Why was Oret cut off from the Kintrees if he is the one who planted the Amber that let Anafenza grow into a kintree? He even killed her to avoid a Dragon doing it. Wouldnt Anafenza's spirit vouch for him? Oret even hid her tree from the Dromka government.
It's looking like a couple of the Abzan flavor texts that reference Anafenza's supporting characters from Khans block have continuity errors, referencing the old timeline.
I really like the lore of the Tarkir clans because it shows the wedge color philosophies. Which set is the lore counterpart for arc color philosophies: Alara or New Capenna?
I would not put either as the counterpart philosophy, as they're not the same kinds of things.
Alara's shards are locations, not factional ideals.
New Capenna is the shards through the lens of crime families, which doesn't really do it either.
Ugin has feathery wings, which is really cool vs considering the dichotomy with Bolas, but he wasn’t planned as Bolas’ bro when the original design was made, so why the feathery wings?
I assume because they looked cool and distinguished him from Bolas. He was always meant to be a contrast to Bolas, just not his twin.
What are political relations on Tarkir? Between the world guide, the stories, and the cards, I'm getting mixed vibes between "we're all unique cultures; maybe we can respect each other" and "if you're not wearing our colors & you step on our land we'll kill you".
I will say that people have wildly misunderstood the PW Guide building out the internal culture of each clan as everything being peaceful and copacetic between clans.
The clans are always in a state of fragile relations. Border skirmishes happen all the time.
Has Ugin ever interacted with the phyrexians? Does he even know what they are? Wvery time they show up he just isn’t there, so we have never seen them interact to my knowledge.
Not that I know of but it seems like he would know of them. Bolas didn’t think much of them and I imagine Ugin doesn’t either.
In regards to the previous scion of the ur dragon question, I always saw it as the normal physical manifestation of the Ur dragon in a plane when the Ur dragon itself is passing by. Kinda like how the gatewatch had to pull kozilek and ulamog fully into zendikar to get them.
Now that I think about it, the ur-dragon card is fantastic from a vorthos perspective. Just being near it means dragons appear more easily and frequently, then when it actually manifests it spontaneously spawns them :) great design!
Yeah there’s basically no lore on the Scion but that sounds like a reasonable interpretation
Three of the khans are referred to as titles that are not "khan". Fangkeeper, Dragonclaw, and Waymaster. Why not 4? With 4, everyone would have been titled uniquely. It feels lopsisded to have two leaders with the same title.
“Khan” is a culturally accurate title for the two that retained it.
It was not accurate or appropriate for the other three.
Can you clarify if the Spirit-Gem is the same thing as the Gem of Becoming? There is a MTG article from 2012 by Monty Ashley called "What's that Gem" that says the Gem of Becoming is not quite the same thing as the gem that Bolas had between his horns. In the recent "A Storm of a Story!" recap video, Roy Graham calls it the Gem of Becoming, and I also just noticed that in your Visual Guide, you use the art for the Gem of Becoming when referencing the Spirit-Gem.
The card “Gem of Becoming” isn’t literally the spirit-gem (it would be legendary if it was), but the name gem of becoming is sort of synonymous with the spirit-gem.
What exactly is the Scion of the Ur-Dragon? Is it closer to a regular dragon, an elder dragon or Ur-Dragon itself?
It was meant to represent the Ur-Dragon back when they didn’t print cards of super powerful beings. Printing the actual thing makes that awkward, but it’s a part of the draconic essence that makes up the Ur-Dragon.
