Disclaimer: This article is completely unofficial and is made by a fan, not the Magic Gathering organization.
Magic the Gathering is one of the most famous trading card games in the world, and is beloved by many for various reasons, whether it be the actual game, the art, the characters, or the music (yes, they made music for a card game). However, one of the aspects that is often underappreciated is the story and worldbuilding. MTG has had over 30 years to develop its world(s), and while it has taken a slight turn for the worse recently, the older material is still just as good, and even the newer material is still worth reading.
To give a bit of background information, MTG’s story revolves around its multiverse, divided into different universes called planes, and the space between them called the Blind Eternities. Very little is known about the Blind Eternities, but by contrast, a great many things are known about the planes. Planes vary wildly in their size and content, from the massive, multi-layered planet of Mirrodin, to the endless desert of Amonkhet, to Ravnica, which is an entire plane the size of a single city. Certain beings throughout the multiverse are given the unique ability to travel between planes through a process called planeswalking, thus they are called the planeswalkers. In the early days of MTG’s story, planeswalkers were rare, and were so powerful that they were effectively interdimensional gods, able to hold off multiversal threats single handedly. However, that changed when several planeswalkers caused an event called The Mending, which had several ramifications throughout the multiverse, one of which was reducing nearly all planeswalkers to little more than normal people with the ability to planeswalk. Now, with all that out of the way, we can finally talk about the story.
The first two sets of Magic the Gathering had literally no story, so we’ll jump to the third set, Antiquities. Antiquities takes place on one of Magic’s most influential planes, Dominaria. Dominaria is a land that has been defined by the various factions and locations that dot the continent of Terisiare, such as the valiant knights of Benalia and the fiery, dragon-scorched mountains of Shiv. The story of Antiquities is a story of two brothers, Urza and Mishra, both artificers who found separate halves of a key for the gate to the plane of Phyrexia. Unfortunately, envy creeps into the minds of both brothers, causing them to each covet the other’s key and plot to take it for themselves. Both brothers would also eventually gain control of armies with the power to dominate the entirety of Terisiare, leading this simple conflict between siblings to escalate into a continent-wide war. The war, known colloquially as the Antiquities War or the Brothers’ War, would rage on for years and bring ruin to all of Terisiare, until Urza chose to bring it to an absolute end by detonating an artifact known as the Golgothian Sylex. The Sylex is essentially a high-fantasy nuclear bomb, and its explosion obliterated almost all of both armies and sent the entire content into a nuclear winter that would last centuries.
Antiquities may be a somewhat simple story, but it’s vital for laying the groundwork for all the future stories, as it introduces Urza, an incredibly relevant character to the lore, explains why the land of Dominaria is such a mess in the next few stories, and alludes to the plane of Phyrexia. Ironically, even though both Urza and Mishra were consumed by greed to obtain both keys to the Phyrexian Gate, let’s just say Phyrexia is a rather undesirable place to be, and I’m sure neither brother would want the keys if they saw the horrors that lie there. However, that’s a story for another time, so I’ll just end this one here.
