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Urza Planeswalker is a fictional character from the universe of The Gathering, best known for his millennia-long struggle with Yawgmoth and the plane of Phyrexia.
Early years
Urza was born on the first day of the year 0 AR to a noble family of Argive, one of the three coastal kingdoms of Terisiare. His younger brother The Gathering) was born on the last day of the same year. Urza's mother died while she giving birth to his brother. His father took another younger wife who did not like the brothers. The next year his father fell ill, their new mother not wanting to bear the children after the loss of their father, sent them away to Urza's old friend Tocasia to serve as students at her archaeological dig.
Apprenticeship to Tocasia
Under Tocasia's guidance, the two brothers learned a large amount about the manufacture of artifacts from the archaeological excavations of the ancient ruins of the Thran, the mysterious civilization that ruled Terisiare thousands of years prior. During this time, Urza developed a talent for study. Rarely having a hands on approach, he would prefer to study the artifacts the excavations uncovered rather than participate in the diggings.
Over their years at Tocasia's camp, Urza and Mishra made several important inventions and discoveries. While the most obvious of these was the ornithopter, the most important turned out to be the Caves of Koilos. A mysterious cave filled with old Thran artifacts, the Caves were also the location of a long-sealed gateway to Phyrexia, used in every Phyrexian infiltration and invasion of Dominaria. On their first visit, Urza and Mishra acquired the Mightstone and the Weakstone respectively, the two halves of the stone that had been holding the portal shut. Mutual desire for the other brother's stone led to a falling-out between Urza and Mishra, as well as the inadvertent death of Tocasia.
The Chief Artificer
After Tocasia's death, Urza moved to Yotia and put his skills with machinery to work as a clockmaker's apprentice. Shortly thereafter, a public contest was announced by the ruler of Yotia. Any man who could move a gigantic jade statue across a courtyard would be married to his daughter. Urza wasn't particularly interested in the daughter, but in an attempt to acquire a rare tome that was in her dowry, Urza built a gigantic machine to move the statue. He succeeded, and was wed to Kayla bin-Kroog. However, being wed did not make him any more affectionate towards his wife - on the contrary, he left her bed on their wedding night to study the Thran book from her dowry. However, he threw himself headlong into his new position of Chief Artificer, working excessively on his attempts to improve his artifacts.
The Brothers' War
While Urza was inadvertently acquiring the reins of power in Yotia, Mishra was doing the same with the Fallaji desert people, becoming a close advisor to the Fallaji ruler over the course of several years. A series of double-crossings and sneak attacks quickly commenced between the two brothers and their kingdoms, soon resulting in an open war. An increasingly elaborate set of machines developed by the two brothers began to fight on either side, and the war slowly spiralled out of control. It continued for decades, until the fateful day at Argoth when the brothers met face to face at the head of their armies. Urza discovered there that Mishra had been corrupted by Phyrexian influence, slowly turning himself from a man into a living machine. Urza responded to this with the frightening force of the sylex. The sylex blast was one of the most traumatic events in Dominarian history. It slaughtered both armies, blasted the landscape for miles around, and altered weather patterns for centuries, leading to the Ice Age. However, it did something more important than any of that - it lodged the Mightstone and the Weakstone into Urza's eye sockets causing him to become a planeswalker, planeswalkers being immensely powerful immortal beings, able to move around the multiverse with merely a thought.
Quest for Vengeance
To be written
Exploring the Origins of Phyrexia
Urza, having just survived the massive magical blast using the sylex, was transformed in the maelstrom into a Planeswalker, a being of pure energy and godlike capacities who can step between worlds, universes and planes as easily as one can step through another room.
Urza settles back to ground zero, and finds Tawnos, his apprentice, sealed in a mechanical coffin that somehow kept him safe throughout the maelstrom. They both have a short reunion, and Tawnos goes off to tell Urza's wife, Kayla bin-Kroog, that Urza had died with Kayla's name on his lip. Kayla, knowing Urza through and through, would rather believe that he had died with Mishra's name on his lip, instead. She spends the her remaining mortal days with her blinded son, Harbin, and writes the Antiquities War, a book that would become a very important source of history for Dominarians.
Urza wanders Dominaria for a time, and finds another planeswalker, Meshuvel, who educates him in the ways of his kind. Their relationship doesn't last, however, as Meshuvel attempted to trap Urza, as she "fears" looking at Urza's eyes. Urza, after his ascension as planeswalker, found that his Mightstone and Mishra's Weakstone, has imbedded themselves in his skull, and together with the sylex blast, have helped him become a planeswalker. Urza, at this time, has also developed many derangements, one of which is a fixation to destroy the Phyrexians as it had destroyed his brother.
Urza journeys Dominaria for a few years more, where in every city all he can hear are curses against the Brothers and their War. Urza has also taken up wandering the planes, where in one plane, he finds Xantcha, a Phyrexian newt (a human-looking sleeper agent) who was deemed "defective" by the Phyrexians and left for dead. Urza heals her, and though Xantcha tells him honestly that she is Phyrexian, Urza simply ignores the admission and thinks she was the victim of Phyrexian torture and brainwash.
Urza then makes a travelling companion of Xantcha for a short while, and shows her the dragon engine that he plans to use in his conquest and destruction of Phyrexia. Xantcha tells him that what he has is extremely insufficient, but Urza doesn't listen, and proceeds to raid Phyrexia with his dragon engine.
Xantcha unknowingly hitches a ride in the dragon engine and uses Urza's raid as a chance to get her "heart" back from the keepers. According to stories circulated in Phyrexia, a Phyrexian newt's heart is said to be the repository of a newt's mistakes--whenever a newt commits a mistake, the Ineffeble one, Yawgmoth, the lord of Phyrexia, makes a scar mark on their hearts. Too many mistakes and the heart is destroyed, and its owner with it. Xantcha doesn't know if the legends are true, but she's afraid nonetheless, and acts to save her heart while Urza lays siege on Phyrexia.
Urza and his battered dragon engine successfully punch through three layers of Phyrexia's nine, but while at the fourth level (where Xantcha was), Yawgmoth, the sleeping lord of Phyrexia, suddenly invades Urza's mind, and incapacitates him. Xantcha climbs onto the dragon engine, and forces Urza to remember where he was, and forces him to planeswalk them out of Phyrexia.
Once outside Phyrexia, in a strange plane, Xantcha told Urza to burn Yawgmoth's name out of his mind, which Urza literally does. Urza and Xantcha spends the next few months dodging Phyrexian hunters as they planeswalk from plane to plane. Eventually, on an icy plane when Urza almost experienced defeat, he managed to planeswalk to Serra's realm, an artificial plane populated by warrior angels created by the planeswalker Serra. It is there that Urza spends months being healed by the benevolont planeswalker before moving on to exploring the other planes for hundreds of years with Xantcha.
Returning home
Ratepe was a young Dominarian recruited by Xantcha, Urza's Phyrexian assistant. Xantcha sought out Ratepe from a small nation in order to impersonate Mishra, Urza's long dead brother. Urza was becoming increasingly obsessed and guilt ridden over his role in his brother's death. So much so that he was abandoning his defense of Dominarian in the hopes of finding a way to undo his brother's death. Xantcha brought Ratepe, posing as Mishra, to Urza in the hopes of alleviating some of his guilt and allowing him to focus on defeating the Phyrexians. Thanks to Xantcha's coaching and Ratepe's ability to hear Urza's Weakstone singing to him, Ratepe was able to help shock Urza out of his guilt. He continued to help Urza and eventually became Xantcha's lover. Both Ratepe and Xantcha were killed when Urza fought the Phyrexian Demon Gix in Koilos. Ratepe and Xancha's sacrifice helped Urza defeat Gix and also revealed to him the shared Phyrexian ancestory with the Thran.
Tolaria and the Time Streams
Though Urza got over his obsession with reversing his brother's death, his interest in the past was far from over. Having learned that the impending Phyrexian threat was more dangerous than ever, Urza created a vast school of magic and technology on the island of Tolaria: the Academy. From all around the world, Urza summoned the most talented artificers, sorcerers, mathematicians, and biologists to study in his prestigious school, including Barrin, Teferi, and Rayne. Using the information he had gleaned from Gix and the technology being developed by his genius resident staff, Urza began the creation of a time machine that allowed him to gaze into the past and see the ancient war that led to Phyrexian banishment.
By implanting Xantcha's heartstone (her only remains) into a silver golem, Urza created Karn, a being that could theoretically enter rifts created by his temporal disruptor and change the past. Tragically, during the machine's trial run, the temporal vortex drew far too much energy and "exploded", destroying the majority of the Tolarian Academy, killing inhabitants, and covering the island in odd (and sometimes horrific) temporal disturbances. Although Karn and Urza survived without injury, and much was learned about the history of the enemy, Urza was devastated.
After being distraught and guilt-ridden over causing another horrible explosion (the first being the Sylex), Urza eventually rebuilt the Academy and realized that the temporal rifts throughout Tolaria could be used to his advantage. He engineered magical-technological armor that allowed Tolarian researchers to finish decades of work in mere hours in fast-time bubbles. Potions derived from water in slow-time bubbles could extend a promising student's life by years. For the first time, Urza had a viable means for gaining ground on the multi-millenial head start the Phyrexian invasion force had so long held.
Atonement for Past Sins
Urza blamed himself for the horrid results of his actions against Phyrexia. To amend his actions, Urza prepared an invasion into The Gathering)'s Realm. He undertook this effort to remove a quickly growing Phyrexian power he had lead there, which ran unquestioned in the absence of Serra herself. Knowing he himself could not stop the now already large force that was being built, the 'walker prepared a large force and a vessel to carry it across planes. To build this vessel, Urza required specific wood. Yavimaya, a very old forest, held this wood. Urza, in his visit to request the wood, was captured by the forest spirit Multani to pay for the destruction of Argoth. After a four year imprisonment, Urza was released and with his reprieve, granted the wood he needed to make the planeswalking vessel, The Weatherlight.
With this vessel Urza attacked Serra's Realm, using a united force of many different artifacts. After defeating the Phyrexian force, and saving many refugees, Urza let Serra's Realm destroy itself, as all artificial planes do without the guidance of a Planeswalker.
With his victory, Urza thought himself forgiven in the many places he had brought trouble. He had done two great deeds, defeating the infestation in Serra's Realm, and the creation of unity between war torn races. Also, with a vessel that could travel planes, Urza could amend many of his other faults on other planes.
Building the Legacy
Urza constructed an army of sorcery and power to resist the coming invasion. He called them the Metathran. He also began a project of massive scale which he called the Legacy. The centerpiece of this was the ship Weatherlight, commanded by none other than Gerrard Capashen, the end product of a long line of genetic experiments. Gerrard was the most important piece to the Legacy, and was Urza's greatest achievement. Along with the ship's crew, Gerrard began his quest to assemble the rest of the Legacy before the plane had completely become overrun.
The Invasion
Finally, the time had come. The moment that Urza spent thousands of years preparing for had arrived. With it came the entire Phyrexian force and all of Yawgmoth's might. The plan essentially forced Rath as a plane to merge with Dominaria. This left massive rifts throughout Dominaria which could be easily abused by the Phyrexian troops. As this plot unravelled, many of the plane's greatest warriors stepped up to face the threat as a united front. Some fought, while others came to the conclusion that they should just cut their losses. Teferi, taking this stance, decided to phase the entire continent of Jamuraa out of existence. Urza was not pleased as he felt the war could only be won with the entire plane fighting together.
The invasion was here, and nothing short of the completed Legacy weapon would end it.
The Nine Titans
The Nine Titan engines were huge artifact creations that were built by Urza to assist in the attack on Phyrexia. Each titan was controled and powered by a Planeswalker and as such they grew to emulate that planeswalker's characteristics. There was one titan engine for each of these nine planeswalkers: Commodore Guff, Tevash Szat, Bo Levar, Daria, Taysir, Freyalise, Kristina, Lord Windgrace, and of course Urza himself. The Titan engines were huge constructs with a vast arsenal of weaponry. They contained aeries of falcon engines (artifacts created by Urza to detect oil, dive towards it, and then once inside the Phyrexian burst apart and destroy it), rocket launchers located on the wrists, mana cannons, as well as colossal hands and feet that could crush hundreds of Phyrexians at a time. These weapons, combined with the formidable power of the planeswalkers themselves, made each and every Titan engine a force to be reckoned with.
Betrayal
During the invasion of Dominaria Urza gathered the nine Titan Engines together with their planewalker operators and launched a counteroffensive against Phyrexia. Their goal was to destroy the heartstones which kept most of the Phyrexians alive. One of the planeswalkers, Tevesh Szat, betrayed the nine and killed Daria. Urza's response to the betrayal, which he expected, was to seal Tevesh Szat's soul within a soul bomb that he created. Similar to nuclear weapons, these soul bombs were the most destructive force yet to exist within the Magic universe.
Years of fighting the Phyrexians had left Urza cold, and more than a little mentally unstable. In an oddly Nietzschian way Urza had come to love and respect the Phyrexians as perfect creatures, even as he fought against them. Barrin realized this, before his death, and tried convince Urza to pull away from madness. Barrin did not succeed.
While in his counter-invasion of Phyrexia, Urza was approached by several angel-like Phyrexians and was convinced to betray his Planeswalker ally, Taysir. He triggered the same part of Taysir's suit, the "kill rubrik", that he used to kill Tevesh Szat. He was led to the seventh sphere, where he was presented with his brother, who had been tortured in this clockwork hell for thousands of years. He then proceeded to the final layer of Phyrexia to worship Yawgmoth, where he was joined by Gerrard.
Final Atonement
To be written
Urza's Legacy
To be written
"Urza"