The official discord link if you wish to join the discord: https://discord.gg/j5RKwCvAFu

Support the wiki on our official Ko-Fi page or Patreon page!

User:Cerberusleuth/SORIN: Difference between revisions

From The Codex
VisualWikitext
 
(24 intermediate revisions by the same user not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
[[File:Fd11bf6fd7014f409d361654be509053--mtg-art-character-ideas.jpg|thumb|600px]]
<tabber>
{{Quote|I have seen entire civilizations rise and fall. You mortals are but dust to me.}}
|-|Human=
[[File:YawgmothRender.png|thumb|500px]]
|-|God=
[[File:Godmoth.png|center|750px]]
</tabber>
<tabber>
|-|1=
{{Quote|From void evolved Phyrexia. Great Yawgmoth, Father of Machines, saw its perfection. Thus the Grand Evolution began. Great Yawgmoth moves across the seas of shard and bone and rust. We exalt him in life, in death, and in between. Father of Machines! Your filigree gaze carves us, and the scars dance upon our grateful flesh. Ash is our air, darkness our flesh. Let weak feed on weak, that we may divine the nature of strength. Unskin these impure bodies, Great Yawgmoth, that flesh may welcome your blessings.|The Phyrexian Scriptures}}
|-|2=
{{Quote|I am greater than rain and nourishment. I am glistening oil and perfection.|Yawgmoth}}
|-|3=
{{Quote|Centuries ago, a mad god offered a simple trade.|''Yawgmoth's Vile Offering'' flavor text}}
</tabber>
==Background==
==Background==
'''Sorin Markov''' is a vampire planeswalker from Magic: the Gathering and a master of sangromancy, a dark corner of black mana specialization.
'''Yawgmoth''', also known as '''The Ineffable''' to his servants and referred to as '''The Lord of the Wastes''' throughout Dominarian mythology, was the god and perfector of the Phyrexian race. Originally human, in his early life, he was a medical genius of the ancient Thran Empire known for his highly controversial solutions to medical ailments.
 
While still human, Yawgmoth discovered an abandoned, artificial plane created by a deceased planeswalker and seized the opportunity to utilize that mechanical world to his ends. He took control of that plane and became its god, naming the world "Phyrexia," but his true dream was to return to his home plane of Dominaria and turn its inhabitants into "perfect beings" under his rule. As the main antagonist throughout multiple ''Magic: The Gathering'' sagas, he is one of the most well-known villains in the game's entire story.
{| class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed wikitable"
{| class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed wikitable"
! style="text-align:left;" |This dropdown contains the synopsis of Sorin Markov’s story. Read at your own risk as you may be spoiled otherwise!
! style="text-align:left;" |This dropdown contains the synopsis of Yawgmoth’s story. Read at your own risk as you may be spoiled otherwise!
|-
|-
|
|
===Vampiric Ascension===
Yawgmoth was born in the last century of the ancient Thran Empire, during a highly politicized conflict between the artificer-aligned elite imperialists and the eugenicist-aligned republican rabble. Due to his fascination with the human body and his view that it was a marvelous machine, Yawgmoth became a champion of the eugenicist faction. Unfortunately for him, after the republicans were defeated, all of their eugenicist champions were blamed and exiled along with their followers.
Thousands of years ago, Edgar Markov was an alchemist. Famine in the land that would become Stensia forced Edgar's hands and led him into dark experiments, areas that he eagerly explored. Making a deal with the demon Shilgengar for the secrets of sangromancy, Edgar created a blood ritual that granted agelessness and the ability to subsist on blood. When Edgar anointed Sorin with the same vampiric state, the trauma of the transformation caused Sorin's planeswalker spark to ignite.
 
===Imprisonment of the Eldrazi===
In ''The Thran'', he is described as being a tall, muscular (due to past rigorous work), human, with thick, dark black hair that created a natural visor for his face. He is thirty-five years old when first introduced, returning from exile to meet Rebbec at the gates of the Thran capital, Halcyon.
Sometime after his ascension in the long distant past, Sorin's attentions were drawn to the Eldrazi, aether-born monstrosities that consumed one plane after another. Sorin decided to ally with two other planeswalkers and trap these abominations. Nahiri, a Kor lithomancer and native of Zendikar, Sorin would use his life leeching magic; and Ugin, an ageless spirit dragon originally from the plane of Dominaria, would use his "spirit fire" colorless magics. Using a special hedron matrix and the plane of Zendikar the Eldrazi were forced into physical form on Zendikar where the three planeswalkers imprisoned them. Unfortunately, this brought great strife to the plane and its inhabitants and ultimately doomed them, but saved the multiverse. The three agreed that if the results of their ritual were ever disturbed, all three would return to Zendikar, and they departed. Some centuries later the Eldrazi managed to free themselves from their prison ethereally but not physically. Unable to depart, they started to consume Zendikar from within. Sorin was called to the plane by Nahiri to assist, but he did not heed the call to assist her, leading to a conflict between the planeswalkers who were once friends.
 
During his exile (from ages thirty to thirty-five), Yawgmoth journeyed the globe, visiting many different civilizations in his ruthless, cold-hearted pursuit of knowledge. During this time, he committed many atrocities, of which the following are known:
 
*He set the Black-Cough upon the dwarves of Oryn Deeps, inciting a workers' rebellion that nearly killed the dwarven king and ended 1,000 years of dwarven rule.
*He turned the Creeping Mold of Argoth into a virulent plague that ate away the elves there. He also kidnapped their priest Elyssendril Lademmdrith and her healers, ordering the elves to pay ransom for their leader and the cure she had developed for the plague. When the elves paid, he delivered to them only sweetened water and 12 dead healers.
*He set the White Death upon the minotaurs of Talruum, just to study its effects.
*He infected the leaders of the cat people nations with rabies, after which they tore each other to pieces.
*He poisoned the human tribes of Gulatto Meisha.
*He pithed and vivisected the Bey of the Shivan Viashino.
 
After five years in exile, Yawgmoth was suddenly recalled to the Thran capital of Halcyon, where the people remained unaware of his inhumane actions. A high-profile medical emergency had recently shaken the capital: Glacian, the chief artificer and technological genius of the Thran Empire, had been attacked and stabbed with a powerstone, after which he had caught a strange disease impervious to Thran healing magic. With nowhere else to turn for help, Glacian's wife Rebbec used her influence as chief architect to bring Yawgmoth back, hoping his expertise in eugenics could find a cure.


Over the centuries, as vampires spread further into human lands, Sorin spent more and more time away from his homeworld, sometimes disappearing for years at a time. Vampires became disdainful of the race from which they had spawned, hunting mortal humans more and more boldly, and Sorin became distant from his own lineage. From his world-hopping perspective, he could see the changes happening within his homeworld. As the vampires gained more and more power, the humans were being driven further and further back, suffering under the boots of his grandfather's legacy, and it would only be a matter of time before the vampires wiped out their former kin. When confronting his grandfather with this newfound knowledge, Edgar brushed it aside, saying they had eternity, or close to it, to find a solution.
Yawgmoth's medical expertise quickly bore fruit. He discovered that Glacian's disease, which he called phthisis, was caused by extensive exposure to powerstone radiation - the very energy source that powered the Thran's advanced civilization. Most of the Untouchables (exiled Thran who lived in the Caves of the Damned, beneath the powerstone-producing Mana Rig) had also caught the disease. Upon hearing this, the man who had stabbed Glacian, Gix, started rallying his fellow Untouchables to rebel and take vengeance upon the Thran.


In order for humanity to survive and to keep vampires from cannibalizing each other once humanity perished, Sorin committed something that forever marked him as a traitor to his race. Borrowing from long-held beliefs about the moon and the afterlife, Sorin forged a warrior who could hold back the vampires and other threats that threatened the extinction of humanity on Innistrad. He named this creation Avacyn and tasked the angel with protecting the plane in his absence. Through her, the magic of faith would create true power to fend off the darkness. She was half of the protective measure he created to protect Innistrad. The other half was the Helvault. So, the church was born from Sorin's act, and while some of the vampires understood, most reviled him as a traitor.
Yawgmoth convinced Halcyon's elders to give him more funding and apprentices to study the disease. The healer Xod gave him the idea to use metals to create a serum against phthisis. When Gix and his supporters came to Halcyon, planning to start a massive rebellion, Yawgmoth managed to quell it by offering free serum to the Untouchables. For his actions, Yawgmoth was made a member of the council of Halcyon and was allowed to make laws to regulate public health. Yawgmoth started sending infected people down into the Caves of the Damned and had healthy Untouchables return to the city, using this to eliminate his enemies from the city. During this time, Rebbec and Yawgmoth started falling in love, although neither of them acted deeply upon it.
===Imprisoning Nahiri===
Unknown to Sorin, the Eldrazi stirred on Zendikar, but Nahiri had to deal with the situation alone. When she later came to Innistrad, Sorin explained that her signal for help had been likely absorbed by The Helvault, but displayed no remorse for his oversight. When Nahiri confronted him with the gravity of his mistake, Sorin became offended and angrily reminded her of who raised her as a planeswalker and advised her to pester Ugin, instead. Nahiri saw this as a betrayal of their bond and chose to physically threaten Sorin. This resulted in Avacyn's intervention, who felt the threat that Nahiri posed to Innistrad. The two clashed, until Sorin called the battle off and banished Nahiri into the Helvault.
===The Ancient Fang===
During one of his rare sojourns on Innistrad, Sorin ran across the interplanar thief Dack Fayden, who had caused far too much of a stir in his short time on the plane, having raised the ire of the Falkenrath line to a frenzy. In exchange for the Ancient Fang, Sorin let Dack and his friends live. Sorin destroyed the notes the walker Sifa Grent had left behind in Falkenrath Keep and told Dack where she hailed from hoping that his problems would take care of each other. He told him of a world even darker than Innistrad; a place called Grixis.
===Return to Zendikar===
Millennia after the initial imprisonment of the Eldrazi, the Eldrazi grew restless once more, and Sorin returned to Zendikar as per his agreement with the other two planeswalkers. However, his fellow Planeswalkers were nowhere to be seen. Unbeknownst to him, Ugin was resting in a Hedron cocoon, after being nearly killed by Nicol Bolas, saved by a time-traveling Sarkhan Vol (Ugin died in the original timeline). Bolas was eager to see who would answer the call of Ugin after the Eldrazi Brood were freed by Sarkhan Vol, Jace Beleren, and Chandra Nalaar. Sorin was forced into action and allied himself with Nissa Revane, an elven planeswalker shortly after arriving on Zendikar. Almost immediately he was beset by the Eldrazi Brood and after dismissing them with a simple spell, he liberated the vampiric slave Anowon and demanded that the two take him to the Eye of Ugin.


Sorin and companions traveled to the nearby Graypelt Refuge to meet with a friend of Nissa's, the merfolk named Khalled, and gain supplies for their long journey to Akoum. Khalled gave them what support he could, including a piece of the puzzle tower Tal Terig so that they could find their way. The trio descended into the Makindi Trench, and after avoiding The Roil several times, encountered an enormous band of Kor refugees. Shortly thereafter, they encountered a Kor of another kind. A babbling Kor woman traveling with a large group of goblins. Sorin and company shared their campfire with the woman, who would only speak in bursts of ancient languages that fascinated both Sorin and Anowon. The Goblins told them that the woman was named Smara and that she was a "witch vessel" for a spirit trapped in the crystal she was carrying. They were also on their way to the Eye of Ugin, and Sorin suggested they travel together.
It was eventually discovered that Yawgmoth was diluting the serum he gave to the Untouchables, claiming a lack of resources. This caused Gix to feel rebellious again, and he started to send Untouchables, both healthy and sick, up to Halcyon. Yawgmoth used this development to attain more funding and complete control over the Halcyte Guard.


Eventually, the mismatched group came to the Piston mountains and Zulaport beyond that. The trio decided to stay the night in Zulaport and find some way to cross the ocean in the morning, but a vampiric death attributed to their group led to them fleeing to the sea. Nissa stole a boat and summoned a massive behemoth to swim the ocean and pull the boat behind it. The party soon regretted their hasty departure, as whatever food was on the boat was soon exhausted and the goblins traveling with them began to vanish one by one. Nissa could not sleep without allowing the behemoth to be dismissed and with no food or sleep, she was forced to repeat her hard-learned Joraga fasting mantras to survive. During this time, Sorin finally told Nissa the nature of their mission as well as admitting to being a walker much like her. Sorin told her that the great gods of the past, and the progenitors of the brood, the Eldrazi Titans were bound beneath Akoum long ago, and it was his mission to make sure they stay that way. The next morning, they approached the beaches of their destination.
One day, the planeswalker Dyfed visited Glacian, wanting to meet the genius in real life, and also to learn about his spark, though she said nothing of it. Yawgmoth walked in on the meeting and managed to talk Dyfed into aiding him. Dyfed agreed to find a plane where Yawgmoth could build his paradise.
When Gix led another large riot in the city, Yawgmoth was prepared. He made an artifact, based on Glacian's designs, to control all powerstone technology in the city. With it and the Halcyte Guard, he managed to stop the invasion and force Gix into complete obedience.


It was a hazardous landing as the companions were to learn. The bays of Akoum were littered with shipwrecks and crystal reefs, but the greatest threat came from the Moon Kraken that ruled those waters. Brinelin demanded tribute from their boat, and Sorin casually killed one of the remaining goblins to satisfy the great creature. That tribute was found lacking, and Sorin had to reveal more of his true nature to the creature. Brinelin remembered Sorin and was somewhat terrified to find him returned after so long, but would not let them pass. Since Sorin's intimidation had failed, Nissa gambled that her diplomacy might work. She spoke of Sutina, who had been friends with the kraken, and told Brinelin of her death. Greatly saddened by the news of his friend's death and discouraged by the return of the brood, Brinelin finally acquiesced to lead them safely through the crystal reefs.
After the city had been rebuilt, Halcyon held a great festival to honor Yawgmoth, but a strange group of delegates appeared shortly before it could commence. They were representatives of the nations Yawgmoth "experimented on" during his exile and they came to declare war on all who stood by Yawgmoth. Faced with the threat of a full-scale war with the united nations, the Thran council voted on whether Yawgmoth could stay, but the votes went 50/50. It came down to the last two members of the council; Yawgmoth and Rebbec themselves, voting together to ensure Yawgmoth's safety in the city. He immediately overthrew the council and imprisoned its elders, as well as the delegates.


The party soon approached Tal Terig, which was surrounded by brood, and found themselves captured by elves Nissa had never seen. They were the keepers of Ora Ondor and planned to sacrifice the group so that their sacred Kolya fruits would grow. In their madness, they had underestimated the brood, and Ora Ondor came under siege by the brood. Nissa and what remained of their party, now greatly diminished to a single goblin who traveled with Smara and the trio, escaped during the confusion, and as they fled, Ora Ondor fell. The goblin, whose name was Mudheel agreed to lead them all to the Eye, for his knowledge of Akoum was better than that of Anowon, but without supplies, the group soon fell into dire straits. They were saved, after finally collapsing in the wastelands, by a water scout who altruistically shared his spoils with the group. Anowon killed the man with Sorin's permission to satiate his hunger which left Nissa aghast. The small band became aware that they were being followed after this incident, and they were finally ambushed by an army of Nulls under the direction of two vampires later that night. Nissa fell during the combat and awoke as a prisoner of the vampires. They told her that they were hunting the Mortifier, who Nissa mistakenly believed to be Anowon. They carried her for several days, all the while leaving Nissa wondering why they had left her alive before her allies rescued her. When she tried to approach Anowon about what she had learned, he told her that she was mistaken and the true extent of Sorin's nature came to light.
Sometime later, Dyfed opened a permanent portal from Dominaria to Phyrexia, the plane which Yawgmoth wanted to make his paradise. Yawgmoth bound himself to the plane within its core, becoming a god while staying there. He started to bring phthisis patients to Phyrexia, where they were implanted with empty powerstones that drained away their sickness. The patients slowly began to evolve as well, growing longer, thinner, stronger, and faster. Yawgmoth hid the two halves of the powerstone Dyfed cracked to power the portal inside Glacian's wounds.


Once the group arrived at the Eye of Ugin, Sorin's plans abruptly changed from what Nissa had promised. Instead of helping Sorin reinforce the spell containing the Eldrazi, she shattered the main Hedron and released the enchantment imprisoning the titans. Nissa thought the titans would flee, that they would leave Zendikar far behind them. She was wrong, and Sorin washed his hands of the foolish elf and the entire plane, choosing to go about his own business once more since Nissa wouldn't heed his instructions.
Yawgmoth fared quite well while warring with the alliance of nations against him. Using the Halcyte Guard, soldiers mutated in Phyrexia, and stonechargers, he could overcome any army that stood against him. Even when Dyfed turned on him, he did not give in. When she was stunned at the horror Phyrexia had become, he stabbed her in the back of the head with a powerstone dagger, disabling the planeswalker, hoping to dissect her and learn what she had that enabled her to planeswalk. Rebbec removed the powerstone however, mercy-killing Dyfed.
===Fall of Thraben===
Sorin returned to the dark world of Innistrad after the debacle on Zendikar. What he found upon his return shocked him. While away, his guardian, his hopes made flesh, had vanished. Now, the world he sought to protect so long ago has turned on itself, tearing apart the institutions Sorin himself had helped to establish. With only grim determination, Sorin began searching for his lost angel, slaying any who would stand in the way of his answers. He found the capital of Gavony ransacked and no answers for his trouble.


His search suddenly stalled when he ran across the anarchistic Tibalt and was forced to deal with the young planeswalker. Tibalt opposed every authority that held the world together, and despite the woes befalling his world, Sorin knew Tibalt posed a significant threat if left unchecked. By the time the upstart had been dealt with, the problem of his missing angel had seemed to solve itself, leaving Sorin no further obligations on the plane. Sorin's interests now turn to a greater threat: that of the recently released Eldrazi.
But not all went well for him. He had used the Null Sphere to filter away the deadly gasses left behind by the stonechargers before they reached Halcyon. When the artificers that controlled it sacrificed their own lives to sabotage the Sphere, Halcyon was destroyed, all its inhabitants fleeing to Phyrexia or being eaten away.
===Tarkir===
====Original timeline====
Sorin journeyed to the plane of Tarkir, guided by visions of a dark oracle. He sought to solve the mystery of what actually became of Ugin and why the dragon did not appear on Zendikar when the time came. With the help of an enthralled Temur warrior, Sorin went into Ugin's Domain. He learned that not only were dragons extinct on Tarkir but that Ugin was dead and his bones were covered by ancient magic. Unbeknownst to Sorin, Ugin had died long ago at the hands of Nicol Bolas.
====New timeline====


Sorin journeyed to the plane of Tarkir, guided by visions of a dark oracle. He sought to solve the mystery of what actually became of Ugin and why the dragon did not appear on Zendikar when the time came. With the help of an enthralled Atarka warrior, Sorin traveled to Ugin's hedron cocoon. Sorin awakened Ugin from his slumber and informed him of the freed Eldrazi. Ugin thanked Sorin for releasing him, and instructed Sorin to find Nahiri, warning the vampire that he did "not wish to see your face without hers."
Yawgmoth had planned to stay in Phyrexia for a while and emerge again when the death cloud had lifted, but Rebbec had finally seen what a monstrosity he was and used the powerstones Yawgmoth had planted in her husband to close the portal between Phyrexia and Dominaria, locking Yawgmoth and his followers out for all eternity.


A furious Sorin then left without comment musing that things were easier when he only had his own world to worry about.
Or so she hoped.
===Shadows over Innistrad===
Upon his return, Sorin found Markov Manor in ruins, twisted into impossible shapes, its inhabitants embedded in the masonry. Nahiri had left this declaration in stone as a warning of her vengeance. Realizing his past had come back to haunt him, he hoped to gather the aid of the other vampires to confront the threat to Innistrad. A difficult task, because he was shunned by his own kind. His search brought him to the remote estate of the powerful Olivia Voldaren, to entreat her aid in calling the bloodline.


In order to secure the help of the other vampires in battling Nahiri and reclaiming Markov Manor, Sorin reluctantly agreed to destroy Avacyn. He was just in time to save Jace Beleren and Tamiyo from being overcome by Avacyn in Thraben Cathedral. Though, when he saw Avacyn was intent on their destruction, he politely offered to let her kill them before they had their talk. Upon speaking with his creation, he saw the depths of her madness and how Nahiri had turned his most precious creation against him. And despite the deal Sorin had made with Olivia Voldaren, he initially tried to reason with his angel, to take her down to the cathedral's cellar, where he could cleanse her mind of madness. Avacyn, in a moment of lucidity, blamed him for what happened, for having her made weak and corruptible so that she could be turned against the innocent. She condemned him as Innistrad's greatest evil, believing that he, her creator, was responsible for everything that she could do, and therefore was responsible for her madness. They fought a battle that nearly tore the cathedral apart. In the end, Sorin overpowered Avacyn, draining her blood and slamming her body through the chapel floor, all the way down to the cellar. There, he once again pleaded with her, offering to make her anew and cleanse her mind. But whether due to her madness or a personal revelation about her own nature, Avacyn refused, stating that "If I am not the daughter you want...then we must battle again, and again, forever. For I will never yield. I am no monster's instrument. I will not be altered by the likes of you." And so, one thousand years after creating Avacyn to maintain the balance between humans and the supernatural, Sorin was forced to unmake his corrupted guardian in the same spot where she was born. Head bowed with anguished regret, he looked away as he dissipated his progeny into an ashen cloud. With Avacyn's destruction, the last of Sorin's magical protections woven over Innistrad was broken.
For ages, Yawgmoth continued to alter the Thran that had come to Phyrexia while fleeing the fallout of the stonechargers, transforming them into the first true Phyrexians. Using planar portals, the Phyrexians journeyed to many planes which they conquered, while they used its inhabitants as raw material for the Newts, as Phyrexians who had not been augmented were known. But Yawgmoth was not happy, for somehow Rebbec had completely locked him out of Dominaria.
Then came the day the archeologist brothers Urza and Mishra disturbed the powerstone sealing the portal while exploring the Caves of the Damned, now known as the Caves of Koilos. Yawgmoth sent Gix, now a fully compleated Phyrexian and a member of his Inner Circle, through the portal as a scout. Gix planned to manipulate the Brothers, who had started a war. Having his minions, the Brotherhood of Gix, infiltrate both sides and eventually replacing Mishra with a Phyrexian, Gix hoped to magnify the war until it had destroyed all civilization on the continent, allowing for a simple infiltration by the Phyrexian Forces built up by Yawgmoth over the centuries. During the war's end, Urza activated the Golgothian Sylex, an artifact so powerful it completely devastated the world of Dominaria. Gix fled back to Phyrexia, telling Yawgmoth of what had happened. Gix's plans to infiltrate Dominarian society via the Sleeper Agents were approved by the dark god, but the first few attempts failed since all the Agents looked alike. The sudden appearance of many people looking exactly similar had caused panic among the Dominarians, who proceeded to kill any they came across. Gix planned to try again, but by then the Shard of the Twelve Worlds was completed. The Shard had been a side effect of the Sylex Blast: it locked twelve worlds from the other planes of the multiverse, trapping many planeswalkers inside, but also keeping the Phyrexians outside. A furious Yawgmoth had Gix thrown into the 7th Sphere of Phyrexia, where he would be tortured for all eternity.


With Avacyn gone, Jace tried to speak with Sorin about why he had destroyed Avacyn. But as Jace spoke, Sorin suddenly realized what Nahiri had been doing and that he had played right into her plan. Promptly, Emrakul arrived on Innistrad. Sorin and Olivia assembled a vampire army and went to war against Nahiri, while Liliana Vess tried to save the populace with a zombie army.
Then Urza, who had died in the blast, but was reborn a planeswalker, attacked Phyrexia. Moments before he activated the Sylex, Urza discovered his brother had been turned into a machine and had gone completely insane, blaming those responsible for turning his brother into a machine for all the wrongs of the Brothers' War. To add more fire to his hate, Urza's eyes had been replaced with the Mightstone and the Weakstone, the two halves of the powerstone that contained Glacian's spirit. Having met the Newt Xantcha, who had been intended as a Sleeper Agent but had been turned into an expendable servant now that the Agents couldn't be deployed, Urza had discovered Phyrexia was responsible and had created a monstrous machine-dragon to attack the plane. He managed to blast a gigantic hole in the plane, all the way down to the 4th Sphere, but then Yawgmoth himself invaded his mind and made him go even more insane. Urza fled and for years he traveled from plane to plane, the Phyrexians always on his heels, for Yawgmoth couldn't let someone who planned to destroy Phyrexia go unpunished. Urza was eventually healed by Serra, but after he left the Phyrexians even invaded her realm and corrupted it.


Sorin and Nahiri battled in Markov Manor, where he was bested by the Lithomancer and encased in stone. Nahiri planeswalked away, leaving Sorin to watch Emrakul devastate Innistrad. Olivia Voldaren then taunted Sorin by proclaiming herself the new lord of Innistrad. She relieved him of his sword, leaving him to his fate.
Then Freyalise, desperate to be free from the Shard, cast the World Spell, opening Dominaria to Yawgmoth once again. He released Gix from his torment since he knew more about fighting Urza and infiltrating Dominaria than anyone else, but while Gix was initially successful Urza returned to his homeplane as well. He first destroyed all Sleeper Agents and then killed Gix.
===War of the Spark===
Free from his stone prison (it is said that he “carved” or "chewed" his way out), Sorin was lured to Ravnica by the Interplanar Beacon, and immediately became trapped there due to Bolas's use of the Immortal Sun.


When he found out that Nahiri was on the plane as well, he immediately went after her, as not even a threat to the entire Multiverse could persuade them to put aside their feud. Ignoring the battle that raged around them, the two planeswalkers fought each other in single combat.
In the wake of his latest setback, Yawgmoth set about concocting a different plan: instead of infiltrating Dominaria, he would prepare for a full-blown invasion. He started to amass an army and created the artificial plane of Rath, which he planned to fill with troops and then merge with Dominaria, placing all his forces there in a single moment.


However, they later came to a temporary truce, joining forces against the Eternals of Bolas' Dreadhorde. They were among the few planeswalkers who chose to remain on Ravnica after Chandra disabled the Immortal Sun, helping the Gatewatch in their fight against Bolas.
Even as he set his new plan into motion, Yawgmoth continued to send troops after Urza, recognizing him as one of the greatest threats to his plans. One of the more successful ones was K'rrik, a Sleeper Agent who tracked down Urza's academy on Tolaria, where mages were trained and artifacts were built to fight Phyrexia. K'rrik succeeded in destroying the place, but Urza sent the silver golem Karn back in time to prevent this. He succeeded, but the time machine overheated and destroyed the academy nonetheless. When Urza returned ten years later he found that the time streams of the island had been twisted. In some places, ten thousand years happened in a single second, in others, it was the other way around. Trapped inside a fast-time bubble, K'rrik had ages to prepare for an attack on Urza, but the planeswalker eventually managed to defeat him with the help of the nature spirit Multani.


It can be assumed that after the war they resumed their feud.
While the evincars of Rath started to overlay small parts of the plane with Dominaria in preparation for the coming invasion, the artificial plane filled up with beings from Dominaria and other planes on which the Phyrexians could experiment. Among them were the Kor, humans with strange elongated skulls. When the Inner Circle member Croag, who oversaw the progress of the plane, discovered humans with Phyrexian traits in them in Benalia, the truth about the Kor was revealed: Urza had started the Bloodline project, a grand plan to manipulate the breeding patterns of several groups of Dominarians to create perfect warriors to fight Phyrexia. The project resulted in ordinary humans with an affinity for tracking down and fighting Phyrexians, and in the Metathran, genetically engineered warriors with no will of their own, eerily similar to the Phyrexians they were designed to fight. After discovering this, Yawgmoth increased the raids on Dominaria, tracking down the Bloodline results and killing them. Croag devastated the nation of Keld, where the renegade Bloodline researcher Gatha had created humans like Kreig, who were able to severely wound an Inner Circle member. Despite Yawgmoth's efforts, some Bloodline children slipped through the attacks, such as Gerrard, the true heir to Urza's Legacy, a collection of artifacts made for the single purpose of destroying Yawgmoth. The attacks became so frequent at times that they started to play a role in local myths. Stories about the Lord of the Wastes, a machine-lord who waged eternal war on Dominaria, started to spread from Benalia to Jamuraa.
===Midnight Hunt===
Returning to Innistrad, Sorin sequestered himself in the ruins of Markov Manor, grieving for the loss of Avacyn. Teferi, Arlinn, Kaya, Chandra and the Cathar Adeline found him brooding in the throne room of his partially destroyed home. He seemed to be suffering from depression and nihilism lamenting that everything he had done to protect Innistrad had been for naught as all of his safeguards had fallen. He was annoyed upon their intrusion, and refused to relinquish the Moonsilver Key simply out of spite. He declared, with anger, that if his family wished to fall into depravity and hedonism of the Eternal Night after all his efforts to save both them and Innistrad, then he would wash his hands of them and leave them to their own devices as he was now too tired to try to stop them. Arlinn tried to convince him of the good he had done for their world, even feeling pity for the man, and attempted to convince him to see the entire plane as his family, not just House Markov, but she enraged him upon mentioning Avacyn. In his fury, he attacked them, but was stopped by Sigarda, who was called by Arlinn's faith. The angel called out Sorin for how far he had fallen and how he now spends his time sulking instead of focusing on more important matters. Sigarda engaged in a battle with him to buy time for Arlinn and her team to get the Moonsilver Key and escape Markov Manor.


===Crimson Vow===
After many centuries of preparation, Yawgmoth finally launched his full-scale invasion of Dominaria in 4205 AR. Throughout most of the invasion, Yawgmoth remained within the depths of Phyrexia while his minions Crovax and Tsabo Tavoc commanded the Phyrexian armies in battle. Tsabo Tavoc's plagues and shock troops devastated numerous Dominarian nations, while Crovax oversaw the overlay of the plane of Rath onto Dominaria, bringing millions of additional Phyrexian soldiers and monstrosities to assault the beleaguered world.
After the falling of the Eternal Night, the Gatewatch once again approached Sorin for help. After his grandfather agreed to marry Olivia Voldaren, he realized that Innistrad was once again doomed to be bled dry in a couple of years.


Sorin teamed up with the Gatewatch to “crash” the wedding, but when guards stopped the rest of the group from entering the Voldaren estate due to the rest of the party lacking an invitation, he was forced to enter on his own. He made his way through the estate with a group of guards behind him, being mocked and laughed at as he did so, until he finally reached Olivia. Olivia greeted him as she had his grandfather's coffin brought in, and hastily began to awaken him with her blood. Sorin, enraged by this, realized that he did not wish for his grandfather to be hurt, and made an attempt to stop her, but ended up being stopped when he was overwhelmed by guards armed with holy chains that they wrapped around his throat and dragged him away with.
Yet even as Phyrexia wore down Dominaria’s nations, the defenders managed to fight for months on end, delaying Phyrexia’s victory. In the face of continued resistance, Yawgmoth became convinced that his ultimate foe was not Urza, but the living spirit of Rebbec herself, who he believed had somehow survived the destruction of the Thran and ascended to become the Dominarian worldsoul, Gaea. As Dominaria struggled, Yawgmoth sensed Rebbec resisting him even still, determined to shut him out of Dominaria for eternity.


When his grandfather emerged from the coffin, Sorin attempted to warn his grandfather that he was being controlled, but is ignored and instead dismissed by his charmed grandfather for “ruining the festivities”. Sorin watched in horror as he is released, and one by one, his relatives came up to and greet him, kissing him on the cheeks, although they did not speak to him, as “talking with Sorin always ruined the mood in Markov Manor.”
In the last hours of the war, Yawgmoth finally returned to Dominaria for the first time in 9000 years. He did so in the form of a black, world-spanning death cloud that killed Dominaria's defenders and resurrected them to fight for Phyrexia.


During the exchange of vows between Olivia and Edgar, Sorin attacked Olivia. At the same moment, Katilda's spirit manifested by coming out of the Key. Katilda used her powers to free the angel Sigarda from her prison. Being freed, Sigarda exploded her angelic aura in a fury that caused the surrounding stained glass to shatter, hurting or killing many wedding guests. Olivia and Edgar were not severely injured.
But there was still hope for the plane: even as Yawgmoth's black spirit wrapped around the entire world and prepared to crush it in his grasp, Urza and Gerrard hovered high overhead in the skyship Weatherlight, the main part of the Legacy. They punctured the Null Moon itself and collected the white mana it had been gathering there for millennia, ever since the Thran artificers of old had launched it into the sky and caused Yawgmoth's first defeat. Yawgmoth tried to flee back to Phyrexia, but the Stone Druids had activated the volcano under the Stronghold, covering the only remaining portal to Phyrexia in deep magma. Yawgmoth was hurt by the white mana but survived. Seeing the Weatherlight transfigured and wreathed in beaming white mana like a divine being, Yawgmoth no longer recognized it as Urza's skyship but instead perceived it to be the soul of Rebbec, the protector of Dominaria and his opposite. Resolving to possess and destroy Rebbec at last, Yawgmoth summoned a storm of giant black tentacles that erupted from the black clouds and attacked the Weatherlight. Undeterred, Gerrard took out Urza's gemstone eyes - the two halves of the powerstone that had locked out Yawgmoth and contained the spirit of Glacian - and placed them in the cavities in Karn's chest, completing the Legacy. The exact working of the Legacy device is unknown, but it created a sentient light that exploded from the Weatherlight and dissolved Yawgmoth's death-cloud form, killing him at last.


To escape Sigarda’s ensuing wrath, Edgar fled into the manor’s sanguitorium. He was confronted by Sorin, and the two came to blows as they hurled insults and viciously attacked one another. During their struggle, Edgar expressed disappointment in Sorin’s naivety and wasted potential. Sorin struggled to understand his grandfather’s careless views and experienced flashbacks to the time of their family’s descent into vampirism. As if continuing his fall from grace, Sorin came back to his senses to find Edgar standing above him and looking down in disgust.
101 years later, the godlike being Karona was looking for other beings like her. She first summoned a "god" for each color of magic, and the black one appeared to be Yawgmoth. Later she traveled across the planes and ended up in Phyrexia, devastated by the Nine Titans, but still holding together. There she met a disembodied voice claiming to be Yawgmoth, suggesting that he was still alive and needed her help to rebuild.


Sorin had fallen into one of the sanguitorium blood pits and continued to reflect upon the past as he slowly sank into its depths. He eventually regained focus, drinking in the blood that engulfed him which healed his wounds. Emerging with renewed power, Sorin picked up a greatsword as he set out to put an end to his grandfather’s foolish endeavors. Sorin found Edgar in the main ballroom in the process of attacking Teferi but intervened and quickly defeated him. Rather than killing Edgar, Sorin showed mercy and ordered him to leave. In the aftermath, Sorin seemed to acknowledge the connection between him and the other planeswalkers and their inherent desire to travel and explore.
However, subsequent canon sources have explicitly confirmed Yawgmoth's death, and given Karona's unstable nature, this supposed encounter was likely just a manifestation of her warped psyche. Alternatively, the whispering voice might have been a lingering echo or faded memory of the dead god's former power in Phyrexia. Given Karona's near-omnipotence and unique power to shape reality, it's conceivable that she alone might have been able to resurrect Yawgmoth and restore his broken plane had she truly wished. In any case, she declined to do so, recoiling in horror from Phyrexia and fleeing its shattered husk.
|}
|}
[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Sorin_Markov Credit to the MtG Wiki]
==Statistics==
==Statistics==
'''Key:''' '''Current''' | '''Before the Mending'''
'''Key''': '''Human''' | '''God'''


'''[[Tiering System|Tier]]:''' At least '''High 8-C''', '''higher''' with the Parasite Blade and the Ancient Fang | '''Low 1-C'''
'''[[Tiering System|Tier]]:''' | At least '''2-A'''


'''Name:''' Sorin Markov, the Mirthless, Grim Nemesis, Imperious Bloodlord, Lord of Innistrad, Solemn Visitor, Vampire Lord, Vengeful Bloodlord
'''Name:''' Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Father of Machines, the Ineffable, Lord of the Wastes


'''Origin:''' [[Magic: the Gathering]]
'''Origin:''' [[Magic: the Gathering]]
Line 87: Line 93:
'''Sex:''' Male
'''Sex:''' Male


'''Age:''' Over 6000 years old
'''Age:''' 30-35 when first introduced, at least 9,205 at the time of his destruction
 
'''[[Status]]''': '''Deceased''' (Completely obliterated by the Legacy Weapon)


'''Classification:''' Vampire Planeswalker, Sangromancer, Bloodlord
'''[[Alignment]]''':
 
'''Classification:''' Human Cleric, Physician, Scientist, Madman | Phyrexian God, Spirit, Embodiment of Black Mana


'''[[Dimensionality]]:''' '''3-D''' | '''Unknown'''
'''[[Dimensionality]]:''' '''3-D''' | '''Unknown'''


'''[[Attack Potency]]:''' At least '''Large Building level''' (As a planeswalker who lived prior to the mending, he should be superior to other planeswalkers, such as [[Tezzeret]] and [[Xenagos]]. Defeated Avacyn, [https://pastebin.com/4RpmLdGX slamming her through the floor of Thraben Cathedral] in the process, which is a [https://imgur.com/a/6j53AK5 massive building]. [https://pastebin.com/0FiKrfae His voice knocked down a massive Eldrazi, turning it into a heap of blood]), '''higher''' with the Parasite Blade and the Ancient Fang (Both [[Durability Negation|ignore durability]]) | '''Low Complex Multiverse level''' ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080926101613/http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=magic/planeswalkers/week1 Able to create and seal rifts that expand across the multiverse] [https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/details.aspx?name=Retether and infinite time streams]. A Time Stream act as an additional time dimension for a multiverse, thus meaning infinite "multiverses" exist that each have an [https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/797643814138544191/829508267129831444/image0.png uncountably] [https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/you-are-planeswalker-2008-07-25 infinite universes] that are "beyond measure" within them. Merely using magic along other Oldwalkers caused the multiverse to become unstable)
'''[[Attack Potency]]:'''  


'''[[Durability]]:''' At least '''Large Building level''' ([https://pastebin.com/2XydD4A8 Unfazed by falling through the cathedral]. [https://pastebin.com/uVUEedar Survived Avacyn slamming him into marble, glass, and several other debree], which [https://pastebin.com/Xt62V7zp destroyed its structures, causing the roof to collapse]. [https://pastebin.com/CC4iAqV2 Can tank attacks from Edgar]) | '''Low Complex Multiverse level'''
'''[[Durability]]:'''  


'''[[Striking Strength]]:''' At least '''Large Building Class''' | '''Low Complex Multiversal'''
'''[[Striking Strength]]:'''  


'''[[Lifting Strength]]:''' | '''Extra-Temporal'''
'''[[Lifting Strength]]:'''  


'''[[Speed|Travel Speed]]:''' At least '''Transonic''' ([https://pastebin.com/ZPpTMD4B Even while carrying a cultist], [https://pastebin.com/NBgta757 he was able to approach Nahiri fast enough to the point where she couldn't hit him with her lithomancy]) | '''Extra-Temporal'''
'''[[Speed|Travel Speed]]:'''  


'''[[Speed|Combat Speed]]:''' At least '''Transonic''' ([https://pastebin.com/j7PEgUqu Attacked Avacyn so fast that the attack reached her almost faster than the sound of it did]), possibly '''FTL''' (Was a peer to [[Ugin]] prior to the mending, possibly being comparable to him) | '''Extra-Temporal'''
'''[[Speed|Combat Speed]]:'''  


'''[[Reactions|Reaction Speed]]:''' At least '''Transonic''', possibly '''FTL''' ([https://pastebin.com/iE2BYdFa Casually caught an arrow]) | '''Extra-Temporal'''
'''[[Reactions|Reaction Speed]]:'''  


'''[[Stamina]]:''' | '''Limitless'''
'''[[Stamina]]:'''  


'''[[Range]]:''' '''Low Complex Multiverse level+''' with [[Summoning]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080926101613/http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=magic/planeswalkers/week1 When a mage summons a creature, it is pulled through the Blind Eternities by the spell that summoned it])
'''[[Range]]:'''  


'''[[Intelligence]]:'''  
'''[[Intelligence]]:'''  
----
----
===[[Hax|Powers and Abilities]]===
===[[Hax|Powers and Abilities]]===
<tabber>
|-|Current=
{{#tag:tabber|
{{!}}-{{!}}Unique Abilities=[[Superhuman Physical Characteristics]], [[Enhanced Senses]] and [[Extrasensory Perception]] ([https://pastebin.com/ReeXn39d Can sense specific Eldrazi from far away]. [https://pastebin.com/HeFEw73F Can sense warriors from thirty paces away that were trying to ambush him and also were whispering]. [https://pastebin.com/4vrCZgzc Predicted Edgar's attack by hearing his armor move]), [[Precognition]] ([https://pastebin.com/Hsa7szRa Has "prenatural senses" that let him react to a spear thrust coming from behind him right before it hits]), [[Immortality]] (Type 1: [https://pastebin.com/Gq93KrPr He doesn't age]), [[Self-Sustenance]] (Types 1 and 3: [https://pastebin.com/gS1cKGAN Doesn't need to breathe] [https://pastebin.com/EM4guurm or eat])
{{!}}-{{!}}Innate Planeswalker Abilities=[[Cosmic Awareness]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080926101613/http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=magic/planeswalkers/week1 Only planeswalkers can see the countless worlds beyond their own, seeing realities making mundane wizards cower in awe]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20080925124320/http://www.wizards.com/magic/multiverse/Planes.aspx Having knowledge of other planes and the Blind Eternities is something no one else could do]), [[Fate Manipulation]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080926101613/http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=magic/planeswalkers/week1 Able to to "forge their destiny"]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20080913191315/http://wizards.com/magic/multiverse/planeswalkers.aspx Can "carve their face into history]), [[Enhanced Senses]] and [[Extrasensory Perception]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080926101613/http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=magic/planeswalkers/week1 Able to seek out magical knowledge]), [[Dimensional Travel]] (Planeswalkers are able to travel to different planes across the multiverse), [[Magic]] (Able to cast spells, superior to that of normal mages), [[Abstract Existence]] (Type 1) and [[Nonexistent Physiology]] (Type 3: '''Only applies to their sparks''': [https://web.archive.org/web/20080926101613/http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=magic/planeswalkers/week1 The Planeswalker Spark (their soul) is a metaphysical property that is only studied by philosophy and not science, and the spark itself is tied the Blind Eternities and infused with its essence, along with being an infinitesimal small piece of the Blind Eternities itself]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20080913191315/http://wizards.com/magic/multiverse/planeswalkers.aspx Sparks are described to be ineffable]), [[Reactive Power Level]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080913191315/http://wizards.com/magic/multiverse/planeswalkers.aspx Planeswalkers grow more powerful and smart each time they travel to planes from the experiences they collect there]), limited [[Reactive Adaptation]] (The Spark "ignites" upon a traumatic and/or life-threatening situation, although this only can really happen once in their life and can't happen again, unless this is undone and is still able to be reignited), [[Damage Reduction]] (Their spells can prevent far more damage than they can endure), [[Acausality]] (Type 4: [https://web.archive.org/web/20080913191315/http://wizards.com/magic/multiverse/planeswalkers.aspx Planeswalkers are unbound by the systems of the world or fate], [[Biological Manipulation]] and [[Longevity]]/[[Immortality]] (Type 1: Can cast spells for [[Self-Sustenance]] by eliminating biological needs, and some spells allow them to slow or halt their aging), [[Death Manipulation]], [[Sheer Will]], [[Darkness Manipulation]], [[Fear Manipulation]], and selective [[Immortality]] (Type 2: [https://web.archive.org/web/20080916112625/http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Multiverse/colors.aspx?color=black Black is the magic of Death, Fear, Darkness, Ambition, and Amortality. Examples of black spells are tendrils of corrupting shadow, command over the undead, and projection of crippling nightmares into the minds of enemies.]), [[Necromancy]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080916112625/http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Multiverse/colors.aspx?color=black Black magic can resurrect the undead]), [[Disease Manipulation]] and [[Life Manipulation|Life]] [[Absorption]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080916112625/http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Multiverse/colors.aspx?color=black Can summon the pestilence and drain the life of others]), [[Curse Manipulation]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080916112625/http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Multiverse/colors.aspx?color=black Black spells can curse the victims in horrible ways]), [[Morality Manipulation]] and [[Poison Manipulation]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080916112625/http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Multiverse/colors.aspx?color=black Black magic can warp the mind and poison the land]), [[Law Manipulation]] and [[Causality Manipulation]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080916112647/http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Multiverse/colors.aspx?color=white White is magic about Law, Order, and Structure, and is a symbol of Justice and Armor]), [[Healing]] and [[Damage Reduction]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080916112647/http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Multiverse/colors.aspx?color=white White magic can heal and protect]), [[Summoning]] and [[Social Influencing]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080916112647/http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Multiverse/colors.aspx?color=white When a white mage fights, they can summon soldiers and/or make soldiers charge into battle]), [[Conceptual Manipulation]] and [[Death Manipulation]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080916112647/http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Multiverse/colors.aspx?color=white The wrath of a white mage can cleanse the world of all life]), [[Light Manipulation]] (Can manipulate light), [[Empowerment]] and [[Statistics Amplification]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080916112647/http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Multiverse/colors.aspx?color=white Can amp one to fight hordes of enemies]), [[Energy Projection]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080916112647/http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Multiverse/colors.aspx?color=white Can release waves of purifying energy]), [[Resistance]] to [[Mind Manipulation]], [[Death Manipulation]], [[Nothingness Manipulation]], [[Reality Warping]], [[Non-Physical Interaction]], [[Deconstruction]], [[Chaos Manipulation]], [[Energy Projection]], [[Existence Erasure]], [[Corruption]] (Type 3), and [[Transmutation]] (As a planeswalker, he has resistance to the effects of the Blind Eternities)
{{!}}-{{!}}Upscaling from Avacyn=
{{!}}-{{!}}Weapons=
{{#tag:tabber|
{{!}}-{{!}}The Parasite Blade=
{{!}}-{{!}}The Ancient Fang=[[Retrocognition]] and [[Memory Manipulation]] (Holds the memories of everyone that used it), [[Immortality]] [[Power Nullification|Negation]] (Type 7: Can kill the undead), [[Fire Manipulation]] (Able to set things on fire)
}}
}}
|-|Before the Mending=
{{#tag:tabber|
{{!}}-{{!}}Unique Abilities=[[Subjective Reality]] ([https://pastebin.com/tXYX4xQa Dreamt the prison for the Eldrazi titans into existence]), [[Deconstruction]] ([https://pastebin.com/MqXZQSF3 Reduced several Eldrazi to dust my merely waving his hand]), [[Existence Erasure]] (Type 4), [[Sealing]] (Type 3) and [[Power Nullification]] ([https://pastebin.com/VeS52GYH Sealed the three Eldrazi titans, preventin them from traveling to other planes]. [https://pastebin.com/LXeFc1zU Sealed both Nahiri and her magic], [https://pastebin.com/B0K5PqRz sealing her within it], [https://pastebin.com/9LGnmJ5F preventing her from planeswalking or reaching the Blind Eternities, erasing her as a whole, along with her senses outside of darkness]), [[Creation]] ([https://pastebin.com/KQcC77uY Created Avacyn and the Helevault]), [[Forcefield Creation]] ([https://pastebin.com/hWGzPZLH Protected Innistrad by creating a field around the plane, causing it to be protected from everything, including signals]), enhanced [[Teleportation]] and [[Smoke Manipulation]] ([https://pastebin.com/1C6d9MSF Can teleport across Innistrad in puffs of smoke]), [[Light Manipulation]] ([https://pastebin.com/LXeFc1zU Weaponized the light of Innistrad's moon])
{{!}}-{{!}}Innate Planeswalker Abilities=[[Reality Warping]] and [[Space-Time Manipulation]] (Able to create rifts with their magic, which can manifest in both space and time, causing temporal anomalies across the multiverse), [[Sealing]] (Able to seal rifts), [[Irreversible Damage]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080926101613/http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=magic/planeswalkers/week1 Rifts are able to sever the mana from a plane, preventing it from healing]), [[BFR]] and [[Fusionism]] (Type 1: [https://web.archive.org/web/20080926101613/http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=magic/planeswalkers/week1 Able to isolate certain planes from the multiverse, as well as fusing them back. Rifts are also capable of isolating planes from the multiverse]. Able to relocate planes), [[Power Nullification]], [[Light Manipulation]], [[Conceptual Manipulation]], and [[Technological Manipulation]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080926101613/http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=magic/planeswalkers/week1 Rifts are capable of discharging Mirrodin's 5 suns (which are 5 seperate orbs of mana) and] [[Karn]]. Rifts can take away the sparks of planeswalkers and cause them to never be a planeswalker again), [[Subjective Reality]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080926101613/http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=magic/planeswalkers/week1 The rifts allowed Menmarch's delusions to partially substitute for the plane's reality]), [[Duality Manipulation]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080926101613/http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=magic/planeswalkers/week1 The rifts weakened the border between the material and spiritual realms on Kamigawa]), [[Soul Manipulation]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080926101613/http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=magic/planeswalkers/week1 Rifts are capable of causing the spirits of the dead to amass in planes isolated from the multiverse]), [[Essence Manipulation]] and [[Conceptual Manipulation]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080926101613/http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=magic/planeswalkers/week1 Able to fuse their own life essence and concept into rifts]), [[Nothingness Manipulation]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080926101613/http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=magic/planeswalkers/week1 Able to "phase out" certain areas of existence, causing them to "not exist"]), enhanced [[Dimensional Travel]] (Instead of concentrating like a Neowalker needs to in order to planeswalk, Oldwalkers can do it just by thought), [[Shapeshifting]] (Oldwalkers can take on any shape they wish), [[Self-Sustenance]] (Types 1, 2, and 3: Doesn't require food, water, air, or sleep), [[Creation]] (Capable of creating entire planes of existence), [[Chaos Manipulation]] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080926101613/http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=magic/planeswalkers/week1 Their magic is tied to the Blind Eternities, causing the entire multiverse to go unstable]), [[Abstract Existence]] (Type 1) and [[Nonexistent Physiology]] (Type 2: Oldwalkers have no true form and are pure embodiments of their will), [[Regeneration]] (Low-Godly) and [[Immortality]] (Types 1 and 8: Described to be ageless and can regenerate from their spark. [https://pastebin.com/aAHNrVdk Can heal their own wounds subsonciously] and [https://pastebin.com/LXeFc1zU immediately])
}}
</tabber>
----
----
===[[Standard Equipment]]===
===[[Standard Equipment]]===
*'''The Parasite Blade:'''
*'''The Ancient Fang:'''
----
----
===Notable Techniques===
===Notable Techniques===
*'''Sangromancy:'''
----
----
===Other===
===Other===
'''Standard Tactics''':


'''Standard Tactics:'''  
'''Weaknesses''':


'''Weaknesses:''' | The sanity of Planeswalkers prior to the mending erode and care less for mortals overtime.
'''Note''': Credit to [[User:Dargoo Faust|Dargoo Faust]] for the scans


'''Note #2''': Contrary to popular belief, Yawgmoth of '''NOT''' a planeswalker. While he was in the pre-revisionist continuity, this has been obviously retconned and he lacks the planeswalker spark. However, he can travel throughout planes like a planeswalker.
==Gallery==
==Gallery==
 
<gallery>
Yawgmoth Concept Art.png|Yawgmoth's concept art for ''Dominaria''
YawgmothJobs.png|Yawgmoth's Demise
</gallery>
==Battle Records==
==Battle Records==
<tabber>
<tabber>

Latest revision as of 01:05, 7 December 2022

“ From void evolved Phyrexia. Great Yawgmoth, Father of Machines, saw its perfection. Thus the Grand Evolution began. Great Yawgmoth moves across the seas of shard and bone and rust. We exalt him in life, in death, and in between. Father of Machines! Your filigree gaze carves us, and the scars dance upon our grateful flesh. Ash is our air, darkness our flesh. Let weak feed on weak, that we may divine the nature of strength. Unskin these impure bodies, Great Yawgmoth, that flesh may welcome your blessings. „
~ The Phyrexian Scriptures

“ I am greater than rain and nourishment. I am glistening oil and perfection. „
~ Yawgmoth

“ Centuries ago, a mad god offered a simple trade. „
~ Yawgmoth's Vile Offering flavor text

Background

Yawgmoth, also known as The Ineffable to his servants and referred to as The Lord of the Wastes throughout Dominarian mythology, was the god and perfector of the Phyrexian race. Originally human, in his early life, he was a medical genius of the ancient Thran Empire known for his highly controversial solutions to medical ailments.

While still human, Yawgmoth discovered an abandoned, artificial plane created by a deceased planeswalker and seized the opportunity to utilize that mechanical world to his ends. He took control of that plane and became its god, naming the world "Phyrexia," but his true dream was to return to his home plane of Dominaria and turn its inhabitants into "perfect beings" under his rule. As the main antagonist throughout multiple Magic: The Gathering sagas, he is one of the most well-known villains in the game's entire story.

This dropdown contains the synopsis of Yawgmoth’s story. Read at your own risk as you may be spoiled otherwise!

Yawgmoth was born in the last century of the ancient Thran Empire, during a highly politicized conflict between the artificer-aligned elite imperialists and the eugenicist-aligned republican rabble. Due to his fascination with the human body and his view that it was a marvelous machine, Yawgmoth became a champion of the eugenicist faction. Unfortunately for him, after the republicans were defeated, all of their eugenicist champions were blamed and exiled along with their followers.

In The Thran, he is described as being a tall, muscular (due to past rigorous work), human, with thick, dark black hair that created a natural visor for his face. He is thirty-five years old when first introduced, returning from exile to meet Rebbec at the gates of the Thran capital, Halcyon.

During his exile (from ages thirty to thirty-five), Yawgmoth journeyed the globe, visiting many different civilizations in his ruthless, cold-hearted pursuit of knowledge. During this time, he committed many atrocities, of which the following are known:

  • He set the Black-Cough upon the dwarves of Oryn Deeps, inciting a workers' rebellion that nearly killed the dwarven king and ended 1,000 years of dwarven rule.
  • He turned the Creeping Mold of Argoth into a virulent plague that ate away the elves there. He also kidnapped their priest Elyssendril Lademmdrith and her healers, ordering the elves to pay ransom for their leader and the cure she had developed for the plague. When the elves paid, he delivered to them only sweetened water and 12 dead healers.
  • He set the White Death upon the minotaurs of Talruum, just to study its effects.
  • He infected the leaders of the cat people nations with rabies, after which they tore each other to pieces.
  • He poisoned the human tribes of Gulatto Meisha.
  • He pithed and vivisected the Bey of the Shivan Viashino.

After five years in exile, Yawgmoth was suddenly recalled to the Thran capital of Halcyon, where the people remained unaware of his inhumane actions. A high-profile medical emergency had recently shaken the capital: Glacian, the chief artificer and technological genius of the Thran Empire, had been attacked and stabbed with a powerstone, after which he had caught a strange disease impervious to Thran healing magic. With nowhere else to turn for help, Glacian's wife Rebbec used her influence as chief architect to bring Yawgmoth back, hoping his expertise in eugenics could find a cure.

Yawgmoth's medical expertise quickly bore fruit. He discovered that Glacian's disease, which he called phthisis, was caused by extensive exposure to powerstone radiation - the very energy source that powered the Thran's advanced civilization. Most of the Untouchables (exiled Thran who lived in the Caves of the Damned, beneath the powerstone-producing Mana Rig) had also caught the disease. Upon hearing this, the man who had stabbed Glacian, Gix, started rallying his fellow Untouchables to rebel and take vengeance upon the Thran.

Yawgmoth convinced Halcyon's elders to give him more funding and apprentices to study the disease. The healer Xod gave him the idea to use metals to create a serum against phthisis. When Gix and his supporters came to Halcyon, planning to start a massive rebellion, Yawgmoth managed to quell it by offering free serum to the Untouchables. For his actions, Yawgmoth was made a member of the council of Halcyon and was allowed to make laws to regulate public health. Yawgmoth started sending infected people down into the Caves of the Damned and had healthy Untouchables return to the city, using this to eliminate his enemies from the city. During this time, Rebbec and Yawgmoth started falling in love, although neither of them acted deeply upon it.

It was eventually discovered that Yawgmoth was diluting the serum he gave to the Untouchables, claiming a lack of resources. This caused Gix to feel rebellious again, and he started to send Untouchables, both healthy and sick, up to Halcyon. Yawgmoth used this development to attain more funding and complete control over the Halcyte Guard.

One day, the planeswalker Dyfed visited Glacian, wanting to meet the genius in real life, and also to learn about his spark, though she said nothing of it. Yawgmoth walked in on the meeting and managed to talk Dyfed into aiding him. Dyfed agreed to find a plane where Yawgmoth could build his paradise. When Gix led another large riot in the city, Yawgmoth was prepared. He made an artifact, based on Glacian's designs, to control all powerstone technology in the city. With it and the Halcyte Guard, he managed to stop the invasion and force Gix into complete obedience.

After the city had been rebuilt, Halcyon held a great festival to honor Yawgmoth, but a strange group of delegates appeared shortly before it could commence. They were representatives of the nations Yawgmoth "experimented on" during his exile and they came to declare war on all who stood by Yawgmoth. Faced with the threat of a full-scale war with the united nations, the Thran council voted on whether Yawgmoth could stay, but the votes went 50/50. It came down to the last two members of the council; Yawgmoth and Rebbec themselves, voting together to ensure Yawgmoth's safety in the city. He immediately overthrew the council and imprisoned its elders, as well as the delegates.

Sometime later, Dyfed opened a permanent portal from Dominaria to Phyrexia, the plane which Yawgmoth wanted to make his paradise. Yawgmoth bound himself to the plane within its core, becoming a god while staying there. He started to bring phthisis patients to Phyrexia, where they were implanted with empty powerstones that drained away their sickness. The patients slowly began to evolve as well, growing longer, thinner, stronger, and faster. Yawgmoth hid the two halves of the powerstone Dyfed cracked to power the portal inside Glacian's wounds.

Yawgmoth fared quite well while warring with the alliance of nations against him. Using the Halcyte Guard, soldiers mutated in Phyrexia, and stonechargers, he could overcome any army that stood against him. Even when Dyfed turned on him, he did not give in. When she was stunned at the horror Phyrexia had become, he stabbed her in the back of the head with a powerstone dagger, disabling the planeswalker, hoping to dissect her and learn what she had that enabled her to planeswalk. Rebbec removed the powerstone however, mercy-killing Dyfed.

But not all went well for him. He had used the Null Sphere to filter away the deadly gasses left behind by the stonechargers before they reached Halcyon. When the artificers that controlled it sacrificed their own lives to sabotage the Sphere, Halcyon was destroyed, all its inhabitants fleeing to Phyrexia or being eaten away.

Yawgmoth had planned to stay in Phyrexia for a while and emerge again when the death cloud had lifted, but Rebbec had finally seen what a monstrosity he was and used the powerstones Yawgmoth had planted in her husband to close the portal between Phyrexia and Dominaria, locking Yawgmoth and his followers out for all eternity.

Or so she hoped.

For ages, Yawgmoth continued to alter the Thran that had come to Phyrexia while fleeing the fallout of the stonechargers, transforming them into the first true Phyrexians. Using planar portals, the Phyrexians journeyed to many planes which they conquered, while they used its inhabitants as raw material for the Newts, as Phyrexians who had not been augmented were known. But Yawgmoth was not happy, for somehow Rebbec had completely locked him out of Dominaria. Then came the day the archeologist brothers Urza and Mishra disturbed the powerstone sealing the portal while exploring the Caves of the Damned, now known as the Caves of Koilos. Yawgmoth sent Gix, now a fully compleated Phyrexian and a member of his Inner Circle, through the portal as a scout. Gix planned to manipulate the Brothers, who had started a war. Having his minions, the Brotherhood of Gix, infiltrate both sides and eventually replacing Mishra with a Phyrexian, Gix hoped to magnify the war until it had destroyed all civilization on the continent, allowing for a simple infiltration by the Phyrexian Forces built up by Yawgmoth over the centuries. During the war's end, Urza activated the Golgothian Sylex, an artifact so powerful it completely devastated the world of Dominaria. Gix fled back to Phyrexia, telling Yawgmoth of what had happened. Gix's plans to infiltrate Dominarian society via the Sleeper Agents were approved by the dark god, but the first few attempts failed since all the Agents looked alike. The sudden appearance of many people looking exactly similar had caused panic among the Dominarians, who proceeded to kill any they came across. Gix planned to try again, but by then the Shard of the Twelve Worlds was completed. The Shard had been a side effect of the Sylex Blast: it locked twelve worlds from the other planes of the multiverse, trapping many planeswalkers inside, but also keeping the Phyrexians outside. A furious Yawgmoth had Gix thrown into the 7th Sphere of Phyrexia, where he would be tortured for all eternity.

Then Urza, who had died in the blast, but was reborn a planeswalker, attacked Phyrexia. Moments before he activated the Sylex, Urza discovered his brother had been turned into a machine and had gone completely insane, blaming those responsible for turning his brother into a machine for all the wrongs of the Brothers' War. To add more fire to his hate, Urza's eyes had been replaced with the Mightstone and the Weakstone, the two halves of the powerstone that contained Glacian's spirit. Having met the Newt Xantcha, who had been intended as a Sleeper Agent but had been turned into an expendable servant now that the Agents couldn't be deployed, Urza had discovered Phyrexia was responsible and had created a monstrous machine-dragon to attack the plane. He managed to blast a gigantic hole in the plane, all the way down to the 4th Sphere, but then Yawgmoth himself invaded his mind and made him go even more insane. Urza fled and for years he traveled from plane to plane, the Phyrexians always on his heels, for Yawgmoth couldn't let someone who planned to destroy Phyrexia go unpunished. Urza was eventually healed by Serra, but after he left the Phyrexians even invaded her realm and corrupted it.

Then Freyalise, desperate to be free from the Shard, cast the World Spell, opening Dominaria to Yawgmoth once again. He released Gix from his torment since he knew more about fighting Urza and infiltrating Dominaria than anyone else, but while Gix was initially successful Urza returned to his homeplane as well. He first destroyed all Sleeper Agents and then killed Gix.

In the wake of his latest setback, Yawgmoth set about concocting a different plan: instead of infiltrating Dominaria, he would prepare for a full-blown invasion. He started to amass an army and created the artificial plane of Rath, which he planned to fill with troops and then merge with Dominaria, placing all his forces there in a single moment.

Even as he set his new plan into motion, Yawgmoth continued to send troops after Urza, recognizing him as one of the greatest threats to his plans. One of the more successful ones was K'rrik, a Sleeper Agent who tracked down Urza's academy on Tolaria, where mages were trained and artifacts were built to fight Phyrexia. K'rrik succeeded in destroying the place, but Urza sent the silver golem Karn back in time to prevent this. He succeeded, but the time machine overheated and destroyed the academy nonetheless. When Urza returned ten years later he found that the time streams of the island had been twisted. In some places, ten thousand years happened in a single second, in others, it was the other way around. Trapped inside a fast-time bubble, K'rrik had ages to prepare for an attack on Urza, but the planeswalker eventually managed to defeat him with the help of the nature spirit Multani.

While the evincars of Rath started to overlay small parts of the plane with Dominaria in preparation for the coming invasion, the artificial plane filled up with beings from Dominaria and other planes on which the Phyrexians could experiment. Among them were the Kor, humans with strange elongated skulls. When the Inner Circle member Croag, who oversaw the progress of the plane, discovered humans with Phyrexian traits in them in Benalia, the truth about the Kor was revealed: Urza had started the Bloodline project, a grand plan to manipulate the breeding patterns of several groups of Dominarians to create perfect warriors to fight Phyrexia. The project resulted in ordinary humans with an affinity for tracking down and fighting Phyrexians, and in the Metathran, genetically engineered warriors with no will of their own, eerily similar to the Phyrexians they were designed to fight. After discovering this, Yawgmoth increased the raids on Dominaria, tracking down the Bloodline results and killing them. Croag devastated the nation of Keld, where the renegade Bloodline researcher Gatha had created humans like Kreig, who were able to severely wound an Inner Circle member. Despite Yawgmoth's efforts, some Bloodline children slipped through the attacks, such as Gerrard, the true heir to Urza's Legacy, a collection of artifacts made for the single purpose of destroying Yawgmoth. The attacks became so frequent at times that they started to play a role in local myths. Stories about the Lord of the Wastes, a machine-lord who waged eternal war on Dominaria, started to spread from Benalia to Jamuraa.

After many centuries of preparation, Yawgmoth finally launched his full-scale invasion of Dominaria in 4205 AR. Throughout most of the invasion, Yawgmoth remained within the depths of Phyrexia while his minions Crovax and Tsabo Tavoc commanded the Phyrexian armies in battle. Tsabo Tavoc's plagues and shock troops devastated numerous Dominarian nations, while Crovax oversaw the overlay of the plane of Rath onto Dominaria, bringing millions of additional Phyrexian soldiers and monstrosities to assault the beleaguered world.

Yet even as Phyrexia wore down Dominaria’s nations, the defenders managed to fight for months on end, delaying Phyrexia’s victory. In the face of continued resistance, Yawgmoth became convinced that his ultimate foe was not Urza, but the living spirit of Rebbec herself, who he believed had somehow survived the destruction of the Thran and ascended to become the Dominarian worldsoul, Gaea. As Dominaria struggled, Yawgmoth sensed Rebbec resisting him even still, determined to shut him out of Dominaria for eternity.

In the last hours of the war, Yawgmoth finally returned to Dominaria for the first time in 9000 years. He did so in the form of a black, world-spanning death cloud that killed Dominaria's defenders and resurrected them to fight for Phyrexia.

But there was still hope for the plane: even as Yawgmoth's black spirit wrapped around the entire world and prepared to crush it in his grasp, Urza and Gerrard hovered high overhead in the skyship Weatherlight, the main part of the Legacy. They punctured the Null Moon itself and collected the white mana it had been gathering there for millennia, ever since the Thran artificers of old had launched it into the sky and caused Yawgmoth's first defeat. Yawgmoth tried to flee back to Phyrexia, but the Stone Druids had activated the volcano under the Stronghold, covering the only remaining portal to Phyrexia in deep magma. Yawgmoth was hurt by the white mana but survived. Seeing the Weatherlight transfigured and wreathed in beaming white mana like a divine being, Yawgmoth no longer recognized it as Urza's skyship but instead perceived it to be the soul of Rebbec, the protector of Dominaria and his opposite. Resolving to possess and destroy Rebbec at last, Yawgmoth summoned a storm of giant black tentacles that erupted from the black clouds and attacked the Weatherlight. Undeterred, Gerrard took out Urza's gemstone eyes - the two halves of the powerstone that had locked out Yawgmoth and contained the spirit of Glacian - and placed them in the cavities in Karn's chest, completing the Legacy. The exact working of the Legacy device is unknown, but it created a sentient light that exploded from the Weatherlight and dissolved Yawgmoth's death-cloud form, killing him at last.

101 years later, the godlike being Karona was looking for other beings like her. She first summoned a "god" for each color of magic, and the black one appeared to be Yawgmoth. Later she traveled across the planes and ended up in Phyrexia, devastated by the Nine Titans, but still holding together. There she met a disembodied voice claiming to be Yawgmoth, suggesting that he was still alive and needed her help to rebuild.

However, subsequent canon sources have explicitly confirmed Yawgmoth's death, and given Karona's unstable nature, this supposed encounter was likely just a manifestation of her warped psyche. Alternatively, the whispering voice might have been a lingering echo or faded memory of the dead god's former power in Phyrexia. Given Karona's near-omnipotence and unique power to shape reality, it's conceivable that she alone might have been able to resurrect Yawgmoth and restore his broken plane had she truly wished. In any case, she declined to do so, recoiling in horror from Phyrexia and fleeing its shattered husk.

Statistics

Key: Human | God

Tier: | At least 2-A

Name: Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Father of Machines, the Ineffable, Lord of the Wastes

Origin: Magic: the Gathering

Sex: Male

Age: 30-35 when first introduced, at least 9,205 at the time of his destruction

Status: Deceased (Completely obliterated by the Legacy Weapon)

Alignment:

Classification: Human Cleric, Physician, Scientist, Madman | Phyrexian God, Spirit, Embodiment of Black Mana

Dimensionality: 3-D | Unknown

Attack Potency:

Durability:

Striking Strength:

Lifting Strength:

Travel Speed:

Combat Speed:

Reaction Speed:

Stamina:

Range:

Intelligence:

Powers and Abilities

Standard Equipment

Notable Techniques

Other

Standard Tactics:

Weaknesses:

Note: Credit to Dargoo Faust for the scans

Note #2: Contrary to popular belief, Yawgmoth of NOT a planeswalker. While he was in the pre-revisionist continuity, this has been obviously retconned and he lacks the planeswalker spark. However, he can travel throughout planes like a planeswalker.

Gallery

  • Yawgmoth's concept art for Dominaria

    Yawgmoth's concept art for Dominaria

  • Yawgmoth's Demise

    Yawgmoth's Demise

Battle Records

None.

None.

None.

Retrieved from "https://thecodex.wiki/index.php?title=User:Cerberusleuth/SORIN&oldid=263533"