The Moons of Mirrodin

The Moons of Mirrodin
Publishing Information
Author(s)	Will McDermott
First printing	September 2003
ISBN-13	978-0786929955
Mirrodin Cycle
Publication chronology

For the satellites of Mirrodin, see New Phyrexia (plane)#Suns of Mirrodin.

The Moons of Mirrodin is the first novel of the Mirrodin Cycle. It was written by Will McDermott and published in September 2003.

Mirrodin starts a new storyline cycle, but it begins where Scourge left off. The story of Mirrodin is continued in The Darksteel Eye and The Fifth Dawn.

Blurb

A World Beyond Imagination

Where forests of metal claw the sky.

Where razor-sharp metallic grasses stretch across the plains.

Where vast oceans of quicksilver conceal predators awaiting the unwary.

Across this harsh landscape, an orphaned elf must make her way, seeking the secrets of her past, daring the perils of her present. And she must tear aside the veil that hides the face of a hidden enemy whose power extends across all Mirrodin.

Overview

On the metallic plane of Mirrodin, the elf Glissa begins to uncover the ancient secrets of the plane, looking for explanations of the visions she's been having and for the vicious Levelers that attack the people of Mirrodin regularly.

Title	Author	Publishing date	Set	Setting (plane)	Featuring
The Moons of Mirrodin	Will McDermott	September 2003	Mirrodin	Mirrodin	Memnarch, Karn, Jeska, Glissa, Kane, Lyese, Brynn, Chunth, Janus, Slobad, Krark (mentioned), Raksha Golden Cub, Rishan, Ushanti, Dakan, Bosh, Yert, Geth, Strang, Steel Mother, Dwugget, Bruenna, Xauvrer, Riley, Jerryl, Daven, Pontifex, Donal, Iapetus

Storyline

Argentum

The planeswalker Karn and his apprentice Jeska drop the Mirari off on Karn’s world, Argentum, where they transform it into the Warden of the plane. After an unknown period, the Warden goes out of the castle to explore. Outside, he finds a world of mathematical perfection, but sterile and lifeless. Fascinated by the blinkmoths, which are the one thing Karn didn't create but had imported from another plane, he decides the world would be better with more things like that. He remembers being the Mirari and has access to all of Karn’s probe data. As he heads inside, he wipes away a black smudge almost absentmindedly. An idea pops into his head to rename his new vision of the plane after himself: Mirrodin.

Glissa's vision

While on the hunt for a vorrac with her friend and love interest Kane, the Viridian Elf Warrior Glissa is struck by a vision. She sees a bright living forest where she is drawn to a bright light. When she comes to, the vorrac has run off a cliff. She believes her visions are repressed memories that are key to the elves’ past and distrusts the Tel-Jilad trolls and their rebuking ceremony that erases those memories. It is not a sentiment shared by Kane, who has become one of the Tel-Jilad Chosen - defenders of the trolls and the Tree of Tales.

They have dinner with Glissa’s family, and her younger sister Lyese tries to flirt with Kane. Over dinner, they discuss how there are fewer stars in the sky and that the water supply is beginning to dry up. After dinner, mysterious figures appear in her bedroom and drag her into the Tree of Tales through a secret entrance. She is brought before Chunth, and both Chunth and his chambers notably lack metal. He explains that the trolls have discovered that every 100 cycles, the Levelerslevelers come to kill the greatest warrior in the Tangle. The trolls want to save Glissa because she has "a destiny". Glissa isn't happy to hear they'll let their family get leveled simply because they "don't have a destiny", so she steals a sword, escapes. Outside, alarms are sounding to signal the approach of the Levelers.

Glissa runs home only to find Levelers already ascending the tree to her parents’ home. Her new blade slices them apart with ease, but when she enters her home, she finds they have killed her parents and sister. A green flame emerges from her, slagging two of the Levelers while the rest move to leave. Glissa’s ankle is caught, and she is dragged away, falling unconscious, but not before she spots a four-armed cloaked silhouette.

Meeting Slobad

Glissa awakens in a dark cavern, her leg still trapped in the Leveler’s blades. A voice speaks to her in the darkness. The creature begs her not to hurt him by waving her sword about, and introduces himself as the goblin Slobad. He helps her free herself and brings her back to his home. He explains that he chose this cavern, at the edge of the Oxidda Mountains, to hide because the Levelers keep all other danger away. They argue over whether the glowing orbs in the sky] are suns or moons, as the Tangle is dark year-round, as it has no sun of its own. They discover Glissa’s ankle is badly wounded and she cannot heal it with her magic. In the morning, they set out to ask for aid from the Leonin of Taj-Nar to heal her leg before she loses it.

Glissa questions Slobad on why he lives alone, and he explains he was born under an ill omen, the blue sun, and was meant to be thrown into the Great Furnace. His mother had dropped him down a vent shaft instead, where he was found by the Krark-Clan. He tried living near the Tangle, but fled from the untrusting elves. He wound up with the Leonin, where he was given to Raksha as a training dummy, getting healed each time after being beaten. When Raksha became Kha, he went to fight the Nim incursions, and Slobad had snuck away, ending up in the Leveler’s cavern.

At Taj-Nar

At Taj-Nar, they find the city surrounded by a Nim army. With no other options, the two push through the Nim. Glissa slices them apart with ease while Slobad and his torch keep others at bay. They reach the city gates only to find them closed… but Slobad helped build the gates and installed a secret entrance of his own. He locates it, and the two slip through to find angry Leonin waiting for them. They are taken prisoner, but convince their guard of the urgency of Glissa’s wound. The regular healers are unable to repair the damage, and so the shaman Ushanti is brought in, who, upon seeing Glissa, immediately faints. Ushant's daughter, Rishan, revives her mother, who then demands the Kha to be summoned. Raksha stomps into the room, and Ushanti reveals that she had seen a vision of Glissa involved in the end of the world, or at least that she saw "the leonin ripped from the world". The Kha takes Glissa's side, as he had also been attacked by Levelers and had seen the four-armed stranger as well. Ushanti then has a vision of the Mephidross, so Raksha sends Glissa and Slobad off there. He frees them and has Ushanti heal Glissa’s leg. He cannot leave during the siege, but he sends the pair to find the cloaked figure. Ushanti divines that they might find answers at the Ish Sah, the Vault of Whispers. Geth likely knows something about what is happening.

The Mephidross and finding Bosh

Raksha has a pair of [[Card|Leonin Skyhunter|title=skyhunters}} take them to the edge of the Mephidross. They quickly find that a pack of Nim is following them, so Glissa hides and observes a Moriok leading them. She kills the man, and finds the Nim continue to follow the last order they were given, passing her and Slobad by. Slobad finds a golem in the muck, and spends a day trying to fix it to no avail. They are attacked by a reaper, and are only saved by the golem, somehow reactivated but amnesiac. Glissa captures the reaper’s controller and finds that he is a rather pitiful man named Yert. She convinces Yert to take her to Geth by promising to get him a new reaper.

When they reach the Vault of Whispers, Glissa has Slobad and the golem stay behind. She goes inside with Yert under the pretense of being a prisoner, but when she confronts Geth, he simply has {[Card|Mephidross Vampire|title=his vampire}} attack her. She frees herself — barely — by severing the vampire’s arm. Using the vampire as leverage (Geth needs the vampire to maintain control), she demands information. Geth reveals that he was hired in exchange for some serum to attack the Leonin. Glissa takes his serum but leaves Yert behind with a promise from Geth for a new reaper.

Glissa spots the cloaked figure again outside the vault, but is overtaken by another flare of a being lured and captured by a bright light. She wakes up in the golem’s arms and tells Slobad what she has learned. When she shows them the vial of serum, the golem finally speaks to say the name "Memnarch", but they can’t get it to say anything more. Back at Taj Nar, they are welcomed by Raksha, but that night, the aerophins attack. Glissa ‘borrows' a pteron and leads the aerophin on a chase through the city, but as she forces them to crash, Rishan steps out of a doorway and is killed by the exploding artifacts. Raksha asks Glissa to leave, but lets her know that once the mourning is over, she is welcome back. Rishan's mother, Ushanti, is less forgiving.

Returning home

With nowhere else to go, Glissa returns home. Seeing more aerophin following them in the sky, they decide to travel by night and spend their days in abandoned Leonin homes in the Glimmervoid. When she returns to Tel-Jilad, they meet with Chunth, who reveals she is a nexus of great power and the world is not what it seems. He explains that her flares are a racial memory of a world the elves lived on before they were transported to Mirrodin. Chunt knows this because he alone is old enough to remember being transported himself. He also tells her of the Vedalken, and that her mysterious cloaked figure must be one, as the aerophins are their creations. He further tells her that the serum is made of blinkmoths, and that they are overharvested, which has led to the drought and lack of stars. Before he can tell her more, a rogue troll blasts him with a Vedalken weapon. A dying Chunth tells Glissa that the world is hollow before passing on.

She is met by Kane on her way to find the troll assassin, and learns that the troll was one of the Elders, Strang. They track the high priest to the Radix, but before he can give up any information, an aerophin blasts Strang from the sky. They follow the aerophin, and in the dense Tangle, they manage to destroy the devices. When they return to Tel-Jilad, it is all too quiet. Glissa emerges from cover to discover it is a trap, and a dozen more aerophin appear. When Kane rushes to join her, the cloaked figure appears and hits Kane with a magic bolt from his staff that melts every piece of metal on his body, killing him in agony. In a rage, Glissa summons mana to herself and flings green fire at the cloaked vedalken wizard. She melts his staff and, as he flees, rends apart the remaining aerophin. She also relieves him of a few fingers. Then she sits, mourning Kane.

The Krark-Clan

Slobad and the golem find Glissa catatonic, and are asked to leave by the remaining trolls (two elders did just die because of Glissa). With nowhere else to go, Slobad leads them to the home of the Krark-Clan. Along the way, Slobad finishes cleaning out the remnants of the Dross from inside the golem, and he tells them his name is Bosh. The legend of Krark was that the hapless goblin discovered a path to the center of the world, and they hoped that the Krark clan’s folklore could help. They are welcomed by Slobad’s surrogate father, and Krark-Clan chief, Dwugget. That night, the aerophin attack again, but Glissa is too traumatized to fight. Bosh saves the day, helping his friends escape the mountain hideout of the Krark-Clan. Bosh himself is blown to pieces.

Outside, Slobad talks sense to Glissa, and she puts aside her defeatist attitude. They learn that the cultists were taken to be cast into the Great Forge as heretics. They rescue the cultists and learn that Bosh is with the refuse to be thrown into the furnace. Slobad charges down after Bosh, and Glissa grabs the attention of just about every goblin in the mountain to distract them from her friend. Slobad manages to get enough of Bosh reassembled to help Glissa escape, and as they flee, they spot the red lacuna. Bosh mentions that he had reached the surface through a hole like that. He remembers Memnarch being at the center of the plane, but cannot remember what Memnarch is.

The Quicksilver Sea

The cultists give Glissa the Book of Krark to read, which talks about the core. It triggers another flare, this time of the giant mycosynth towers inside the core. She talks about it to Bosh, and he believes that he was created to fight the mycosynth infection, but that he had failed. Knowing that they need to confront the Vedalken next, they head out toward the Quicksilver Sea. At the shore, they find a Neurok village. Unsure how to proceed, Bosh tells Glissa she could pass for human with a disguise. Slobad steals a human outfit, and Glissa sneaks in to speak with the village’s leader, Bruenna, to gain intel on the Vedalken. Bruenna tricks her into revealing she is not, in fact, another human, and she gets blown across the room by a summoned gust of wind.

The two face off for a moment, Glissa believing Bruenna is a servant of the Vedalken. When aerophins attack yet again, Glissa quickly learns that the Neurok are little more than slaves. With her village under threat, Bruenna has little choice but to ally with Glissa. Together, Bruenna, Glissa, Slobad, and Bosh manage to escape the village, leading away the aerophin and losing them on an island chain. With the immediate danger out of the way, Bruenna demands to know what is going on. Glissa explains, and in turn Bruenna explains, that the Vedalken once worked with the Neurok, but the serum has since turned them cruel, and they are little more than conquerors now. When shown Glissa’s vial of serum, Bruenna tells Glissa that the elf can find the answers she seeks in the Knowledge Pool at Lumengrid, but that the Vedalken city is heavily defended.

Bruenna just happens to have a plan to infiltrate Lumengrid, though. She has constructed a crude submarine, but without a power source, she could never get it to run. Bosh offers his mana battery, but Slobad offers a better idea than losing their colossal friend — Bosh can just pull it. Simple ideas are often the best, and the journey goes well enough. Bruenna makes it so they can see through the opaque sea for a distance, but Bosh becomes entangled by a quicksilver beast under the sea. Unable to see to fight it off, Glissa is forced to ingest her vial of serum to give her the awareness she needs. She frees Bosh, but ends up filling her lungs with Quicksilver. While unconscious, she has another flare, this time of the horror of waking up as a first-generation elf on Mirrodin.

Lumengrid

Bruenna revives Glissa, and they make it inside an underwater entrance to an abandoned lab, which used to belong to Bruenna’s father. When Bruenna learns that Glissa used the serum, she is furious, then sad. Her plan depended on the serum, but they figured that in the Vedalken hub, they could always acquire more. Bosh and Slobad move to create a distraction, allowing Glissa and Bruenna to make their way to the Knowledge Pool. They are met there by a Vedalken named Lord Pontifex, and when questioned, they say they are on an errand for the Synod. Unfortunately, so is Pontifex, and he has them accompany him… right into a trap. Pontifex lives up to his name and pontificates at Glissa and Bruenna, now his prisoners. He believes handing over Glissa, who is wanted by Memnarch, will secure him a place on the Synod.

When Glissa explains that a Vedalken was trying to kill her, he is disbelieving. Feeling secure, he reveals he was the cause of Bruenna’s father’s death; her father was executed after accessing the Knowledge Pool. Pontifex, his master, had wanted to study the effects of the pool on a human. Slobad and Bosh trigger their distraction and wreak havoc across Lumengrid. In the chaos, Glissa takes out their guards and captures Pontifex. He agrees to lead them to the pool. Along the way, Pontifex implies that if a Vedalken was after her, it would have to be Lord Janus, the head of the Synod. At the pool, Pontifex is denied access by the biometric scanner as only Synod members are allowed inside.

Counting on Janus being her mysterious cloaked Vedalken, Glissa pulls out the fingers she severed earlier. The doors open for her, but inside, more guards are waiting, and Janus strides in, having captured his quarry. Pontifex is knocked into the Knowledge Pool during the scuffle. Bruenna is taken hostage by Janus, and in a rage, Glissa again summons the green fire, destroying all the guards’ weapons and the [[Card|Looming Hoverguard|title=hoverguard}} among them. Janus admits to trying to murder Glissa (and all the races’ champions) because his plans to supplant Memnarch were not yet ready, and he did not know what Memnarch wanted with her. Pontifex, enraged, emerges from the pool and aids Glissa in subduing the traitor. Glisa melts Janus with his staff in vengeance for Kane. She destroys the staff, only to find Pontifex turned on her and intends to deliver her to Memnarch.

Into the Core

Bruenna lies wounded, and Glissa and Pontifex bargain for her life. Glissa agrees to go with Pontifex peacefully if he heals the Neurok wizard, but they are saved at the last minute by Slobad and Bosh. They dive beneath the Knowledge Pool to find the blue lacuna. Glissa has another flare, this time of the once-perfect Argentum and the slow mutation of Memnarch from golem to monster. As they descend, gravity shifts so the tunnel down becomes a long walkway instead of a steep drop. When asked if Bosh remembers the lacuna, he says the Knowledge Pool has restored his entire memory.