Jodah

Jodah was a powerful archmage during Dominaria's Dark Age and Ice Age, who was present for many of the important historical events on Terisiare during the period. He made a habit of gathering nicknames and epithets along his travels, most notably Jodah the Eternal.In Memoriam - Jaya Ballard
==Description==
Jodah was very influential during the Ice Age in developing and researching the aspects of the color and magic of Dominaria. He was also a major contributor to the return of the Shard to the rest of the multiverse. Jodah looks deceptively young - twenty-five at the oldest despite being over four thousand - and sports a shaggy mane of brown hair.
Jodah can create portals to transport him, and others, all over Dominaria.
==History==
===The Gathering Dark===
Jodah was born in 413 AR, several generations after the Sylex Blast that ended the Brothers' War. He was born into a wealthy family that was a direct blood relation of Urza and Mishra themselves, the family line being founded by Kayla bin-Kroog after the war. This wealthy family resided as farm landowners in Giva Province, previously Argive, and had many notable members such as Jarsyl, his great-great-grandfather. However, because of the ever-shortening summers and the overfarming of the land, the wealth of Jodah's family began to decline. The family finally abandoned their estate when Jodah was just a young man. The Gathering Dark
Originally only able to channel white mana, Jodah was apprenticed at the age of 15 to the wandering mage Voska, who after a year and a half of studies gave him a Reflecting Mirror that would play an important role later on in his life.Wizards of Magic: The Gathering (archived) The two were captured by the Church of Tal, the dominant religious institution of the region, who believed magic to be evil. Jodah escaped and wandered the region for a while, trying to reunite himself with Voska. During these travels, he was forced to hide from a group of goblins by submerging himself in a long-abandoned Fountain of Youth in the city of Pitdown. The magical waters of this fountain slowed down his aging to a crawl, although it would be years before anyone noticed.
Eventually, Jodah learned that Voska had been executed by the Church, and decided to travel alongside another mage, Sima, to the City of Shadows. Halfway through the voyage, Jodah was captured by Merfolk, who traded him to the <c>Rag Man</c>, in exchange for the Coral Helm. The Rag Man took Jodah through one of the safe havens to the Conclave of Mages. Confused by these events, but happy to have found a group of fellow mages who could teach him, Jodah succeeded in the test that Mairsil, the ruler of the Conclave, had set for him, and enrolled in this secluded community.
Unbeknownst to him, Jodah had become part of the intrigue among powerful wizards. The Rag Man had been sent by Lord Ith, the former ruler of the Conclave, whom Mairsil had imprisoned over the Bottomless Pit located under the building. Mairsil himself thought he could use Jodah to open a planar portal to the Dark Lands, a place Jodah's ancestor Jarsyl had supposedly visited, from which Mairsil thought he could gain immense power.
However, all the plotting was interrupted by a full-on assault by the Church of Tal. Alongside Sima, who had tracked him down after his kidnapping, Jodah was led to Ith's prison by the Rag Man. Jodah freed the old mage, only to see Ith, who had been driven insane by his time over the Pit, go into a murderous rampage that resulted in the death of Mairsil and the Rag Man. In the end, Jodah managed to use the mirror Voska had given him to make Ith come to his senses. Even with his sanity returned, Ith still intended to cause the Fall of the Conclave of Mages, and the wizard chased any remaining mages from the building and proceeded to tear it apart. With Ith deciding to travel the land alone, the mages followed Jodah and Sima to the City of Shadows.
===Archmage of the Unseen===
Jodah thrived in the City of Shadows, eventually becoming the Archmage and marrying Sima. However, the fountain he bathed in had dramatically slowed his aging, so while those around him died, he remained practically unchanged. After the Start of the Ice Age, he lost Sima and all his other acquaintances from his youth. His grief and despair mounted, causing Jodah to descend into madness. To retain his sanity, he began to store his memories in his mirror, wipe his memory clean, and then restore the memories from the mirror, drained of their emotional attachment. He lived so long that he was granted the title of Archmage Eternal and oversaw the shift from the City of Shadows to the School of the Unseen.Jeff Grubb (2000), The Eternal Ice, Wizards of the Coast
===The Eternal Ice===
Over 2000 years into the Ice Age that fell over Dominaria, Jodah was kidnapped by the cousins Gerda Äagesdotter, his second in command at the School, and Gustha Ebbasdotter, the royal mage of Kjeldor, who were envious of his power. They gave him to the necromancer Lim-Dûl, who imprisoned Jodah in Tresserhorn and muddled his brain with <c>Fyndhorn Pollen</c>, tricking him into believing he was a summoned creature, and forcing him to research magic for him. Lim-Dûl specifically asked for information about Shandalar and on ways to defeat planeswalkers.
Jodah was saved by Jaya Ballard, a former apprentice who never got very far in the wizarding world. However, Jodah had been kidnapped shortly before his regular memory-cleansing ritual. Thus, without the pollen muddling his mind, Jodah was going insane. Combined with withdrawal from the addictive pollen, this caused him to collapse into feverish rambling. Jaya called upon Freyalise to cure him, placing them both in a position of debt to the half-elven planeswalker.
Having discovered the extent of Lim-Dûl's plans, Jodah took Jaya to Kjeld to convince the ruling elite of the danger. This was not easy as many Kjeldorans believed that the necromancer was no threat, or that he was even a possible ally against the Balduvian barbarians, the very people with whom Jodah wanted the Kjeldorans to ally themselves. But Lim-Dûl overplayed his hand; he had the secret organization called the Knights of Stromgald stage a coup. Thanks to the timely intervention of Jodah, Jaya, Gustha, and Varchild, the coup failed, but the threat convinced King Darien of the truth in Jodah's warnings.
The next spring, the conflict came to a head in Lim-Dûl's Battle, a climactic clash between Lim-Dûl's undead hordes and the Kjeldoran-Balduvian alliance. During this battle, Jodah dueled with Lim-Dûl himself, who revealed that he was a merger between Lim-Dûl, a former Kjeldoran soldier, and Mairsil, who had placed his essence into his ruby ring, which had been found by the soldier. The two battled until they were both spent, but Jodah was robbed of his final chance for vengeance when Leshrac intervened. The planeswalker, who was the source behind much of Dûl's powers, was displeased by how the necromancer had wasted his armies on Kjeld, as he had wanted him to use them on Shandalar. After cutting off Dûl's hand, thus severing his link with Mairsil, Leshrac took him to Phyrexia to be recreated.
In the aftermath of the battle, Jodah was summoned to Fyndhorn by Freyalise, who had placed his mirror into the <c>Ice Cauldron</c> as payment for his debt. The mirror was used to reflect the world's true state to itself during the World Spell that ended the Ice Age, and Jodah was forced to disperse the effect of the spell through the safe havens, destroying them all. Freyalise returned the mirror afterwards, but Jodah felt she had somehow altered it, and from that moment on he did not dare to use it again.
===Shattered Alliances===
Twenty years later, Jodah was again visited by Jaya, who showed him a shriveled, severed hand: the hand of Lim-Dûl and the ring finger were missing. Fearing that the ring containing Mairsil/Dûl's essence could thus take over a powerful lord or wizard and wreak destruction, the reunited duo set out to find it. During their travels, Jodah learned that Jaya had changed in the years he had not seen her.
On these travels, Jodah once again allied Kjeldor and Balduvia, this time against the forces of Varchild, now a renegade with anti-Balduvian sympathies herself. This alliance would eventually be sealed by a dynastic merger via the marriage between Lothar Lovisason of Balduvia and Alexandrite of Kjeld. This marked the beginning of New Argive.
This eventually led to Soldev, and the Soldevi Adnates in particular. During an audience with the Adnates, Jodah discovered that they had access to the Phyrexian War Beasts that the Soldevi had excavated. Moments after this discovery, Jaya stabbed Jodah fatally, revealing that she had been the new vessel of Mairsil/Dûl all along. The Adnates then used the blood of Jodah (the closest still living relative of Urza, the arch-enemy of Phyrexia) to activate the War Beasts, who went on to take over the Soldevi Steam Beasts that had been modeled on them. They leveled Soldev, and then teleported to the School of the Unseen, destroying that as well.
With no other options left, the dying Jodah used his mirror. He was able to amplify his faltering magic with it and heal himself, but he also discovered what Freyalise had done to it. She had felt that someone near her had the planeswalkers' spark and believed it to be Jodah. Annoyed by Jodah's irreverent attitude towards planeswalkers, she had enchanted the mirror to trigger the spark of anyone using it. But Jodah was certain that he did not possess the spark, and narrowly managed to escape the spell.
Faced with an immensely powerful Jaya/Dûl/Mairsil, Jodah realized that every time he had met Freyalise, someone else had been there: Jaya. After an intense duel, Jodah was in the right position and smashed his mirror in Jaya's face. The energy of Freyalise's spell was released, burning away the essence(s) of Mairsil and Lim-Dûl, and triggering her spark.
After ascending as a planeswalker, Jaya helped Jodah defeat the Beasts that had destroyed the School of the Unseen. Jodah decided, like Ith before him, that the seclusion of the School had not been the right way, and opted not to rebuild. With the surviving mages traveling to other continents, and Jaya setting out across the planes, Jodah opted to spread rumors and lies about himself to hide behind myths and legends.
===Later appearances===
After he disappeared, Jodah made several appearances.
300 years after the destruction of the School, Jodah visited Urza, who had returned to Dominaria. Urza wanted to fight the Phyrexians and their coming invasion but was completely insane. Jodah talked to him, telling him what had happened to the plane in his absence, and played an important role in restoring Urza to sanity.
During the Phyrexian Invasion Jodah was not seen but was mentioned as still being alive.
He eventually returned during the events of Planar Chaos. Somehow, probably by scrying, he had discovered that Jhoira would arrive at Urborg and waited for her there. When they met, he offered to help her in her quest to stop the further deterioration of Dominaria's space-time continuum. He had created a new mirror that was a perfect copy of the one he had gotten from Voska almost 4000 years earlier. He eventually gave this mirror to Freyalise, hoping she could use it to heal the world as she had done before, but Freyalise discarded the item, claiming it couldn't do the job. Although he did not join her for the entire quest, there were definite sparks between Jodah and fellow immortal human Jhoira. They began a relationship, but it didn't work out. 
After all the troubles were over and the time of Mending had begun, Jhoira sought Jodah out. Jhoira told him that he was a different man from the Jodah she had read about, which Jodah confirmed. Whether this means that the Jodah that appeared in Planar Chaos is a different Jodah, possibly one from another timeline, or simply that the stories about Jodah had painted a different image of him was left unexplained.
===At the time of Dominaria's resurgence===
Sixty years after the Mending, the Archmage Eternal is now over four thousand years old. He prefers to hide behind extravagant and sometimes contradictory legends while remaining aloof from the day-to-day affairs of Dominaria. He currently resides at Tolaria West, where he can often be found lecturing. He is content to let the chronicles across the ages describe himself and let those who believe them think they refer not to one mage, but a family or an arcane title.flavor text for <c>Jodah, Archmage Eternal</c>
===Dominaria United===
In 4562 AR, Jodah presided over a peace summit between the Keldons and New Benalia at Oyster Bay to end hostilities in the Ice Rime Hills. The summit was interrupted when the planeswalkers Karn and Teferi revealed the threat of a New Phyrexian invasion and several of the Benalish knights were revealed as Phyrexian sleeper agents. After traveling with both planeswalkers, Jaya, and Stenn to Argivia, he helped fight off the Phyrexians. Travelling to Yavimaya, he met with Meria, the leader of the forest's elves and helped fight off a dragon engine piloted by Rona. As one of the leaders of the New Coalition, he was present and fought in the Battle at the Mana Rig. He helped create a memorial to Jaya after her death, and delivered her eulogy.
Teferi, Saheeli and Kaya resolved to find a solution to the Phyrexian problem in the past, and with blueprints of Urza's time machine given to them by Jodah, installed the Temporal Anchor in Urza's Tower. During his work with the planeswalkers, Jodah entered the pocket dimension within the Starfield Orb, where he found constructs of Xantcha and Mishra, as well as numerous copies of The Antiquities War and many of Urza's documents. He resolved to share the information with Teferi after the completion of his work with the Anchor. However, he was grievously wounded while helping protect the tower from Rona's forces. While recovering, he stayed with Saheeli in the Tower to retrieve Teferi from the damaged Anchor.
==Gallery==
The Gathering Dark.jpg|Jodah on the cover of The Gathering Dark
The Eternal Ice.jpg|Jodah on the cover of The Eternal Ice
The Shattered Alliance.jpg|Jodah on the cover of The Shattered Alliance
Jodah, the Unifier.jpg|Jodah, the Unifier
Jodah, the Unifier Stained Glass.jpg|Jodah, the Unifier, stained glass treatment
==Trivia==
*Adeliz is close with - and maybe the daughter of - Jodah and Jhoira.
*Jodah is one of few people alive since the Brothers' War who can read Thran.
==Story appearances==
Title 	Author 	Publishing date	Set 	Setting (plane) 	Featuring
The Gathering Dark 	Jeff Grubb 	June 1999 	The Dark 	Dominaria 	Arkol, Ith, Mairsil, Rag Man, Vervamon (mentioned), Jodah, Voska, Jarsyl (mentioned), Thargrin (mentioned), Tanar, Delphine, Michelle, Dobbs, Sima, Togath, Fendah, Tivadar, Barl, Lucan, Drusilla, Alex, Betje, Shannan, Ophenia, San-Lo, Dorine, Dervish, Jonko, Orm, Nedastophalites, Remarin, Ingles, Wode
The Eternal Ice 	Jeff Grubb 	May 2000 	Ice Age 	Dominaria 	Arkol, Márton Stromgald, Lim-Dûl, Darien, Jodah, Zur (mentioned), Freyalise, Chaeska, Jarkeld (mentioned), Tevesh Szat (mentioned), Leshrac, Marit Lage (mentioned), Sima, Jaya Ballard, Gustha Ebbasdotter, Gerda Äagesdotter, Belenda Danisdotter, Mairsil, Jonte, Aliana, Shannan, Lovisa Coldeyes, Avram Garrison, Varchild, Arcum Dagsson, Thadior Glandesson, Klausson, Klazina Jansdotter, Kolbjörn, Kaysa
The Shattered Alliance	Jeff Grubb 	December 2000 	Alliances 	Dominaria 	Arkol, Gerda Äagesdotter, Jodah, Jaya Ballard, Chaeska, Lord of Tresserhorn, Ozmar Starkaadison, Glissenda, Tissellia Hannasdottir, Lothar Lovisason, Lovisa Coldeyes, Zur (mentioned), Darien, Alexandrite, Gundarsson, Kartha Shockfist, Koravis Darkeyes, Pova, Varchild, Relj, Karthon, Arcum Dagsson, Sorine Daabson, Mairsil, Lim-Dûl, Freyalise, Xantcha, Ratepe, Urza
Planar Chaos 	Scott McGough 	January 2007 	Planar Chaos 	Dominaria 	Teferi, Jhoira, Corus, Venser, Windgrace, Jodah, Weaver King, Freyalise, Radha, Karn, Barrin, Jeska
Future Sight 	Scott McGough 	April 2007 	Future Sight 	Dominaria 	Leshrac, Myojin of Night's Reach, Nicol Bolas, Jeska, Jhoira, Dinne il-Vec, Venser, Teferi, Radha, Multani, Jodah
 	Martha Wells 	2018-04-11 	Dominaria 	Dominaria 	Ajani, Jhoira, Hadi, Tien, Gideon, Liliana, Lyra Dawnbringer, Rael, Thiago, Shanna Sisay, Raff Capashen, Tiana, Arvad, Jodah, Naban, Thom, Arongi
 	Langley Hyde 	2022-08-11 	Dominaria United 	Dominaria 	Karn, Ajani, Radha, Jhoira (mentioned), Jaya, Jodah, Aron Capashen, Stenn, Teferi
 	Langley Hyde 	2022-08-12 	Dominaria United 	Dominaria 	Karn, Jaya, Jodah, Stenn, Teferi, Shanna Sisay
 	Langley Hyde 	2022-08-15 	Dominaria United 	Dominaria 	Karn, Jaya, Jodah, Teferi, Shanna Sisay, Arvad, Raff Capashen, Slimefoot, Tiana, Ajani, Danitha Capashen, Meria, Aron Capashen, Ertai, Darigaaz, Jhoira, Radha, Jenson Carthalion (mentioned)
 	Langley Hyde 	2022-08-18 	Dominaria United 	Dominaria 	Teferi, Karn, Jhoira, Ertai, Ajani, Jaya, Radha, Danitha Capashen, Sheoldred, Darigaaz, Jodah, Meria, Saheeli, Elesh Norn
 	Reinhardt Suarez	2022-10-21 	The Brothers' War	Dominaria 	Teferi, Jodah, Elspeth, Kaya, Vivien, Saheeli, Jace (mentioned), Chandra (mentioned), Koth (mentioned), Elesh Norn (mentioned), Urabrask (mentioned), Lyra Dawnbringer (mentioned), Windgrace (mentioned), Wrenn, Seven
 	Reinhardt Suarez	2022-10-24 	The Brothers' War	Dominaria, Kaladesh	Saheeli, Kaya, Gonti, Jodah, Jhoira, Sharaman, Teferi
 	Reinhardt Suarez	2022-10-25 	The Brothers' War	Dominaria 	Elspeth, Wrenn, Seven, Chandra, Nissa, Heliod (mentioned), Daxos (mentioned), Jodah, Jaya (mentioned), Venser (mentioned), Calix (mentioned), Kaya, Saheeli, Teferi, Rona, Tezzeret, Ashiok
 	Reinhardt Suarez	2022-10-26 	The Brothers' War	Dominaria 	Chandra, Nissa, Kaya, Saheeli, Teferi, Wrenn, Seven, Gaea, Nahiri, Jace, Jodah, Elspeth, The Wanderer, Kaito Shizuki, Tyvar Kell, Lukka, Vraska
==In-game references==
==References==
Category:Humans
Category:Ice Age Saga
Category:Wizards