Grixis

Grixis
[[File:{{#setmainimage:Grixis.jpg}}|250px]]
General Information
First seen	Shards of Alara
Last seen	Conflux
Status	Merged with the other Shards
Game Information
Colors
Mechanics	Unearth
Demonym	Grixian

Grixis is one of five shards of Alara. It is primarily black-aligned, with blue and red as secondary colors.

Description

Grixis is a world of death, darkness, undead, hatred, envy, and a lot of other bad things. It is dominated by demons, horrors, necromancers and other forms of undead. Due to the predominance of undeath, it is possible to find undead versions of Bant's leotaus and Jund's viashinos in Grixis. Grixis means "traitor" in the ancient Vithian language, a name given to it by the knights and paladins who were killed during Sedris's defection to the demonic inhabitants after the Sundering.

Grixis’s skies are purple-gray, stormy, and ominous, riddled with pink heat lightning. Its hills are drifts of bones, its valleys are decaying flesh, and its seas are murky, polluted deathtraps. Its cities are lairs of undead hordes and necromancer barons, and every parcel of land between them is a battlefield for their constant power struggles. Because of ancient enchantments, decay is slowed to a crawl on the plane, allowing the landscape to fester for centuries.

Most necromancers use their powers to create minions and use those minions to search for more sources of life. Almost all necromancers are capable of animating dead tissue to do their bidding, but mages might practice more variants of necromancy on Grixis than on any other plane. Fleshcrafters — artists and artisans in the medium of death — create bizarre implements from flesh and bone. Lethemancers steal vis through the thoughts and memories of living beings, leaving amnesiacs and lunatics in their wake. Ghostslavers specialize in trapping and binding the restless spirits that haunt Grixis, while gale mages control the death gales, the entropic winds that scour the plane.

Besides the necromancers, a group of humans called the Vithians actively hunt the undead. They uphold the ways of a lost kingdom. The still-living beings on Grixis are called Vitals, and the life-force of those beings is called Vis. Vis suffuses a living creature's tissues and bodily fluids but is not itself a physical material. Vis empowers Demons and fuels all of the magic on Grixis. Vis can be consumed directly from a living host via magical means but is usually gathered through the blood or thoughts of the living. Necromancers actively hunt down Human and Ogre encampments to take slaves to obtain this Vis through arcane rituals. They hunt for the ultimate power to conquer all others. Demons have the power to drain a vital of its' vis at will. A Human or Ogre whose life force has been drained is still considered alive. These Damned oftentimes aren't distinguishable from real living. The damned have an ashen, gaunt appearance and greatly diminished mental function, but are physiologically alive. As such they can pass for normal humans for a short time, but are completely controlled by their demon masters—making them dangerous spies. Hermitages of the living test for the Damned with rigorous questioning and magical detection.

Despite its intangibility, vis is the most important resource on Grixis. The mana of Grixis is entropic, and self-destructive, without white and green mana to protect and strengthen it, it dissipates over time. As a result, Grixis, the plane of death, is dying. The only thing that extends its survival is vis.

Incurables are the Ogres on Grixis, inflicted by a terrible form-altering curse that happened soon after the Sundering. Dreg Reavers are huge undead designed to lay waste to other armies or necropolises in times of war. Banewasps are insects that feed on carrion and are used by necromancers as a weak source of Vis. Demons employ devils as torturers, slave drivers, and masters of packs of undead, using their skills in tormenting others to their motivational advantage.

History

Before Grixis split off from the mega-plane of Alara, things were different. White and green mana still flourished there. The land was called Vithia, a white-aligned empire of humans and other races, a land proud of its dynasty of wise and honorable monarchs. Much like the kingdoms that make up the Shard of Bant, Vithia functioned on a system of castes and had a focus on knighthood and chivalry up until the sundering occurred. Vithian paladins were known for their crusades against the necromancers of old.

When Grixis was separated from the rest of Alara and cut off from white and green mana, the demons, witches, and necromancers gained power in the ensuing chaos, while its angels soon went extinct. However, even though the powers of Vithia's mages were losing their potency, there was still a chance for the kingdom to survive, due to the martial skill of its many knights. Sedris was once the good and righteous king of Vithia during the early years following the Sundering. It is unknown when exactly he fell from grace, but when demons tempted him with dreams of power, he submitted. Sedris handed thousands of innocents over to the demons, killed his own family and advisors, and performed a dark ritual that allowed his consciousness to continue into unlife. Vithia's paladins, unable to stop the fallen monarch, fled the kingdom. Vithia was overrun by demons and the undead shortly afterward, and the capital was transformed into the now greatest necropolis on the plane. Sedris still rules this dark city of the dead, as the most powerful lich warlord on the plane.

Conflux

When the Conflux hit the shards, the life energies of green and white mana flooded into Grixis. The process of harvesting vis was disrupted, and the creatures became fueled with energy by the power of the life that was coming in. They invaded the nearby planes, turning dead soldiers into new undead of their own. Meanwhile, the great Dragon, Nicol Bolas, had already disrupted the other shards, and the plane fell into chaos. It has become part of the New Alara, and cults of demon worship have risen all across the new landscape, with the most notable being dedicated to Nefarox. After the death of the plane's de facto leader, Malfegor, chaos reigns, with factions vying for control of the former shard.

New Phyrexia's Invasion

Alara as was targeted by Elesh Norn's Machine Legion as part of New Phyrexia's Invasion of the Multiverse with a simultaneous strike on Bant, Esper, and Jund. At some point during the invasion, the Maelstrom itself awoke to fight on behalf of Alara. The role and fate of Grixis' demons and undead in the invasion is unknown.

Geography

Grixis features a vast swamp where degeneration is slowed to a crawl known as the Dregscape, made up of the remains of various large corpses, eroded earth, and the stench of death. The carcasses of centuries-old beasts and people linger here, slowly becoming a thick ichor. The Dregscape is the main feeding ground for the kathari, a race of scavenging vulture-people who occupy the islands out to sea, and a wellspring of black mana and corpses for necromancy. The mutated ogres, known as incurables, dwell high in the mountains.

The few living humans take shelter in small, hidden brick cities known as hermitages. Some hermitages, wracked with the amnesia-magic of lethemancers and faced with the daily horrors of the plane, become nothing more than insane asylums. A precious few, such as the mountain fortress of Torchlight, are reasonably well-defended with sword and sorcery, but the renegades who maintain them are constantly under siege by flesh-hungry undead and tempted by the promises of demons.

If there is any true civilization on Grixis, it's in the necropolises, cities of the undead. Most necropolises are ruled by liches or demon lords, but others are run by living necromancers. Rulers of necropolises, called barons, constantly war with one another, trying to expand their boundaries and hoards of resources. Some necropolises are built over enormous, labyrinthine systems of caverns that serve as dungeons for the living and storage for the dead.

Notable locations

• The Boneheaps, the dumping grounds of the Kathari. Once the kathari are done gnawing on a corpse, they fly the skeletons piece by piece to enormous hills of bones. There, rats and other vermin clean the rest of the meat from the bones, leaving only clean, dry, clattering remains. The kathari can then use the pieces to construct animated skeletons, jewelry and armor, and bone golems. Bone heaps can be good sources of red and black mana, and are often scoured for valuables by the minions of necromancers and liches.
• The Dregscape
  • Loamlair
• The Droning Isles, crumbling towers of ashen crust that are the massive hives of the banewasps. Banewasps construct their hives in the middle of murky, shallow seas, which help protect their developing larvae from predators such as kathari and plague bats. The constant buzzing of these larva warehouses gives the Droning Isles their name.
• Kederekt, a necropolis of undead-afflicted, half-sunken manor houses near a greasy, acidic sea. Facetiously called "Seaside" by still-living Vithian humans. The manor houses have sunken into the silt so they're tilted at odd angles. The residents are all undead, and Kederekt naturally divides them into those who live above and below the water line.
  • Bolas's hideout beneath Kederekt.
• Sedraxis, once the shining capital of Vithia, is now the largest necropolis on the plane. Filled with gothic arches and cobblestone streets, the once-great city is now a deadly maze of crumbling walls, half-collapsed spires, and roofless shells of buildings. The lich king Sedris rules this place, though he is usually content to let chaos reign within its walls.
• Torchlight, the greatest hermitage of living beings. A mountain fortress.
• Unx, a necropolis most well known for the massive dragon skeleton that circles the city. Unx was once a grand stadium, but its floor has become a huge sinkhole that leads far down to the magma below. Vampires meet here annually.
• Ilsun Gate, home of Eliza of the Keep.
• Joffik

Notable inhabitants

• Eliza of the Keep
• Kess
• Malfegor
• Nefarox, overlord of Grixis
• Sedris, the Vithian traitor king
• Thraximundar
• Yidris

Planeswalker visitors

• Dack Fayden
• Jace Beleren
• Liliana Vess
• Nicol Bolas
• Sifa Grent
• Tezzeret
• The Unluckiest

In-game references

Represented in:

• Grixis

Associated cards:

• Grixis Battlemage
• Grixis Charm
• Grixis Grimblade
• Grixis Illusionist
• Grixis Panorama
• Grixis Slavedriver
• Grixis Sojourners
• Nefarox, Overlord of Grixis
• Obelisk of Grixis

Quoted or referred to:

• Agony Warp
• Banewasp Affliction
• Bant Sureblade
• Blightning (Shards of Alara)
• Bone Splinters (Shards of Alara)
• Brainbite
• Covenant of Minds
• Demonspine Whip
• Dreg Reaver
• Dregscape Sliver
• Dregscape Zombie
• Fleshbag Marauder
• Infectious Horror
• Kederekt Creeper
• Knight of New Alara
• Parasitic Strix
• Shore Snapper
• Unstable Frontier
• Vectis Agents
• Viashino Skeleton
• Voices from the Void
• Zealous Persecution (Alara Reborn)
• Zombie Outlander