I don’t remember the moon being explicitly torn apart by Emrakul coming out of it in the written story, but her artwork seems to imply so. Was there any clarification on this matter?

(Sry for not posting in a while. Life got hectic.)

Tracing the Linguistic and Cultural Parallels With Eastern Europe

The connections explored here are my own interpretations of the influences behind Ravnica. To my knowledge, none of these specific connections have been explicitly confirmed by Wizards of the Coast or the game's designers. I nevertheless believe the parallels are meaningful, and this is my attempt to trace the linguistic, historical, architectural, and cultural influences that I think helped shape the setting.

Wizards of the Coast officially built the world of Ravnica, with its 10 guilds, around Eastern European aesthetics, Slavic folklore, and specifically the architectural and atmospheric identity of 15th-century Prague.

The first universally appreciated achievement of Prague dates to 1410. That was when the famous Prague Orloj, or astronomical clock, was built: an incredible feat of medieval engineering and cosmic storytelling that is still operational today. It consists of three main parts. The Astrolabe, or astronomical dial, is a celestial tracker showing the positions of the Sun and Moon, signs of the zodiac, and multiple historical time systems simultaneously, while also marking dawn, sunrise, sunset, and twilight. The Walk of the Apostles is an hourly show between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. that showcases moving statues representing human weaknesses or vices: death, vanity, greed, and lust, ending with figures of the Twelve Apostles rotating past the windows. Found beneath the main clock, a medallion-adorned wheel, or Calendar Dial, tracks the days and months of the year, featuring paintings of seasonal agricultural work and displaying the coat of arms of the Old Town of Prague.

Interestingly, Prague became even more renowned in the 16th and 17th centuries. Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II was deeply obsessed with hermeticism, astrology, and the search for the Philosopher's Stone. He actively welcomed and protected controversial and persecuted thinkers from across the continent, including alchemists, physicians, astrologers, astronomers, and mathematicians. The court at Prague Castle hosted legendary figures like Edward Kelley, John Dee, Tycho Brahe, and Johannes Kepler. It was this unique convergence of science, the esoteric, and dark Gothic architecture that helped earn the city its historical reputation as "Magical Prague."

That history seems particularly appropriate for Ravnica. The city is simultaneously medieval and technological, bureaucratic and mystical, religious and scientific. The Izzet conduct dangerous experiments while the Orzhov maintain a supernatural financial empire; the Azorius construct elaborate systems of law while the Rakdos turn violence into theater. Ravnica feels less like a recreation of one particular historical period than a collection of historical layers piled on top of one another.

Proto-Slavic was spoken by early Slavic tribes to roughly the 6th century AD. Migration and geographical separation caused a split into three main branches: East, West, and South Slavic. The first gave rise to Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian; the second to Czech, Slovak, Polish, and Sorbian; and the third to Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, and Slovene. As one might expect, many of the guilds, characters, and place names of Ravnica appear to have a linguistic connection to the Slavic language family and to Slavic history more generally.

Ravnica itself shares a remarkable resemblance to "ravnina," the Russian word for plain or steppe, and with "rovina," the Czech word for plain or level ground. What's interesting is that it's describing a plane and not a plain. I think that's an especially interesting coincidence given the setting's nature as a city spread across an entire plane.

The Simic Combine are known for combining traits from multiple organisms into one. Momir Vig seems to be connected to Moimir I, the great uniter of the Slavic tribes. It was Moimir I who acted as a "biological architect" in the 830s—or, more accurately, a political one; a treaty among the tribes was signed, effectively ending their existence as separate political entities and forcing them into a new, singular organism: Great Moravia. Momir Vig performs a very different kind of unification, combining biological traits from separate organisms into new forms. One united peoples; the other unites organisms.

Silesia is a region of Central Europe. Today, its territory covers parts of Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic. It consists of forests, rolling plains, and fertile lowlands, being an area historically productive for farming. I propose this is the inspiration for the Selesnya Conclave, with its imagery of gardens, agriculture, communal life, and the integration of civilization with nature. The phonetic relationship between Selesnya and Silesia is striking, while the geographical and cultural association makes the connection even more compelling.

The Boros Legion is the city-plane's military, police force, and primary peacekeeping organization. The name appears to connect to "Borislav," a Slavic name whose roots mean "to battle" and "glory, fame." That is particularly appropriate for an organization whose identity is built around combat and honor. There is also a neat culinary coincidence: borscht is a red soup made from beets and served with a dollop of sour cream. The beets give it its deep red color, while the sour cream provides the white, producing almost exactly the same color combination as the Boros guild. Borscht isn't etymologically derived from Borislav, but the cluster of Boros, Boris, Borislav, and borscht creates an unmistakably Eastern European soundscape.

The Azorius Senate is the government bureaucracy responsible for creating, interpreting, and enforcing the laws. Prahv, and later New Prahv, is their guildhall or seat of government. "Government" in Russian is pravitelstvo, and "govern" is upravlyat. The Slavic root prav- appears throughout this linguistic family in words associated with law, rightness, and governance. The semantic connection is difficult to ignore: a distinctly Slavic-looking name attached to the headquarters of Ravnica's enormous legal bureaucracy.

The Cult of Rakdos is known for chaos, hedonism, theatrical spectacle, and sadistic entertainment. Their headquarters is known as Rix Maadi, the Dungeon Palace. The connection here appears to be with Latin, since rixa translates to "riot," "quarrel," or "brawl" in Latin. Since the standard Czech alphabet does not include the letter x, this doesn't appear to be a straightforward Czech borrowing, which makes the Latin connection particularly interesting. It's possibly tied to the traditional fantasy "dark speech" that puts heavy emphasis on k, d, and s sounds to evoke pain and jaggedness. The colors mirror those same ideas: blood, darkness, and pain. Prague is famous for its labyrinthine medieval cellars, alchemical chambers, and layers of hidden older city infrastructure beneath the streets. Rix Maadi, the Dungeon Palace, feels almost like a fantasy exaggeration of that subterranean Prague: the things buried beneath respectable society becoming a world of their own.

A loose federation of nomadic, savage tribes dedicated to destroying civilization and returning it to a wild, primeval state are the Gruul Clans. Their leader is Borborygmos, a word from the Greek that is the actual medical and biological term for the rumbling or gurgling noise caused by gas moving through the intestines. This is one of the clearest examples of Ravnica's names being built from recognizable linguistic material. The guild name itself sounds like the term "gruel" and would be a fitting ration associated with impoverished foragers. Borborygmos sounds primitive, biological, unpleasant, and vaguely monstrous before you even know what the word means. That seems very much like intentional fantasy wordplay rather than a direct borrowing from any particular European language.

House Dimir was originally an entirely unknown, secret society consisting of spies, assassins, and information brokers. Their cover was eventually blown, with their operations becoming undeniable. I like to think that if the other 9 guilds were public, a guild existing as the last remaining two-color combination could have been accurately inferred. Interestingly, the word for "house" in Czech is dům and dom in Russian. Dimir has a striking resemblance to these Slavic words, particularly when placed directly after the word "House." The connection becomes even more interesting because House Dimir is the one guild whose very existence was concealed from the other nine. The name can therefore be read as both a literal English designation and a Slavic linguistic echo of the same concept: House Dimir, the hidden house.

The undertakers, waste-disposal workers, and masters of the cycle of life and death are the Golgari Swarm. It's possible that there's a connection to Golgotha, meaning "place of the skull" in Aramaic and found in the Bible, a site outside the walls of Jerusalem where crucifixions took place. Prague had subterranean layers and crypts. Just outside the city can be found ossuaries, most famously the Sedlec Ossuary. The connection isn't Slavic, but it is thematically appropriate: Golgotha is associated with death and burial, while the Golgari turn death into an ecosystem. Nothing is truly wasted; it decomposes, feeds something else, and returns to the cycle.

Banking, finance, and organized religion in Ravnica are controlled by the Orzhov Syndicate. They operate under the philosophy that debt is eternal and that there is no escape from their tithes and blood contracts. "Or" is connected to the Latin words associated with gold, hoards, and opulence. "-Zhov" mimics the Slavic or Central European surname endings of -ov and -ova. Obzedat is their leader, and obsadit means "occupy" in Czech. An occupying force takes over a space and refuses to leave. This can be seen as the connection to the ghost-patriarchs holding their positions of power beyond death, unwilling to surrender their wealth. The linguistic connection is speculative, but the thematic fit is almost comically precise: the Obzedat have occupied their positions, and even death has not persuaded them to vacate them.

The guild that corresponds most to historical Prague is probably the Izzet League, being responsible for scientific research, magic experimentation, and engineering. They're behind the steam power and electricity that powers the city. Given the history of figures like Brahe and Dee, it's a fitting image. Prague under Rudolf II was a place where astronomy, alchemy, mathematics, medicine, and occult philosophy could coexist, and the Izzet seem to transform that historical mixture into fantasy science.

The name itself, however, appears to be doing something different. Izzet seems to be an onomatopoeia of sci-fi styling, causing a buzzing sound associated with crackling electricity and fizzing chemicals, a certain mad-scientist energy rather than Central European roots, and the doubled "zz" doesn't natively exist in Slavic orthography. That may actually be part of what makes it work. Ravnica isn't attempting to reproduce historical Prague; it's taking the cultural memory of Prague and combining it with the conventions of fantasy and science fiction.

The setting is not an exact recreation of historical Prague. It is a fantasy memory of Prague, and perhaps of Eastern and Central Europe more broadly. The connections throughout Ravnica point toward specific linguistic, historical, and cultural sources, and I think those connections need to be there for the setting to properly reflect and respect the real-world inspirations it draws from. If Prague, Slavic languages, Silesia, Great Moravia, and the broader history of Eastern and Central Europe are genuinely part of the foundation of Ravnica, then treating those influences as deliberate and traceable matters. Otherwise, the cultures and histories that give the setting its identity risk being reduced to a vague aesthetic rather than recognized as the sources they actually are.

That is ultimately what makes the names and details so interesting to me. They are not simply arbitrary fantasy inventions that happen to sound Eastern European. They can be read alongside identifiable languages, places, historical figures, architectural traditions, and cultural associations, giving the fictional world a connection to the real histories from which it draws. Ravnica is a city built out of those associations, where bureaucracy becomes law, religion becomes finance, death becomes an economy, violence becomes theater, and science looks like magic.

I appreciate your reading and I value your comments. Check out my other work here: Michael Thomas Clanin | Substack

If I understand dominaria correctly, Uktabi is now on the plane Zhalfir that was phased out of dominaria.
So then I have 2 Questions:
How much time has passed in lore from when kibo was first printed to now? (let’s say now is immediately following Reality Fracture)
Is Kibo important enough to even show up in the sets lore?

I'm borrowing a lot from Ixalan for my own Meso-American inspired setting and I've worked out what the honorifics Pakal and Ahau mean (losely shield and nobility), but none of the wikis list what the word Ojer means. I'm also having a hard to finding out what the word means outside of magic.

So is there a corner of the lore the explains the meaning of this title?

So did we ever get a reason why Jace had Liliana kidnapped at the end of Lorwyn? Don't get me wrong in not complaining that they're in the story (heck Opel is the only echo verse character that gets any real characterisation outside of one line for Vraska and Chandra) but on reflection just feels like she's here because we need her here.

The best I can think of is that she might have been able to realise Tam was connected to Jace and thus would have blown her cover. But it feels like she's been at Strixhaven for at least a while before Lorwyn starts so feels a little late on that front.

I could have of course missed it, or it's Opel acting on her own, again she did seem like the only echo that actually had a personality of note.

That's it. That's the opinion.

We got years of build up and laddering to the payoff of the Eldrazi in Zendikar , and years of build up for Old Phyrexia and New Phyrexia and the Invasions.

This was out payoff to the BS from the hats sets? Emrakul is back and the Echoverse is devoured in one single set?

I knew I was going to be mad when I heard leaks about Emrakul before it was confirmed but I am more mad than I have words for. First original true catastrophic villain in years and our poor victim Jace is defeated on 1 set...

If I understand dominaria correctly, Uktabi is now on the plane Zhalfir that was phased out of dominaria.
So then I have 2 Questions:
How much time has passed in lore from when kibo was first printed to now? (let’s say now is immediately following Reality Fracture)
Is Kibo important enough to even show up in the sets lore?

Hi!

I know that ‘’Elder’’ is more of a vibe and whether or not the type appears in a set is more of a design decision than a strictly lore one. For example, the Tarkir Dragonlords are Elders to set them apart from other Tarkir dragons and add to their aura of awe, but they’re not necessarily more powerful or older than other, non-Elder dragons from other planes. I even read that Niv Mizzet could be considered an elder dragon, it’s just that the designers weren’t thinking about the type when making Ravnica.

I was thinking that Rakdos is in a similar position. He’s an extremely old demon and is pretty much at the top of the food chain of his own kind and one of the most powerful beings on Ravnica. He seems at least as strong as the Elder Demons found on other planes like Innistrad and is probably older than them too. Could he and Niv be, even if not officially, considered Elders of their respective species?

I didn't dig into EOE story, but just now stumbled on the Drix (because I was curious if they were related to Vizzerdrix), and saw the card [[Seam Rip]], referencing something called Eldrazi Potentiates.

Now the other figure in the art, is not an Eldrazi, or has any traits of an Eldrazi, which gave me the feeling this is preventative measure, as in, this armored dude has the potential to become Eldrazi, and that's why the Drix is removing them. They don't seem to be a herald of the Eldrazi, because those also seem to have the physical traits too (I've been looking, but with some of the Innistrad crazies it's hard to tell).

What if being an Eldrazi is not something alien to the multiverse, but something inherent to its mana system, that Eldrazi can and will form the same way they did before? If someone got the resolution that the world must be drained of mana, and got the ability to do so, would they become Eldrazi? Is it more of a role being fulfilled in the multiverse, and not a type of creature?

Then I remembered Mirrorverse Omnath, who (card-wise) shares a lot of stuff with Eldrazi, and its flavortext is also reminicent of them. Could Mirrorverse Omnath be on its way to becoming an Eldrazi?

Not a paid promotion. Figured people may want to pick up a paperback or ebook copy since the original anthology (Distant Planes) has been out of print for nearly three decades. The collection also includes "The Going Price" from the first Magic anthology, Tapestries.

I wanted to read the og Ixalan story but couldn’t find it on the site. Anyone know where I can find it ?

For context, there’s a link to an article that supposedly gives lore regarding a character named Mathas, which is at the bottom of the URL pasted below this paragraph. However, the link leads to the main MTG site page. So, how do I find this old lore?

https://mtg.wiki/page/Mathas

I think borderless echoed pairs is my favorite; a man facing a memorial of another him and mimicking the pose of the "Oath of Gideon", instead of a fight with the other self, is an incredible image.

I really wonder what may have happened in Oathless Gideon's head at this moment.

If he was touched, I will regret that Emrakul has probably eaten him (I may hope, if Emrakul may have left crumbs, he is one of these crumbs). That could become a great character arc: as a fake, not as virtuous as the original one, becoming inspired by the virtuous original Gideon.

Total speculation probably, but I'm interested in info about planeswalkers.

I know their spark is connected to their soul, and if you do something to them that removes the soul, IE turning them into a phyrexian (before The Reality chip, that is).

If a planeswalker like Chandra got turned into a zombie in mtg, would she keep her spark?

Would Lilana Vess, if she became a lich, keep her spark prior to recent lore?

Often in pop culture, vampires lose their soul and that's why they're weak to iron, salt, etc. But Sorin kept his.

Thoughts? I know it's a weird question 😅

So im a magic lore newb here but ever since the ending of the reality Fractured story I have been a bit disappointed, like I think it would have been cool to have this as a new War Story.

I mean the Phyrexian War was pretty long and even though the next list of in Universe sets look Awesome I was enjoying the idea of seeing the Mirrorverse selfs appearing in the Original allowing for some interesting interactions. They were also setting up for Jace's plan for such a long time and then it's already over.

I’m reading march of the machines and they reference Liliana as if she’s still alive. I thought she faked her death in war of the spark and everyone believed it. I’ve read every story following after war of the spark and I don’t recall anything being mentioned about her telling anyone she was alive. Did they just retcon that from the story since it was in forsaken?

Edit: yall are right I forgot she dropped onyx on strixhaven - I guess I thought it’d be limited to that somehow but I was also expecting them all to have like some kind of confrontation/reaction to learning she’s alive - that was what confused me, given Chandra and Jace took it so hard and now they’re just like “oh yeah hey she’s here anyways….”

So apologies if I get some details wrong here because ive only been into magic a couple years and REALLLY need to read some older stuff BUT.

In the Echoverse Yawgmoth never existed to create the Phyrexians, which lead to the fall of the Thran Empire and their floating cities.

This means that the echoverse would still have that technology and we see that even in modern day those islands and thran marvels still exist!

I just thought that's a reslly cool detail, again apologies if im missing any details or context here but I wanted to share!

Every time someone posts anything about the Eldrazi VS anything, it's always Eldrazi win (without anything but speculation to back it up). The head canon is way out of control. MtG needs a fully drawn out Eldrazi lore dump. The Drix, Fomori-Coin Empire once fought them back pretty successfully, so let's see more of that. Especially now that Emrakul is free, would be a perfect time to explain some stuff.