Phyrexia is Hell | A 30-Year History of Magic's Most Sinister Villains

this episode is sponsored by Card Kingdom go to cardkingdom.com studies to support the show by purchasing your favorite phyrexian cards from across magic history shipped all in one package I recommend these full art Basics from Elena Danner and Mark Riddick they're so stylish and will forever add that special touch to your favorite decks this episode is sponsored by coalesce apparel and design head to coalesce to pick up rustic studies t-shirts hoodies play mats stickers and all new hats and beanies the team at coalesce have also just added this Elish norn inspired design to the store use code studies for 10 off your order every purchase directly helps the channel I have these nightmares where I lose my teeth [Music] I lose them or I grind them into dust or I bite too hard and the pressure does the work like a crowbar into a splinter door frame I remember losing my first Mauler as a kid how it wiggled against the back of my tongue how I couldn't eat out of fear and out of pain when I got older my baby teeth wouldn't fall out so they had to start pulling them the dentist was a family friends Dr Mueller he laid me back into the chair and put sunglasses over my eyes and told me that it was going to pinch he pulled my cheek from my gums and it did pinch the lidocaine injection and I remember the sound of them being ripped out of my skull but from the inside years later Orthodontics the Herbst Appliance expanders rubber bands The Growing Pains of a complete and perfect smile except my teeth aren't perfect my enamel is weak and my incisors are crowded and one day the last of my molars will fall out again this embodied teeth decorate the limbs of winged Horrors in the deepest layers of new phyrexia across this reformed Worlds the body and all its parts are distorted repurposed transformed muscles and bones are trophies of an outdated technology nothing more than a texture to Define The Season's new aesthetic thank you 700 years ago the exiled Florentine Dante Alighieri composed the first of his three epic poems Inferno the most notorious of these Works turns the Wayward ends morally corrupt inside out across its nine layers Sinners of scaling severity were brutally tortured for eternity writing this poem was Dante's therapy an exorcism of his schadenfreude the concentric rings of Inferno outlines the poet's Journey Through the afterlife ends toward paravizo Dante understood that to ascend you must first descend that the only way out is through that the path to becoming perfect means going through hell [Music] [Music] [Music] this card is called priest of yagmoth it was released in the spring of 1994. a mere seven months after the debut of magic and the printing of its first cards the painting by Mark tadine shows a stoic figure performing the Latin gesture of benediction common among the Catholic clergy framed against a deep purple background notably the cleric is casting his Blessing not with his right hands which is customary but with his left the Romans from whom the gesture originated were highly suspicious about the left side of the body the Italian word for left is sinistra Sinister when Dante passed through Inferno from one layer to the next he and Virgil always turns to the left a subtle detail of their Sinister Journey already in 1994 the phyrexians were bound to transgress tradition and subvert that which was holy just as well this painting introduces the concept of a biomechanical creature into magic in place of a crucifix hangs an oversized hex nut a symbol of their worship which fastens to a layered metallic suit the priest himself is an assemblage of Snap-on hardware and beneath his fleshy panels run a series of sinewy tubes we may call him a cyborg a cybernetic organism a relatively new term birthed in the discourse of the space race of the 1960s three other cards from Antiquities depict the very first prototypes of the phyrexians this demon painted by Sandra everingham is more skeletal than cybernetic and in the early days it was confused for yagmat himself due to its name these Gremlins by Amy Weber are conceptually dissonant and read silly to a contemporary audience nothing here is evocative of phyrexia in contrast this enchantment also by Sandra everingham is a tonal match to the phyrexians of today Aaron's hoses weave through the fleshy walls of a room that is slightly intestinal in composition and within it lies a staircase that leads down into an unseen chamber it's a real Sinister looking card for the next few years the phyrexians would be sprinkled into various magic sets as the World building and storytelling became more serious and organized alliances gave us phyrexian warbeast an alien machine vague and Indiscreet in form Mirage block offered three artifacts that emphasized the mechanical nature of the species the Dreadnought by Pete Ventures is a Colossus of twisting cables and sharpened scales The Walker by Brian Talbot is a mechanized spider with Spotlight eyes whose flavor text describes a citizen enraptured in fear as they witness their Town become overrun by invading tanks and these Legends by Carl crichlow and weather lights depict two figures who look far more Gothic and vampiric than phyrexian at the very least their descriptions accurately frame them as heartless and without Souls these characteristics will persist and Define the phyrexians for two decades Tempest and stronghold and exodus move to the phyrexians closer to a cohesive identity cards like lobotomy hinted at Future body horror imagery selenia Dark Angel showcased how pharesus manifests as oil draining from the eyes and phyrexian Hulk reincorporated some guts and goo into the steel skeleton this one by Matthew Wilson even has a rib cage bodies strewn upon sacrificial and surgical tables will become a recurring motif as well splicers this painting from Brahm is horrific and cold like a mortician it is resoundingly phyrexian even 25 years later urza Saga released in October 1998. with it the synthesis of the biological with the mechanical became a defining characteristic of the first wave phyrexians priest of gixx offered a streamlined iteration of its Antiquities counterpart Patchwork skin and android-esque arm a metallic plate wrapping around the skull this is a cyborg concepted for a high fantasy setting later in this block phyrexian negator appeared and made explicits the underlying science fiction influences for phyrexian creature designs like that of Dante H.R giger's seminal work has inspired countless iterations and homages Echoes of Geiger's alien appear in the shape language of this creature its connective tubes and razor Claws and beluga whale face are all reminiscent of the Xenomorph the majority of phyrexians from this era however showcased more visceral detailing than that of the negator the work of Pete venters Ron Spencer Mark to Dean and Kev Walker together defines their core features and look more beastly than humanoid these Acid Trip Horrors seem ripped out of a Cronenberg nightmare because firexians were strictly limited to Black cards they also became synonymous with the color's identity their extreme villainy matched with black as the de facto antagonist of Magic's color pie in the years since Black's philosophy has moved away from evil in favor of ambition to give the color more depth and dimension finally in urza Saga appeared the first examples of phyrexia as pseudo-religious cult in Vile Requiem we see a horrific altar of warped bones beneath the vaulted Nave flanking either side of the monument are phyrexian minions Bowing in worship and etched into the stone base and suspended from the ceiling is a new symbol one that resembles the Greek letter Phi it appeared along the hilt of the Scythe in order of yagmoth and again carved into gixx's faceplates in oppression the cult now had its identity marker sewn into the creature's chest appeared another emblem this is the mask of yogmath a Sigil of phyrexian Allegiance and an icon of their God yagmath the creator of phyrexia the father of machines the game's first super villain in the early years he remained a formless boogeyman mentioned only by name in stories which lended to his Mystique but in June 2001 inquest magazine offered the first artistic rendition of yogmoth at the height of his godhood a demonic figure wrapped in layered Robes of flayed skin filled the page his exposed chest cavity melded into a torso of open pipes his two featureless eyes floated in a hollow skull tucked deep into his collar long before his grisly transformation he was human a native of dominaria a physician but his ruthless biological experiments led him astray his eugenesis spirits fueled the weaponization of a new disease one that slowly mutated the sick and turned them into mechanical monstrosities his narcissism became the motivation to rebuild an abandoned plane in His image and populated with his converted followers yogmath's attempt to reconquer dominaria provided the narrative thrust for the next two years of magic beginning with mercadian masks in October 1999 and concluding with Apocalypse in June 2001. these six sets represents the Pinnacle of the first era of phyrexian design everything from humanoid creatures to Titanic Abominations and even more experimental figures showcased the breadth of their concept more traditional shapes like phyrexian rager appeared as well which provided a visual through line to the designs of the previous block all of these creatures stayed firmly in Black the mask of yagmoth was incorporated into the key arts and marketing materials for Nemesis and apocalypse and it served as the set symbol on all of the latter's cards although this year marks the end of the first vyrexian thread their recognizable iconography and position as villains was well established within the greater magic ecosystem in a retrospective article from June 2021 titled welcome phyrexians author Rob Bachmann aptly notes the subtle shift in phyrexian design over this time period he writes the invasion aerophyrexia was about the fear of a global pandemic or military Invasion rather than the fear of predation and victimization we had armies of spiky Warrior drones and spinal implants instead of phyrexia negators and eviscerators clouds of battleflies and viral Nanobots instead of scourges and necromancy it became sci-fi body horror instead of fantasy body horror Bachmann highlights devouring strosis as a poignant example of this change in theme a toxic green gas fills the scene as the Silhouettes Of A lurking horror rumbles into Focus the shape of his headgear resembles a gas mask and the composition connotes images of trench warfare the horrors two Wings lend just enough magical realism to render the creature fit for a fantasy card game but the overall tone became clear the phyrexians were a mobilized threat set to Vanquish other planes at the turn of the new Millennia the characterization of the phyrexins was that of forceful conquerors driven by an ideologically corrupt Madman but the failed military campaign of the wrathy overlay in their wake future colonization efforts would require a shift in method and the targeting of a new more vulnerable world [Music] nearly 10 years passed in the time between Magic pushed the envelope of its World building and tested the load-bearing limits of its high fantasy genre tag the Multiverse expanded dramatically feudal Japan a European super City a Celtic storybook a living landscape a metallic Oasis Meriden a virulence oil unknowingly seeped into the core of the world it corrupted its caretaker it awakened a long dormant contagion like the melting of permafrost like the unearthing of a prehistoric grave in October 2010 scars of Meriden debuted and ushered in the second wave of phyrexia a decade of iteration and experimentation had tremendous effects on Magic's Creative Vision with this release the identity and philosophical underpinnings of the phyrexians grew in with and in depth due to the influence of miradan's five Sons they transcended black and harnessed the other four colors of Mana for the first time in contrast to the failures on dominaria they also successfully invaded a plane and converted many of its peoples scarsblock marked an era of maturation for the game one in which storytelling and mechanics and art Direction could cooperate to address darker and more serious themes consider Anthony Francisco's work on conversion chamber and vivisection like Brahms splicer both of these paintings focus on the harrowing process of converting victims into new recruits Francisco's pallets of ugly blues and Grays painted with loose and Smoky textures to find the painting's atmospheres the test subjects are hidden behind layers of glass and steel and buried in the shadows creating a distant and implied suffering awaiting surgery in a hospital doesn't look like this exactly but for many of us it feels like this the doctor a detached and faceless figure the dentist huddling over a paralyzed mouth a gape the patient etherized upon a table and sustained by some unidentifiable apparatus of tubes the tone of new phyrexia was sterile and clean attributes that are somehow worse in comparison to the Torso spilling bowels and sleeking oil found in the hulks of the earlier years eager's alien is implied once again here but in the same way a beloved horror movie franchise often expands its bestiary so too did the phyrexians after conquering miradin stinging hummingbirds hovered the orange Skies rats traveled through rivers of black icker snakes weaved through branches of poisonous trees Drakes with naked spines haunted the sea of featureless clouds above widening the scope of phyrexian creatures Beyond mechs and grotesque monsters the desire to disgust and repulse was no longer the main mechanism of fear more frightening instead was the familiarity of these metallic creatures and how their organic forms were reshaped into these Sleek uncanny counterparts the process of completion or converting a living being into a phyrexian moved into focus in this block we can see this transformation in etched Oracle who became a champion in scars of miradin only to then succumb to phyresis in the ark's tragic conclusion the filigreed exterior illuminated by the Manna of the five sons became a husk of blackened steel with extra appendages in its final form completion begins with exposure to the glistening oil major headaches and genetic mutations soon follow as the subject loses touch with their primary personality traits icker begins to drain from the eyes as the soul departs from the body excruciating surgical procedures are then performed to replace arteries with cables and modified lackluster organic Parts with seamless sheets of metal flaying skin and rerouting ligaments and sharpening bones are all within the bounds of these operations those who survive emerge on the other side a newly indoctrinated phyrexian their previous allegiances are rendered null against a far greater plan at the heart of completion lies a pressing ethical question about bodies their aesthetic presentation their operative functions and the extent to which both are mutable aside from some of their visual motifs this is the aspect of the phyrexian's most fundamentally based in science fiction the phyrexian's obsession with perfecting the physical form overlaps with current debates over the boundaries between us and our Technologies and the responsibilities of maintaining or traversing those boundaries minor operations like pulling teeth to install veneers are morally acceptable more controversial Endeavors like manipulating DNA and embryos to thwart's eventual diseases are much harder to navigate the problem is these ideas are no longer simply plot devices of pulpy William Gibson novels as philosopher Tobias masan writes science fiction is turning into science with increasing rate in the article titled transcend the flesh Mason explores the burgeoning topic of transhumanism which the association Humanity plus defines as the class of philosophies of life that seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life by means of Science and Technology underlines that transhumanism is no longer just a lofty dream that we have found ourselves in a unique moment in human history in which our desire to move beyond our physical limitations is becoming increasingly possible and readily available low stake trivial modifications like Lasik eye surgery were unfathomable half a century ago but consider a 38 year old's Neil Harbison the first legally recognized human cyborg who successfully implanted an antenna into his skull the device is sensitive enough to measure electromagnetic radiation and transmit it through audible vibrations 50 years from now such Tech may be commonplace and while we may Grimace at the thought the phyrexian perspective would aggressively endorse such a procedure far more extreme transhumanist ideas include uploading Consciousness to a neural network and conquering mortality the enlightenment advocated for the greatness of human beings due to our excellence in the Arts and Sciences and transhumanism seeks to Leverage The advancements in these fields to perform the next great leap for our species the phyrexians encourage similar thinking as seen in samples of flavor text across the block where nature impedes vyrexians overcome life is ephemeral phyrexia is eternal I am weak make me ideal and so on the characterization of Geth and the black phyrexian faction at large is fascinated with defying death the flavor text on necrotic ooze positions Geth as dismissive of the finality of life he sees death a challenge to be overcome and recognizes the power in its Conquest of course the phyrexians achieve immortality through necromantic magic but the impulse is nevertheless there counter arguments to transhumanism include bio-conservatism a position that Embraces imperfections in body and health and resists the pursuit of technologies that confronts the quotes human Essence Francis fukuyama notes that challenging The Human Condition carries with it a frightful moral cost that building hierarchies favor those in positions of power that defining Perfection is always relative bio-conservatism in the current day may appear as wearing glasses or smiling with crooked teeth or letting your hair fall out bio-conservatism in the future may appear as refusing genetic modifications that guarantee perfect vision or straight teeth or a full head of hair aside from the conviction to protect their native plane the mirins embody such a resistance they remain disinterested in the promise of bodily Perfection as presented by the phyrexians they see completion as a slight against the natural way the Planeswalker vencer mirrors this sentiment he asks they can't even comprehend nature how could they improve it not all mirans think accordingly however the glisteners are captivated by the opportunities of phyrexia and voluntarily expose themselves to phyreesis they are the Renegades living on The Cutting Edge of change the Neil harbisons of the Magic World thrun the last troll is maybe the most symbolically charged creature on new phyrexia a remnant of muridan's first era he knowingly remains silent about the inevitable phyrexian contagion which fuels his deep remorse visually thrun is a prototypical green creature an embodiment of a primordial nature his monastic sensibilities oppose any sense of technological progress villainous or otherwise the image of Throne wandering through trees covered in glistening oil is evocative of Mallards swimming in polluted lakes or deer huddling together following a forest fire if the firexians are the harbingers of contentious progress thrun defines the other edge of the paradigm he is slow moving wisdom a pariah of tradition thrun Smiles with crooked teeth a unified sense of art Direction was among many key developments for new phyrexia compare for example the notable reprint phyrexian rager to its previous showing in Apocalypse and we can see how 10 years of World building experience can affect visual design at the card level matinee's rager exhibits a new Motif for the phyrexians in this block darkened figures atop bright monochromatic backgrounds made identifying these creatures easy at a quick glance reducing their appearance to Silhouettes gave prominence to their exaggerated forms and Tiding them in thick Shadows emphasized their Sinister nature building upon the foundation set by venters and tadine and Walker illustrators like chippy and sniels ham and Igor kierloch helped Define the phyrexians trademark features in the second era mortis dogs a continuation of plague dogs from urza's Destiny depicts a bone-clad and hungry hound of phyrexian hell their elongated Jaws resemble the pincers of a stag beetle and their skinless bodies and featureless faces take a bite straight from the dantesque a sickly yellow Haze reappears as the Marquee identifier of the impure miradin landscape fumes better a chimeric mass of oxidized metal with mantis-like arms and claw game legs offers the image of an animated scrap yard deployed to devour and strand Walker an amorphous and insectoid Terror piloted by a phyrexian germ invites viewers to contemplate how the machine stretches its limbs about and the grading cacophony that is produced by those joints in motion these three paintings come from three different artists but they all feature similar aesthetic qualities and are unmistakably phyrexian this is important for shortcutting during gameplay but it becomes even more Paramount when considering how a world is remembered and eventually Revisited that last piece was illustrated by Igor kirlook who may be the most influential painter of phyrexian imagery in the game's history histoic figure work and Mastery of textures and control over composition has resulted in some of the most haunting visions of this world innocuous pieces like blinding Soul Eater and skin Wing command a hypnotizing aura like in a nightmare Intrigue overrides fear you are drawn in by a mortgage boost logic [Music] is [Music] there still the eyes from The Sultans of your surrounding skull was it her did she seduce you with evidence of boundless magnificence did you resist Ellis norn Grand cenobite is a Timeless magic painting I remember seeing it for the first time how it Arrested me how its two-tone palette Blended so seamlessly in and out of the white card frame norn's exposed Crimson muscles elegantly intertwine with her porcelain armor hence the acolytes preventing her Cape from grazing the ground only crystallize her opulence added to this is a slender effeminate figure with long fingers and an oversized calcified mask tiny cracks shoot through its frame it lacks any outlets for eyes if the mask of yagamoth symbolized the first generation of phyrexia Ellis noran's faceplate has undeniably become the icon of its new age the subtle blood and gore visible in norn's character design reflect phyrexia's intent to attack the body horrific imagery of sharp instruments and exposed musculature populate the cards in these three sets from cenobites carving the phyrexian symbol into the stripped backs of captured mirins to Newts viciously erupting from rusted birthing pods to more conceptual depictions of pain the visceral overtones of new phyrexia make it among the most graphically challenging of card sets rows and rows and rows of Razor teeth are aplenty I'm not sure I've ever seen so many teeth in a single block scenes depicting surgery are a recurring concept too even when the composition reads Whimsical the effect is still unnerving the most sophisticated rendition of the body horror Trope is Steven belladin's surgical extraction widely considered a masterpiece painting this image like Ella schnorn has eclipsed the context in which it was produced it is emblematic of phyrexian horror and reflective of the high standard of quality for magic illustrations moving into the 2010s perhaps the most significant byproduct of the phyrexians overtaking miradin was the origination of the praeters by 2011 magic understood that the color pie was its most valuable asset for marketing to veteran players and newcomers alike filling out each color with phyrexians at every rank along a vertical social structure made sense from a design perspective as card Rarities could easily correspond to power levels along that hierarchy the praters themselves appealed to different psychographic profiles of the player base allowing everyone to choose their favorite color and align with its villain this tried and true formula is at the heart of magic success as a game and it has been mimicked in every major release for 15 years since just as well each prayer became the general of a narrow faction that rarely cross-contaminated with the other four colors within this structure each group developed its own identity values and ideas of perfection infighting between prators erupted due to conflicting worldviews which added to the violence intrinsic to the set as a result tension between the five factions became a driving force of the narrative one that would fester and demand a future revisit to the plane although each Prater possesses their own level of intrigue Ellis norn and her machine Orthodoxy nonetheless became the centerpiece of the conflict a new phyrexia the praeters jostled for position and control over the plane and she emerged Victorious at the top so in 2014 Wizards of the Coast delivered a remarkable version of Elish norn for the judge gift program written in an esoteric script that nobody could read well nobody could read yet among the most ambitious of Magic's undertakings was the invention and development of the phyrexian language this is not just a transliteration of the card text into a set of fancy symbols phyrexian is a complete system fit with tense markers and diacritics and agglutination and patterns in syntax virexian has room for various accents which can distinguish those in the upper echelons of society like the praeters from lower ranking priests and beasts vyrexian has a phonology a system of speech phyrexian has an alphabet and a grammar and all the rest of those morphological elements that Delights language aficionados and linguists alike I know all of this because I spoke with the leading experts in phyrexian translation hello I am Fernando Franco Felix right now I am a writer for PBS space-time and in the magic Community I guess I'm known as the phyrexian guy because I just got really into this language trying to decipher it and how it works and now well eventually people started knowing me as a ferexing guy known online as highly entropic mind Fernando has been working for years with other passionate translators in the community to decipher this language in March 2021 he began publishing a video series that showcases their cumulative efforts and highlights significant breakthroughs in their progress across nearly 30 installments to date he has covered everything from verb conjugation to plural markers to Continental roots given that phyrexian is a constructed language or conlang for short decipher is like ferdin into their knowledge of other languages for Clues it is clear that English was a weak part of hyraxian because there were already many names like a yakimo phyrexia stuff like that but they also were influenced by other languages I think for example Hebrew or maybe Arabic I think I can also see some influence from German and some if influences maybe from Korean and obviously aesthetically many people have pointed out that it looks a lot like Mongolian or the organ script that was used in medieval Ireland the first thing to note is that phyrexian like Mongolian and the ogum alphabet is written vertically across the center of its symbols runs a stem line that connects words into phrases each symbol corresponds to either punctuation marks or a letter in an alphabet that carries with it a specific pronunciation most of them can be produced with the human mouth but some like these sliced consonants are aspirated and sounds like a dagger dragging along a sharpening stone similarly these consonants are produced like their plosive counterparts followed by a metallic Clank thus to speak perfect phyrexian one would need to install various metal appliances along their vocal tract we can start with a simple noun to get our bearings here is the phyrexian word for swamp which appeared on this Basic Land for the first time in jumpstart in July 2020. the first letter here corresponds to cut which is a plosive uvular consonant plosive means it is produced by stopping airflow and suddenly releasing the airflow and uvular means that the sound comes from touching the back of the tongue to the uvula you can't make cuff with your teeth or your lips for example you need your throat although these charts can appear overwhelming they are essentially a coordinate map of where you make sounds and what you use to make them like the phyrexians linguists divide the body into useful Parts vocal cords nose tongue lips teeth now already we find a fascinating detail the phyrexian letter for cut is written just like the letter for book but it carries an additional tiny symbol next to it this is called a diacritic mark and it is essentially an instruction for pronunciation most English speakers know the Spanish word jalapeno that squiggly line called the tilde is a diacritic mark as it tells speakers to move from [Music] without that diacritic Mark the word would be pronounced jalapeno the exact same distinction is happening here now notice that there are two more letters that build upon the letter K and phyrexian the first letter uses the same symbol and adds another diacritic marker the one used for the sliced sounds the second built upon kuf and carries the diacritic marker for the clanked sounds but this means at the macro level is that phyrexian is a completely phonetic language every sound is accounted for in its alphabet and unlike English every word is pronounced exactly as it is written moving along we find four more letters and then a tiny hook to close off the stem Line This marker denotes the end of a sentence in phyrexian you can see it again here on the type line as the term for swamp is repeated by mapping each letter to the phyrexian alphabets then coordinating with the pronunciation guide we can read swamp in phyrexian as hashtam koshkum features a common attribute of phyrexian words many of them begin and end with consonants sometimes multiples without vowels in between this gives the language a certain staccato harshness another detail that is very much by Design languages that feature many vowels like Italian for example can sound flowing and soft the antithesis of the phyrexians modifying simple nouns with adjectives provides the next key insights into the phyrexian language an influence I see from German is for example in the aglic nation agglutination is a feature from many languages in which you can take short words and combine them and create very long words so for example in the middle in her car which is a completed Planeswalker you can see an extremely long word that is like legendary artifact Talking Tom videos Jordan all that whole thing is like a single word because it has been agglutinated all along tamio's text box appear a few more recurring symbols this is the start line which in phrases with verbs is followed by a tense marker at its most basic level verb tenses indicate when an action occurs in time but become very nuanced when adding features of aspect and mood tense markers and phyrexin are extremely complex aside from simple tense markers like the present phyrexian also utilizes Concepts like deontic modalities which indicates how the world should be this aligns neatly with their philosophy then comes the space marker which separates words at a quick glance you can see the space marker reappear many times across this card constructing these terms is as methodical as the writing system anticipates that phyrexian is a radical language or one that uses Continental roots to create new words some of the influences I see from Hebrew or Arabic is the fact that it seems that hyrexian works with something known as consonantal roots also known as radicals in linguistics this is a feature of Semitic languages in which the base of a world its Essence in a way is a series of consonants and then by adding or vowels between those consonants or adding some other consonants in between before or after you can modify the meaning of a word so for example in Arabic the root for the book is the consonants but like without vowels right and then by adding vowels and other stuff you can make a stuff like I write you write but also like Library stuff like that by starting with this rules can get many different words and so it seems that phyrexian does that because there are many instances where we see that the vowels change but the consonants remain the same deciphering is an arduous process of trial and error the past two years alone have provided the community with more workable samples of phyrexian text than was offered in the previous 10 years combined and everything they know travels along a gradient from concrete certainty to tentative speculation but a major leap occurred in 2018 when the game's first Saga was printed in dominaria artist Joseph Meehan posted a high resolution scan of his painting for phyrexian scriptures on Twitter kicking off one of the very first blind translations from scratch these are the thyrexian scriptures this was one of the first pharexian texts that was translated from scratch this wasn't translated by me this was translated but originally by another person that goes by Citrus Inferno in Revit but this is a a beautiful example of just phyrexia and translation this is how it works first we have here the tens marker all pyrexine sentences start with the tense marker the thing with tense markers is that they are really really really complex we don't understand them completely yet but so far I can tell you that this is a past tense marker and then here we have pyrexia then we have land so five so you are glutinate the work directly in the world for land and this means like the world pyrexia right Lane of pyrexia and then we have the word for void and then we have like evolved then we can continue this is the end of the sentence actually you can see that because here we have this little hook at the end that means that at the end of that sentence and so it's just saying that phyrexia evolved from the void and it happened in the past and then we have here another sentence and this is a little bit weird because we don't get a tense marker here at the end which is really unusual but we can recognize that this is a word for great Fair accents are always talking about the greatness so this is a word we know very well and then here we find a very familiar name yadmoth immediately after the world for jagmus we get these two words here is machines which is like yak and then which means like Father off but then look at this like they sound very similar it's just like it's just the same thing just put them together and have an extra e at the end and so that was the reason when I saw this I was like Yak mode means father of machines phonetic analysis resulted in this phenomenal observation by fer and placing both of the words side by side you can see they are nearly identical with the word father carrying an extra possessive morpheme near the end feder speculated that father of machines wasn't an epithet of yogmoth it was a literal translation when I tried to analyze the sounds of this I realized this connection jackmot literally means like the machine father or the father of machines and it was like in plain side all along it just it was just waiting for someone to notice it solely but surely the translator completed the phrase and arrived at a revelation and so together this seems to mean something like phyrexia evolved from The Voice Jack mod sees this and this is the way the great Evolution begins and in fact this is the flavor text of a cardinal Relic system 20 years separates the printing of these two cards the flavor text of Dark Ritual from urza Saga was Rewritten along the altar of phyrexian scriptures in its native language in dominaria hiding in plain sight was another detail the composition of mian's work directly references Tom Fleming's illustration the mask of yagmoth the father of machines is proudly displayed in each painting knowing the phonetics Fair happily provided me a narration of the entire text s quotes thank you although fair was not the first to translate this Saga a card spoiled early from neon Dynasty in January 2022 provided him with a similar opportunity Our Moment finally came the phyrexian version of a car was leaked before anyone could see the English version this was a phyrexian text whose English equivalent nobody knew it was finally your chance to decipher phyrexian fair to fired up twitch and tested his translation skills live on stream it took him four hours the image was grainy and blurry and so low in contrast that he had to transcribe the symbols himself pivotal to his success were pages and pages of a handwritten dictionary that he had compiled and scanned into his computer in it were recurring patterns of phyrexian symbols corresponding to the game's most common words a true field journal for linguistic research I feel like I've seen this sequence of symbols somewhere else okay let me check the dictionary by cross-referencing Mark rosewater's blog and mining for leads in the HTML Fair slowly but surely made progress and celebrated each step of the way with infectious enthusiasm but if you really squint at it in fact you can see this is the vowel this this is the proof this is the vowel used in in third person conjugations this is the vowel used in second person conjugations look at that at the end he produced this functional translation and had a mountain of evidence to sustain it soon thereafter his work was confirmed with the card's official preview this was a moving achievement and a testament to Fair's dedication it may be the most inspiring display of Applied passion I've seen from a Community member to date although experts like Fair have made substantial progress over years of work there is still a long way to go until anyone can claim fluency I asked him what he needs clarified and what the next leap in Translation may look like in terms of fluency what we need is a couple of things first off we need more vocabulary way more because I I can tell you about like the evolution and attack steps and cards and stuff like that but I'm not sure I can tell you something as simple as I'm thirsty or I'm tired stuff like that we need to have stories written in firexian because the ferric sentence we see is mostly the Forex syntax related to the cards to the game and we need to see if I Rex and text that is related to many other situations also we need to understand the Thames markers there's a lot about them we don't understand this is not something I can do alone it's also true that uh I don't have time to decipher all of it by the time I'm done ciphering one thing there is five more I had one more question for fed currently there is a game going on between Wizards and the decipherers in which the former slowly reveals bits and pieces of new information that the latter must decode the recently published article from January 2023 titled a breakthrough in phyrexian language and Communications is an acknowledgment of this game it is written in such a way that encourages its participation my question was would you rather this back and forth game continue or with a click of a button have access to the entirety of the language all at once I mean if if they reveal the entire language I would became the oh well we can continue the the game of the cipherment but also it would be really cool because okay now we can see how to actually speak correction we can play a new game actually come to think of it I think it would be similar to what happened in history with other languages that were deciphered little by little and then all at once but if they went they when they were deciphered all at once like I don't know hittite or Sumerian that wasn't the end of the game now there were so much more stuff to to read and to understand of these cultures so I think actually if that happens it would mirror what happened in history with other languages so it would be really cool yeah returning to the phyrexian version of Elish norn I started to notice some patterns as if the language was slowly revealing itself to me start lines space markers diacritics and hooks I'm sure with some practice I could memorize how to say her name and maybe one day I'll be able to read the entire card but then I noticed something else something that didn't quite fit [Music] foreign [Music] for the next 10 years the phyrexian threat would Nestle into meriden's metal Spears endsley dormant magic continued to expand the scope of its World building and focus its stories on its highest profile characters existential threats to the Multiverse manifested on worlds they didn't belong a megalomaniac terrorized its Heroes an ensemble of Legacy characters returned home mythologies became the tapestry upon which the yarn was spun Greek Egyptian Mesoamerican Norse call time a monster appeared among the snowy banks of the world it hunted its caretaker it stole the sap of its sacred tree a profane gesture a ruthless display of its insolence in February 2021 Warren clex rated call time and ushered in the third wave of phyrexians successful conquest of miradin granted the phyrexians a perilous amount of uncontested time during this period of incubation the five factions stratified the world into nine spheres an homage to the original plane of phyrexia from ages long past the structure of this plane was also an explicit reference to Dante Inferno was divided into Nine Circles of sin which was an inversion of the nine Angelic hierarchies the phyrexian parody of organized religion became a major theme in all will be one the machine Orthodoxy of Elish norn swelled into a totalitarian cult inhabiting the seventh sphere beneath them grew an invasion tree called realm breaker itself a distortion of igdrasil the world tree defiler of Flesh by Matthias koros exemplifies phyrexia's attack on the holy the painting depicts an ensemble of humanoid figures melded into a base of flowing metallic limbs beneath their grasp is a Pegasus suffering the initial stages of phyresis as its blood seeps from an open wound along its nape the horse's widespread Wings give Dynamic movement to the composition hence the layers of feathers resemble those of angels the black Alliance chimeric Abomination dominates the white Alliance graceful figure as it forcefully transmits its disease this illustration is a beautiful display of phyrexian sacrilege stylistically the painting exhibits specific characteristics of baroque art the chiaroscuro contrast in its Lights and Shadows the elaborate postures of its figures the highly symmetrical arrangement of its composition and especially the display of graphic violence Baroque artists often recalled motifs from Greek Classics like the Pegasus in this painting The Winged horse has qualities of a sculpture like those decorating the centerpiece of the Trevi Fountain in Rome art director ovidio Cartagena has cited his Inspirations for the phyrexians in all will be won which span from Renaissance painters to sculptor John Lorenzo Bernini influences from a long tradition of Fine Arts permeates the paintings of this set this was an intentional decision what better way to subvert the holy than to make a mockery of its signature aesthetic styles phyrexian angels are another Wicked example of this Paradox Basilica Shepherd by Alan Williams Francais flayed Crimson body with porcelain Wings its name a satirical Twist on that sacred occupation Excel cyan of atraxa Glides about on lattices of sinewy Flesh herself and Imago of the Angel she serves and noran's choir Master takes the charade to its Extreme as bodies desperately grasp from its gargoyle-esque appendages these angels are the overseers of machine hell they drift through the corrupt Skies of its deepest layers infected with the Divine gift of Pharisees that choice in term is equally intentional just as the praitters emerged as a symptom of exposure to Meriden Stars so too have the domini taken form on phyrexia described as god-like anomalies these five deities manifested from the land itself they are mountainous in size and behave according to their own volition each of them are nightmarish expansions of the phyrexian creature concept and they represents the epitome of the faction's most strongly held values mondrak for example wails from her many mouths and compels all who listen to assimilate into the cult while zapandral insights fighting as to faster Crown the next apex predator with their emergence the ungodly have found their new gods Dante assigned each circle of his hell a distinct sin on phyrexia we may do the same each of the five inhabited layers employs A Draconian form of governance the machine Orthodoxy as described in its original write-up is an engineered religion a faith of the physical one that promotes a naive literalism although they lack any concept of spirituality or a soul the whites aligned phyrexians nonetheless embrace the powerful force that is their pseudo-religious cult however each faction by now has splintered into its own ideology the phyrexians are far from unified and not all of them follow the Argent etchings of elishnorn the progress engine under Jin cataxius aspires to the great synthesis and seeks to eliminate the will while preserving the body as a resource they are the most scientifically minded of the five and inhabit the surgical Bays of the Fifth Sphere above them the vicious swarm under foreign collects have created an environment of endless predation in the hunter maze their Outlook is a merciless form of social Darwinism a survival of the fittest taken to its extreme the dros pits of the black aligned phyrexians host the most hostile of the factions incessant infighting has resulted in mistrust and betrayal between the thanes childred has yet to be deposed finally amid the autonomous furnace lives urobresque the heretic who ignores and at times defies the rest of the praitters in allegiance to the great work his Outlook favors the individual and implicitly threatens the cultish uprising of the fair basilica notably these two spheres are geographically the furthest apart from one another and urabrasque is the only praetor to speak with an accent if descent is imminent it may first pass through him thus the world can be divided by its rulership rule by religion by scientific inquiry by Anarchy by bureaucracy or by industry the common denominator between the praeters perhaps the only one is the pursuit of completion and desire to spread the contagion to other planes if the firexians are to succeed at propagating yogmoth's Grand Evolution they must Bend and compromise in cooperation of this I have my reservations encasing the nestled layers is a wasteland of sandstorms and debris a metallic crust called the Monumental facade scattered throughout this horizonless Dreamscape are living obelisks monuments of a perverse Pride this painting by Igor kerluck depicts The Surreal decadence of this alien life form it is my favorite illustration of the set cited along the Baroque artists was the influential polish painter slitslop beksinski his disturbing visions of mysterious figures blanketed in a yellow Haze like thick pollen informs the visual tone of phyrexia's limbo Zenith chronicler by Johann Boden provides a glimpse of the polluted air here terramorphic expands by Adam Byrne shows how this layer is oxidizing and rusting away the phyrexians need to colonize other worlds for more than just motivations of ideology presently a paradigm shifting advancement allows for the completion of Planeswalkers what was once impossible is now an act of reality new Praxis involves the harnessing of the intangible spirits and with it the preservation of the effervescent Spark unlike most converts the prater's reward special privilege to these Planeswalker subjects they allow them to maintain a fracture of their uncompleted Minds their values and Ambitions are then subverted and reoriented to serve the needs of the machines an inferno Dante pioneered A New Concept called Contra Paso in his punishment of his Sinners Like Newton's third law Contra Paso assured that the sinner's Crime and Punishment remained in equal opposition among the most literal examples are the soothsayers who in life falsely looked to the Future and are forced in death to Forever look behind them flatterers are drowned in rivers of their own and the suicides are turned into trees unable to inhabit a human body that they so carelessly once tossed aside some of the phyrexian Druids and clerics pay tribute to this punishment specifically the completed Planeswalkers face their own version of Contra passo under the influence of the praitters their defining characteristics like tamio's love of research and ajani's love of family are twisted and weaponized against them like a Black Mirror many of their compositions reflect this reversal in ethics Nissa ascended animist parallels Nissa who shakes the world Jace the perfected mind parallels Jace the Mind Sculptor and veraska betrayal sting parallels vraska the Unseen completion exaggerates these characters defining traits through grotesque modifications to the body it was fitting then that we saw the first completion take place on new kamigawa a plane that flaunts its advancements in technology on the bodies of its citizens both neon Dynasty and all will be one explore the concepts of transhumanism and the cyborg the former plane is entwined with the Aesthetics of cyberpunk and its themes fulfill a juvenile power fantasy of bodily enhancement on kamigawa we saw a cybernetic augmentations and computer chips and energy swords and power suits we saw hover bikes weaving through a glowing world of Lights technology was not antagonistic or threatening to daily life rather it had completely synthesized with the traditional in a harmless and seemingly beneficial manner neon Dynasty is a utopic vision of the transhumanist world all will be won in stark contrast is Bleak and pessimistic the phyrexian employment of biotechnologies to achieve Perfection results in ecological pollution and Frankenstein's monsters and terrific pain phyrexia explores the political ramifications of eugenics and the heavy risks that accompany the Defiance of natural life the infamous futurist ferodon is foundieri who changed his name to FM 2030 believes that's the most urgent problem facing us is not social economic political but rather The Brute fact of our biological limitations namely human mortality transhumanism has a hyper fixation with immortality there is an Earnest Pursuits in this field to develop technologies that will allow us to live forever and not just metaphorically Brian S Turner counters this Pursuit by claiming that's prolonged life with no purpose will result in a profound boredom if Medical Technology can make it possible to live forever technology will corrode ethics the phyrexians are an emblematic example of such corrosion but transhumanists also understands that extreme and flashy Technologies like an immortality machine often overshadow the more momentous yet subtle advancements they claim that humans have always been bound to technology that even the most primitive tools represented paradigmatic leaps for our species we are only now on the precipice of another shift being so explicit computers have eclipsed the greatest Grand Masters in competition and have created new play patterns at the highest levels of chess has taught us new tricks Snapchat face filters and MMORPGs and immersive VR are blurring the boundaries between us and our devices at least for the moment our terminals exist outside our bodies but that will change too even my relationship with you the viewer is tenuous at best [Music] in years time there may be no real knowing if I am who I claim myself to be [Music] Alice norn received a new title in all will be won she has passed from Grand cinebite to the self-proclaimed mother of machines this arrogant nod to yagmoth is reflected in the language her new card is illustrative of 25 years of phyrexian evolution jetting away from her Open Arms is a sea of ossified bodies and behind her iconic faceplate glows the enduring symbol of her devout followers soon she will colonize another plane and bestow upon its people malevolent ideas of perfection Perfection of the exposed body of the corrupted mind of the non-existent spirit in Norse mythology the norns were deities responsible for shaping the courses of Destinies in this way Alice norn is living up to her namesake If Ever I wanted to address the mother of machines correctly with reverence and in phyrexian I would need to align the inside of my skull with metal plates I would need to reshape the structure of my 32 teeth and lacerate my soft palate from my nasal cavity and unhinge my larynx to form new glottal stops I would need to be more perfect like a machine [Music] for now though I'll just have the computer do it the final sponsor of this episode is the Niels ham playmat and token collection on Kickstarter nielsom is among my all-time favorite illustrators for magic bailful strix is single-handedly responsible for drawing me into the World of Magic art this Kickstarter project is launching with 30 handcrafted tokens showcasing his personal style he even Drew all of the text Elements by hand tokens are available on standard cardstock as well as premium layered foil these look absolutely radiant the project also offers extended artwork premium stitched Edge play mats that are limited edition and hand stamped with Neil's signature I will be pledging for both baleful strix and ever dream corresponding limited edition G clay Prince Will accompany the play mats as well follow the affiliate link below to support the kickstarter I'm so happy for Neil's ongoing success in Magic and I'm proud to be part of this campaign [Music] in the pre-release packages of all will be one a rare D20 with phyrexian numerals appeared for the first time within a matter of hours the translation Community had deciphered the Engravings and concluded that the phyrexians count with a base hexadecimal number system this means that for every 16 numbers the system resets for reference our counting system is decimal or base 10. the numbers are written along a stem divided into fours and a diacritic marker rotates counterclockwise along each quadrant at 16 the stem extends and the pattern repeats that the markers rotate counterclockwise is a detail I find poetic A fitting insight into how this Sinister species writes and reads I suspect that this system was developed relatively recently as no cards printed in phyrexian to dates have utilized it in the text box the Arabic numerals and Elish norn Grand cinebites still feel misplaced to me and I've always disliked the typeface of the numbers in the power and toughness box on these creatures I hope in future sets that we will see a card printed entirely in phyrexian including the numerals I anticipate that will be a milestone worth celebrating thank you so much to fair for providing insight into phyrexian I greatly admire his work and I recommend his YouTube channel for anyone who would like to get into the nitty-gritty details of the language you may also enjoy the deciphering phyrexian Discord Channel a space for ongoing translation and investigation thank you to my patrons for their patience and Relentless supports sign up now at the five dollar tier to put your name in the credits alongside these lovely people at the highest tier you will receive a signed baleful stricts from me these folks are the only reason I can do this and for them I am eternally grateful thank you so much for watching experience of all the very strange and esoteric tense and mood markers that are in farexian if you all have a favorites that you like to write for the phyrexins oh I definitely have a favorite uh because Bella always calls me out because I always try to translate sentences in the juices which is like the the must you must do this and Villa always makes fun of me for it it's also about genoa's favorite problem also Ellis yarn's favorite so yes I do my favorite is uh it's probably which is the narrative pass used for storytelling oh yeah Kappa is the the one that I always use uh is it on this one it is yeah no it's right here thank you so much appreciate you

Channel: Rhystic Studies

Views: 444,456

Keywords: magic the gathering, mtg, trading card game, themagicmansam, rhystic studies, phyrexia, dante's inferno, phyrexian language

Id: rRl0Z-HYe2g

Length: 68min 13sec (4093 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 28 2023