Magic Untapped takes a look at a the character Alhammarret, a conniving sphinx and master of mental magic from the plane of Vryn who took under his wing a young prodigy who would become his downfall.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to Who Is on Magic Untapped as we take a look at the histories and backstories of various characters from across the Magic: The Gathering multiverse. I’m Barry White.
In this episode, we will take a look at a sphinx from the plane of Vryn. A sphinx who had a special interest in a boy who would become a planeswalker named Jace Beleren.
Here is the story of Alhammarret.
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Alhammarret was a highly respected mage on the plane on Vryn. A talented mind mage, he was appointed arbitrator between the plane’s two major warring factions: the Ampryn League, a collection of core states that oversee the plane’s Ring Network – a system that controls and contains the plane’s mana streams, and the Trovian Separatists, a group that contested the League’s control of the Rings.
It's during this generations-long conflict that a talented, up-and-coming mage known as Jace Beleren became known to the arbitrator. He took Jace under his wing, as it were, and took it upon himself to train him, nurturing his natural talents in mental magics.
After a few years of training, Alhammarret began sending Jace out to gather information from both sides of the conflict.
Jace would do this under the cloak of darkness. Shrouded by illusions, the Sphinx’s apprentice would sneak into the camp of one side or another and learn of their battle plans. Jace would then return to the Sphinx and tell him all that he uncovered, after which the Sphinx would use his own talents to wipe Jace’s mind as if nothing had ever happened.
Over time, Jace began to suspect that something was up between him and his tutor. During one of these reporting sessions, Jace used his own talents of mind magic and enter Alhammarret’s mind – a feat never before achieved.
Jace succeeded. Between the shock of his success and the sheer power of Alhammarret’s mind, the apprentice mage’s planeswalker spark ignited.
Alhammarret, recognizing the display before him, knew exactly what was happening to his pupil.
Despite not being a planeswalker himself, he pulled Jace back through the Blind Eternities – the realm between realms – then wiped his mind of the experience.
As it turns out, Alhammarret, despite being the arbiter between the conflict’s two warring sides, was playing both sides to his own advantage the whole time by providing each side the war intel gathered by Jace in an attempt to keep the war going for as long as he could rather than finding some way of creating eventual peace.
The Sphinx’s plan was working out just fine and he was pocketing the profits over and over again. That is until Jace became wise to the sphinx’s schemes.
Once he had his suspicions, he would self-erase his memories of the intel he gathered on Alhammarret’s behalf and, instead, chose to keep his records on paper to keep them safe from Alhammarret’s meddling.
Of course, Alhammarret soon discovered Jace’s treachery. He confronted the budding mind mage and the two became locked in a battle – mind mage versus mind mage. They each infiltrated one another’s mind seeking to inflict harm on the other.
In Jace’s mind, the sphinx began removing core memory after core memory until Jace could no longer remember his home or his family. Jace, seeking something more drastic, removed the sphinx’s knowledge of how to do basic functions including knowing how to breath.
At the conclusion of the battle, Jace planeswalked away to safety on Ravnica, though with most of his core memories lost to him as Alhammarret fell, gasping for the air that he no longer knew how to breath.
The sphinx’s body was found later on by authorities. Jace, now missing, was presumed dead.
But not all was completely lost as Alhammarret left behind an immense archive that contained the totality of his notes, theories, thoughts, and plans.
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With the fall of Alhammarret, the conflict on Vryn devolved into nonstop chaos. With no formal governance or order, society on the plane all but failed.
The plane was briefly seen once more during the New Phyrexian multi-plane invasion of the multiverse, but the war-hardy denziens of Vryn were more than prepared for battle. They overloaded the mage-rings that dotted the globe, detonating them, decimating not just the New Phyrexian invaders, much of what was left of their world as well.
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See you next time.
