Cliff Notes Magic the Gathering History by Patrick Chapin

This was a series of facebook posts made by the one the only Patrick Chapin. I'm pretty sure a few things are a bit out of order, and some of the facts have been simplified a bit, but it's mostly dead on! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, and I really felt like it deserved to be saved.

Did you know that Urza lost to Yawgmoth? Yawgmoth, who had fully corrupted Mishra in the first place presented Urza with the clockwork hell that had been torturing Mishra for thousands of years after his death and Urza bowed to Yawgmoth who then had Gerrard and Urza fight, Gerrard cut off Urza's head. Urza also had 9 Giant titan robots similar to battle tech that were driven by 9 planeswalkers, Commodore Guff, Tevesh Szat, Bo Levar, Daria, Taysir, Freyalise, Kristina, Lord Windgrace, and of course Urza himself.

Like with Jesus and Judas, Urza knew Tevesh Szat would betray him and did not stop him. Unlike Jesus and Judas, Urza responded being putting Tevesh Szat inside a Nuclear Soul Bomb and blew up a continent.

Multani started out as a bad dream that Urza had, but accidentally turned it real after he accidentally slept for years because the dream he was having took on a life of its own. No two see the same Maro, and Urza's was a real jerk (though when he magically sprang into existence, he began looking after yavimaya).

Ever wonder where the gate to phyrexia was?
It was in the Caves of Koilos the whole time!

Urza had a serious psychological disorder from the guilt of kolding his brother and half of tolaria, but eventually Ratepe shocked Urza out of his guilt by pretending to be Mishra after being hired by Xantcha (a Phyrexian "newt" that Urza hired to be his personal assistant). Xantcha and Ratepe end up hooking up before being killed by the Phyrexian Demon, Gix.

Urza happened to be born on day 1 year 0 of Magic (AR). Mishra was born on the last day of that year. They hated their step mom.

Urza was an apprentice once...
...he studied under Rusko, the Clockmaker. (Seriously)

Urza "won" his wife Kayla by winning a contest where the goal was to move a gigantic jade statue across a court yard. Urza wasn't really into girls, but wanted a tome that was a part of her dowry.

Kayla's dad, the Warlord Kroog wasn't going for it, until he realized that Urza invented Ornithopters which really impressed Kroog.

Urza married the chick, took her up to a bedroom, "consummated the marriage," then rolled out, went to the treasure room where the book was kept and spent the night reading it. In the years that followed, he was chief artificer (which he was in to), but he never really got into his wife.

part of Urza's beef with Mishra was that their mom died giving birth to Mishra (and they REALLY did not get along with step mom)

Urza wasn't always a Planeswalker. In fact his "spark" wasn't ignited until he poured all of his emotions into an artifact called the golgothian sylex, which blew up, killing Mishra (who had already been corrupted at this point). As an accidental side effect, the "Might Stone" and the "Weakstone" got blown into Urza's Face, one into each eye. This was traumatic and ignited his spark (plus guilt over killing bro).

After Urza became a Planeswalker, he had his apprentice Tawnos go and tell Kayla bin-Kroog that Urza had died and with her name on his lips. She said "Call, if he had died, it would have been with Mishra's name on his lips." As a result, she wrote a book about the subject called "The Brother's War" and it is one of the most important books in the universe.

You probably realize that Urza made Karn and Karn made Argentum (which Memnarch renamed Mirrodin after he took over and invented Ravagers). What you might not realize is that Karn became a planeswalker when gerrard stuck urza's head inside him complete with the stones that were getting urza busy.

Karn touched the Mirari and Memnarch was born. This was generally regarded as a bad thing by those of us in the know.

At one point, Chainer (yeah that Chainer) got his hands on the Mirari and gave it to his boss the Cabal Patriarch.

A whole bunch of randos get control of it for a bit, like Lietanent Kirtar and Laquatus, but eventually Khamal gets his hands on it and turns it into a sword.

He doesn't know how to contain its power, though, so Balthor the Dwarf is going to teach him.

See the weird thing is that Balthor was just this short guy that kicked it with Khamal some times. Lacquatus got his hands on the Mirari for a second and forced Khamal to kold his buddy. Then, Balthor came back to life, this time defiled as a zombie.

Khamal and the Zombie Dwarf started hanging out again and things seemed ok, but then all of the sudden Khamal was possessed by his sword and killed Zombie Balthor (again).

It wasn't until all the lames in Odyssey block each got a turn not being worthy until Karn finally got the mirari and turned it into memnarch (as I mentioned). He did this by combining it with the body of Karona the False God and doing some Magic stuff.

Memnarch kind of ran stuff on Mirrodin (Argentum) for a while since Karn was off seing the multiverse. Memnarch had quite an afffinity for artifacts, if you know what I mean.

See Memnarch wasn't that bad a dude at first, but became corrupted by some unknown black slime. Word on the street was that that was Yawgmoth's Essence in slime form, but it is all hush hush until New Phyrexia this fall.

Memnarch's main issue was that he had Planeswalker Spark Envy. He was really smart and powerful (considering he was a robot made out of a magic sword/orb and the body of a fake god chick.

He was really jealous that Karn was a planeswalker and he wasn't, so he built stuff like Levelers, Eaters of Days, and Arcbound Ravagers.

Some of his inventions were better than others.

Part of Urza's deal when he was alive was that the Perfect and Pure Plane that Serra had made was becoming corrupted as a result of the dark influences of the growing Phyrexian Hordes nearby.

See, when Urza blew stuff up, he trapped Phyrexia in a "fast time bubble" making them evolve really fast and grow beyond control.

Serra's plane is starting to get kolded and Urza is gonna help the broad. She is really into angels.

Most of the stuff serra is into is kind of wack, like one time she teamed up with this guy Feroz.

They were really into some protectionist type policies regarding the Plane of Ulgrotha.

See Serra and Feroz had beef with Tolgath. Eventually Tolgath gets pissed and uses the Apocalypse Chime to kold all life on the entire Plane.

After this, the Plane was sort of a battleground where Planeswalker would go to fight, since there was nothing alive there.

Actually, let me clarify, Tolgath was the bad guys people, it was Ravi that actually rang the chime.

So Serra and Feroz decide to "Ban" all other Planeswalkers so as to give life a chance to develop on the plane.

This ends up killing them, but at least the Plane got to live on and decide to rename Ulgrotha "The Homelands." Eventually some of them turn into Vampires.

You might be asking about Fallen Empires? When did that happen?

That is the stuff happening on Sarpadia right after Urza killed Mishra. It mostly involves watching Fungus grow and climate change.

On the upside, it was this climate change that lead to the Ice Age, which is generally regarded as when Magic sets stopped being stone cold terrible.

Dark was kind of interesting in that it was when Mortals first discovered the five color nature of mana. It is more of the aftermath of Urza's War with Mishra, just somewhere else and dealing with nuclear winter.

Prophecy details the riveting tail of some wizards fighting some warriors in some random place at the same time that Urza is doing stuff relevant somewhere totally different.

Odyssey is 100 years after Invasion and is mostly about this guy Khamal that kills his buddy the dwarf a lot, gets mad at a squid, and eventually comes to give up "barbary" in favor of tree-hugging.

The best part of Khamal is that his sister, Phage, was a real freakshow. She and Akroma caused a lot of havoc and Khamal wanted it to end which is why he ended up giving the mirari to Karn.

A long, long time ago there were these guys, these heros, these villians. That is legends. The set itself doesn't really have a set story line, but rather has like 100 story lines, it was sort of like Future Sight, where we get glimpses of 100 pasts that will be talked about in the future, like Korlash, a zombie that uses Dakkon's sword.

We have of course heard all about Nicol Bolas at this point, but what many don't realize is that Tetsuo Umezawa is actually the only link between Kamigawa and the rest of Dominaria.

See there is this plane where everyone is japanese and Toshiro Umezawa is a samurai that is descended of Tetsuo Umezawa, a legendary Samurai from the old school that someone a long time ago ran into when they were hoping around Planes.

Most of the story revolves around Toshiro and this princess Michiko trying to bring peace, since the living people are fighting with the Kami (a bunch of spirits that seem like bastardized versions of ancient Japanese religious ideas).

Eventually, there is some peace and everyone tries to forget that we ever spent a year on the topic.

Ravnica is this place that doesn't get messed with that much and is covered with a big freaking city.

There are 10 "Guilds" that are representative of each two color pairing of mana. They sign a treaty and for 9,999 years everything is cool.

It turns out the Dimir guild (go figure) want to mess stuff up for everyone. Agrus Kos and Teysa Karlov get to the bottom of it. Not a lot happens, but on the upside the block is generally regarded as the best of the decade and shocklands are printed.

During Urza's situation, he accidentally blows up Tolaria at one point. Stuff is kind of crazy at the time and various people respond different ways. Teferi's response is to leave reality and take his continent with him.

Actually, these two continents, Shiv and Zhalfir end up "phased out" and Teferi wants to fix stuff so he does some experiements. This is the time travel season of Magic and all sorts of stuff from all sorts of times ends up in the story.

In the end, Teferi brings about "The Mending" which makes all the planeswalkers in the universe (except you and me, and other Uber-Planeswalkers from the FAR FUTURE) much weaker, so weak in fact that they are printable for less than 12 mana.

They are still pretty good though.

Lorwyn is just this place where everyone is asleep but doesn't realize it or ever suspect how weird it is that it is always sunny and happy. The Faeries, led by Oona, are running a Matrix style situation. Figures.

Rhys is the protagonist (of sorts) and works for Colfenor. Ashling, the Pilgram thinks he is the good guy.

Shadowmoor happens because of the aurora and now everything is dark and sad. no one remembers the way things were. was the other a dream and this real or vice versa?

Rhys and Maralan are the only two who remember the other world.

Trees turn out to be very important.

A little while later, Ajani's brother is killed and he decides to avenge that death.

This brings him to hunt Nicol Bolas, who happened to be busy merging the five shattered planes of Alara. See on Alara, they think progenitus is God, but he is really just this five headed hydra with protection from "The Everything."

Nicol Bolas merges the planes in a bid to regain his lost power. He kills Sarkan Vol and Ajani Vegeant, Elspeth, and Tezz manage to take him down.

While all this is going on, Garruk and Jace and Liliana are busy with some Zendikar related stuff that will eventually lead to the Rise of the Eldraza.

The Eldrazi are really big demi-gods that are presumably more than just fatties.

They like to eat people for food and they have been extinct for thousands of years though people, especially Mono-G players still worship them.

In a mostly unrelated matter, Princess Shaharazad tells a lot of stories so that she won't be killed.

The End.