The Fading Aurora: Recent Activity
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| Mechanics | Skeleton |
Recent updates to The Fading Aurora: (Generated at 2025-12-14 02:33:40)
| The Fading Aurora: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Mechanics | Skeleton |
Recent updates to The Fading Aurora: (Generated at 2025-12-14 02:33:40)
Tweaking the abilities now...
Also worth noting that Planar Anchor exists as an actual card in the set, so it’s possible to get Venser into play and use his +1 without first using the -2.
Maybe the +1 needs to make the Anchor and the -2 becomes a +2 with a lightweight ability.
General backstory for Venser (and mind you, I’m no writer, and it involves some serious speculation/pre-retconning):
Venser died in New Phyrexia when he contracted phyresis and gave his spark over to Karn in an effort to stop the Phyrexian corruption of the golem. This means that going into Dominaria, Venser doesn’t exist, but his spark (analogous to his “soul”?) does.
Now we go speculative.
At some point after returning to Dominaria, Karn regenerates/reignites a spark of his own, and the spark provided by Venser is forced out of its occupation. Sparks, we learn, if displaced, don’t necessarily need a body or host to survive. The displaced spark drifts through the Blind Eternities and numerous planes without much control over itself for a while. It recalls its former selves, but is unable to act on its own.
It drifts into Kaladesh, where it unexpectedly attaches to an artificed construct; after having been embedded within a golem, it is drawn into a mechanical construct, though he struggles to maintain his adhesion to it. He manages just enough will over the machine to build a Tony Stark-style Planar Anchor (we know from Time Spiral that back in Urborg he was an inventor) that keeps him held into it, but it requires constant focus and maintenance for him to keep himself in a corporeal form.
Having an artificial body now, Venser goes off looking for a way to permanently bond his spark and his constructed/simulacrum body into something more whole. He learns of the rejoining of Alara, and goes there to study the metaphysics. He theorizes that being present when similar forces rejoin a world might make his bond to the Anchor permanent and whole.
Lorwyn/Shadowmoor is his best shot. It’s been a few centuries since the last Aurora, and even with the the two planes joined into one, things are breaking down and it’s becoming evident that the halves were never truly made one, but instead were just interwoven in a way that gave both sides “natural” day and night cycles. Entropy is setting in, and the paper-thin line between the sub-planes is dissolving.
Venser sees this as his chance. He doesn’t really care what the outcome for Lorwyn/Shadowmoor is, so long as punching a whole between the two creates a planar singularity that might finally make him whole again.
I’m absolutely with you when you point out that the +1 isn’t right; I needed something short as a placeholder. The “Ultimate” is a souped-up reflection of his original abilities, and it messes with the Light/Dark Aspects of the blending plane(s). Still, open for redesign.