Origin Stories

Reality Fracture has 43 echoed pairs, 38 of which are paired characters (okay, one of those is Gideon and his memorial). Each of those characters was chosen because they are a favorite character from across Magic's history. For today's article, I'm picking a handful of those characters, talking about where they originated, designing their very first card, and how we designed the Reality Fracture pair.

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Karn

In Reality Fracture, we get Karn Argent Defender and Karn, Gilded Guardian, both pictured on different versions of Mirrodin, the artificial plane he created.

Karn's first card released in Urza's Saga, called Karn, Silver Golem.

Of all the characters today, I'm starting with Karn as he's closest to my heart because I co-created him. Many years ago, I was sitting around talking with my friend Michael Ryan (he was an editor on Magic) when we bemoaned that Magic didn't really have an ongoing story. Michael and I decided to come up with one and pitched it to the Magic Brand team. We called the story the Weatherlight Saga. To our surprise, they said, "Let's do it!"

Our idea was to have an ongoing cast of characters that we followed from set to set. Their means of traveling from plane to plane was a flying ship called the Weatherlight (first seen in the Mirage block story). We filled the ship with a crew that hit all the different colors of Magic. I insisted that one of the crew members be an artifact creature. I love playing artifact-themed decks and adore artifact creatures.

Because we wanted to tell a classic story, Michael and I based the Weatherlight Saga on a story archetype known as the "myth of the epic hero." We were big fans of author Joseph Campbell who wrote about comparative mythology (the idea that humans keep telling the same core stories). The story's protagonist, Gerrard Capashen, had a destiny. He was going to use a series of artifacts, known as the Legacy, to save the world (from the Phyrexians it would turn out).

Because the Legacy was a huge part of the story, we decided to tie our artifact creature to that. I really wanted him to be a Golem, partly because the first artifact creature I ever opened, and fell in love with, was Obsianus Golem back in Limited Edition (Alpha) and partly because Golems are from Jewish mythology. Golems are usually crafted out of a single substance. I thought that him being silver would be cool. We named him Karn after the word "cairn," which means "a man-made pile or stack of stones used as a landmark, a trail marker, or a memorial."

We liked the idea that Karn was part of the Legacy. He was hollow, so all the artifacts of the Legacy could fit inside him. (In our original version of the story, the Weatherlight wasn't part of the Legacy.) He also was meant to function as a protector of Gerrard.

All of our characters were tied to specific character archetypes. The one we chose for Karn was one known as "the gentle giant." This character archetype is someone who's very big and looks menacing, but is, in fact, very kind. To tie into this archetype, we decided we wanted to make Karn a pacifist, someone who refuses to fight on principal. Our background story for him was that he was accidentally responsible for the death of an innocent, and he responded to that by vowing pacifism.

When Michael and I created the Weatherlight Saga, the first story arc was planned for three years. Our plan was to slowly roll out the Weatherlight crew as cards one at a time over many years. As the Weatherlight Saga was first being rolled out, I was assigned a project designed for in-store play called Vanguard. Vanguard cards were large cards that sat outside a deck that granted a player a special ability and altered their starting life and starting or max hand size. The Vanguard cards wanted to represent characters, and since I realized we were years away from all the Weatherlight crew being cards, I suggested we use the Weatherlight Saga characters for the Vanguard cards.

Because we (myself and Mike Elliott) had designed the Vanguard cards prior to having characters, we looked to see if the characters could fit the card designs we already had. One of the cards was inspired by the card Titania's Song from Antiquities (an ongoing theme of this column is my love for Antiquities), which turns all of your noncreature artifacts into creatures with power and toughness equal to their mana value. Karn's job was caring for the Legacy, a collection of artifacts, so it seemed like the best fit.

Flash forward a year to Urza's Saga. The block went back in time to explore Urza's role in the story (he was later added after Michael and I stopped working on the story). As we were back in time before most of the Weatherlight crew existed, Karn was the only choice for the Weatherlight crew member to get a card.

I wanted Karn to be big, but he was a pacifist, so I needed a way to communicate he wasn't going to kill other creatures. The solution was to make him a 4/4 that got -4/+4 whenever he blocked or was blocked. Because his Vanguard card had been popular, we gave him an activated ability to animate noncreature artifacts. Years later, during the Mending, when we depowered Planeswalkers to allow us to make cards out of them, the story turned Karn into a Planeswalker. We made numerous Karn planeswalker cards out of him, some quite powerful. During the Phyrexian War, he lost his spark, allowing us to make more legendary creature cards with him. He's one of only a handful of characters to go from legendary creature to planeswalker and back to legendary creature.

For Reality Fracture, we chose him as one of the pairs because we wanted to show the contrast between the Multiverse version of Mirrodin and the Echoverse version. The normal Multiverse version of Karn, Karn Argent Defender, is what R&D refers to as a "hate bear" (a smaller creature with a global effect that tends to cause problems for the opponent; usually you build your deck with the knowledge that you have the card). Karn has always had a mechanical relationship with artifacts, so that was used here. Playing up his defensive nature, Karn stops enters effects of both artifacts and creatures.

Jace removed the Phyrexians from the Echoverse, so its version of Mirrodin is a much happier place. To contrast with the colorless Karn, the Echoverse version is all five colors, using a technique we first employed on Reaper King in Shadowmoor with all five twobrid symbols. This version of Karn encourages you to play all five colors by rewarding you for the more colors you play (via the enters effect and casting cost).

Fblthp

In Reality Fracture, we get Fblthp, Impossibly Lost (set on Innistrad) and Fblthp, Knows the Way (set on Echoverse Zendikar).

Fblthp's first card released in War of the Spark, called Fblthp, the Lost.

Though he first appeared in Totally Lost from Gatecrash.

Blue often has a common that puts a creature on top of its owner's library (nowadays, we usually let the creature's owner choose top or bottom). Because Ravnica is a city, the card concept was a creature that got lost in the big city. We wanted it to be someone small, because we liked the visual of legs all around them. Ravnica had homunculi, little artificially made created creatures, often with one big eye, so we chose to have a little homunculus be the lost creature. The card had space for a line of flavor text, so we named the little fellow. (Ravnican Homunculi don't have vowels in their names.)

I'm not sure exactly how the card caught on. The art by David Palumbo was great. The creature having a name helped personify him a little. Everyone could relate to getting lost. The card started turning into memes online. We began hiding him in art.

We made plushies of him. He became sort of an unofficial mascot. So much so, that I knew we needed to make a card for him. I had a slot for a planeswalker card in Unsanctioned, the box set that had a mix of Un- card reprints along with a handful of new cards. I wanted it to be Fblthp. I liked the idea of him getting so scared by getting lost that his spark ignited. Now he could get lost across the Multiverse. I asked the Franchise team if that would be okay, and they said no. They wanted to put him into a premier set. (I made B.O.B. (Bevy of Beebles), the collective of beebles that became a planeswalker, instead.)

I found the opportunity to make a Fblthp card a couple years later in War of the Spark. We were back on Ravnica, Fblthp's home, and because the set was more about the storyline than the world, I had an opportunity to do some non-guild Ravnica concepts. We knew two things about his design. One, we had to capture the flavor of a little homunculus that keeps getting lost, and two, we wanted him to be a quirky build-around card. During vision design, we came up with the concept of shuffling him into your deck when targeted, but his first ability, the one that made it to print, was redone during set design. We've done four more Fblthp cards since then, and I'm sure we'll do many more. Fblthp has also become the de facto mascot of MagicCon.

Fblthp, Impossibly Lost from Reality Fracture plays into similar concepts from Fblthp, the Lost. He's a build-around card that can draw you cards and occasionally gets shuffled into your library. The fact that we can use the shuffle-in ability to keep you from decking yourself was a fun touch. Fblthp, Knows the Way needed to capture the flavor of a Fblthp that never gets lost, so we leaned into something we often do with exploration, the fetching of lands. In this case, you want to get differently named basic lands to help raise Fblthp's power through his domain ability.

Yargle

In Reality Fracture, we get Yargle, Glutton of Urborg and Yargle, Goliath of Otaria (both places on Dominaria).

Yargle's first card was the same card, premiering in Dominaria.

For many years, the head developer was a man named Erik Lauer. Erik is an amazing designer who loves the game and has since retired. One of his many passions was power and toughness combinations. He created a list of every combination (well, ones we might actually print) that we had never done, and whenever he worked on a set, he would see if he could fit in a new one.

Erik was working on Dominaria, and he got an idea. We'd never done a 9/3 in Magic. What if we made it a vanilla creature (a creature without any rules text)? So, he did. Now, a 9/3 is an odd-shaped creature, so when they did the card concept for it, they got a little silly. What if it was a giant creature with little tiny legs? The artist, Jehan Choo, had fun with the concept, and the art quickly became one of the most popular in the set. Trying to match the tone of the art, we gave him a somewhat silly name, Yargle.

The whole package was a huge hit, and like Fblthp, Yargle quickly became meme worthy. Wizards even leaned into it dubbing September 3 (9/3) Yargle Day.

This Reality Fracture pair was handed off after vision design. It was pretty obvious what the Echoverse version of Yargle had to be. I honestly didn't know if this was going to make it to print but am happy it did. The new Fblthp art, also by Jehan Choo, is great.

Pia Nalaar

In Reality Fracture, we get Pia, Determined Rebuilder and Pia, Aether Ascetic.

Pia's first card, Pia and Kiran Nalaar from Magic Origins, includes her husband.

Just in case some readers are unaware of who Pia is, she's Chandra's mom. Here's how she first came about. We were designing the latest core set and wanted to find a way to spice it up. The following block (Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch) was the launch of our new story, introducing a team of Planeswalkers called the Gatewatch. The initial five Gatewatch members (the team started with four, and Liliana joined in the next block) were one of each color, with Chandra being the red representative. What if the core set was the origin story of the first five Gatewatch members?

The idea we came up with was to show each Planeswalker on their home plane and watch them turn into Planeswalkers and see where they visited when they first sparked (when you initially spark, you unintentionally planeswalk). Each of the five home planes and the five first visited planes would be one of the ten two-color archetypes.

At the time, we'd never visited Chandra's homeworld but had a few hints at what we thought it should be. She had a regulator and goggles, which hinted at a steampunk inspired world, something we'd been talking about doing for years. Also, we had always planned for her homeworld to have a heavy Indian influence, hinted at by her name.

We ended up deciding to make the peek at Chandra's homeworld a throw-forward, meaning something we would follow up on a few years later. Magic Origins spent extra time building out Avishkar (referred to as Kaladesh at the time). This included getting a chance to meet Chandra's parents. (Chandra believed they both had died, it was the event that caused her to spark, but it turns out her mom had survived.)

The blue-red theme for Magic Origins was artifacts to play up Avishkar as a world of invention. We had Pia and Kiran create 1/1 colorless Thopter artifact tokens with flying, as that was the one creature token we'd made to represent Avishkar, then blow them up. This would hint at both Kiran's role as an inventor and Pia's as a rebel. Pia would show up with each return to Avishkar (in Kaladesh, March of the Machine, Aetherdrift, and of course, Reality Fracture).

Pia, Determined Rebuilder in Reality Fracture leans into Pia's traditional artifact theme. As is normally the case for Pia, she makes 1/1 colorless Thopter artifact creature tokens with flying. Her pump ability is reminiscent of the artifact-creature boosting on her first solo card, although this time it's a little bigger in both cost and effect. Pia, Aether Ascetic leans into a more mechanical mirroring, making her work with enchantments rather than artifacts. Green doesn't do a lot of enchantment tutoring, so this was us pushing into some new green space (I'd call it a little bit of a bend). Green is number two at "enchantments matter" though and often interacts with permanents, so it was something we were comfortable trying.

Saheeli Rai

In Reality Fracture, we get Saheeli, Jewel of Avishkar and Saheeli, Consul of Oversight.

Saheeli's first card was Saheeli Rai in Kaladesh.

Magic Origins introduced the world of Avishkar. Kaladesh was our first full visit to the world. At the time, our blocks were two sets, one large and one small. The Kaladesh block was Kaladesh and Aether Revolt. The first set was about an inventor's fair that showed off the creativity and invention of the world. Magic had done a lot of darker worlds with harsher themes, and we liked the idea of having a brighter world that was more about celebration. But, of course, every world has conflict, so the second set showed the inventors rebelling against the oppressive government of the world.

Originally, Chandra was going to be the face of Kaladesh. Avishkar is her homeworld after all. But the first set was about invention and creativity, not exactly strengths of Chandra's. And the second set was about rebellion, a theme much more on-brand for our fire caster. So, we made the call to move Chandra to Aether Revolt. That meant we needed a face for Kaladesh. None of our existing Planeswalkers were a good match. Also, we really wanted a native of Avishkar. The answer was to make a brand-new Planeswalker specific to these goals.

We made Saheeli blue-red as that's the color combination of creativity. The first ability we gave her was a Heat Shimmer effect for artifacts (allowing her to make temporary copies of artifacts). I'd been looking for a home for that effect in the set, and the Planeswalker for the face of the set seemed like a great choice. We made her first ability scry and 1 damage to give her a small blue-red effect. Her ultimate allows her to tutor for three different artifacts, again leaning into her inventor feel.

She showed up again in War of the Spark and in The Brothers' War, where she also played a role in the story. She then lost her spark in the Phyrexian War and showed up in The Lost Caverns of Ixalan and Aetherdrift Commander before her return in Reality Fracture.

Like Pia, in Reality Fracture, the Multiverse version of Saheeli, Saheeli, Jewel of Avishkar, plays into the Avishkar theme of Thopter tokens. She also rewards you for playing noncreature spells, a common blue-red theme, which we saw on her planeswalker card in War of the Spark. Saheeli, Consul of Oversight mirrors the Thopter creation but cares about a completely different build-around—scrying and surveilling. It's a small theme of Reality Fracture seen on four other cards.

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Story Time Is Over

I hope you enjoyed my card stories today. As always, I'm eager for any feedback, be it about today's article, Reality Fracture, and/or any of the cards I talked about. You can email me or contact me through social media (Bluesky, Tumblr, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter).

Join me next time for my first Magic: The Gathering® | Star Trek™ preview article.

Until then, may you find the character that most speaks to you.