Characters / Magic: The Gathering: Phyrexia, Rath and Mirrodin

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Characters related to Phyrexia and New Phyrexia

Old Phyrexia

Yawgmoth

Yawgmoth, during his time in Thran
^{Click here to see his form as the God of Phyrexia} Behold! Blessed perfection!

Color: Black

Race: Unclear, but possibly some kind of Phyrexian God (formerly Human)

Class: Cleric

The leader and god of Phyrexia, and the primary Big Bad of Magic: the Gathering during its early years. Yawgmoth was originally a eugenicist and physician exiled from the Thran Empire, and during his time abroad, he committed genocides on several of Dominaria's other races. He was recalled from exile to study a disease outbreak caused by the overuse of Thran powerstones, but he eventually started a power struggle in the empire. This in turn lead to the planeswalker Dyfed bringing him to the plane of Phyrexia, where he fled into exile and became the living god of Phyrexia. Yawgmoth would conspire to invade and conquer his home plane of Dominaria for millennia. His invasion nearly succeeded, but at the cusp of Yawgmoth's victory he was destroyed by Urza's Legacy Weapon, the culmination of all of Urza's work.

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• Adaptational Ugliness: Downplayed. Way before he was depicted in a card, The Thran described him as a Tall, Dark, and Handsome man with a wiry build, tanned skin and thick black hair, who would effortlessly catch Rebbec's gaze with his looks alone. His Thran Physician version, while not ugly, shows him as pale and with a cold expression, giving away his insanity much more easily.
• Agent Scully: He has little patience for Thran elites blindly trusting magic and has a sarcastic quip for every occasion.
• A God Am I: In fact, he actually becomes the god of Phyrexia, so he's way less delusional than most of the examples of this trope.
• Badass Boast: An entire chapter of Apocalypse novel is dedicated to this. Right before he gets the equivalent of a divine punch in the nose and starts throwing a hissy fit.
• Badass Bookworm: An extremely dark one during The Thran.
• Badass Normal: When he was a human, before becoming an Empowered Badass Normal.
• Biblical Motifs: His character draws heavily from the Old Testament.
  • His seduction of Rebbec, which leads to the downfall of the Thran empire, is reminiscent of the Fall in the Book of Genesis. Appropriately, snakes are associated with poison but also with medicine, and Yawgmoth is a physician.
  • Despite him being a clear Satanic Archetype, some of his traits are similar to God's most unsavory ones — namely, he brings havoc to an opulent but corrupt city, leads the surviving Thran to a (sort of) promised land, spreads plagues, communicates through horrifying creatures and is of course ineffable.
• Big Bad: Of the whole Weatherlight saga, and one of the most legendarily evil entities in the entire multiverse, his influence continuing to be felt even after his death.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: His cold, scientific philosophy clashes with the romantic conception of "magic" in Dominaria.
• Body Horror: He surgically and magically altered himself into something... else. His followers inflict the same fate upon entire planes.
• Breakout Villain: When he and the other Phyrexians first appeared, they were barely a footnote in the flavor of the Antiquities expansion; eventually, they morphed into the main villains in Magic's Rogues Gallery.
• CCG Importance Dissonance: Despite being one of the most powerful beings—perhaps the most powerful — in the whole Multiverse, Yawgmoth never obtained his own card (although, that'd be like printing a card of God in, say, Top Trumps). He is, however, related to the (in)famous pair of powerful banned/restricted cards, Yawgmoth's Will and Yawgmoth's Bargain. He does finally get a card in Modern Horizon that depicts him prior to his ascension. Behold, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician.
• The Charmer: In The Thran his intelligence goes along with good looks and a natural charisma. Just ask Rebbec.
• The Chessmaster: He plays the whole city of Halcyon like a fiddle during The Thran. After being sealed in Phyrexia, he starts planning his long-term revenge and comes this close to victory.
• The Corrupter: If he cannot compleat someone, he will surely try to sway them to his side, and will often succeed in doing so.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Not that he himself had much of a soul to begin with before he turned himself into a deity of vile technology and Body Horror. The unfortunate victims he corrupted into Phyrexians, on the other hand...
• Dark Is Evil: He is one of the most prominent black mana wielders in the Magic universe, and easily the most powerful and evil of them.
• Deal with the Devil: He offers one to both Gerrard and Urza at the beginning of Apocalypse, pitting one against the other and offering the winner whatever he wishes. In game, this translates into some cards associated to him, like Yawgmoth's Will, which lets you play cards from your graveyard but also exiles those that end up there during the turn, and Yawgmoth's Bargain, which lets you draw any number of cards you want (metaphorically enlarging your knowledge) as long as you pay 1 life per card.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: One of the earliest non-planeswalker characters to actually defeat one himself, especially when Pre-Mending Planeswalkers are reality warping Pure Magic Beings. He does this by jamming a Powerstone into Dyfed's head when she gets distracted from witnessing the horrors of the Phyrexian's creation, leading to her being disrupted to the point where she's trapped between living and dead. He's also more or less directly responsible for the deaths of many pre-mending planeswalkers, and he manages to depower Urza himself once he and Gerrard reach the ninth sphere.
• Dirty Communists: Downplayed. According to a citation in The Thran the author praises the inspiration — Soviet composer Dimitry Shostakovich — for having survived "a real life Yawgmoth" (although Shostakovich would be a praised composer even while Stalin was alive), and his take on Phyrexia is noted as being uniform unlike the vibrant and diverse Dominaria. Ironically, some of his nastier traits (like his entitlement towards Rebbec and obsession with eugenicism) have become more and more associated with extreme alt-right and libertarian positions. Ultimately, it's safe to assume that a place like Phyrexia is too far removed from human politics, and the comparison never went beyond The Thran.
• The Dreaded: During the millennia of his exile, Dominarians still live in fear of his minions and machinations. Sleeper agents in particular are a huge source of paranoia.
• Eldritch Abomination: He fuses his own essence to Phyrexia, extending his own physical and mental presence on the whole plane. In the first chapters of Apocalypse, he manifests himself through the landscape and the audience in the arena.
• Emperor Scientist: What he becomes after claiming dominion over Phyrexia, his scientific knowledge helping him shape the "perfect" plane on which he rules unquestioned.
• Entitled to Have You: Arguably the scariest thing about this fanatical eugenicist turned demonic machine god is how he pretty much reacts when Rebbec has had enough with him. He (metaphorically) rapes her and obsesses over her, even personifying Dominaria itself as her and framing his conquest as taking her at last.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: Rebbec had genuine, if very conflicted, feelings for him. Even after witnessing what Yawgmoth was willing to do in the name of his vision, she still hesitated when it came to closing the portal that led to Phyrexia, although she ultimately went through with it.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He might be a monster but he's an efficient monster and won't hesitate to weed out pure sadists like Tsabo Tavoc as soon as their proclivities get in the way.
• Evil Genius: A brilliant scientist, politician and strategist who just happens to have extremely twisted morals.
• Evil Is Petty: Apparently, becoming a machine god with a whole plane to himself wasn't enough for him to stop fuming about Rebbec rejecting him. The whole Invasion is like a cosmic-sized tantrum on his side.
• Evil Makes You Ugly: Not that he was a saint before becoming the god of Phyrexia, but it's worth noting that his ascent to power made him go from a Tall, Dark, and Handsome man to this◊.
• Evilutionary Biologist: Unsatisfied with natural evolution, he worked to create his own version, one involving metal and glistening oil.
• Exact Words: During The Thran, he vows to cure one of the infected rioters of his disease. He does so, and the cure works... but Yawgmoth then injects him with poison as punishment for his crimes.
• Expy: Appropriately for a classical dark lord, he's one of Sauron. Once associated with a positive activity (medicine, in this case) he progressively became more and more fascinated with power, while always on the side of order against chaos. He takes over the work left by a previous dark entity (the planeswalker who died after creating the plane that would eventually become Phyrexia), corrupts existing races into twisted minions, favors industry and machinery over nature, has many titles with few people daring to speak his actual name and is unable to act directly on the world he wants to conquer. He also uses artifacts to manipulate others, and a coalition of nine planeswalkers gathers against him.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: As a human, he's very handsome despite his cold-blooded insanity.
• Failure Is the Only Option: While the idea that a planeswalker spark can be transferrable isn't wrong, his attempts to extract one are proven fruitless due to his belief that it exists as a physical "gland".
• Fatal Flaw: His conception of love as possession. He underestimated that Rebbec would bereave Glacian's death and expected her to take place beside him in Phyrexia, but she decided to close the portal, trapping him for the following nine millennia. When he had Urza and Gerrard at his mercy, he fooled the latter by promising to bring Hanna back to live, but Gerrard saw through it at the last moment, breaking free from the illusion and eventually leading to Yawgmoth's defeat.
• Faux Affably Evil: As a human, he's a learned, charming man with a penchant for hygiene who becomes a nearly invincible creature and plans to create a brand new order. As an Eldritch Abomination, he rewards his most faithful underlings with various augmentations that are considered the biggest honor in Phyrexia. He's basically Dominaria's Mayor Wilkins, only without the Morality Pet.
• The Final Temptation: Keeping in line with his Satanic elements, he tries this with Rebbec, Urza and Gerrard, offering them a place by his side if they accept Phyrexia and compleation. They all refuse.
• Fog of Doom: He manifests on Dominaria as a sentient black fog that kills and reanimates whatever it touches.
• Foil
  • To the unnamed planeswalker who created the plane that would become Phyrexia. They both are wielders of black mana, although Yawgmoth never became a planeswalker. The plane creator would often assume the shape of a dragon and died at the very core of his creation for unknown (probably natural) causes, while Yawgmoth ends up taking a multitude of forms and dies outside Phyrexia after being targeted by the Legacy weapons. The planeswalker's name is unknown, while Yawgmoth's name is very much famous but rarely spoken outright.
  • To Urza, as they are both amoral masterminds with a deep knowledge of artifacts. During the Thran civil war, Yawgmoth was on the republican side, endorsing the idea that humans had to evolve along — and possibly together — with the machines. Urza would have fit squarely into the imperialist side and its idea of keeping humans and machines separated. Urza is a Planeswalker while Yawgmoth never had the spark. For added irony, Urza gains an additional spark from two powerstones containing it by embedding them in his eyes while Yawgmoth never managed to succeed to transfer a spark into himself.
  • To Gerrard. Despite belonging to opposite archetypes, both were Tall, Dark, and Handsome humans and very charismatic leaders, although Yawgmoth was a manipulator while Gerrard spent most of his life as a glorified pawn of Urza's scheme. Also, both loved a blonde artificer and in both cases, it ended tragically.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: From an exiled physician with no magical power to the greatest threat Dominaria has ever faced.
• God-Emperor: He's the closest thing to a god that original Phyrexians have, and he has a complete dominion over the plane to the point of being one with it. He was planning the same destiny for Dominaria as well, if he had his way.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Subverted as he's very likely not entirely sane to begin with outside of the Thran's supremacist culture, but he definitely becomes more enlightened upon meeting Dyfed for the first time, leading him to learn of the existence of planeswalkers, and witnessing the vast, limitless worlds of the Multiverse outside of Dominaria.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Despite becoming the most powerful known being in the Multiverse, he resents planeswalkers since he doesn't have the spark. Thinking such powers are generated by a gland, he fruitlessly dissects a deceased planeswalker in order to find it, and later tries to do the same with Dyfed.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: Not only does he not have his own card, he's never depicted in any art in his post-ascension form, with the sole picture of him being when he was a human. For a long time, the closest we had was Yawgmoth's Bargain until Yawgmoth's Vile Offering finally showed him in his full horrific glory.
• I Have Many Names: The Ineffable, the Father of the Machines, the Lord of Wastes...
• I Was Quite a Looker: He used to be a Tall, Dark, and Handsome human.
• Irony: In his early days, Yawgmoth longed for two things; the love of Rebbec, the wife of his greatest rival, and a planeswalker spark. Unbeknownst to him, Rebbec's husband Glacian was a latent planeswalker. To add salt to the wound, Glacian's latent planeswalker spark would be transferred to his later Arch-Enemy, Urza.
• Just Think of the Potential!: When he found out a cure for phthisis.
• Killed Off for Real: The story team seems very intent on making sure he never makes a comeback. While Scourge features a scene showing him wounded, but alive, that's since been retconned with at least two Take Thats in the Time Spiral block (Windgrace states that he has confirmed Yawgmoth as dead, and Urborg is known as the Tomb of Yawgmoth), and the leaders of Phyrexia are now explicitly the Praetors.
• Knight Templar: Is obsessed with reaching perfection for Phyrexia.
• Leaking Can of Evil: In the Time Spiral block we learn that Urborg, the land where Yawgmoth was defeated is still tainted by the blood, oil and pieces of Phyrexian corpses more than three hundred years later. (Urborg was an evil swamp to begin with, but it turned out even worse.)
• Love Makes You Evil: If the crazy, obsessed kind of "love" counts. After his exile he became obsessed with Rebbec, the wife of Glacian who was instrumental in making him a Sealed Evil in a Can, and upon his return this obsession had become so great that he delusionally believed that Dominaria itself was Rebbec.
• Mad Doctor: Although he found a cure for phthisis, you might want to take a look at Phyrexians before asking him for a visit.
• Mad Scientist: He eventually comes to believe that all life is inherently flawed and must be compleated.
• The Magnificent: He's often referred to as "The Ineffable" and "The Father of the Machines".
• Man Behind the Man: Since he's trapped on Phyrexia, he sends agents to infiltrate Dominaria to bring it down from the inside. He doesn't make an appearance in person until the end of the Phyrexian invasion.
• Manipulative Bastard: He's very good at creating conflict among his enemies so that they will weaken each other and let him advance his own plans unbothered.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Fittingly for someone who manipulates everyone around him (but especially a married couple) and is often compared to the Devil, his name sounds similar to Iago.
  • In-Universe, Yawgmoth means "Father of Machines" in the Phyrexian language. Granted, this was most likely a matter of him designing the language that way, rather than the other way around.
• Mechanical Lifeforms: He shows a clear fascination for them as a human and infuses his essence into every single one created in Phyrexia.
• Monster Progenitor: He obtained compleation through the glistening oil and fused himself with the plane, thus becoming the progenitor of all Phyrexians. Even the ones that would later turn Mirrodin into New Phyrexia still bring a Genetic Memory of him.
• Moral Sociopathy: Despite his clear lack of empathy, he's sincerely devoted to the idea of phyresis and believes it should apply to everyone.
• Mysterious Past: Nothing is known about him before his exile, apart from his profession and him siding with the republican faction during the civil war.
• Narcissist: One of the most powerful beings in the Multiverse and yet he's unable to accept that the woman he has obsessed about for nine millennia had some reasons to reject him.
• Near-Villain Victory: He thwarts Urza's millennia-long planning and has the planeswalker decapitated in the Ninth Sphere, his plan only failing at the last moment because of Gerrard's Heroic Second Wind. Even then, he manages to escape to Dominaria and cause long-lasting, possibly irreversible damage to the plane, before being defeated.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: To the point where only the fully Legacy-empowered Weatherlight was able to harm him, and even then it required cracking a moon open and dumping an entire planetoid's worth of white mana on him to finish the job.
• No Cure for Evil: It has been stated very clearly that he was a skilled physician, not healer. Science Is Bad, so we still get our villain.
• Not So Stoic: Becoming a machine god should grant a certain detachment, not that he was very emotional from the start. Deep down, however, he can still be a petty, petulant narcissist.
• Obviously Evil: In his Thran Physician iteration, he's depicted as an Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette wearing black clothes on a bright red background, with a driven, calculating look in his eyes. Subtle.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Although his specialization as a mortal was biology, he already had a knack for mechanics and war strategy. As a god, suffice to say his expertise went in all directions, from nanotechnology (glistening oil, flowstone) to necromancy.
• Organic Technology: His "children", the Phyrexians, are a horrific melding between flesh and metal.
• The Perfectionist: He believes that all organic life is inherently flawed and needs to be perfected through a process called "compleation".
• Pet the Dog: The Thran shows him caring to some people, although in his own twisted way. He seems to really love Rebbec and even offers her to become a goddess along with him, and works smoothly with the fellow healer Xod, later sincerely admiring his devotion and transformation in one of the first Phyrexians.
• The Philosopher: To him, phyresis isn't just a medical concept but a vision of life as a whole. During The Thran, he sometimes reflects about it with Rebbec, considering that all things are born out of conflict and renewal, including the Empire.
• Physical God: He becomes this once he merges with Phyrexia.
• Power at a Price: What else would you expect from the creator of phyresis? Cards associated with him (see Deal with the Devil above) tend to give a big advantage with balancing effects that, if not considered well, can lead you to lose the game. His own card allows you set up very consistent combos in several formats, provided that you have enough creatures, life points and cards in your hand to sacrifice for the cause.
• Present Absence: Due to him being sealed away from Dominaria, he doesn't appear until the end of Apocalypse, however he's one of the main forces behind the events. The same used to apply to the game until he was depicted on a card in 2019, since his name is associated to the infamously powerful Yawgmoth's Will and Yawgmoth's Bargain.
• Professor Guinea Pig: He was willing to experiment on himself as well as on others.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Rape is an odd recurring motif with him. In The Thran Rebbec accuses him of "rape and murder" (considering he violates her essence to a cellular level this accusation makes sense) and when he manifests as a black cloud in Dominaria rape is said to be one of the things he embodies.
• Red Baron: "The Father of Machines", "the Ineffable".
• Renaissance Man: Ethics (or lack of) aside, his genius as a human is unquestionable. In The Thran he's shown to be versed not only in medicine but also in general science, as well as in strategy, swordsmanship, politics and philosophy.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Caused by being Sealed In A Can.
• Satanic Archetype: Both as a human and as a god, his character is filled with Satanic elements. For example, the structure of Phyrexia is composed of nine progressively smaller hollow planets resting inside one another, with each sphere having a specific function and Yawgmoth residing in the ninth innermost sphere. Replace Phyrexia with Hell and Yawgmoth with Satan, and you have Inferno. That said, it is also worth noting that he also intentionally draws upon the Abrahamic God, with a strict religious doctrine, his most cherished creations being the seraph-like pneumagogs and his own name (similar enough to Yahweh).
• The Scottish Trope: It's generally considered bad luck to speak his true name, hence the various euphemisms he's known by in-universe. Some fans, particularly Phyrexian sympathizers, have taken up this custom. It doesn't seem to have any supernatural repercussions, though.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: For nine millennia, with Phyrexia itself being the can.
• Shadow Dictator: He has rarely been seen in millennia.
• Single-Target Sexuality: He only expresses interest towards Rebbec.
• Slashers Prefer Blondes: His lack of empathy, huge sense of entitlement and love for vivisection wouldn't be out of place in a serial killer's profile, and the two women who are pivotal to his story (Rebbec and Hanna) are blondes.
• The Spock: In The Thran, he coldly points out the many problems of the empire and discards any mystical notion about healing.
• Stalker with a Crush: On a cosmic scale. He obsesses over Rebbec to the point he considers Gaea as her reincarnation. Considering their respective roles, his millennia of plotting are eerily similar to the actions of a stalker subtly infiltrating their victim's life until they get close enough to act directly.
• Start of Darkness: The Thran describes his very first machinations and steps along the way to become The Father Of Machines.
• Straw Vulcan: The most scientifically minded character in The Thran, putting up with the elite's frankly idiotic obsession to just solve things by blindly using magic.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: He's described and depicted this way as a human.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: In The Thran he rarely loses an occasion to throw vitriol at the empire's glaring flaws.
• The Unfettered: Yawgmoth is willing to do virtually anything — wage war on his own civilization, graphically experiment on or torture anyone in his path, and come within an inch of dooming the entire multiverse — solely to prove that his way was the best.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: His horrific ways of improving on life falls into this, but if you are a Phyrexian, then Phyrexia is paradise.
• Villain Decay: Of a sort, as during The Thran he is a very capable Chessmaster but after his banishment he abandons all notion of strategy or subterfuge. He probably could have conquered Dominaria easily if he had pitted the planet's various peoples against themselves, but by invading outright he gave them a common enemy to unite against, leading to his defeat.
• Villain Has a Point: There's very little arguing that the Thran approach to problems needed some work, especially when it came to medicine.
• Villain Protagonist: In The Thran. The book has several main characters, but there's no question as to who ends up the most important.
• Visionary Villain: Twisted as they are, his actions are based on a grandiose ideal of perfection.
• Was Once a Man: Not only Yawgmoth himself, but most of the Phyrexians. Many of which do not resemble the organisms they were made from. At all.
• We Can Rule Together: He made this offer to Rebbec, Urza and Gerrard.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: During The Thran. Also, from his point of view, invading Dominaria is a way to improve it.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: He despises Gerrard's request to have Hanna back if he defeats Urza in the arena because he sees love as a weakness.
• Wicked Cultured: He is a horrible, horrible man, but he likes philosophy and science.
• You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Implied to be what he eventually becomes. Notably, he has never been depicted on a card after his ascension (at least until Yawgmoth's Vile Offering), and during Apocalypse he manifested as some sort of killer death cloud.

Gix

Color: Black

Race: Phyrexian

Class: Praetor

Yawgmoth's original praetor and right-hand man. Originally called to Dominaria by Urza and Mishra through a portal in the caves of Koilos. His priests corrupted Mishra and used him as a pawn to try and take the plane over. Urza was able to drive him back... well, most of him; the portal closed before he was all the way through, severing his claw. He was tortured for a thousand years for his failure to take Dominaria, and was eventually shunted into an unstable temporal portal of his own creation. Whether he still exists is unknown.

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• Ambiguous Situation: On whereas he's a demon. He's frequently referred as one, but lacks the typing in his actual card and ontologically speaking he's a mutated human with metal added, not an embodiment of black mana as most Magic demons are.
• An Arm and a Leg: He lost an arm when the Koilos portal closed on him unexpectedly quickly while he was fleeing the Sylex blast. He replaced the arm by the time of his next appearance, though his followers enshrined the original severed limb as a holy relic.
• And I Must Scream: If he survived his final battle with Urza, this is likely his final reward.
• Body Horror: He inflicts this on his followers as a gift.
• Cast from Hit Points: His Brothers' War card lets you, or any other player, spend 1 life to draw a card whenever a creature that player controls deals damage to one of your opponents.
• The Chessmaster: Patiently manipulates both Urza and Mishra over the course of the Brothers' War, which spans for close to half a century.
• The Corrupter: While Mishra was already a hardened desert raider with a grudge against his brother, it was Gix that pushed him into true villainy.
• The Dragon: Yawgmoth's first.
• Dream Weaver: Gix has the power to influence and control people's dreams. He gets the Brotherhood of Gix to come to Koilos and open the portal for him by giving them dreams of Phyrexia's biomechanical perfection, and also shows them exactly what they need to do to open the portal in said dreams.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: From a quarantined Thran rebel of no real importance to one of Phyrexia's most powerful agents.
• God Guise: The Cult of Gix worships him as a god, a fact he readily exploits during the Brothers' War.
• Holier Than Thou: "We decide who is worthy of our works."
• Karmic Transformation: He is introduced as a remorseless killer, and is eventually transformed to appear as the monster that he is. Unfortunately, for Phyrexians in general this is almost always considered Cool and Unusual Punishment or Cursed with Awesome, at the absolute worst.
• Knight Templar: At least as a mortal man, fighting for the rights of the Untouchables. But The Dark Side Will Make You Forget...
• Manipulative Bastard: While Urza and Mishra were never a paragon of brotherly love, Gix played a substantial role in putting one against the other. This translates in-game with his first ability, which makes any player draw cards if their creatures have damaged any opponent during that turn.
  • His incarnation on the tabletop reflects this. In a multiplayer match, his ability invites opponents to attack every which way except his controller, drawing extra cards while steadily bleeding their life totals dry. He can also allow his controller to play opponents' cards, turning their own resources against them.
• Mind Probe: In The Brothers' War, he can extract information from a person's mind by digging his claws into their skull and interfacing with their brain. He can also rewire their brain's architecture while he's at it. The Brothers' War set represents this with Gix's Caress, which forces the other player to reveal their hand and lets you discard one of their cards.
• Mind Rape: His specialty, which he inflicts on the newts (i.e. newborn Phyrexians). His actions are pretty explicitly treated as a form of violation:
  There were uglier beasts in the Multiverse, meaner ones, and possibly more dangerous ones. None of them has a demon's malignant aura. Born-folk had a word, rape. It occurred on every world, in every language. In Phyrexian, as Xantcha understood it, the word for rape was Gix.
• Minor Major Character: He's the ultimate Big Bad of the Brothers' War and is responsible for pitting Urza and Mishra against each other, leading to Mishra's corruption and Urza's ascendance into a planeswalker, the latter of which was a defining event for the entire Magic storyline (reshaped the continent of Terisiare, provided Magic with its longest-running protagonist, locked Yawgmoth away from Dominaria for a millennium, etc etc).
• Murder Is the Best Solution: His initial plan for reclaiming the Weakstone was to kill Mishra in his sleep. It's only when that plan fails, due to the Weakstone unexpectedly repelling him, that Gix decides to corrupt Mishra instead.
• Power Parasite: His Brothers' War card can, at a hefty cost, exile as many cards from your opponent's library as you desire. Gix can then play lands and cast spells from those exiled cards for free.
• The Spymaster: He's the brains behind Phyrexia's initial sleeper agent programme, flawed though it was. He also personally oversaw the sleeper cell operating out of Efuan Pincar. Before both of these, he ran his cult like a spy ring during the Brothers' War, sending them to infiltrate both factions for the purpose of gathering information and undermining the brothers.
• SkeleBot 9000: As a Phyrexian, he resembles a robotic skeleton with some fleshy bits and an elongated, inhuman skull.
• The Starscream: He's not particularly loyal to Yawgmoth and has tried to usurp him. He never succeeded.
• Technopath: Gix can control artifacts with his mind. At the climax of the Brothers' War, he seizes control of both factions' war machines and makes them run amok.
• Time Master: In his final clash with Urza, Gix somehow starts rewinding the flow of time to remove the Mightstone and Weakstone from Urza's eye sockets and put them back in the console that controls the Koilos portal.
• Trapped in Another World: His final showdown with Urza ended with him being thrown into a portal by Xantcha and Ratepe.
• Truer to the Text: An artistic example. Gix's redesign◊ for the 2022 Brothers' War set, while radically different from how he was depicted◊ in cards from the 1990s, is much closer to how his appearance is described in the novel of the same name.
• Villainous Face Hold: Several cards depict him as grabbing a person by the chin and getting right up in their face, much to the victim's obvious discomfort. The "Oppression" card is one such example.
• You Have Failed Me: Though not shown, it is strongly implied that Yawgmoth eventually had him killed for his failure to kill Urza and Xantcha. Or worse.

Tsabo Tavoc

A deadly Commander. A chump villain.

Color: Black and Red

Race: Phyrexian Horror

The Phyrexian general in Invasion. A half-human half-spider hybrid with mechanical augmentations and a great lust for battle and death.

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• Asshole Victim: Being devoured would be a horrible way to go for anyone, but it's safe to assume no one felt sorry when Crovax inflicted that on a sadist like Tsabo Tavoc.
• Ax-Crazy: She gleefully takes every opportunity to vivisect, operate on, and toy with any of Urza's Metathran that she takes as prisoners.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Ultimately what gets her killed. She's a capable leader, but her sadism leads her to sacrifice thousands of her own troops just for the visceral thrill she gets from their deaths.
• The Dragon: Crovax's second in command.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Her card gives her protection from legendary creatures as well as the ability to destroy them. While she is an adept Torture Technician and not half bad in a fight, she has nothing close to either ability.
• Hero Killer: Played with, as her card revolves around destroying legendary creatures but she ironically never actually kills anybody directly.
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: Waxes on at length about how she adores both physical and mental anguish.
• Sadist: She relishes in the pain of foes and subordinates alike, which leads to her doom.
• The Sociopath: Phyrexians may be lacking in morals but they surely have an ordered structure and a cause to follow. She only cares about her short term pleasure, which makes her a very low-functioning example.
• Spider People: She's half human and half Cyborg spider thing.
• Starter Villain: The first villain of the Invasion.
• Torture Technician: Tortures the Metathran general Thaddeus and plots to do the same to Gerrard.
• You Have Failed Me: After taking center stage as the primary antagonist of the first Invasion book, she's promptly killed in the opening act of Planeshift by Crovax for her failure to Yawgmoth.

Xantcha

Color: Black and Red

Race: Phyrexian

Class: Minion

Not all Phyrexians were turned into machines; some were made humanoid spies. One of said spies, Xantcha, rebelled against her masters and became a hero, allying herself to Urza. Her heartstone later becomes Karn's.

---

• The Ageless: Xantcha has been palling around with Urza for thousands of years by the present day of Planeswalker, and hasn't aged a day in all that time. As she explains to Ratepe, Phyrexians like her can't die of age, sickness or "anything else that born-folk might call natural".
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Inverted; she defected from the villains.
• Artificial Human: Grown from a vat, she looks human for the most part, enough to fool Urza into thinking she was a young woman kidnapped by the Phyrexians when he found them torturing her, prompting her rescue and the beginning of their partnership.
• Barrier Warrior: She can cover herself in an invisible film that protects her from a variety of threats, from mundane weapons to the harmful effects of traveling between the planes without a planeswalker's spark. She can also expand this film into a bubble which lets her float through the air, though it's less resilient in this state.
• Dark Is Not Evil: A Black and Red phyrexian who sacrificed herself heroically to save the multiverse from her kin.
• Defector from Decadence: The spark of individuality given to her by Gix caused her to rebel against the Phyrexian creators who saw her as an obsolete abomination.
• Flawed Prototype: She's a first-generation sleeper agent, created at a time when Phyrexia seems to have forgotten some of the subtler details of human biology and behavior. The resulting crop of identical, sexless, unageing beings were too conspicuous to do their jobs effectively and were written off as failures. Later generations of sleeper agents have clear sexes and appear to age, making them far more effective.
• Floating in a Bubble: Urza implanted a cyst in her stomach that allows her to yawn a giant bubble out of her mouth, which she can use to fly around in. It's rather disgusting, actually.
• Heroic Sacrifice: She sacrifices herself to defeat Gix and save Urza.
• Morality Pet: To Urza. As his only companion for centuries, she becomes his anchor to sanity. Considering how off his rocker he is most of the time, that's saying something.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Is the extremely rare non-sociopathic Phyrexian prior to Urabrask and his ilk came into existence.
• No Biological Sex: Though she self-identifies as female — and can usually pass as one — following her Mind Rape by Gix, she is biologically neuter.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: She's a sleeper agent.
• Token Heroic Orc: Although Urabrask's group has shown some anti-heroic tendencies, Xantcha is still the only known Phyrexian that is outright heroic.
• You Are Number 6: "Xantcha" is a Phyrexian number.

K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth

Color: Black

Race: Phyrexian Horror

Class: Minion

A Phyrexian sleeper agent who washed ashore on Tolaria. He was found by Jhoira, whom he seduced to gain access to the Tolarian academy. His actions would put a stop to Urza's Time Travel experiments and make him a constant thorn in the planeswalker's side for decades.

---

• Arc Villain: He's the main threat of the Time Streams novel.
• Cast from Hit Points: His ability lets you spend life instead of black mana whenever you cast a black spell.
• CCG Importance Dissonance: K'rrik is a major villain in the Time Streams novel and the set it's based on, yet he had no card at the time and wouldn't get one until Commander 2019 came out, almost twenty years later.
• Evilutionary Biologist: He spends most of the novel breeding armies of Phyrexian negators, making incremental improvements to their design with each successive generation so they'll eventually become tough enough to pass through the deadly time rift that separates his fortress from the rest of Tolaria. His experiments eventually pay off, and before long his forces have overrun the whole island.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: As a sleeper agent, he's a ruggedly handsome and charming man who easily sweeps Jhoira off her feet even as he plots the deaths of everyone on Tolaria, her included. This trope goes out the window once Karn thwarts his plans, however, as K'rrik modifies himself to become as monstrous and grotesque as any other Phyrexian.
• Gathering Steam: His card starts out fairly weak at 2/2, but he gets stronger every time you cast a black spell.
• God Guise: He maintains control over his minions by indoctrinating them to believe that he is the son of Yawgmoth and a god in his own right.
• Life Drain: His card has lifelink, which will help offset the life you'll be spending to cast your spells.
• Like Father, Like Son: Even if Phyrexians are more assembled than born, he's still a handsome human (on the surface, at least) who seduces a young researcher and is sealed away from the place he's targeted for a long time. Yawgmoth would be proud.
• Punctuation Shaker: He originally went by the name Kerrick when he was masquerading as an ordinary human. After the academy blew up, he dropped a few letters from his name and added an apostrophe.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: He spends decades—centuries, from his perspective—trapped in a fast-time rift that will destroy him if he tries to leave. Ironically this makes him more dangerous than he would otherwise be, as he uses the time and resources available to him to build a fortress and breed armies of minions to wage war against his foes outside the rift.
• Spikes of Villainy: He grafts many spikes onto himself in the years following the academy's destruction.
• Tele-Frag: Urza kills him by planeswalking into his body, splattering K'rrik all over the room.

Ertai

See his entry in the Weatherlight Crew.

Rath

Davvol

Race: Phyrexian

The original evincar of Rath, who was eventually replaced.

---

• Achilles' Heel: Davvol's Phyrexian boss gives him a skullcap which is impenetrable except for a small circular indentation at the back. Davvol correctly suspects that this weak point was deliberately engineered to allow him to be killed once he's outlived his usefulness.
• The Chew Toy: "‘Davvol, blast those elves.' ‘Davvol, transport those troops.' No one cares that today is my birthday."
• Doomed by Canon: He appeared as evincar of Rath in Urza's Legacy, a prequel to the Weatherlight Saga, in which we already saw Rath ruled by a different evincar.

Volrath

Color: Black (primary), Green and Blue

Race: Phyrexian Shapeshifter (formerly Human)

Born Vuel, son of Sidar Kondo, in Jamuraa. He failed his ritual rite of passage due to machinations of agents of Rath, and was saved from death by his adopted brother, Gerrard, which he took as a Fate Worse than Death, as he was disowned by his clan for his failure. Yawgmoth's agents stoked his newfound enmity of Gerrard and made him Volrath, evincar of Rath. Years later, he kidnapped Captain Sisay of the Weatherlight, hoping to lure the Legacy to the plane and destroy it and its heir (Gerrard again). When the gambit failed, he shapeshifted into his agent's daughter to attempt to destroy them from within. Failing this, he killed his agent and returned to Rath... where he was captured and executed by the new evincar of Rath, Crovax.

---

• Arch-Enemy: To Gerrard, as they have a Cain and Abel thing going on.
• Cain and Abel: With Gerrard. Both adopted by Sidar Kondo, with Volrath turning into his adopted brother's Arch-Enemy.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Volrath was built up as the ultimate villain of the Weatherlight Saga... until Urza's Destiny, when we find out that Rath is just one part in Yawgmoth's plans.
• The Dragon: To Yawgmoth. Had one himself in Greven il-Vec.
• Evil Former Friend: To (guess who?) Gerrard.
• Shapeshifting: Phyrexian experimentation turned him into a prodigal shapeshifter.
• You Have Failed Me: Yawgmoth's response to Volrath's twice failure to kill Gerrard and procure the Legacy? Give Rath to Crovax and let him execute Volrath in the most hideous way possible.

Greven il-Vec

Color: Black (primary), Red

Race: Phyrexian Human

Class: Warrior

Commander of the skyship Predator, and Volrath's Dragon. A former member of the Vec tribe, who betrayed them to serve the Evincar (thus the il- in il-Vec.)

---

• The Dragon: To Volrath. Forced to be one to Crovax.
• Restraining Bolt: A mimetic spine was grafted into him, giving Volrath (and later Crovax) control over him (by sending intense pain through it if he strayed.)
• You Have Failed Me: Did this to Vhati il-Dal, who fired on the Weatherlight while he was still on board.
  "The fall will give you time to think on your failure."

Crovax

Color: Black

Race: Phyrexian vampire (formerly Human)

Class: Noble

A cursed noble from Urborg who eventually became an evincar of Rath and leader of the Phyrexian invasion of Dominaria.

---

• Alternate Self: Planar Chaos includes a version from an alternate timeline where he never fell to the curse, the White-aligned Crovax, Ascendant Hero.
• Ax-Crazy: After his transformation, at least. His accomplishments include killing over a thousand civilian hostages to his own detriment by impaling them on flowstone spikes in order to eat their souls, executing Volrath by injecting him with flowstone and then disassembling him molecule by molecule while he was still alive, and ripping Tsabo Tavoc apart before eating her.
• Death Equals Redemption: After Crovax's death, Gerrard sees the spirits of both Crovax and Selenia finally reuniting, free of their corruption.
• The Dragon: He becomes this to Yawgmoth after killing Tsabo.
• Face–Heel Turn: Once a member of the heroic Weatherlight crew, turned into a vampiric monster due to killing Selenia and inflicting some kind of curse on himself.
• Fallen Hero: From a multiversal hero in the Weatherlight to evincar of Rath.
• Love Makes You Crazy: He was obsessed with Selenia, though ultimately subverted as it was some kind of curse spawned from her death that pushed him to evil.
• Our Vampires Are Different: He became one as the final part of a curse.
• Tragic Villain: When he was forced to kill the love of his life (an angel named Selenia), the corruption that had taken control of her did the same to him. He continues his service to Yawgmoth because he "gave" Selenia back to him, albeit in the form of an artificial copy.

Selenia

Color: White and Black

Race: Phyrexian Angel

A fallen angel and Crovax's love, Crovax ultimately saw her betray the crew of the Weatherlight and killed her for doing so, fulfilling the curse that he would fight evil and join it. In the Planar Chaos alternate timeline, Mirri kills Selenia and becomes the evincar instead, and Crovax becomes a hero.

---

• The Cameo: She is depicted briefly in Urza's Saga as one of Serra's angels who was captured and tortured by the Phyrexians, explaining how she fell in the first place.
• Light Is Not Good: Still retains white mana, despite having some black added.
• Replacement Goldfish: The "copy" Yawgmoth created after her death.
• Thanatos Gambit: She had to die to fulfill Crovax's curse. This has been orchestrated since her corruption in Serra's Realm.

Mirrodin

Memnarch

Color: Blue

Class: Wizard

When Karn created the artificial plane of Argentum, he transfigured the powerful artifact called the Mirari into a thinking construct he named Memnarch, and charged his creation with guarding the plane of his absence. However, Memnarch was corrupted by a trace of Phyrexian oil accidentally left behind by Karn and shut his creator out of the plane. Memnarch abducted countless creatures from other planes, turning the sterile Argentum into the thriving metal ecosystem of Mirrodin in his mad search to gain a planeswalker spark. He was ultimately defeated by Glissa and her companions, allowing Karn to return to Mirrodin.

Karn transformed Memnarch back into the Mirari and entrusted it to Glissa, Slobad, and Geth. With Slobad's death and Glissa and Geth's betrayal of Mirrodin, the Mirari's whereabouts are now unknown.

---

• Body Horror: A former flawless chrome sphere developing tendons and limbs. Gross.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength: Memnarch's corruption-based hallucinations of Karn were strong enough to prevent the real Karn from returning to Mirrodin.
• The Chessmaster: He has spies on almost every corner of the world, and said world is just a large machine working toward his purposes.
• Evil Genius: The only thing brighter than his mind was his insanity.
• God Guise: He was worshiped as a god by Mirrodin's vedalken.
• Mad Scientist: For the purpose of becoming a planeswalker he eschewed his role as Mirrodin's warden to become a genocidal experimentator.
• Technopath: Was able to control all machines in Mirrodin.
• The Assimilator: His special abilities is to convert permanents into artifacts and then take control of them. Ironically, his presence and activities prevented the initial spread of the oil; once he died, the contagion spread quickly.

Raksha

Color: White

Race: Leonin

Class: Soldier

The kha (ruler) of the leonin, the lion-like humanoids of Mirrodin's Razor Fields. Raksha Golden Cub helped Glissa in the battle against Memnarch. After Memnarch's defeat, he was sent back to the plane from which Memnarch originally plucked him along with the rest of the older leonin, leaving the younger generations (who were born on Mirrodin) leaderless.

In Raksha's absence, Kemba took up regency of the leonin, causing a civil war that weakened them in the war against New Phyrexia.

---

• Curbstomp Battle: His childhood friend Slobad used to be his training partner, except that Slobad saw himself more as a punching bag.
• King of Beasts: A kingly leonin, an anthropomorphic lion.
• Heroic Build: The guy can boast literal abs of steel, and the fleshy part is equally ripped.
• The Leader: Of the leonin faction.
• Meaningful Name: "Raksha" means "protection" in Sanskrit.
• Mr. Fanservice: Is drawn with a notable Female Gaze, unique given the early 2000's trends in Magic.
• Panthera Awesome: Is a lion kicking evil machines to the curb. Is there anything else that needs to be said?
• Sculpted Physique: His abdomen appears to be chiseled out of metal.
• Supporting Leader: He's one of the most important people in Mirrodin in-universe, but Glissa is the main protagonist of the storyline, not him.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: He wears shoulder and arms protection, but leaves his chest exposed.

New Phyrexia

Elesh Norn

"We are a single entity. Dissenters must be sutured into the Orthodoxy."

Color: White

Race: Phyrexian

Class: Praetor

The White Praetor. Leads the theocratic faction known as the Machine Orthodoxy.

---

• Affably Evil: Subverted. For most of the time, she appears to be Affably Evil, being charismatic, motherly (for Phyrexian standards, at least) and cultured. She's also in good terms with Jin-Gitaxias. Her appearance at the end of the story for Phyrexia: All Will Be One has her offering compleation to the yet uncontaminated planeswalkers, bringing up Nissa and Nahiri as an example of peace and unity that New Phyrexia would bring them. In March of the Machine, all this comes crumbling down when she devolves into a deep rage, throwing any trace of respect she had for her fellow Phyrexians out of the window.
• Alto Villainess: In the extended trailer for Phyrexia: All Will Be One, she speaks with a deep, echoing voice.
• Arch-Enemy: She becomes this to Elspeth, obsessing about the planeswalker to the point of preferring outright murder to compleation.
• Assimilation Plot: As hinted in the flavor text from Skinrender.
  "Your creations are effective, Sheoldred; but we must unite the flesh, not merely flay it."
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: As evidenced by her Curb-Stomp Battle to both Sheoldred and Urabrask, Elesh Norn is the most powerful Praetor.
  • This translates ingame too. Taking their abilities into account, Elesh can kill any other Praetor while remaining alive herself (except Sheoldred the Apocalypse, who has Deathtouch, causing a Mutual Kill). Some, like Vorinclex, have higher raw stats but Elesh's ability to absolutely cripple her enemies' stats always turns the battle in her favor.
• Awesome, but Impractical: She single-handedly causes a massive 4 power and toughness swing in favor of your creatures compared to your opponent's, which is significant enough that most aggro decks can never come back from it, but costs a back-breaking 7 mana in a color not known for a heavy emphasis on ramp, and has no removal protection other than her massive toughness that at least puts her out of range for most burn and fight effects. She is, however, a perennial favorite in reanimator decks.
• Bad Boss: March of the Machine shows that not even the other Praetors are safe from her rage.
• Bald of Evil: The trailer for March of the Machine gives us a lovely view of the back of her head. As one might expect due to her body being completely flayed, her head is a completely bald red surface, connected by many tendrils to her porcelain plate.
• The Baroness: An elegant, ice-cold and fanatical female villain who is no slouch on the battlefield and would qualify for the Sexpot variant if not for the Body Horror.
• Beneath the Mask: It's unclear how much she really believes in her doctrine and how much she's twisting the teachings for her own benefit. Ironically, she's the only praetor to wear an actual mask. Recent materials confirm that she seems to fully believe in her cause, but also that she is not as emotionless and flawless as she makes herself out to be.
• Berserk Button: Elspeth. Norn doesn't even raise her voice when dealing with "heretics" like Sheoldred or Urabrask, but the mere vision of the planeswalker is enough to unsettle her. Later, Elspeth rebuking Norn's belief is enough to trigger a Villainous Breakdown.
• Biblical Motifs: Similarly to the whore of Babylon, she dresses in red and has ambitions of godhood while representing a whole civilization that is described as an epitome of evil in the setting.
• Big Bad: According to Elspeth's letter to Ajani, Elesh Norn kicked the crap out of Sheoldred and Urabrask, so she's now the dominant praetor. As of Phyrexia: All Will Be One, she has claimed the title of Mother of Machines and is the one to start the multiplanar invasion.
• Bishōnen Line: Why yes, the most powerful Phyrexian does resemble a shapely feminine humanoid wearing a Pimped-Out Dress, how did you guess?
• Body Motifs: Skin, or better the lack of it. Elesh Norn preaches about flaying as a step towards unity, and everyone in the Machine Orthodoxy — herself included — is skinless and with muscle tissue in full sight. However, they also wear plates of white porcelain to symbolize the improvement carried by phyresis... but this also suggests that Elesh still wants to keep something covered.
• Breakout Villain: With time, she has become the most visible Praetor and one of the most representative characters of the whole franchise.
• Break the Believer: Her faith in the Machine Orthodoxy is shaken by Ashiok and Elspeth, but she doesn't truly believe in her own doctrine.
• Break the Haughty: Her sanctimony is first shaken when Ashiok makes her deeply repressed emotions resurface, although she regains control. Once Elspeth stands up to her, Norn finally loses her poise, reacting with absolute fury.
• Cold Ham: She conveys magniloquence and fanatical belief through the typical Phyrexian coldness.
• Condescending Compassion: She sees everyone who is not a Phyrexian as a poor, misguided creature that just needs to experience the beauty of compleation, no matter what they would actually prefer.
• Creepily Long Arms: Norn's limbs are about two and a half times as long as they have any right to be.◊
• Creepy Doll: Invoked. Her porcelain-clad body is graceful and off-putting at the same time, and she proves to be much more childish than she conveys at first.
• Cruel Mercy: After having Urabrask mutilated limb by limb, she orders her minions to "let the traitor be" despite him being in complete agony to the point that a Coup de Grâce would be better.
• Cute Monster Girl: Especially after gaining a little bit of curves, Elesh has a very gorgeous and ladylike figure... that just happens to be flayed and covered in metallic porcelain.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: A case in which this trope makes her even more terrifying than her previous Ice Queen characterization. When she starts losing control over the Invasion, she reveals to be harboring deep-seated fear and borderline psychotic anger.
• Demiurge Archetype: Once her plan to install Karn as the new Father of the Machines fails, she proclaims herself the leader of New Phyrexia, progressively pushing her role towards the "godly" part.
• Dissonant Serenity:
  • She preaches joyfully about flaying and sewing creatures together.
  • Her statement about Nahiri and Nissa being compleated. There's something so twisted and insane about this drivel, that when she unironically preaches this in front of several other Planeswalkers as if she was doing a good thing makes her look worse than if she's actually taunting them.
    "Nahiri fought us, but she found peace, and a better way in the One," said Elesh Norn. "She and Nissa came from the same place, but they were never friends. Now they are sisters, united, finally on the same side in every way. They are One. You, too, can be One. Only yield, and it will be over quickly."
• Dressed Like a Dominatrix: She wears a sort of porcelain corset, has long fingernails and high thighs, all to fit her glacial, dominant personality.
• Egocentrically Religious: She believes in the Orthodoxy and spreads its teachings in the measure it allows her to retain power over the rest of New Phyrexia.
• Evil Is One Big, Happy Family: She pushes the belief that the factions of New Phyrexia should come together and, more widely, that the Multiverse should be united into a single organism without conflict or flaws.
• Evil Matriarch: After Karn's escape from the clutches of Phyrexia, she became the new Mother of Machines.
• Evil Versus Evil: In the sidestory "A Garden of Flesh" Ashiok gives her a nightmare where she fails to compleat a human, whose death causes plants with human body parts attached to them to grow in her sanctuary. Norn realizes the truth and the two Battle in the Center of the Mind before Ashiok unsettles Norn with the idea that she is imperfect and leaves.
• Extra-ore-dinary: In addition to being made completely out of metal, she can attack with it as seen in Marrow Shards.
• Eyeless Face: She only has a mouth on her face; some of the other White Phyrexians are The Blank.
• Faceless Mooks: Members of the Machine Orthodoxy cover their faces in the porcelain-like metal that forms their shells.
• False Prophet: She's been corrupting her own teachings, twisting them to make her own interests take over those of New Phyrexia as a whole.
• Fatal Flaw: Something that she thought to have eliminated a long time ago: her own individuality. Despite the teachings of the Orthodoxy, she struggles with a very disfunctinal ego that she doesn't even seem aware of before Ashiok shows her what she truly fears. Once she loses control over it, she turns on her own trusted lieutenants and opens herself to an attack from Elspeth, marking the beginning of the end for New Phyrexia.
• Femme Fatalons: Her fingertips are covered by long and pointy shards of porcelain.
• Flaying Alive: Getting rid of skin is the first step to become a white Phyrexian, and she makes no exception.
• Foil: To Yawgmoth as the Father (or Mother) of the Machines. Both are incredibly rigid in their ideology and lead the reorganization of a plane in their own version of Phyrexia. Yawgmoth started as a male human who clearly felt attracted to a woman, and was centered on black mana. Elesh Norn has a very feminine figure, is implied to have been a Phyrexian from the start, has never shown any kind of attraction and is the white Praetor. Both of them, however, are Not So Stoic as they try to make it seem.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Both the teaser and the trailer for "Phyrexia: All Will Be One" have her looking straight at the camera. Looks like there's something that needs compleation...
• The Fundamentalist: She is obsessed with Phyrexian scriptures, and constantly moralizes her hideous actions with preaching.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Her first iteration helps all your other creatures while depowering your opponents' ones, emphasizing her role as a ruthless but selfless preacher of unity when Mirrodin had just been conquered. Her second iteration has a more global effect regarding all kind of permanents, which fits her triumphal rule over New Phyrexia. The final ability of her Saga in the third iteration allows you to destroy everything that is not a land, and artifact, a Phyrexian or herself, the ideal conclusion for a plan of multidimensional conquest.
• Glacier Waif: She looks thin, lanky and delicate like a porcelain doll, but she has the highest toughness of all Praetors. Admittedly, she is only really a "waif" compared to her fellow Praetors, being about twice the size of an average human.
• God-Emperor: What she plans to be by installing herself as the new Mother of the Machines, taking the place that once used to be Yawgmoth's.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Fighting Elpseth while in the throes of a Villainous Breakdown, she grabs anything within reach to throw at her opponent, including the head of an unfortunate minion who happened to be standing too close, and a horn unceremoniously snapped off of Vorinclex.
• The Heretic: She accuses anyone who doesn't follow the Machine Orthodoxy to be this and yet, she proves to be the worst one, with her selfish manipulation of Phyrexian scriptures.
• Heroic Willpower: While she's no hero by any stretch, she manages to drive Ashiok out of her mind by calling upon her unity with her followers, allowing them to stand together against the nightmare weaver's machinations.
• Her Own Worst Enemy: Despite wielding an immense power with very few rivals, she manages to engineer her own doom.
  • While Sheoldred was a dangerous backstabber from the start, nothing suggests that Urabrask was interested in taking over New Phyrexia, or even focused enough to try. Norn could have left him shut into his own Furnace and carry on her plans anyway but, by attacking him in the name of her obsession with unity, she exacerbated the conflict between Urabrask and the rest of the plane, leading him to betray New Phyrexia.
  • She has access to a perfected glistening oil, various compleated planeswalker and planar travel. Considering the nature of Phyrexians, she could have infiltrated the planes and converted them in more subtle ways, allowing the oil to adapt to various environments. Her sense of grandiosity makes her invade various planes at once and directly, which eventually leads to her defeat.
• High Priestess: Mother of Machines and uncontested ruler of both the Machine Orthodoxy and New Phyrexia as a whole.
• Hive Queen: She becomes this after turning her faction into a Hive Mind.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard: By March Of The Machine she modified the glistening oil so that it would only transmit her orders. Unforunately for her, doing this made her the biggest weakness of New Phyrexia, once she dies, it effectivly shuts down the compleated Phyrexians and causes the oil to be rended inert.
• Holier Than Thou: She looks down on everyone who is not part of the Machine Orthodoxy.
• Horrifying the Horror: In "A Garden of Flesh", she exchanges a mutual instance of this with Ashiok, who bows to her and calls her a "masterpiece" before leaving.
• Hypocrite: For someone who preaches about letting go of the self to embrace the Orthodoxy, she's unable to cleanse herself from the pride, fear and wrath she harbors. When Elspeth points this out, Elesh becomes mad with rage.
• I Am the Noun: When she talks about spreading Phyrexia, she actually means herself. While she tries to hide it, she finally says it openly shortly before her death, making her true goals blatantly obvious even to the Phyrexian forces:
  Elesh Norn: Why aren't any of you protecting me!? I am Phyrexia!
• Ice Queen: At first, she's cold and hieratic, even when chastising others for not standing up to her standards of perfection. However, she later proves to be not that emotionless.
• Iconic Item: Her huge arched porcelain mask is possibly the most recognizable item of the whole New Phyrexia.
• Idiot Ball: For someone who played friends and foes like a fiddle, she grasps a plane-wide one during March of the Machine and doesn't let go from there. Making the Machine Legion a Keystone Army would mean repeating one of Yawgmoth's worst mistakes but she does so anyway, as if she hadn't already the control over the whole operation. To make things worse, she allows her pent-up rage and frustration overwhelm her when she's in the perfect situation to compleat Elspeth, preferring to assault Jin-Gitaxias, who up to that point has been nothing but a helpful ally, for just pointing that out.
• Impractically Fancy Outfit: It's not entirely clear how she manages to fit her gargantuan head boomerang through doors.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Beneath all that pretty porcelain and grandiose statements lies an abyss of insecurity and fear of being imperfect.
• Irony
  • Originally, all Phyrexians were aligned with black mana. Come New Phyrexia, which sees a power struggle between Phyrexians of all five colors, the one that comes out on top is... the white-aligned faction, the primary enemy color to black!
  • She emerges as the ultimate leader of New Phyrexia and yet she's the Praetor with the most humanlike figure.
  • Her encounter with Ashiok shows that, deep down, she harbors fear and anger, two emotions that are typically associated with Black and Red respectively.
  • The Praetor who preaches the most about unity ends up mutilating the other fours to various degrees.
  • She always feared that Urabrask's egotism would cause the ruin of New Phyrexia. In the end, it's her own egotism to cause it.
• It's Personal: After Ashiok terrifies her into fearing Elspeth with a nightmare, Elesh Norn starts harboring an obsessive hatred towards Elspeth, far beyond what is necessary to further Phyrexia's goals.
• Jeanne d'Archétype: A very dark combination of femininity, devotion and military leadership.
• Killed Off for Real: Her end comes at the hands of Karn, to make sure she never rises back up against the multiverse again.
• Kinslaying Is a Special Kind of Evil: While the Praetors aren't exactly a family — although they call each other "brother" or "sister" in some occasions — it's worth noting that Norn is the only one to have damaged or killed each one of the other four.
• The Kirk: After becoming the leader of New Phyrexia, she plays this role between Jin-Gitaxias and Vorinclex. The balance between fanaticism and planning is also one of the driving points of her character.
• Knight Templar: A living flare of fanaticism and self-righteousness.
• Lady of War: Her somewhat graceful and ladylike appearance (again, for Phyrexian standards) goes along with a strategic mind that guaranteed the victory against Mirrans.
• Large and in Charge: While she's not as bulky as Vorinclex, an official size comparison shows that she absolutely towers over an average human. She stands easily 10 feet tall.
• Lean and Mean: Not as lean as Jin-Gitaxias, but still counts.
• Light 'em Up: As seen in the Conspiracy version of Rout, where she puts her light magic to use against the Mirran Resistance. She also uses it against Ashiok in "A Garden of Flesh".
• Light Is Not Good: She unites old fashioned Phyrexian Body Horror with White absolutism. She even used to be the page image.
• Literal-Minded: The "unity" she preaches isn't merely metaphorical. She actually wants to sew each and every creature in a single super-organism.
• Machine Worship: One of the most literal applications of this trope.
• The Magnificent: By the time of "Phyrexia: All Will Be One", she has picked up the epithet "Mother of Machines".
• Malevolent Masked Woman: The upper part of her head is concealed by her iconic arched mask, which grows directly from her uncovered muscle tissue.
• Meaningful Name: "Elesh" is a Hindu name that means "monarch", and Norns are female characters in Norse mythology who rule the destiny of gods and men. It suits her High Priest position rather well... even moreso when she becomes the Mother of Machines.
• Meaningful Rename: She goes from Great Cenobite to Mother of Machines, adapting Yawgmoth's title to herself, to emphasize her newfound control over the whole New Phyrexia.
• Moral Sociopathy: All Phyrexians think that their terror-inducing procedures of Body Horror infliction while the victims are still alive are to be done, but she truly believes that her faction's horrifying mutilations and brainwashing are for the greater good. Furthermore, she is an expert at manipulation and deceit, which would further indicate her nature as a high-functioning sociopath, but more recent material show that she truly believes in her cause and is able of feeling emotions like fear and hatred. It all becomes moot in March of the Machine, where she proves to have just been conflating her own desires with those of New Phyrexia as a whole.
• A Mother to Her Men: As shown in "A Garden of Flesh", she leads through inspiration and wants to be an example for her underlings. She also wants to be this to the whole New Phyrexia during her tenure as Mother of Machines.
• Multiversal Conqueror: Everything must be united, and "everything" includes other dimensions too.
  "The Gitaxians whisper among themselves of other worlds. If they exist, we must bring Phyrexia's magnificence to them."
• Narcissist: She makes a point to be grandiose in anything she does, and refuses to see any flaw in her plan, reacting with either haughtiness or psychotic rage.
• "Not So Different" Remark: During her fight with Elspeth, Norn tries to get her to join Phyrexia by appealing to her desire for peace and unity, their shared traits as mono-white characters. When Norn snaps at Jin-Gitaxias for calling her out for focusing on Elspeth so much, Elspeth turns it around and points out that Norn is as fallible and individual as the non-Phyrexians she hates.
• Not So Stoic:
  • The story "A Garden of Flesh" reveals that she harbors an intense fear and hatred of flesh, feelings she didn't believe she was capable of harboring as a Phyrexian Praetor. At the end of the story, she then resolves to simply seek out and kill Elspeth Tirel, rather than try to compleat her.
  • In a more humorous example, it's revealed in March of the Machine that even she can't stand Lukka, even after his compleation. As soon as he leaves to invade Ikoria she outright admits to her other underlings that she fully expects him to get killed because of his own stupidity and ego, and even if he succeeds he'll almost definitely screw up in some way that'll require later punishment.
• Obfuscating Insanity: She appears to be a delirious, insane religious lunatic, but she's actually a rather clever manipulative bitch. Even Sheoldred, the master of conspiracies and rumors, was apparently completely fooled, and stood no chance when Elesh came for her.
• One Bad Mother: By the time of Phyrexia: All Will Be One, she has claimed de facto leadership of New Phyrexia and the title of Mother of Machines.
• Pride: Although at first she seems able to combine it with actual political and military skills, in the end she lets it take over herself, leading to her downfall.
• Principles Zealot: Differently from Jin-Gitaxias, she obsessively sticks to the Argent Etchings.
• Progressively Prettier: In "Phyrexia: All Will Be One", she looks more shapely than her first gaunt appearance in "New Phyrexia".
• Psychopathic Womanchild: Her Villainous Breakdown shows that, beneath all her poise, she reacts to a sudden inconvenience with the same maturity of a spoiled child, only with much more violence.
• Purple Is Powerful: In the sense of purple as the expensive reddish hue that was used for the garments of Roman and later Byzantine emperors. Her sash fits her position as Mother of the Machines pretty well.
• Red Right Hand: It might get lost due to her overall appearance, but her front teeth are slightly crooked, suggesting that she's not as perfect as she thinks she is.
• Religion of Evil: The Machine Orthodoxy. One of its pillars is flaying.
• Resistance Is Futile: While she is like this anyway, post-Villainous Breakdown she screams to this effect shortly before she is attacked by her own forces and those of Jin-Gitaxias. As it turns out, she is completely wrong, as she is shortly thereafter killed and all attempts of Phyrexia to take over destroyed.
  Elesh Norn: What we've done… what I've built will last forever! Phyrexia will never die. You're only delaying the inevitable. Why can't you understand that? Why won't you accept your fates?!
• Royal "We": The side story "Nemesis" has her using this while talking to Tezzeret. It's unclear if it's due to her deep connection with the rest of her faction or if she just does so to remark her status.
• Rule of Symbolism: It becomes prominent in March of the Machine.
  • The trailer shows her from behind for the first time, with a unnerving set of tendrils sprouting from the back of her flayed head to sustain her elegant headpiece. In this set we finally see how hypocritically selfish she is despite her claims of acting for the best of New Phyrexia.
  • The way she mutilates the other Praetors reflects the degree of animosity she has towards them. Vorinclex, who has always been a faithful if dumb accomplice, gets away with parts of his armor snapped off; Jin-Gitaxias, who has just reminded her of her duties towards their cause, ends up with an arm torn from his body; the seemingly reformed but still treacherous Sheoldred is beheaded; and the always hated Urabrask is slowly and painfully torn limb by limb.
• Satanic Archetype: Combined with Demiurge. She's a prideful being associated with light who proves to be a selfish False Prophet, promises power to those who forsake their own soul and is extremely able when it comes to lies and manipulation. If you consider that Phyrexia drew inspiration from The Divine Comedy, she also commits the worst sin possible, that is treason (both against her own faction and her own original creator, since she ultimately condemns Yawgmoth's work to oblivion with her own selfishness).
• Secretly Selfish: Elesh Norn has conflated her desires with Phyrexia's needs for so long that she doesn't realize she only cares about Phyrexia because she sees it as an extension of herself. Sheoldred directly accuses her of this, and it later becomes the crux of Elspeth's "Not So Different" Remark:
  "What a joke," Sheoldred whispers. Speaking strains her chest against its bonds. "All of this grandstanding won't change the truth: you're only looking out for yourself, Norn. Phyrexia means nothing to you unless it conforms to your mad ravings. You've never cared about unity, you only care about yourself."
• Shout-Out: Her first title Grand Cenobite is one to the Hellraiser franchise.
• Simple, yet Opulent: Compared to other Phyrexians, her design is rather clean and simple. At the same time, the porcelain that covers most of her body must have required an extensive knowledge of biomechaeics, and her red garments recall the very expensive purple worn by Roman emperors.
• Sinister Minister: She's a nightmarish looking high priestess whose church encourages flaying as a step towards perfection.
• The Sociopath: Once all the refinery is stripped away, she's just a callous manipulator who sees the other members of her (highly social) species as pawns to advance her own vision and glorify herself.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: She can shape her white armor into a variety of bladed shapes for combat, from a swarm of throwing knives to duel-wielded blades or even a giant broadsword.
• Status Effects: How she works in gameplay: as soon as she hits the field, all creatures you control get +2/+2, while creatures your opponent(s) control get -2/-2, potentially clearing the field of any pesky 1- or 2-toughness creatures your opponent has.
• Stone Wall: Ingame. Her 4 power is somewhat respectable, but only on par with the weakest praetor Urabrask. On the opposite end of the spectrum, she has 7 toughness, the highest of all Phyrexian praetors across all incarnations thus far, and having Vigilance allows her to attack without leaving her controller open for a counterattack. However, she also has a lot of value as a Support Party Member.
  • In her Grand Cenobyte iteration, her crippling aura makes it additionally hard for her to perish in combat. Add in the fact that she also empowers her controller's entire team, and you have one hell of a nasty combination on your hands.
  • In her Mother of Machines iteration, she makes it such that anytime an effect is triggered upon a creature is summoned, it triggers for an additional time, while denying your opponent the ability to use any effects that are triggered upon summoning a creature.
• Super-Persistent Predator: It should come as no surprise that a White Praetor would have the Vigilance keyword.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Calling her "nice" would be a stretch, but at least she allowed the other Praetors to join her cause once she emerged as the leader of New Phyrexia, even resurrecting Sheoldred, even if as a minion. In general, she came off as a draconian ruler who sincerely wanted New Phyrexia to be united and harmonious. Her mental battle with Ashiok hinted that she even harbors a dose of self-doubt, coupled with a sincere belief in her cause. Then, during March of the Machines, she ends up torturing and murdering her own kin, and it turns out that she has been manipulating her whole species to serve her own egotistical whims.
• Undying Loyalty: To Karn, so long as he's the Father of Machines. The moment he abandonds the role, her devotion to him ends.
• Ungrateful Bitch: Begrudgingly or not, Vorinclex and Jin-Gitaxias sided with her the whole time, and still she repays by ripping off parts of their bodies as she's facing Elspeth. Even worse, Gitaxias was suggesting her the most logical course of action.
• The Unsmile: "Rows upon rows of teeth spread into a mocking rictus" is not exactly the most pleasant description of a smile ever. And there's nothing faked about it: she's showing true enthusiasm as she does.
• Villainous Breakdown: In March of the Machine (specifically the story "Episode 7: Divine Intervention"), she is driven over the edge by Elspeth's sudden intervention, devolving into a raging maniac who throws pieces of her own throne against the planeswalker and assaults Jin-Gitaxias for merely trying to help.
  Elesh Norn: We are beyond your comprehension, beyond your reach! When we have conquered the Multiverse you've held so dear, you will kneel at our feet and bask in the glory of our creation! You will not ruin everything we've achieved. Eons from now you will be forgotten, and we will remain the eternal hierophant, Elesh Norn!
  Elspeth: That's just what I mean. You want people to worship Elesh Norn, don't you? Phyrexia doesn't matter to you. It never has. Power's the only thing you care about.
  Elesh Norn: You… I hate you!
• Villainous Friendship: She appears to be in one with Jin-Gitaxias. She even lets him use the Argent Etchings as a base for his Great Synthesis. After gaining control of the whole plane, she has left him in a rather lofty position and has trusted him with a centerpiece of their plan, that is the compleation of planeswalkers.
• Villain Respect: She celebrated the valour of an angel leading the Mirrans by having said angel compleated into Atraxa.
• Visionary Villain: She wants to "bring Phyrexian perfection" to other planes.
• Voice of the Legion: Her voice has a strong metallic reverb that seems composed of lesser voices speaking as one.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: In a twisted example, she sees Karn as the new Father of the Machines and longs for his acceptance of the role.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Subverted. She considers her multiversal invasion a crusade for a peaceful and united Multiverse. Too bad for the non-Phyrexian, it's a horrible nightmare and that she only cares about New Phyrexia as long as it's an extension of herself.
• White and Red and Eerie All Over: White for the metallic porcelain, red for the exposed muscle tissue. This color combination carries over to her whole domain, including the Porcelain Legion and the Fair Basilica. She even provides the page image.
• White Mask of Doom: Her porcelain covering takes the form of a sinister eye-less ivory mask.
• With Us or Against Us: As she implies during the trailer for Phyrexia: All Will Be One, those who don't willfully accept compleation are automatically enemies of New Phyrexia.
  "You can either kneel before this throne or become a part of it."
• Woman Of Wealth And Taste: Among the Praetors, she easily has the most elegant look, with long red garments and white porcelain covering most of her body. This extends to her faction, which is the most polished looking one. Her headquarter is a majestic cathedral because, quite ironically considering the trope, she's a religious leader.

Jin-Gitaxias

"A mind may be steeled against madness, but all battlements fall in time."

Color: Blue

Race: Phyrexian

Class: Praetor

The Blue Praetor. Leads the Phyrexian R&D department known as the Progress Engine.

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• Affably Evil: If you can get past the vivisection and Mind Rape part, he's a genius with a dry sense of humor (especially towards Vorinclex) who is in good terms with Elesh Norn. He's the most patient among the Praetors, even encouraging his underlings to report mistakes so that their process can improve. In Neon Dynasty he solemnly welcomes Tamiyo as the first compleated planeswalker and is sincerely elated at the progress their faction will reach thanks to her.
• Alpha Strike: The final chapter of his Saga lets you cast as many spells from your hand as you want, for 0 mana. Given that the saga also takes away your maximum hand size and lets you double the size of your hand every turn leading up to this, you're probably going to have most of your deck in your hand when this chapter comes around. And at this point, why hold anything back?
• Awesome, but Impractical: True of most of the Praetor cycle, but he's the most so at ten mana. If you can get him out (reanimation works), he'll draw you seven cards every turn and reduce your opponents' hand sizes to zero. Victory is almost guaranteed after that. His second iteration is more accessible at seven mana.
• Badass Bookworm: For a scientist, he's a tough fighter. Both of his creature cards are moderately-sized, and he puts up quite a fight in the Neon Dynasty story.
• The Bad Guy Wins: In Neon Dynasty, he escapes Kamigawa with Tamiyo as a compleated planeswalker, something that even Yawgmoth didn't manage to obtain.
• Batman Gambit: He oversaw the contamination of the Quicksilver Sea, letting the natural curiosity of blue creatures like vedalkens and neuroks push them to study the glistening oil.
• Benevolent Boss: He appears to be forgiving towards his minions as long as they report their mistakes, a far cry from the sadism of some old Phyrexians like Tsabo Tavoc.
• Berserk Button: It's difficult to notice due to his stoic behavior, but he really doesn't like when someone challenges his intelligence and/or philosophy. He's constantly dismissing Vorinclex's worldview and, despite being in much better term with Elesh Norn, he's piqued by some assumptions she made about his ability, probably concerning the compleation of planeswalkers, before he accomplished the task.
• Beyond the Impossible: He manages to devise a way to compleat planeswalkers without removing their souls, making Phyrexian planeswalkers possible for the first time.
• Big Bad: Of Neon Dynasty (alongside Tezzeret), where he manipulates Kamigawa's underground to experiment on the kami.
• Blue Is Calm: He takes this trope to an uncanny extreme, being almost unflappable in any situation.
• Bright Is Not Good: His residence, Lumengrid, is a pretty place filled with blue light from Mirrodin's Blue Sun and he and his servants have pristine silver metal on their bodies, but they're evil.
• Chrome Champion: His body is made of shiny metal.
• The Corrupter: A special case even among his kind, as he has found a way to compleat planeswalkers.
• Counter Spell: As the blue praetor, it should come as no surprise that he's good at countering the spells of his foes. His Progress Tyrant iteration automatically counters any one artifact, instant, or sorcery that your opponent casts per turn, while his March of the Machine iteration has Ward 2, meaning he counters any spell or ability targeting him unless your opponent pays two more mana.
• Creepily Long Arms: Being the scientist he is, they are likely very handy for... experimentation.
• Creepy Blue Eyes: When injecting himself with inkmoth serum, his eyes are similar to blue neon lights.
• Creepy Monotone: Implied by his dialogue in Neon Dynasty, where he uses the same fluency to speak with his underlings or to sic the guards on an intruder.
• The Creon: He progressively emerges as Elesh Norn's right-hand, and he seems content with his position. It takes him being mutilated without reason to finally try to usurp her role.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: He isn't killed by Norn or any of the rebel forces fighting against New Phyrexia, he's killed when a Zhalfirin Warrior smashes him in to a vat of his creations, who promptly eat him.
• Deadpan Snarker: Particularly towards Vorinclex.
• Determinator: As he says, mistakes are only abhorrent if they go undocumented.
• Disney Death: He gets slashed "severely" by the Wanderer, but the final story implies he's alive. There's even some sneaky Gameplay and Story Integration going on - Wanderer's Intervention, the card that depicts the event, deals 4 damage, but Jin as he appears on Kamigawa has 5 toughness, meaning he would have survived that.
• Emperor Scientist: Of his faction.
• Evil Genius: His alignment with blue mana naturally makes him a curious, inquisitive, intelligent being. His nature as a Phyrexian makes him a killing machine with zero compassion and a drive to spread Phyrexia's "perfection". Put two and two together and...
• Expy: The Evil Genius of the group with a propension for Mind Rape? A slender, warped body that reflects an equally twisted and labyrinthic mind? Associated with blue and silver? Focused more on perfecting the process than on reaching a particular endgoal? An intense rivalry with a green and decidely more "organic" fellow? You get the idea that he and Tzeentch would get along well.
• Frontline General: As shown in Mirrodin Besieged, he would lead the Phyrexian troops this way.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: If you're playing with a 60 card deck, there is a very real possibility that you'll run out of cards and lose the game before you can defeat your opponent.
• Idiot Ball: He grabs it and holds it very tightly during the siege of New Phyrexia. Even if Elesh Norn has attacked him shortly before, one would expect the cunning and patient Jin-Gitaxias to bide his own time, perhaps letting Norn's legions and the Zhalfirin soldiers decimate each other. Instead, he tries to usurp Norn's role during the battle, while standing on top of a huge vat containing newts that for some reason wouldn't recognize him as their own creator or ruler. This leads directly to his death.
• Irony: Urza was mainly aligned with blue mana, and it's the blue Praetor who makes Yawgmoth's dream of compleating planeswalkers come true.
• Just Think of the Potential!: Unfortunately, what Phyrexians call "potential" tends to be less-than-optimal for pretty much everyone else.
• Knight Templar: He's obsessed with perfecting Phyrexia.
• Large and in Charge: He's thin and hunched but still abnormally tall.
• Laser-Guided Karma: It's non-fatal and ultimately doesn't impede his plans in the long run, but still. Jin-Gitaxias is well known for his love of vivisection. The Wanderer takes him out of the fight in Neon Dynasty by almost cutting him in half.
• Lean and Mean: He is thin as a stick and a horrific Evil Genius.
• Machine Worship: Some flavor texts have him referring to his works as "blessing".
• Mad Scientist: Not the typical Laughing Mad type, however. He's focused and professional in his work, which arguably makes him scarier.
• Meaningful Name: "Jin" is a romanization of the Chinese word for "metal".
• Mechanical Lifeforms: Both he himself and most of the things he creates.
• Mind Rape: His experiments concern the mind as well as the body. This translates into the gameplay:
  • His Core Augur iteration allows you to abnormally enlarge your knowledge (by drawing the equivalent of a starting hand) while forcing your opponents to forsake their own.
  • His Progress Tyrant iteration lets you copy one spell you play per turn while countering one cast by your opponent. Keep in mind that your hand represents your magical knowledge.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: In a very short time, Elesh Norn calls him a heretic, tries to choke him and rips an arm from his body, all for suggesting a logical course of action during the battle with Elspeth. As Elspeth notices, Gitaxias subsequently abandons Norn and flees to save his own hide.
• Never Found the Body: He's last seen swarmed by his own newts and we don't get any information about his final condition, differently from the other four praetors.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • He suggests to compleat Elspeth as soon as she's in Norn's grasp, which would be the most logical solution. Since Elesh is undergoing a severe Villainous Breakdown, his reward is a grievous assault and an arm torn from his body.
  • He's known for being rather patient with his minions, and one comics shows him as protective towards his own larvae. The moment he falls into the vat during the final battle, however, his own newts devour him.
• Not the Fall That Kills You…: He falls into a huge vat where he's promptly attacked by newts.
• Not So Above It All: For a blue-aligned Phyrexian scientist who is constantly dispassionate, he seems to enjoy Kamigawan garments, either for their level of refinement or as a sort of concealment. Also, unless his dominus Tekuthal is using the marionettes of Vorinclex and Urabrask to help his machinations, then Gitaxias probably likes to mock his least favorite brothers.
• Only Sane Man: He's this among the Praetors, at least for Phyrexian standards. Urabrask is a conflicted recluse, Sheoldred is a backstabber who doesn't learn from her past mistakes, Vorinclex is a proficient but short-sighted predator, and Elesh Norn is a fanatical religious zealot who proves to be not nearly as perfect and emotionless as she appears. Jin-Gitaxias is the only one who actively tries to adapt and learn from the past, pushing forward the cause without being blinded by sectarianism.
• Pet the Dog: He might not be in a full Villainous Friendship with Sheoldred, but they seem to be the only two Praetors who don't lambast and openly criticize each other.
• Pragmatic Villainy: He doesn't take part openly to the struggle for power between the other Praetors and doesn't limit his research to blue mana. Despite his contempt for Vorinclex, it seems to work on some level.
• Properly Paranoid: He never trusted Urabrask at all, and would often send his spies to the Quiet Furnace. His suspects would later prove to be justified. He's also diffident towards Tezzeret, who has shown time and again to be a self-serving backstabber.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: He gives a short, sharp one to Elesh Norn as the latter bawls for her forces to protect her instead of fleeing.
  Jin-Gitaxias: Your ego is a tumor on whatever talent you might have had. New Phyrexia has evolved beyond you. But your scraps may serve some use.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: He will still alter his underlings like the other Praetors, but he's above killing for a mistake when there's a lesson to learn. He also treats Tamiyo with respect, probably since she's his masterpiece of compleation.
• The Red Mage: Besides Blue mana he apparently can make use of Black mana and White mana, as implied in the page on the Planeswalker's Guide to New Phyrexia.
• Reduced Mana Cost: His saga, The Great Synthesis, lets you cast any number of spells from your hand for free as its final chapter.
• The Rival: To Vorinclex.
  "I despise Vorinclex and his slobberings about 'evolution'. Only I know true progress."
• Science Is Good: Ironically, this is one of the bases of his worldview. He's not afraid of mistakes as long as one can learn from them, and is willing to experiment new ways to improve the process of the Great Synthesis. He would be the dream leader of any research group if only he weren't, you know, a Phyrexian Praetor.
• Sinister Surveillance: His blighted agents spy on the Quiet Furnace, and his infamous probe allows you to look at your opponent's hand.
• Spikes of Villainy: His upper body has a very pointy design.
• The Spock: The most logical and scientific Praetor.
• Spock Speak: In Neon Dynasty, his way of speaking is impeccably analytical.
• The Starscream: He also plots against Karn, although he doesn't mind if someone else takes the throne so long as said person is competent.
• The Stoic: At worst, he reacts with a slightly altered voice. Even the heavy wound inflicted by the Wanderer doesn't faze him that much.
• Stronger Than They Look: Mirroring Vorinclex on Kaldheim, he proves to be extremely tough in Neon Dynasty. His size and being made almost entirely of metal surely helps.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Not just with Vorinclex. In Neon Dynasty, he teams up with Tezzeret and, despite Gitaxias' usual stoicism, it's clear they don't think highly of each other.
• They Would Cut You Up: If Jin-Gitaxias gets his claws on you, do not expect a quick death.
• Totalitarian Utilitarian: While Elesh Norn focuses on the the words of the Argent Etchings, Jin-Gitaxias puts the results, or the "Great Synthesis" first. Strangely enough, the two of them get along well.
• Uncertain Doom: He falls into a vat of his own newts and is apparently devoured by them, but he's already proven able to withstand a huge amount of damage. The story doesn't focus on him anymore after that.
• The Unsmile: His unique facial conformation gives him a sort of permanent rictus.
• Verbal Tic: Jin uses a lot of long-winded words.
• Villainous Friendship:
  • He appears to be in one with Elesh Norn, and he enjoys a certain degree of independence compared to Sheoldred and Vorinclex. The end of Neon Dynasty suggests it might have gone sour and he may be plotting against her, but he still provides her with the compleation of planeswalkers. By the time Elesh wounds him in March of the Machine for merely trying to help her, it goes awry and he leaves her alone against Elspeth, later trying to usurp her position.
• Villains Out Shopping: During his stay on Kamigawa, he's depicted wearing local garments, (Such as in his "Progress Tyrant" card) which can make you wonder why he felt the need to get them in the first place.
• Visionary Villain: Even the successful compleation of a planeswalker is just another step in the neverending process of perfection.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Assuming that the metallic outer layer on his body is a sort of skin, he wears what seems to be a lab apron on his waist. On Kamigawa he wears more strands of cloth.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: His aim is to create the perfect New Phyrexia. At any cost. Differently from Elesh Norn, he sticks to the cause until the very end.
• You Have Failed Me: Decidedly averted. To Jin-Gitaxias, the only reason to be ashamed of a failure is if you don't learn anything in the process. As such, he's the least likely of the Praetors to off an underling for a mistake.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Delivers this to Elesh Norn (see "The Reason You Suck" Speech above) when he fully betrays her in the final moments of the March of the Machine story.

Sheoldred

"Welcome to perfection."

Color: Black

Race: Phyrexian

Class: Praetor

The Black Praetor. Maintains her position by out-backstabbing the other members of the Seven Steel Thanes.

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• Ambiguous Situation: After pending her debut in Scars of Mirrodin hating Norn, the Mother of Machines lays waste to her domain and yet she survives to serve her. While undoubtedly coerced, it isn't clear if is the result of a genuine agreement (many of the Thanes swore loyalty to Norn, and Sheoldred herself is depicted doing so) or if she's being brainwashed (in Dominaria United she does have Norn's white porcelain plates on her chest and is almost completely skinless). Later sets reveal that she was buying time while still plotting agains Norn.
• Ascended Fanboy: Keskit, the Flesh Sculptor is a Phyrexian with an utter obsession with Sheoldred, remaking himself (and others) in her image after he became her right-hand man.
• Cassandra Truth: Her last words about Norn using New Phyrexia for her own gains turn out to be true by the end of March of the Machine.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Probably the most deceitful of all Praetors, and that's saying something!
• Continuity Cavalcade: Her second iteration is called "the Apocalypse" like the expansion detailing the final showdown between old Phyrexia and Dominaria. In the same card, she's controlling the lower body of a dreadnought and the flavor text mentions Gix, the main villain of Urza's Saga.
• Creepy Centipedes: As of Dominaria United she traded her spider-like lower body for a titanic one resembling a millipede.
• Dark Is Evil: Gee, isn't it shocking that the Praetor aligned with black mana is not a very good person? Admittedly, she is hardly much worse than the Praetors of other colors, aside from the Red one.
• Defiant to the End: After being captured by Norn's faction, her last words before being executed were accusing Elesh Norn of being Secretly Selfish.
• Fatal Flaw: Her ambition coupled with a subconscious desire of emulating Yawgmoth's way. While Sheoldred is a cunning and capable backstabber, she never considers that Yawgmoth kept the whole Phyrexia under his command for nine millennia without any true competition. Instead, Sheoldred has to deal both with the internal backstabbing in her faction (which she manages to overcome) and the conflict with the other Praetors. Elesh Norn is an apt Manipulative Bitch by herself and in a better position to start with, so Sheoldred ends up failing twice, the second time fatally.
• Flaying Alive: As seen in cards like Skinrender, her faction is prone to this.
• Karmic Death: She's the one who compleated Ajani in the first place to use him as a sleeper agent, though when he's brought back to New Phyrexia he ends up devoting himself to Elesh Norn's faction. Guess who ends up being the one Norn assigns to execute Sheoldred?
• Killed Off for Real: Ajani executes her on behalf of Norn for her attempted rebellion in the first chapter of the March of the Machine story.
• Knowledge Broker: "Sheoldred weaves every thread of information into a noose to hang her enemies."
• Manipulative Bitch: She has to be, if she wants to remain the leader of the Seven Steel Thanes and eventually head of the New Phyrexia. She is ultimately Out-Gambitted by Elesh Norn, although she survives and the ending of Dominaria United implies that the two are now working together. As of Phyrexia: All Will Be One, however, Sheoldred is still conspiring against her.
• Life Drain: Of sorts. In exchange for the necromancy she was capable of in her Whispering One iteration, Sheoldred, the Apocalypse gives 2 Life to her player whenever they draw a card, and deals 2 damage to their opponents whenever they draw a card.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Sheol is Hebrew for "grave", "pit", or "abode of the dead". It is also the Jewish afterlife, described as a place of darkness.
  • Also, the rank of Thane is a reference to Macbeth, which suits well her treacherous nature.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: "Sheol" + "dread".
• Necromancer: Appearently she has "necromantic visions". In-game, her Whispering One iteration also has the ability to raise her dead allies from the grave while forcing the opponent to sacrifice theirs.
• One to Million to One: In "Echoes in the Dark", she splits her humanoid torso into dozens of spider-like creatures to get away from Karn, who had just buried his fist in her gut and was about to set off the bomb he was holding.
• Pet the Dog: A mutual instance with Jin-Gitaxias, as they might not be friends but there aren't flavor texts about Sheoldred spewing her usual venom about her brother's work.
• Puppeteer Parasite: One of her preferred ways of getting that pesky "free will" thing out of the way when it comes to making new servants for Phyrexia.
• Redeeming Replacement: She intends to succeed where Gix previously failed.
• Reforged into a Minion: It seems to be her situation as of Dominaria United. Her body looks flayed and covered in porcelain, she compares herself to Gix and leads Ajani and Karn to Elesh Norn in New Phyrexia, things that she would have never done before her fall from power.
• Spider People: She has a humanoid upperbody attached to an enormous spider like creature. However, she can actually detach from it, making it more of a Horse of a Different Color.
• The Spymaster: Her motto is "to know is to rule" and her preferred weapons are rumor-mongering and manipulation. She's survived and dominated the Chronic Backstabbing Disorder-fest that is Black Phyrexia by being better, more well-informed than the rest.
• The Starscream: She might be working under Elesh Norn as of late, but being incorrigibly ambitious, she's working against her at the same time.
• Took a Level in Badass: In gameplay terms, Sheoldred, Whispering One is usually seen as the most underwhelming Praetor, with an unwieldy mana cost for a situational keyword and an ability that doesn't swing the game anywhere as much as those of most other Praetors. Her the Apocalpyse incarnation in Dominaria United is slightly weaker stat-wise, but comes with a more versatile keyword, a Simple, yet Awesome ability that makes it brutally hard for aggro decks to race her while also punishing control decks for drawing extra cards, and costs just over half the mana compared to Whispering One. Ironically, she nerfs the Phyrexian Dreadnoughts, one of which she uses as a body - a normal dreadnought is a whopping 11/11, but Sheoldred stapled to one is only a 4/5.
• Touch of Death: Fittingly enough for a Black Praetor, Sheoldred's Apocalypse incarnation comes with the Deathtouch keyword, allowing her to One-Hit KO any creature she makes contact with.
• White and Red and Eerie All Over: In Dominaria United her card has red exposed muscles and white porcelain plates (well, on her torso; her lower body is a Phyrexian dreadnought), presumably to show subservience to Norn.

Urabrask

"All will be reforged in the fires of glory."

Color: Red

Race: Phyrexian

Class: Praetor

The Red Praetor and leader of the Quiet Furnace.

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• An Arm and a Leg: Elesh Norn has him captured and dismembered limb by limb in March of the Machine.
• Anti-Villain: He may be a Phyrexian, but the color he is aligned to allows him to actually feel emotions, which leads him to be less hostile to Mirran life than other Phyrexians. As of New Capenna he goes full renegade against Phyrexia and helps out the heroes.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Even among his fellow Praetors, he's an enigma due to the inner conflict between his Phyrexian nature and the chaotic essence of red mana.
• Body Horror: As a Phyrexian this is a given, but the planar bridge especially messed him up. Vorinclex was able to recuperate by assimilating others, while Jin-Gitaxias likely had minions to sacrifice people for him. Urabrask, all alone aside from Tezzeret, is forced to slowly rebuild himself, with only some help from Vivien. His husk is completely torn apart and exposed flesh can be seen.
• Chrome Champion: His body is covered in shining red metal.
• The Comically Serious: Even the most emotional Praetor is still rather stoic, though he also seems to be rather socially awkward and Literal-Minded in conversation. Vivien has to actively stop herself from snorting when he, completely serious, requests she "break [New Capenna] faster" after she points out the City is nearing its breaking point and Elspeth likely won't find what she's looking for until it does.
• Defector from Decadence: As of New Capenna he has had it with Norn's authoritarianism and decided to take her out, allying himself with Tezzeret and Vivien Reid.
• Draconic Abomination: His appearance is that of a twisted metallic dragon with incandescent limbs and exhaust vents on his shoulders.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The only Praetor to have any, as a matter of fact.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: For as evil as he can be considered, this is his ideal version of Phyrexia. He actually would rather his underlings keep the best assets and skills of their original forms and use them to contribute to Phyrexia as a whole instead of forcing them into his design and beliefs like the other Praetors. In addition, he wants others to choose to join Phyrexia instead of being forcibly compleated, benefiting his ideals of freedom.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Not surprising for a Red-aligned character, his profile says he has temper issues. In spite of this, when he's actually portrayed in story he has a rather calm, bland voice, showing that even his emotions don't take the machine out of a phyrexian. That being said, in Streets of New Capenna he's rather impatient at the prospect of having to wait until Elspeth sorts her own issues out before Vivien can get her to meet with him. He doesn't raise his voice, but he does continuously ask if there's any way to speed up the process.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: It's worth noting that Urabrask is rebelling against Elesh Norn specifically, as her vision of Phyrexia as The Dividual offends his Mad Artist sensibilities. He is still more than happy to spread Phyrexia's influence, just on his terms.
• Heel–Face Turn: As of New Capenna he's officially fighting against Elesh Norn and the rest of New Phyrexia, refusing to embrace her vision of one multiverse under Phyrexia.
• The Heretic: His empathy and natural desire for freedom completely separates him from other Phyrexians and especially the other Praetors' driving goal of making the multiverse into Phyrexia. His second card even gives him the title of "Heretic Praetor".
• "I Hate" Song: "Fallen Praetor", his theme song in the New Capenna soundtrack, is a dark industrial metal piece where he lashes out against Phyrexia's single-minded quest to assimilate everything into itself, and shows that despite his compleation, the Mirran in him still hates Phyrexia for what it did to his home.
  Cracking grounds beneath our feet
  Laying pipe and circuitry
  Transforming our villages into
  Mechanical digestive systems
  Mechanizing
  Flattening me
  Wrought with disease
  Blanket of weeds
  We are fed through the conveyor belts of their industry
  Like bullets, like cattle, helplessly witnessing our end
• I Just Want to Be Free: His ultimate motivations lay in his beliefs of freedom, and the reason he hates Elesh Norn so much is that her leadership ultimately only leads towards all of Phyrexia being subservient to her and her alone. As he points out to Chandra when she asks why he's helping the Resistance:
  "Even a newt understands. Urabrask serves no one."
• Hypocrite: For someone who lambasts Norn for her conquer plot, he doesn't mind allying with Tezzeret, who was essential in Nicol Bolas' reign of terror, and Sheoldred, a Manipulative Bitch who actively seeks to effectively replace Norn. Though at the end of the day, both prove to be an Enemy Mine, and his primary alliance ends up being with the Mirran Resistance first and foremost when it comes time for the Final Battle.
• Mad Artist: It is implied that he wants to turn Mirrodin/New Phyrexia into what he considers aesthetically pleasing.
• Meaningful Name: Urabrask is similar to Ouroboros, which suits well his desire to keep reforging New Phyrexia.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Despite being a Phyrexian, he is capable of empathy and doesn't share the fanatical desire to compleat all living things across all planes at all cost. This gets him branded as a heretic by Elesh Norn.
• Never Found the Body: Well, never found the parts that mattered, at least. He's last seen dismembered but conscious, not unlike Karn was.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His off-hand ruling of the Quiet Furnace ultimately causes a good deal of problems during March of the Machine, as the Furnace Host end up being deployed to wreak havoc on the multiverse alongside the other Praetors' forces while he's too busy helping the Mirran Resistance to command them to stand down.
• Our Dragons Are Different: His appearence has led to the speculation that he is a "compleated" furnace dragon (a species that once occured in Mirrodin).
• Poor Communication Kills: His official decree was for the Mirran Resistance to be left alone and not harmed by the rest of the Furnace Layer. Unfortunately, several of his followers seem to think that capturing and forcing Mirrans to accept compleation counts as "helping" them instead.
• Redemption Earns Life: Possibly. He is the only remotely sympathetic Praetor, and the only one not confirmed dead by Word of God at the end of March of the Machine.
• Red Is Heroic: Not heroic per se, but he is definitely the least malevolent of the praetors, and his metal-skin is as red as his alignment.
• Red Ones Go Faster: As a Red Praetor, this is no surprise.
  • His Hidden iteration makes it such that while he's on the field, he grants every creature on your side Haste while every creature your opponent brings out comes to the field tapped.
  • Meanwhile, not only does his Heretic Praetor version have Haste, he makes everyone exile cards from the top of their library each turn, which they're allowed to cast until the end of the turn. The difference between you and your opponents is that this happens during your upkeep seperate from your draws, meaning you still have your regular draw and can potentially push out spells faster, whereas for them it replaces their first draw, potentially denying them a draw if he exiles something they can't play immediately, and even then said play stands a good chance of being suboptimal for the sake of not losing cards.
  • His March of the Machine iteration loses Haste, but what he gets in exchange is First Strike and the ability to deal 1 damage to an opponent every time you cast a Sorcery or Instant spell and gives you an extra Red Mana every time. This on top of the fact that he now costs 1 less mana to play^note The previous two versions of Urabrask would've both had a converted mana cost of 5 each, two of which have to be Red; this means he now costs 4 mana, two of which still have to be red.
• The Shut-In: He shuts the Furnace from interferences from the rest of New Phyrexia and barely if ever interacts with the other Praetors, focusing only on his own vision.
• Token Good Teammate: He and his entire faction are, due to their red mana, not entirely bound to Phyrexian will and are capable of not compassion per se, but at least empathy. He's betraying the rest of the Phyrexians (that is, betraying them for a different reason than wanting the big chair for himself) by allowing Mirran refugees to hide within his territory, and banned the other factions from entering. It's mostly a case of him thinking the Mirrans are merely misguided, not abominable, and that he has bigger priorities whenever they're not actively sabotaging the Great Furnace.
• Token Heroic Orc: "Heroic" might be a slight overstatement, but he's the one of the few Phyrexians (and the only Praetor) to not be driven by a zealous desire to turn all life into mechanical abominations. As of New Capenna he seems to be a full Anti-Hero.
• Uncertain Doom: At the end of the Scars of Mirrodin block, Elesh Norn obliterates the Great Furnace but Urabrask's fate is left unclear, though later stories did confirm he survived and is now formulating a new plan with Tezzeret's help on New Capenna.
  • Returns to this status after March of the Machine. The last time he's seen, Norn tortures him by tearing all his limbs off to the point of effectively quartering him, but it's noted by the cards in the set that she decreed her harvesters to "let the traitor be" before having what remained carried off, still conscious. Considering Praetors have survived similar or worse injuries, such as Jin-Gitaxias getting cut in half in Neon Dynasty and Urabrask's own aforementioned Body Horror incident during Streets of New Capenna, it's unclear if he's truly dead or not.
• Verbal Tic: According to the designer of the Phyrexian language, Urabrask is unique in that he speaks with an accent and uses slang.
• What Is This Feeling?: Due to being aligned with the color of emotions, Red Phyrexians, including Urabrask, have some empathy which is completely alien to the Phyrexians. While their feelings disturbs them to a degree, that doesn't stop them from hesitating to fight the Mirrian Resistance because of their emotions.
• Wild Card: He works against Elesh Norn, but he does it mostly for his own vision. His odd behavior makes him unpredictable to potential allies as well.

Vorinclex

"Domination by the strongest—that is all that matters in the Tangle now."

Color: Green

Race: Phyrexian

Class: Praetor

The Green Praetor and boss of the Vicious Swarm.

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• Anti-Air: Fittingly, and as of March of the Machine, Vorinclex now has the Reach keyword.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Fittingly enough for a Green Praetor, he always has the Trample keyword.
• The Assimilator: Whatever means he used to get to Kaldheim stripped him of his fleshy bits. He grows it back by consuming wildlife and making their flesh his own. By the time he attacks Esika's sanctum, he's fully restored. He also speaks with a Voice of the Legion made up his victims.
• The Bad Guy Wins: He leaves Kaldheim with the tyrite, having also mauled Esika (and implicitly killing the Skoti gods) and possibly leaving behind the phyrexian corruption judging by all the fungus-like metal spreading about.
• Book Dumb: While he is quite brutal and dislikes thinking and sentience in general, he can be viciously cunning if he wants to. In the Kaldheim storyline, he blackmails Tibalt to make him cause chaos, using it as a distraction to sneak into Esika's secret sanctum, steal a sample of tyrite and get away from the plane.
• The Brute: The largest and physically strongest Praetor. He's also the most feral one.
• The Bus Came Back: He makes a surprise return in Kaldheim, where the Phyrexians have been able to send him by unknown means.
• Don't Think, Feel: He wants to eliminate sentience and turn the whole Mirrodin into a lawless predatory hunting ground.
• Dumb Muscle: At least, that's how Jin-Gitaxias sees him. Given how Vorinclex's plan boils down to eliminating all sapient thought and that the Green Praetor is so obsessed with hunting and killing that he's barely a figurehead in his own faction, the Blue Praetor could be right. Averted horrifically in Kaldheim where it is made clear that, as much as he doesn't like to think, he is a master strategist when pressed.
• Evilutionary Biologist: In his case, he is obsessed with the idea of survival of the fittest and as such is behind the creation of horrific behemoths.
• Eye Scream: By the time the Kaldheim storyline ends, he has restored his body with the exception of his eyes. While the Planar Bridge disintegrates organic matter, the effect it may have had on the eyes must have been particularly painful.
• Genius Bruiser: He's not as smart as Elesh Norn or Jin-Gitaxias, but he is definitely not stupid unlike what the latter thinks he is. He can be deceptively cunning if he wants to, as seen when he fled and used Tibalt as proxy to get what he wanted.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Of Kaldheim. Tibalt is the main driver of the story's conflict, but Vorinclex was the one who blackmailed Tibalt into causing the conflict in the first place (admittedly much to the devil's pleasure) in order for him to enact his Phyrexian plots.
• Irony: Vorinclex's sheer obsession with and lionization of raw might gets undermined when an utterly unknown Zhalfirin soldier—implying that she's probably far from the kind of ultra-mighty being he'd consider to be the only thing worthy of consideration—beheads him.
• It Can Think: While he speaks not a word as Kaya and the Omenseekers confront him, they soon realize that the behemoth is capable of strategizing in their fight against him. After then he blackmailed Tibalt to start the Doomskar so he could charge straight into Esika. It worked. Ironic, since Vorinclex despises thinking.
• Large and in Charge: He is the leader of the Green Phyrexian faction, and he is immense and the strongest Praetor stat-wise.
• The McCoy: After Elesh secures her position, he becomes this in opposition to Jin-Gitaxias.
• Meaningful Name: "Vore" is a Greek suffix related to eating.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: It has the word "Vore" in it, and ends with an X, so you know the guy is not to be messed with.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: He legitimately wants to be stupid, but he's insanely clever when he's backed into a corner.
• Off with His Head!: How a Zhalfirin warrior kills him.
• Poison and Cure Gambit: He blackmails Tibalt into doing his bidding by poisoning him, telling him that he'd remove it only if Tibalt caused a "distraction."
• The Rival: To Jin-Gitaxias.
• Smarter Than They Look: He isn't stupid, he just doesn't want to think for most of the time. On Kaldheim he shows that, while still brutal and not exactly a rocket scientist, he's an efficient strategist who can endanger a whole plane by proxy.
• The Social Darwinist: Does it still count as "social" if his idea of "society" is just a forest overtaken by enormous horrorbeasts? At any rate, the idea that only the strong survive is the cornerstone of his philosophy, so he creates the absolute strongest abominations around, physically speaking.
• Terraforming: In his March of the Machine iteration, he gains the ability to straight-up allow you to search your deck for 2 Forest cards and put them into your hand as soon as he hits the field.
• Uncertain Doom: He is decapitated during the events of March of the Machine, but his previous appearance in Kaldheim has already shown that he is able to recover from serious injuries by absorbing other organisms.
• Villainous Glutton: His name has the word "vore" in it and his title is "Voice of Hunger", so...
  • Manifests somewhat in gameplay:
    • In his Voice of Hunger iteration, whenever your opponents tap lands for mana, they cannot untap those lands at the next turn; at the same time, he grants extra mana of any color for every land you tap for mana.
    • In his Monstrous Raider iteration, he makes it such that whenever you place any sort of counter on on any target, they get twice as many counters, while your opponents place half as many counters rounded down^note For calculation purposes, say your opponent was about to put a counter on one of their creatures, that creature gets no counters at all; likewise, if they were to get 2 counters, they would only get one..
• Voice of the Legion: His voice is described as an artificial union of several different ones.
• Xanatos Gambit: His blackmailing of Tibalt can be considered this. Despite Tibalt cannot be compleated, if he does not wreck havoc in Kaldheim he will spread Phyrexian corruption to other planes. If he does, then he gets what he exactly wants because of Tibalt keeping Kaya and the Skoti busy. Helped by Tibalt coming to Kaldheim with the sole intent of doing what Vorinclex tells him to do anyways.

Geth

Color: Black

Race: Phyrexian Zombie (formerly Moriok human)

Once the mighty lord of the Vault of Whispers, he was overthrown after trying to pull a You Have Failed Me on the wrong minion. After spending some time as nothing more than an undead talking head, he became a collaborator with the Phyrexians in exchange for a new body. He is now trying to claw his way back up to the top of the heap, a task complicated by all the other Phyrexians who are also vying for the position.

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• Back for the Dead: He reappears in the Phyrexia: All Will Be One short story A Hollow Body, where Ixhel brings Atraxa his head. Though it's also Subverted as she then makes his head part of her new creation Vishgraz, which seems to at least possess his memories. The story ends with Vishgraz implying it's defecting, and Ixhel letting him go despite longing to follow.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: He betrayed and outlived Memnarch, then joined Phyrexia without hesitation, then betrayed them (which is usually impossible). The man is truly a master of his craft, and not even dying the three or four times will keep him from his work.
• Les Collaborateurs: And he brought along the entire Moriok tribe of humans with him.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Punished his incompetent minion Yert by feeding him to a vampire. Result: Yert became a vampire, gaining both the strength and motivation to overthrow Geth.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: Once lord of the Mephidross, now competing to just be a feudal lord within Phyrexian society.
• Losing Your Head: His only organic part left, and constantly falling off his body constructs.
• Magically-Binding Contract: His primary weapon. If you break it, he owns your soul.
• Sickly Green Glow: Seen in Promise of Power.
• Token Evil Teammate: To Glissa, during the time after his overthrow and before the Phyrexian invasion

Glissa Sunseeker/the Traitor/Sunslayer

Color: Green (primary), Black

Race: Phyrexian Zombie Elf

Class: Warrior

Once a hero of Mirrodin who defeated Memnarch, her efforts are forgotten and she was shunned and blamed by the Mirrans for everything about the Phyrexian takeover. She's now compleated and became Vorinclex's top enforcer.

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• Brought Down to Normal: For a while she was a potential planeswalker, but she lost her spark after nearly dying in a fight against Memnarch.
• The Dragon: Vorinclex's (alleged) second in command.
• Dragon-in-Chief: As Vorinclex has little interest in things that don't involve hunting and killing or making new monsters and setting them loose in the Tangle, Glissa is for all intents and purposes the one who actually runs the Vicious Swarm.
• Face–Monster Turn: If her title as "the Traitor" didn't clue you in. By All Will Be One, she rechristens herself as "the Sunslayer" to establish that she has turned against Mirrodin to become Vorinclex's top enforcer. What makes this a Face–Monster Turn and not a Face–Heel Turn is that she didn't take the Compleation voluntarily. The Glistening Oil just got into her.
• Fallen Hero: Not of her own will, but there she is, from one of the staunchest defenders of Mirrodin to the right hand of Vorinclex.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Only a few surviving Mirrans (the storyteller Thrun among them) know of her heroic triumph over Memnarch, most knowing her only as a Phyrexian traitor.
• Luke Nounverber: Glissa Sunseeker, and Glissa Sunslayer.
• Our Elves Are Different: A phyrexianised elf, who is a also a zombie for some reason.
• Touch of Death: Glissa, the Traitor and Glissa Sunslayer are among the rare units with both first strike and deathtouch, which means that any creature that duels her without being indestructible is guaranteed to meet an untimely death. Glissa, Herald of Predation doesn't have it naturally, but instead has the ability to grant it to all Phyrexians on her side of the board, including herself.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Can they do anything to make the poor elf's existence any more outright soul-crushing? Her family is violently killed by little automated thresher machines. She endures a great many difficulties in collecting the Macguffins of Power only to have them turned on her almost immediately by the Big Bad. Her Heroic Sacrifice lets Slobad save the people of the world, transporting those who were abducted from other planes back to their original planes... including every one of Glissa's friends (except Slobad) and her only surviving family member, but not her, ensuring her heroism is forgotten by everyone else. When she gets back, she's blamed for everything bad that happened in the last several years before being corrupted by Phyrexian oil and turned into a powerful enemy of the same world she'd worked so hard to save.
• Villainous Friendship: She and Vorniclex seem to genuinely get along, even taking his Social Darwinist personality into account. To the point they have vicious yet playful sparring sessions together regularly.
• Villainous Rescue: In a very twisted way, New Phyrexia and Vorinclex actually saved her from her sorrow of being shunned and ostracized by Mirrodin's residents by giving her a new purpose. Unfortunately, her new "saviors" are way worse than the Mirrans who are ungrateful of her.

Atraxa

Color: White, Blue, Black, and Green

Race: Phyrexian Angel Horror

What is now Atraxa was once an angel who fought against the unstoppable force of New Phyrexia. Captured while fighting to save the Mirran Resistance, she was brought before the Praetors, who pooled their talents to create the icon of New Phyrexia's final victory over Mirrodin. While Urabrask refused to assist in the process, his four fellows worked their terrible craft and Atraxa was compleated. Now herald of the Praetors, she is a horrifying embodiment of Mirrodin's corruption.

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• Abusive Parents: For a broad sense of parent, that is. She has created Ixhel and is dismissive when the latter brings him her own creation. Even Elesh Norn is more motherly with her underlings.
• All Your Powers Combined: She has 4 keyword abilities, one for each color (flying is traditionally blue, vigilance is white, lifelink represents black, and Deathtouch is probably provided by green, its secondary color right after black).
• Angelic Abomination: She has been compleated into one.
• Ascended Extra: As detailed below, she started as a footnote in the lore of New Phyrexia, only appearing in her own card and providing the flavor text for Grip of Phyresis before Phyrexia: All Will Be One, probably due to her being introduced in the Commander format before New Phyrexia came back to the spotlight.
• Body Horror: No, angels aren't generally supposed to have tails or wings malformed into blades.
• Broken Angel: Her creature type isn't Angel Horror for nothing.
• CCG Importance Dissonance: Game-wise, Atraxa is the most played commander since the birth of the format, being extremely versatile and with a four-color identity that allows for many different strategies. Lore-wise, she has yet to appear in a story concerning her homeplane, the only info available about her coming from the introduction to her Commander deck. Not even the Praetors mention her. Subverted when she came back as an Ascended Extra in Phyrexia: All Will Be One.
• Fallen Angel: She once fought for Mirrodin, but now she is an unwavering servant of New Phyrexia.
• Killed Off for Real: Meets her end when the remaining families of New Capenna decide to detonate the city's tether to the plane, bringing the entire city down upon her.
• Klingons Love Shakespeare: Inverted, quite gruesomely. Atraxa is first introduced to the ideas of "art" and "beauty" during her invasion on New Capenna, and she is so disgusted with the wastefulness of it all that she personally spends a significant chunk of the invasion just reducing everything in an art museum to dust.
• Light Is Not Good: She's and angel and her body is made of white metal, but she's a servant of Phyrexia with all that that entails.
• Meaningful Name: The word "Ataraxia" means a state of uninterruptable bliss, free of worry and stress. In a twisted way it is the exact state of "freedom" that the Phyrexians seek to spread. It's also similar to "atrox", which is Latin for "atrocious".
• Mouth of Sauron: As her name implies, this is her purpose.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: She has four arms.
• Plague Master: Technically her ability works on any kind of counter, but let's not kid ourselves, she's clearly made to work with Infect, the emblematic ability of New Phyrexia. (Ironically, she is more commonly run in planeswalker-based decks, where her ability to pump up the whole team's loyalty each turn truly shines.) She also has Deathtouch because of course she does.
• Spikes of Villainy: She's covered in them.

Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa

Color: White, Black, and Green

Race: Phyrexian Angel

Atraxa's creation and "daughter", in a sense. Stars in the short story A Hollow Body.

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• Defector from Decadence: She's at least on the verge of defecting by the end of her short story, letting Vishgraz, who she was ordered to destroy, go while referring to him and his creation as her first act of defiance.
• Irony: She's effectively the daughter of a Phyrexian who was worked on by every Praetor except Urabrask, yet her struggling with her own emotions means she's closer to Urabrask than any of the Praetors who made her creator.
• What Is This Feeling?: Something she struggles with immensely as a Phyrexian; Ixhel actually feels emotions, yet has no idea how to process them and tries to suppress them. She outright questions what's wrong with her several time throughout her short story.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: She tries to deny it due to the Phyrexian mindset, but its clear she desperately longs for the approval of her "mother" Atraxa. She even creates a new Phyrexian out of Geth and Belaxis' bodies in an attempt to impress her, and is crushed when Atraxa dismisses it and calls her nothing more than a weapon.
• The Xenophile: Downplayed in that she isn't sexually or romantically interested in them, but it's implied that Ixhel finds the incompleat parts of Belaxis' body attractive, or at least visually pleasing.

Compleated planeswalkers (unmarked spoilers)

While Planeswalkers were initially immune to Compleation because the spark that gives them their powers cannot be sepparated from the soul, which is lost in the process of Phyresis, Jin-Gitaxias has recently developed a method that enables the survival of both the planeswalker spark and fragments of the original personality to remain even after compleation. His first successful Phyrexian Planeswalker was Tamiyo, compleated thanks to research done on the Kami of her home plane, but others have since joined the ranks. Listed in order of compleation.

• Tamiyo
• Tibalt
• Ajani Goldmane, the Sleeper Agent
• Lukka
• Vraska
• Nahiri
• Nissa Revane
• Jace Beleren

The Domini

Color: One for each color

Race: Phyrexian Horror

As a result of the Phyrexians terraforming Mirrodin, entire swaths of land somehow came to life as colossal entities known as the Domini. While their nature is not entirely known, they seem to be allied to the Phyrexian cause. While classified as Phyrexian Horrors, they can also be considered the closest thing Phyrexians have to deities of their own. They form a cycle of cards, one per color: Mondrak (white), Tekuthal (blue), Drivnod (black), Solphim (red), and Zopandrel (green). Each of them doubles a specific effect and can gain indestructible.

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• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Being spontaneously born from parts of the New Phyrexian scenery, they are fittingly gigantic.
• Compelling Voice: The wail from Mondrak's many mouths "compels living things to assimilate into Phyrexia". This is mechanically represented by her ability allowing her controller to create twice as many creature tokens they normally would.
• Eldritch Abomination: Most of them look pretty weird and surreal, with Mondrak in particular being described as "an awe-inspiring but brain-melting sight" in official materials.
• Gale-Force Sound: In its art, Mondrak is depicted blasting several spires apart from the sheer force of her wails.
• Genius Loci: They are basically entire chunks of the New Phyrexian landscape that have come to life.
• Great Gazoo: Tekuthal, for whatever reason, is apparently almost solely driven by a desire to mock and belittle every living thing it sees, creating unflattering biomechanical "puppets" in the likeness of those nearby to enact cruel and juvenile performances for its own amusement. Needless to say, everyone in the Surgical Bay (including Jin-Gitaxias) is baffled and slightly put-off by its bizarre and aimless behavior.
• Horse of a Different Color: It's subtle, but paying close attention to the art of Sheoldred's incarnation on March of the Machines shows that she is actually attached to Drivnod's arm.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: They can each become indestructible, at a price. This makes them very difficult to deal with without a sacrifice or exile effect.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Nobody, not even the Phyrexians, really knows how these things came to be or what they really are. It is questionable whether they are even Phyrexians in the strict sense of the word, although they definitely seem to be allied with New Phyrexia for the most part.
• Physical God: While they're classified as Horrors, they seem to be the closest equivalent to deities New Phyrexia has. Their ability to become indestructible seems to allude to this, as many God creatures in MTG are either innately indestructible or can become indestructible when some conditions are fulfilled.
• Sadist: Drivnod "takes pleasure in torturing lesser life forms" and strategically nails other Phyrexians to his staff so he can enjoy their screams. This is mechanically represented by his ability allowing his controller to get twice as much benefit from effects that trigger when creatures die.

Realmbreaker

Color: Colorless (Green while bonded to Wrenn)

Realmbreaker, also known as the Phyrexian Invasion Tree, is a lifeform cultivated by Elesh Norn, deep within the mycosynth gardens of what was once Mirrodin's core. The Invasion Tree is a scion of Kaldheim's world tree, grown from a piece of Tyrite, the sap of the world tree, stolen by Vorinclex. Once fully grown, the invasion tree's omenpaths will stretch throughout the multiverse, enabling the spread of blessed perfection to other planes.

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• Battle in the Center of the Mind: How Wrenn bonds with it. She links with the tree in the physical world, then enters a vast sea of oil and finds the last vestige of organic life within — a small, sickly sapling — and helps it grow until it's strong enough to take control.
• Botanical Abomination: Realmbreaker is an unnatural creation that reflects its plane of origin. Its trunk has bark made of the porcelain-like material characteristic to the Machine Orthodoxy, it bleeds phyrexian glistening oil instead of sap, and shadows moving across it with no clear caster. Its branches stretch into the blind eternities, which is an incomprehensible mindfuck on its own. Tyvar, an elf from Kaldheim intimately familiar with the world tree, is disgusted at the abominable tree.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: For a given definition of father and son. While both are nonsapient, the World Tree of Kaldheim is a benevolent force vital to the existence of that plane and a natural creation despite its uniqueness. Realmbreaker was artificially cultivated by the Phyrexians, and exists as a way for them to spread their corruption through the multiverse.
• My God, What Have I Done?: When Wrenn bonds with it and grants it some measure of sapience, it's terrified of what the Phyrexians made it do.
• You Are Number 6: As Wrenn's new partner, Eight.

The Mirran Resistance

Melira

Color: Green (primary), White

Race: Human (Sylvok)

Class: Scout

A Sylvok woman born without metal, which leads to her getting entangled in the events of Scars of Mirrodin and becoming a key member of La Résistance during and after the Phyrexian takeover.

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• All of the Other Reindeer: She was rejected because she didn't have metal growing out of her like other Mirrans. This proves to be a blessing in New Phyrexia.
• Heroic Sacrifice: She takes some shrapnel to the stomach while helping Wrenn commune with Realmbreaker. She lasts long enough to use the last of her strength to reverse the compleation of Ajani and Nissa.
• The Immune: Born with an inexplicable resistance to the Phyrexian contagion, and was capable of gifting others with her immunity as well.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: As long as Melira, Sylvok Outcast is in play, you can't get poison counters and other creatures you control can't get -1/-1 counters. Melira, the Living Cure doesn't give total immunity to poison, but can limit it to one poison counter per turn.
• Interspecies Adoption: Abandoned in the Tangle as a child, she was found and raised by Thrun.
• The Medic: Heals those suffering from phyresis, even being capable of sharing some of her immunity.

Kemba

Color: White

Raksha Leonin

Class: Cleric, Rebel

A leonin skyhunter who was chosen as the tribe's leader after Raksha's disappearance. She later helped to rally the surviving peoples of Mirrodin after the Phyrexian invasion, and now serves the planeswalker Koth as his closest advisor.

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• Mook Maker: Kemba, Kha Regent creates a Cat token each turn for every piece of equipment she wields. Kemba, Kha Enduring can instead create Cat tokens for spending mana, and can immediately pass them a piece of equipment when they enter the field.
• Reluctant Ruler: She was hesitant to accept the title of kha after Raksha vanished, and settled on kha regent holding out hope that her predecessor would return some day. She later took on the title proper to give the surviving leonin a figure to rally around.

Thrun

Color: Green

Race: Troll

A troll hermit native to the jungles of Mirrodin, serving as its last storyteller.

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• All Trolls Are Different: The trolls of Mirrodin lived within Tel-Jilad, the largest tree in the Tangle upon which the entire history of Mirrodin was inscribed, and served as its sages and guardians.
• Fling a Light into the Future: After Tel-Jilad was destroyed by the Phyrexians, Thrun escaped and now seeks to preserve the stories of Mirrodin and pass them on to surviving generations.
• Invincible Minor Minion: Thrun, the Last Troll is protected by hexproof and regeneration, while Thrun, Breaker of Silence has hexproof against any color besides Green and is indestructible on your turn. Both iterations are immune to counterspells.
• Last of His Kind: Following Fifth Dawn, after the beings not native to Mirrodin were sent back to their respective home planes, he was the only troll who remained.
• My Greatest Failure: Foresaw the coming Phyrexian corruption but said nothing until it was too late. He then chose to punish himself for his silence, by exiling himself and living alone in the Tangle...
  • My Greatest Second Chance: ...until he found the abandoned Melira and took her under his protection, discovering that she would be crucial to the future of Mirrodin.

Jor Kadeen

Color: Red and White

Race: Human (Auriok)

Class: Warrior, Rebel

An Auriok man who serves as the Resistance's tactician, and the leader of their elite forces, the Goldwardens.

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• Determinator: Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer's flavor text says it all:
  "As long as my hand holds a blade, there’s hope for a pure Mirrodin once again."

Ghalma

Color: White

Race: Loxodon

Class: Artificer

A loxodon artificer who is responsible for maintaining the Razor Circle Passages that allow the Mirrans some measure of mobility through New Phyrexia.

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• The Engineer: Without her architectural genius, it's doubtful the Mirrans would've survived at all.
• Extra-ore-dinary: She is described as being able to shape cold metal like clay.
• Honorable Elephant: A heroic loxodon who fought Phyrexia.

Kara Vrist

Race: Human (Neurok)

A Neurok intelligence operative who is known as the only person to ever enter the Phyrexianized remains of Lumengrid and survive uncorrupted.

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• Deadpan Snarker: Her flavor text quotes have a dry, cynical wit to them.
• Last of Her Kind: She is the only uncompleated Neurok mentioned by the time of All Will Be One.
• The Sneaky Guy: So sneaky she's never even shown up on a card.

Neyali

Color: Red and White

Race: Human (Vulshok)

Class: Rebel

A Vulshok woman who lends her remarkable courage and bond with The Phoenix Otharri to the battle against Phyrexia.

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• Bond Creature: Of a remarkably useful kind, as Mirran phoenixes are apparently immune to Phyresis.

Agents of Gix

Cultists of Gix have long existed across Dominaria's history. The latest chapter has been re-awakened by the former Tolarian academist Rona, helping Sheoldred in recovering ancient artifacts and posing a threat to the Song of Dominia once again.

Rona

Color: Blue and Black

Race: Phyrexian Human

Class: Artificer, Wizard

A former Tolarian student who decided to worship Gix. So when Sheoldred and her forces land on Dominaria, she couldn't possibly be more pleased.

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• Armor-Piercing Response: After she paralyzes Karn and starts gloating to him with relish, Karn—partly to buy himself time to fight off the paralysis, partly from genuine confusion—asks Rona why she hates him so much. She responds by accusing Karn of being a bad parent to Memnarch and the other inhabitants of Mirrodin, shocking him so much that he's unable to free himself before Rona collapses the ceiling and buries him under tons of rock.
• Black Shirt: Rona had been obsessed with Phyrexia long before the New Phyrexians invaded Dominaria. When they did, she immediately jumped on board.
• Brainy Brunette: She has black hair and is a scheming artificer.
• Evil Gloating: In "Echoes in the Dark", she gloats to an immobilized Karn about how he cannot stop New Phyrexia’s invasion of Dominaria and rubs his failure to save Mirrodin in his face.
• Eye Beams: Her left eye has been modified into a red laser.
• The Paralyzer: In "Echoes in the Dark", she manages to immobilize Karn with a powerful spell, stopping him from flipping the switch on the incendiary device that he had just shoved into Sheoldred's gut.
• The Renfield: She serves Phyrexia and acts as The Dragon to Sheoldred on Dominaria, yet she herself notably hasn't been compleated, though she does have enough body enhancements to qualify as a Cyborg. Interestingly, the Flavor Text on her second card implies that this is intentional on Sheoldred's part. She finally gets properly compleated during March of the Machine, with her newest card transforming into Rona, Tolarian Obliterator.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: In her twisted mind, she is saving Dominaria.

Elas il-Kor

Color: White and Black

Race: Phyrexian Kor

Class: Cleric

A kor who has been infected by the glistening oil. She now commands troops to get Lim-Dul's ring.

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• Light Is Not Good: White skin, white hair, white clothes, and is a partially White card. Still evil.

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