Teferi Akosa

Teferi is a Jamuraan planeswalker that at the Tolarian Academy. He was caught in a slow-time bubble after the temporal disaster there, but rescued by Urza, Jhoira, and Karn. He later became a royal mage of his homeland Zhalfir and ascended of a planeswalker. He became a guardian of Jamuraa, although his experiments with the timestreams indirectly caused the Mirage Wars. When the Phyrexian Invasion broke out he phased out north-western Jamuraa and parts of Shiv to save them from the war. Teferi will return in the upcoming set Time Spiral.

Early Years

Although the young Teferi was a prankster and at times a bully, he had considerable magical potential, and was thus brought to Tolaria, where the planeswalker Urza had founded an academy to train the mages of Dominaria and prepare the plane for an attack from Phyrexia. It was on the academy where Teferi first met Jhoira, Karn and Barrin. Although they would become his best friends later on, he got of on the wrong foot because of his constant practical and less practical jokes.

One day, the Phyrexians attacked the island, and Teferi was killed. Urza sent Karn back in time to prevent the attack, which the golem did, but the time machine overheated, causing a massive explosion that killed many and completely disrupted the timestream of Tolaria. Teferi survived, but was caught in a slow time bubble for many years. After some time Jhoira, who had also survived and was stranded in a normal time zone, found him like that and threw a wet blanket at him. Five years later that blanket put out the fire on his clothes.

After Karn, Barrin and Urza, who had been able to flee from the island, returned and rebuild the academy, Jhoira fell into a coma. When she awakened 10 years later, she had discovered a way to free Teferi. She contructed a machine that used the water of Tolaria, which wasn't affected as drastically by the time anomalies as organic material, to create a portal between the normal time zone and Teferi's bubble. It was only a prototype, but the resilient bodies of Karn and Urza could pass trough and pull Teferi out. For a while he felt depressed and out of sinc with the world because everyone he knew either died during the explosion, or had aged 20 years while he had been in stasis. But with a little help from Karn and Jhoira though, he was back to his usual tricks soon after.

Some years later a more mature Teferi was told by Urza that he should accompany Jhoira to her homeland of Shiv, where the two worked on the Thra Mana Rig that could produce the powerstones needed to fuel the artifacts Urza build to battle the Phyrexians. Altough there had always been and age diference between them, which had only grew while he was trapped in teh time bubble, some romantic feelings developed between Teferi and Jhoira. Time had little meaning for students of Tolaria anyway.

For a while Teferi stayed closely involved in Urza's crusade against Phyrexia, helping out in the battle against K'rrick and the battle for Serra's Realm, but after a while he became a Royal Mage of his homeland Zhalfir, becoming a protector of the region. What happened to his relationship with Jhoira during this time is unknown. He did befriend the reclusive Jolrael, but this never became more than friendship and he didn't try to persuade her to return when she forsook civilisation to live in the deep jungle.

The Mirage Wars

At a certain point in time Teferi ascended and became a planeswalker himself. Feeling the urge to wander the planes, he constructed the guild-structure of Zhalfir to aid the country in his absence. Thus the Civic Guild, the Shaper Guild, the Shadow Guild, the Armorer Guild and the Granger Guild were called into existance.

When he returned however, Teferi found the continent on the brink of war. Southern Zhalfir had split off and formed the theocracy of Femeref because the churches didn't agree with the fact that Teferi had left control of the dead in the hands of the Shadow Guild. When Femeref had found gold in the mountains, the northern country of Suq'Ata had invaded part of Zhalfir and had driven the dwarves there from their mountain homes. When the dwarves had aided Femeref in harvesting the gold, increasing their efficiency greatly, Zhalfir felt cheated out of their rightful portion of the gold. Teferi tracked down and tutored a capable girl of royal descent. After he crowned her as Queen Yormeba she brought peace to the nation, but failed to unify it. Tired of the petty squabbles of his people, Teferi left with a group of trusted advisors, sages, artificers, and sorcerors. They sailed for a hidden realm in the Chaza Isles, where Teferi wanted to manipulate time to make it easier to summon creatures.

The experiments met with limited success, but after years of trial and error Teferi realized that the process was inherently unstable. By then however, the damage was done. The earliest experiments of Teferi had been clumsy and had damaged the temporal balance. Teferi attempted to correct the problems by unleashing a blast of mana to repair the hole in the stream. Although he had anticipated danger, he did not anticipate the results of his “cure”. The unleashed mana burned into all plants, animals, and buildings on the isle. Instantly everything but the bare rock of the island phased out of existence.

After several years Teferi’s Isle returned. For a long time its people were unaware that any time had passed, but when one of Jolrael's dragons attacked the isle, they began to realize something was terribly wrong. Teferi did some research and discovered that they had been absent from time for quite a while, and that his "cure" for the timeline had indirectly caused a great war on the mainland.

The energy surge had attracted three powerful mages. The first was Mangara, a wise man from Corondor who was versed in politics and had been atracted out of curiosity. The second was Teferi's old friend Jolrael, coming to see what happened to her friend. The last one Kaervek of Urborg who wondered if he could use the power for his own gain. After realizing that there was nothing on the island but bare rock the three moved to the mainland to monitor it from a more comfortable place. Mangara got himself involved in the local politics and with his brilliant diplomacy he solved the struggles between the countries and managed to put himself in the position of de facto ruler. A jealous Kaervek had then manipulated the people-shy Jolrael into joining his side and the two of them had amassed an army and after imprisoning Mangara in an Amber Prison they declared was on the three nations.

Unable to interfere directly with the war because of he needed to monitor and reconstruct the timelines, Teferi aided the defenders with visions and sometimes helped empower their spells. However, during the remainder of the war he remained at the sidelines. Still, he felt tremendous guilt over his role into causing the conflict. After Jolrael had defected to the defenders and Kaervek had been defeated, Teferi remained a recluse in the Chaza Islands and gave up manipulating with time. We only know of one thing of significance he did in the years that followed, when he apeared during the Planeswalkers War on Corondor to save Daria from an Amber Prison.

Avoiding War

Then one day Keld attacked Jamuraa. For reasons unknown Teferi stayed out of the war until the last moment when he defeated the Keldons. They made Teferi realize that he didn't want to be part of Urza's plans to fight Phyrexia anymore and he began to device an alternative.

When the invasion began and portal opened in the sky over Zhalfir, Teferi convinced Urza to join him in teleporting in and out of the portals with him, overloading them. Teferi had told his former tutor that he had a plan to use the resulting energy, but when Urza found out what this plan was, he wasn't to happy about it: Teferi weaved it into one gigantic phasing spell that removed north-western Jamuraa and the part of Shiv that Jhoira stayed on from the timestream to safe them from the horrendous attacks of the Phyrexians. A furious Urza ordered Teferi to stop, for this action would remove many powerful allies from the timestream, but it was to late.

One hundred years later the goddess Karona was looking for beings like herself. While doing so she pulled Teferi back into the timestream. Altough he couldn't help her, he did get to see Dominaria again and realized the Phyrexians had been defeated. He left contemplating whether it was time to bring the phased-out lands back.

Teferi is revealed to return for the upcoming Time Spiral story.