Magic has been around since 1993. And almost from the game’s start, there has been a story. When a story’s been going for that long, it’s bound to become complex and hard to follow. This article seeks to remedy that by summarizing the most important aspects of the Magic story into a single digestible read. If you’re a new player, it’ll help you understand how things got to where they are today, and if you’re an older player, it will be a useful review.
THE MULTIVERSE and PLANESWALKERS
Before I start breaking down the whole of Magic lore there are some key aspects of it that are essential to understanding the story. First, Magic takes place in a multiverse. In other words, there are many different worlds that we have visited over the course of the game’s story. These other worlds are called “planes” in the parlance of the game. Typically, it’s not possible for individuals to travel between these different planes because they are separated by a void called The Blind Eternities.
However, scattered throughout the multiverse there are beings called planeswalkers. These are powerful mages who have the ability to travel between planes. Planeswalkers and the conflicts between them are often at the heart of the Magic story.
Planeswalkers were once regular beings on their respective planes, but during an event of great emotional turmoil their “spark” ignites, granting them their abilities.
DOMINARIA: CENTER OF THE MULTIVERSE
Dominaria is the first plane visited in the Magic story and until 2005 almost the entire story took place there. It’s also at the center of the multiverse.
UGIN, BOLAS, and THE ELDER DRAGONS
During the plane’s most ancient history, there was a multi-generational war between incredibly powerful dragons. This wreaked havoc on the plane, and ultimately the two remaining factions in the war were led by the power-hungry and manipulative Nicol Bolas, who wanted to rule all of Dominaria with an iron fist, and Arcades Sabboth, who believed order and peace were necessary to rule.
Bolas was on the verge of victory when someone unexpected intervened on behalf of Arcades – Bolas’s twin brother, Ugin. Bolas had thought his brother had died much earlier in the conflict, but Ugin reveals that he has the ability to travel throughout the multiverse and that’s where he’s been during all the time. This makes Ugin the first known planeswalker in the story.
He tells his brother that all of his efforts on Dominaria are pointless because the multiverse is so vast. This drives Bolas into a jealous rage. His own spark ignites, and he is transported to another plane, bringing an end to the war. But this isn’t the last we’ll see of these two elder dragon brothers.
YAWGMOTH and PHYREXIA
Thousands of years after the Elder Dragon War, a physician named Yawgmoth is asked to help fight a disease that is ravaging the world’s dominant power – the Thran Empire. He realizes the disease is coming from their use of powerstones, powerful sources of energy.
Yawgmoth agrees to help them, and during his work he encounters a planeswalker named Dyfed, who offers to help him in his mission. She shows Yawgmoth an empty plane. Yawgmoth dubs this plane “Phyrexia” and promises to use it for his patients. In reality, he uses the plane and the sick who are sent there as test subjects for creating a race of beings that are part machine.
Eventually, the Thran discover Yawgmoth’s deception, and this results in a war fought between the Thran and Yawgmoth. This war doesn’t end well for either side. Yawgmoth largely obliterates the Thran Empire, but he also ends up trapped in Phyrexia as the portal between the two planes was closed using an especially powerful powerstone.
THE BROTHERS’ WAR
Thousands of years later, two young brothers are known as artificer prodigies – Urza and Mishra. They both seek to uncover the secrets of ancient Thran technology.
The two of them discover the sealed portal to Phyrexia. They are both drawn to the powerstone sealing it, and they grab it at the same time, causing it to break into two parts. These come to be known as The Mightstone and Weakstone. These stones granted each brother great power, but they both grew jealous of one another and desired to possess both halves of the stone. This leads to war.
Meanwhile, because the portal to Phyrexia has opened, one of Yawgmoth’s most terrifying creations – a praetor called Gix – comes through the portal and begins influencing the plane, infiltrating both factions. He has more success with Mishra, who he ultimately corrupts. The alliance between Phyrexia and Mishra is too much for Urza to handle.
Urza is not left with many options. He uses a massively destructive weapon called the Golgothian Sylex to obliterate a massive chunk of Dominaria. His plan works, but at great cost to the plane. Those who survive the blast have to deal with a world plunged into a dark Ice Age and the general collapse of society. In the aftermath, Urza’s emotional turmoil leads to him awakening as a planeswalker.
THE TOLARIAN ACADEMY
After a millennium and a half of multiplanar adventures, Urza returns to Dominaria. He is pleased to find that the plane has finally recovered. However, he also uncovers a Phyrexian plot to infiltrate Dominaria using sleeper agents – Phyrexians that look identical to humans.
Urza founds the Tolarian Academy. It’s an elite institute for the training of the youth of Dominaria in artifice and magic. But its true purpose is to help the plane prepare for an inevitable Phyrexian invasion at any cost. Only children are admitted, because sleeper agents can only appear as adults.
Urza begins experimenting with time travel, because he might be able to use it to undo some of his mistakes and the continued rise of the Phyrexians. While he finds a way to create a time machine, he finds that the only thing that can pass through it is silver. This leads to him creating Karn, Silver Golem.
Just as he completes his time machine, the Phyrexians catch wind of Urza’s plans at the academy, and they attack it. Most of the students are killed. Urza and Karn use the time machine to try and prevent the Phyrexian attack from ever happening. They succeed, but Urza’s time machine creates a time rift on the plane.
THE WEATHERLIGHT SAGA
Now, Urza focuses on constructing his Legacy, an airship that possesses both immense firepower and the ability to travel between planes. He has to gather many powerful artifacts and even some magical wood to construct it.
He builds a skyship called The Weatherlight which quickly proves to be a powerful weapon which he uses to stall a Phyrexian invasion and evacuate the residents of another plane.
However, he also realizes the ship is not yet ready to destroy Yawgmoth and the Phyrexians. He begins The Bloodlines Project, the goal of which is to genetically engineer super soldiers over time, including the future pilot of the Weatherlight.
Eventually, this results in the birth of Gerrard Capashen, who is completely unaware of his prominent role. He goes on many adventures on the Weatherlight, amassing a crew including Karn.
During this time, they are subtly guided by a Blind Seer who claims he can see where The Weatherlight is needed. Everywhere they happen to travel, they find some new artifact that allows them to make the ship more powerful. Meanwhile, Dominaria is invaded by the Phyrexians.
In the climax of the story, the Weatherlight travels to Phyrexia to destroy Yawgmoth himself. Here, it is revealed that the seer was Urza all along. He tells the crew that the only way to destroy Yawgmoth and Phyrexia once and for all is to use the Powerstone and Mightstone in Urza’s head, Karn’s body, and Gerrard’s life. These components will turn The Weatherlight into the more powerful Legacy Weapon.
The resulting blast succeeds in destroying Yawgmoth, but it also results in the death of Urza and Gerrard. In the wake of all the destruction, Urza’s spark fuses with Karn and he becomes a planeswalker.
MIRRODIN
Karn uses his newfound power and a powerful artifact called the Mirari to create a plane called Argentum. He even turns The Mirari into a golem. However, this golem – called Memnarch – seizes control of the plane, even finding a way to prevent Karn from planeswalking there. In his own search for a planeswalker spark, he ravages the plane turning into a metallic one dominated by artifacts. He renames it Mirrodin. Ultimately, Memnarch is defeated by the denizens of the plane, but only after a difficult battle.
THE MENDING
While the Phyrexians were defeated, the damage they did to the plane of Dominaria was on a massive scale. Furthermore, all of the major cataclysms experienced by the plane (including Urza’s Sylex Blast, Urza’s time machine, and even the Elder Dragon War) had created time rifts. Various planeswalkers and denizens of Dominaria close these rifts in an event called The Mending.
THE POST-MENDING MULTIVERSE
Uh oh. Look who is angry about the Mending.
The Mending of Dominaria has some unintended consequences. It turns out, part of what made planeswalkers so powerful was their ability to easily draw mana from across the multiverse by using these time rifts.
Repairing the rifts makes it more difficult for planeswalkers to travel between planes, and it becomes almost impossible to travel between planes by other means. So, a ship like the Weatherlight can no longer do the job.
It also weakens the power of planeswalkers. For example, they are no longer immortal, as Urza was. They also no longer have the power to create entire planes, as Karn did. This creates a new era in the multiverse often referred to as “Post-Mending.”
The “Post-Mending” era of the Magic story also largely focuses on planes other than Dominaria, though as we’ll see, the various events that occurred on that plane had long-term implications for the multiverse.
ALARA
The Elder Dragon Planeswalker Nicol Bolas has been traveling the multiverse for millenia. He’s been enjoying his god-like power by invading planes, manipulating other planeswalkers, and murdering his brother Ugin. However, when the Mending weakens him, he tries to find a way to reclaim his power.
In his search, he finds the plane of Alara. Once a single plane, it was shattered into shards millenia ago. Nicol Bolas infiltrates each of these Shards and plans to reunite them in The Conflux. This will create a maelstrom of energy that Bolas wants to absorb to restore his power.
In his quest to gain this power, a leonin (cat person) named Jazal Goldmane is killed. His brother Ajani is struck with grief and a thirst for vengeance, awakening his spark as a planeswalker.
With his newfound power, Ajani manages to fight Bolas to a standstill, and he ultimately chooses to retreat from the plane, but only after absorbing the maelstrom and becoming more powerful.
THE RISE OF THE ELDRAZI
Even after absorbing the Maelstrom, Bolas isn’t as strong as he wants to be. He begins to shift his attention toward harvesting the sparks of other planeswalkers. He thinks if he can get enough of them, he will return to his Pre-Mending levels of power.
To that end, he manipulates a dragon-loving planeswalker named Sarkhan into guarding a strange object called the Eye of Ugin, which is on the plane of Zendikar. He also tricks the pyromancer planeswalker Chandra Nalaar into investigating the eye, by telling her about a magic scroll that will teach her a new spell called Ghostfire. Chandra steals the scroll from a group called the Consortium, and this leads to the mind mage planeswalker Jace Beleren pursuing her to get it back.
In the end, all three of these planeswalkers arrive on the plane and fight one another in the Eye. Chandra’s mastery of Ghostfire results in the unintended consequence of shattering the Eye of Ugin, which – it turns out, imprisoned massive eldritch monsters from the Blind Eternities called the Eldrazi, and had been put in place by Ugin millenia before.
These beings are overwhelmingly powerful, especially the three Eldrazi titans: Emrakul, Kozilek, and Ulamog. Not only are they highly destructive, they are also capable of traveling between planes.
Bolas wanted these beings to escape because he thought it would lead to many planeswalkers coming to Zendikar to try and stop them, giving him an opportunity to harvest their sparks. But the planeswalkers are initially unsuccessful at slaying the Eldrazi and they retreat and regroup. They realize that they need to find a way to seal the Eldrazi once more as the Eye of Ugin did, as fighting them isn’t working.
DRAGONS OF TARKIR
During Sarkhan’s time in the Eye of Ugin, he starts to hear the whispers of an ancient dragon and Bolas’s brother – Ugin himself. His whispers drive him insane. Sarkhan hails from the plane of Tarkir, a world once dominated by dragons. He learns that Ugin himself is responsible for the dragons that once roamed the plane. However, during a cataclysmic battle millenia earlier, Bolas killed his brother, ultimately resulting in the end of Tarkir’s dragons.
Using an ancient relic called Ugin’s Nexus, Sarkhan travels back in time and alters the result of the battle between the twin dragons, allowing Ugin to survive. Not only does this result in a Tarkir that is once again dominated by dragons – it also means that Ugin, the multiverse’s greatest hope against both the Eldrazi and Bolas, can now help the other planeswalkers.
THE BATTLE FOR ZENDIKAR
Meanwhile, Zendikar is still being ravaged by the Eldrazi. However, Ugin joins the other planeswalkers in the fight, and he begins by attempting to repair the Eye of Ugin, as well as a network of obelisks called Hedrons, which can help bind the Eldrazi.
Several of the multiverse’s planeswalkers work together to fight the titans, and with the added power of Ugin’s hedrons, which significantly weakened the Titans, they finally managed to destroy both Kozilek and Ulamog, with Chandra dealing the fatal blow.
While Emrakul manages to escape, and would later wreak havoc on the gothic horror plane of Innistrad, she is also ultimately defeated, ending the threat that the Eldrazi posed to the multiverse. In all the chaos and destruction wrought by the Eldrazi, Bolas also didn’t manage to harvest any sparks.
The catastrophe also resulted in planeswalkers banding together and taking the Oath of the Gatewatch, with each of them promising to work together in the future if a similar cataclysmic event threatens the multiverse.
So overall, Bolas’s plans on Zendikar ended up being an epic failure. However, he’s not done yet.
WAR OF THE SPARK
In the intervening years, Bolas comes up with a new plan for harvesting sparks. Using powerful relics that he has procured from throughout the multiverse, Bolas lures planeswalkers to the plane of Ravnica and traps them there.
There, he has amassed an army of powerful Zombies called Eternals that are under the command of a necromancer planeswalker who is under his control – Liliana Vess. He has manipulated her over the years, and she is bound by a contract to him. If she reneges on it, she’ll die.
The most powerful Zombies that are under her thrall are the former gods of the plane of Amonkhet. These Eternals are hard to defeat even for planeswalkers, and many are slain and have their sparks harvested by Bolas.
In the climax of the story (which is captured quite well in this animated video) Liliana decides to turn on Bolas, sending the God-Eternals and the rest of her undead army after him. This creates an opening for the forces battling Bolas, and he is ultimately defeated, losing his own spark and all those that he collected.
Bolas is imprisoned by Ugin in the Meditation Realm, a place where he will spend eternity alongside his brother. After wreaking havoc on the multiverse for millennia, Bolas is finally sidelined.
THE MARCH OF THE MACHINE
Meanwhile, the Phyrexians have slowly been expanding once again. They conquered Karn’s plane of Mirrodin and dubbed it New Phyrexia. It’s their new base of operations. The Phyrexian Praetor, Elesh Norn is now calling the shots.
There are two important aspects of the Phyrexian invasion plan. First, they find a way to create portals called “Omenpaths” throughout the multiverse. This allows Phyrexian armies to simply enter any world they choose.
Second, they take control of several planeswalkers by “Compleating” them – or making them into Phyrexians. With some of the multiverse’s most powerful planeswalkers on their side, the invasion gets off to a good start for the Phyrexians.
However, even with this advantage, the Phyrexians underestimate the resolve of the multiverse’s many planes, which unite to defeat them. In the end, the Omenpaths backfire. New Phyrexia is invaded by a multi-planar army, and the Phyrexians are finally defeated.
THE OMENPATHS and THE DESPARKENING
Karn is one of many former planeswalkers who lost their spark.
While the Phyrexians may have failed, their attempted invasion of the multiverse has had lasting effects. First, the Omenpaths they created remain, although most of them are hidden and difficult to find. This means that it is easier to travel between planes than it has ever been. Second, many of the multiverse’s planeswalkers lose their spark. It is currently unclear what exactly led to this event, though it has been theorized by some former planeswalkers that with the Omenpaths, the multiverse no longer needs planeswalkers.
The game’s current story revolves around a being called Loot, who has the ability to locate omenpaths. People throughout the multiverse are after him because of his ability. In the most recent story, Loot was used by Jace to locate the Meditation Realm, and Nicol Bolas has once again been freed. If you want a deeper dive on that particular story, there’s an article for that!
END STEP
That’s a summary of all the major events in the Magic timeline. I hope this was useful in getting you caught up! In the future, I’ll be writing some articles that take a deep dive on various aspects of the Magic story, so you can look forward to those. If there’s anything in particular that you’d like me to cover, let me know on X or Bluesky.
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.