Secrets of Strixhaven releases on April 24th, and the set’s official story will begin in the very near future. Strixhaven is a magical university located on the plane of Arcavios. Secrets will be our second adventure set on the plane, with 2021’s Strixhaven: School of Mages introducing us to the plane.
As such, I thought it would be a good time to recap everything we know about the plane of Arcavios and its magical university.
PRIMORDIAL ARCAVIOS AND THE ELDER DRAGONS
Millennia ago, two primordial planes collided with one another and merged into one. This led to the opposing magics of these worlds overlapping, resulting in the creation of snarls – places where opposing forms of magic became intermingled and entangled. These paradoxical locations of both opposition and unity eventually birthed five Elder Dragons, each of which eventually achieved mastery over each of the five enemy color combinations.
THE BLOOD AGE AND THE FOUNDING OF STRIXHAVEN UNIVERSITY
Several millennia later, humanoids emerged on the plane of Arcavios. At first the Elder Dragons had no interest in helping these new beings understand their magic. However, this resulted in a time known as The Blood Age – a time of fierce warfare between different humanoid factions on the plane, and they were often wielding magic dangerously when they did so.
Eventually, the Elder Dragons decided to intervene. They reasoned that it would be better to teach the humanoids of Arcavios about each of these enemy color combinations and how to wield them responsibly. They created an institution for this exact purpose – Strixhaven. Following their founding of Strixhaven, these five dragons came to be known as the Founder Dragons.
Five colleges were created within Strixhaven – one for each of the enemy color combinations. These five colleges bear the name of its respective Founder Dragon, and each of them has their own separate campus.
THE FIVE COLLEGES OF STRIXHAVEN
Prismari – College of Elemental Arts
Prismari mages combine Blue’s love of knowledge and innovation with Red’s focus on passion and emotion. They use their knowledge of artistic media to express their emotions with the Fine Arts – including art and music. They often do this by summoning beautiful elementals that are a form of living art.
Silverquill – College of Eloquence
Silverquill mages combine White’s love of structure and zeal with Black’s focus on exposing the weaknesses of others. They wield the magic of words, using them to convince others of specific viewpoints and/or to attack others. They do this through both the spoken and written word, and their words are so powerful that they can physically harm or enhance themselves or others. Their particularly powerful insults and retorts sometimes manifest themselves as Inklings, shadowy beings that embody the thoughts and ideas of their summoner.
Quandrix – College of Numeromancy
Quandrix mages combine Blue’s love of knowledge and Green’s love of nature to closely observe and influence the world around them, especially when it comes to living things. They do this through the study of Numeromancy – what we would call mathematics. They analyze and influence the world around them using numbers. For example, Quandrix mages can summon fractals – artificial life forms that are formed by a series of geometric figures.
Lorehold – College of Archaeomancy
Lorehold mages combine Red’s love of discovery and adventure with White’s love of order. They do this by exploring the plane of Arcavios and trying to find ruins and documents that can help them understand the plane’s past. Most Lorehold mages are archaeologists or historians. As a History PhD and part-time professor, this is the college that is the nearest and dearest to me.
Lorehold mages have a pretty big leg up on real world historians and archaeologists though. They can summon spirits of those who lived in the past, and talk with them to learn directly about the past from those who lived it.
Witherbloom – College of Essence Studies
Witherbloom mages combine black’s desire for power with green’s knowledge of living things. This allows them to draw power from other living things or enhance themselves or others using their knowledge of nature to brew potions. They create beings called Pests that exist purely to allow Witherbloom mages to have a source of life energy.
THE RISE OF THE ORIQ
The main story for the original Strixhaven: School of Mages largely centered on three protagonists: The Kenrith twins and Professor Onyx. The Kenrith twins are a planeswalker duo from the plane of Eldraine who travel to Arcavios to study at Strixhaven in the Prismari college. Professor Onyx is the necromancer planeswalker Liliana Vess in disguise. Following the events of War of the Spark, during which her friend Gideon Jura gave up his life to save her, she heads to Strixhaven in an attempt to find a way to revive him. She is serving as a Witherbloom professor.
Liliana is aware of a threat on Arcavios – a group called the Oriq, who are opposed to Strixhaven’s gatekeeping of the plane’s magic. They believe there is much that Strixhaven is hiding from those who live on Arcavios. The Oriq choose to wield magic in their own way, often with massively destructive effects. Basically, they want to return to a time of completely unregulated magic comparable to the Blood Age.
Their leader is a man named Extus. An alumnus of Silverquill College, he is bitter for being passed over by the Founder Dragons for the role of the school’s Oracle. Now, he wants to destroy the university and everything it stands for. He begins researching forbidden magic from the Blood Age to meet this end.
To enact this plan, he stealthily recruits mages within the school, who he tempts by offering them access to forbidden magic, as well as powerful relics. He also creates an army of Horrors called Mage Hunters, whose express purpose is to hunt and kill mages.
Liliana becomes aware of the Oriq presence at Strixhaven and she recruits fellow planeswalkers Will and Rowan to help her. Before long, Extus stages his attack on the school.
His goal is to reach the Hall of Oracles, where he thinks he’ll have access to the necessary magic to summon a frightening being known as the Blood Avatar. While he succeeds in reaching the Hall and summoning the Avatar, the intervention of the Kenrith twins, Liliana, and even the Founder Dragons ultimately leads to Extus’ defeat.
THE PHYREXIAN INVASION AND ITS AFTERMATH
Like most planes in the multiverse, Arcavios was invaded by the Phyrexians during the March of the Machines and it didn’t fare very well. Much of the school’s faculty was compleated, and it was ultimately left to Liliana and some of the school’s more advanced students – including Quintorius Kand – to find a way to repel the invasion.
She uncovered a powerful spell called the Invocation of the Founders which harnessed the different forms of magic wielded by the Founder Dragons. Ultimately, the spell worked, but many Strixhaven students and faculty died during the invasion, and the school was in ruins.
During the invasion, the Lorehold student Quintorius Kand disappeared, and it was later revealed that his planeswalker spark ignited.
The school was rebuilt by the survivors, and the subsequent opening of the Omenpaths – dimensional portals anyone can access, which were left in the aftermath of the Phyrexian invasion – has actually led to the school growing in size.
Lorwyn Eclipsed – A STRIXHAVEN FIELD TRIP GONE WRONG
We last got an extended look at Arcavios in the Lorwyn Eclipsed story. While most of that set’s events take place on Lorwyn-Shadowmoor, the story starts and ends at Strixhaven, and some of the story’s main characters are first-year students at the school.
Abigale (Silverquill), Sanar (Prismari), Kirol (Lorehold) and Tam (Quandrix) are on a field trip in the woods collecting flowers to feed to pests when they encounter a strange insect-like humanoid being. Tam chases after it, wanting to learn more about this unknown creature, and her companions follow. When they do, they end up tumbling through an uncharted Omenpath, and they awaken on Lorwyn-Shadowmoor.
Meanwhile, one of Liliana’s old friends – Ajani Pridemane – locates her on Arcavios and pays her a visit. While he’s there, news of the missing students is reported to Liliana, and she asks Ajani to find them and bring them back.
The foursome have a perilous journey on the plane, and eventually discover that the insect-like being that tricked them to coming to the plane was none other than the Faerie planeswalker Oko, who wanted to create chaos on his home plane. Ultimately they are rescued by Ajani, who actually returns with a fifth student – Lluwen. He’s a Lorwyn elf the group encountered on their travels, and he returns to Strixhaven to join Witherbloom college.
Once the students have returned and the ordeal is over, something very strange happens to Liliana. While she’s in her office, she hears a knock on her door. When she opens it, she sees a woman who is a mirror-image of herself. However, instead of being clad entirely black, she is clad entirely in white. The woman says the two of them need to talk, and the story ends.
LOOKING AHEAD: WHAT MIGHT STRIXHAVEN’S ‘SECRETS’ BE?
The identity and origin of Liliana’s white doppelganger is certainly the most pressing ‘secret.’ It’s possible that she is somehow the Lorwyn version of Liliana herself. On that plane, there is constant duality between day and night, with beings taking on different forms depending on the time of day.
However, in addition to that very personal mystery for Liliana, there could be any number of other secrets lurking on the plane. Arcavios is a massive plane, and Strixhaven itself is only a small part of it. We’ve seen very little of the rest of the plane – but we do know that gigantic Avatars known as Archaics are wandering it.
They are immortal and wise beings who are constantly seeking knowledge. The Archaics could possess some knowledge about the plane’s past that would definitely qualify as a secret. Furthermore, while they certainly don’t behave like Eldrazi, their colorless identities and massive eldritch forms might indicate that they have some sort of connection to them. We did recently see the Eldrazi return in Edge of Eternities, so it wouldn’t be completely crazy if we get another hint of them on Arcavios.
Arcavios also has mysterious structures all over it called “Star Arches.” These are inert, immovable stone structures that appear to levitate. Each of them almost looks like it’s marking a doorway, but so far no one knows what they are for.
Furthermore, despite founding the university, the Founder Dragons are surprisingly mysterious. They rarely interact with the school except in emergencies, and those ancient beings could also have some secrets about the plane’s mysterious origins. Perhaps they know what the Star Arches are, for example.
One of the early previews for the set is Lorehold, the Historian – and that may not mean anything for the story. On the other hand, it might be that he’s going to share some secrets of the plane’s past with the students in the college that is named for him.
But really, Strixhaven could be harboring any number of secrets. While the way the Oriq went about things was definitely unethical, there is some truth to the fact that knowledge of magic on Arcavios is heavily regulated and only those chosen for the university get to study it. And even once one becomes a student or faculty, you don’t gain access to everything within Stirxhaven’s archives.
END STEP
So, what do you think? What secrets is Strixhaven harboring? Let me know over 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.