The Buildup
The post-Mending story arc of Nicol Bolas exists as decade-long tangle of threads, but the end is finally in sight.
Bolas’s popular return in Conflux was ushered in with an odd dual-explanation by block novel author and current Senior Creative Designer Doug Beyer: the Maelstrom was either part of Bolas’s plan to regain pre-Mending power or simply serving as a stave to buy himself more time to regain those powers. It worked as an interesting jumping point, but what Alara Unbroken ultimately delivered was an ambiguous resolution to the undecided goal: Bolas absorbed the power of the Maelstrom, but in the midst of a battle with a mirroring essence of himself summoned by Ajani, the dragon Planeswalker vanished.
His goal possibly achieved (fans still really aren’t sure), Bolas and his threads continued to be woven in wherever and whenever was needed. In Agents of Artifice, a novel released shortly prior to Alara Unbroken, Bolas failed to retrieve the Infinite Consortium which had been stolen away from him by Tezzeret. The webcomic Enter the Eldrazi revealed that Bolas had tried and failed to release the Eldrazi titans. In Dark Discoveries and The Quest for Karn, Bolas sent Tezzeret on a mission New Phyrexia to… “surveil the planar core,” which we’ll count as his first true success. And to its credit, the Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 game attempted to tell a non-specific Bolas story through the campaign but achieved nothing of note. Another subtle attempt was made in Duels of the Planeswalkers 2014 and the game succeeded in explaining exactly one offhand comment that Bolas made in a webcomic published three years earlier. Success!
But then there were no more novels, novellas, comics, webcomics, or yearly installments of Duels games.
The New Era of storytelling had finally arrived! Free online fiction was the premiere way to deliver the main story. Magic Story articles highlighted Bolas’s victory over Ugin on Tarkir and Liliana’s retroactive deal through Bolas before shifting the focus to the Eldrazi titans, which he had intended to release. But with the titans’ defeated a year later, the villain void was once again filled by Bolas, and the audience was reminded that this was all part of his ongoing plan. Tezzeret had been sent to Kaladesh to acquire the Planar Bridge, the Eternals were ripe for harvesting on Amonkhet, and now the Elder Dragon’s pawns controlled half of the guilds of Ravnica—with color balance in mind, naturally.
Though as the final set of the Bolas arc waits just beyond the horizon, we remain entirely incapable of knowing or even guessing how these threads tie together for Bolas. Sure, the final plan involves the Eternals, Tezzeret’s bridge-arm, and the Immortal Sun, but we have to wait until the absolute last set of this years-long story to learn the in-universe mechanical explanation for why these components, when used in combination, will grant Bolas godlike powers.
Truly one of the finest mastermind stories ever told.
The Bait And Switch
But piled on top of that wait for a reasonable explanation as to why any of this matters was another surprise for fans: Despite the past four years of the story being proudly defined by the format of free online fiction, novels were finally making a return, and just in time for you to buy the complete finale to the arc you had followed!
On a few different levels, this eleventh hour switch from free online fiction to paid novels is a difficult sell. The primary issue is that novels have historically been a commercial failure and money sink for Wizards. Sam Keeper at CoolStuffInc wrote A Brief History of Wizards Being Bad at Selling Books fleshing out this point fully, so I encourage you to read that article if you want a comprehensive history of their attempts and some choice quotes regarding novel consumption and public reception.
Second, we had been repeatedly told that the web fiction was more successful than any other storytelling approach. But with the final departures of New Era authors’ names from the online fiction—leaving for better opportunities, being let go from Wizards, or moving elsewhere within the company—Blake Rasmussen, Editor in Chief for DailyMTG, began to respond to fans while strongly implying that the online fiction actually isn’t all that popular. Thankfully this odd downplaying of the free online fiction and its readership was explained just over a month later with the announcement of the Ravnica novel.
But the final layer of this optionally purchasable cake is the communication of it all. In the same article that formally announced the Ravnica novel, a second unnamed Magic novel to be written by the same author was announced. What about the online fiction that was proclaimed to be the future? No statement reassuring fans of its continued support, only a Twitter reply days after the fact stating there would be online stories to run alongside the three sets. It’s an unusual answer when you could easily take the question as an opportunity to double down on your commitment to the most successful storytelling outlet you have, but maybe there’s a good reason fans should know further into the future of the paid novel line than they should of the free online fiction column.
Jenna Helland, Magic Origins: A New Era
Tarkir block marks the first time we released sequential, plot-relevant stories on the web site. The response has been fantastic, and we plan to continue to deliver the storyline in a weekly column.
So if you’ve read the main story for four years, will it just be paywalled by novels now? Seeing the enthusiasm at announcing two new Magic novels, the delay in responding that Magic Story would be continuing through the three more sets, and Rasmussen’s belittling of the outlet’s popularity, draw what conclusions you will. Nobody from Wizards is rushing to assure you otherwise.
The Starving
At the end of the Dominaria storyline, the Gatewatch and a few additional allies have arrived on Ravnica. Liliana has been whisked away by Bolas. And that was their last appearance.
Magic built fans up for years on both free online fiction and following a main cast of characters. People know that the Gatewatch are about to fight Bolas. He’s been the looming long-term threat in the online fiction for the last two years and was on the backburner even before then for anywhere up to a decade depending on how you measure his presence.
With Magic 2019, the Vivien Reid stories, Guilds of Ravnica, and now Ravnica Allegiance, the Magic Story column will be approaching eleven months without any stories that accompany the main storyline. The ten Ravnica set stories occur in a blur of chronology placed cleanly before the Gatewatch’s arrival at the end of Dominaria and—at no fault of the author—serve only as guild slices of life. These are months of stories that contribute nothing to our knowledge of the Gatewatch’s actions, Bolas’s pawns, and their machinations in the time immediately preceding the largest story finale in a decade.
Will there be any stories associated with the Guilds of Ravnica or Ravnica Allegiance story spotlights? Not unless they release them months later in a slew of finale story content for the third set, jamming three sets worth of story moments into one set worth of release time. And it’d be nonsensical to even cover GRN and RNA when they had the opportunity to use up to 10 slots for relevant stories summarizing each respective set, but refused to place any main story content in those.
The End
So for the sake of argument, let’s pretend they just don’t try to catch people up on the previous two sets. Guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica Allegiance had their story moments on the cards and a few paragraphs in the art book. It’s good enough for Wizards, so it’s obviously good enough for the audience.
The Ravnica novel is 304 pages. There are an unknown number of Magic Story articles running alongside it. The main story is featuring at least 15 Planeswalkers: Nicol Bolas, Tezzeret, Liliana, Domri, Ral, Vraska, Dovin, Kaya, Jace, Chandra, Gideon, Teferi, Jaya, Karn, Ajani, and any Planeswalker that Ajani has brought along, including possibly Tamiyo from the poster, Nissa from the comic cover, or maybe even Ugin because he needs to payoff his stealthy return to life before this all ends.
But this novel is called Ravnica, right? That leaves almost no space for the guilds and politics that are key to the plane’s identity. Even beyond the potential interguild conflicts, there are ten intraguild conflicts represented by the two opposing legendary creatures for each guild. The sad conclusion that must be drawn is that we should not expect any significant non-Planeswalker interaction between the guilds.
What threads does Ravnica have to tie up? Everything that Bolas has collected or orchestrated in the decade up to this point, Liliana’s deal with Bolas, Ugin’s timeline-warping resurrection and hidden existence, awarding the Gatewatch their big victory, fulfilling the flavor text of Blackblade Reforged, and establishing any stakes for the story by unloading that explanation from earlier as to why any of this works towards Bolas’s goal of godlike powers.
It’s difficult to have confidence in the free-to-read experience adequately delivering any of these. It’s even difficult to believe that the paid experience will deliver most of these while thoughtlessly shafting the hallmark guilds of the titular planar backdrop. Will the second paid novel be revealed as a surprise Part 2, requiring you to buy two separate novels to finish the Bolas arc in its entirety? It sounds ridiculous, but so does boasting your commitment to and success with free online fiction for years, then paywalling a majority of that story’s finale.
I really don’t doubt that Ravnica will be a fine novel. It’s going to entertain a lot of people and more importantly it marks the end of a decade of Bolas. There are a lot of reasons to be excited for this story finale, but the mismanagement of the story itself in conjunction with the surprise finale cash grab is quite a bit to look past. Consider whether you want to financially reward the cluster of a decision that is the Ravnica novel, and until next time.
Cary
