Nicol Bolas

Template:Character The planeswalker Nicol Bolas is the most powerful of the five Elder Dragons to survive the Dragon War. He is considered the most powerful planeswalker of the Multiverse.

Dragon War and ascension

A younger Bolas

Thousands of years before the Brothers' War, the Elder Dragons were engaged in a conflict called the Dragon War. Nicol Bolas emerged victorious and during this time became Dominaria's first planeswalker.

Some thousands of years later, Bolas fought against a demonic leviathan in the first duel between planeswalkers on the still-young plane of Dominaria. The fight lasted a month, reduced Madara to a third of its former size, and created the first rift. In the end the dragon used his magic to defeat his foe. After the battle Bolas feasted on the remains of the leviathan over the course of a year, absorbing its power in the process. When he finished, not much was left besides what eventually became known as the Talon Gates. Bolas regards the Talon Gates as a trophy of sorts and visits them and Madara from time to time to relish his victory.

Madaran Emperor

On Madara three mana lines, blue, black and red, intersect at a single point. Bolas took over the Empire of Madara and erected his Imperial Shrine on this focal point, reigning for 400 years as a god-emperor.

Using the Meteor Hammer spell, Tetsuo Umezawa destroyed the Imperial Shrine. When the dragon chased him, following him to the Meditation Plane, he was killed by Umezawa in his weakened state. However a ghostly remnant of his life force still lingered in the rift by the coast.

Time rifts

Bolas remained present in his land during the time rifts, presenting himself under the alias of Sensei Ryu. His lands were overrun by cat-dragons (nekoru) and their followers. When he sensed that Teferi was lost in a rift and had become separated from his companions he arranged for them to arrive on the Madaran beach near the Talon Gates. Using Venser's latent planeswalker spark he was able to escape his prison and was reborn. After Teferi located his companions, he challenged the dragon to a duel in an effort to stay his revenge. Bolas easily won, but Teferi shared his knowledge of the collapsing planes with and Bolas and he was made aware of the severity of the rift problem. He left soon after swearing a vow to take terrible vengeance on anyone related to the Umezawa line, and anyone who had ever aided or come into contact with it, then presumably left for Kamigawa.

Bolas later returned to Madara, where he was ambushed by the planeswalker Leshrac, who challenged him to a duel; the latter was defeated after an epic battle and was imprisoned in the mask of the Myojin of Night's Reach. It was implied by Bolas that he had stripped most of that spirit's dark powers but she had managed to escape.

Bolas then confessed to Teferi and his companions that he had observed the rift phenomenon and took responsibility for closing the Madaran rift. After Bolas used Leshrac's spark to close the rift, Bolas left for an unknown destination. Believing that it was unlikely Teferi and his band could forestall the imminent collapse of the multiverse, Bolas claimed that he had devised a plan to preserve himself in the event that happened. Although the multiverse survived, Jeska's Mending spell changed the nature of the planeswalker's spark. Since the nature of planeswalker spark was fundamentally changed by this, Bolas, like possibly all other "old planeswalkers" who survived past the Mending, lost a significant portion of his powers. Still, he supposedly retains his formidable Elder Dragon powers.

Involvement in Alara

After the Mending, Bolas lost a significant portion of his powers and abilities, but managed to escape to the plane of Alara. He has dwelled in the Shard of Grixis where he prepared to take advantage of the Conflux to regain his powers, and started to manipulate certain individuals and organizations on the multiple shards:

• Bant: Order of the Skyward Eye and Gwafa Hazid to spread xenophobia and disorder along the borderlands of Bant's nations.
• Esper: Seekers of Carmot leading them to warn Esperites about dwindling supplies of etherium, and creating a fervent demand for an otherworldly red stone called carmot. A Daily MTG article later implied that Esper's carmot and Jund's coveted sangrite crystals are one and the same.
• Grixis: Malfegor to lead massive armies of the undead, getting the hordes ready to invade the other shards and cut chaotic swaths through any living resistance they find.
• Jund: Rakka Mar to whip up an itch for greater and greater "life hunts" among the warrior clans there.
• Naya: his agents in Naya were responsible for attempts to kill Ajani, stimulated the emergence of the philosophical schism of the nacatl [Cloud Empire] and influenced Marisi in his revolt of the Wild Nacatl, that resulted in destruction of most of the advanced Cloud Nacatl civilization and cities and the cat-people nation's regression back to savagery.

As a culmination of all his efforts, he managed to regain his full planeswalker potential by absorbing most of the Maelstrom, but is shortly thereafter stalemated by Ajani.

However, Brady Dommermuth has hinted that Bolas isn't thwarted for good.

The Seekers Fall

In the comic The Seeker's Fall, he meets Tezzeret in Grixis and offers him power in exchange of servitude which Tezzeret presumably accepts.

Agents of Artifice

Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker

In the novel Agents of Artifice, where he is said to be 25 000 years, it is revealed that sometime after the Mending Bolas founded a interplanar consortium whose control was stolen by Tezzeret. He still retains his mind-reading ability and Tezzeret tries to counter it by using Jace Beleren. This ends in disaster as Bolas easily overtakes both planeswalkers mentally and Tezzeret and Jace barely escape with their lives.

At the end of the novel, after Jace defeats Tezzeret in a duel and cleanses his mind, it is revealed that this was all a plan of Bolas to regain his consortium, and that Liliana Vess works for him. It is also at this point that it is revealed Bolas has obtained Tezzeret's body and is examining it, but to what end is never explained.

Alara Unbroken

In the novel Alara Unbroken, the full gravity of Bolas' plans come to fruition. Through the manipulation of people on all five shards (The Order of the Skyward Eye on Bant, the Seekers of Carmot on Esper, the demon/dragon hybrid Malfegor on Grixis, the human shaman Rakka Mar on Jund, and Marisi the nacatl of Naya) his plan to erupt total war across Alara has happened, awakening obelisks of mana on each of the shards and causing the Maelstrom to grow in magnitude. Over the course of the novel he enlists the help of Sarkhan Vol to help spread the seeds of his destruction across Naya.

Ajani's quest to find hid brother's killer eventually leads him into conflict with Nicol Bolas, and knowing that he can not defeat the dragon-god himself, he summons the essence of Bolas' own soul to fight him. The two dragons battle each other in perfect symmetry, before lunging at each other with powerful bites. Both connect simultaneously, and in a flash of light the dragons disappear. It is unknown whether Nicol Bolas is dead or not, having harvested the essence of the Maelstrom immediately prior to this climactic battle, but at the very least it can be said that the threat that he posed to Alara is now gone.

Cards

Nicol Bolas was originally printed as a creature in Legends, and reprinted in Chronicles, Time Spiral, and From the Vault: Dragons, the last featuring new artwork.

In Conflux he was printed as Planeswalker card with the type Bolas.

External links

• Doug Beyer (January 28, 2009). "Bolas's Secret Minions". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.
• Doug Beyer (January 19, 2009). "Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast.
• Planeswalkers: Nicol Bolas
• Tipping the Scales