Real life has kept me busy, but I've been thinking a bit more about Svyelun and divinity on Dominaria. I've developed a theory concerning Svyelun's ontological status, which is my fancy philosophy degree way of saying that I've found a possible way of fixing this mess and reconciling all conflicting interpretations of gods on Dominaria.

My idea for how it could all make sense came from the info I compiled in my thread about the cosmology of Hell:



So "the dreamrealms" are a thing that exists, huh? And (presumably) not just in a purely metaphorical way? And apparently they contain weird things like angelic illusions that may even be manifestations of Serra's warrior spirits that somehow ended up there instead of respawning as Serra Angels? Well, what if the dreamrealms are also the metaphysical space in which Svyelun (and possibly other Dominarian gods) exists?

At least that's what I would believe if there was any precedent of a plane having some sort of metaphysical dreamspace that amplifies the beliefs of mortals in their gods and makes them real... Oh, wait. So what if Dominaria (and perhaps all planes) had a mini-version of Nyx that was there all along, except it's more abstract and remote, just like Svyelun and possibly other Dominarian gods that might dwell there are abstract and remote? Nyx is the one feature that sets Theros apart from other planes, but what if it was just like Dominaria's dreamrealms on steroids?

We've seen a space that's very similar to this in the form of Bolas's meditation plane in Legends II, a pocket plane that most characters could only access with their minds and that would reshape itself according to the visitor's thoughts. Add that to other cases in the lore where characters have communicated via dreams, or some of the hints we get in the Onslaught cycle. I can't give you exact page numbers, only chapters, because the Onslaught cycle is from my earlier phase of book collecting and I only have a weird German omnibus edition, but there are some scenes that I wanted to point out:

- Ixidor creates Akroma from his dream (Onslaught, ch. 15)
- We learn that Kuberr had only appeared in dreams initially (which we also see in the short story 'Family Man' in The Secrets of Magic) but that he grew stronger over the centuries and later began to manifest in physical gold coins that the Patriarch keeps in a pocket dimension (Legions, beginning of ch. 7)
- Ixidor tells Kamahl that Lowallyn created Topos "out of despair and dream" and that despair and dream are one and the same (Scourge, ch. 14)

It's not too crazy to assume that those hypothetical dreamrealms could be where Kuberr's spirit (and presumably Lowallyn's too) was preserved after his death. If Serra's warrior spirits can somehow end up in the dreamrealms, why not Numena?

There are also some references in that trilogy that reinforce the idea that there are no true gods on Dominaria, e.g. when the narrator tells us there were no gods looking down on Ixidor (Onslaught, ch. 12) or when Sash tells Waistcoat that he read a book that said there were no true gods on Dominaria, only beings like wizards, planeswalkers, nature spirits etc. that are considered gods by some people (Scourge, ch. 4). Obviously references like these aren't conclusive evidence, and it's pretty hard to prove that something doesn't exist, but they are very much consistent with the fact that gods have never been treated like real beings in all previous lore about Dominaria.

Luckily, there are several ways for something to "exist" or "not exist", and I'd argue that beliefs made manifest in the dreamrealms could be one of those ways. Svyelun might really just owe her "existence" to the Vodalians' belief in her existence. That would make the Svyelunite creation myth false (as it should be), but maybe the part where she shared her teachings with the Vodalians could actually be true if she did so via dreams. I could kinda buy that those weird metaphysical dream shenanigans might make some gods "real" enough for them to exist on a card. Maybe you couldn't even literally summon them as creatures the way the card would suggest, but Magic has printed its fair share of cards for beings that you couldn't possibly "summon" to a duel (unlike, say, Grizzly Bears or a Shivan Dragon). The Eldrazi Titans or the gods of Theros come to mind.


This would give us the following hard distinction between those entities on Dominaria that are true gods and those that are not:

Belief precedes existence for gods like Svyelun (and perhaps others like Ergerborg, Terrent Amese, Torahn, Aerona (the goddess, not the continent) etc.) that only exist in the dreamrealms.

Existence precedes belief for powerful beings that are considered gods but are actually something else, like the Lady of the Mountain (presumably an avatar created by Fiers), Fiers (presumably a dwarven Oldwalker), Serra, Freyalise, Lord Windgrace (Oldwalkers), Maro Sorcerers, Masters of the Hunt, the Lord of Atlantis, Gaea (Dominaria's worldsoul), Karona (an avatar of Dominaria's mana) etc.

Ironically, this would make the true gods less powerful (or at the very least more remote) than the pseudo-gods, but I like the idea. Plus, it would still keep the debate whether the gods "really exist" or not as open-ended as it should be. It wouldn't take anything away from either the believers or the non-believers. One side could point to the metaphysical status of Svyelun and be like "See? Svyelun exists, she dwells in the dreamrealms!" while the other side could be like "Pssh, she's only there because you guys blieved in her really hard, that kind of existence doesn't make her real! Besides, what's the point in believing in gods that don't intervene?".

That's a loophole that I could live with. Not only would it save Dominaria from walking a path it was never meant to walk and potentially ruining its identity in the process, it would also salvage an obscure piece of worldbuilding and use it to tie together several formerly unconnected things into a coherent whole. The War in the Abyss became slightly more relevant when Belzenlok was introduced in Dominaria, so why couldn't the dreamrealms?

I hope someone at WotC is taking notes...

That answer from Lim-Dûl doesn't explain why Baron Sengir is stuck on Ulgrotha.

That's because there are two different kinds of summoning in the lore. The one described by Lim-Dûl summons aether copies of creatures, i.e. not the actual person or creature (which is the one people brought up in an attempt to explain how Svyelun can suddenly show up). The other method actually does summon a real creature from one place (or plane) to another, which is what happened to Baron Sengir and what left him stranded on Ulgrotha. In Sengir-related news, though, his blurb in Commander Legends established the Baron actually made it through the portal in his basement just in time before the Mending and is thus no longer stuck on Ulgrotha. Where he ended up is anyone's guess, though...