Meditation Plane

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Meditation Plane
Information
First seen	Legends Cycle II
Last seen	Tarkir: Dragonstorm
Status	Reforming after being engulfed by nothingness
Scryfall Statistics
1 plane cards 100%
19 artworks 26.3% 5.3% 31.6% 10.5% 21.1% 5.3%

The Meditation Plane (also known as Bolas's Meditation Realm and after the War of the Spark as the Prison Realm) is a plane in the Multiverse.

Description

The Meditation Realm is a surreal, always-changing plane whose geography can mirror the thoughts and potential futures of its inhabitants.

It is connected by an Omenpath to an ancient temple in Tarkir's Shifting Wastes.

According to Jace Beleren, the elder dragons had never realized that it was a multiversal hub, a substrate to all of reality, touching countless worlds and moldable by sheer force of will.

History

Pre-Mending

Before the Mending, the Meditation Plane was a subplane of Dominaria, believed by Ugin to be artificial. Accessible by the plane's inhabitants by astral projection, it was discovered by Ugin and later visited by Bolas on their first planeswalks millennia before the Mending. Other planes were accessible from here through bubbles floating in the air.

Confrontation of the twins

Many times and adventures later, the two planeswalking brothers confronted each other. First above the wide waters of the Meditation Realm and then on a wild pummeling path through the planes, they struggled for days, years, and generations. In the end, they returned to the Meditation Realm by diverse paths, where Bolas killed Ugin. Monstrous waves rose from Ugin's fall into the water. The waves ran on and on, washing far beyond the bounds of the Meditation Realm into the web of connection that links the planes and the Blind Eternities. Bolas was flung through many planes before he fell hard back into Dominaria, onto the island chain of Madara.

After this confrontation, the plane became a wilderness of rock; barren and wrecked, all its serenity drained away into the interstices of the Blind Eternities. A long time later, it began to restore itself. A pale sheet of liquid trickled up out of nowhere, returning from the unseen and untouchable web of darkness. With eerie silence, the realm reformed with its silvery waters. When the waters ceased rising, they grew still, and in that still became a mirror waiting for the reflection of Ugin. He inhaled, pulling the waters into himself. They curled and frothed into every crevice and wrinkle and scale and indentation until his horns sparkled, his claws gleamed, and his eyes shone with magic. The dragon was reborn and floated above a once again dry seabed beneath the luminous sky. After his departure, the process of restoration started anew.

The seat of Bolas

Considering the Meditation Plane, the site of his greatest triumph, Bolas thought it a fitting place for him to ruminate over his plans. To give himself a focal point on which to center his meditation, he chose a spot at the center of a vast span where no islands broke the surface. Here, he erected two gigantic curved horns so they emerged from the waters as if a gargantuan dragon lay sleeping beneath.

Madaran refuge

Centuries later, the Meditation Plane could only be accessed from Dominaria by skilled servants of the Madaran empire.

Tetsuo Umezawa had practiced with Ayesha Tanaka for years to discover how to physically travel to the Meditation Plane. After killing the emperor's assassin Ramses Overdark in the Imperial Shrine on Madara, the champion used this skill to flee fully into the Meditation Plane. Bolas tracked the energy that Tetsuo carried—Lord Dark's essence—and projected his mind to the realm, leaving his body unprotected. In the Meditation Plane, Tetsuo revealed the full extent of his plan, having destroyed Madara's rich and constant mana flow to rob Bolas of his body and unleashing Dark's essence in a living attack on Bolas's mind. The champion cleaved the elder dragon's spirit in half and narrowly escaped to Madara, just as the destructive power released in the Planeswalker's death tore and collapsed the very boundaries of the realm.

However, as a result of his connection to the temporal rift, a ghostly remnant of Bolas' life force still lingered by the Madaran coast, trapped between the material world and the Meditation Realm. Using Venser's latent planeswalker spark, he was able to finally escape his prison and be fully reborn into the physical world, regaining his body by pulling a copy of it through the rift from an earlier point in time.

Post-Mending

After the Mending, the Meditation Plane became a pocket plane of its own, separate from Dominaria. Sarkhan Vol visited the Meditation Plane following his assignment at the Eye of Ugin. Sarkhan was debriefed by Bolas as he traveled from the Pools of Becoming to Bolas's Donjon, where he found the dragon reconstructing the unconscious body of Tezzeret.

Vraska visited the Meditation Plane following an invitation she had received on Ravnica. There, Bolas offered her leadership over the Golgari if she traveled to Ixalan and successfully located the Immortal Sun.

Baishya, through a link with Ugin, was able to scry into several of Ugin's memories of this plane. In the story "Chronicle of Bolas", she was the sleeping girl atop the sea. Bubbles that rose from the sea containing memories would burst as they reached her misty form, and a new memory was shared with her.

War of the Spark

Current appearance of the Meditation Plane, after Ugin regains the plane.

During the War of the Spark, Ugin resided in the Meditation Plane. After Bolas's defeat, where Jace Beleren had faked Bolas's death at Ugin's behest, Ugin secretly transported the now mortal Bolas back to the Realm. Ugin explained that it was his world even before Bolas became a planeswalker and that he helped Niv-Mizzet to be reborn. Ugin also revealed that the Spirit-Gem between Bolas's horns had been made from Ugin's essence and allowed the Spirit Dragon to see every step and mistake his brother made. Ugin then took away both of Bolas's names and rendered the fallen one nameless.

Ugin told his brother that he would become his jailer for eternity and expanded himself over the Meditation Realm. The Realm thus became an eternal prison for Bolas and Ugin alike. Neither could leave.

The temple in the heart of storms

On Tarkir, Narset was approached by the angelic planeswalker Elspeth Tirel, who questioned her about the dragonstorms that were appearing all over the Multiverse. Together they traveled to the Crucible of the Spirit Dragon. They were met by Sarkhan Vol, who was elated about the increasing dragonstorms. Sarkhan engaged Elspeth in battle but his desparked form was no match for the archangel and he was quickly defeated.

After having heard a mysterious voice in the crucible urging them to find "the temple in the heart of storms", Narset and Elspeth traveled the Abzan Stormplains. While at the court of khan Felothar, they were warned by Ajani Goldmane that Sarkhan Vol had taken the form of an enormous dragon and had taken control of Tarkir's wild dragons.

Elspeth and Narset traveled to the heart of the storm to find an ancient temple that housed a ragged Omenpath leading to Meditation Realm. There they encountered two invisible forces. One that wished to encourage the dragonstorms and one that desired to halt them. While investigating, they happened on Jace Beleren and the creature Loot who were somehow involved with what was happening with the dragonstorms.

Jace's spell

At first, the Realm looked different for each of them, as their thoughts trapped them in a shifting space. Jace saw no logic, no actual roads, and feared they would be trapped forever. However, Narset's special mindset allowed her to help the others to clear their minds, and to reveal the true silvery nature of the plane. To their shock, they were met by the two elder dragons that had been sealed away here in eternal lockdown. While Ugin berated Jace for breaking their agreement (as he was the only one knowing about their continued existence) and warned them to get away, the nameless dragon that had been Nicol Bolas saw a chance to gain information and regain power.

While all the others were distracted, Jace put his plan into motion. He secretly moved behind Ugin's back and stole his Spirit-Gem. Using the power of the Gem, he started casting a magnificent spell, making use of Proft's technique to manifest an illusion into reality and the multiversal reality-bending properties of the Realm. Thinking that he would offer the Gem to Bolas, Elspeth attacked and temporarily distracted him. While even Vraska tried to hold him back at the last minute, he proceeded anyway. The world blurred and deepened in hue, becoming the blue of the mind mage's magic. Briefly, it appeared as if Jace might have done the impossible. The Realm expanded like an animal drawing its first breath, and when it exhaled, visions became kaleidoscopic, filled then with the glimpses of the futures that they'd lost: dead friends alive again, worlds unbroken, planes made innocent of their pain. Obedient to its new master, the Meditation Realm attempted to recreate itself in the image of Jace's desperate hopes, but for all the power he'd thieved from Ugin's gem, Jace was still only human. He gasped, the last of his endurance failing, and the others stared in horror as the horizon broke into mirrored fragments, revealing a nothingness that ate at the eye, a void that poured toward them, unmaking reality — Jace included. As the emptiness rolled over him, he shattered like glass.

To escape the catastrophe, all present, including Bolas, left the Meditation Realm. Later, the Realm began to reform, and a reflected silhouette of a mage in a blue cloak manifested in its waters, similar to how a reflection of Ugin had manifested there when he was reborn from the Realm's waters after his death at the hands of Bolas.

Notable locations

• Pools of Becoming
• Bolas's Donjon

Planeswalker visitors

• Aminatou (non-canon)
• Ashiok
• Elspeth Tirel
• Isona Maive (non-canon)
• Jace Beleren
• Nicol Bolas
• Sarkhan Vol
• Tezzeret
• Ugin

Non-planeswalker visitors

• Loot
• Narset
• Niv-Mizzet
• Vraska

In-game references

Represented in:

• Pools of Becoming
• Prison Realm

Depicted in:

• Apex of Power
• Archon of Cruelty
• Ashiok, Dream Render
• Finale of Revelation
• Gem of Becoming
• Sarkhan's Catharsis
• Stillness in Motion
• Ugin, the Ineffable
• Ugin’s Conjurant