Kaldheim, Episode 2 Story Review

Kaldheim, Episode 2: Awaken the Trolls Review

Magic the Gathering Story Review by a Casual Sci-Fi and Fantasy Reader

On January 13, 2021 WoTC released the second free web-based story article for its upcoming Magic set, Kaldheim. Click this link to read the story for yourself before reading on here as spoilers wait ahead! 

Summary

    The TLDR of the second chapter of the Kaldheim story is that Kaya is on her mission to find and kill Vorinclex by traveling across the realms of Kaldheim on the Cosima given to her by Alrund. Kaya cannot planeswalk between the realms of Kaldheim, so she must travel using the Cosima.The story begins with Kaya being shepherded to a different realm of Kaldheim. She lands on an unknown wooded realm of Kaldheim. 

    As Kaya walks aimlessly through the woods of this new realm, she comes across a group of trolls being directed and led by an individual who refers to himself as Valki, the God of Lies. Kaya is suspicious of Valki, so from cover, she casts a dispel magic spell on Valki to see if he is indeed being glamoured. She was correct as her spell turns Valki back into his original form, Tibalt, the devil planeswalker from the plane of Innistrad. Tibalt, angry that Kaya has revealed his form, sets his two intelligent trolls upon Kaya. Kaya outsmarts them easily and gruesomely disposes of one which makes all of the trolls desert Tibalt. Then, Kaya and Tibalt have a brief conversation as Kaya attempts to gain more information from Tibalt about what he is doing and why he is on Kaldheim. Tibalt does not reveal much before waking up 6 Torga trolls which are large trolls that normally slumber underneath and apart of the rock, grass, and forest. The Torga trolls attack them both, but Tibalt pulls out an ethereal sword which he uses to open a portal to Immersturm, the demonic realm of Kaldheim, and leaves. 

    Kaya attempts to fight all of the trolls but quickly finds herself losing. Before she can be seriously injured, a powerful young elf shows himself named Tyvar Kell who saves Kaya by using magic to turn all of the trolls back into stone. After the fight is over, Tyvar tells Kaya that he is the leader of the elves of the plane and that he has been tracking Valki. Previously, Valki spoke to Tyvar's brother and the royal elf court leading them to militarize against the gods of Kaldheim. After Kaya explains to Tyvar that Valki is actually Tibalt and that Tibalt traveled to Immersturm, Tyvar uses his magic to open a portal to follow Tibalt and states that he has been able to travel to every realm of Kaldheim using this ability. Kaya then notices that Tyvar is wearing a necklace of stone trinkets with one of them looking like a hedron from Zendikar. Tyvar admits that he got the hedron trinket from Zendikar, and Kaya clarifys that he is a planeswalker, but Tyvar had never heard of the term before. 

Criticisms 

I want to preface this section with two points: I love that WoTC has returned to publishing weekly web articles for the story of each set, and I enjoyed reading this story and I will articulate why in the next section. Here I want to discuss what I did not like about this article. 

1. There was one line from this article that irked me hard. After being chased down by Kaya, Tibalt says "You run like the devil!" which is frustrating for two reasons. One being that it is another 80s one-liner, but I can try to look past that. The other being that it directly contradicts the story around Tibalt and devils in Magic the Gathering and breaks the 4th wall. The majority of devils of Magic the Gathering, like Tibalt himself, are from the plane of Innistrad with the lore being that devils came from Ashmouth, a gaping hole into the plane's core where demons and devils come from. The devils of Innistrad serve the greater demons of the plane looking to attain power while sowing chaos. I am explaining this because it is important to know that there is no one devil of Magic the Gathering; there are many devils that serve powerful demons who are closer in flavor to the devil, but they are called demons, and Tibalt would be aware of this as he is from a plane rife with demons and devils. Therefore, Tibalt's line must be referencing the devil himself from real-life Christianity and thus immediately breaks the reader's immersion. Nothing against religion, but I do not want real life religions and direct references to them like this line in my high fantasy game and associated story.

What I Liked

I went in hard on one line in this article, but I did enjoy this story. Here is what I liked most:

1. The consistency of Kaya's personality is very much appreciated. If you're gonna write a flippant 80s movie action hero that exclusively says one-liners, you gotta be consistent about it. Nobody would fondly remember Arnold Schwarzenegger's character from Predator if he wasn't constantly doing badass maneuvers while blurting hilarious one-liners. Kaya is giving me this, and I am here for it now. 
2. At the very end of the story, Tyvar Kell blatantly asks Kaya "and what, exactly, is a planeswalker?" after she exclaims to him that he is a planeswalker as she notices that he got a hedron from Zendikar. I really like this because it has never made sense that planeswalkers from different planes already know what they are and that they are called planeswalkers without having had a mentor explain it to them previously. Having Tyvar not know what his ability is called makes logical sense for the multi-universe that WoTC has created. 

Predictions

Before more preview cards and the next chapter of the story come out, here are my predictions for where the story of Kaldheim is headed:

1. Alrund sent Kaya on a wild goosechase. I do not believe that the Cosima that Alrund provided to Kaya took Kaya to where Vorinclex escaped to. Alrund sent Kaya on a different path, possibly one that involves eliminating the false god, Valki/Tibalt for him. My evidence for this is, "Kaya searched for the silvery, organic-looking veins of metal she'd seen in that cave deep in the Aldergard. I'd take a big, spooky footprint instead. Or maybe some claw marks. But there was nothing. No sign that the monster had been this way at all." 
2. Tibalt's sword that he used to open the portal was the Sword of the Realms. The Sword of the Realms was previewed as the flip-side of the new mono-white god, Halvar, God of Battle. I predict the the Sword of the Realms belongs to Halvar but was stolen by Tibalt so that he could travel between the realms. My evidence is the description of the sword in this article which is "Forged from some kind of glass, it seemed to contain a shifting spectrum of color she had only seen once before: spilling off of Alrund himself." If you look at the art of the Sword of the Realms, it looks very similar to the description that is given in Episode 2 of the sword that Tibalt wields. Further, the flavor text of the Sword of Realms reads, "It cuts through the Cosmos itself, carving new Omenpaths between the realms" which indicates that the Sword of the Realms allows the wielder to travel between the realms of Kaldheim just like the sword that Tibalt wields in this article.