Multiverse (Magic: The Gathering)
The Multiverse is the shared fictional universe depicted on "" cards, novels, comics, and other supplemental products. Though "Magic" is a strategy game, an intricate storyline underlies the cards released in each expansion. On the cards, elements of this multiverse are shown in the card art and through quotations and descriptions on the bottom of most cards (called flavor text). Novels and anthologies published by HarperPrism and Wizards of the Coast (WOTC), and the comic books published by Armada Comics expand upon the settings and characters hinted at on the cards. WOTC also publishes a weekly story  (most often related to the plane explored in the current expansion set) in the Magic Fiction column, previously known as Official Magic Fiction and Uncharted Realms. In the early days of the game, the name 'Dominia' was used to describe the story universe but, due to confusion with the name of the plane/planet where the central events of "Magic" occur (Dominaria), it fell into disuse and was replaced. Publication history. Creative origins. The way "Magic" storylines are conceived and deployed has changed considerably over the years. The main premise of "Magic" is that countless possible worlds (planes) exist in  the Multiverse, and only unique and rare beings called Planeswalkers are capable of traversing the Multiverse. This allows the game to frequently change worlds so as to renew its mechanical inspiration, while maintaining planeswalkers as recurrent, common elements across worlds. Players represent planeswalkers able to draw on the magics and entities of these planes to do battle with others. Richard Garfield established enough of this story for the game when it was first published. With the first sets, most of this story was told through the cards flavor text, and because most of the creatures and the keywords were based  on common fantasy tropes (dragons with flying, for example), there was no significant driver for a backing narrative. In some cases, narrative was demanded to help with new gameplay mechanics and keywords that did not fit standard fantasy tropes, but these were still limited to flavor text. The first expansion "Arabian Nights" (1993) designed by Garfield was based on "One Thousand and One Nights" folklore and include figures from that like Aladdin. Pre-revision era. With demand for more expansions, several different teams within Wizards of the Coast's research and development separately worked on these upcoming sets, with the  card designers taking the lead in creating their narratives. Each of these teams had different approaches for implementing that in the cards. For example, the next expansion was "Antiquities" (1994) with design led by Skaff Elias. Elias' team wanted this set to focus on the use of colorless artifacts, and came up with the narrative idea of a battle between two brothers skilled in artifact use at a point in time before the other realms of magic had established themselves. This would tie into both their planned cards as well as help define the differences between the color mana schools  better. Elias' planned out elaborate timelines, but as the set was only 100 cards, most of this was left on paper, giving players only glimpses of the larger picture through flavor text. In the case of "Homelands" (1995), R&D had two writers craft a story first and then worked alongside them to implement that into the cards for that set. Still, few elements of any of these sets were shared save for the common connection to the plane of Dominaria. Separately to Wizards' own attempts at storytelling, in 1994, Wizards gave exclusive licenses to Harper Prism to publish novels, and  to Armada Comics, an imprint of Acclaim Entertainment, to publish comic books. Neither of these were developed in concert with the game and created divergent ideas to the game. "Much of the lore established" by Armada Comics "is the foundation from which the rest of continuity was built. In fact, the idea of 'The Revision' stemmed in part from WotC publishing novels based loosely on many of the stories told in these comics. Some of the details changed (or were 'retconned', in popular fan speak), but for the most part the core of these stories stayed the same". The comics  came to a sudden end in 1996 when Acclaim, parent company of Armada Comics, started to run into financial trouble. In 1997, "two video games connected to the comics, and , were also released [...]. In general, Pre-Revisionist materials are still canon unless contradicted by another source". Pre-mending era. Wizards began to take back narrative control with the "Mirage" (1996) storyline. "Detailed story summaries for Mirage and Visions were available on the Wizards website, covering the events of the Mirage War. But it was with "Weatherlight" that Magic's first epic narrative began". Wizards wanted to try to create a  more cohesive universe with the next major expansion, "Weatherlight" (1997), comparable to other works like "Star Wars". Mark Rosewater and Michael G. Ryan developed a long-term story arc that would cross through several expansions as well as into the comics, magazines, and novels. With the cards, a small team of dedicated writers were used to make sure there were a consistent voice to the flavor text to help emphasize the story elements. "The next four years, from "Tempest" in 1997 through "Apocalypse" in 2001, would follow the story of the legendary Skyship Weatherlight and her crew". This saga was  intended to last the next five years, but several factors came into play by the time the Urza block was released: there was a change in leadership in oversight of "Magic: The Gathering" and the direction it was heading, players were not interested in the lead characters of the saga, and players had found it difficult to follow the narrative from the cards alone. In 1998, a new a four-issue limited comic series was published by Dark Horse. Around the same time, Wizards had regained control on the license to publish novels and comics and they decided to make  the novels the primary route for the story of "Magic: The Gathering" which would tie in closely with the cards designed for the expansion. This approach was used through the "" block in 2003, after which Wizards had found that novels were not a sufficient means to build out the details for cards; novels would be focused on how characters change over events, while the game presented a character at a single moment, and a novel could not flesh out all the other supporting elements that the card designers needed to build their sets without weighing down the readers. Following "Onslaught , the narrative of Magic: The Gathering" took a more distanced approach. Once an idea for an expansion was presented, preliminary work was done simultaneously by the research and development team and by the creative staff to build out the basic gameplay concepts and the setting of that expansion, respectively. Once both sides agreed to that, the two teams then proceeded primarily on individual routes towards their end production. Brady Dommermuth, the Creative Director in 2006, said that "generally the cards provide the world in which the novels are set, and the novels sometimes provide characters represented on cards. But cards  also introduce their own characters that might not appear in the novels. In short, the Magic creative team and the novelists work largely in parallel and inform each other as much as possible."<ref name="ask wizards 07/01/06"></ref> Post-mending era. The pre-mending and post-mending monikers come "from the event known as the Mending, which fundamentally changed the nature of planeswalkers from near-divine beings to mortals with a bit more oomph". During this time, Wizards further transitioned to ebooks as well as having their creative staff write more in "Uncharted Realms", a weekly column on the company 's website. In September 2011, Hasbro and IDW Publishing accorded to make a four-issue mini-series about "Magic: The Gathering" with a new story but heavily based on MTG elements and with a new Planeswalker called "Dack Fayden", the story of which mainly developed in the planes of Ravnica and Innistrad. In total, between 2011 and 2014, four four-issue mini-series were published by IDW. In 2013, Wizards saw that even with continued growth in player numbers, printed novel sales had fallen greatly and ebook sales remained flat, and made the decision to discontinue the larger narrative works  in favor of having the creative team provide story coverage and shipments as of the "Uncharted Realms" column. In 2014, Mark Rosewater wrote: "Unfortunately, the public has made it very clear that novels are not how they want the story told". Clayton Emery, on why he no longer writes "Magic: The Gathering" novels, wrote that after being invited to Gen Con he "arrived to find waiting for me — nothing. [...] No reading, no panels, no chance to meet fans, and not a single copy of any of my books anywhere in sight. Why did you invite me? [...] While there, I did  get to ask, [...] Will you guys promote my work? 'No. If you catch fire with the fans, then we'll promote you.' How do I catch fire with the fans if you don't promote my work? 'Who knows? We don't promote Magic books as a rule anyway, because they don't sell well.' Then why produce them? And hey, you promoted Jeff Grubb's latest Magic book, advertising it on the inside front cover of every DC comic for three months during one summer. 'Oh, sure. His books sell.'" Sam Keeper, for "CoolStuffInc", wrote "I can't attest  to the accuracy of Emery's recollections, but it certainly feels familiar. [...] None of the ebook releases, to my knowledge, have ever been acknowledged by official accounts, aside from that single link to an incomplete list on mtgstory.com. [...] Nonetheless, it's a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy to not promote a product, and then conclude that there simply isn't an audience for it". This approach continued through 2017. Then, Wizards of the Coast hired novelist and scriptwriter Nic Kelman as their Head of Story and Entertainment. Kelman's task was to assemble all of the lore established from  previous card sets and the published novels, comics, and other materials as to create the game's "cosmology" or the story bible that established all the known planes and elements of those planes, the individual Planeswalkers and their connections to others, and other details that then could be passed not only to the teams developing new cards but also to those expanding the franchise with new novels and other content. This allows for highly connected events between the external media and the game; one example established the death of a major Planeswalker in the novel "" that was published just prior  to the release of the new set "War of the Spark", the first novel published by Wizards in several years, with the set containing cards referencing that death. In 2018, as part of MTG's 25th anniversary, IDW began publishing another four-issue comic mini-series — this time centered around the Planeswalker Chandra Nalaar. In 2018, Kelman said:In the early days of "Magic" storytelling, there wasn’t necessarily a lot of communication between different storytellers, nor was there much long-term planning about where "Magic" story might be in 2, 5, or 10 years. Over the years, we’ve  been trying to make the story more consistent in tone and voice, make the Multiverse more consistent from a cosmological perspective, and plan out stories and character appearances further in advance. In terms of emphasis, I think the early days were less about characters and more about lore. "Magic" has been trying to emphasize characters more and more over the years. [...] We’ve embarked on the very exciting effort to gain the same reputation for fantasy fiction that "Magic" has for fantasy art. To that end, we’re now hiring first class, globally recognized fantasy authors to write our web  fiction. [...] On the micro level, we try to make sure every story has at least one character who new fans can relate to without needing to know years of history and at least one character who established fans know and love. On the macro level, we try to plan out sets, settings, and stories so over the course of any given year, there’s going to be something for everyone.In September 2019, the sequel Chandra comic series was cancelled before publication. In November 2019, "" (2019) was widely panned and Wizards of the Coast "canceled plans for the book that  was intended for the game's next set, "Theros: Beyond Death"". Then in 2020, with the "Zendikar Rising" (2020) set, the "Magic" storyline returned via story articles on the official website. A new ongoing comic series began in 2021; the first issue went "for a third printing despite it already being the highest selling Magic comic book in history". Cosmology. The Multiverse is a collection of planes (described somewhat like pocket universes) which are usually named after the primary planet contained within them. Travel between these planes is possible, and powerful beings known as Planeswalkers are capable of traversing between  them. The Blind Eternities. The Blind Eternities is the term more commonly used to describe the space between the planes of reality. Filled with chaotic, raw energies such as Aether, Mana and temporal energy, it is a place where matter and life as known within the planes of reality cannot subsist. (The only exceptions are the Planeswalkers, who briefly pass physically through it when they "walk" between planes.) As such, not much is known or understood about the Blind Eternities. Unfathomable, reality-warping cosmic horrors known as the Eldrazi are said to be born there. Aether. Aether (previously spelled  Æther) is the main type of energy filling the blind eternities, although it can also appear in variable quantities within the planes. It is inextricably associated with magic within Magic's shared fictional universe and the use of the word in several Magic cards implies that casting magic involves channeling and manipulating Aether. Similarly, "summoning" the creatures around which combat and much of gameplay in Magic revolves is described as "pulling (them) from the Aether". Dominaria. The majority of the "Magic" story was set on the plane of Dominaria prior to Mirrodin, encompassing long time periods each detailed in certain  card sets or books. Dominaria is a unique nexus between all the other planes of the Multiverse. Occasionally, such as in Time Spiral, the storyline returns to it. Storylines. Each expansion set of MTG "tells a cohesive story across those sets. [...] Each new world comes with all its own themes, strife, magic, and complications. While some elements carry throughout each block (Planeswalkers can cross into other realms after all) and Magic game designers often returns to past favorites, every block is mostly a new story to hook new players while keeping Magic veterans interested". Additional plots. There are numerous other  smaller plots and subplots that take place in Dominaria and on the many planes of the multiverse of Dominia as well as events after the invasion of Dominaria by the Phyrexians. Reception. In 2016, Cameron Kunzelman, for "Paste", highlighted the Kaladesh storyline and wrote: "This might be the appropriate time to say that the Kaladesh leans very hard into the visual stylings of a fantastical, precolonial India (as one of the set’s key characters, Saheeli Rai, might suggest). While I can’t speak to how successful they have been at synthesizing the cultural references with the fantasy elements, my  general impression is that the gesture toward Indian culture is just that: a vague gesture. I’ve yet to see a card that really felt like it “landed” in that cultural space. At the same time, "Magic" has gotten better and better at melding the mechanical elements of the game with the narrative ones, and Kaladesh is the best that this current formation of the company has done so far". In 2018, Kunzelman, for "Kotaku", highlighted a card from 1993 that was reprinted as part of the 25th anniversary — the newer card now has an elaboration on how it connects  to the Planeswalker Liliana Vess. Kunzelman wrote: "This is the smallest trickle of narrative, literally buried at the bottom of a card, and yet it allows a player who is familiar with the game to grasp onto it and get a huge amount of new contextual information about the world [...]. It’s a really great touch that makes a world that we access through "card stock" to feel like it is a living, breathing world with its own mythology that we’ve been living in for the past 25 years. That’s the real selling point of this kind of  contextual storytelling on collectable cards for me. [...] This story, appearing on the bottom of a card and giving a whole new dimension to a narrative I’m already familiar with, sells me on the idea that all the pieces matter. Each card is a piece of a larger world, and I’m supposed to pay attention to them and connect them up like breadcrumbs". Aidan Moher, for "Tor.com", wrote "Magic’s storytelling has come a long way from its early days. It’s no longer a plain fantasy world filled with generic tchotchkes and epic fantasy tropes. It’s grown  into something way bigger and more expansive than Richard Garfield, the game’s creator, could have ever imagined. "Magic" was my gateway into fantasy—and as an adult, I’m stilled thrilled by its ever-expanding world. [...] It’s also an experience shared by the game’s millions of players—a story of community and hope, overcoming odds, coming together over a shared love of the game, and, of course, blasting dragons with lightning bolts". In 2018, Sam Keeper, for "CoolStuffInc", wrote "It's bewildering that the main website of this game offers no comprehensive list of all the art  books, novels, comics, and webcomics, with new releases coming out this very week highlighted and promoted all over every relevant article. This is the kind of thing bloggers and webcomic artists recognize the need to establish, so why does a company owned by Hasbro have such a disorganized back-and-current catalog? For goodness sake, this has actually gotten worse recently, with the former list of ebooks getting killed in the still buggy and archive-destroying site redesign a few years back. Even that, mind, was a bizarre mess, with single books missing from trilogies on different platforms, and no  mention of Godsend, which had come out a month before this archive capture. Wizards seems to want to turn the storyline, somehow, into a global franchise and brand, but they seem pathologically unwilling to pay for the venture. [...] Certainly, it's hard to feel very invested in a fandom where I feel so little like I know what's going on, what is being released when, and how to actually give Wizards of the Coast my dang money!" Book titles. Wizards of the Coast. Section::::"Dungeons & Dragons". The as a setting for "Dungeons & Dragons" was officially added to the game in  November 2018.