Maybe I'm late with this topic, however now that after almost twenty years we got the definitive recounting of the Elder Dragon War, I wanted to know your opinion.
I must say my feeling are ambivalent: I liked how every Elder Dragon (and not only Bolas and Chromium) got a distinctive characterisation, however I cannot feel how much the war didn't stand up to what we knew (or believed to know) on it. It was supposed to be a huge interplanar war (remember, in the past not only PWs could travel the plane, and Elder Dragons were basically described to be able to) which spawned the dragons of the Multiverse; instead, the only non PW dragon to travel the planes seems to be the Ur-Dragon and we are sure that he travelled to Dominaria, but cannot say the same for other planes (it seems it didn't happen, however, if so we would have Elder Dragons from other planes). The Elder Dragon War just became (another one of the many) confilct that ravaged Dominaria, and lost that Infinity War vibe which I thought the writers were trying to put in Magic (which I still believed it will happen in Rereturn to Ravnica). So I must say that to be, even if the story was "good" it lost sooo much potential... Invasion block still remains the only time that Magic deal with extraplanar threat (if you don't count Emrakul)...
-The Elder Dragon War was't just one of many conflicts that ravaged Dominaria. It was the first world war, and by far the longest-lasting conflict that we know of. We're talking a planar war that emerged from out of Dominaria's most ancient history and lasted for centuries, probably millennia. We're talking countless generations of primeval human beings who knew existence only as chattel to be sacrificed at the whims of immortal tyrants, generations in which the entire purpose of being was waging war for one's winged overlords. This is far and beyond the cold war on Tarkir-this was mass devastation and nonstop global conflict. Consider the implications of that all, and the horror of it for a moment. Whenever such things as "civilized values" and "human dignity" finally took lasting hold among humanoids, it was only after the dragons were done using them as pawns. No wonder Bolas scorns such concepts as meaningless--it's not (just) because he's evil, but also because he predates such things as law, justice, civilization, and "rights." Arcades Sabboth trafficked in these ideas early on, but he was far ahead of his time.
This is what I took away from reading about the Elder Dragon War: the human element. What must the human experience have been like in such an era? No written history predates the war - war was the only history humans had. What values, what norms, what beliefs, philosophies, and morals did these chattel civilizations develop to find meaning in their existence? It must have been very alien to us, nothing at all resembling, say, Judeo-Christian morals or Confucian ethics. Generation after generation, humans were inferior lifeforms who existed solely to feed the jaws of a global, neverending war.
To me, this is far more horrifying and interesting than Superdragons brawling across the Multiverse. That's fun in concept of course, but to me the idea carried all the emotional and dramatic weight of a kaiju battle or a Michael Bay robot fight. Dominaria is a world I care about, and its people and cultures matter to me. Seeing how its early civilizations were born in the clutches of dragon tyranny was a fascinating choice, and I honestly much prefer this more localized version of the Elder Dragon War, involving victimized human kingdoms, to the multiverse-wide monster brawl I'd pictured before.
I must say my feeling are ambivalent: I liked how every Elder Dragon (and not only Bolas and Chromium) got a distinctive characterisation, however I cannot feel how much the war didn't stand up to what we knew (or believed to know) on it. It was supposed to be a huge interplanar war (remember, in the past not only PWs could travel the plane, and Elder Dragons were basically described to be able to) which spawned the dragons of the Multiverse; instead, the only non PW dragon to travel the planes seems to be the Ur-Dragon and we are sure that he travelled to Dominaria, but cannot say the same for other planes (it seems it didn't happen, however, if so we would have Elder Dragons from other planes). The Elder Dragon War just became (another one of the many) confilct that ravaged Dominaria, and lost that Infinity War vibe which I thought the writers were trying to put in Magic (which I still believed it will happen in Rereturn to Ravnica). So I must say that to be, even if the story was "good" it lost sooo much potential... Invasion block still remains the only time that Magic deal with extraplanar threat (if you don't count Emrakul)...
What do you guys think?
EDIT: Dang, I made a mistake in the title!
-The Elder Dragon War was't just one of many conflicts that ravaged Dominaria. It was the first world war, and by far the longest-lasting conflict that we know of. We're talking a planar war that emerged from out of Dominaria's most ancient history and lasted for centuries, probably millennia. We're talking countless generations of primeval human beings who knew existence only as chattel to be sacrificed at the whims of immortal tyrants, generations in which the entire purpose of being was waging war for one's winged overlords. This is far and beyond the cold war on Tarkir-this was mass devastation and nonstop global conflict. Consider the implications of that all, and the horror of it for a moment. Whenever such things as "civilized values" and "human dignity" finally took lasting hold among humanoids, it was only after the dragons were done using them as pawns. No wonder Bolas scorns such concepts as meaningless--it's not (just) because he's evil, but also because he predates such things as law, justice, civilization, and "rights." Arcades Sabboth trafficked in these ideas early on, but he was far ahead of his time.
This is what I took away from reading about the Elder Dragon War: the human element. What must the human experience have been like in such an era? No written history predates the war - war was the only history humans had. What values, what norms, what beliefs, philosophies, and morals did these chattel civilizations develop to find meaning in their existence? It must have been very alien to us, nothing at all resembling, say, Judeo-Christian morals or Confucian ethics. Generation after generation, humans were inferior lifeforms who existed solely to feed the jaws of a global, neverending war.
To me, this is far more horrifying and interesting than Superdragons brawling across the Multiverse. That's fun in concept of course, but to me the idea carried all the emotional and dramatic weight of a kaiju battle or a Michael Bay robot fight. Dominaria is a world I care about, and its people and cultures matter to me. Seeing how its early civilizations were born in the clutches of dragon tyranny was a fascinating choice, and I honestly much prefer this more localized version of the Elder Dragon War, involving victimized human kingdoms, to the multiverse-wide monster brawl I'd pictured before.
This is a very interesting view of the conflict!