Does anyone else think that Tarkir is much worse-off than it was before the time travel? The honor of the Mardu and the pride Temur were completely destroyed (they just mindlessly destroy/hunt under the threat of death from their dragon overlords), bears are on the verge of extinction, the Atarkan humanoids are starving, the Jeskai (and to a lesser extent the Abzan) have given up on free will and become religious fanatics that view Ojutai (or in Abzan's case Dromoka) as perfect, and the efreet have been subjugated. The only people who don't seem worse off are the Sultai/Silumgar, and that is just because they were always completely oppressed. It just seems a lot worse than Tarkir was in Khans of Tarkir or in Fate Reforged.
The world is a worse place now for most of the humanoids for sure. However, the world is a better place for the dragons. Before dragons weren't oppressed as much as they were just all dead. Both timelines have more balance issues than Ugin on a tight rope as far as the ecosystem is concerned. It looks worse for the new timeline to us though because we can identify with the humanoids far more easily than the giant winged monsters.
The world is a worse place now for most of the humanoids for sure. However, the world is a better place for the dragons. Before dragons weren't oppressed as much as they were just all dead. Both timelines have more balance issues than Ugin on a tight rope as far as the ecosystem is concerned. It looks worse for the new timeline to us though because we can identify with the humanoids far more easily than the giant winged monsters.
It isn't just humans though, it seems to be much worse for nondragons in general in this timeline. Since nondragons are still the vast majority of the population, doesn't that mean that Tarkir is worse overall now?
If you know time travel stories this should not be a surprise. At all. MaRo actually said somewhere something to the effect of, a time traveler going back in time to make things better and the consequences not being what he expected is a pretty common time travel trope.
Yes they're worse off in numerous ways.
The Ojutai are a supposedly knowledge focused group that only know a false history of the world and are discouraged from drawing in knowledge from other sources.
The Atarka are the clan who's colors revere nature but are hunting numerous creatures to near extinction.
The Kolaghan may or may not be worse off specifically because of interaction with their dragon lord I'm unsure. The flavor text from and about her is less so than some of the others. She seemed unconcerned with ruling the former Mardu than just going as fast as she could. We'll see if 1280 years have riled her up as much as they seemed to mellow out Ojutai (even if Ojutai may or may not have mellowed much.) But they do seem to have been reduced to sprinting after their leader leaving no time for honor or camaraderie.
The Abzan have forsaken their individual family units for the wider community as a whole. Everyone is Dromaka's baby now and counterintuitively it's likely made them more xenophobic and dogmatic rather than more welcoming and protective. Now, the Abzan are actually probably LESS likely to mourn or feel the impact of a lost one because they've got this whole, "one lost scale doesn't matter," thing going on. I'm speculating here because we actively don't know yet and won't until Wednesday.
And I'll actually argue the Silumgar ARE worse off. Before the change, over at least if you had a terrible ruler there was a possibility you could take them out. Even if they didn't get poisoned or killed you could just wait them out and then bring them back as a zombie under your control. Now... they have VERY little recourse and are reduced to keeping their leader entertained. At least before there could be some meaningful plotting done and the leader had to at least be concerned with their people enough to wonder if something was going on. Now their leader can just eat the problem.
In the end though, look at it this way: Tarkir very likely had to be sacrificed here. Look at the new Tormenting Voice. Ugin gets it and we should too. Tarkir may need to suffer some discomfort if the entire Multiverse is to be saved. Someone has to check Bolas. Someone has to get the Eldrazi back under control and studied before they can wipe out any number of planes. Yes, we're aware the clans are worse off now... but we also need to be aware that fact can be mitigated AND that the Multiverse as a whole just got a little bit safer.
Sucks for the humans that don't embrace the sex, drugs and rock n'roll lifestyle. Tarkir seems like a plane where that's acceptable given all the ways you could get killed.
actually i believe the efreet actually enjoy the rule of the dragons over the humans.
the sultai actually seem somewhat thriving but under more restrictions.
I really think wotc set up the world to have enough conflicts to have enough material for a revisit.
i really think a counter-revolution on this world could happen pretty easily, considering all the juicy conflicts they set up.
It is just too unsustainable the way many of the clans are set up right now.
whether it ends up as a happy medium or the extreme we are yet to see, but there are plenty of planeswalkers with ties and sympathetic values that can possibly set up changes to this plane. sarkhan won't let the dragons of his home die out, and many planeswalkers are champions of the weak and other noble causes.
not even close to it. a whole intelligent species was whipped completely out nothing the dragons have done is remotely comparable to genocide.
Destroying multiple religions, instituting revisionist history with themselves as godlike beings, driving wildlife to extinction, execution and banishment of those who disagree with them, and starving humanoid species doesn't count? Also, wiping out an intelligent species isn't a bad thing when that species is a predatory species that is trying to kill or subjugate you.
um none of your crimes you listed are remotely comparable to genocide as I said. as for your last part that's complete bull crap genocide is always a bad thing on second thought a bad thing doesn't even come close to saying how terrible of a thing it is if you don't agree well I have nothing more to say to you your thought process is too alien to mine own.
um none of your crimes you listen are remotely comparable to genocide as I said.
I'll take genocide over 1984-level revisionist history any day and starving almost all of the Atarka humanoids basically amounts to genocide.
as for your last part that's complete bull crap genocide is always a bad thing on second thought a bad thing doesn't even come close to saying how terrible of a thing it is if you don't agree well I have nothing more to say to you your thought process is too alien to mine own.
When the species that is being killed off is universally trying to conquer, enslave, and kill, I think genocide is justified. Look at this quote from Yasova Dragonclaw.
"We watch helplessly as our homes are ravaged and our children killed. We glance to the skies like frightened rabbits, dedicate our lives to nothing more than survival, scratch out a living as simpering peasants in someone else's domain."
Are you seriously going to argue that a species that kills children and treats humanoids like insects should be allowed to exist?
bwahaha I can't believe you can say for a second that creating a false history that in no way changes your present day ability to live your life is remotely worse than genocide.
you say conquering and enslaving as if they are dirty words yet degrade the word genocide to a seemingly meaningless and respectable word? the hell? I am pretty sure that killing is a pretty rare thing in all the clans in fact I am nearly certain that if you compared people the khans killed to people the dragons killed the khans would have the higher score. and if not its still not remotely comparable to genocide which is a word I don't think you give 10000000000000000000000000th of a percent enough gravitas.
Ugin is the great mediator of balance, he believed dragons and humans are necessary for balance. In the khans timeline there is no balance, all the dragons are dead and in the dragons timeline there is no balance because dragons way overpower humans. HOWEVER, the reason dragons are spawning so rapidly is because of Ugin's slumber so now that he is awake again, balance can be restored. Basically I see the dragon timeline as much better since there is no mass extinction and now there is at least a chance for balance in the future by Ugin's hand whereas in the old timeline Ugin is dead and balance is nigh impossible.
Ugin is the great mediator of balance, he believed dragons and humans are necessary for balance. In the khans timeline there is no balance, all the dragons are dead and in the dragons timeline there is no balance because dragons way overpower humans. HOWEVER, the reason dragons are spawning so rapidly is because of Ugin's slumber so now that he is awake again, balance can be restored. Basically I see the dragon timeline as much better since there is no mass extinction and now there is at least a chance for balance in the future by Ugin's hand whereas in the old timeline Ugin is dead and balance is nigh impossible.
Pretty much. And again, in the end, whether this is better or worse for Tarkir is irrelevant. Ugin is back and it's better for the Multiverse as a whole based on the info we have right now.
Real-world speaking, I liked the clans of Tarkir 1.0 better - they had fleshed-out background, strong backstory, were defined both philosophically and visually. The new dragon clans seems a lot shallower (at least some of them - yeah, looking at you, Kolaghan and Atarka - ironically those whose transition in Khanfall was the easiest). And looking what Surrak is here is just painful.
It might seem "worse" because we saw the original timeline, and quite liked it. But overall, Tarkir is definitely better. In the original timeline, it was an imbalanced, dying world on the brink of slow extinction. Now, it is a world teeming with life, and reawakened Ugin can put things into balance again. This is a much better starting point.
Moreover, these hints like Anafenza, or Arel, Unseen Whisperer, are pointing towards some dissent in the dragonclans, and are, IMO, quite clear set-up for return to Tarkir. I am quite sure that we will revisit Tarkir with the old clans reformed somehow.
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bwahaha I can't believe you can say for a second that creating a false history that in no way changes your present day ability to live your life is remotely worse than genocide.
Being able to create a false history, say something never happened, and have people believe you leads to unending tyranny that cannot be stopped because the people to not even understand what needs to be stopped. The ability to have 1984 levels of tyranny is much more dangerous than the destruction of a single species.
you say conquering and enslaving as if they are dirty words yet degrade the word genocide to a seemingly meaningless and respectable word? the hell? I am pretty sure that killing is a pretty rare thing in all the clans in fact I am nearly certain that if you compared people the khans killed to people the dragons killed the khans would have the higher score. and if not its still not remotely comparable to genocide which is a word I don't think you give 10000000000000000000000000th of a percent enough gravitas.
The thing that makes genocide bad is that it kills people who did nothing wrong simply based on their ethnicity. All of the dragons preyed on sentient creatures. They were waging a war on humanoids. They were all combatants in a war in which they killed countless noncombatants along with the fighters. They were all murderers, vandals, and oppressors, and they all deserved to die.
The Dragons were sapient predators. They competed with humans for food and occasionally hunted humans as food. But the humans were hunting dragons as well. It isn't like the attacks were one sided and without a reason. Both were at war. Dragons were roughly as intelligent as humanoids (some more, some less), so why should they sacrifice their lives and culture for humanoids?
And if you think the genocide of an entire species is worse than its subjugation, would you say that Dragons completely wiping out humans would have been a happier ending? I mean that was the fate of the Dragons in the timeline where the humanoids won.
So we started Khans of Tarkir design knowing we needed a flawed world that would get changed into an even more flawed world.
It's the typical 'time travel gone wrong' trope, and presumably the story direction will be for Sarkhan and/or Narset to try and fix it - we've already seen in the flavour text for Tapestry of the Ages that Narset's interested in the original clans. People seem to be assuming that the storyline is done, but the set's only just released and there's only been one Uncharted Realms story piece so far.
Yes, the Ravnica follow-on was atrocious; we had a storyline where the guilds were destroyed, and then a magic reset button somewhere before Return to Ravnica meant that everything was exactly as before at the start of the story (save for more active conflict between the guilds). But when they first visited Ravnica they may not have envisaged returning there (ditto Mirrodin - the Mirrodin story in the second block was essentially unrelated to anything that happened in Mirrodin 1).
More recently they seem more deliberate in setting up conditions for a return to a plane - the Zendikar storyline left hanging, and possibly setting up an Orpheus trope for a return to Theros to rescue Elspeth. So I don't think the Dragons story is done yet - either we'll see the start of a rebellion by the clans, or the conditions will be set up for a future rebellion. Mechanically, that will also make things easier if they ever want to revisit the wedge theme, since they can reinstate the clan wedges (while if they want to revisit shards they have to invent a whole new set of them unless they decide to destroy Alara all over again).
bwahaha I can't believe you can say for a second that creating a false history that in no way changes your present day ability to live your life is remotely worse than genocide.
Being able to create a false history, say something never happened, and have people believe you leads to unending tyranny that cannot be stopped because the people to not even understand what needs to be stopped. The ability to have 1984 levels of tyranny is much more dangerous than the destruction of a single species.
you say conquering and enslaving as if they are dirty words yet degrade the word genocide to a seemingly meaningless and respectable word? the hell? I am pretty sure that killing is a pretty rare thing in all the clans in fact I am nearly certain that if you compared people the khans killed to people the dragons killed the khans would have the higher score. and if not its still not remotely comparable to genocide which is a word I don't think you give 10000000000000000000000000th of a percent enough gravitas.
The thing that makes genocide bad is that it kills people who did nothing wrong simply based on their ethnicity. All of the dragons preyed on sentient creatures. They were waging a war on humanoids. They were all combatants in a war in which they killed countless noncombatants along with the fighters. They were all murderers, vandals, and oppressors, and they all deserved to die.
bull crap tyranny isn't something that can be hid if it's present people will resist it if they ever learn the true history or not. people are resisting it in tarkir we already know that. if anything is preventing it from being stopped it's the incredible power of dragons and the potential that there are just too many of them now. tyranny however bad will never in a million years justify genocide.
about your comment of what makes genocide bad your totally wrong what makes genocide bad isn't that it happens to innocent people its that there can never be a crime so bad that it can ever be justified.
MaRo said in one of his recent articles that one of the ideas for Tarkir, thematically, was "take a bad world and make it worse through time travel, but the twist is the protagonist doesn't see it that way because his priorities are skewed"
If you're a dragon, Tarkir is a pretty happening place.
not even close to it. a whole intelligent species was whiped completely out nothing the dragons have done is remotely comparable to genocide.
You'd have a point about genocide, if it weren't for the fact that the clans merely defended themselves. The dragons kept attacking and killing the humanoids on Tarkir and the Tarkirians -rightfully so- used lethal force to keep the dragons at bay.
If someone comes into your house and is seriously endangering your childrens' lives and you kill that intruder, no court in the civilized world will accuse you of murder, because it was clearly self-defense. The same happened on Tarkir, except on a much larger scale.
nothing says the dragons were continuing to attack as their numbers dwindled in fact we have the opposite stated by them saying the khans HUNTED them to extinction. also I disagree that defense makes genocide ok it does potentially make it necessary it doesn't make it ever be right.
seeing as how one of the khans directly participated in ulgin's death for that exact result how do you figure? it doesn't take a genius to see there are no more storms and realize what that means
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Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
It isn't just humans though, it seems to be much worse for nondragons in general in this timeline. Since nondragons are still the vast majority of the population, doesn't that mean that Tarkir is worse overall now?
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Yes they're worse off in numerous ways.
The Ojutai are a supposedly knowledge focused group that only know a false history of the world and are discouraged from drawing in knowledge from other sources.
The Atarka are the clan who's colors revere nature but are hunting numerous creatures to near extinction.
The Kolaghan may or may not be worse off specifically because of interaction with their dragon lord I'm unsure. The flavor text from and about her is less so than some of the others. She seemed unconcerned with ruling the former Mardu than just going as fast as she could. We'll see if 1280 years have riled her up as much as they seemed to mellow out Ojutai (even if Ojutai may or may not have mellowed much.) But they do seem to have been reduced to sprinting after their leader leaving no time for honor or camaraderie.
The Abzan have forsaken their individual family units for the wider community as a whole. Everyone is Dromaka's baby now and counterintuitively it's likely made them more xenophobic and dogmatic rather than more welcoming and protective. Now, the Abzan are actually probably LESS likely to mourn or feel the impact of a lost one because they've got this whole, "one lost scale doesn't matter," thing going on. I'm speculating here because we actively don't know yet and won't until Wednesday.
And I'll actually argue the Silumgar ARE worse off. Before the change, over at least if you had a terrible ruler there was a possibility you could take them out. Even if they didn't get poisoned or killed you could just wait them out and then bring them back as a zombie under your control. Now... they have VERY little recourse and are reduced to keeping their leader entertained. At least before there could be some meaningful plotting done and the leader had to at least be concerned with their people enough to wonder if something was going on. Now their leader can just eat the problem.
In the end though, look at it this way: Tarkir very likely had to be sacrificed here. Look at the new Tormenting Voice. Ugin gets it and we should too. Tarkir may need to suffer some discomfort if the entire Multiverse is to be saved. Someone has to check Bolas. Someone has to get the Eldrazi back under control and studied before they can wipe out any number of planes. Yes, we're aware the clans are worse off now... but we also need to be aware that fact can be mitigated AND that the Multiverse as a whole just got a little bit safer.
the sultai actually seem somewhat thriving but under more restrictions.
I really think wotc set up the world to have enough conflicts to have enough material for a revisit.
i really think a counter-revolution on this world could happen pretty easily, considering all the juicy conflicts they set up.
It is just too unsustainable the way many of the clans are set up right now.
whether it ends up as a happy medium or the extreme we are yet to see, but there are plenty of planeswalkers with ties and sympathetic values that can possibly set up changes to this plane. sarkhan won't let the dragons of his home die out, and many planeswalkers are champions of the weak and other noble causes.
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Destroying multiple religions, instituting revisionist history with themselves as godlike beings, driving wildlife to extinction, execution and banishment of those who disagree with them, and starving humanoid species doesn't count? Also, wiping out an intelligent species isn't a bad thing when that species is a predatory species that is trying to kill or subjugate you.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
I'll take genocide over 1984-level revisionist history any day and starving almost all of the Atarka humanoids basically amounts to genocide.
When the species that is being killed off is universally trying to conquer, enslave, and kill, I think genocide is justified. Look at this quote from Yasova Dragonclaw.
Are you seriously going to argue that a species that kills children and treats humanoids like insects should be allowed to exist?
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
you say conquering and enslaving as if they are dirty words yet degrade the word genocide to a seemingly meaningless and respectable word? the hell? I am pretty sure that killing is a pretty rare thing in all the clans in fact I am nearly certain that if you compared people the khans killed to people the dragons killed the khans would have the higher score. and if not its still not remotely comparable to genocide which is a word I don't think you give 10000000000000000000000000th of a percent enough gravitas.
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Pretty much. And again, in the end, whether this is better or worse for Tarkir is irrelevant. Ugin is back and it's better for the Multiverse as a whole based on the info we have right now.
It might seem "worse" because we saw the original timeline, and quite liked it. But overall, Tarkir is definitely better. In the original timeline, it was an imbalanced, dying world on the brink of slow extinction. Now, it is a world teeming with life, and reawakened Ugin can put things into balance again. This is a much better starting point.
Moreover, these hints like Anafenza, or Arel, Unseen Whisperer, are pointing towards some dissent in the dragonclans, and are, IMO, quite clear set-up for return to Tarkir. I am quite sure that we will revisit Tarkir with the old clans reformed somehow.
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
Being able to create a false history, say something never happened, and have people believe you leads to unending tyranny that cannot be stopped because the people to not even understand what needs to be stopped. The ability to have 1984 levels of tyranny is much more dangerous than the destruction of a single species.
The thing that makes genocide bad is that it kills people who did nothing wrong simply based on their ethnicity. All of the dragons preyed on sentient creatures. They were waging a war on humanoids. They were all combatants in a war in which they killed countless noncombatants along with the fighters. They were all murderers, vandals, and oppressors, and they all deserved to die.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
And if you think the genocide of an entire species is worse than its subjugation, would you say that Dragons completely wiping out humans would have been a happier ending? I mean that was the fate of the Dragons in the timeline where the humanoids won.
It's the typical 'time travel gone wrong' trope, and presumably the story direction will be for Sarkhan and/or Narset to try and fix it - we've already seen in the flavour text for Tapestry of the Ages that Narset's interested in the original clans. People seem to be assuming that the storyline is done, but the set's only just released and there's only been one Uncharted Realms story piece so far.
Yes, the Ravnica follow-on was atrocious; we had a storyline where the guilds were destroyed, and then a magic reset button somewhere before Return to Ravnica meant that everything was exactly as before at the start of the story (save for more active conflict between the guilds). But when they first visited Ravnica they may not have envisaged returning there (ditto Mirrodin - the Mirrodin story in the second block was essentially unrelated to anything that happened in Mirrodin 1).
More recently they seem more deliberate in setting up conditions for a return to a plane - the Zendikar storyline left hanging, and possibly setting up an Orpheus trope for a return to Theros to rescue Elspeth. So I don't think the Dragons story is done yet - either we'll see the start of a rebellion by the clans, or the conditions will be set up for a future rebellion. Mechanically, that will also make things easier if they ever want to revisit the wedge theme, since they can reinstate the clan wedges (while if they want to revisit shards they have to invent a whole new set of them unless they decide to destroy Alara all over again).
bull crap tyranny isn't something that can be hid if it's present people will resist it if they ever learn the true history or not. people are resisting it in tarkir we already know that. if anything is preventing it from being stopped it's the incredible power of dragons and the potential that there are just too many of them now. tyranny however bad will never in a million years justify genocide.
about your comment of what makes genocide bad your totally wrong what makes genocide bad isn't that it happens to innocent people its that there can never be a crime so bad that it can ever be justified.
If you're a dragon, Tarkir is a pretty happening place.
If you're anyone else, Tarkir sucks.
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You'd have a point about genocide, if it weren't for the fact that the clans merely defended themselves. The dragons kept attacking and killing the humanoids on Tarkir and the Tarkirians -rightfully so- used lethal force to keep the dragons at bay.
If someone comes into your house and is seriously endangering your childrens' lives and you kill that intruder, no court in the civilized world will accuse you of murder, because it was clearly self-defense. The same happened on Tarkir, except on a much larger scale.
Citation needed.
They were continuing their war as they had and saw an opening, not knowing the circumstances surrounding it.
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