Tolaria

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Tolaria
Information
Plane Dominaria

Tolaria was a legendary island on Dominaria, home to the original Tolarian Academy.[1]

History

Most people thought of Tolaria as a myth: a land of great wealth lost to an unknown curse that covered the island in terrible, devouring mists. For centuries sailors told tales of that land, of people who entered the isle's interior only to return weeks later without any knowledge of the time that had passed, or worse still, of people gone for hours, but aged years. It was marked on maps only as a place to avoid.[2]

Before its destruction, Tolaria lay in the middle of the ocean, far to the west of Jamuraa and the south of The Domains. Surrounded by coral reefs, it was a large, tropical isle, lightly forested, with palms on the shore and hardwood trees on the interior.[2] It was part of a chain of islands, most likely uninhabited.

Before the founding of the Academy, Tolaria was home to many shapeshifters, such as the Morphling. After the founding of the Academy, human wizards flocked to the island. Other creatures native to Tolaria include faeries, drakes, snakes, lizards, rabbits, birds, and sentient illusions, and merfolk and sea serpents dwelt in the surrounding waters. Finally, the island was the birthplace of the metathran race, created by the planeswalker Urza.

The Tolarian Academy

In 3285 AR, Urza and Barrin founded the Tolarian Academy. They chose the island as the best choice for Urza's laboratories because Tolaria was far from any other Dominarian location. Urza wanted to keep its existence a mystery, and knowing that Phyrexian sleeper agents never appear in child form, his new students were exclusively children.

Urza intended to gather all possible knowledge on Tolaria to stop Phyrexians. His first plan was to create a time machine. He wanted to change the ancient past, when still the Thran ruled Dominaria, and halt them on the path that would give rise to the horrors of Phyrexia. Because no living being could survive the temporal stresses of time traveling, Urza created a golem-probe, soon after named Karn.

The Tolarian Temporal Disaster

When Jhoira's life was taken by a Phyrexian sleeper agent during a Phyrexian assault in 3307 AR, Karn used Urza's time machine to go back and save her; Although he succeeded, the time machine suffered a catastrophic failure, destroying the academy and leaving Tolaria a shattered temporal landscape.[3] This also created the Tolarian Time Rift.

Headmaster Urza escaped with Mage Master Barrin and thirteen other students and scholars.[4] Karn rescued thirty-three more, but Jhoira was stranded alone.[5]

The Invasion of Tolaria

The survivors of the academy moved their school to a grand sailing ship named New Tolaria.[6] Ten years later, Urza, Barrin, and Karn returned to Tolaria with a new batch of students to help rebuild the academy and discovered Jhoira still alive, and Teferi trapped in a slow-time bubble. Jhoira and Karn worked hard and eventually devised a method to rescue Teferi. When Urza left the island to visit Shiv and Yavimaya, the Invasion of Tolaria began, with K'rrik's negators swarming over the island in increasing numbers. This invasion was ended only through the combined efforts of Barrin and his students, faculty, and artifact creatures, Jhoira and Teferi and their allies from Shiv including Rhammidarigaaz, Gherridarigaaz, viashino and goblins, as well as the spirit of Multani carried inside Urza.[5]

The Bloodline Project

In parallel with battling the Phyrexians, Urza also secretly started the Bloodline Project, selecting individuals with certain characteristics to become part of a multi-generational process of creating the best possible counterpoint to the Phyrexians - mortal heroes who would stand against the world's dark enemy and wield the Legacy as a weapon against Yawgmoth. For this project, the first generation of honed individuals included Gatha and Rayne, who were brought to the island to do research and help nurture the budding Metathran, a species created solely to battle the Phyrexians. Barrin was included in the project planning, and eventually the project expanded across the plane, as far as Jamuraa, the Domains, and Terisiare. However, the over 800-year-long project took a toll on the island as it was slowly stripped of its natural resources to drive the development onward. The Colony was set up, as a home for those who suffered malformations from the experiments and could not continue to work at the Academy. As the project neared its end, most of its most eminent scholars had quit - Gatha had left for Keld where he was killed, Timein stayed with the Colony for a while, then left the island entirely, and both Rayne and Barrin grew disillusioned. The birth of Hanna marked the last known individual in the project.[7]

Obliteration of Tolaria

During the Phyrexian Invasion of Dominaria, Barrin's daughter Hanna died from Phyrexian Plague. When Urza activated his Nine Titans, storing their titan engines on site on Tolaria, they attracted the attention of the Phyrexians, who swarmed the island. When a grieving Barrin later returned to the island, and saw that his home hand fallen to the invaders, he sealed Hanna in an impenetrable sarcophagus and obliterated the entire island with a massive spell.

Tolaria today

Although Tolaria was annihilated in Barrin's spell, a part of the island is believed to have survived the explosion: possibly the location of the Pendrell Vale, as it continued to emanate magic for hundreds of years after the Invasion. Although since then it was almost forgotten, on a tiny island far away in the northern Spice Isles, scholars of magic decided to immortalize the memory of that great school by building a new academy. The island was named Tolaria West, honoring the memory of the original Tolaria.[8]

Geography

Locations on Tolaria:

  • Angelwood - a slow-time verdant paradise teeming with fish, birds, and fresh, running slow-time water.[5][7]
  • The Colony - a small hamlet of bloodlines subjects who had moved to the far corner of the island[7]
  • The Curtains of Eternity, also called the Curtains of Time - a series of thin but wide time bubbles of extremely slow or fast time, deadly to the touch. The metathran commanders Agnate and Thaddeus were stored there in an extreme slow-time curtain, until the time of the Phyrexian Invasion.[5][9]
  • The Giant's Pate - a high vista where almost the entire island could be viewed[5]
  • The Hives - a fast-time bubble where its inhabitants lived a tribal life, building mud hut villages at 100 times the speed of the bubble's outside.[5]
  • Jhoira's Cove - a small bay on the western shore of Tolaria, where Jhoira lived in a cave for 10 years after the Tolarian Temporal Disaster.[10]
  • K'rrik's rift - a deep ravine at the bottom on one side of the Giant's Pate, where a fast time bubble had settled.[7][11]
    • City of K'rrik - a black tower with a laboratory and storage in the bottom, located inside the rift.[7][11]
  • Lotus Vale - a garden of Black Lotuses[12]
  • Pendrell Vale - a valley of magically perpetual mist and the mysterious Tabernacle in its midst.
  • Slate Waters - a slow-time bubble swamp, wide, desolate, and filled with gray, dead trees.[5]
  • Teferi's Shrine - an extreme slow-time bubble within which Teferi was suspended in the air for over 10 years, perpetually on fire.[5]
  • The Tolarian Academy - the famous school of learning established by Urza and Barrin[5]
    • The Chancellor's Hall - Office section for the senior chancellors of the academy, including Barrin.[7]
    • The Grand Vault - a big hall where the Metathran experiments were performed.[7]
    • The Hall of Artifact Creatures - a museum where Urza placed important but obsolete inventions. Destroyed in the Tolarian temporal disaster, but rebuilt in the new academy.[5]
    • Scholar's Row - where the Academy's scholars lived[7]
    • The Tower of Artifice[5]
    • The Tower of Mana[5]
  • Vanish Point [13]
  • The Western Reaches - the tallest mountains on the island[5]

Notable inhabitants of Tolaria

In-game references

Represented in:
Associated cards:
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References

  1. ↑ Scott McGough (March 21, 2011). "From the Ground Up". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast. Archived from the original on 2020-10-20.
  2. ↑ a b Will McDermott (November 1998). "A Time for Remembrance". The Official Guide to Urza's Saga
  3. ↑ Blake Rasmussen (March 30, 2018). "Dominaria Card of the Day: Karn's Temporal Sundering". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast. Archived from the original on 2020-11-09.
  4. ↑ Jess Lebow (April 1999). "Forgotten Lore: Jhoira de Vivre" The Duelist #36, p.19.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m J. Robert King (1999) - Time Streams, Wizards of the Coast
  6. ↑ Will McDermott (April 1999). "Scars of the Legacy". The Official Urza's Legacy Game Guide
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g h Loren L. Coleman (1999) Bloodlines. Wizards of the Coast.
  8. ↑ Magic Arcana (May 30, 2007). "Tolaria West". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast. Archived from the original on 2021-04-29.
  9. ↑ J. Robert King (2000) - Invasion, WotC.
  10. ↑ Steven E. Schend, J. Robert King, ed. (2001.) "Of Protectors & Pride", The Dragons of Magic, Wizards of the Coast.
  11. ↑ a b J. Robert King. (2001.) Planeshift, Wizards of the Coast. ISBN-13 0-7869-1802-0.
  12. ↑ Pete Venters (October 1997). "Dominian Chronicles: Weatherlight Ports of Call." The Duelist #19, 33-34
  13. ↑ Tim Ryan, J. Robert King, ed. (2003.) "The Reluctant Student", The Monsters of Magic, Wizards of the Coast. ISBN-13 0-7869-2983-9.
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