This is an initiative in collaboration with Wizards of the Coast.
In these that you just ate, you are leaning on the sofa with little desire to do anything and you remember that tomorrow it’s time to text from Magic: The Gathering. Zero drama because I usually try to have what I’m going to write about the game each month in advance, but you never know what the Magic Chronicles.
Total, that with the slump that a good stew imposes, and trying to find the perfect excuse for a “I’ll do it later“and start playing Elden Ring, I make myself a coffee, I pick up my mobile and I start looking at what theme of Magic I was planning to take out. After all, the kid takes a nap and you have to make the most of these moments of calm.
How to procrastinate badly: lesson 1
Since the Pyrenees letter was very popular, my intention is to write about real moves that inspired letters from Magic. There are examples to bore you, from places to people, literature or events, but of course, ordering all that is not going to be easy and you have to find a thread to pull from.
I could go with something lighter, but I’ve made it a habit to annoy Tonichan with the schedule of topics that we get from Magic and, after delaying it a couple of times, this time I’m really going to go with the idea of the cards. It’s time to go through the huge list of fonts that I have saved in Notion for that specific topic.
And between sips I go from one page to another, and from there to a godforsaken forum, and from there to a thread on Reddit from when Cyril of Alexandria lived… The surprising thing is that I have everything I need to good I collect from when I was researching the subject and a long time ago I could already have the subject written and laid out, but that’s how I am.
Procrastino mal. Instead of investing my time in something else, I am going deeper into a well that I have seen on many occasions that has no end. But hey, in the end that’s what I like most about Magic, that going into it as a novice is like discovering a hole in the pyramid of Cheops. Difficult to resist prying what’s inside the jaws of the whale.
Following the trail of breadcrumbs
The day is coming when getting lost in that hole, whether it’s smart or not for my efficiency as a letter joiner, doesn’t end up becoming a gold mine, and this week’s example is one of the craziest that could tell. Yeah, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve said that too.
The fact is that I’m jumping from one topic to another, looking at cards in detail and studying their names, setting phrases and arts when, suddenly… PRIZE. It is what breadcrumbs have, that if you know how to follow them, in the end you end up finding the best bread. “Segovian Leviathan? But what the…“Oh dear, the bakery.
When one finds something like a Segovian Leviathan it’s hard not to get excited. It could be anything, and the chances are high that it has nothing to do with piglets, rosettes or aqueducts, but the illusion is the last thing you should lose in this job, so beyond the hee hee haha and jump to something else, I decide to pull the thread to see if there is any luck.
The magic of the unknown is rather short-lived and, before I can come even higher, a pitcher of cold water wakes me from my reverie. It seems that someone is claiming that this is a misprint, that the fish is actually a Serovian Leviathan and that, as expected, that was too good to be true.
Segovia, the miniature map of Magic
The forum participants comment on the topic, one of them shows a broken and already lost image from some image bank that probably closed decades ago and, while the messages follow each other, another hole in the pyramid. Not only the letter is called Segovian Leviathanis that Segovia is one of the planes of the multiverse of Magic: The Gathering.
It would be pretty cool if it was an alternate universe where elves and goblins feed on suckling lamb and beans, but it’s actually a lot crazier than that. Segovia is a plane whose size is always 1:100. Everyone who enters is reduced to that scale so they can be part of their miniature universe without destroying everything by stepping where they shouldn’t.
A nice place, plagued almost entirely by water and sea monsters, but with a few small tracts of land that are inhabited by humans looking for fun and sporting events. Apparently they love racecourses.
They don’t do it badly, no, but as a curiosity there isn’t much to scratch beyond the name and the fun of some quotes that I find. This one manages to blow my mind and, of course, invites me to get even deeper into the well. what the hell is a Angel of Segovia
“When Worzel summoned the angels of Segovia to fight Thomil’s Gargantikari mosquitoes, the battle that ensued is among the least destructive in the Multiverse.“.
The segovian angel
Apparently there is more letters with Segovia as the protagonist. There are not many, no, but among the four that I see there is another one that acts again as King Midas and turns dust into gold. The text quoted above belongs to a letter called Angel of Segovia and, although the name still seems surreal to me, his art finishes the job.
I understand that life is coincidence in a high percentage -you will never give percentages in vain-, but this cannot be trivial. This is too much of a coincidence. What is behind the Angel of Segovia is the damn Aqueduct of Segovia?
One that crosses the city in a curve and that seems closer to the walls of the aforementioned racecourse than an aqueduct itself, yes, but it is clear that someone from Wizards of the Coast was in Europe and brought with him a “I was in Segovia and I remembered you“.
That or the artist Simon Dominic was commissioned to make a Segovian angel and he grabbed at the first thing he saw on Google like a straw. Unable to avoid letting out a loud laugh, I run to my colleagues to tell them that I already have a topic of Magic for tomorrow. And that they will freak out when they see it.
It is not every day that one crosses the aqueduct of Segovia guarded by an angel as small as a mosquito in a letter from Magic. Anyway, I imagine that in the end a text with letters based on real places has come out, right? Well more or less.
Image | David Corral
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