Magic: The Gathering has been telling one story since Antiquities in 1994, through novels, comics, Wizards of the Coast's own web fiction and the flavor text of thousands of cards. It is a story about brilliant people who cannot leave power alone, about an enemy that wants to turn every living thing into machine, and about what the heroes lose stopping it. It all goes back to two brothers fighting over a broken stone. Here is the whole thing, era by era, in one read. It is also the map for The Story of Magic, our series retelling it one Saga at a time, starting with Saga 1: The Brothers' War.
How we tell it
Everything here follows the story as Wizards of the Coast has published it: the novels, the official Magic Story fiction and the cards themselves. The events are theirs; the words are ours. Where Wizards has retold something differently over the years, the Sagas say so. It is Magic's own story only. Universes Beyond sets like Final Fantasy, Spider-Man and The Hobbit tell other worlds' stories and are not part of it.
Part 1 of 10Before the story: the Thran and Phyrexia
Prologue · about five thousand years before the Brothers' War
Long before the brothers, the continent of Terisiare belonged to the Thran, an empire that ran on powerstones, crystals of stored energy. Its most dangerous mind was a physician named Yawgmoth, brilliant and without mercy, who rose to power, took hold of a dying plane and rebuilt it as Phyrexia: a world of metal and oil where flesh is a flaw and every living thing can be "improved" into machine. He went to war with the rest of the Thran. When it ended, they sealed him inside his new world and locked the door with a great powerstone, and their empire died of its wounds. Phyrexia waited, and deep in its core Yawgmoth became its god.
Cards from this era: Yawgmoth, Thran Physician $26.54
Part 2 of 10The Brothers' War
Era I · Antiquities (1994), The Brothers' War (2022)
Urza and Mishra were orphans raised by an archaeologist, Tocasia, at her dig in the desert. In the buried Thran city of Koilos they found that great powerstone and came out with it in two halves: the Mightstone for Urza, the Weakstone for Mishra. Without knowing it, they had unlocked the door to Phyrexia. The jealousy between them killed the woman who raised them, and grew into a war between two empires, Urza's Yotia and Mishra's desert Fallaji, that lasted decades and ate a continent. Mishra seduced his brother's wife. Urza burned his brother's cities. And all the while a Phyrexian demon, Gix, whispered to both sides, until Mishra was no longer a man at all.
On the forest island of Argoth, Urza looked up at what his brother had become and wept. Then he set off an ancient weapon, the Golgothian Sylex. The blast killed both armies, sank the island and set the world on the road to an ice age. It also ignited Urza's spark: he became a planeswalker, able to walk between worlds, with the two halves of the stone fused into him as his eyes.
Cards from this era: Urza, Lord Protector $8.87 · Mishra's Workshop $3,699.99
Read Saga 1: The Brothers' War →
Part 3 of 10Urza's long war
Era I · Ice Age to Urza's Destiny (1995–1999)
Urza spent most of the next four thousand years fighting Phyrexia, and it cost him his mind. The blast had, in time, sealed Dominaria off from the rest of the Multiverse for almost three thousand years, and the world froze into an Ice Age that ended only when the planeswalker Freyalise cast her World Spell. Locked outside, Urza found a companion in the strangest place: Xantcha, a Phyrexian made to be a spy, who had turned against her makers. He attacked Phyrexia itself and was beaten, and Yawgmoth's corruption began working on his mind. The two of them healed in Serra's Realm, a plane built by the planeswalker Serra, then wandered for more than a thousand years. When they finally came home, Xantcha died beside Urza in the caves of Koilos, killing Gix at last.
Urza built on what was left of her. He founded the Tolarian Academy to prepare the world for war, and there he built Karn, a silver golem who could travel through time, with Xantcha's heart at the center of him. Karn grew into a gentle soul who would not kill. Urza's time experiments destroyed the first academy and left a student named Teferi frozen in a bubble of slow time for years. To power a flying warship, the Weatherlight, Urza drained the last energy of a whole dying plane, Serra's Realm: he saved his world by spending another. And he ran the Bloodline Project, generations of arranged marriages meant to produce a hero worthy of his arsenal of artifacts, the Legacy. The result was a boy named Gerrard Capashen.
Cards from this era: Tolarian Academy $184.25 · Karn, Silver Golem $21.21 · Serra's Sanctum $522.44
Read Saga 2: Urza's long war →
Part 4 of 10The Weatherlight and the Invasion
Era I · Mirage to Apocalypse (1996–2001)
Phyrexia found Gerrard's family first. When it raided Benalia, Karn carried the child out and brought him to a warlord in Jamuraa to raise. The warlord's own son, Vuel, grew to hate his foster brother. He stole the Legacy, scattered it across the world, and Phyrexia made him Volrath, lord of Rath, an artificial plane built as the staging ground for an invasion. Years later the crew of the Weatherlight, captained by Sisay and joined by Gerrard, Karn, the cat warrior Mirri, the minotaur Tahngarth, the goblin Squee and the navigator Hanna, whom Gerrard loved, went hunting for the pieces. Volrath kidnapped Sisay. The crew followed her into Rath and got her back, and it cost them: the noble Crovax, cursed into a vampire, killed Mirri.
Then Phyrexia came. The Invasion laid Dominaria waste: Rath was dropped over the world like a second skin, whole nations fell, and the dead ran into the billions. A plague took Hanna; the cure was found hours too late. Her father Barrin, Urza's partner in founding Tolaria, was driven mad by grief and destroyed the island of Tolaria, and himself with it. Urza led planeswalkers in giant titan engines into Phyrexia itself, then, fascinated by what Yawgmoth had built, gave himself up to him, and Gerrard killed him. At the end, Gerrard used the Legacy as it was meant to be used. He set Urza's stone eyes into Karn's chest, and the blast that followed ended Yawgmoth. It ended Gerrard too. Karn became a planeswalker.
Cards from this era: Weatherlight $1.38 · Gerrard Capashen $0.46 · Legacy Weapon $0.71 · Volrath's Stronghold $139.03
Part 5 of 10New worlds
Era II · Odyssey to Dissension (2001–2006)
With Dominaria wrecked, the story spread out. On the continent of Otaria, an artifact Karn had sent out into the world, the Mirari, set off a chain of wars that ended with the birth, and death, of a false goddess named Karona. Karn took the Mirari to his own metal plane, Argentum, and turned it into a guardian, Memnarch. But a single drop of Phyrexian oil fell from Karn and stayed behind on Argentum. It drove Memnarch mad, and he remade the plane as Mirrodin. That drop will matter.
On Kamigawa, a lord named Konda stole a kami, a spirit, out of the spirit world to make himself immortal, and the spirits went to war with the mortal world to get it back. On Ravnica, a city the size of a world, the Guildpact, the ancient magical treaty that held its guilds in balance, broke on its ten-thousandth anniversary.
Cards from this era: Mirari $2.28 · Karona, False God $3.34 · Memnarch $5.21 · That Which Was Taken $2.80
Part 6 of 10The Mending
Era II · Time Spiral to Future Sight (2006–2007)
Four thousand years of catastrophe caught up with Dominaria. The Sylex Blast, Urza's time experiments, the Invasion and the wars since had torn rifts in time all over the world, and they were draining it dry. The old planeswalkers, near-immortal and close to gods, spent themselves closing them. Teferi gave up his spark to heal one. Freyalise, Lord Windgrace and Jeska gave their lives. Karn vanished after sealing the rift over Tolaria.
When the last rift closed, the Mending rippled out across the whole Multiverse and changed what a planeswalker is. They could still walk between worlds, but they lost their immortality and their godlike power. From here on, planeswalkers can die like anyone else, and the story is about people, not gods.
Cards from this era: Jhoira of the Ghitu $1.26 · Venser, Shaper Savant $1.71
Part 7 of 10New planeswalkers, old evils
Era III · Lorwyn to Avacyn Restored (2007–2012)
In 2007 Magic turned its planeswalkers into cards, and a new cast took over: Jace, a mind mage; Chandra, a hot-headed fire mage; Liliana, a necromancer who had sold her soul for youth; Garruk and Ajani, then Sorin, Nissa, Gideon and more. Their first great enemy was the oldest: Nicol Bolas, an elder dragon who had lost most of his power in the Mending and wanted it back. He clawed some of it back when the five shattered shards of the plane Alara crashed together, and he drank in the energy it released.
On Zendikar, a fight between Chandra, Jace and Bolas's servant Sarkhan Vol cracked an ancient prison built long ago by Ugin, Sorin and Nahiri, and Nissa broke the last seal. The Eldrazi, colossal beings from outside reality that devour whole worlds, were loose. On Mirrodin, that drop of oil won: Phyrexia took the whole plane and named it New Phyrexia, and its heroes saved only Karn, at the cost of Venser's life. On Innistrad, a gothic horror world whose guardian angel Avacyn had vanished, Liliana tricked the cathar Thalia into shattering the Helvault, freeing Avacyn along with the demon Liliana had come to kill.
Cards from this era: Jace Beleren $4.31 · Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker $3.47 · Emrakul, the Aeons Torn $29.25 · Eye of Ugin $52.52 · Karn Liberated $4.96 · Avacyn, Angel of Hope $43.75
Part 8 of 10Bolas and the Gatewatch
Era IV · Return to Ravnica to War of the Spark (2012–2019)
Jace became the Living Guildpact, Ravnica's magical law in a person. On Theros, Elspeth helped bring down a satyr who had made himself a god, and was then killed by the sun god Heliod with her own weapon. On Tarkir, Sarkhan Vol went 1,280 years into the past and saved the life of the spirit dragon Ugin, Bolas's twin, rewriting his home world into an age of dragons. On Zendikar, Gideon, Jace, Chandra and Nissa swore an oath to protect the Multiverse together, as the Gatewatch, and destroyed two of the three Eldrazi titans. The third, Emrakul, came to Innistrad at the call of Nahiri, who wanted revenge on Sorin. It ended with Sorin forced to unmake Avacyn, the angel he had created, and Emrakul sealed inside Innistrad's moon.
All of it was prologue to Bolas. He bent the inventors' world of Kaladesh, the desert world of Amonkhet and the pirate seas of Ixalan to his plans, and on Amonkhet he beat the Gatewatch so badly that they scattered. In the War of the Spark he brought an army of undead Eternals to Ravnica to harvest planeswalkers' sparks, and planeswalkers died in its streets. Liliana, bound to him by contract, commanded that army until regret won out. She turned it on Bolas, and when breaking the contract began to kill her, Gideon took its price on himself and turned to dust in her place. The planeswalkers fought back, and Ugin sealed a sparkless Bolas away in the Meditation Realm.
Cards from this era: Gideon, Ally of Zendikar $1.21 · Ugin, the Spirit Dragon $15.14 · Emrakul, the Promised End $31.26 · Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God $37.62 · Liliana, Dreadhorde General $10.74
Part 9 of 10Phyrexia returns
Era V · Throne of Eldraine to March of the Machine: The Aftermath (2019–2023)
With Bolas gone, the old enemy came back. Phyrexia had been growing on New Phyrexia under Elesh Norn, and its agents began turning up across the Multiverse: a praetor on Kaldheim, and experiments on Kamigawa that made Tamiyo the first Phyrexian planeswalker. Then the praetor Sheoldred and an army of sleeper agents invaded Dominaria again. They captured Karn, took his body apart and destroyed the Sylex he had dug up to use against them, and Teferi's spirit went back in time to the Brothers' War to learn how Urza had set it off. A strike team of ten planeswalkers invaded New Phyrexia to stop Norn, and failed. Jace, Vraska, Nissa, Nahiri and Lukka were compleated: turned Phyrexian.
In March of the Machine, Norn invaded every plane at once through the branches of an invasion tree, Realmbreaker. The Multiverse held, barely. Elspeth came back as an archangel and struck Norn down. Wrenn spent her own life-force to swap New Phyrexia's place with Zhalfir, a nation lost long ago. Karn, pieced back together, unmade Norn, and every Phyrexian in the Multiverse fell still. Victory had a price. Omenpaths opened across every plane, doorways anyone can walk through, and most planeswalkers lost their sparks. Karn gave up his, and the Mirran healer Melira gave her life, to bring Ajani and Nissa back from compleation.
Cards from this era: Sheoldred, the Apocalypse $102.22 · Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines $27.99 · Realmbreaker, the Invasion Tree $0.82 · Wrenn and Realmbreaker $6.96
Part 10 of 10The Omenpath era
Era VI · Wilds of Eldraine to Reality Fracture (2023–2026)
With the Omenpaths open, anyone can cross between worlds, and the story became a run of adventures across them. On Eldraine, the half-fae hero Kellan helped end a curse of endless sleep. Ixalan's explorers found a whole world inside the plane's hollow core. A murder at a party in Karlov Manor exposed a wave of killings on Ravnica, until the detective Alquist Proft named who was behind them. On the frontier plane of Thunder Junction, Oko's gang went after a legendary vault, and Jace and Vraska walked off with what was inside it: Loot, a small creature with a map of all reality in his head.
Jace had been compleated and brought back, and he could not live with what the invasion had done, or with his own part in it. He and Vraska had spent months recovering on his home world, Vryn, kept alive by his own mind's defenses and his mother's healing. Loot's trail ran through Bloomburrow, the house of horrors on Duskmourn and the interplanar race of Aetherdrift, and ended in the Meditation Realm, where Jace tried to reach back in time and undo the Phyrexian invasion. He failed and seemed to die. Nicol Bolas, imprisoned there, got his name back and escaped into the Multiverse.
Jace was not dead. Remade as the Meditation Realm's custodian, he began building the Echoverse, a copy of the Multiverse with the suffering taken out. Meanwhile Tezzeret hunted a relic called the Endstone at the edge of the Multiverse, Oko pulled four Strixhaven students onto Lorwyn, and Liliana was kidnapped by her own Echoverse double. In Reality Fracture, released in October 2026, Jace's Echoverse threatens to overwrite the real Multiverse, and a band of heroes has to stop a friend who only wanted the pain to end. How that ends is the final Saga of our series.
Cards from this era: Loot, the Key to Everything $0.38 · Valgavoth, Terror Eater $24.12 · Ugin, Eye of the Storms $42.87 · The Theorist, Jace Beleren $41.28
The series
The Story of Magic retells all of this in 37 Sagas across six Eras, a new one every week, each with the cards that tell it.
| Era | The story | Sets | Sagas |
|---|---|---|---|
| I | The Brothers' War to the Phyrexian Invasion | Antiquities to Apocalypse (1994–2001) | 6 |
| II | Dominaria after the war; Mirrodin, Kamigawa, Ravnica; the Mending | Odyssey to Future Sight (2001–2007) | 6 |
| III | New planeswalkers, old evils | Lorwyn to Avacyn Restored (2007–2012) | 5 |
| IV | Nicol Bolas and the Gatewatch | Return to Ravnica to War of the Spark (2012–2019) | 8 |
| V | Phyrexia returns | Throne of Eldraine to March of the Machine (2019–2023) | 6 |
| VI | The Omenpath era | Wilds of Eldraine to Reality Fracture (2023–2026) | 6 |
Start with Saga 1: The Brothers' War.
Retold in our own words from Wizards of the Coast's published story: the novels, Magic Story and the cards. Prices are 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.