Innistrad Remastered releases on January 24th, 2025. It’s going to feature cards from our various visits to the plane, including in original Innistrad Block, Shadows Over Innistrad Block, and Innistrad: Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow. To get you prepared for a return to one of the most popular planes, I’m going to recap the Innistrad story.
INNISTRAD: THE PLANE OF SCARY GOTHIC MONSTERS (AND REALLY SCARED HUMANS)
Perhaps the defining feature of the plane of Innistrad is the presence of many beings that appear in horror fiction. Most prominent among them are vampires, spirits, werewolves, and zombies.
The plane also features humans, who are barely managing to scrape by on a world where they are constantly hunted by the plane’s more frightening denizens. Night time is especially problematic for humans, as that’s when the plane’s mysterious moon brings about the most frightening forms of the plane’s monsters. This is represented by double-faced cards, which were first introduced in the original Innistrad.
However, these humans do manage to exist throughout the plane thanks to what many of them see as divine intervention. Most humans on Innistrad are members of the Church of Avacyn, a religious institution built entirely around a powerful angel named Avacyn who often intervenes on the behalf of humans, protecting them from the denizens of Innistrad.
SORIN and THE HELVAULT
Ironically, the survival of the humans on Innistrad is largely the result of a vampire – a powerful vampire planeswalker named Sorin Markov. He created Avacyn to protect humans, but his reasons for doing so aren’t entirely noble. While it’s true that he wants to limit the number of humans who are killed on the plane, it’s because he’s worried that if the monsters of Innistrad were able to run wild, they would eliminate the human population – and vampires need the human population to survive.
Sorin also created a prison from a sliver of the plane’s powerful moon. He calls this a Helvault, and it’s where the plane’s most powerful monsters – demons – are imprisoned.
Avacyn and Sorin kept Innistrad balanced for centuries, with humans being allowed to thrive just enough to also provide a food source for the plane’s vampires. However, this balance was shattered by Griselbrand, the plane’s most powerful demon.
GRISELBRAND and LILIANA
Griselbrand is one of the demons who formed a pact with the planeswalker Liliana, and he owns part of her soul. When Griselbrand learns that Liliana is taking out all the demons she made a pact with, Griselbrand formulates a plan to stay safe from her, while also plunging the plane of Innistrad into chaos.
He entices Avacyn to fight with him in front of the Helvault, but it’s a trap. When it opens to capture him, Griselbrand drags Avacyn into the prison along with him. Griselbrand sees this as the only way to stay safe from the powerful Liliana.
However, Liliana is not one who gives up easily. She interrogates the leaders of the Church of Avacyn about his whereabouts. When Mikaeus, the protector of the city of Thraben dies as the result of a zombie attack on the city, she even resurrects him to pump him for information.
Learning about the Helvault doesn’t help her, though. Even she can’t open it. Ultimately, it’s Thalia, the new guardian of Thraben who opens the prison but only after Liliana threatens to murder all of her soldiers.
This results in the release of all of the plane’s imprisoned demons, along with Avacyn. Liliana gets what she wants when she kills Griselbrand. Meanwhile, Innistrad’s balance returns thanks to the intervention of Avacyn.
SORIN’S PAST HAUNTS THE PLANE
However, this balance was relatively short-lived. Sorin’s past actions would return to haunt the plane in the form of a powerful Kor planeswalker named Nahiri. Sorin was a father-figure to her long ago, and the two of them had worked together to imprison the Eldrazi on Nahiri’s home plane of Zendikar.
However, when the Eldrazi broke free of that prison during the events of Battle for Zendikar, she asked her old mentor for help, but he never arrived to help her. This resulted in lots of death and destruction on her plane.
This enraged her. In her anger, she arrived on Innistrad and demanded an explanation from Sorin, who claims to never have received her message. Ultimately, things turned violent, and Avacyn and Sorin trapped her in the Helvault.
So, when the Helvault was opened, Nahiri was released alongside Avacy and the plane’s demons. After her time in the Helvault, she’s even angrier than she was before, and she sets about getting her vengeance against Sorin. She starts by attacking his family and imprisoning them.
She also manipulated the flows of mana on the plane. This resulted in many of the plane’s residents becoming warped, including Avacyn. After centuries of protecting humans, she now began slaughtering them wholesale. Ultimately, Sorin has to intervene and kill his beloved creation.
MAYBE THOSE OTHER MONSTERS WEREN’T SO BAD….
However, things get even worse for the plane. It turns out, Nahiri wasn’t just manipulating the flow of magic on Innistrad to warp Avacyn and other angels on the plane – she was also creating a beacon to summon the Eldrazi. Despite her hatred of them, she hates Sorin even more, and wants his plane to be laid waste just like hers was. The most powerful of the Eldrazi titans – Emrakul – arrives on the plane in the wake of Avacyn’s death.
When Emrakul arrives on the plane, many of its residents are warped into Eldrazi. Even the plane’s remaining angels aren’t immune to her influence.
Ultimately, it takes the intervention of several planeswalkers to stop Emrakul. In addition to Sorin, Gideon, Chandra, Jace, Liliana, Nissa, and Tamiyo all work together to defeat her. In the end, Tamiyo imprisons Emrakul in the plane’s moon.
ETERNAL NIGHT AND THE HARVESTTIDE FESTIVAL
It turns out, putting a multi-dimensional eldritch horror in your moon isn’t such a good idea. About two years after Emrakul was imprisoned there, the plane’s newfound balance was again disrupted. Nights began to become longer than days, creating serious problems for the plane’s humans, while stoking fears that soon it would always be night on the plane.
Meanwhile, Sorin is still consumed by depression as a result of killing Avacyn, and he has no interest in protecting the plane any longer.
The humans began to devise a plan that revolves around a witch named Katilda, who practices a form of protective magic older than Avacyn. This culminates in the Harvesttide festival, a ritual meant to restore the plane’s day and night balance using an ancient device called The Celestus.
However, the ritual is interrupted by Tovolar, a werewolf leader who wants eternal night to descend on the plane. Just when it appears that the Tovolar and his band have been defeated, Olivia Voldaren arrives on the scene and kills Katilda before the ritual can be completed, and eternal night swallows Innistrad.
In celebration of the eternal night, and in an attempt to consolidate her power, Olivia plans to marry the plane’s very first vampire – Edgar Markov. As part of the wedding festivities, she plans on killing one of the plane’s few remaining protectors – Sigarda, who is imprisoned. Then, she’ll use her blood to gain control of all the angels of Innistrad.
However, it turns out that Katilda’s death didn’t take. Not exactly, anyway. As is the case with many Innistrad humans, she returns as a spirit. She frees Sigarda with the help of Sorin (who has finally been convinced to intervene) and the werewolf planeswalker Arlinn Kord. After putting a stop to the wedding and the sacrifice of Sigarda, they return to the Celestus and complete the ritual, restoring Innistrad’s balance once more.
THE PHYREXIAN INVASION
Once again, the peace on Innistrad was short-lived. Just like every other plane in the multiverse, Innistrad was invaded by the Phyrexians during the events of March of the Machine. As with Emrakul, the influence of the Phyrexians began to morph the plane’s residences into something new and frightening – in this case, biomechanical monstrosities.
For the first time, the plane’s humans, vampires, werewolves, zombies, and spirits all work together to defeat the invaders, although thousands of the plane’s residents are killed before the invasion is halted.
END STEP
So, that’s the story of Innistrad. We’ve taken so many trips to the plane that it has quite the long story. Innistrad Remastered is sure to effectively capture all the different eras of Innistrad in a single set. It’s going to be exciting to see what they choose to reprint.
If you want to talk about Innistrad, hit me up over on X.
Jacob has been playing Magic for the better part of 24 years, and he especially loves playing Magic’s Limited formats. He also holds a PhD in history from the University of Oklahoma. In 2015, he started his YouTube channel, “Nizzahon Magic,” where he combines his interests with many videos covering Magic’s competitive history. When he’s not playing Magic or making Magic content, he can be found teaching college-level history courses or caring for a menagerie of pets with his wife.