The Horror of Innistrad | Dissecting Gothic, Cosmic, and Cinematic Terror

this episode is brought to you by shutter get started streaming the best horror thriller and supernatural films and shows shutter's expertly curated collection includes must-see titles like vicious fun the mortuary collection and pg psycho gore man plus all the best horror documentaries in the hit tv series creep show from executive producer greg nicotero of the walking dead i've been watching films on shutter for both research for this video and for my own enjoyment and i invite you to try shutter for free for 30 days with the promo code studies i highly recommend the 1922 silent masterpiece nosferatu a required viewing for film scholars and movie buffs alike or for something more contemporary watch deep red by dario argento an italian jollo thriller with murderous twists and a killer soundtrack featuring the prog rock band goblin both flicks are available to stream now follow the link below and give shutter a try for free on me [Music] shortly after arriving in vienna in november of 1830 the polish pianist and composer frederick chopin wrote a letter to his eldest sister luvika accompanying the letter was a musical dedication a short piece in c-sharp minor in the style of a nocturne this piece like all of chopin's nocturnes was inspired by the knight the haunting melody of the right hand drifts around the broken cord shapes of the left like moonlight seeping through the dead trees [Music] even at only 20 years old chopin was terrified of leaving his home in warsaw and dying alone in exile when he finally mustered the courage to travel he was celebrated with a farewell by family and friends at the gates of walla but a month after his departure an uprising erupted at home against russia chopin spent that christmas alone in vienna wishing desperately he could help his countrymen confessing in a letter to his best friend behind me a tomb beneath mia tomb only above me was no tomb to be found but night always becomes day listen as the sun comes out right here romantics like chopin like the poet giacomo leopardi who spent his short sick life gazing at the moon from his window in the seaside town of rekhanathi let casper david friedrich whose paintings illustrate the movement better than words ever could they were awestruck by nature's limitless power they chased the sublime they swayed with the waters of their temperamental hearts they championed aesthetic beauty in all artistic expression as william wordsworth claimed in lyrical ballads poetry should begin as the quote spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings end quote alongside words within this collection was samuel taylor coleridge's longest work the rime of the ancient mariner illustrated here by wood engraver gustavore another romantic artist himself in some romanticism states that all power derives from profound human emotion the moon and eternal muse of the romantics embody such power [Music] but in time elation turns to melancholy and grandeur proves illusory chopin once more sets the sun and the night settles in again [Music] beneath this european wave of romanticism swelled a darker more tragic more macabre undercurrent this is the gothic an antiquated term that giorgio vazadi used as a pejorative to describe the architectural style of german and french medieval churches the gothic in literature was born in the 18th century with horus walpole's the castle of otranto it flourished into the 19th century with mary shelley's frankenstein and emily bronte's wuthering heights and solidified its immortality with the publication of bram stoker's dracula in 1897 a text that cannot die sewn together to the gothic is its appendage horror from the latin to tremble gothic horror imitates its emotional brother romanticism but remains transfixed with fear and fear can't be explained away with logic with rationale or diagrams or the empirical fear is died in the wool emotion fear argues the gothic is terribly human gothic horror invites us to befriend fear to succumb to its fatal attraction to sit down to a warm meal with death incarnate and smile [Music] ten years ago at the end of september 2011 magic players all around the world were welcomed to the plane of innistrad for the first time marketed with the tagline horror lurks within innistrad promised a world design top down from the terrific tropes and narrative beats of gothic fiction as senior game designer on magic's creative team james wyatt writes on the world of innistrad horrors stalk in the shadows and scratch at the door in the night humanity is beset on all sides vampires thirst for human blood werewolves live for the thrill of the hunt the restless spirits of the dead haunt the living and no corpse is safe from reanimation at the hands of cruel necromancers or cunning scientists only their grim determination and their staunch faith in the protection of their patron archangel havison allows humans to survive in this nightmarish realm much like the sprawling cityscape of ravnica innistrad draws from the flora and fauna of northern europe to fill out its landscapes but unlike ravnica and much more like pharaohs and el drain this setting is pastoral it is pre-industrial relying on raw materials merchant trade and human labor to survive geographically innistrad is divided into four major regions off the icy waters of the port towns of nephalia black market economies thrive on corp smuggling and criminal movement to facilitate growth even the most resolute followers of law and order acknowledge nephalia's underground trading arteries as a necessary evil and the thick mist rolling in from the sea ensures all crime remains unseen the town's buildings are made of wood a decree enforced by the vampire runo stromkirk to guarantee the safety of his progenies it is difficult to carve stakes he argues if all the nearby forests have been raised in kessig however the woodlands are thriving ensnared in a perpetual autumn the denizens here become hunters and trappers farmers and humble villagers but they too have their own secrets to hide inflicted with the curse of lycanthropy are commoners and mayors alike their nature revealed at the first glimpse of moonlight those who detest the curse are called repentance but the wantons who embrace their duality harness this inhuman rage and form howl packs with fellow werewolves mechanically werewolves were a huge innovation to make them work r d borrowed design and printing tech from another game in wizards of the coast's arsenal called duel masters which featured cards with two faces initially aaron forsyth and the team were hesitant to print cards without the iconic deckmaster back but after play testing it became clear that the gameplay was too rich to ignore the risk paid off tenfold its success is still felt 10 years later and innistrad's depth remains indebted to these cards that transform transformation is fundamental to gothic horror the tension between human and monster marks the dramatic center of these stories often however the dichotomy dissolves revealing that the human is the monster unlike in fairy tales and bedtime stories where heroes and enemy beasts are visually and morally opposed the gothic suggests that without proper emotional control or physical defenses you too can become one of them and this is the locus of fear in both character and reader frightening is the thought of being involuntarily bitten by a wayward wolf unknowing if the curse has been passed until a full moon's night even more unnerving is being held captive by the beast a total relinquishment of control the journal of jonathan harker that opens the novel of dracula is a gothic horror miniature parker's imprisonment is particularly dreadful because all the while he suffers the count hovers around the castle seductively playing with his food werewolves and vampires both embody the transformation from human to monster but they symbolize deferring emotional extremes returning to wyatt if werewolves are a symbol of repressed rage vampires are a symbol of repressed desire innistrad's vampires find home in the harrowing region of stencia described as a mountainous valley of jagged hills dotted with victorian manners here the sun never seems to break through the strangely colored clouds a description reminiscent of the pages of stoker's novel on innistrad four vampire families skirmish for dominance atop the hierarchy are the markov the most ubiquitous and prestigious they utilize psychic magic to impose their volition the falcon wrath bloodline originates from a falconer and thus they can fly they are the veinest of the vampires the voldarin conversely are the most hermetic and antisocial of the clans opting to disguise themselves by transforming into animals but homebodies as we know are often the hosts of the best house parties the trope of the vampire ball reappears throughout innistrad and especially on olivia's first card finally the stromkirk who roam the shores and streets of nephalia their affinity with the coast allows them to disappear at will into the haunting blue mist this piece by james ryman highlights the self-assuredness with which the vampires roam innistrad as an aside how strange is it to see a man behind the noble donned in a mask how differently an image can read 10 years removed from its conception in browsing the first innistrad block for this retrospective i found myself returning to this card over and over again it is a gem of visual design the illustration by winona nelson radiates with opulence and sophisticated fashion and the colors both within the painting and in the surrounding card frame align with our collective imagination of vampires red and black is the dominating motif which is complemented by a deathly white in the lacy garments and on the cold skin in the commons live the fruits of world building and this innocuous game piece captures the essence of innistrad's vampires in full the fourth and final region of this plane is gavin home of the humans among the most enduring images from the first set one that many players must remember is this piece by peter morbacher i love this painting because it places us undoubtedly on innistrad it can never be confused for any other plane in mike linneman's article architecture on innistrad we learned that gavin township is a half-timbered house which was a cheap building method consisting of vertical diagonal and horizontal laminated timber beams filled with adobe stone brick wood or plaster such houses still stand among the streets of germany today which connects this fantasy world to its living geographic counterpart employed in this painting too is innistrad's primary visual gag art director jeremy jarvis notes that the first person camera is established across the world to deliver a sense of personal dread the township here is disproportionately exaggerated with its base widened as its roof sharpened to a tiny point in the sky the effect is unnerving and imposing leaving you suspicious of this supposedly safe space in a world that is actively hunting you johannes vos's iconic image of blood artist utilizes this upward gazing first-person camera to similar effect which invites viewers into the scene as a proxy for the suffering victim as noel carroll argues in the article the nature of horror horror appears to be one of those genres in which ideally the emotive responses of the audience run parallel to the emotions of characters indeed in works of horror the responses of characters often seem to cue the emotional responses of the audience this marks another distinctly gothic element of inisrod's horror here humanity is the symbol of hope but the humans are terrified and by extension so are the players in life the humans of innistrad are nothing more than fancy cattle to the vampires who maintain their populations like livestock they see themselves humanity's saviors yet despise their dependence on human blood in life the humans build fortifications against rampant werewolves unknowing that the disease already secretly lives among their ranks in life the humans build churches to seek safety through that which is holy but within the clergy run corrupt bishops and priests who actively call forth demons living beneath the chapels even in death the humans are not at rest corpses of the deceased on innistrad often return in ranks to walk among the living or they are dismembered and mutilated in experiments by the scabrin mad scientists obsessed with necromantic reanimation the spirits of the dead are also just as vulnerable to the horror ghosts returned to haunt the living some unknowingly become the specter of the ones they loved most in life the geists of innistrad which is the german term for ghost thus pairing the fiction to its real world equivalent once again are fundamentally connected to the gothic like werewolves and vampires they illustrate the transformation from human to monster they also reflect the plane's total dependence on superstition as means of explaining unnatural phenomena much gothic fiction brings us into contact with the supernatural we may live our lives professing that we don't believe in the supernatural we may live our lives never being really convinced that we've seen a ghost on the other hand our dreams remind us all the time that there are things that we see even when asleep which are very hard to explain there is no culture in the world which is free from ghosts or from the fear of ghosts or from the belief in ghosts and there never has been so common are the geists that not even death promises an escape from the terror an afterlife afforded to only the most noble of innistrad citizens is called the blessed sleep a tranquil oblivion in which neither body nor spirit return in any form to the world but as the nibble ghast proves the breath of the sleepless that rolls in with the tide and brings geists to nephalia this fate is a rare occurrence enhancing the humans belief in superstition is the omnipresence of the moon as stated prior the romantic moon and the gothic moon differ primarily in their connotations romanticism used the moon splendor as a symbol of profound emotion the gothic sees the moon as a lingering warning a sign of a malicious presence when the moon is new on inistrod babies have a better chance at the blessed sleep conversely an increase in werewolf attacks marks the presence of the so-called hunter's moon many astronomers on the plane believe that the moon is made of silver if so the werewolves greatest boon is also their greatest bane this is the essence of the gothic and the moon represents its central theme of horrific transformation ends like the humans the moon is itself capable of transforming as it waxes and wanes through its phases so does the superstition driven behavior of the citizens and so this extremely rich and grounded immersive experience distinguishes the world of innistrad from other worlds and magic this immersion i think is due to the hyper focus on humans as both the victims of a relentless multi-front hunt and their presence at the core of the monsters hunting them all the world building elements from the pointed art direction to mechanical minutia like equipment getting better if a human holds it or spells benefiting from the presence of death aided in this feeling as proxies for the players the humans fear invited us to be afraid too the narrative arc acknowledged that it had to get worse before it got better and despite all odds humanity prevailed ministrad's first story was one of humans resisting humanoid monsters a fundamentally gothic tale of the grappling between the darkness and the light and then [Music] five years later the eldrazi invaded innistrad and twisted all of these relationships usurping the balance between humans and monsters was an entirely alien entity a cosmic horror from the blind eternities the promised end in all her tentacular glory shadows over innistrad debuted in april 2016 its title reminiscent of the lovecraft source material from which it drew emrakul's arrival on innistrad was teased in this set across the plain her influence was felt in the bodies of its citizens and in the clouds of the sky her presence displaced the moral center of the plane's most stalwart protectors and altered the texture of what made innistrad horrible alongside her arrived the gatewatch magic's ragtag version of the avengers a group of pseudo-superheroes who placed their nagging differences aside to save the world and suddenly innistrad needed a lot of saving as i often do i turn to the basic lan suite for guidance and insight into the state of world building during this era together with the decrepit and warped symbol of abison all five basic lands feature this monument a stone formation resembling an anvil or the head of a sliver called kryptoliths these structures quite literally pointed to the mystery that needed solving they also symbolically pointed to a shift away from the gothic as the primary mood of storytelling no longer would minor quarrels between vampires and geists and werewolves and humans instigate fear now there were bigger fish to fry if the first blocks visual gag was a first-person point of view that invited players to identify with victims shadows over innistrad and eldritch moon's primary visual gag was to showcase gory and unnatural mutations of the body due to americle's arrival with restraint this concept could still fit the tone and atmosphere that makes innistrad so charming in excess however it can nullify the rules that make the world immersive like going through a haunted house with all the lights on consider matt stewart's illustration for manic scribe from the victorian era costuming to the arched window panes whose fluid shapes mirror the waxy candles burning alongside the demented scholar this scene like gavin township undeniably takes place on innistrad upon closer observation we see the quills are pierced through the scribe's palms and both their pinky fingers are curling ever so slightly as they scribble nonsense onto the parchment that litters the entire office the catatonic stare the mouth a gape the eyes lifeless and petrified sell the horror in this piece and the tentacle digits are just subtle enough that they don't distract from the composition conversely vuldarin pariah and especially their transformed side abolisher of bloodlines mark the full departure into the theater of excess making literal the title eldritch moon we see a vampire completely morph into an eldrazi monstrosity growing extra limbs and tentacles and animal moths and claws all while bathed in the light of the full moon notably their silhouette mimics that of emrakul herself it is a smart and grotesque composition a delightful exhibition of unnatural body horror but with this shift in art direction came the concession of turning on the lights in the haunted house conceptually cosmic horror and gothic horror operate on separate axes gothic horror is anthropocentric in nature it is fundamentally concerned with the darkness living within human beings doppelgangers make manifest these inner battles and represent the sublime's evil twin what freud and others called the uncanny the case of dr jekyll and mr hyde explores this idea and notably the transformed monster still resembles the man even if his physique is exaggerated the gothic is obsessed with superstition in religion and in the occult it is distrustful of scientific explanation since the monsters will always defy any and all rational explanation the existence of ghosts or the headless horsemen or count dracula is not a matter of belief gothic protagonists understand that such evils are woven into the fabric of the world and to defeat them you must play by the same rules smelting silver bullets and conducting seances and decapitating the zombie at the neck all utilized the same logic that formed the monsters in the first place staying inside during a full moon or avoiding patterns of the number 13 are not signs of paranoia they are tactics of the wise and the gothic rewards such behavior in contrast the cosmic horror of lovecraft and the like are completely anti-anthropocentric often these stories lean into the ineffable to emphasize the minuteness of human life against the unimaginably large scale of time and space cosmic horror is heavily informed by scientific technologies the monsters are not symbolic of human emotions but rather could read as the devastating consequences of hubris or the total indifference of the universe with regards to earthly affairs invisible horrors like the untameable radioactivity of chernobyl or the unreachable mariana trench are comfortably at home in the tales of this genre if the gothic cares about how our moon affects human behavior the cosmic argues that this moon is just one moon among many moons in a solar system rotating around an average star among billions none of which are even aware of your bad luck on an arbitrary tuesday afternoon if the gothic is a distinctly pre-industrial product of the 19th century then the cosmic is reflective of the 20th century's gigantic and dehumanizing leaps in industry and technology during our second visit to innistrad in 2016 i found myself asking what horrors are at home in the home of horrors why was there such dissonance between this setting that enamored so many players a few years prior and the invasion of a new race of monsters that were horrific in their own right and thus theoretically could meld seamlessly into this environment never mind the gatewatch a gimmicky cliche in an ip that takes itself very seriously and doesn't need monochromatic characters to push its narratives why didn't shadows over innistrad and eldritch moon deliver on the tremendous successes of their former selves because in looking again at all the cards there are just so many awesome designs here perhaps i'm misremembering i mean look at shamble back and relentless dead and from under the floorboards these are the blackest of midnight black cards there's nothing cosmic about them the vampires too look excellent insulit neonate and era falconrath both capture that high-class maliciousness and vampiric disregard for the rules startled awake and persistent nightmare is an inspired design one that took the transform mechanic into completely new space and just look at the way village messenger flips man it practically jumps out of the card frame even the red angels are terrific with gold knight castigator being one of my all-time favorites of the tribe in shadows over innistrad the moody atmospheric gothic darkness is still prolific on so many cards even some of eldritch moon's eldrazi hybrids are stellar svetlin velanov's decimator of the provinces is a painting that has persisted in my memory of this set the mangled deformities of the boar are reminiscent of nuclear wastes affect on organic life and those vibrant and warm autumnal oranges contrast the nightmarish creature in a beautiful way fibrous entangler by stephen belladon is another horrific display of body mutation you can practically hear the bones cracking as they stretch and turn the tentacles squishing as they ride around the howling face of the distorted werewolf once again the lights are on in the haunted house but certain horrors can still frighten even while on full display and aside from the standout paintings and pet cards players still consider eldritch moon limited to be one of the most engaging draft formats in the game's history so this is a main phase ping you with the thermo alchemist play make mischief ping you again galvanic bombardment the devil shoot you with the devil attack with the castigator so okay after all brock did assemble lethal on that uh same turn but then i come back to emrakul the promised end and i remember why cosmic and gothic horrors clash this image is a phenomenal composition the alien's gigantic size is set to scale as she hovers behind the town square her tentacles pouring down and swallowing the buildings below beneath her an all-out war wages between the humans and their corrupted counterparts silhouettes of axes and pikes remind us of the state of technology on the plane and furthermore emphasize that this battle is one of the common folk fires are ablaze black smoke is rising a full moon glows behind a colossal cosmic abomination in the distance oh the futility this painting underscores the humans of innistrad's total irrelevance not only are they caught fighting between one another but even if they banded together how could they ever stop such a force how could they stand a chance against such an inhuman entity while myriad other monsters prey upon their ilk just as much at the level of gameplay the appearance of emrakul the promised end represented the total loss of all hope but here comes emrakul for sam pardee and the fun is about to start here let's see what devastation sam party can bring to andrew brown's side of the battlefield picks up a card from nissa and a card from his drawstep and now we'll see what andrew does with this extra turn here in the face of sam party's emerical just a pair of lance and that'll be a scoop for andrew brown so embrycol does it there for sam pardee in incredible fashion eldritch moon arrived in july 2016 following a string of doom and gloom magic blocks the eldrazi sense of omnipotence was exhausted in the two sets prior on zendikar and their arrival on innistrad felt like mixing steak and potatoes with octopus and lionfish of course you want your invasive species to feel out of place on the worlds they are seeking to conquer but again with their arrival the keystone that kept the belief suspended was yanked out from beneath the narrative structures it upheld so in a poetic return to form when the gatewatch trapped emrakul in the moon they simultaneously re-established the rules that made the world so rich and believable and grounded in the first place it was a symbolic gesture that dismissed the cosmic and returned us to the earthly land of superstition the gothic moon rose once again and this painting persists it feels like a movie poster doesn't it an image you'd see framed in a light box behind the kiosk at the local cinema and returning to the question what horrors are at home in the home of horrors i realized that alongside the gothic and the cosmic innistrad has always been informed and influenced by the silver screen cinematic horrors crept into the card frames in 2011 and nestled in alongside the monsters of gothic literature this continued with shadows and eldritch moon and now with our third visit to the plane innistrad is once again going to the movies hey you're all right i'm looking at you i can tell you're okay what are we waiting for let's do it in the 1986 sci-fi horror film the fly david cronenberg slowly turns the beautiful athletic and smart but goofy 34 year old jeff goldblum into a repulsive and decaying creature who cannot leave his house as the title suggests he slowly becomes a fly we see his story told on delver of secrets 12 years prior toby hooper took a group of rowdy miscreants and a lo-fi film camera out to the hill country near austin texas and set up one of the most iconic and culti slashers in the genre's history i can't help but see leatherface and vulcan baga's painting here the butcher's undead eyes staring gloomily past the fourth wall and directly into us village cannibals despite predating ari astor's filmic debut has me remembering the horrific climax of 2018's hereditary the wooden beams and stoic faces lit from below feel eerily similar to the attic and treehouse scenes in the film's third act and who could forget linda blair's timeless performance in the exorcist whose stunts put her in various contraptions and harnesses and caused unrepairable damage to her spine the floating girl in ghostly possession takes me back to this film from 1973 and has me wishing i could have seen this one in theaters myself the easter eggs and subtle references to horror films and monster movies are abundant throughout the first two innistrad blocks but with the third visits the creative and marketing teams leaned in further to pop culture's knowledge of cinema to build midnight hunt and crimson val tapping at the window for example captures that childhood fear of inventing threats out of shaking trees caught in a thunderstorm but it also points back to 1982's poltergeist in which robbie is actually kidnapped by the possessed oak in his backyard lawn the meat hook massacre makes explicit reference to that texas chainsaw one the hand hanging in the foreground provides a hint of what the butcher is chopping up behind it even delver of secrets received a reprinting here of course join the dance raise the effigy and the entire coven mechanic are nods to the witchy folk horror classics of the 60s and 70s as well as ari astor's sophomore effort in mid-summer add to the list this forest by andreas rocca which may be a call out to the tree of the dead from which the headless horseman emerges in sleepy hollow from 1999 tim burton's efforts are masterful in this film its colors and textures and ghostly atmosphere feel like innistrad living in live action other gags like rise of the ants and shadowbeast sighting bring a little bit of campy humor to the fold which is always welcomed comedy is ingrained in horror comedy provides some comfort and relief to the grim nature of the haunted house even more fun when the haunted house that's trying to kill you hits you with a couple of puns on the way out the door midnight hunt's premier full art basic lands were printed in black and white they are reminiscent of gustav dore's engravings invoking the spirit of the romantics once more perhaps none more effectively than evan cagle's island here to me they also capture the essence of black and white horror films the invisible man frankenstein the wolfman with lon chaney jr even later classics like alfred hitchcock's psycho and george a romero's night of the living dead all of these films leverage their black and white film stock to develop atmosphere and mood and it's curious to me that some of history's earliest feature-length films when cameras were primitive and materials costly focused on horrific subject matter and terrifying stories to tell i mentioned nosferatu at the beginning of course but even the passion of joan of arc from 1928 and the inferno from 1911 are frightening and heavy works of filmmaking this mountain reminds me a bit of the latter's film set as we move into another autumn i find myself feeling at home now more than ever on innistrad just as much as ravnica if not more i see this plane as magic's tonal center a darker worlds that synthesizes the gothic with the cinematic and still makes room for high fantasy a world that is at its best when its humans are in mortal danger despite the lack of eldrazi presence this time i appreciate that the citizens still remember the chaos and onslaught that emerical brought to the plane commonly referred to as the travails the events of eldritch moon still haunt and linger over those who survived denick pious apprentice's story is particularly tragic the illegitimate son of a father that kept him in secret dennick dreamed of becoming a cathar and vowed to protect the people of gavin the travails destroyed his entire legitimate family and even long after death dennick still raises his shield to defend the innocent from innistrad's evils the recurring appearance of the card unruly mob has changed only in flavor text across these three sets and has become another source of comedic relief from me they feel like the crows on the fence of venistrad surviving all the horrors that the world throws their way every year around october i immerse myself in horror media and it has now become tradition that i make a magic video for halloween i must admit i find a lot of comfort in this genre i know i'm not alone as part of my research to understand why i enjoy being frightened i found an article titled the paradox of horror fear as a positive emotion from 2012. here author katarina bentanaki writes arguing from the principle that we can find experiences both unpleasant and perfectly desirable smutz traces the attraction of horror and all painful art in the rich experience that it offers he argues that one is seldom as fully engaged intellectually perceptually and effectively as when experiencing painful emotional responses to art innistrad to me is a world of comfort fears a place where terrifying events are happening to people who are decidedly not me and never could be for reasons that are ridiculous and fantastic and imaginary i find a lot of joy in watching humans flip into werewolves and swinging into a squad of bloodthirsty vampires i find being held in suspense alongside a theater of anxious moviegoers to be cathartic and overwhelmingly fun i find scouring the source material that inspired these sets to be infinitely rewarding i feel even after writing this love letter to innistrad that i have yet to scratch the surface of why i enjoy these cards so dearly but the haunted house must inevitably lead to an exit somewhere so i'd like to end with this piece from the first set this is paraceline by ryan yee the name of a natural phenomenon in which the light of the moon forms a halo and creates a luminous spot in the sky as we've seen time and again the moon on innistrad and in gothic horror at large often warns of impending doom here however the full moon seems to provide some serenity and calm perhaps for the first time ever on this plane as i often take walks at night to gather my thoughts i'm enamored by the light of the full moon i remember that i am staring at the same moon that guided chopin's hands as he composed his nocturnes i feel inspired by leopard these poems his love letters to the moon that kept him company the same moon i see in the sky now i imagine that somewhere in a far-off land a bat is taking flight from the arched window of a lonesome castle a farmer is succumbing to the infernal rage and answering the howl of the beast within a corpse is desperately clamoring for the blessed sleep to no avail i imagine what it must have been like to sit down to a warm meal with death incarnate and i smile [Music] this episode was sponsored by shutter use the code studies for 30 days free and let me know what you end up watching as we move through the spooky season and into the dark and cold winter months ahead and as always i continue to be a proud partner of card kingdom you know what to do there in researching this video i took note of the standout artists who really captured the essence of innistrad among the many is the timeless kev walker limited fans of midnight hunt and the general magic audience at large rallied around his terrifying work on flesh taker i'd also like to nod to malicious intent and especially erdwell ripper these paintings are chilling and feel like they come from another era i'd also like to highlight this piece crowded crypt by the talented up-and-coming artist to real threat mr threat uploaded a time lapse of him completing this illustration on his own channel it is a must watch for fans of magic illustration it's an excellent painting one i wish i bought myself the decaying dead skin the heavy stone coffin embossed with avacyn symbol all the innistrad beats are here it's just lovely and as always thanks for watching you can support the show directly on patreon and join the ranks of the names you see here and i'll be seeing you sooner than normal for a special project involving another innistrad favorite that's in crimson valley has become a vampire stay tuned you

Channel: Rhystic Studies

Views: 352,765

Keywords: magic the gathering, mtg, trading card game, themagicmansam, rhystic studies, innistrad, gothic horror

Id: _UlrFTdANKc

Length: 41min 14sec (2474 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 31 2021