Well, hello everyone. I wanted to try something different today, something way outside my comfort zone. I wanted to take a few minutes to discuss some interesting theories I've been developing surrounding the highly anticipated Shadows Over Innistrad.

It's no secret the Magic community at large revered Innistrad as one of the best blocks ever to hit print. There's also an ever-growing group of players who are invested in the lore of Magic. Wizards has taken strides to deepen and expand their lore more than ever before, integrating characters and overlapping story lines to create large cross-block archs.

If any of you know me, I'm by no means a lore expert and largely not a Vorthos. Although I have read through some of the Magic books of old, including all of Odyssey and Onslaught block, and it's something I do enjoy to some degree. Just predicate everything I'm going to talk about on the fact that I don't study it that intently. Most of what I'm drawing from is the story Wizards has set for us in Battle for Zendikar block, as well as the upcoming Shadows Over Innistrad block.

Many believe our missing Eldrazi titan Emrakul will be making a debut on Innistrad. My question is, how would that be possible? Could Innistrad and Zendikar, or any of the characters involved, be connected in some way? As I thought about it more and the theory unfolded in my mind, it started to make sense. And it sounded awesome (well, to me anyway).

Connecting Zendikar and Innistrad

We got this teaser video some time ago from the official Wizards of the Coast YouTube Channel. We know that something is very wrong with the plane right now---we see an angel's feather soaked in blood and the Church of Avacyn symbol clearly being distorted. I use the word distorted deliberately; we may be looking at the influence of the Eldrazi on the plane.

Recently Wizards began publishing art books for the various blocks, a trend we could see continue into the future. We have the Art of Zendikar, announced at PAX, but we also now have confirmation of another art book, for Innistrad. Not too long ago, a synopsis of the book was "leaked" via various media sources that are working alongside Wizards to promote the book. Here's that synopsis:

In THE ART OF MAGIC: THE GATHERING – INNISTRAD, terror falls from the skies on blood-spattered wings and nameless horrors lurk in the shadows. These pages, lavishly illustrated with the award-winning art of Magic: The Gathering, are your entry into a world beset by terrible evils on all sides and betrayed by the hope it held most dear. Tread lightly as you follow the heroic Planeswalkers of the Gatewatch as they investigate these dark mysteries.

Very interesting indeed. The Gatewatch will be a part of this story, that much we knew. If you read deeper you can find some clear indications of what might be waiting for our Gatewatch heroes back on Innistrad when they return. Betrayed by the hope it held most dear---that line kept me thinking over and over again, where have we seen that before? Why does that sound so familiar?

Thanks to a little digging with the help of Kelly Reid and archive.org, we were able to re-read some older articles before Wizards did its re-design. What we found was this snippet from "The Defiance of Angels" by Doug Beyer in 2010:

Imagine if you were a being created from the purity of white mana, summoned to serve an ideal that turned out to be based on a catastrophic historical error. All your work to uphold a set of presumed values, all your lifelong hope that you would one day make contact with your deity—in fact, your entire purpose for being—would be founded on a lie.

The Zendikari founded multiple belief systems on a lie, and have been lied to since the beginning. These belief systems were based on distorted legends and gave rise to Ula, Kosi, and Emeria. Even the angels associated with this deity "Emeria" have been associating themselves with a lie. Each race depicted these terrible Eldrazi titans as distorted deities in each of their belief systems. Here's a chart from the article "Gods and Monsters" by Doug Beyer:

Considering what the art book synopsis gave us, it appears that the denizens of Innistrad as well as the Zendikari now have something in common, lied to and betrayed by something they once held dear. We should also re-cap on everything else they have in common:

• Angels
• Similar humanoid races
• Plane ravaged by "monsters" and protected by "gods"
• Belief Systems - Church of Avacyn / Zendikari deities

Something else I found fascinating, was that we know that Avacyn was "created," and it's alluded to that the Zendikar angels were created as well, like on every other plane. Sorin has been a part of each story for quite some time. Could there be some overlap between the angels of Zendikar and his own creation?

This might be grasping, but I can't deny the obvious similarity:

I found each of these angels from Zendikar use long staffs, adorned with symbol-like crooks at the end of them. We got to see this multiple times, not just on Shepard of the Lost. I swear, if we keep looking at them over and over, they sort of start to resemble something, don't they?

Like I stated, I'm digging deep into something that might not be relevant. Perhaps there's some missing information here that can conclude that angels use similar staffs all the time, but I just had to point out the glaring similarities.

When we look at the Innistrad trailer again we see that the sigil of the Church of Avacyn is not really breaking, but it looks to be distorting.

I could well be wrong. Innistrad and Zendikar might have their similarities, but that might not amount to anything. Wizards might not have wanted to connect the planes at all, and they could remain stand-alone planes with no connection whatsoever. It just seems like a coincidence that Innistrad and Zendikar are back-to-back blocks and that the Gatewatch is coming to Innistrad specifically.

It really sets up a Lovecraftian feel, which is supported further by the revealed keyword, "investigate." Seems like we should all be purchasing our Arkham Horror board games, from our friends over at Fantasy Flight. Although it's from the work of HP Lovecraft, that can set up a really great finale to this story between Innistrad, Zendikar, the Gatewatch and the Eldrazi.

What about the theories? Well, let's talk about them.

The "Planar Overlay" Theory

This one might be the more wild of the theories I present, but when we're dealing with all-powerful beings in these colossal Eldrazi, anything could happen.

What if Zendikar and Innistrad were planes that were overlaid somehow? The Eldrazi could have put forth this plan thousands of years ago, and it wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility that between Kozilek, Ulamog and Emrakul they somehow distorted reality enough to overlap both of the planes, making them "bizzaro" worlds. We already discussed how both worlds are similar; perhaps the Eldrazi used that to their advantage. We've seen something like this in Planar Overlay, so it does actually exist in the Multiverse, and capable of happening.

Initially this was really far fetched even for me, but a certain announcement may have made this more believable. Wizards announced the second set in the Shadows Over Innistrad block. That set is Eldritch Moon:

Like many stories before, perhaps the moon is connecting the two planes. Some inter-dimensional gateway that was created and now being used by Emrakul to warp Innistrad, distorting the planes and its inhabitants. We know Nahiri is on this plane. Maybe Nahiri has something to do with luring the Eldrazi titans to this world, similar to how she, Sorin and Ugin originally lured them to her plane of Zendikar.

Perhaps it's payback time for Nahiri, who has figured out that these planes are connected and is now exploiting that fact and exposing Emrakul's power:

Emrakul...twists all things living, be it plants, animals, or sentient beings.

- http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Emrakul

It's been done before. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask was based entirely around the moon and the distortion of time (traveling back and forth) learning that the "Moon" was home to some alternate dimension when fighting "Majora" itself.

If anyone watched the 90's anime series The Visions of Escaflowne, we learned that the heroine of the series, Hitomi Kanzaki, was transported to the World of Gaea which was a mysterious planet, but the Earth and its moon were visible in the sky. We later found out that the Earth was known as the "Mystic Moon."

Maybe that's what's happening here. Maybe Innistrad's moon will be known as the (Eldrazi)tch Moon. Right out of an HP Lovecraft novel. A whole lot of maybe's but there's something there; it could directly tie into why Innistrad was the way it was all this time. These are extremely powerful beings, who could have put this plan into motion thousands of years ago, and our heroes---Sorin included, a native of Innistrad---weren't the wiser.

Which leads us to our next theory:

Avacyn Is the "Shadow" Over Innistrad

That certainly doesn't look like the depiction of the character we've all come to know as Avacyn. There's this feeling that something is seriously wrong on Innistrad. Perhaps all the clues between what we know Emrakul is capable of, and the synopsis of the art book has lead us to this point. Avacyn is no longer the champion that Sorin created, the being created of pure white Magic and keeping the balance on the plane.

No, I get this sinking feeling that Avacyn is now being manipulated by some force, and everything points to our "missing" Emrakul. Doing what it she does best---twisting all living things. If we read back through those articles in 2010 by Doug Meyer, we realize that the Eldrazi titans have done this before. It's normal that they try to enslave races and help them take over entire planes.

We go back to this snippet of information:

But despite their unearthly power, the Eldrazi failed to wipe out the angels completely. They failed, too, to turn the angels into a kind of slave race, as they did with the vampires.

Maybe this time Emrakul succeeded, turning Avacyn into a slave to do her bidding. They've already encountered angels, and the Eldrazi already came into contact with vampires. Remember what happened on Zendikar?

What do you know, Innistrad is full of vampire bloodlines just waiting to be enslaved like their Zendikari counterparts. Controlling Avacyn along with an army of vampires---it would seem the rest of Innistrad doesn't have a chance.

It would set up the arrival of the Gatewatch perfectly to rally the remaining denizens to fight this new "shadow" along with any other living things Emrakul is controlling. Exactly as they did back on Zendikar. Nahiri could play a similar role as Ob Nixilis, and we have the final battle with Innistrad and Zendikar hanging in the balance.

~

Well, there you all have it. My first real plunge into talking about the lore and really going outside of my comfort zone when it comes to writing articles. I think others more well-versed than me can poke several holes in this. At the same time I would love to be educated, because it really seems like all of these subtle similarities in the past between the two blocks can somehow be re-told now that both of these blocks will be crossing-over.

Assuming any of this is true, I understand that many of you would be forced to accept some flawed logic and retcons for all this to work in the story. One thing to remember is that for a long period of time (shortly after those books I read a long time ago) the lore of the game wasn't really the driving factor. During this period most of use just had to accept lots of inconsistencies, as well as stories and characters that were presented and never fully fleshed out.

Perhaps we're at the point where some of these holes will have to be filled to make the future stories work. There's just such a long history to the game, and there was never any set unified story arch.

This would also be similar to what Wizards did back in the four-set block of Shadowmoor and Eventide. Two "worlds" using the same plane, which was quite an interesting story (for me anyway). This would be similar, but I also think could be successful in its own right.

I'm eager to hear everyone's interpretation on what I discussed or what might be more plausible directions for the story to take. I hope everyone enjoyed my first attempt at an article of this nature. Perhaps if there's interest we can try this again sometime.

- Chaz @ChazVMTG