Dominian Chronicles
This content was originally included in an issue of Duelist magazine. The original article can be accessed via Internet Archive here.
Main Magazine Page: The Duelist #16
By Pete Venters, Kij Johnson, & Scott Hungerford
Dominia is a place of infinite wonder, where myriad planes move in an elaborate dance, each bearing countless worlds. And at its heart—and the heart of Magic: The Gathering—is Dominaria. Whole cultures and nations thrive here, along with legendary wizards and warriors who have struggled to change their world. Their stories live here too, great sagas that tell of the rises and falls of empires, as well as smaller tales of individuals who have changed lives, and indeed, changed history.
These cultures, characters, and stories are hinted at in the cards of Magic, but there is so much more to Dominia than can be captured in a handful of words or a single image. Where is Phyrexia? What is the story of Mirage and Visions? What makes a Fallen Angel? Who are Urza and Mishra? Who’s Teeka, and why does she have a dragon? How many fingers does a Minotaur’s hand have? (Be warned: the last one is a trick question!) The Continuity department at Wizards of the Coast knows the answers to these questions, and, starting in this issue of The Duelist, we’ll be passing on the large and the small stories to you in a series of columns and articles.
And don’t forget to check out the Encyclopedia Dominia in the Duelist Online at <http:www.wizards.com/duelist_online>, where you’ll find regularly updated information about Dominia’s fascinating creatures, characters, and lands.
Dominia, Dominaria: What’s the Deal?
Dominia is a multiverse, a limitless series of dimensional planes that travel independently of one another in a chaotic and unchartable dance. Because the links between planes are temporary and fragile, it’s nearly impossible to travel between planes. Only a few individuals in all of Dominia have the power and the gift for such travel. These beings are known by many names but are most accurately called planeswalkers.
Dominaria is a rare entity in the multiverse: a plane with relatively permanent connections to more than a dozen other planes, each with its own cultures and connecting planes as well. It’s within this extended family of planes that the action in most Magic: The Gathering expansion sets takes place. When you think about the opportunities available to planeswalkers in such a place—including rich mana resources and abundant creatures, ripe for the summoning—you begin to see why Dominaria is a favorite haunt of the planeswalkers.
So, is Dominaria a planet or a plane? Actually, it’s both. Planeswalkers name a plane after its most important planet. Some planes may actually share the same physical universe, but planeswalkers don’t rely on the laws of physics for their “walking”; it’s the relative ease of “walking” from plane to plane that determines proximity, not the physical relationship of the respective planets.
A Quick Tour of Dominaria
Dominaria is the setting for every Magic expansion except Arabian Nights (which is set in the planes of Rabiah) and Homelands (set in the backwater plane of Ulgrotha). Most of our attention has been centered on the continents of Terisiare, Jamuraa, and the Domains.
Troubled Terisiare was the setting for the cataclysmic Brothers’ War chronicled in Antiquities. The war brought about a series of social and climatic changes across the world that were detailed in The Dark, Fallen Empires, Ice Age, and Alliances. Modern-day Terisiare is very different from the ancient continent where Urza and Mishra battled. With the myriad strip mines left by the brothers and the damage wrought by the glaciers of the Ice Age, the land has divided into four distinct land masses. Most notable of these is New Argive, a post-Ice Age civilization born from the alliance of Kjeldor and Balduvia. New Argive is a major seat of learning, and its universities and museums are unrivaled within its corner of the world.
Six thousand miles east of Terisiare lie the Domains. The Domains are actually a handful of continents surrounded by hundreds of islands, large and small. Here you’ll find nations and places with names as familiar to players as the name Magic: The Gathering itself: Benalia (about which there’s extensive information in the Duelist Online); neighboring Avenant, where archers and warriors hold the border against Benalia’s dreams of conquest; the forests of Llanowar, Savea, and Shanodin; the mountains and nation of Hurloon; Kush, site of the festival city Estark; Foriys, home to monstrous giants; Mirtiin and Stahaan, radical xenophobic nations of Minotaurs; Verdura, home of the mysterious enchantresses; the Orvada Empire, a merchant empire rivaling Benalia; and Keld and the neighboring Kingdom of Parma, home of the Keldon Warlords and the Northern Paladins. The Domains have been featured throughout HarperCollins’s novels and the Magic: The Gathering basic set. You can find more tidbits about this region in the flavor text of Fifth Edition.
A few thousand miles to the east of the Domains lies the continent of Corondor, scene of most of Acclaim’s Magic comic books and the site of a recent war between a handful of planeswalkers. Corondor has fallen on hard times in the wake of the war, and it may be centuries before it fully recovers from this disaster.
About two thousand miles to the south of Corondor lies Jamuraa. We visited the northwest of this continent in the Mirage and Visions sets and witnessed the predations of Kaervek, a mage from the nearby Burning Isles. Jamuraa extends for several thousand miles, much of it controlled by the Suq’Ata Empire and the bipedal lizards known as the Viashino, before the continent butts against another giant land mass, which meets another, and another… These land masses form a colossal supercontinent, much of it controlled by certain empires whose ancestors migrated to Dominaria through gates connected to Rabiah. Rabiah is a series of planes linked by a shared culture reminiscent of the mythical lands, creatures, and people of Earth’s own Arabian Nights. Each of these planes is a distorted reflection of the last. This family of planes shifts constantly across Dominia, making it impossible to track any specific plane. Only a few stable gates are known of, most of them upon Dominaria.
Far to the northeast of this supercontinent lies Shiv. The home of the Shivan Dragons (and their cousins, the Viashivan), Shiv is an inhospitable volcanic land mass. Shiv sits within a deep-ocean “ring of fire,” which fuels the coastal waters to near-boiling point. Only the Viashino know the secrets of how to navigate these inhospitable waters, and they control the land, much to the ire of the Shivans.
Then there is the continent of Sarpadia—once home to the thrulls, the thallids, and other fallen empires. Scholars disagree, but it is believed that the lost continent lies some where far to the south of Terisiare. A few claim to have visited the land, and they talk of monstrosities ruling over inhuman kingdoms. Little else is known at this time, and the sages of New Argive have yet to pluck up the courage to mount a full expedition.
And what of Phyrexia? Phyrexia is a terrible plane some distance from Dominaria. The planar predations of the Phyrexians have ensured their notoriety throughout much of known Dominia. Even on Dominaria, their artifact horrors roam the dark nights, awaiting the call of their master’s will. There’s a lot of information about Phyrexia available right now in the Duelist Online.
Next Issue
We’ll be starting a regular column where we’ll tell you more about the stories and places of Dominia and the settings of upcoming card sets and expansions. We’ll clue you in to the secrets of planeswalkers and their legends, and answer some of your most frequently asked questions.
Oh, and by the way, the answer to “How many fingers does a Minotaur’s hand have?” is “It depends on the race.” Hurloon and Anaba Minotaurs have four fingers and thumb, like humans, while all other known Minotaurs (Talruum, Mirtiin, Stahaan, to name but a few) have two fingers, as well as two thumbs set across the palm from each other. Why? Well, that involves an ancient and narrow-minded planeswalker, a duel gone wrong, and the “Heresy of Hurloon.” But that, as they say, is another story.
Walkers of the Planes
In Magic: The Gathering you take the role of a planeswalker. Planeswalkers can traverse the planes of the multiverse, and they can draw mana and summon creatures from one plane while they are in another. Throughout the multiverse they are regarded as gods and goddesses. But what separates:a planeswalker from the other Wizards that live throughout Dominia?
One person in several million is born with what is known as “the planeswalker spark,” a direct link that allows him or her to draw on mana throughout the multiverse. Many such people learn the tricks and spells that come easily to those with the spark, eventually becoming accomplished and powerful wizards—but not planeswalkers. However, if they’re discovered young enough by another “walker,” they can be trained until the day their spark flares, turning the apprentice into a true planeswalker. Some individuals have become planeswalkers without such guidance, usually because of a moment of crisis, but these walkers don’t have the training to control their newfound powers and are dangerous to everyone around them. One such example would be the Battlemage Ravidel.
The existence of this spark is a closely held secret among the planeswalkers. It is easily detectable by other walkers but indiscernible to nonwalkers, a fact that has led many smaller wizards to believe that accumulation of power is all they need to win planeswalking skills.
Few have ever harnessed planeswalking artificially, through the use of artifacts or spells. In fact it hasn’t been done successfully since the ancient and mysterious Thran Empire developed gates between planes: one such Thran Gate was discovered by Urza and Mishra at the cave of Koilos several thousand years ago. Not even the Thran could control the power they had developed; it resulted in their extinction, just as it helped destroy the Brothers, five millennia later.
A warped version of these portals still exists in Phyrexia, built using stolen secrets. Very little is known about the portals; as with any information about Phyrexia, the truth is veiled in lies and madness, for those who search for such knowledge rarely return unchanged from their quests—if they return at all.
Dominaria Facts
Dominaria is similar to Earth, with temperature ranges and seasons close to our own. It is almost fifty percent larger at the equator, which gives Dominaria almost two and a half times the surface area of Earth. However, Dominaria’s gravity isn’t substantially stronger than ours (the secrets of that riddle lie deep within the planet…). Dominaria’s year is 420 days long and is organized by most developed cultures into twelve months, each of 35-days duration.
Dominaria’s oceans are enormous, separating its continents with many thousands of miles of water. The oceans tend to be shallower than Earth’s, and scattered volcanic activity has raised immense strings of habitable islands that trail like stepping stones across the leagues. Skipping along these island chains is the only realistic way to cross most of the oceans, and only the bravest sailors are willing to leave the sea-lanes and challenge the vast uncharted oceans. There may well be hard-to-reach continents that have never been visited by known Dominarian cultures.
The planet has two moons. One, the Mist Moon, is large and constantly shrouded in the mists of its murky atmosphere. Its smaller sibling, the Glimmer Moon, appears as a tiny glittering ball hurtling across the sky. The Glimmer Moon (or “Null Moon,” as the planeswalkers call it) it actually an artificial satellite, crackling with occasional huge electrical bursts that arc across its chaotic surface. No one knows who built the moon or what purpose it might have served, but it’s believed to have existed long before the ancient Brothers’ War between Urza and Mishra.