This is another one of those threads that I've been wanting to start for a while, and I thought I'd better get it out there while I still have the time and still care about Magic Dominaria enough to put in the energy.

So, I've been wondering about the story of those paladins from 7th Edition and how they fit into the bigger picture. 7th Edition tried this weird thing where all the cards had new artwork and there were hints at an overarching story that revolved around the conflict between the Northern Paladin and the Southern Paladin on one side and the Western Paladin and Eastern Paladin on the other. What's interesting and potentially tricky about the whole situation is that the flavourtext in the set started the trend of mentioning Oneah, the nation (and island of the same name) on Dominaria that was described in the Harper Prism novel Ashes of the Sun [insert obligatory comment about how much I love that book]. This along with the fairly consistent look of the art direction for most of the Soldier cards in the set seems to strongly suggest that the conflict between the paladins took place in or around Oneah, even though the flavourtext on Merfolk of the Pearl Trident seems to be the only one that directly references both (“The paladins would be wise not to forget about the Pearl Trident. The merfolk warriors have turned the tide of more than one human war … and I have no doubt they shall do so again.” —Onean scholar). There's also the text on Staunch Defenders that quotes the Southern Paladin, and the soldiers in the artwork are wearing the same kind of armour and uniform as, say, Crossbow Infantry, which has flavourtext referencing Oneah (only added in 8th Edition, though), or Shield Wall (which is actually from 7th Edition).

Leaving the setting aside for a moment, what do we actually know about those paladins? Well, not much. The best piece of info I could find is from an old Ask Wizards article. If anyone knows other sources or perhaps even has a 7th Edition deck insert that gives us more information, that would be super appreciated. Anyway, here's what the source says:

July 10

Q: "What is up with the Northern Paladin's left eye? It seems that several cards in Seventh Edition picturing the Northern Paladin, such as Glorious Anthem, Final Fortune, and Reprisal, all show the left eye as simply white. What happened to him? Or is this just a mistake?"

A: From Brandon Bozzi, creative administrator:
"Actually, all four of the paladins have a missing eye. In the Seventh Edition backstory, when someone is 'confirmed' as a paladin he trades one of his eyes for a magical gemstone which increases his spell casting ability. Take a look at Infernal Contract, Grapeshot Catapult, and Oppression for other examples of the replaced eye."

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2002-07-01


You know those cases when unrelated pieces of old lore come together with other unrelated circumstances and everything ends up fitting way better than anyone could have planned for? Well, look no further than the updated creature types of Western Paladin and Eastern Paladin, which would be Phyrexian Zombie Knight (formerly just Zombie Knight). Why do I think this does anything for the 7th Edition story? It's because the lore about the paladins' eye implants reminds me of the Eye of Yawgmoth the Phyrexians put inside of Belbe, Corrupted Observer. Yeah, it wasn't literally in her eye, but it was a device that allowed Yawgmoth to directly observe her at all times. Funnily enough, Belbe's (updated) typeline also says Phyrexian Zombie Elf. I thought the Zombie type was super weird on Belbe when the card came out, even considering her origin story, but apparently WotC is also using the type for the kind of not-really-undead Phyrexian creation that Belbe is. This, in turn, would help to explain why the black paladins from 7th Edition look like regular living people (apart from the eye implants) and not like the undead monstrosities they were printed as in Urza's Saga. They probably started out as normal dudes that were then killed, dissected and put back together again as Phyrexian cyborgs. It helps that Phyrexian Hulk was also reprinted in 7th Edition and even received new flavourtext, which is an "Onean children’s rhyme" apparently. The possibility of a Phyrexian presence in Oneah was already baked into the story of 7th Edition right from the start!

I stated above that the Oneah connection in the flavourtext of 7th Edition was "potentially tricky", and here is why. Bruce Holland Rogers, the author of 'Heart of Shanodin' in the Tapestries anthology, must have been as in love with Ashes of the Sun as I am, because the story references much of the lore from that book in great detail while adding some of its own. We learn that Khairt, the protagonist of 'Heart of Shanodin', survived the fall of Oneah in the Goblin War and used to be a wrestler in the same wrestling school as Ayesh, the protagonist of Ashes of the Sun. (And let me get this awesome detail out there, even though it's not relevant to the overall thread: Khairt is actually mentioned by name in Ashes of the Sun as one of the other wrestlers Ayesh used to know at least twice, as far as I can tell. He even uses at least one of the same Onean idioms - "Gods and gashes" - in his speech as Ayesh! Just how cool is that level of detail!? A casual reader would probably never pick that up, but it's there!).
To get to the heart of the issue, Khairt tells his companion this: "That is why I wandered far until I found a master who would teach me the art of broadsword. Edged weapons were forbidden in Oneah. Sin resides in steel" (Tapestries, p. 168, emphasis mine). Me being the nerd I am, I went through Ashes of the Sun cover to cover to see whether this is explicitly contradicted or confirmed there (Well, technically I went through AotS first looking for that reference about edged weapons, only to realise it was in that other story all along. D'oh!). I'm pretty confident in saying that it doesn't clearly come up either way in the novel, so there is no contradiction and the info in Tapestries fits the exisiting canon. The only part of AotS that comes close to touching on the subject is this little bit about the Onean wrestlers specifically: "For just a moment they [the goblins] froze at the sight of the wrestlers, men and women too pure to fight with weapons [...]" (Ashes of the Sun, p. 83). This doesn't necessarily tell us much about Oneah as a whole or all kinds of weapons in general, but it certainly fits the bigger picture.

Okay, so if edged/bladed weapons were forbidden in Oneah, that might explain why it was completely destroyed by goblins, but it's also at odds with the knights and soldiers depicted in the art of several 7th Edition cards, at least if we assume those are supposed to be Onean. My suggested solution? Well, Khairt refers to the status quo in Oneah during the time of its fall, at the very end of the civilisation about 40 years before the Phyrexian Invasion. But we know that Oneah was old, presumably older than Benalia (which was founded at least 1,000 years ago) since one of Torsten Von Ursus's seven lieutnants was in fact from Oneah. (Small caveat: I haven't been able to get my hands on Sisay's Quest yet, in which the Weatherlight visits the ruins of Oneah, so I have no idea whether there are any super specific details regarding the matter in that source). Clearly something must have changed between the story of the paladins and the Goblin War that ended Oneah. My theory is that it was the war between the paladins itself that led to bladed weapons being outlawed. In fact, I think the conflict was probably a civil war between the seven cities of Oneah that was caused by Phyrexian agents in human disguise pulling the strings. This would explain the somewhat arbitrary division between south and north VS east and west, especially as there isn't anything on the map that this could refer to other than citites. In fact, the 7th Edition flavourtext on Wall of Bone mentions "the city of the Eastern Paladin". Even the existence of a paladin tradition that opposes black mana in the north of Oneah would make sense since noth of Oneah beyond the Red Mountains lies the kingdom of Amjad, which is known for its evil king, its blighted bogs and its Black Knights (which Khairt has joined after the fall of Oneah). The anti-red order in the southern parts of Oneah was probably concerned with fighting off goblins and the like, so even that fits. An Onean civil war and the ensuing ban on edged weapons to prevent this from ever happening again might explain why the ban is justified with "Sin resides in steel" by Khairt, and maybe this development was what gave rise to the Onean wrestling tradition in the first place. Heck, this would actully mirror the history of the Garan elves from The Prodigal Sorcerer, which is kinda cool IMO.

It's not quite clear from the cards whether there were several paladins of each type or only one. The art and flavourtext make it look like it's only one of each, but the cards themselves aren't legendary. Maybe there was an entire order or faction of paladins for each cardinal direction, each of them with a single leader who was referred to as THE Southern/Northern/Western/Eastern Paladin. As I outlined with the Southern and Northern Paladin(s), though, I think they each must have had a specific kind of enemy to defend Oneah from (goblins and the kingdom of Amjad), so it makes sense for them to be entire factions and not just a single individual each. The black orders in the east and west could have been founded specifically to stir up a civil war.

TL;DR and Conclusion

So, to sum it all up again, my theory for the possible reconstruction of the story is something like this:

- At some point in Oneah's history, at least two orders of white-aligned paladins with magical eye-implants existed
- The Phyrexians infiltrated Oneah by turning at least two of its paladins into brainwashed cyborgs with their own version of the eye-implants that probably functioned like Belbe's Eye of Yawgmoth
- A civil war broke out between the Onean cities controlled by or allied with the black paladins against their white counterparts
- The civil war ended, edged weapons were forbidden in Oneah to prevent another civil war from happening again
- The Phyrexians may or may not have continued to pull the strings behind the scenes, perhaps intentionally banning edged weapons and disbanding the paladins to make Oneah more vulnerable to external threats
- About 40 years before the Phyrexian Invasion, Oneah is destroyed by hordes of goblins from the surrounding Red Mountains

Fascinating. Nice to know there was something up with those guys.

The twenty year old Ask Wizards article is a good find! I agree on Ashes of the Sun; definitely one of the best Magic novels.

Another wrinkle is that at least a couple of sources give Parma as the home of the Northern Paladins.

Hey Ethan, good to see you!

I daresay it got even better post-Dominaria, considering how thoroughly it explores the history theme that Dominaria doubled down on.

Yep, one of those Northern Paladins from Parma even showed up as a character in the Greensleeves trilogy.

There's even another wrinkle when you look at the Weatherlight printing of Southern Paladin. Firstly, that set gives us a tour of Dominaria at the start of the Weatherlight saga, a point on the timeline when Oneah was already dead and in ruins. Secondly, the art on Southern Paladin seems to be pointing to Zhalfir rather than Oneah. Not only are there palm trees in the background, the guy also has a triangle tattoo under his eye (or more of a V-shape, technically), which might have something to do with the Triangle of War that's also mentioned in the flavour text of Zhalfirin Knight, and a line drawn through a triangle seems to symbolyse the interruption of war in Peace Talks. The artwork from Mirage and Visions isn't very high res, but Infantry Veteran, Dream Fighter and the guy in Sealed Fate also seem to have a triangle or V-shape in their face, and what we see of the Southern Paladin's armour looks a bit like the one in the artwork of Raging Gorilla.

Long story short, I agree there are Northern and Southern Paladins outside of Oneah, but I don't really see them being involved in the story of 7th Edition. Maybe there even are obscure historical connections between those orders of paladins in different parts of Dominaria, but I think the story itself probably works best if it's more or less limited to Oneah as a setting. That's not even mentioning the fact that the other printings of the white paladins mention the Book of Tal in their respective flavour texts... The only reason I'm drawing a connection between the black paladins in 7th Edition and their original printings in Urza's Saga is because I want to make sense of the creature types. The way I see it, the story works fine (or probably better) if the Northern Paladins from Parma and the Southern Paladins from Jamuraa (or from wherever) have nothing to do with it, but the Eastern and Western Paladins from 7th Edition are stuck with the same weirdly specific type line as their printings in Urza's Saga.

The Phyrexian connection almost certainly wasn't intended when 7th Edition was made, but considering there never was any official info about that story as far as I can tell - except for that Ask Wizards tidbit - why not try and accommodate those Phyrexian Zombie Knights the way they are now? Add that to the parallels with Belbe or the fact that Oneah just happened to be destroyed a few decades before the Phyrexian Invasion, so I'd argue it makes a lot of intuitive sense. Heck, I'm firmly in the camp that believes that Greel, Mind Raker was a Phyrexian creation and that the entire conflict of Prophecy was secretly orchestrated by the Phyrexians to destabilise parts of Dominaria before the Invasion, so even that could be tied together somehow. At least that'd be my two cents on the topic.


So, I take it there are no internal documents about the (intended) story of 7th Edition at WotC that you came across while researching Dominaria? Not that you'd have to share them or anything, but it'd be really interesting to know how much any of this was actually fleshed out internally back in the day.

Oh, and if you ever need inspiriation for a new Saga that deals with Knight tribal or something, the 7th Edition flavour text on Glorious Anthem and Infernal Contract mentions "The Ballad of the Paladins". That sounds like the perfect name for a Saga to me...


On a completely unrelated note, Ethan, could you do me a little favour and look up the rough placement of the major landmarks in Urborg on your reference map for me? Urborg is where the next part of my Dominaria D&D campaign is going to be set, and it would help me a lot if I could at least get the basic geography right without going through half a dozen books... I promise I won't call it a retcon if it's ever contradicted

The Art of Dominaria says that the Stronghold is at the centre of the island, and the Heroes' Memorial is on one of the outer islands (I think I recall that being just south of the main island and on the same spot where Crovax's estate used to be?). You also said in the Magic Story Podcast back in 2018 that Vhelnish is somewhere near the westcoast, perhaps roughly in the northwest? Did I get that right, and are there any other locations or landmarks you'd be willing and able to share (the Yavimaya remnant, Skulltown, Venser's workshop, Crosis's tar pit, what have you)? At least a confirmation for Vhelnish, the Stronghold and the Heroes' Memorial would be really appreciated, the rest is mostly just gravy

I don't think I've ever seen any material about 7th edition at Wizards. However, poking around the art descriptions for the 7ed Paladins reveals that a style guide was made! I wonder if it's still extant!

I crammed most of the points of interest into the southern part of Urborg. You can see the mountain where the Stronghold is on the map. I don't remember all of my reasoning after so many years, but I put the Outer Isle of Urborg (with the Martyrs' Tomb) south of the east cost; I wanted it to be pretty close to Bogardan since the Weatherlight crashed nearby, and Jhoira brought the ship to Bogardan for repairs, IIRC. I put Vhelnish on the west coast, west-northwest of the Stronghold. I put Crosis's Catacombs / Tarpit east of the Stronghold, and the Yavimayan fragment south of the Stronghold. I also put Skulltown to the south, pretty arbitrarily.

Awesome, thanks!


Poking around in obscure old material is fun! But yeah, I thought there must have been a style guide, there's a lot of recurring stuff in the art of the set that's way too consistent for it to be coincidence. And I guess the style guide is where the info about the eye implants might be from, even if there was no other material on the lore.

Looking at the art some more, I wonder whether the "generic" elves depicted in the set (who also have a pretty consistent look overall) could be Savaen Elves, simply because they are shown interacting with the paladins and the Savaen Forest is located on the island of Oneah. I looked through 'What Leaf Learned of Goblins' in Distant Planes, which features Savaen Elves and their home shortly after the fall of Oneah, to see whether there's anything precluding that possibility. One odd wrinkle in particular stood out to me. Leaf, the protagonist of the story, is "more than a hundred winters" old, and the story heavily implies multiple times that that's considered relatively old even by the standards of the Savaen Elves. The 7th Edition flavour text of Dregs of Sorrow reads, however: “We live for a thousand years. The death of even one brings untold sorrow.” —Elvish elder. The art shows the Eastern Paladin doing his thing and killing some elves. So I guess if we take the flavour text and its reference to the thousand year lifespan of those elves (which is a lot more in line with what we know from other elves on Dominaria) seriously, they either aren't Savaen Elves or we have to assume that something happened to them that drastically reduced their lifespan between the story of the paladins and their later appearance in Distant Planes. The elves in that short story do seem kinda self-conscious about their own mortality, though, and accepting death seems to be an important part of their philosophy. Maybe this could have been shaped by some curse or tragedy in their past. Or maybe the elves we see in 7th Edition were from a different group of elves that lived in Oneah proper, and maybe they all died in that conflict, which is why they aren't mentioned in Ashes of the Sun. The 7th Edition printing of Persecute could easily imply that the Eastern Paladin killed all elves there or drove them into exile (or maybe that's how they ended up in the Savaen Forest in the first place? Hmm...). Of course, there is also the fact that the name mentioned in the flavour text of Savaen Elves seems to be at odds with the naming conventions of the Savaen Elves in Distant Planes, plus the fact that the card itself is from freaking The Dark, so there is already some inherent fuzziness to this whole thing...

It gets even weirder when you try to make sense of the way Lord of Atlantis is treated in 7th Edition, considering there should be multiple lords (but maybe not simultaneously?), and also considering the appearance of that other Lord of Atlantis in the Greensleeves books (Or maybe they are somehow the same guy?)... I'm pretty confident it could all be reconciled and explained somehow, but it's tricky.



All of this really makes you wonder why the folks working on 7th Edition picked Oneah in the first place seemingly at random, only to then present a story and a setting that has no explicit ties to the Oneah we know from the books... Oh, and I just want to remind everyone that the flavour text on Gorehorn Minotaurs is a thing that inexplicably exists Almost certainly was slapped on as an afterthought, but at least the minotaurs in the art look like they probably have four fingers, them fighting with axes fits, and if you are extremely generous, you could interpret the black lines on their horns and on that one minotaur's face as the ritual scarrings that Mirtiin minotaurs tend to have. Their loincloths are vaguely black-red, so maybe they could be from House Flame-in-Void. I guess that random artwork that wasn't made to fit the flavour text could certainly be worse

I vaguely recall somebody on some Vorthos forum bragging about how they slipped a reference from a HarperPrism novel into M12 flavor text without Brady Dommermuth noticing, but I could be misremembering.

You know what, I think that might even ring a bell with me, I think I vaguely recall coming across that as well... I guess whoever is doing Brady's job these days can be glad that *I* don't write flavour text

Seriously, though, I think Core Sets could and should have done more on that front while they were still around. Pete Venters showed everyone how it's done in 5th Edition. Is there a chance of Core Sets ever coming back btw? It's like you guys finally cracked the code on how to put together a Core Set that people love with Core 21 and then immediately stopped making them.

I really hope the situation in Mirtiin is going to be picked up again eventually, Stahaan was exactly the kind of villain I loved to hate...

#FreedomForMirtiin



I also thought about the possible placement of the 7th Edition story on the timeline some more, and I think there's a short window of about two decades that would make the most sense and that would allow for the vast majority of cards in the set to exist simultaneously, especially the more prominent factions.

The flavour text on Merfolk of the Pearl Trident references Oneah and the paladins, and the Lord of Atlantis is either quoted or depicted on several cards in the set and even got a pretty distinct new look, which means it's probably one specific Lord of Atlantis who's calling the shots in Vodalia. I'd say it makes the most sense to assume that he was around at the time the story of the paladins happened, and that this was probably before Empress Galina returned to the timestream in 3307 AR (according to The Art of Dominaria). What's more, Tolaria is mentioned several times in 7th Edition as well, and some of the staffs and clothes of the wizards in the art resemble depictions of Tolarians in Urza's block. There are no explicit interactions between the Tolarians in 7th Edition and the paladins, but the art on Duress shows the Western Paladin next to a guy with a distinctive checkered black-and-white collar thingy that's pretty reminiscent of similar patterns in Tolarian uniforms. I checked the timeline at Multiverse in Review, and it would appear that the original Tolarian Academy was founded in 3285 AR. That would leave us with the abovementioned window, namely between 3285 AR and 3307 AR.

This window would also seem to fit with my interpretation of the black paladins being Phyrexian agents, because it would make it so that 7th Edition happens after the present-day parts of Planeswalker where we've seen Phyrexian Sleeper Agents infiltrating Dominaria. Plus, there would be more than enough time between 7th Edition and the version of Oneah we know from the Harper Prism books for the place to change accordingly. I also noticed that Venerable Monk seems to be pushing around the Eastern Paladin, and I like the idea that the Onean wrestling tradition we learn about in the books might have originated with monks like this one.

I also checked Final Sacrifice for more info on the Lord of Atlantis that Greensleeves meets there (he shows up on p. 206), and it's clear that that version of the Lord of Atlantis was already around (and not a common mortal) during the Brothers' War, so there's no way for the Lord of Atlantis from 7th Edition to somehow become that other guy eventually. Maybe that's for the best, the Lat-Nam parts of the Greensleves trilogy have a bit of an awkward place in the canon as it is and raise a lot of questions, so I guess the less connected they are to anything else, the better.

I came across another art-related wrinkle recently while shuffling my Old Border Cube after a fun night of draft: The Invasion Era soldiers in the art of Putrid Warrior are wearing the same kind of uniform as the folks in 7th Edition, which should be impossible and is probably an error. Maybe I could try to make sense of it somehow, but I refuse I mean, Order // Chaos was printed in the same set and clearly depicts Mercadian soldiers, so I guess some leftover artwork must have been used here and there.