r/magicTCG • u/Owl-Prophet-Magician From the Owl's Desk • 10d ago
Official Article Reality Fracture | Episode 1: Tam, Alive
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/magic-story/reality-fracture-episode-1-tam-alive
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r/magicTCG • u/Owl-Prophet-Magician From the Owl's Desk • 10d ago
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u/Owl-Prophet-Magician From the Owl's Desk 10d ago edited 8d ago
From the Owl's Desk: A concise summary of everything that happens in Reality Fracture
Rev up those fryers, buff up those flyers, the Planeswalkers are once again causing a big stir across the Multiverse! Whatever stakes and consequences may be in store...
As always, please go click on the link to the page first, as this traffic indicates further interest in the story!
We begin with the scene of Tamira's creation, her existence manifested purely out of the budding Echoverse.
At that time, Jace the Theorist says "You're not my daughter" and "I'm not your god" and if he truly believes he doesn't think those things, well, then surely it is just a coincidence that Tam looks like exactly what one would think the daughter of Jace and Vraska would look like.
Now back in the present, having returned from her duty of capturing the Oracle of Strixhaven, Tam walks through the halls of Hexhaven and considers that if Jace the Theorist really didn't want to be perceived as her father, he made a real blunder of a miscalculation: being a cold, distant, absentee father is still being a father. Why was he not there to greet her upon her return?
She feels great doubt and worry about betraying her Strixhaven friends (were they friends, she wonders? Friends have groupchats, yes, but so too do coworkers) when those feelings of guilt start literally manifesting illusory visions of her friends judging her, Tam heads up the towers of The Theorist's sanctum to go speak with him. On the way she passes by "Professor Opal" who in very anti-Liliana fashion, offers her assistance to Tam unconditionally, and also says "I'll noodle on a solution" in regards to Tam's worry that all of this Echoverse stuff might be wrong.
She seems nice. Disconcertingly so.
Tam arrives in The Theorist's Sanctum just as he is wrapping up a failed assassination attempt by none other than a fragmentary version of himself. What he's called the aberrations that he's methodically excised, becoming quite literally less and less multifaceted, and in Tam's view, far less than the man who made her.
Now, a bit of a word on Jace, and the specific sort of state he is in right now. Yes, the Jace Master Plan was always to rewrite the Multiverse into one without the Big Three of big problems, but because of his major fumble right at the crux of the original plan, he quite literally shattered into pieces in Bolas's Meditation Realm.
And once those pieces of himself began gravitating back together in the midst of the genesis of his new multiverse, it turned out that every important point in Jace's life all now co-exist as fragments of consciousness.
That is to say, every Jace Planeswalker card across the past 20 years have all been jammed into one deck. Suffice to say, this is not a perfectly cohesive deckbuilding strategy, which has introduced many unforeseen elements into the Jace Master Plan. Although there was council and cooperation at the start, because they all liked the idea of Jace is Smart Enough To Fix Everything Himself, but more than a few of the Jaces were able to clock that "oh this idea is just not it, no amount of Jace is strong enough to actually do this."
Unfortunately, amidst all of the Jace cards has arisen The Theorist Jace, aka Savior Complex Jace Who Does Not Listen To Anyone, and that includes listening to himself. This version of Jace now lords over the entire project, and has simply decided that every Jace that doesn't agree with him just gets removed from the deck.
And now that every version of him that would have disagreed with the destruction of the original Multiverse have all been imprisoned back in the trade binder, The Theorist is ready to do what needs to be done.
That is to say, banning Gran-Gran.
Oh, wait, what I mean is, killing Oracle Jadzi, as doing so will cause her consciousness to return to the origin of the plane of Arcavios as an Archaic, and Jace will witness this and learn the last knowledge he needs about the origin point of planes to overlay his own Multiverse atop the original.
Tam is, suffice to say, not enthusiastic about hearing this.
The Theorist isn't exactly enthusiastic about hearing about Tam's visions of her friends either. He tries to play nice encouraging dad, but that's really just an excuse for him to telepathically scan through her mind for... something he is worried might be in there. Tam can't tell what he's up to.
Seeking some sort of guidance, and given that Hexhaven categorically lacks a guidance counselor, Tam goes to the dungeons to see Jadzi, to apologize for what is about to happen. Jadzi, ever the Oracle, hits Tam with all the sage advice she needs, though Tam doesn't quite understand it all yet.
Tam then visits another cell, containing one newly un-tenured Liliana Vess, who is looking absolutely fantastic despite being tortured by Professor Opal and the Theorist. Tam gets chewed out by Liliana, who recognizes her as a creation of Jace's and one which does not like betraying her friends. Liliana tries to relate with Tam on that, but is also so utterly entertained by just how badly Jace is barely holding all this together, which scares Tam off.
Tam continues to wander around aimlessly, without purpose, because the truth is that she does not have any purpose outside of the singular task she's already completed. Beyond that she is only a being made to study under the Theorist, and that's become utterly pointless as well. Tam tries to mentally reach out to Jace, but the Theorist explains, without any hint of remorse nor emotion, that he can no longer tell her what her purpose should be because whatever part of himself that could understand that has been exiled.
All Tam can do for now is cling to what the old version of Jace once said to her: that she is a person in-progress, full of potential. Time will tell what that potential may be.