Alekzander Tavor joined the Boros Legion with the intent of changing the guild from the inside out. Growing up in poverty provided firsthand experience that turning to the blade and the spell to resolve an injustice incites further violence. Alekzander trained under the minotaur wizards of the Legion and joined the ranks of the Boros guildmages, able to wield red and white mana. While practicing his spellcasting, Alekzander developed an affinity for red, believing that its power and connection to the individual’s emotions provided the individual with a path to rejecting the frigid authoritarianism of white in favor of the self-discipline necessary to successfully utilize red mana.

Alekzander remained with the Boros Legion, though sickened by Aurelia’s use of white’s staunch belief in a form of law that excused the Legion’s brutality. He travelled to the Legion garrisons in the Undercity, Husk, and Utvara, trying to gather support from his former colleagues. Alekzander and his band of Boros raided Izzet factories that manufactured the Boros Legion’s weaponry; unbeknownst to his allies, Alekzander sought information on Zomaj Hauc’s failed attempt at hatching and controlling dragons unhindered by the Rakdos’s cruel theatrics.

Acquiring the details of Hauc’s plans sent Alekzander and his allies to the southernmost pole of Ravnica, where the local Izzet magelords were conducting experiments in snow mana. Their power plants had the resources that Alekzander needed to successfully summon a dragon. Though there were no more eggs among the Izzet factories in the Husk or Utvara, Alekzander did uncover spells for summoning dragons never before seen on Ravnica. The scrolls were among the refuse, having been labeled the ramblings of a Firemind-addled goblin mage desperate to regain its status in the Izzet League. Alekzander worked toward developing an affinity for the snow mana of the southern pole’s mountains while his followers continued to disrupt weapon-distribution to the Boros garrisons that had taken to Aurelia’s militarism.

The minotaur wizards that trained Alekzander tracked him down and arrived in zeppelids loaded with flame-kin, giants, and fleets of skyknights given Simic-engineered biogear to deal with the snowy conditions. Alekzander was captured by the minotaur wizards, his followers arrested and the plans to summon dragons burned.

The flight back to Sunhome brought a sobering realization: Alekzander’s actions had provoked further incursions by Gruul raiding parties, Rakdos revelers, and Golgari shaman seeking to test their teratogens. In turn, more impoverished neighborhoods like his own were overrun by the Undercity guilds and subjected to long periods of fighting. The outcome was always the same: the Undercity guilds were triumphant, the survivors were pressed into the guilds, and the Boros were nowhere to be found. After the disruptions to the weapons flow, they were left vulnerable to the pent-up anger of those they had abused. In attempting to live up to his self-prescribed principles, Alekzander had fed the Boros Legions’ newfound military mania.

At Sunhome, Alekzander’s spark ignited. A large gathering was held, open to the public and all members of the Boros Legion. Alekzander was given no trial, having been deemed incurably insane by a mindmage hired by the Boros in the interest of ensuring a fair trial. One of the minotaur wizards spoke up as the mindmage prepared to lobotomize Alekzander – the minotaur wizard that led the hunt for him. The minotaur argued that such an act would radically alter Alekzander’s very spirit. After a short recess it was agreed that Alekzander would not be subjected to a lobotomy. Instead the minotaur wizards decided to free his spirit from the ruined flesh, sending it into the sacred foundry of Sunhome. All watched as the minotaur wizard that led the hunt for Alekzander had him shot with a bamstick, beaten, castrated and cast into the foundry.

The severe physical trauma coupled with Alekzander’s emotional anguish to ignite his spark, dragging him away from Ravnica and dumping him in the Oxxida Chain. As he neared the foundry fires, Alekzander inadvertently fired off a spell that slew the minotaur wizards, sending tides of blood crackling with lightning across the gathered masses. The blasphemous act was passed off as a validation of the need for the Boros’ more fundamentalist bent.

On Mirrodin, the Vulshok found him and nursed him back to health. Among the Vulshok Alekzander found a means of embracing the philosophy that backfired on Ravnica, reforging his beliefs and forging limbs of iron like those of his Vulshok kin to mark a new beginning. He left Mirrodin with the intent of returning to Ravnica to undo whatever damage had befallen his old stomping grounds as a result of his blasphemous act.

NOTES

I'm placing his arrival on Mirrodin sometime after the 5th Dawn retcon and long before the first hints of Phyrexia's presence in the Scars block. Avoids unnecessary complications.

Alekzander Tavor marked the hillside ruins, then the burrows from which spilled a lurid red glow. Within the light he noted the squat things with flat skulls tapering to a beaklike muzzle, sharp cheekbones, and bladelike ears without lobes. Their red hides and rocklike carapaces camouflaged them from sailors that braved the Leviathan King beyond the Oil Sea until they were right upon the Arrowheads. Standing opposite the Arrowhead burrows were reminders that unsanctioned artifice would not be tolerated: stakes with blackened and cracked corpses preserved by a stasis enchantment that rebuffed the frigid winds. They lined the shore where the Oil Sea’s rainbow-sheen waters slithered in and crept out; leaving behind young skyswallowers shed by the multitude of entangled skyswallower leviathans that comprised the Leviathan King.

And there’s a dragon caged by the Leviathan King. Alekzander kept watch on the Oil Sea, as did the other magic-users in the Coldfire Command, while the Cold Father and its student wizards examined the totems that had been brought in by the oily tide.

[i]I don’t imagine the dragon’s prison is different from this one[/i]. A cold wind whipped one of the staked lawbreakers. Except our jailor is Fear. Alekzander’s connection to the leylines-turned-chains tightened, and the lava’s pressure rose under the lavamancer’s grip. A shudder seized him as he imagined that their fear of the Arrowheads was something he could throttle as easily as the leylines. He felt a tug as the bound dragon shifted, stimulated by his anger.

“Lavamancers, ready!”

Alekzander started, felt his magical grip on the leylines puncture their delicate surface layers. The snow-laden beach around him became a cloud of hissing steam as lava snaked toward the ground level. Through the steam Alekzander saw the Cold Father withdrawing to the rear, along with its shaven-head students.

A crackle and roar announced the arrival of the lhurgoyfs. They came from the Oil Sea, dragging their bulk with skeletal arms or slithering forth with tentacular feet, others jetting from the waters in fountains of seawater, beaching astride mounts of coral reef. The larger ones were suddenly made smaller as slim, terrestrial lhurgoyfs sprang spiderlike from their bloated bodies. They were met by the pyromancer’s fire magic.

Alekzander slung globules and streams of lava at lhurgoyfs distracted by the pyromancers’ elementals, feeding his magic with the residue of the pyromancers’ fireballs and the electromancers’ lightning bolts. He lessened his grip on the leyline, coursing with the stuff of magic, when he scented the brine-ozone odor indicative of the snappers working to recover spells for the frontline wizards.
Lavamancy had become rote after years with the Command. While his fingers did their tricks and his lips spoke the words, Alekzander took note of the lhurgoyfs. They could easily have been spawned by the bound dragon; for all their varied forms, they shared a common reptilian base. Why are we—

Something yanked the hem of Alekzander’s robes, slamming him to the ground and setting his ears to ringing. Looking up, he saw the squat, three-toed feet and tightly muscled body of an Arrowhead. Its eyes were pinpoints of blue fire, its smile revealing double rows of needlelike teeth. The goblin grabbed Alekzander by the arm and dragged him away from the fighting.

“Squeeze,” it said, pointing to a series of stakes set in the form of a fireball. Bound to the stakes by crackling red and blue arcs of energy were struggling Arrowheads. The goblins were spitting and hissing, trying to form words around their gags. “Whoosh!” the Arrowhead said as Alekzander climbed to his feet.

Witness this, Alekzander thought as he directed the lava streams for the stakes, burning the bound Arrowheads. He glanced to the side; saw the Cold Father’s hooded head turned toward him while its student wizards conjured their faeries. Wait a minute. They’re waiting for the Arrowheads’ enchantments. Oh Alekzander you self-righteous little wizard you.

As the Arrowheads burned, a red mist flowed from the remains within their rocky carapaces, coalescing into a serpentine creature that, though it bore some resemblance to an Arrowhead, brought to mind a fetal dragon.

This is their patron, Alekzander realized. The patron crashed into the Cold Father and its students in a stream of steaming red-orange scales, letting out a wet, guttural roar. What in the name of the beast gods is going on? Alekzander stumbled back, switching his attention from the Arrowhead that had urged him on and the massive cloud of steam rolling across the seashore.

A buzzing sound heralded the summoning of the faeries. Their wingbeats parted the clouds of steam to reveal the Cold Father standing against the colossal patron, staff brought to bear against the patron’s serpentine bulk. The corpses of the student wizards lay scattered and pulped around the struggling combatants. With a gesture of its head, the Cold Father sent the faeries in droning bursts against the patron.

Everything faded when Alekzander felt the needles tearing into his arm. His left fist came down against the tapering head of the Arrowhead that had latched onto him. It thrashed, shredding skin and spraying blood in a red mist. All of the lavamancer’s words and gestures fled his mind as the thing’s teeth made it to the bone, a heavy numbness engulfing the initial pain. The last thing Alekzander saw was the blood, then the three glowing eyes of the Arrowhead, bits of his flesh hanging from its leering muzzle.