MTG Salvation

Lore:Balefire, Master of Mutants was once a mage of average power and above-average cleverness on a strange plane where powerful magic is commonplace and wizards compete in games where they design new spells or creatures for amusement. One day, his latent planeswalker spark flared up, causing him to transport against his will to the distant plane of Ravnica, where his spark became dormant again. Finding himself deep in the undercity, he assumed a low profile and skulked in the shadows, using the more subtle and clever of his magics to learn the basics of the guilds and to infiltrate the secret Dimir, eventually assuming the identity of a masked assassin known only as "The Enigma" and developing the art of producing an illusionary duplicant of himself, a Secret-Veiled Figure, to assassinate foes at a distance.

Eventually he learned of a Golgari Death-Shaman who could revive both dead bodies and dead memories. Hoping this man might hold the key to helping him regain the ability to walk the planes and return home, Balefire consulted the witch-doctor. The old elf was unable to re-awaken the planeswalker's dormant spark, but he did have a vision that Balefire would find his path home through the Simic.

Balefire had to make many complicated arrangements and go through many adventures, but years later he was free of the Dimir and a rising star in the Simic, helping to refine many of the best krasis designs. It was in his sixth year of study that the ports opened and the Phyrexians attacked. Two years and many horrible stories later, Balefire's spark flared back to full life as the last of the Simic rallied against Glissa's hoard. Unable to stop the carnage, he saved all that he could, a few dozen Simic and a handful of renegade survivors of other guilds, and planeswalked away to Dominaria.

Wasting no time, he set the Simic to work creating an army out of everything they could get their hands on, creating default krasis patterns to help them. He then left the Ravnican survivors to seek out allies on Dominaria, leading to two more years full of adventures. Returning to the Simic encampment two years later with a small band of brave and diverse adventurers, he found that his pupil Zygos had managed to create a sizable and powerful kingdom comprised of a few hundred wizards and tens of thousands of mind-linked servitor mutants. The reunion seemed quite pleasant at first, with Balefire proud of his student if slightly disturbed by the alienness of the kingdom he created, and Zygos seemingly quite eager to hear and participate in plans to fight the Phyrexians.

That night Balefire consulted Zygos in the library tower, planning to discuss battle plans, and when a few strange quirks in Zygos' disposition caused the planeswalker to become suspicious he told Zygos to give him a sample of his blood for testing, since he was afraid he had been compromised. Zygos merely smirked and raised his hand to unleash a spell, but Balefire was quicker and threw a bolt of paralyzing force at his pupil. When the bolt contacted Zygos, it triggered a spell he had woven into his flesh, causing him to grow into a huge flying monster and the spell to roll off his hide. He batted Balefire into a wall, then flew out a window. Balefire ran to the window and jumped from it as he unleashed a spell upon himself to transform into a guardian default, a huge crocoscorpian with a web-producing tail. Shooting a stream of webbing at Zygos, he caught his pupil and dragged him from the sky, slamming the mage into the ground just as Zygos was reverting to human form but before Balefire did.

Looking over the broken body of his pupil, Balefire reverted to human form, his brow furrowed as he wondered just how bad the situation was. He remembered just how many mutant creatures were in this city, and that all of them were ultimately mentally linked to Zygos, and he looked back to the keep in horror as he realized just how outnumbered his allies were. He started to rush to help them when he heard a gurgling laughter from what should have been Zygos corpse, and looked back to see his pupil's body stitch together, black oil reaching out from his wounds to pull his flesh back into a single solid piece. "I... killed... them... the second you knew." Zygos said as he finished pulling together. "And this is the part where you run." Although he raged and grieved at the same time, Balefire was not foolish enough to contradict Zygos, and he planeswalked away, reaching farther through the darkness between planes than he ever dared before, past things with maddening forms and profane presences, and he found a familiar plane. He was home.

He wasted no time, and gathered together all of his old friends in the greatest game yet. Reassuming his Dimir diguise, the Enigma hosted a contest to gather all of the best and brightest. The prize would be all of the knowledge he had collected throughout his travels, as well as transportation to any plane the winner wanted to visit after gaining this knowledge. The community of wizards rose to the occasion, and through many difficult trials they were down to the last two...

And this is where our next story begins, before it is revealed that Zygos is a planeswalker and has infiltrated the game, and now stands poised to win it.