Chandra Nalaar

Template:Character Chandra Nalaar is a planeswalker who is adept at using spells of red mana. She's particularly good with fire and uses it resolve whatever situation she might be in. She values ingenuity and improvisation with her magic. She is passionate, impulsive, and doesn't much like authority, as typifies characters tightly bound to red mana. Even though Chandra is proud of her independent nature, she also recognizes the volatile nature of her inner fire.

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Chandra Nalaar is a red-magic-wielding planeswalker. Her specialty is pyromancy: spells of fire, fire, and more fire. There's no virtue in subtlety—at least not as far as the fire-mage Chandra Nalaar is concerned. Impulsive, passionate, and short-tempered, she's as ready to explode as the pyromantic spells of her ever-growing repertoire. Chandra's spark ignited when she was still quite young, and as she has grown, so have her abilities as a wielder of fire magic and as a planeswalker. As a source of immense and unpredictable power, authority figures have sought to restrict and control Chandra, which comes into direct conflict with her need for independence and freedom. As Chandra's wild inner fire comes in contact with world after world of rules and strictures, the results are sure to be explosive.

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Origins

Chandra was born on an as of yet unnamed plane, with a "mother who was strict, father who was gentle, two sisters who [she] hated, and an older brother who she adored" in her own words. Her brother was killed in a war at some point. As she grew older, Chandra began to practice and play with her fire abilities, which came to her as naturally as breathing, more and more. However, on her home plane, fire magic was strictly banned, and her parents pursued many ends in an attempt to "cure" their daughter of her wild streak. Believing that "a husband an children would do her good," they planned to marry her to one of the local boys. In an attempt to scare off both her parents and her prospective husband, she set off a huge blast of fire that caught several of the village huts on fire, and then ran to the mountains. In her absence, the police of a temple on her plane rounded up the village, believing the people of the village to be a group of fire magic practicing rebels, as they did not believe that one person could cause such destruction. They placed the villagers into the burning huts where they were to be burned to death. Chandra returned in time to see her family burned, her mother crying for her daughters to be released, and fought against the soldiers until the entire village had burned to death, at which point she surrendered. She was forced onto her knees, head held back, and a blade swung to her throat, her punishment immediate execution.

Then her planeswalker spark ignited.

Fuel for the Fire

Sometime after the events in her past, while in a plane called Kephalai, Chandra stole a scroll from a museum. She was pursued by a Watch Commander, his men, and a pair of gargoyles. They attempted to execute her but she managed to get away using a large fire spell. Since no body was found, they considered the matter closed, but later investigations re-opened it.

Jace Beleren was assigned to track the scroll, and erase the memories of anyone who had read it. He managed to find Chandra in a yet-undisclosed plane where she was spending her time with a couple of elder woman, and a boy named Brannon. In the fight Jace seemed to gain the upper hand, and left after completing his mission.

However, it was revealed that Chandra had given the scroll to a group of scribes who were making copies of it before Jace arrived.

The battle between Chandra and Jace is also covered in the first chapter of The Purifying Fire, in which the plane she is on is revealed to be Regatha.

The Purifying Fire

Chandra, at some point after her first planeswalk, has come to live on a plane named Regatha, where she has been studying at the Keral Keep monastery in an attempt to learn better self control and mastery of her powers. The monastery was founded ages ago by another fire wielding planeswalker, Jaya Ballard. Her quotes and teachings are the core of the Keep's beliefs, championing personal freedom and individual choice over all other things, as long as one was not infringing on another's rights. The novel covers the series of events put into place by a new Order that had begun to enforce it's rule over the lands of Regatha, starting with the plains, then moving to the forests, and ideally to the mountains where Keral Keep rests (Regatha seems, like the Naya shard of Alara to be composed chiefly of white, red, and green mana).

After attempting to chase away a specter that served the Order, she set fire to a large portion of the forest, and angering a tribe of oufes. The leader of the Order, Walbert, uses this event, and an attack on his soldiers, as an opportunity to order Chandra's capture. Mother Luti, head of the Keral Keep mages, decides that it would be a good time for Chandra to "disappear" for a while, and sends her on a quest to retrieve the scroll that Jace had retaken, stating that the true meaning of its words might not be in the words, but in some sort of physical attribute of the scroll itself.

Her attempt to retake the scroll fails, and her attack on a group of soldiers causes the entire Sanctum of Stars, a collection of artifacts and rarities of great power and value on the plane of Kephalai to be completely destroyed, killing all inside. During her flight, she encounters a man named Gideon who seems at first to want to help her, but turns her over to the soldiers of Kephalai. After attempting to torture the location of the scroll, which she had lost during her flight, she manages to escape from the dungeons of Kelaphai to a plane ruled by a vampire and shrouded in eternal night. Eventually enlisting the help of Gideon himself, who had followed her and is also a planeswalker, she manages to free the plane from its eternal night and restore the flow of mana, and returns to Regatha. During their journey, Gideon reveals that the plane of origin of the scroll is none other than the mysterious plane of Zendikar, where he claims that mana and magic act in powerful, but erratic ways. Chandra describes the idea of Zendikar as a plane where "mana works differently."

Her return is not met with good news, though, as the plane has fallen even more under the rule of the Order. Gideon reveals that he works for the Order, which is a multiplanar organization, promising to bring "peace, order, and law" to the multiverse. After leaving him and getting to Keral Keep with the aid of an ally from the forest, the Keep is laid under siege until they had her over, which not a single one of the free-thinking fire mages are willing to do. They entirety of the Keep values the idea of individual freedom to the point that they would not dare infringe on Chandra's even if it meant their own deaths. She eventually decides to turn herself over, expecting to encounter an execution.

What awaits her is far, far worse. Planning to use the Purifying Fire, an ancient artifact that "cleanses" a person's soul of their sins and imperfections, Walbert plans to strip Chandra of not only her fire magic, but her ability to planeswalk, leaving her powerless and bound to one plane, as an example to any who would dare stand against the Order. To Chandra, this fate is worse than death by a long shot, asking Gideon to kill her rather than have her "humiliated and put on display." Before she is brought to the Fire, Gideon speaks with her, and claims that she may be able to keep her power if the Fire accepts her, if she enters it with a "clean soul." She tells him of her history and how she led to the death of her family in a painful fire and the destruction of her entire village, something she had been running from and that had been causing her nightmares ever since.

She declares that she doesn't know "what clean is, but I do feel better" after her confession. Walbert, on the way to the Fire, explains that he has seen Chandra in his visions, that she is a cataclysm that will bring an era of lawless madness to Regatha, which is why he aims to stop her, and secure his rule, believing that when a planeswalking fire mage is stripped of her power, the rest of the Keep will fall into place.

The Fire, however, accepts her as she enters it with a clean soul, removing all the wards and shields placed around her by Walbert. She faces her past, her mistakes and victories, her successes and failures, taking them all for what they are and nothing more, no longer running. When she emerges from the Fire, she feels infused with more power and focus than ever, and decimates the Order's forces around her, burning Walbert and many others to death. She is knocked out when the chamber around the Fire collapses.

Gideon wakes her up, harshly chastising her for leading to the deaths of all the members of the Order, yet she feels no remorse for taking down what they believed in. She decides to leave the plane of Regatha forever, and seek out the mystical powerful plane of Zendikar. Before she leaves, though, she tells Gideon a part of her story that she had held back the night before: that the soldiers that so brutally ordered the death of her village at the slightest false provocation belonged to an order that promised to bring "harmony, protection, and law," leaving him to ponder the revelation of his allegiances and what the Order he belongs to has done. She tells him that should anyone proclaiming the virtues of the Order (and by extension white magic) cross her path she would treat them as her enemies without remorse. With this, she leaves, seeking Zendikar.

In-Game References

Represented in cards:

• Chandra Nalaar

Associated cards:

• Incinerate (Duel Decks: Jace vs. Chandra)
• Seal of Fire (Duel Decks: Jace vs. Chandra)

Quoted or referred to:

• Inferno Elemental
• Pyroclasm

External links

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• Chandra Nalaar at the Planeswalker Minisite
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