M:tG earns its 13+ rating today.
Before we get into the thick of it, a brief note on vampires on Zendikar, as far as I know, from the UR articles and the book Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum. A lot of Nissa's backstory and probably a lot of the Eldrazi lore has been retconned from this time (the book is from 2010), but it stands up pretty well - most of the exposition is from Nissa and Anowon, who don't actually know what's going on, and Sorin, who does know what's going on, has about zero incentive to tell the truth and mostly refrains from correcting their misconceptions via eyeroll or sigh. A lot of the actions that the Eldrazi spawn and their vampire slaves are taking in the book are interpreted wrong by Nissa and Anowon. For example, they see them trying to rebuild a "Eldrazi temple" and replicate hedrons, and wonder why their efforts seem so crude compared to the ancient artifacts and buildings. The answer is, of course, that the Eldrazi never built any of these things in the first place. These spawn are basically the Titans' fingers, reaching out blindly through a crack in the door of their prison and fiddling with the lock, trying to break free.
From
Stirring From Slumber, we know that vampires didn't appear on Zendikar until after the Eldrazi titans were imprisoned there. Many of the vampires are slaves to the Eldrazi, and the horns and spikes that protrude from them are supposedly created so that the spawn have an easier time restraining and controlling them. According to the vampires, a particular vampire, named the Mortifier, betrayed and enslaved the race to the Eldrazi. Nissa spends most of the book suspecting Anowon as being the Mortifier, but Anowon, and later some other vampires, accuse Sorin of the deed.
Nissa spends most of the book completely ignoring the obvious clues that Sorin is a vampire. To be fair, his gothic-horror vampire is pretty different than the Zendikari version. Between that and the fact that it seems very, very unlikely that he would enslave anything to the Eldrazi, it doesn't seem like he created the Zendikari vampires and then sold them off into bondage.
So, where did the Zendikari vampires come from, and why are they slaves to the Eldrazi?
With that, on to
Memories of BloodThis week's story is pretty intense, as you might expect from a group of desperate vampire-led survivors that contains "The Orphans Brigade". Read it for the details, if you wish. I'll sum up. It does have a preview card for
Drana, Liberator of Malakir!
Drana had defeated the attempt to turn all of the vampires of the city of Malakir into slaves of the Eldrazi. Now, though, it's not deception or slavery that they have to worry about - it's destruction. Her forces have long since had to abandon the city as the great hosts of Ulamog turn everything into dust. She now leads a small force of vampires and thousands of mortal refugees, most of which are injured, exhausted, and starving.
They are constantly on the move; the only plan is to survive one more day.
They reach the coast of Guul Draz and see Kor flying in on kites. They are bringing a message from Gideon: the Zendikari are making a last stand at Sea Gate. With the uncountable foes of the Eldrazi, including a massive sire, they can't leave without abandoning the refugees. Drana manipulates and convinces Enkindi and his kor flyers to make a stand here.
Drana has been alive for thousands of years, but her memory is not so long. She feels that, if this may be her last day, she should try to retrieve those memories. Perhaps they will be important to the vampires surviving the war. Drana, half-starved herself, needs power to retrieve the memories.
She gets it. By torpedoing into the massive Eldrazi Sire and sucking the life from its heart.
The spell she casts lets her go back into her memories - and also the memories of the Eldrazi. Or are they the same thing? Drana was Ulamog before she was Drana, as much as any of Ulamog's brood.
Were the Zendikari vampires, creatures of hunting and consuming, created by the corruption of the Eldrazi, creatures of devouring?
We were made in the shadow of our makers.Drana also learns that the Eldrazi are not from here - and by inference, that there's a "not here" for them to be from...or go back to.
The power of the Eldrazi's life-force explodes out and she grows a mass of lashing tentacles. She consumes every last bit of the Sire's energy and the monster explodes. With her near-infinite power, she considers leaving to wherever 'not-here' she's discovered (hello, planeswalker spark), or finding Ulamog and destroying it right away. However, she sees that the refugees are being slaughtered here and, though she says she does not care for them, decides that they belong to her, and her things will not be taken away by the Eldrazi. She lets the power flow into her people, healing their wounds and making them powerful and invulnerable. They destroy the rest of the Eldrazi force, and Drana is left without the alien power.
Using this technique, she could in theory retake Guul Draz, but between the fight to retain her identity against the all-consuming fixation of the Eldrazi power and the fact that there's not much on the continent worth retaking, she orders her people to make preparations to leave for Sea Gate.
This one's real good. Like, probably the best serious UR I've ever read (the one with the soup-pot carrier wins for silliest!), but it's really intense. Interested to see what others think!