Notes/Ramble
PLEASE for the love of Yawgmoth do not feel like you have to read this. Please feel free to go straight to the audio, it's really really not important that you understand all the references- everything below this line is really just here as a monument to how much fun I let myself have while making this :)
Either way, it probably makes more sense to listen to the audio first anyways :)
For the <1% of you who are wondering... yes, this is a Magic: the Gathering audio. Magic: the Gathering is a fantasy trading card game. I didn’t tag it as such because I wanted it to be seen as a [Rape] [Knights] [Double Mind Break] [Tentacles] audio first and foremost that happened to take place in the MtG multiverse and I also wanted to be really clear this audio is accessible to everybody, not just to people who were played some random card game during a story arc that took place literally a decade ago.
I was never very serious about playing MtG but I have so many great memories of playing with groups of my friends and going to pre-releases whenever they happened. I dabbled a bit during Kamigawa, but I really started to get into the game around the end of the first Zendikar block because all my friends were becoming obsessed with the game.
My first cards of that period were the Phyrexia vs. The Coalition Duel Decks. This is one half of the equation for this audio- I could have started this life story during Scars block, but it was really important to me for some reason that I explain how the Phyrexians were some of the first cards I ever started to really play with. The pack of two decks reenacted a conflict that took place literally about ten years of real-life time before I started playing, during a block called “Invasion.” Invasion was the culmination of a war between the Phyrexians, an ancient and all-consuming swarm of corrupted techno-organic beings, and the Coalition, the united front of warriors, scientists, and mythical beings that teamed up to stop them.
My cards were a ton of fun from a story standpoint, but in retrospect, they were really bad decks and I struggled to keep up with my friends. The ambitious trade-offs of legacy black cards included in the Phyrexian deck weren't enough to keep up with the synergy of Zendikar’s Vampires or the sheer eldritch power of the Eldrazi, which were both really popular among my friends. I liked the heroic aesthetic of The Coalition, but that 4-color deck is… really unfocused and inconsistent. I was having fun because I liked playing cards with my friends, but I wasn’t having a ton of fun actually playing the game itself. For a while, I was just doing it because I wanted to keep playing with my friends, but feeling like my decks and cards couldn’t really do anything was really discouraging.
Then I met Knight Exemplar.
It feels kind of weird to type out, but playing Magic is a huge part of where my [Knights] kink comes from, probably second only to my account namesake. I had (and still have, I guess) a huge crush on Knight Exemplar. Setting aside her powerful and graceful art, she also exemplifies (ha) a lot of what I idealize and want to be: Her main strength lies in bolstering and protecting her teammates. She makes all “other” Knight indestructible, meaning she herself is still vulnerable; she offers a huge amount of utility and support at the cost of painting a huge target on her own unprotected head.
From the moment I first encountered this card, she’s been my favorite Magic card and my favorite deck has always revolved around getting a copy (or two :D) of her out on the field. Is it the best deck out there? Absolutely not- the deck and even Knight Exemplar herself are insanely far from being optimal. But it was everything I never knew I wanted in a card flavor-wise, and I made it work. And I started to really, really enjoy Magic after that. We all had our subconscious little niches/creature tribes. We had a Goblins/Elves guy. We had a guy who liked edgy/cool-looking cards. We had a guy who liked wacky-looking oddities and we had a guy who liked big monsters. And after a period of time where I failed to make Angels work, I was finally the Knights guy :D
I eventually even played a Knights tribal deck in a 2014 Grand Prix. In plain English, that's "I played a very underpowered deck in a big serious event because I was attached to how cool my cards looked" and I still somehow managed to not lose all of my matches :3
Knight Exemplar was released in 2010 in the M11 Core set and the immediately following block, Scars of Mirrodin, was after a really huge (good/exciting, though!) life change for me. With that came my first time playing with a new group of friends. I continued playing with my old friends but Scars block was when this new group started to consistently bring me along to those quarterly prerelease events for a few years. There was just something really hype about getting up early in the morning to be among the first wave of people on the planet to get to open and try out a brand new set of cards and experience a new part of Magic’s incredible worldbuilding and storylines.
Scars was a really fun time for me: It featured a return to Mirrodin, a classic world in Magic’s multiversal mythos. I’d only been playing for about a year before then, so it was a great introduction to the world for me. I loved the mechanical, gleaming aesthetic, and the return of my favorite Knight-themed Planeswalker was a huge draw for me.
That winter was peak [Knights] obsession for me. Knight Exemplar was highly unconventional, but just enough so that it worked. At least... it worked enough that I was having a really good time playing with my friends :P The Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works movie came out the previous winter, so my hype for Saber (King of Knights, who my username is a reference to) was just starting to really hit it's stride. I was even taking a writing course at the time that centered around King Arthur and the stories of Camelot- stories and themes that I was already completely obsessed with. I was having fun in this new world of Mirrodin with my new friends in my new life.
I was having so much fun, in fact, that I missed every... small... sinister... clue... that something was about to go very, very wrong.
Mirrodin Besieged is the storyline during which this audio takes place. It was the set immediately following Scars of Mirrodin.
Something you might need to know is that back then, Magic sets were released in groups of three called “Blocks.” The pattern GENERALLY went something like this: They would start a block by introducing a new or returning world to us in the Autumn, have some form of conflict with the second set in the Winter, then resolve that conflict and show us the consequences with a third set in the Spring. Summer would usually give us a break from the story in the form of a “Core” set that didn’t have a specific theme, then the Autumn afterwards it was back to a new Block and a new world.
Magic: the Gathering has books and short stories and stuff, but the true way the story is told is through the cards, both in form and function. I believe no other card game tells a story or builds worlds through their cards in this way as adeptly as MtG does and I will die on that hill :P
Mirrodin Besieged was the second set in the Scars block, and it pitted my beloved world of knights and automatons against… none other than the returning Phyrexians- the villains of my first actual set of cards, who had been dormant since an entire decade before I started playing this game.
Mirrodin Besieged was one of my all-time favorite prerelease events for a lot of reasons, but the first and foremost reason was that it was the first prerelease where I had ever been asked to choose a side. When you got arrived and paid registration, you were asked to side with either Mirrodin or the Phyrexians- and you were given a special pack of cards to accompany the rest of the cards that you’d be getting that day that represented your side in the war. Each of these special packs had a special promotional signature card.
The Phyrexian side got “Glissa, the Traitor,” an elven pariah who had been corrupted by the Phyrexian’s glistening oil. Meanwhile, the Mirrodins got Hero of Bladehold. Hero of Bladehold was a bit too scantily clad for my taste for her to ascend to my new favorite in place of Knight Exemplar, but she was still (at the time) a very cool Knight card that creates more soldiers for you every time she attacks :D
The entire past half of this ramble has all been just for me to explain that literally, personally, as much as anybody could possibly have been, I was at the battle for Mirrodin, and I also literally fought in it. I love the Phyrexians as MtG villains, but at this point, if you can’t guess which side I fought for that day, then you haven’t been paying attention :P
So at last, with the Hero of Bladehold, the actual audio references/explanations can begin. Bladehold is the stronghold that the characters were trying to protect. The actual Hero of Bladehold, Ria Ivor, actually ends up rescuing a ton of refugees and reestablishing Bladehold after it’s overrun once but this is really only a temporary thing. So I guess technically, this audio probably takes place during the second fall of Bladehold \^\^;
The Knight Captain character brings up the idea to join forces with Ezuri’s Brigade and Atraxa during the audio as well. Ezuri is a former Elven bandit who staged a lot of resistance against the Phyrexians, while Atraxa is one of the guardian angels of the the world of Mirrodin. Avid card players might recognize that Ezuri was confirmed in 2015 to have been corrupted by the Phyrexians, while the only depiction of Atraxa is on a 2016 card is one where she has already been corrupted. I really wasn’t expecting a single person to get these references, but it was my personal way of saying “None of the hope that the characters feel is justified; everything is going to be consumed by the Phyrexians and there’s no way they’re actually going to make it out of this.” However... if the idea of a rendezvous with Ezuri or Atraxa gave you a sinking feeling in your stomach in the moment, then that was for you, true believer :)
I don’t know exactly when Bladehold fell, but Tel-Jilad is one of the first parts of Mirrodin to be overrun, so that’s why I had the Knight-Captain’s backstory of survivor’s guilt take place there. Lumengrid is also mentioned as having fallen by then, which I put in there mostly because I figured that would be the first place I would go after if I were Jin-Gitaxias.
The Knight-Captain was actually a really difficult character to work with and I was really happy with how he turned out. I thought it was going to be a clear thing where he was going to start off romantic, transition into getting tentacle-fucked by Jin-Gitaxias, and then finally transform into a tortured thrall who forces himself upon the listener. But the deeper I got into writing this out, the more I realized I also wanted to try to use him to lure the listener into a false sense of security. My entire goal with him in the opening section was to see if I could make the listener forget about all the scary tags in the title, and it ended up developing the situation and his relationship with the listener in a way that I really liked.
I also needed him to function as exposition to plant the idea that the Phyrexians don't just kill, but assimilate, and to build up the idea that Praetors are the most dangerous among the Phyrexians. Having people specifically survive a battle with the Praetors was counterproductive to that end, which is where his hiding/survivor's guilt aspect came in. Most of that was unplanned and I was really happy with how nicely it all fit together. The exposition led to exposing his survivor's guilt, which gave the listener a part to play in calming him down, which reinforced him having something to live for before Jin-Gitaxias bursts in to destroy it all.
Anyways, Vorinclex, mentioned in the audio briefly, is the Praetor that was responsible for really bringing the war into full-swing by causing the fall of Tel-Jilad, so I kind of liked the juxtaposition of the Captain having to go through two very different invasions with very opposing philosophies. Vorinclex lives more in the moment, only really thinking about consuming what’s directly in front of him and thinking about his next meal, while Jin-Gitaxias is the most methodical and paranoid out of the moment. I think Vorinclex (And Urabrask, I guess) are the two that are the most likely to leave “survivors” in a senseless rampage, while Jin-Gitaxias is one of the most likely to meticulously snuff out all life in an entire area in the rabid pursuit of perfection. I would have really liked to use Elesh Norn for this, but she identifies (?) as female (???) and for some reason I didn’t feel like genderbending her. Jin-Gitaxias with his “perfection of process” philosophy ended up working out really well for this audio, but if I’d gone with Elesh Norn I would probably have gone down the “religious fanaticism” route :)
There are five Phyrexian Praetors, each with their own color-identifying philosophies through which they view their chase for perfection. I knew that I wanted to do something mind-fuck-y and manipulative and less overtly physically forceful, so I crossed Vorinclex and Urabrask off the list right away, leaving me with Elesh Norn, Sheoldred, and Jin-Gitaxias. I wasn't originally a huge Jin-Gitaxias fan going into this and I heavily considered genderbending one of the other two, but he ended up being really perfect for this.
And with the head designer for Magic himself explaining that Blue’s philosophy desires perfection and abhors instinct and emotion, Jin-Gitaxias ended up being the perfect candidate for a… mind-rapist, I guess. While the desire for perfection is a huge driver of blue, I think the fear of not being perfect can be just as much, if not more of a primary motivator. I don't think it came through in the audio as much as I would have liked, but in my head, the cruelty that I tried to exhibit in my take on Jin-Gitaxias was an outlet for that fear. I can't relate to wanting to assimilate an entire plane of existence, but I can relate to a fear-driven desperation to achieve perfection, so I tried to let that feeling carry me through this process.
If I'd gone with Elesh Norn, I don't think the audio would have turned out as well. I think it would have been mostly similar but with a little bit less character. If I'd gone with Sheoldred, however, I think this might have been completely different. It would have been way harder to write, but I would have wanted it to include a lot of sneaking, misinformation, whispers, impersonations, and gaslighting XD
I do think it would be cool to have something like Elesh Norn and Jin-Gitaxias vying against each other for control of a listener, though...
The Magic wiki does a really good job of cataloguing the cards that mention each major character, whether in the flavor text or in the art. So the first thing I did was click on every card that’s ever quoted or mentioned Jin-Gitaxias and write down every quote that I thought I could cram into an audio. The script has a citation page, but here are some of my favorites:
Synthetic Destiny - “To Jin-Gitaxias, perfection is not a goal, but a process”
Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur - “It is not a goal, but a process- the process of creating a perfect Phyrexia”
Given one of these is the literal source material for a character in this audio and the other is the source for the title, it’s probably not surprising that this is the thesis statement for the latter half. "Core Augur" was actually the working title of this script, but... it didn't really work as a audio/post title. I thought it made a lot of sense that Jin-Gitaxias’ true goal wasn’t to corrupt the Knight-Captain and the listener, but to use them as insignificant stepping stones on his path to basically devour the multiverse. I really liked getting to attempt to convey the idea that two peoples’ lives got completely destroyed, and that it barely even mattered to the thing that made it happen. It was also a really easy segue into the idea that this kind of scene might have and might continue to play out in countless times and different ways in the story beyond just this audio.
My other two favorites were:
Mental Misstep - “Your first mistake was thinking I would let you live long enough to make a second”
Psychic Miasma - “A mind may be steeled against madness, but all battlements fail in time.”
Both of these quotes just scream “audio material” to me XD
On March 29th of that year, it was announced that the final set in Scars block was going to be called "New Phyrexia." That spring, Mirrodin lost their war and their world was overrun.
I still dip my toes in and out of Magic: the Gathering every once in a while. I got back into it for Throne of Eldraine (and for those of you who knew it was a fairy-tale inspired set, yes, I got back into the game because I was excited about the prospects of cool knew [Knights]) but some life stuff happened and I haven't gotten to explore Kaldheim or Strixhaven yet.
But I heard... for the first time since I went to battle for Mirrodin a decade ago... that Vorinclex made an appearance in Kaldheim earlier this year.
New Phyrexia is stirring. The Praetors are up to something.
And you can bet, that when we find out what it is, you'll find me right there on the frontlines fighting them off once more...
...or maybe, we'll find ourselves corrupted after this audio and join the Phyrexians when the time comes.
Take your pick :)