Into Rath: Gerrard, Volrath and the stolen Legacy

Urza spent eight hundred years breeding a hero, and in Benalia, in a family named Capashen, he finally got one: a boy named Gerrard. Urza also left him an inheritance, a set of artifacts called the Legacy that were meant, together, to beat Phyrexia. This is Saga 3 of The Story of Magic, the story Wizards told across the Weatherlight, Tempest, Stronghold and Exodus sets: how Gerrard lost his Legacy, walked away from it, and went to an artificial world called Rath to win it back. It follows Saga 2, Urza's long war. New here? The whole story in one read comes first.

Part 1 of 12The heir in the desert

Phyrexia found Gerrard's family first. Its raiders came to Benalia and murdered the Capashens while Gerrard was still a small child. He survived because of his guardian: Karn, the silver golem from Saga 2, whom Urza had given to the Capashens to protect his bloodline. Karn carried the boy out and took him to Jamuraa, to a warlord who was an ally of Urza's. Sidar Kondo adopted Gerrard and raised him in his war-clan as his own.

Kondo had a son of his own, Vuel. At first he had no use for the orphan his father had taken in, but the two boys grew up together and became close, as close as brothers. Gerrard had the Legacy with him, or the part of it that had come to him as a child: a handful of strange artifacts, with Karn to guard them.

Part 2 of 12Two brothers and a poisoned climb

Phyrexia had not forgotten the boy. It sent an agent into Kondo's clan: Starke, a man from Rath who served whoever paid him best and believed in no one but himself. Starke of Rath sums him up in his own words: "I know to whom I owe the most loyalty, and I see him in the mirror every day." Starke worked his way into the clan and close to Vuel, and slowly he taught Kondo's son to see Gerrard as a thief who meant to take his birthright.

Then came Vuel's rite of passage, the climb up a high cliff that would make him his father's heir. Starke had poisoned the paint the clan put on Vuel's body for the ritual. Halfway up, Vuel faltered and began to fall. Gerrard climbed after him and caught him. He saved his brother's life, and in doing so ruined the rite, which had to be faced alone. In front of the whole clan Vuel had failed. He told Gerrard he should have let him die, cut the back of Gerrard's hand, and walked away.

Starke found him alone that night and offered him powerful friends. He also gave him a weapon: a small artifact called the Touchstone, which could switch off an artifact with a touch. With Starke at his side, Vuel stole Gerrard's Legacy and sold the pieces he could not use to pay for an army.

Karn took it badly. When the boy Gerrard accused him of not caring, the golem set off alone, crossed a chasm and a mountain range, and walked along the bottom of a lake to the floating village where Vuel was planning his attack on Kondo's camp. Vuel had set a trap. He had hidden the stolen artifacts inside the body of a captive blacksmith, and he taunted Karn until the golem lost his temper. Karn lashed out, and an innocent bystander died. The blacksmith gave up his own life to end it, and as Karn gathered up the Legacy, Vuel's Touchstone did its work. "One touch to the stone and the sidar's son turned me from stalwart to statue," the golem remembers on the card.

Karn stood frozen in that village for ten years, the Touchstone clutched in his hand, and the villagers built a shrine at his feet and forgot what he was. He never forgot why he was there. "An innocent man died because of my anger," he says on Agonizing Memories. "That knowledge will haunt me for all eternity." He swore never to kill again.

Vuel's army burned the war-clans that had shamed him. Among the dead was his own father. Furious that Gerrard had slipped away from him, Vuel demanded the power Starke had promised, and Starke sent him through a portal to an audience with his masters. The portal took Vuel to Rath, and there, hearing Yawgmoth's voice, he gave himself to Phyrexia. He took a new name, Volrath, and became the evincar, the ruler, of Rath, Phyrexia's artificial world, with the power to reshape his own body into any form he liked.

Part 3 of 12The Weatherlight's crew

Gerrard had missed all of it. He was away training under another of Urza's allies, the forest spirit Multani, where he made two lifelong friends: the elf Rofellos and the cat warrior Mirri. When they finally went home, they found the war-clan's camp destroyed and Sidar Kondo dead. With nothing left, the three of them drifted, selling their swords to whoever would pay.

In a seedy tavern they met Sisay. Gerrard won a knife-throwing contest by hitting the bullseye; Sisay split his knife in half with her own. The bet she won made him and his friends crew on her ship. The ship was the Weatherlight, the skyship Urza built at the end of Saga 2, which had passed to Sisay from her family, a wealthy Zhalfirin house killed by someone they called the Lord of the Wastes. Nobody aboard knew that was another name for Yawgmoth. Sisay was looking for the scattered pieces of the Legacy, believing they could help her against whatever had killed her family, and she was right. Captain Sisay built the crew that would carry the rest of this story: "Her leadership forged the Weatherlight's finest crew."

There was Tahngarth, a minotaur first mate with a hard sense of justice, who disliked Gerrard on sight. There was Hanna, the navigator, an artificer and the daughter of Barrin from Saga 2, and before long the woman Gerrard loved. There was Orim, a Samite healer; Crovax, a nobleman from Urborg; and Squee, a goblin cabin boy. Hunting the Legacy across Dominaria, they gathered some of it back.

Then a message came from Crovax's family. Two Phyrexian horrors, Morinfen and Gallowbraid, were tearing through their estate in Urborg. "If its skin looks like stone, it is only to match its heart," Crovax said of Gallowbraid, and of Morinfen: "I looked into its eyes, and its soul was so empty I saw no reflection, no light there." The ship came too late to save Crovax's family. In the fight Rofellos was killed, and Crovax used a cursed family heirloom to call down the angel who guarded his house, Selenia, who turned the battle. The Phyrexians had come looking for Urza's bloodlines, and the one they wanted most was Gerrard.

For Gerrard that was enough. He blamed the hunt for his Legacy for Rofellos's death, he had had enough of people dying because of him, and he quit. Mirri went to Llanowar to tell Rofellos's people he was gone. "I cradle my rage even as the earth cradles my dead kin," she says on Nature's Kiss. Gerrard went to Benalia, the land his family came from, and became a master-at-arms in its army. Hanna felt betrayed. Tahngarth felt proved right.

Part 4 of 12Sisay is taken

Sisay kept hunting without him. She found a book of Thran knowledge, the Thran Tome, and learned two things from it: that her own ship was part of the Legacy, able to cross from one plane to another, and that there was a world called Rath. She also found Karn, still a statue after all those years, and had him carried into the Weatherlight's hold.

Then Starke came to her with news. Vuel had left Dominaria for Rath, he said, and ruled it now as Volrath, and he was planning Gerrard's destruction. It was all true, and Starke was still Volrath's man. Volrath held Starke's daughter, Takara, in his dungeons, and Starke had found a price for her freedom. He betrayed Sisay. A portal opened, and the Weatherlight's captain was pulled through it to Rath. The bait was set for Gerrard.

Tahngarth, briefly the captain, went to Benalia to fetch the man he despised. He found Gerrard in the middle of uncovering a plot inside the Benalish army: his own commander, Alaric, was shielding a guild of assassins and had tried to poison him. In Gerrard's office sat one of the Legacy artifacts he had kept, the Null Rod, a rod that seemed to do nothing at all. On the card Gerrard complains, "But it doesn't do anything!" and Hanna corrects him: "No—it does nothing."

When Tahngarth told him that Sisay had been taken, Gerrard was furious, at Volrath and at Sisay, who he felt had tricked him into chasing his Legacy in the first place. Tahngarth answered that Rofellos had died because Gerrard sought the Legacy, and Sisay would die if he did not. Then he mentioned Hanna. Gerrard came back to the ship. He made one thing plain: he was doing it for Sisay, not for the Legacy.

Aboard, Gerrard named Tahngarth his first mate, and he and Hanna found each other again, carefully. In the Thran Tome he found a spell that could undo the Touchstone, and in the hold he found the golem who had carried him out of Benalia as a child. Gerrard woke him. Karn came back with a vow: he would never kill again, not even to save himself or Gerrard.

Part 5 of 12Gathering the crew

Gerrard wanted his old friends with him. The ship flew to Llanowar, the great elvish forest, to find Mirri, who agreed to come on one condition: that they first help the elves kill an aboroth, a forest giant that had grown up beside their village. The elves fought it with wooden war machines. "Most people can't build decent weapons out of stone or steel," Gerrard says on Llanowar Behemoth. "Trust the elves to do it with only mud and vines."

When the monster rose, Gerrard ignored the plan. He had Tahngarth fly the ship in behind the Aboroth and dropped onto its head with two pieces of the Legacy. With the Thran Forge he turned the beast into metal, and with the Touchstone he shut the metal down, again and again, until there was nothing left of it. "This will work," he called to the elves, "but if it doesn't, we won't survive to care." It worked. Tahngarth admitted, grudgingly, that only the heir to the Legacy could have used its pieces together like that.

The crew still needed a wizard to set the ship's Thran crystal for the crossing into Rath, so they went to Tolaria and Hanna's father, Barrin. He would not come himself, but he offered his star pupil, Ertai, a young mage of tremendous talent and no modesty at all. Ertai passed Hanna's test easily and annoyed nearly everyone aboard. "If that arrogant brat doesn't shut up soon," Mirri growls on Abjure, "I'm going to have to kill him."

In Urborg they found Crovax alone at his family's crypt. Since the attack he had broken the cursed heirloom that bound Selenia to him, believing it would set her free to be with him; Starke, playing on his love for her, had talked him into it. Instead she had vanished to Rath, and the curse had passed to him: he was doomed to destroy what he loved. "I am condemned without end," he says on Haunting Misery. Rath was where Selenia was, and where his family's killers came from. He accepted Gerrard's offer on Shattered Crypt: "You must be mad to want one such as I aboard the Weatherlight. But I would be mad to remain here with my rotting family. I accept."

Last, they needed someone who knew Rath. Crovax remembered Starke, who had come to him begging for a place to hide from a Keldon warlord, Maraxus of Keld, hired by Volrath to bring him back. "Save me from Maraxus," Starke pleads on Inner Sanctum, "or condemn me to his wrath. Either way, do not ignore me!" The Weatherlight found Maraxus holding Starke prisoner, landed on the warlord's army and scattered it, and Gerrard fought Maraxus himself. Before Maraxus could say who had really handed Sisay to Volrath, Starke stabbed him in the back.

Gerrard hated the dishonor of it, but he needed his guide. Debt of Loyalty records the moment: "'I killed him because I had to,' Starke lied to Gerrard. 'But now I pledge my loyalty to you.'" Starke had worked out that he would win either way. If the crew failed, he could claim to have delivered Gerrard to Volrath; if they succeeded, he could free his daughter. The crew was complete, and the Weatherlight set out for Rath.

Part 6 of 12Ambush over Rath

Rath was not a natural world. Phyrexia had made it, out of a shifting, half-alive substance called flowstone that poured from a great machine at its center, and the evincar ruled it from the fortress built around that machine, Volrath's Stronghold. The card calls it "the seed of a world's evil." Its skies were a storm of raw energy that tore apart anything caught in them, and its peoples, elves and humans and stranger things, had mostly been dragged there from Dominaria and left to survive under the evincar's boot.

The Weatherlight had barely crossed over when a far bigger warship found it: the Predator, Volrath's flagship, commanded by his enforcer Greven il-Vec. Gerrard drew his sword and grinned. "This won't be a fair fight," he called to his crew on Gerrard's Battle Cry. "They should have brought a second ship!"

Leading the Predator to them was Selenia. Crovax saw her and went to pieces below deck. "Crovax had witnessed Selenia lead the Predator to the Weatherlight," reads Enfeeblement. "As the battle raged on deck, he felt his strength melt in the heat of her betrayal." The Predator harpooned the smaller ship and its moggs, Rath's goblins, swarmed aboard, going straight for the Legacy. Karn would not fight. He had killed a mogg by accident during the fight, and after that he would not move at all. "Frozen by conscience, Karn did not resist as the moggs carried him to the Predator," says Pacifism. Squee, at least, kept one thing out of their hands. "Squee tucked the warm ball in his pocket and slipped a pebble in its place," reads Legerdemain. He had no idea it was a piece of the Legacy.

Greven boarded the Weatherlight himself and went looking for Gerrard. "As Gerrard and Greven neared each other," says No Quarter, "the moggs caught between them realized they should flee." Greven was winning when the Predator's cannon fired again: his own first mate, Vhati il-Dal, was trying to kill his captain and Gerrard at once. The Weatherlight lurched, and Gerrard went over the side. "As Gerrard's form vanished into the maw of trees," reads Abandon Hope, "Hanna mouthed a silent plea, mourning a crushed dream."

Greven took his prizes and went home: Karn, the Legacy, and, unknown to him, Tahngarth, who had grabbed a boarding line as the Predator pulled away. Back on his own deck, Greven dealt with Vhati. "The cannon wasn't aimed at you!" Vhati pleaded on Repentance. "I'm not sure which is more pathetic," Greven replied, "your judgment or your aim." Then, on Diabolic Edict, he lifted him off his feet: "The fall will give you time to think on your failure." Tahngarth found Karn in the hold and begged him to fight his way free. "Now, statue, you must fight to save yourself!" he says on Mogg Conscripts. Karn would not, and when Greven found the minotaur, "the match between Tahngarth and Greven was close only in the mind of the minotaur," as Hand to Hand puts it.

The Weatherlight came down hard at the edge of Skyshroud, a vast forest growing out of the water. The moggs had cracked its Thran crystal, the stone that let it cross between worlds. Sisay was a prisoner, Karn and Tahngarth were captives, the Legacy was gone, Gerrard was missing and presumed dead, and the ship could not go home. "We should step up repairs," Crovax says on Root Maze. "I think the forest has plans for us."

Part 7 of 12The Korvecdal

Gerrard was not dead. The two tellings of the story disagree on how he survived the fall (see the box below), but he landed alive in Skyshroud with one opinion about it. "I think I used up all my good luck and all my bad luck in the same fall," he says on Broken Fall. The forest's merfolk attacked him almost at once, and he got away with a blow he was not proud of. "I concede it was a cheap shot," he admits on Stun, "but it was the only one I could afford."

Wandering through the roots, he came upon a procession of the Vec, one of Rath's human peoples, on a pilgrimage. With them was their seer, the Oracle en-Vec, and she knew him on sight. Gerrard, she said, had arrived at the time and place her prophecy named: he was the Korvecdal, the one who would unite Rath's peoples against the evincar. Gerrard had no interest in being anyone's chosen one. He did see how useful the title could be.

Back at the wreck, Mirri and Hanna went into the forest to look for his body. Hanna was not sure she could keep up. "Hanna was astounded," reads Mirri's Guile. "Mirri read every leaf and wisp of breeze like a book of ancient lore." A shapeshifter, one of Volrath's creatures, attacked them, taking on a blend of both their forms, and it beat Mirri. Hanna killed it. Gallantry has the moment: "'Forgive me,' Mirri whispered. 'I thought you a burden, and you saved my life.' Hanna quietly accepted the apology."

The two of them were captured by the elves of Skyshroud and brought to their leader, Eladamri, Lord of Leaves, and that is where Gerrard found them, walking in with Eladamri and the Oracle. He vouched for his crew. "We can fight with you or against you," he says on Insight. "After my day, I'd prefer the former." He and Hanna stopped pretending. Eladamri called off his warriors from the Weatherlight and decided the time had come to attack the Stronghold.

At the war council a plan came together. Eladamri's elves and the peoples of Rath would rise against the evincar. The Weatherlight would slip into the Stronghold by a back way, through the furnaces beneath it, to free Sisay, Karn and Tahngarth and take back the Legacy. And they would need a way home. That job fell to Ertai, who stayed behind at a portal to open it for their escape; the tellings differ on which portal, and when he stayed (see the box below). "Alone at the portal, Ertai began his meditation," says Soltari Emissary. "He realized immediately that he was not alone." He had company from the Soltari, a people trapped in the shadows between Rath and Dominaria, and their emissary, Lyna, struck a bargain with him: the Soltari would help him open the portal if he let them through it.

Starke spent the council watching the Oracle watch him. He was afraid she could see what he was. "The third time the Oracle glanced suspiciously at him," reads Opportunist, "Starke decided she had glanced twice too often." He crept into her tent meaning to kill her, and did not go through with it. The man who sold everyone was beginning, against his own judgment, to hope that Gerrard might win.

Part 8 of 12In Volrath's cells

Inside the Stronghold, Volrath was displeased. Greven had brought him Karn and the Legacy but not Gerrard, and the evincar punished him through the graft in Greven's spine. "Tell me again why you failed to capture Gerrard," Volrath says on Fevered Convulsions, "you worthless pile of spine." On Puppet Strings, the warning is shorter: "Have no illusions," Volrath told Greven, "about free will."

Tahngarth went under a mutating ray. Volrath meant to remake the proud minotaur into a new second-in-command for Greven, and the ray twisted his body. Karn's torment was made for Karn. He was put in a cell whose floor tilted, again and again, throwing his huge silver body onto the moggs packed in beside him and crushing them. He would go through about a hundred goblins a day, his guard promised. Karn decided that as long as he stood and endured, he did not belong to Volrath. The evincar tried words too, on Propaganda: "You've failed Gerrard. You've failed the Legacy. You've failed yourself. I can do no more."

Part 9 of 12Fire, slivers and the dead

The back way into the Stronghold ran through some of the worst places on Rath. The ship crept into a dead chimney of the furnaces, and the walls of the cave burst open with slivers, insect-like creatures that grow stronger with every one of their kind nearby. Hanna noticed metal slivers among them and guessed they were the leaders. They were not: Volrath had built them as counterfeits and slipped them into the hive, and "when the clever counterfeit was accepted by the hive," reads Metallic Sliver, "Volrath's influence upon the slivers grew even stronger." Hanna destroyed two to no effect. "'They clearly were not the leaders,' Hanna cursed," on Disenchant. "'I guess we'll have to do this the hard way.'" She worked out that the slivers' shared strength reached only so far, and the crew split them apart and killed them.

Beyond lay the Furnace of Rath itself, where the ship began to burn and lightning struck the deck. Someone had to set a lightning rod on the bow under fire. The card Havoc gives the job to Orim, who shielded herself with a spell as she worked: "That's when the Furnace got personal." The novel gives it to Hanna (see the box below). Either way, the rod saved the ship.

Then the Death Pits, where Volrath dumped his failed experiments, and where the dead rose out of the black ooze to climb aboard. "I suppose," Gerrard said to Orim on Death Pits of Rath, "it's a little too late for prayer, isn't it?" Squee had fled up a mast, and there, terrified, he accidentally set off the warm little ball he had kept from the moggs. The dead shrank back from it, and Gerrard used it to drive them off the ship. "As the horrors closed in on Gerrard," reads Squee's Toy, "Squee trembled and clutched his toy for comfort." Crovax watched the bodies with something new in his eyes. "Crovax gazed upon the dead," says Dregs of Sorrow, "and for one dark moment he saw a banquet." He was thinking of Selenia. "I followed her song," he says on Whispers of the Muse, "only to find it was a dirge."

Part 10 of 12Inside the Stronghold

The Weatherlight docked against the Stronghold's flank. A guard saw them, and Mirri was on him before he could cry out. "Mirri leapt quickly and silently," reads Leap. "The guard died likewise." Hanna stayed with the ship; if anything went wrong, they would meet in Volrath's Gardens. Gerrard went in with Mirri, Starke and Crovax.

A shapeshifter met them wearing Selenia's face, and Crovax tore it apart. "Crovax's rage was horrifying," reads Amok. "Within moments only blood and shreds of flesh remained of the shapeshifter." Gerrard pulled him back and tried to reach him on Megrim: "You can run from your pain, but take it from experience: you will tire before it does."

In a chamber further in they found a globe, a model of a world, and it took Gerrard a moment to understand which one. "Gerrard studied the globe as Mirri kept watch," reads Invasion Plans. "Suddenly, his eyes widened. 'This is Dominaria!'" Someone was planning to invade his home.

A bridge of flowstone over a bottomless pit tried to kill them on the way to the prison tower. "I expected a fight," Gerrard says on Ensnaring Bridge, "but I didn't expect it from the building itself." They fed it the shapeshifter's corpse and crossed while it was busy. In the tower they freed Karn and Tahngarth. The minotaur came out changed. "Volrath has killed me," he says on Torment. "All that remains of me is the scar!" They found Sisay floating in a glass tank in Volrath's laboratory and broke it open. It was another shapeshifter.

Then Selenia found them. Crovax could not move, and Mirri threw herself in the way. "Mirri did not have time to think, only to react," reads Provoke. The angel's sword opened her belly. Then Crovax and Selenia fought, both of them weeping, because she was bound to serve Volrath and he was bound by the curse. "I am light. I am dark," Selenia says on her own card. "I must give my life to serve; not even death can release me." At the last moment she hesitated, and Crovax ran her through. "For a sharp second, Selenia froze, and Crovax's blade found home," reads Death Stroke. "As the angel shattered like glass, Crovax felt his mind collapse—the curse had been fulfilled."

The shards of the angel streamed into Crovax's body. When Tahngarth found the two of them and carried them back to the ship, Orim barely recognized the nobleman: pale as a corpse, with solid yellow eyes and long fangs. "It was not the minotaur's shoulders but his soul that bore the heaviest weight," says Conviction. The healer could treat Mirri. She could do nothing for Crovax. "Selenia had hurt Mirri terribly, but injuries of the flesh could be treated," reads Convalescence. "The wounds she had torn in Crovax's soul would never close."

Karn, meanwhile, had felt the Legacy nearby and gone after it alone. He found it in the lair of the Sliver Queen, the mother of all of Rath's slivers, and came back with every missing piece and one new one, the Skyshaper. "Twice I have let the Legacy slip away," he says on Sift. "Never again."

Gerrard and Starke went on alone, through Volrath's Gardens. "Watch yourself," Starke warns on Volrath's Gardens. "These plants aren't nice when they're hungry." Among Rath's strange growths Gerrard saw a tree he knew from home, a tree of Llanowar, and he understood what the globe had meant. Rath was swallowing pieces of Dominaria. It was growing toward his world.

At the top of a tower stood the Dream Halls, and in them Gerrard saw his own life with Vuel, his brother's exile, horned figures, splitting apart and merging into one, as they corrupted Vuel, and Volrath's armies sweeping across Dominaria. Then Volrath himself stepped out of the visions. Starke stabbed him in the back, and it did nothing. "Predictable little man," Volrath tells him on Contempt. "In all these years you taught me so much yet learned so little." Kondo's service to Gerrard's Legacy, Volrath said, had cost him a family, and Gerrard had cost him a clan.

Volrath had brought Sisay and Takara with him, his mind in control of both. "'Takara, it's me!' shouted Starke," reads Heat of Battle. "It was no use—she obeyed Volrath." Takara's sword took her father's eyes. Gerrard knocked Sisay out, disarmed Takara, and went after the evincar. "You've got your childhood wish at last," he tells Volrath on Smite. "Now you get to die." He killed him, and the body melted into something else: a shapeshifter. "'Enjoy your deception, Vuel,' Gerrard said as Volrath's features melted from the dead shapeshifter," reads Scapegoat. "'I'll count this one as practice.'" Freed from his control, Takara bound up her father's wounds. "She knew the last image her father had seen was her sword flashing toward him," says Bandage.

Part 11 of 12Exodus

Outside, Rath rose. Eladamri and the leaders of the Kor, the Vec and the Dal, Rath's peoples, had sworn themselves to one plan, and now they threw their armies at the Stronghold. "There are times when destiny calls forth a people and demands an action," Eladamri says on Awakening. "Now is the time. We are the people. This is our action. Charge!" It was braver than it was wise. "A great cry went out, and countless elves and Vec soldiers charged up the mountain," reads Primal Rage. "Their fury and passion hid the fact that they were horribly outnumbered." When the fighting turned into a slaughter, Eladamri did not flinch. "If we cannot live proudly, we die so!" he says on Pandemonium.

At the ship, Lyna appeared out of nowhere, and Hanna's sword went straight through her. "Ertai sends word that the portal is open—but not for long!" the Soltari cried on Erratic Portal, and pressed Hanna to cast off. Tahngarth staggered out of the Stronghold carrying Mirri and the changed Crovax. Then Karn came back with the Legacy. "Karn and Hanna stood over the recovered Legacy artifacts like loving parents over sleeping children," says Treasure Trove. The Weatherlight lifted away to pick up Gerrard in the Gardens, and the Predator came after it.

The bigger ship harpooned the Weatherlight again and began to haul it in. Hanna put on all the speed she had and flew the other way, and the Predator, still tied on, was dragged behind her into the side of the Stronghold. "The Weatherlight dragged the Predator behind it," reads Cataclysm, "the cradle hauling the casket." The Predator blasted its way free of the Stronghold and kept coming, sending ornithopters loaded with goblin bombs after the smaller ship. Hanna rigged the Weatherlight's own lights into a weapon that could fire once, and knocked one of them out of the sky.

Down in the Dream Halls, Sisay came round. "'My ship . . . ,' Sisay mumbled," on Fugue. "'Intact,' Gerrard reassured her, 'which is more than I can say for you, my friend.' Sisay laughed despite the pain." Gerrard got her to the Gardens, and Takara led her blinded father there behind them. Tahngarth leapt from the deck onto the last ornithopter to stop it.

Below deck, something was wrong with Crovax. The voices in his head had told him to wreck the ship, and he went to wreck its sails. Mirri, wounded and exhausted, followed him. "All Mirri wanted to do was rest," reads Curiosity, "but she couldn't ignore a nagging suspicion as she followed Crovax's skulking form." She caught him at it. They fought, and they went over the side together, falling through the trees into Volrath's Gardens.

Greven was waiting there for Gerrard. "I will flay the skin from your flesh and the flesh from your bones and scrape your bones dry," he promises on Hatred. "And still you will not have suffered enough." Gerrard fought him off by giving up any thought of defending himself. "Only by sacrificing any semblance of defense could Gerrard best Greven," reads Maniacal Rage. The ship lowered its rope ladder, and Gerrard climbed toward it with Sisay.

Mirri was still on the ground with Crovax, who had bitten into her and very nearly made her his. She fought her way back to herself, and she saw what Crovax was doing: keeping Gerrard and the ship there for as long as he could. Gerrard could reach her or he could save his crew. He could not do both. Mirri, who had loved him for years and never told him, looked up at him and let him go. Gerrard left her. The man who had quit the Weatherlight because one friend died for his Legacy had just let another die for it, knowing exactly what he was doing. It was the first sacrifice he made with his eyes open. Crovax killed her in the Gardens, as Slaughter shows.

The Weatherlight ran for the portal with the Predator behind it and Rath itself trying to stop it. "The flowstone seemed for a moment to assume Greven's rage," says Seismic Assault, "it lunged like a wild beast at the Weatherlight." Gerrard ordered Hanna to fire up the Skyshaper, the piece of the Legacy Karn had only just fitted into the ship. "It'll get us to the portal," Hanna warns on Skyshaper, "but I can't guarantee what it'll do to the ship." Ertai and the Soltari had held the way open.

As the ship hurtled through, Gerrard saw a ghostly procession of Soltari crossing with them, and Ertai, hanging by a rope from the arch of the portal. The ship was going too fast to stop. They left him behind. The portal snapped shut, the Predator smashed into it, and Ertai fell into the wreckage at Greven's feet. On a hill nearby, Lyna turned to the figure beside her. "They're gone. What now?" she asks on Mind Over Matter. "As ever," said Urza, "we wait."

"The tide of magic brought them here," says Aether Tide. "Now it would take them home." It did not. The portal led somewhere else entirely.

Part 12 of 12Why it matters

Saga 3 is where Gerrard becomes the hero Urza bred him to be, and it does not happen the way he would have wanted. He spends most of the story insisting he is not there for the Legacy, only for his friends, and it ends with him leaving one of those friends behind for the sake of everyone else. He learns that his destiny is not his to control. That lesson, and what it costs him, carries him through the rest of this Era.

It is also where Phyrexia's plan comes out of the dark. Rath was not a prison world or a private kingdom for Volrath. It was a staging ground, growing century by century, built to fall over Dominaria and drop Yawgmoth's armies straight onto it. Gerrard saw the globe and the Llanowar tree, and he knew. And the Legacy, which began as a boy's bag of strange artifacts, came back together as something more: Karn, the Weatherlight, the Thran Tome, the Touchstone, the Forge, Squee's warm little toy and now the Skyshaper, pieces that seemed to find each other, as if Urza's plan had a will of its own.

Plenty was left behind on Rath. Volrath was not dead; the body Gerrard cut down was a decoy. Crovax was still there, a cursed vampire walking back toward the Dream Halls. So was Ertai, in Greven's hands. All of them come back. And for the people who played in 1997 and 1998, this story was told on the cards themselves, scene by scene, across four sets: the flavor text of Tempest block is the novel in miniature. Fans were divided about it, and Wizards dropped the idea for many years, until Story Spotlight cards brought a version of it back with Kaladesh.

Who's who

Character	Who they were	Their card
Gerrard Capashen	The last child of Urza's bloodline project and heir to the Legacy. Walked away from it, then came back to save a friend.	Gerrard Capashen $0.46
Sisay	Captain of the Weatherlight, which she inherited, and the one who kept hunting the Legacy when Gerrard quit.	Captain Sisay $13.62
Karn	Urza's silver golem, Gerrard's guardian since childhood. Froze for a decade after killing an innocent, and swore never to kill again.	Karn, Silver Golem $21.21
Sidar Kondo	The Jamuraan warlord, an ally of Urza, who raised Gerrard as his son. Killed by his own son's army.	Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa $1.02
Vuel / Volrath	Kondo's son and Gerrard's adoptive brother. Stole the Legacy, gave himself to Phyrexia and became evincar of Rath, a shapeshifter.	Volrath the Fallen $3.03
Starke	A Rathi agent who ruined Vuel and betrayed Sisay, all to free his daughter.	Starke of Rath $1.10
Takara	Starke's daughter, Volrath's prisoner.	Takara $14.69
Tahngarth	The minotaur first mate. Distrusted Gerrard, then followed him; Volrath's torturers twisted his body.	Tahngarth, Talruum Hero $1.11
Hanna	Navigator and artificer, Barrin's daughter, and the woman Gerrard loved.	Hanna, Ship's Navigator $2.20
Orim	The ship's Samite healer.	Orim, Samite Healer $2.08
Squee	The goblin cabin boy, who kept a warm little toy he did not understand.	Squee, Goblin Nabob $36.22
Mirri	A cat warrior, Gerrard's oldest friend, who loved him and never said so.	Mirri, Cat Warrior $3.40
Crovax	An Urborg noble cursed to destroy what he loved: his guardian angel, Selenia.	Crovax the Cursed $0.94
Selenia	The angel bound to Crovax's family, pulled to Rath and made to serve Volrath.	Selenia, Dark Angel $5.17
Ertai	Barrin's brilliant, insufferable student, who held the way home open.	Ertai, Wizard Adept $13.23
Greven il-Vec	Volrath's enforcer, captain of the Predator, kept obedient by a graft in his spine.	Greven il-Vec $7.41
Eladamri	Lord of Leaves, leader of the Skyshroud elves and of Rath's uprising.	Eladamri, Lord of Leaves $79.88
The Oracle en-Vec	The Vec seer who named Gerrard the Korvecdal, the uniter Rath's peoples were waiting for.	Oracle en-Vec $0.56
Lyna	Emissary of the Soltari, a people trapped in Rath's shadows, who helped Ertai open the portal.	Lyna $12.80

The cards of this Saga

Wizards told this story on cardboard across four sets: Weatherlight and Tempest (1997), then Stronghold and Exodus (1998). Some of the cards that tell it are among the most sought-after of their era, each with today's price.

• Volrath's StrongholdStronghold · $139.03
• Sliver QueenStronghold · $306.75
• Null RodWeatherlight · $107.98
• Dream HallsStronghold · $33.02
• Eladamri, Lord of LeavesTempest · $79.88
• Mind Over MatterExodus · $48.71
• HatredExodus · $64.90
• CataclysmExodus · $15.87
• Mirri's GuileTempest · $28.65
• Ensnaring BridgeStronghold · $13.97
• Debt of LoyaltyWeatherlight · $12.47
• Root MazeTempest · $12.01
• Captain SisayInvasion · $13.62
• Ertai, Wizard AdeptExodus · $13.23
• AwakeningStronghold · $6.95
• Selenia, Dark AngelTempest · $5.17

Sources: the novel Rath and Storm (1998), edited by Peter Archer, with stories by Michael G. Ryan, Hannovi Braddock, Philip Athans, Miranda Horner, Jennifer Clarke Wilkes, J. Robert King, Kij Johnson, Francis Lebaron and Liz Holliday; Loren L. Coleman's Bloodlines (1999); and the cards' own flavor text. Retold in our own words. Prices are TCGplayer market prices for each card's regular printing (foil where there is no regular one), refreshed nightly; as of 2 November 2026. The Story of Magic is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.