Temporal Crisis of Dominaria
| Temporal Crisis of Dominaria | |||||
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| Time Spiral Crisis | |||||
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| Information | |||||
| Era | Final phase of the Rift Era | ||||
| Date | 4500 AR | ||||
| Location | Dominaria | ||||
| Sets | Time Spiral, Planar Chaos, Future Sight | ||||
| Characters | Freyalise, Jeska, Jhoira, Jodah, Karn, Leshrac, Nicol Bolas, Radha, Teferi, Windgrace | ||||
| Outcome | |||||
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| Timeline | |||||
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The Temporal Crisis of Dominaria — also known as the Time Spiral Crisis — was a multiverse-threatening phenomenon that climaxed around 4500 AR, during the final stages of the Rift Era.[1] The crisis was the culmination of centuries of magical trauma to the plane of Dominaria, where severe temporal fractures called time rifts began siphoning mana, distorting reality, and threatening planar collapse.
Causes
The time rifts were scars left by high-magnitude magical events spanning millennia. Each rift represented not just damage to Dominaria, but to the Multiverse itself.
Notable causes included:
- The Sylex Blast at the climax of the Brothers' War, detonated by Urza in Argoth, which created the first known rift and shifted Dominaria’s mana alignment.
- The temporal explosion at Tolaria, the result of Urza's experiments with time travel, which fragmented time around the academy and formed the Tolarian rift.
- The Rathi Overlay, in which the artificial plane of Rath merged with Dominaria, causing tectonic upheaval in Urborg and further stress on planar stability. During this, Freyalise overlaid the Skyshroud Forest into Keld, opening yet another rift.
- The Phasing of Zhalfir and Shiv by Teferi, who removed large regions of the plane from the timestream to protect them during the Phyrexian Invasion—an act that tore localized rifts through temporal reality.
Another key catalyst was the rise and fall of Karona, False God, a divine entity formed by the fusion of Akroma, Phage (Jeska), and Zagorka. Karona monopolized all mana on Dominaria while alive. Her death restored access but permanently damaged the planar leylines and destabilized existing rifts, accelerating the crisis.
Effects
As mana drained into the rifts, Dominaria withered. Once-mighty nations such as Benalia and Keld fell into decline. Cities crumbled, ecosystems collapsed, and magic-dependent life forms—plants, creatures, and even civilizations—died out.
More dangerously, the rifts opened to alternate timelines and unrealized futures. Chronomantic anomalies became common: time loops, paradoxes, and reality shifts plagued the survivors. Creatures and individuals from distant or hypothetical futures and pasts emerged. The world fell into temporal chaos.
The cultural and metaphysical impact was equally severe. The survivors began tapping into new forms of magic to adapt: future-shifted sorceries, retro-temporal invocations, and chaotic spells from diverging timelines—many of which became the basis for the three-card set mechanics: Suspend, Split Second, and Morph/Future Sight.
Resolution
The effort to heal Dominaria was led by a coalition of planeswalkers and mortals, many of whom had personal ties to the events that caused the rifts. Each major rift could only be closed through sacrifice—typically the loss of a Planeswalker's Spark, life essence, or both.
The sequence of closures included:
- Shiv — Teferi returned to Dominaria, guilt-ridden over his earlier actions. With help from Jhoira, he restored Shiv to the timeline and sealed the rift, sacrificing his spark and becoming mortal.[2]
- Keld — Freyalise, once revered as a goddess in Skyshroud, sacrificed her life and destroyed the forest she had once saved to seal the Keld rift.
- Urborg — Lord Windgrace, panther warrior and protector of Urborg, gave his life to close the rift above the Stronghold. His essence lingered as a guardian spirit tied to the land.
- Tolaria — Karn, Urza’s heir and a silver golem made planeswalker, traveled into the past to seal the Tolarian rift. He succeeded but was haunted by visions of Phyrexia’s rebirth and fled to Mirrodin, unknowingly carrying Phyrexian oil with him.
- Zhalfir — Jeska, who had once been Phage the Untouchable, used part of Radha’s soul to close the rift, severing Zhalfir from the Multiverse entirely. It remained in phase, unreachable by any known means.
- Yavimaya — Jeska again intervened, burning out the spark Radha had unknowingly inherited. This act closed the rift, but temporarily destroyed Multani, the elemental avatar of Yavimaya.
- Madara — Nicol Bolas, newly reemerged, sacrificed Leshrac—a rival planeswalker and shadow mage—to seal the Madaran rift. Bolas did this primarily to eliminate a threat and gain magical insight into the changes affecting planeswalker sparks.
- Otaria — Jeska’s final act was to seal the massive rift at the heart of Otaria, where Karona had died. The effort consumed her entirely. This final closure unleashed the full force of the Great Mending.
Legacy
The sealing of the rifts triggered the Great Mending, a metaphysical restructuring of the Multiverse. The nature of one's planeswalker spark was fundamentally changed:
- Pre-Mending planeswalkers—immortal, near-omnipotent, and detached from human needs—lost those powers.
- Post-Mending planeswalkers (like Jace Beleren, Liliana Vess, and Chandra Nalaar) were mortal, fallible, and tethered to the same physical laws as other beings, though still capable of planeswalking and wielding vast magic.
The Mending saved Dominaria but came at an immense cost. Many of its greatest champions perished. The golden age of world-shaping planeswalkers ended, and a new, more grounded era began - the Mending Era.
In-game references
- Represented in:
- Referred to:
References
- ↑ Depicted in the Time Spiral Cycle, comprising Time Spiral, Planar Chaos, and Future Sight.
- ↑ (2006). Time Spiral Player's Guide. Wizards of the Coast.
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