Editing Magic: The Gathering (section)

==Pre-Mending Story==	
[[First Magic Sets|Originally,]] the game really had no story, except that the two players represented wizards who were beating the shit out of each other for control of a ''plane'', which is fantasy-speak for an entire universe within a multiverse called Dominia, where you would sometimes find a world full of angels or [[Arabian Nights|a copypasta of what white people think the Middle East was like once upon a time.]] Within a few months of the game's release, the "Antiquites" expansion set was released, depicting the story of a war between two brothers, Urza and Mishra, and introducing Phyrexia as <s>bootleg Apokolips</s> a cosmic antagonist manipulating things from the shadows. This kicked off an extremely long and convoluted plotline that was supposed to officially end with the "Apocalypse" expansion pack, but which WotC keeps dredging up and continuing because they haven't had a good, original idea since the Rath cycle. There have been a few side-plots along the way, but nobody really ever gave a shit about them because they sucked. The game was also broken as fuck as even back then R&D had no idea what the fuck they were doing; most decks consisted of a combination of [[Power Nine|Black Lotus]], Channel and Fireball for plenty of turn 1 kills, cards were wordy as fuck and the art was between trippy and butt ugly.

===The Urza/Weatherlight/Rath/Phyrexia Saga===
The beginning of this story is depicted in the prequel novel "The Thran". In this novel, a bunch of people (the eponymous Thran) are becoming sick and they have no idea why. Yawgmoth, a healer, eventually figures out that it's because they're wearing radioactive jewelry. He develops a crush on a girl, but she friendzones him, so he decides to surgically implant tons of radioactive jewelry into her boyfriend. The story ends with the Thran getting sick of his shit and banishing him to an empty plane, Phyrexia, where he sets up shop and starts using his knowledge of radioactive jewelry to start building an army of greasy steampunk zombies.

Fast-forward a few thousand years, to the events of the novel "The Brothers' War". Two young brothers, Urza and Mishra, go exploring in the Caves of Koilos and find a couple of magic rocks, the Mightstone and the Meekstone. Urza keeps the Mightstone and Mishra gets the Meekstone. Because the mightstone is bigger and better, Mishra spends most of his life suffering from Magic Stone Envy. Fast-forward maybe another 20 years. In a clever ripoff of "The Princess and the Pea", a king decides that he will only allow his daughter to marry a man who can lift a huge-ass piece of rock that no one can actually lift. [[That Guy|Urza shows up and builds a humongous mecha that easily moves the rock.]] The king decides that this is good enough and lets them marry. However, the marriage is a disaster because it turns out that building humongous mecha and maintaining romantic relationships are two extremely different skill sets. Blah blah blah, war breaks out between the two brothers, entire continents are pillaged and despoiled as a result of the war, and Urza eventually wins by nuking half of the goddamn planet with a plot device called a Golgothian Sylex. The Sylex Blast turned Urza into a Planeswalker, guaranteeing that he'd continue to fuck up the entire multiverse with his drama for eons to come.
[[File:Teferi.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Print 'phasing' again, I dare you.]]
The ensuing nuclear winter was depicted in the expansion packs "The Dark", "Fallen Empires", "Ice Age", and "Alliances". Nobody really knows or cares about this part of the story, because they aren't about the Almighty Urza Christ, Peace Be Unto Him. Urza's adventures during this time are depicted in the novel "Planeswalker", where he decides to wage a one-man war against the Phyrexians, who he blames for turning Mishra into a robot. He starts by launching a LITERAL one-man attack against Phyrexia, where he gets ROFLPWN3D but manages to pick up a sexy female Phyrexian sidekick named Xantcha. Realizing that the successful destruction of Phyrexia would require him to be less of a dick and learn how to make allies, the two of them go to places like Shiv, Tolaria, and Serra's realm, which never ends well for the inhabitants of those places because the Phyrexians are constantly following him and fucking up everything everywhere he goes.  He also taught some students, Teferi and Jhoira, who get busy finding entirely new ways to fuck shit up with time travel.  He eventually decides that the key to victory will be to make a bunch of extremely powerful plot devices, which he calls the "Legacy Weapon", whose actual functions and purposes would be decided by whichever unfortunate authors got stuck with writing the end of this story. Some components of the Legacy included the flying ship ''Weatherlight'' and the silver golem ''Karn''. He also bred an army of super-soldiers that he called the Metathran. These events are depicted in the novels "Time Streams" and "Bloodlines"

Eventually, the Weatherlight came to be crewed by a bunch of people who basically had no clue who Urza or the Phyrexians were, or what the Legacy was, or really anything that was mentioned in the above paragraph, because all of that shit was made up retroactively. In the anthology book "Rath and Storm", Sisay, the hot black chick who somehow became the Weatherlight's captain despite knowing nothing about it, has been kidnapped, and the rest of the crew, led by Gerrard Capashen, must hop from continent to continent, looking for clues to her whereabouts and picking up random hitch-hikers as they go, often for little or no reason. They track her down to the plane of ''Rath'', where everything from the merfolk to the weather is [[Grimdark|Darker and Edgier]]. Some shit happens, they succeed in rescuing Sisay, and they also "rescue" someone who they THINK is Takara, daughter of Starke, a double-dealing backstabber that they allowed to come aboard because good is dumb. During their escape, however, they end up leaving two crew members behind: Crovax and Ertai. 

The next three books and expansion packs, collectively called the "Masquerade Cycle", all take place during the same time frame but in different locations. "Mercadian Masques" follows the crew of the Weatherlight, who find themselves in an unknown plane called Mercadia, and who must figure out how to get back to their home plane, Dominaria (not to be confused with Dominia). This is also where "Takara" is, in fact, revealed to be Volrath, the Evincar of Rath, who manages to do absolutely nothing of importance in Mercadia and must find a way back to Rath. "Nemesis" follows the adventures of Crovax and Ertai after they are left behind. To make a long story short, they both turn to the dark side, and Crovax is appointed the new Evincar of Rath by Ertai's hot new Phyrexian girlfriend, Belbe, who dies immediately afterward. Volrath is also executed upon his return. "Prophecy", the third book and expansion pack in the cycle, was about overpriced cards that totally fucking sucked and a story that no one gave a shit about because it had nothing to do with anything else that was happening at the time, and can be safely ignored.

The Invasion cycle - Invasion, Planeshift, and Apocalypse - depicted the long-awaited Phyrexian invasion of Dominaria. Urza, the Weatherlight crew, the Elder Dragon Legends, [[over 9000]] different kinds of Kavu, and everyone else came together to fight back against the endless army of greasy steampunk zombies. This resulted in the deaths of most major characters, the destruction of Phyrexia, and the transformation of Karn into a Planeswalker.

===Post-Weatherlight Blocks===
After that came the Odyssey and Onslaught cycles, which took place on Dominaria 200 years after the Phyrexian invasion. These stories sucked ass and depicted no events of major importance, except for the Mirari, which was Karn's <s>bootleg One Ring</s> space probe that became retroactively important in a weak attempt at continuity, and the resurrection of the Slivers, a creature type from the Rath cycle that had proven insanely popular.
	 
Then came a strange phase in MtG history, where WotC would alternate between unsuccessful attempts to dredge up the past and unsuccessful attempts to create new planes and stories that were worth giving a fuck about. [[Kamigawa]] block deserves a special shout-out here, as it didn't sell worth shit because it was a low-power block sandwiched between two blocks of solid [[cheese]]. <strike>There's also a very, very small chance of ever coming back here according to an article written by Mark Rosewater titled "Rabiah Scale Part 1", where he explains that while Kamigawa is the least popular plane, there is a very vocal minority that loves it.</strike> Lol not anymore. In 2022 WOTC is as story-line and setting-dead as the Holly-Wood down the coast, Kamigawa is back baybee, except it's cyberpunk now. 
	 
Dominaria was revisited in "Time Spiral" when WotC, realizing that something was amiss, decided that the only way they could get people to care about the story again was to bring back the old Weatherlight crew, which in turn required time travel. The "Time Spiral" cycle also gave WotC an excuse to bring back Slivers AGAIN. Then came "Scars of Mirrodin", which took a formerly original plane and storyline and shoehorned the Dominaria/Phyrexia storyline into it. This was about the point where the "Mending" happened, which changed the fluff of the story and marked a major change in storytelling since Wizards acknowledged that Time Spiral didn't actually make people start caring about the story again.