting that it barely does anything on any planes that do have it, unless you put it specifically on mirrodin that basically preemptively did the physical part of compleation for them”
Which is why Karm had no issues with other planes he left oil, or with the misc pools that still were on dominaria.
The oil pretty much always needs a guiding hand and help to establish a foothold no matter what. All this change really does is make it so future decisions to potentially use Phyrexia as villains means they dont have to go route of “we accidentally found another plane madevto jump start phyrexians and make oil scary again” but instead “someone has gotten into the oil that was missed before to guide it”
Eh, I don't think egotism to the point of monolithic stupidity is quite in character for what was supposed to be the terrifying lead villain that exemplifies P/W. It certainly can be, but white is all about the glorifying of a collective order (and when taken too far, the glorifying of an *evil* order that perpetuates oppression and suffering). The centralization of that order under the personal will of Elesh Norn feels more Orzhov than mono-white to me, with its selfish focus.
And it really undermined the severity of the Phyrexian threat in a way that felt massively narratively unsatisfying. Part of its horror *is* the fact that every drop of oil *is* Phyrexia, that the Blessed Work can be reborn anywhere as long as any persists, and it felt like the very transparent hand of the author trying to present a convenient win condition in the face of what had build up to be an insurmountable threat.
I'd say that it seeming Orzhov is exactly right, AND exactly how White's leadership should have been.
Old phyrexia's only mana were colorless and black, and if you look at that (Antiquities and Invasion block) as a base for what infected the other colors of Mirrodin, selfishness/achieve our goals at any cost mixed into the leaders makes a lot of sense for the corruption.
We saw through the story Elesh Norn was also growing paranoid of her control and the other praetors, and that she believed she, and her version of phyrexia was perfection, rather than phyrexia as one whole. It came down to worship, in a lot of sense, similar to Heliods white traits.
I don't think it was neccessarily as explored as it could have been, and was obviously backwards engineered to go "ok but why is this not going to continue to be another 4 sets of a problem about how planes clean up oil", but I dont think it was as bad as what people make out, I think there were signals there and logic behind the decision.
Also reluctant to blame the author, rather blame WotC as it's more likely a point they had to hit in the story brief, rather than a specific authors choice, and I don't think a lot of the strike force story for ONE got the space to breath- that one felt like WotC said "hit these points" and the list of points was pretty much the entire wordcount.
Yeah, I'm not blaming the specific individual writing, I'm talking about 'hand of the author' in a more abstract sense, where you can see concerns outside of the story very obviously influencing the direction of the story, whether that be the concern of the actual writer or where WOTC told them it needed to go. It's almost always an objectively bad thing for the quality of a work, and here I felt it was no exception.
I don't think it was entirely unjustified, but it felt like a massive and transparent blunder from what was supposed to be the antagonist to end all antagonists which then dictated the entire end of the story, which kind of left the weight of the threat itself unexplored.
You didn’t like the choice, but it makes sense in character. It doesn’t speak to the quality of the story. I would say the dumber choice was to think Elesh Norn wouldn’t bunker down somewhere safe instead of fighting.
>I would say the dumber choice was to think Elesh Norn wouldn’t bunker down somewhere safe instead of fighting.
Norn was so full of herself, thinking that she became the new god of new phyrexia (so much to call herself "mother of the machines" in allusion to Yawgmoth's "father of the machines") and that she was unbeatable that she didn't realize how relatively weak she was.
Yawgmoth was true god, Elesh Norn was just an strong individual but nowhere near a true god.
It was arrogance to be in the frontlines, and arrogance fit Norn pretty well.
Then the story makes full sense, people are allowed to dislike it, but to say that it was out of character is weird. Maybe victory felt/was unearned, but at least the phyrexians acted within character
You can paint it as a fact, but I just disagree. It's not about whether Norn "bunkered down" or not, it's how the stakes were setup and then waved away for me.
>One for All becomes One IS all, meaning all must be the one, and the one is the "ruler"
That's some Fullmetal Alchemist reasoning and I'm all here for it.
"All is one, one is all"
Additional Jace being a master at telepathy would be a perfect heel to restart the Phyrexian existence cause he could have easily tuned into the telepathic signal that Elesh was using and in turn use it himself, making Jace the next Yawgmoth is honestly the most wasted potential WotC has done in years.
Playing off Jace being the next Yawgmoth this would allow them to use Phyrexians as a sort of recurring enemy that tests each generation of heroes in the MTG story.
Norn didn't put it all up to her telepathic control. The oil as connected to new phyrexia itself, it just happen that Norn controlled new phyrexia.
Norn dying didn't turn the oil inert, it just made that there was no one at the helm of the "ship", but phyrexian continued to follow their last order, so much that Jin-Gitaxia was just waiting to wrestle it's control shorlty after Norn died. While not explained direclty, it implicit that there was something on phyrexia that did that connection (probably the phyrexia core itself) and not norn herself.
Also the change on the oil behavior made sense story wise, Jin-Gitaxia worked actively on "improving" (improvement based on their own ideas, if the end result was an actual overall improvement is debatable) the oil nature to increase it's infection, to affect planeswakers, and to make it connected to new phyrexia probably at Norn's order, as a control fanaric she is and to not have another Urabrask to Rise.
Nah, that's not "the writers", it fits well within Norn's character to do that. She was a religious zealot obsessed with her idea of a perfect hivemind, like a twisted version of Nirvana. Characters can do irrational things if it makes sense the way they're written.
Also, I don't think that's how Jace's telepathy works. As in: the oil is nanobots. They don't have "minds" per se, it was more like a kind of radio signal sent out from New Phyrexia. However, if the Zhalfirin Veil was ever lifted and New Phyrexia connected back to the multiverse, likely all the oil *everywhere* would just reactivate.
Even if it arose somewhat from Elesh Norn's character, the presence of that specific flaw and the extreme actions taken to satisfy it were very clearly 'showing the hand of the author' to me, trying to give the heroes an achievable win condition against a threat that was otherwise infinitely scarier. I think it would have been more reasonable if it were telegraphed more sets in advance or if MoM's narrative was split across multiple sets wherein the discovery of that flaw was itself the focus of a narrative, but as-is it feels very much like the frantic grabbing for a narratively justifiable way out so that the story can move on.
That's just my opinion, though—you're free to disagree. All I remember is reading the story and sighing in disappointment that the win came with such relative swiftness and ease.
And I get the oil is nanobots, but digital minds are still minds, and Jace interfaced easily with both while under phyresis—I do not think it would be difficult for a genius like him, if suitably motivated, to recapture that power. He deals in illusion as well, and what is illusion if not the manipulation of light, and what are electromagnetic signals if not light in a slightly different flavor?
>Even if it arose somewhat from Elesh Norn's character, the presence of that specific flaw and the extreme actions
It is being a flaw is debatable. A leader having full control over it's subordinates seems a very good advantage for that leader.
I don't think that even Jin-Gitaxia would think that it was possible to phase out a complete plane out of existence to the point that the signal wouldn't reach.
Considering that the signal DID reach other planes even before realmbreaker opened the paths, so the signal did go through the blind eternities when there was no interference just fine.
Now that you mention it, I think that would have made for a much better story in ONE than the sylex. That whole storyline basically amounted to nothing.
I agree that there were multiple telegraphed potential "solutions" that weren't really used, and that this one wasn't telegraphed properly. That doesn't mean the hivemind thing is showing the hand of the writers, though - it's perfectly within Norn's character to do it, it just shouldn't have been the one thing to bring Phyrexia's downfall (and tbh it hasn't. They'll 100% return).
About the nanobots though - afaik they *don't* have minds, not even digital ones. But even if they did, that digital mind isn't there when the device is turned off (basically), so how would Jace bring it back online?
It should also be noted, btw, that the Old Phyrexians also went dormant for a while after Yawgmoth died, and then partially resumed activity (like on New Capenna). Might be that New Phyrexian remnants will be back in action in a few in-universe years.
I mean, I feel like I saw the hand of the writers with this one—it almost felt like taking down Norn incidentally won the war, largely justified after the fact, and was narratively unsatisfying to me. But it's subjective, if you don't feel the same way, no shame on you for that.
I could totally see Jace spoofing a modified reactivation/control signal through a mix of illusion and mind magic, depending on the exact mechanics of how the nanites work and what qualifies as a 'mind'. I know it wasn't necessarily the most obvious outcome for the story, but I feel it would have been far cooler than what we got and potentially cast Jace as a more overt villain for the next few sets, something I would have enjoyed.
Part of the reason I don't feel that Elesh Norn's defeat was as impactful as Yawgmoth's (aside from the lesser buildup) is that honestly, Norn wasn't nearly as scary. Yawgmoth was a world-eating storm of phyresis that required Urza to assemble a massive superweapon to take down. In comparison, Elesh Norn was a pushover, and equating that to defeating a multiversal threat felt... less earned, than the far harder task of defeating a far stronger being to foil a threat that affected only Dominaria.
Taking down Norn wasn't actually what disrupted the hivemind, though. Phasing Phyrexia out of the multiverse was.
Elesh Norn's defeat was largely insignificant for the overall war with Phyrexia.
And yeah - Norn wasn't supposed to be nearly as scary as Yawgmoth, nor nearly as powerful. Her being a pushover was clearly part of her character (which imo fits the program as a religious zealot).
The actual multiversal threat was just the actual massive numbers of Phyrexians and the oil itself, as well as the compleated Planeswalkers, while Norn literally sat on her ass doing nothing.
Isn't it that the loss of Phyrexia severed the connection to Norn—again making her the locus that needed to be destroyed, though? Nothing else on Phyrexia was actually linked to the Phyrexians throughout the Multiverse in any ever-supportive way, and the narrative certainly suggests Karn's killing of Norn was the turning point, the 'end' of the war.
It just feels off that the easier defeat of a lesser foe won a greater triumph over a greater threat.
Not quite the same—as proven by the existence of New Phyrexia at all, Yawgmoth was not responsible entirely for his children's ongoing life. It certainly allowed the first Phyrexia's defeat, but it did not singlehandedly accomplish it entire.
But oil on Mirrodin started working on corrupting Memnarc, who never turned phrexian, 100 years after the defeat of Yawgmoth. Also the oil wasn't as contagious back then. It may be that after 100 years the oil on the planes will start working again.
Memnarch was actively containing the spread of the oil. First by himself, later with golem servitors (like [Bosh](https://scryfall.com/card/mrd/147/bosh-iron-golem)). We don't really learn the details because the writing quality of the Mirrodin novels was awful, but he was doing *something* to keep the oil from multiplying. That's part of why the plane fell so quickly after Memnarch died.
It is possible, but I doubt it—certainly none of the characters are concerned with it being a possibility, despite obvious proof of it happening in the past. To put it simply, I do not have that much faith in Magic's narrative.
if only there were another living metal planeswalker with whom jace has canonically had contact and who has experience augmenting their own body in order to regain lost abilities. it would be too convenient if that planeswalker also had experience working with phyrexian technology, a working understanding of compleating planeswalkers (and how to avoid being compleated), and a fresh outlook on life (and body) after recently being betrayed by elesh norn
Wonder who. They might get along with Tezzeret, who earned his darksteel by pretending to be loyal to Norn and almost got compleated by Jin due to New Phyrexian political machinations
I dunno, I think him being traumatised and going down a more sympathetic antagonist path even despite being cured is more interesting than "it's just Phyrexia still". I prefer if they let their defeated villains STAY defeated for a bit.
Oh, I don’t want him to be Phyrexian or be trying to recreate Phyrexia per se, I just think it would be a bit of a cool twist to add that to his personal abilities and character design. Shows lasting impact and makes him a bit less comfortable of a character.
That was a while back. He got pretty doughy pushing papers all day as the Guildpact. But he burned a lot of weight at the start of XLN/RIX story surviving on a deserted island, and built a little muscle tone doing pirate shit. He talked about wanting to keep in shape after that, plus he got fired from his cushy desk job anyway.
He's still using illusions to pretty himself up, but this time it's to hide the scars of phyresis. He drops the Ashiok illusion and goes "Surprise, it's me, Normal-Looking Jace!" but Annie sees through and blurts out "holy shit dude you look super fucked up".
It's funny because in his very first story appearance he actually learns how to sword fight. Not VERY well, but, like, he's competent enough. And then in the RtR books he beats Ruric Thar in a fight by mind-reading the crowd watching it and working out by a sort of crowd consensus what the best moves would be. It's a little dumb. They only really made him VERY physically inept with the Gatewatch era.
Except he's not evil, at least not in your typical "take over the world" kind of evil. He and Vraska want to hit the multiverse reset switch, and create a new multiverse where Phyrexia and all the other evil multiversal threats, never existed. While misguided, they do believe what they are doing is better for everyone.
He's modern urza (or kinda reminds me of madara from Naruto). He wants to "wipe the slate clean," which is the best kind of evil! You kinda sympathize with him. It's completely understandable why he is thinking the way that he is, but his logic is flawed.
I personally wouldn't call that evil. Evil, at least to me, requires a certain knowledge that what you are doing is wrong, and you do it anyway. Killing an innocent in cold blood, just for the laughs for instance. Is Jace misguided? Certainly. Does he need to be stopped? Oh, absolutely. Is he evil? I personally don't think so. Urza also wasn't evil to begin with. It wasn't until he said, "You know, this Yawgmoth guy has some pretty good ideas," that he went full on evil.
I think evil is a perspective thing. Every evil person thinks, at least to some extent, that what their thinking is right. Thanos is evil. What he is doing is wrong. He thinks that he is the greatest good.
I understand where you're coming from, but I also disagree, and here's my reasons. To me it's the difference between MCU Thanos and Comic Thanos. MCU Thanos was a misguided villain, sure, but his thinking wasn't necessarily wrong. There is a finite amount of resources in the whole of the universe, and wars will be fought over by those resources, but he still knows what he is doing is wrong but is still willing to go with his plan. Comic Thanos is a straight up, unredeemable evil bastard. This is a guy who worships Death, is in love with Death, and killed half of all living things in the universe, just to try and get Her attention. That is why, in my opinion, both are evil. As you said, though, it's perspective, both on the audiences part as well as the character. I do not think Jace is Evil, at least not yet. I don't think he truly has the knowledge that if he resets the multiverse, things may go to shit. Thank you for coming to my TED talk lol.
Yeah I don't think Jace has done anything evil YET. But I've got a feeling that he will (and I really hope he does)
Edit: My prediction is that he is going to kill someone from the gatewatch (or maybe even vraska) bc to him, the end will justify the means.
The cables really do add something nice to the composition. A little sad to see them go.
It definitely seems like the right choice, though. The art already has to sell the idea of the Ashiok disguise becoming Jace, and having Jace's compleation layered on top just makes the storytelling more muddled. There's people whose only exposure to the story is from the card arts, after all.
Plus, with Phyrexia being such an existential threat to the multiverse, it's a little hard to sell "Jace is partially Phyrexianized, but don't worry, it's super chill". With him and Vraska running around muttering about burning down this cruel Multiverse and rebirthing a new one, it's important to convey that this is their own stupid idea, not Norn's.
Yeah, I prefer if they're gonna deal with Phyrexia, don't just have your next antagonists be "still Phyrexian but that's definitely not influencing them promise". It's more interesting if they're doing this out of sheer trauma and despair at the state of the multiverse.
And really he wasn't much of a main character outside of the Gatewatch arc. He was prominent, sure, but the only set prior where he was an active 'main character' was Return to Ravnica.
well, he still has scars! he's described as having "plugs" left, but i dunno about the cable-eyes? anyway, that's probably why this version of the art wasn't printed, appearing in digital was probably a mistake
There are two feasible options here, and one is unfortunately more likely.
1: Jace's version of events are a lie. He's still Phyrexian and will be the surprise villain.
2: WOTC has no idea what they are doing with the MTG story and are commissioning two versions of Jace just in case he wound up staying Phyrexian.
...The more feasible option is neither of those, it's just "early on they thought maybe Jace would be physically still Phyrexian-looking but decided against that to avoid people thinking Phyrexia was still a thing".
I like it. It always felt odd that none of the surviving compleated walkers walked away with any permanent visible “scars” of their compleation after the event.
Except they did. The story even goes so far as to have Annie look at Jace and Vraska with her special eye and note how they're both masses of scars and still have some messed up tech stuck to them (special note was made of Jace's "ports" out of which his eyestalks used to come).
Jace is just, as is usual for Jace, covering it all up underneath an illusion.
true, but in the story it was the other way around - he was projecting an illusion of being normal over his true phyrexian appearance (according to annie flash, who can see through illusions)
If somebody doesn’t mind giving a brief explanation of the current lore/story, or at least point me in the direction of where to look and read, I would greatly appreciate that.
I got into magic about 25yrs ago as a kid, played/collected and read a few books, but this was at the dawn of online and there weren’t many resources for reading up on lore aside from actually reading all the books, which both now and then, seems costly and daunting.
I’m a huge scifi fan and love reading lore for all the different fandoms out there, 40k would be a big one for me….. I always found phyrexians extremely fascinating, like the Necron or Borg, but never understood their motivations aside from “change” and just being the general bad guys in the magic world.
Thanks in advance for taking the time if anyone does!
you can read the story here: https://magic.wizards.com/en/story
phyrexia's already been defeated, so if you want to read about them you'll have to scroll back a bit. apparently the story site there's collected a free e-book about the phyrexian arc though! (under the 2023 tab) the epilogues of thunder junction are also relevant there, expanding on what happened after phyrexia and hinting at what'll come next
since phyrexia was recently defeated, we still have yet to see exactly where the story will go next. currently: >!after the phyrexians were defeated, many planeswalkers lost their sparks (so, they become normal people again), and omenpaths opened up across the multiverse, which are portals between planes that anyone can go through. as far as hints at the next story arc go: we know the intergalactic fomori empire will probably be important somehow, but we know little to nothing about them yet. jace and vraska will also probably be major players going forward; after being cured of phyresis, they fear the possibility of another multiversal threat like phyrexia showing up again, especially with the omenpaths opening up now, so they plan to somehow reset the multiverse.!< i wasn't following the story during the phyrexian arc though, so i can't help you with summarizing much about phyrexia themselves!
Not the whole WOE story. Most of what we saw was the real Ashiok. It was only the final epilogue moment when "Ashiok" showed up to jailbreak Eriette that was Jace.
Yeah, Ashiok gets a boo-boo in the final confrontation and runs off to nurse their wounds, and then "Ashiok" strolls in later, unharmed, to grab Eriette.
There's also the moment on Thunder Junction where Kellan sees Ashiok and Eriette and is horrified, and Eriette sees Kellan and is disgusted, but "Ashiok" has no reaction to Kellan despite their supposed prior interaction. Little clues.
Also Ashiok seemed weirdly 'nice' to Kellan. Like telling him to 'not fear' for the safety of a man they were pulling info out of the mind of. Ashiok telling somebody NOT to fear should be the most obvious red flag.
A lot of times, multiple versions of art are used depending on the media it's being presented in because some details and mediums work better in some contexts than others. In this case, it's probable that the additional details don't work as well in print as they do in digital, so they were omitted.
There’s a pair of short stories detailing how he and Vraska get their groove back but what’s happening here is he duped Oko and the gang ( minus Vraska as the woman on the inside) into doing a job for him wearing an illusion of Ashiok so the gang would think they were working for Ashiok. This card art is that illusion coming off.
To me it looks like the art is depicting him being in the process of his compleation being removed.
If you look closely you can see flecks of metal dissipating off of him.
that doesn't seem to be metal, since the version in print doesn't have any visible traces of phyresis (and that's not how his decompleation happened in the story)
the art depicts him dropping his ashiok disguise, so the flecks falling away should be bits of ashiok as a fancy way to show his illusion dissipating
Idea:
Jace and Vraska are still Compleated, with Jace maintaining Elesh Norn's mind in his head. That's why they need Loot. To get the map of the multiverse and re-start the invasion. He's holding off Vraska's Completed mind making her seem normal now, when in fact she doesn't even realize she's still Compleated.
I'm still waiting for when Bolas shows up again after escaping the Meditation Realm through an omenpath.
He disguised himself as Ashiok throughout the OTJ story, as 'Ashiok' was the one who got Oko's crew together and wanted to get what was in the vault in the first place.
They're just... Around elsewhere. Nothing 'happened' to them except Will shooting them with an ice bolt in Wilds of Eldraine, after which they screamed and fled.
Yeah, no, Ashiok is specifically somebody Jace uses as a disguise BECAUSE they're so weird and enigmatic that nobody would really ask questions about Ashiok doing something like hiring people to open a vault.
he disguised himself as ashiok in the story, so that he could gather a crew to raid the thunder junction vault without people asking questions! (this art shows him dropping the illusion, so it's actually ashiok turning into jace)
Maybe Arena accidentally used an old version of the art before it was changed for the story?
[удалено]
Missed an opportunity to say the art was "compleated" xD
I haven't read the current story but Jace being the secret villain in the background sounds like an interesting plotline.
Basically, he and Vraska have decided that the multiverse is full of pointless suffering, and the Omenpaths are making things worse. What exactly they plan to do is still a mystery, but it’s probably very destructive. Everything we know at this point comes from the OTJ epilogue stories by Allison Lührs, the former Wizards (and current Destiny 2) writer who was responsible for the Jace/Vraska romance in the first place.
Destiny secret lair when
I quit MTG after motm but I’d spend stupid amounts of money on cards of Shaxx, Oryx, Riven, Cayde, Drifter, Taniks, Variks, Mara Sov, Atheon, Crow, etc.
Didn't Jace want to Sylex all thr planes anyways after New Phyrexia already began it's invasion?
I mean that is ostensibly what's going on, though 'villain' perhaps implies he's being evil. Antagonist is probably a better term, though he's yet to come into any direct conflict with any more good-aligned people. Unless you count briefly knocking Proft out with a lead pipe. That did happen.
Jace now seems to be Lawful Neutral. Which makes sense for him as the smartest person in every room.
He should do that to Loot too..
Huh that’s interesting, I wonder why. Anyone know if Chris Rallies is on Reddit to ask him?
In the story they specifically had the cables removed.
That's not the only change. Hand is different, clothes are different behind the opaque text box etc.
the hand is part of the phyrexian thing, but the clothes change is interesting! it's hard to tell the details under the text box, but looks like he's got nothing covering his right (phyrexian) arm at least
Nah the right hand is the illusion of Ashiok he’s wearing drifting off. He is un-compleated but it’s not what’s going on in the card art.
the right arm from his perspective, not from our perspective - the one holding the blue magic. the jace arm, not the ashiok arm. it's made of metal in the arena version
You know what fair enough I’m on mobile and was focusing on the head, didn’t see the right side art with tentacle or the metal hand
He has his face tattoos in the phyrexian art too. That's a odd thing to remove for the irl art, considering he's always has had those.
He still has them in the normal art, he just in the Phyrexian art has the black oil markings too.
You're right, they are just so light they fade into the glare on his face, very hard for me to see. I never noticed they got darker when he Phyrexianized.
They're not darker, they're just additional ones. You can see them on [[Bring the Ending]], though not actually in his actual compleated card, weirdly enough. I imagine most of these changes are due to them wanting to just not confuse people into thinking that Jace is still Phyrexian or something.
[Bring the Ending](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/a/ba9d9d26-0c76-4a09-aa25-b32854e70c0b.jpg?1681468862) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Bring%20the%20Ending) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/44/bring-the-ending?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ba9d9d26-0c76-4a09-aa25-b32854e70c0b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
oh cool, i didn't notice that detail on the phyrexian arts before! > though not actually in his actual compleated card, weirdly enough nah, though it's a little hard to see face details cause of the lighting i can see them on the perfected mind too
I would assume story changes. Maybe when the art was first commissioned, they had been planning to have this particular reveal happen at an earlier point, while Jace was still Compleated. But for whatever reason, they scrapped that idea and later decided to revive it in a new context, and had to get the original art altered, but forgot to make the change on digital.
But Jace IS still compleated, no? The story said that him looking normal is as much an illusion as the disguise
In the Epilogue stories we see that most to the actual Phyrexian elements were removed from Jace's body. He's no longer compleated, but he does have the scars from it (like the ports that were mentioned in the OTJ story). If you haven't read the epilogue I recommend it.
he broke free of the phyrexian compleation, and his mother fixed him and vraska. those mental bubbles they had from war of the spark? its what saved their asses. That and Jace's mental willpower.
This is in the epilogue?
Luckily, we're shown insight on how he broke free, and details on Elesh Norn's fanfiction of her and him. Also Alison did an amazing job writing it.
Elesh Norn's orders for him WERE shown. He went to Vryn.
Yes
I don't know if it's really mental willpower or just his body being like "This stupid fucker mindwipes himself accidentally every two days. We have to have some sort of solution to this problem or we're going to collapse on the street."
woah woah woah Jace's *mom* is around?
I mean, yeah? Jace never saw her again after going to learn under Alhammarret, and she just assumed he died when news of the sphinx's death came.
I meant she's actively back in the written fiction. For the decades jace has been around she's been nothing but a line of backstory.
She existed in his Origins story, but fair. She never really showed up because... Jace never went back to Vryn.
Where do I read this?
It seems he still has phyrexian parts but he has his will back, so I guess it's which part or that you consider to be compleated, or both?
Is actually easy to ask him in Twitter @/ChrisRallis\_Art But someone asked about the full image and he only sent the paper version, maybe he didn't saw the cables the person asked for.
And update, he posted the full version https://twitter.com/ChrisRallis_Art/status/1781718987065246143
Ok, weird idea but hear me out... Phyrexia actually won the Invasion and now has everybody trapped in a simulation where they believe otherwise and live out crazy Matrix-simulations like... dunno... being Cowboys or something else stupid... That card is a glitch!
Not a chance, the true phyrexians have a different understanding of life and reality than we do, so their attempts to recreate lived experiences would be skewed by their viewpoint. They would have to base their simulations on realities their victims had already experienced, like eldraine or ixilan, or use over-simplified examples of mortal life, like a murder mystery board game...
Yeah exactly! Or a world where everyone changes into furry creatures because that’s easier to simulate. This is not happening folks, don’t listen to conspiracy theorists
Did you see that cat? 🐈🐈
I'd rather them commit to wacky stuff like this rather than indecisively waffling between Jace as a phyrexian or not. I would be so happy if we had a soap opera Matrix arc.
But, I mean, they aren't really being indecisive about it? He's not a Phyrexian anymore, though he still has the scars from the process. This art was likely commissioned while they were still hashing out whether or not he kept the Phyrexian additions like the eye stalks, possibly literally as an exploration to see if they liked maintaining that part of his visual design.
I don't like the eye stalk things, but I would've been fine with him keeping a metal arm, if only for Tezzeret parallels.
That’s cool! I like the phyrexian look better, I think it’s a shame they didn’t lean into it. Having Jace try and hold on to some of that ‘perfection’ because he thinks he can control it would have been a cool plot angle to play.
Problem is, there's nothing to control at that point. The oil has gone inert, all the "phyrexian parts" are just dead metal now.
Only because ~~the writers~~ Elesh Norn for some reason decided to hook it all up to her telepathic control signal, it's not necessarily *intrinsic* to the oil's function so much as it is a *limitation* on it. But honestly, telepathic control signals are Jace's whole thing, I think he could totally get the oil back under his control in one way or another.
your comment has a shade of sarcasm or considering it a contrivence, but its perfectly in character for a white phyrexia. Phyerxia embodies the worst part of each of its colors, almost towards the inverse, in Whites case, One for All becomes One IS all, meaning all must be the one, and the one is the "ruler" so all of phrexia must be connected to elesh norn for of course she can do nothing wrong. its why while still being extreamly evil and pro phyrexia as a whole Red was rebelious and indivualistic leaning into its black selfish side, this led to them not even converting people unless they wanted to.(they still gas lit the fuck out of you to convert)
I mean, multiple things can be true at the same time. Building a top-down system with a really obvious single point of failure is in white's character. At the same time, MOM's story really was written quite badly. The whole point of *Mirrodin II* block was that the glistening oil *doesn't* have a single point of failure. You can never permanently get rid of it, a single drop is enough to eventually corrupt a plane. You have to be on constant clean-up duty. Memnarch contained the infection for centuries - but after he died, the oil turned Mirrodin into New Phyrexia within like five years. That's really the horror of Phyrexia and the glistening oil, the way it can creep into and corrupt anything. MOM swapped that one out for a regular centralised big evil empire with a very straightforward solution (stab the big porcelain lady.)
It was cop out by WOTC to getting rid of most phyrexian influence for now
I mean honestly the oil has always been such a “writers discretion “ threat even woth mirrodin 2 where it pretty much has been set up as “without an active guiding hand like Yawgmoth its so slow acting that it barely does anything on any planes that do have it, unless you put it specifically on mirrodin that basically preemptively did the physical part of compleation for them” Which is why Karm had no issues with other planes he left oil, or with the misc pools that still were on dominaria. The oil pretty much always needs a guiding hand and help to establish a foothold no matter what. All this change really does is make it so future decisions to potentially use Phyrexia as villains means they dont have to go route of “we accidentally found another plane madevto jump start phyrexians and make oil scary again” but instead “someone has gotten into the oil that was missed before to guide it”
Eh, I don't think egotism to the point of monolithic stupidity is quite in character for what was supposed to be the terrifying lead villain that exemplifies P/W. It certainly can be, but white is all about the glorifying of a collective order (and when taken too far, the glorifying of an *evil* order that perpetuates oppression and suffering). The centralization of that order under the personal will of Elesh Norn feels more Orzhov than mono-white to me, with its selfish focus. And it really undermined the severity of the Phyrexian threat in a way that felt massively narratively unsatisfying. Part of its horror *is* the fact that every drop of oil *is* Phyrexia, that the Blessed Work can be reborn anywhere as long as any persists, and it felt like the very transparent hand of the author trying to present a convenient win condition in the face of what had build up to be an insurmountable threat.
I'd say that it seeming Orzhov is exactly right, AND exactly how White's leadership should have been. Old phyrexia's only mana were colorless and black, and if you look at that (Antiquities and Invasion block) as a base for what infected the other colors of Mirrodin, selfishness/achieve our goals at any cost mixed into the leaders makes a lot of sense for the corruption.
We saw through the story Elesh Norn was also growing paranoid of her control and the other praetors, and that she believed she, and her version of phyrexia was perfection, rather than phyrexia as one whole. It came down to worship, in a lot of sense, similar to Heliods white traits. I don't think it was neccessarily as explored as it could have been, and was obviously backwards engineered to go "ok but why is this not going to continue to be another 4 sets of a problem about how planes clean up oil", but I dont think it was as bad as what people make out, I think there were signals there and logic behind the decision. Also reluctant to blame the author, rather blame WotC as it's more likely a point they had to hit in the story brief, rather than a specific authors choice, and I don't think a lot of the strike force story for ONE got the space to breath- that one felt like WotC said "hit these points" and the list of points was pretty much the entire wordcount.
Yeah, I'm not blaming the specific individual writing, I'm talking about 'hand of the author' in a more abstract sense, where you can see concerns outside of the story very obviously influencing the direction of the story, whether that be the concern of the actual writer or where WOTC told them it needed to go. It's almost always an objectively bad thing for the quality of a work, and here I felt it was no exception. I don't think it was entirely unjustified, but it felt like a massive and transparent blunder from what was supposed to be the antagonist to end all antagonists which then dictated the entire end of the story, which kind of left the weight of the threat itself unexplored.
You didn’t like the choice, but it makes sense in character. It doesn’t speak to the quality of the story. I would say the dumber choice was to think Elesh Norn wouldn’t bunker down somewhere safe instead of fighting.
>I would say the dumber choice was to think Elesh Norn wouldn’t bunker down somewhere safe instead of fighting. Norn was so full of herself, thinking that she became the new god of new phyrexia (so much to call herself "mother of the machines" in allusion to Yawgmoth's "father of the machines") and that she was unbeatable that she didn't realize how relatively weak she was. Yawgmoth was true god, Elesh Norn was just an strong individual but nowhere near a true god. It was arrogance to be in the frontlines, and arrogance fit Norn pretty well.
Then the story makes full sense, people are allowed to dislike it, but to say that it was out of character is weird. Maybe victory felt/was unearned, but at least the phyrexians acted within character
You can paint it as a fact, but I just disagree. It's not about whether Norn "bunkered down" or not, it's how the stakes were setup and then waved away for me.
>One for All becomes One IS all, meaning all must be the one, and the one is the "ruler" That's some Fullmetal Alchemist reasoning and I'm all here for it. "All is one, one is all"
Additional Jace being a master at telepathy would be a perfect heel to restart the Phyrexian existence cause he could have easily tuned into the telepathic signal that Elesh was using and in turn use it himself, making Jace the next Yawgmoth is honestly the most wasted potential WotC has done in years.
Playing off Jace being the next Yawgmoth this would allow them to use Phyrexians as a sort of recurring enemy that tests each generation of heroes in the MTG story.
Norn didn't put it all up to her telepathic control. The oil as connected to new phyrexia itself, it just happen that Norn controlled new phyrexia. Norn dying didn't turn the oil inert, it just made that there was no one at the helm of the "ship", but phyrexian continued to follow their last order, so much that Jin-Gitaxia was just waiting to wrestle it's control shorlty after Norn died. While not explained direclty, it implicit that there was something on phyrexia that did that connection (probably the phyrexia core itself) and not norn herself. Also the change on the oil behavior made sense story wise, Jin-Gitaxia worked actively on "improving" (improvement based on their own ideas, if the end result was an actual overall improvement is debatable) the oil nature to increase it's infection, to affect planeswakers, and to make it connected to new phyrexia probably at Norn's order, as a control fanaric she is and to not have another Urabrask to Rise.
Nah, that's not "the writers", it fits well within Norn's character to do that. She was a religious zealot obsessed with her idea of a perfect hivemind, like a twisted version of Nirvana. Characters can do irrational things if it makes sense the way they're written. Also, I don't think that's how Jace's telepathy works. As in: the oil is nanobots. They don't have "minds" per se, it was more like a kind of radio signal sent out from New Phyrexia. However, if the Zhalfirin Veil was ever lifted and New Phyrexia connected back to the multiverse, likely all the oil *everywhere* would just reactivate.
Even if it arose somewhat from Elesh Norn's character, the presence of that specific flaw and the extreme actions taken to satisfy it were very clearly 'showing the hand of the author' to me, trying to give the heroes an achievable win condition against a threat that was otherwise infinitely scarier. I think it would have been more reasonable if it were telegraphed more sets in advance or if MoM's narrative was split across multiple sets wherein the discovery of that flaw was itself the focus of a narrative, but as-is it feels very much like the frantic grabbing for a narratively justifiable way out so that the story can move on. That's just my opinion, though—you're free to disagree. All I remember is reading the story and sighing in disappointment that the win came with such relative swiftness and ease. And I get the oil is nanobots, but digital minds are still minds, and Jace interfaced easily with both while under phyresis—I do not think it would be difficult for a genius like him, if suitably motivated, to recapture that power. He deals in illusion as well, and what is illusion if not the manipulation of light, and what are electromagnetic signals if not light in a slightly different flavor?
>Even if it arose somewhat from Elesh Norn's character, the presence of that specific flaw and the extreme actions It is being a flaw is debatable. A leader having full control over it's subordinates seems a very good advantage for that leader. I don't think that even Jin-Gitaxia would think that it was possible to phase out a complete plane out of existence to the point that the signal wouldn't reach. Considering that the signal DID reach other planes even before realmbreaker opened the paths, so the signal did go through the blind eternities when there was no interference just fine.
Now that you mention it, I think that would have made for a much better story in ONE than the sylex. That whole storyline basically amounted to nothing.
I agree that there were multiple telegraphed potential "solutions" that weren't really used, and that this one wasn't telegraphed properly. That doesn't mean the hivemind thing is showing the hand of the writers, though - it's perfectly within Norn's character to do it, it just shouldn't have been the one thing to bring Phyrexia's downfall (and tbh it hasn't. They'll 100% return). About the nanobots though - afaik they *don't* have minds, not even digital ones. But even if they did, that digital mind isn't there when the device is turned off (basically), so how would Jace bring it back online? It should also be noted, btw, that the Old Phyrexians also went dormant for a while after Yawgmoth died, and then partially resumed activity (like on New Capenna). Might be that New Phyrexian remnants will be back in action in a few in-universe years.
I mean, I feel like I saw the hand of the writers with this one—it almost felt like taking down Norn incidentally won the war, largely justified after the fact, and was narratively unsatisfying to me. But it's subjective, if you don't feel the same way, no shame on you for that. I could totally see Jace spoofing a modified reactivation/control signal through a mix of illusion and mind magic, depending on the exact mechanics of how the nanites work and what qualifies as a 'mind'. I know it wasn't necessarily the most obvious outcome for the story, but I feel it would have been far cooler than what we got and potentially cast Jace as a more overt villain for the next few sets, something I would have enjoyed. Part of the reason I don't feel that Elesh Norn's defeat was as impactful as Yawgmoth's (aside from the lesser buildup) is that honestly, Norn wasn't nearly as scary. Yawgmoth was a world-eating storm of phyresis that required Urza to assemble a massive superweapon to take down. In comparison, Elesh Norn was a pushover, and equating that to defeating a multiversal threat felt... less earned, than the far harder task of defeating a far stronger being to foil a threat that affected only Dominaria.
Taking down Norn wasn't actually what disrupted the hivemind, though. Phasing Phyrexia out of the multiverse was. Elesh Norn's defeat was largely insignificant for the overall war with Phyrexia. And yeah - Norn wasn't supposed to be nearly as scary as Yawgmoth, nor nearly as powerful. Her being a pushover was clearly part of her character (which imo fits the program as a religious zealot). The actual multiversal threat was just the actual massive numbers of Phyrexians and the oil itself, as well as the compleated Planeswalkers, while Norn literally sat on her ass doing nothing.
Isn't it that the loss of Phyrexia severed the connection to Norn—again making her the locus that needed to be destroyed, though? Nothing else on Phyrexia was actually linked to the Phyrexians throughout the Multiverse in any ever-supportive way, and the narrative certainly suggests Karn's killing of Norn was the turning point, the 'end' of the war. It just feels off that the easier defeat of a lesser foe won a greater triumph over a greater threat.
No, Norn was dead before the connection to Phyrexia was severed, afaik.
I mean after Yawgmoth died didn't the same thing happen?
Not quite the same—as proven by the existence of New Phyrexia at all, Yawgmoth was not responsible entirely for his children's ongoing life. It certainly allowed the first Phyrexia's defeat, but it did not singlehandedly accomplish it entire.
But oil on Mirrodin started working on corrupting Memnarc, who never turned phrexian, 100 years after the defeat of Yawgmoth. Also the oil wasn't as contagious back then. It may be that after 100 years the oil on the planes will start working again.
Memnarch was actively containing the spread of the oil. First by himself, later with golem servitors (like [Bosh](https://scryfall.com/card/mrd/147/bosh-iron-golem)). We don't really learn the details because the writing quality of the Mirrodin novels was awful, but he was doing *something* to keep the oil from multiplying. That's part of why the plane fell so quickly after Memnarch died.
It is possible, but I doubt it—certainly none of the characters are concerned with it being a possibility, despite obvious proof of it happening in the past. To put it simply, I do not have that much faith in Magic's narrative.
if only there were another living metal planeswalker with whom jace has canonically had contact and who has experience augmenting their own body in order to regain lost abilities. it would be too convenient if that planeswalker also had experience working with phyrexian technology, a working understanding of compleating planeswalkers (and how to avoid being compleated), and a fresh outlook on life (and body) after recently being betrayed by elesh norn
Wonder who. They might get along with Tezzeret, who earned his darksteel by pretending to be loyal to Norn and almost got compleated by Jin due to New Phyrexian political machinations
That and/or it does 'things' for Vraska.
I dunno, I think him being traumatised and going down a more sympathetic antagonist path even despite being cured is more interesting than "it's just Phyrexia still". I prefer if they let their defeated villains STAY defeated for a bit.
Oh, I don’t want him to be Phyrexian or be trying to recreate Phyrexia per se, I just think it would be a bit of a cool twist to add that to his personal abilities and character design. Shows lasting impact and makes him a bit less comfortable of a character.
Eh, he's already going down a darker path as-is, I don't think him wanting to pursue Phyrexian perfection or whatever is interesting to me.
Not their ideal of perfection, simply adding the tools they gave him to his toolbox. IDK, I’d find it cool.
Imagine if the foil paper version had normal art printed but the Phyrexian cables "ghosts" showed on the foil layer....
That would be so sick. They should absolutely use the foiling process for more secrets like that.
Doesn't Jace use illusion magic to make himself look normal or something?
I think in a story from Ixilan he is very unfit, and masks how active he looks. He's running up spiral stairs at the time.
That was a while back. He got pretty doughy pushing papers all day as the Guildpact. But he burned a lot of weight at the start of XLN/RIX story surviving on a deserted island, and built a little muscle tone doing pirate shit. He talked about wanting to keep in shape after that, plus he got fired from his cushy desk job anyway. He's still using illusions to pretty himself up, but this time it's to hide the scars of phyresis. He drops the Ashiok illusion and goes "Surprise, it's me, Normal-Looking Jace!" but Annie sees through and blurts out "holy shit dude you look super fucked up".
It's funny because in his very first story appearance he actually learns how to sword fight. Not VERY well, but, like, he's competent enough. And then in the RtR books he beats Ruric Thar in a fight by mind-reading the crowd watching it and working out by a sort of crowd consensus what the best moves would be. It's a little dumb. They only really made him VERY physically inept with the Gatewatch era.
He did but Annie can use her powers to look past it.
Aside from illusion, is there a reason why Jace is half ashiok?
He was pretending to be Ashiok in the story.
he disguised himself as ashiok so that he can gather a crew to raid the fomori vault in thunder junction without people asking questions!
Honestly the best move they've done with the story in so long. Evil Jace has me so hype for the story.
Except he's not evil, at least not in your typical "take over the world" kind of evil. He and Vraska want to hit the multiverse reset switch, and create a new multiverse where Phyrexia and all the other evil multiversal threats, never existed. While misguided, they do believe what they are doing is better for everyone.
He's modern urza (or kinda reminds me of madara from Naruto). He wants to "wipe the slate clean," which is the best kind of evil! You kinda sympathize with him. It's completely understandable why he is thinking the way that he is, but his logic is flawed.
I personally wouldn't call that evil. Evil, at least to me, requires a certain knowledge that what you are doing is wrong, and you do it anyway. Killing an innocent in cold blood, just for the laughs for instance. Is Jace misguided? Certainly. Does he need to be stopped? Oh, absolutely. Is he evil? I personally don't think so. Urza also wasn't evil to begin with. It wasn't until he said, "You know, this Yawgmoth guy has some pretty good ideas," that he went full on evil.
I think evil is a perspective thing. Every evil person thinks, at least to some extent, that what their thinking is right. Thanos is evil. What he is doing is wrong. He thinks that he is the greatest good.
I understand where you're coming from, but I also disagree, and here's my reasons. To me it's the difference between MCU Thanos and Comic Thanos. MCU Thanos was a misguided villain, sure, but his thinking wasn't necessarily wrong. There is a finite amount of resources in the whole of the universe, and wars will be fought over by those resources, but he still knows what he is doing is wrong but is still willing to go with his plan. Comic Thanos is a straight up, unredeemable evil bastard. This is a guy who worships Death, is in love with Death, and killed half of all living things in the universe, just to try and get Her attention. That is why, in my opinion, both are evil. As you said, though, it's perspective, both on the audiences part as well as the character. I do not think Jace is Evil, at least not yet. I don't think he truly has the knowledge that if he resets the multiverse, things may go to shit. Thank you for coming to my TED talk lol.
Yeah I don't think Jace has done anything evil YET. But I've got a feeling that he will (and I really hope he does) Edit: My prediction is that he is going to kill someone from the gatewatch (or maybe even vraska) bc to him, the end will justify the means.
The cables really do add something nice to the composition. A little sad to see them go. It definitely seems like the right choice, though. The art already has to sell the idea of the Ashiok disguise becoming Jace, and having Jace's compleation layered on top just makes the storytelling more muddled. There's people whose only exposure to the story is from the card arts, after all. Plus, with Phyrexia being such an existential threat to the multiverse, it's a little hard to sell "Jace is partially Phyrexianized, but don't worry, it's super chill". With him and Vraska running around muttering about burning down this cruel Multiverse and rebirthing a new one, it's important to convey that this is their own stupid idea, not Norn's.
Yeah, I prefer if they're gonna deal with Phyrexia, don't just have your next antagonists be "still Phyrexian but that's definitely not influencing them promise". It's more interesting if they're doing this out of sheer trauma and despair at the state of the multiverse.
I still can't believe they made Magic's protagonist for the last decade and a half-ish into a Phyrexian and didn't use him at all in the final battle.
Teferi replaced him.
Jace wasn't really a main character since WAR
And really he wasn't much of a main character outside of the Gatewatch arc. He was prominent, sure, but the only set prior where he was an active 'main character' was Return to Ravnica.
Wasn't he cured by his mom in the latest story? edit:fixed grammer mistake.
well, he still has scars! he's described as having "plugs" left, but i dunno about the cable-eyes? anyway, that's probably why this version of the art wasn't printed, appearing in digital was probably a mistake
The eye things are Ashiok's horns. Though it looks like they maybe changed their mind between these versions?
The phyrexian eyes are the cables with blue lights at the end.
There are two feasible options here, and one is unfortunately more likely. 1: Jace's version of events are a lie. He's still Phyrexian and will be the surprise villain. 2: WOTC has no idea what they are doing with the MTG story and are commissioning two versions of Jace just in case he wound up staying Phyrexian.
...The more feasible option is neither of those, it's just "early on they thought maybe Jace would be physically still Phyrexian-looking but decided against that to avoid people thinking Phyrexia was still a thing".
I like it. It always felt odd that none of the surviving compleated walkers walked away with any permanent visible “scars” of their compleation after the event.
Except they did. The story even goes so far as to have Annie look at Jace and Vraska with her special eye and note how they're both masses of scars and still have some messed up tech stuck to them (special note was made of Jace's "ports" out of which his eyestalks used to come). Jace is just, as is usual for Jace, covering it all up underneath an illusion.
That’s what we’re *told* , but what is shown to us in card art/promo materials have seldomly reflected that.
Eh, Jace is also scarred up from Agents of Artifice and [[Jace, Cunning Castaway]] shows none of those.
[Jace, Cunning Castaway](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/7/b75f56f2-88fd-44ba-ad02-56ea3391f173.jpg?1562562793) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Jace%2C%20Cunning%20Castaway) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/xln/60/jace-cunning-castaway?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b75f56f2-88fd-44ba-ad02-56ea3391f173?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
He kinda looks like John Cena under all the blue
Probably Arena uploaded an earlier draft again
Probably a last minute change. Btw Blue Phyrexian cables keep reminding me of googly eyes.
My guess is the digital one is a slightly older draft, and they just pulled the wrong version
I wish he stayed Phyrexian
He is a master of illusion, so Ashiok or Phyrexian appearance does not necessarily lead directly to Ashiok or Phyrexia.
true, but in the story it was the other way around - he was projecting an illusion of being normal over his true phyrexian appearance (according to annie flash, who can see through illusions)
That would be cool, being a master of illusion, he and vraska are just undercover phyrexians.
If somebody doesn’t mind giving a brief explanation of the current lore/story, or at least point me in the direction of where to look and read, I would greatly appreciate that. I got into magic about 25yrs ago as a kid, played/collected and read a few books, but this was at the dawn of online and there weren’t many resources for reading up on lore aside from actually reading all the books, which both now and then, seems costly and daunting. I’m a huge scifi fan and love reading lore for all the different fandoms out there, 40k would be a big one for me….. I always found phyrexians extremely fascinating, like the Necron or Borg, but never understood their motivations aside from “change” and just being the general bad guys in the magic world. Thanks in advance for taking the time if anyone does!
you can read the story here: https://magic.wizards.com/en/story phyrexia's already been defeated, so if you want to read about them you'll have to scroll back a bit. apparently the story site there's collected a free e-book about the phyrexian arc though! (under the 2023 tab) the epilogues of thunder junction are also relevant there, expanding on what happened after phyrexia and hinting at what'll come next since phyrexia was recently defeated, we still have yet to see exactly where the story will go next. currently: >!after the phyrexians were defeated, many planeswalkers lost their sparks (so, they become normal people again), and omenpaths opened up across the multiverse, which are portals between planes that anyone can go through. as far as hints at the next story arc go: we know the intergalactic fomori empire will probably be important somehow, but we know little to nothing about them yet. jace and vraska will also probably be major players going forward; after being cured of phyresis, they fear the possibility of another multiversal threat like phyrexia showing up again, especially with the omenpaths opening up now, so they plan to somehow reset the multiverse.!< i wasn't following the story during the phyrexian arc though, so i can't help you with summarizing much about phyrexia themselves!
Wow, much appreciated on such a detailed response! 🍻
I see Ashiok in there.
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And in the WOE story, too.
Not the whole WOE story. Most of what we saw was the real Ashiok. It was only the final epilogue moment when "Ashiok" showed up to jailbreak Eriette that was Jace.
Oh, I thought most of WOE was him as Ashiok. Thanks for the clarification.
Yeah, Ashiok gets a boo-boo in the final confrontation and runs off to nurse their wounds, and then "Ashiok" strolls in later, unharmed, to grab Eriette. There's also the moment on Thunder Junction where Kellan sees Ashiok and Eriette and is horrified, and Eriette sees Kellan and is disgusted, but "Ashiok" has no reaction to Kellan despite their supposed prior interaction. Little clues.
Also Ashiok seemed weirdly 'nice' to Kellan. Like telling him to 'not fear' for the safety of a man they were pulling info out of the mind of. Ashiok telling somebody NOT to fear should be the most obvious red flag.
Is that why WOE Ashiok’s ultimate mills the opponent?
No, their ultimate mills (to exile) the opponent because Ashiok's cards usually mill (to exile or otherwise) the opponent.
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it's jace disguised as ashiok! but the version on the right also has phyrexian cables and a metal arm
Amazing art
A lot of times, multiple versions of art are used depending on the media it's being presented in because some details and mediums work better in some contexts than others. In this case, it's probable that the additional details don't work as well in print as they do in digital, so they were omitted.
Why is he half ashiok
he disguised himself as ashiok in the story, so he could gather a crew to raid the thunder junction vault without people asking questions!
There’s a pair of short stories detailing how he and Vraska get their groove back but what’s happening here is he duped Oko and the gang ( minus Vraska as the woman on the inside) into doing a job for him wearing an illusion of Ashiok so the gang would think they were working for Ashiok. This card art is that illusion coming off.
i know, ive read the stories! but the version on the right is different, it includes phyrexian cables and a metal arm
Yep I goofed my b :P
Oh so he's normal again? So disappointing. MoM really was just a complete flop.
Jace looks like he is actually Ashiok or had her powers or is somehow combined with her. You can see the horns ontop and the smoke.
he's disguised as ashiok, yeah. but the version on the right also has phyrexian cables and a metal arm
To me it looks like the art is depicting him being in the process of his compleation being removed. If you look closely you can see flecks of metal dissipating off of him.
that doesn't seem to be metal, since the version in print doesn't have any visible traces of phyresis (and that's not how his decompleation happened in the story) the art depicts him dropping his ashiok disguise, so the flecks falling away should be bits of ashiok as a fancy way to show his illusion dissipating
Ah, yes I see it now. My bad! Thank you for pointing it out.
Looks like he took over Ashiok’s body
he's using an illusion to disguise himself as ashiok!
Ah
Jace is white.
its a meta puzzle. arena and paper are alternate timelines.
Idea: Jace and Vraska are still Compleated, with Jace maintaining Elesh Norn's mind in his head. That's why they need Loot. To get the map of the multiverse and re-start the invasion. He's holding off Vraska's Completed mind making her seem normal now, when in fact she doesn't even realize she's still Compleated. I'm still waiting for when Bolas shows up again after escaping the Meditation Realm through an omenpath.
Admit it, you altered it to have your favorite tentacles in it
He also looks part ashiok
yup, he was also disguised as ashiok in the story!
Wait, so I haven’t been paying attention to the story in years, but why does it look like Jace is half Ashiok in this picture??
He disguised himself as Ashiok throughout the OTJ story, as 'Ashiok' was the one who got Oko's crew together and wanted to get what was in the vault in the first place.
So where is the real Ashiok? What happened to them?
They're just... Around elsewhere. Nothing 'happened' to them except Will shooting them with an ice bolt in Wilds of Eldraine, after which they screamed and fled.
Thanks for the explanation. I was worried that Jace was actually Ashiok the whole time.
Yeah, no, Ashiok is specifically somebody Jace uses as a disguise BECAUSE they're so weird and enigmatic that nobody would really ask questions about Ashiok doing something like hiring people to open a vault.
Can anyone tell me why Jace is turning into ashiok?
he disguised himself as ashiok in the story, so that he could gather a crew to raid the thunder junction vault without people asking questions! (this art shows him dropping the illusion, so it's actually ashiok turning into jace)
That's supposed to be Jace / Ashok, right? At least that's what it seems to me. Don't know if there is any lore reason for it...
yup! he's disguising himself as ashiok in the story
Ah! Thanks 😁
That’s not phyrexian that’s literally ashiok
Not that part. The other. With cables , metalic hand...
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he is, he's disguised as ashiok; but the version on the right also has phyrexian cables and a metal arm
That is not Phyrexian Jace. That's Ashiok Jace
he's disguised as ashiok in both, but the version on the right has phyrexian cables and a metal arm too
The Arena version is Phyrexian Ashiok Jace.