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The original was posted on /r/magictcg by /u/Likier on 2024-06-29 13:57:05+00:00.
Yesterday there was a discussion about Yawgmoth possibly being the antagonist in Duskmourn. While that is subject to another debate, I feel like a lot of people repeat a fallacy about what happened to Yawgmoth at the end of Apocalypse (3rd book of the Invasion block).
First off, let's focus on who Planeswalker Urza was. The planeswalker spark wasn't his, it was the Glacian's Stones inside his eyes that were the essence of the planeswalker and Urza used to be a man responsible for the Brothers' War who was responsible for using a devastating artifact called the Golgothian Sylex to stop the Phyrexian invasion lead by Gix. In the process, he was absorbed by the stones, which held Planeswalker Glacian's essense.
Glacian was the Thran genius Yawgmoth took advantage of in the ancient times, who sacrificed his being to form a "blocker" of sorts which prevented Yawgmoth from reentering Dominaria. That blocker was broken into the Glacian Stones by Urza and Mishra and after the Sylex Blast it became a planeswalker entity with Urza becoming something of an avatar personality projected by the stones.
Fast forward to when Urza meets Xantcha, a Phyrexian with free will, that hated Phyrexia and all it represented. Urza learns about the plane and blames Phyrexians for all his mistakes and Mishra's demise. He invades Phyrexia on an artifact dragon and gets his ass kicked by Yawgmoth, his being degenerated in the process and slowly progressing into insanity.
Urza tries to learn how to defeat Yawgmoth, traveling through the Blind Eternities to find the origin of Phyrexians. After centuries he learns that he was going in the wrong direction, and that Phyrexians didn't destroy the Thran, they were the Thran and came from ancient Dominaria from where they started their invasion of different planes.
To Yawgmoth, Urza is a curiosity akin to a reality show, a guilty pleasure and a slight obsession. Urza's efforts bring Yawgmoth entertainment and unbeknownst to Urza, The Uneffable (how Phyrexians call Yawgmoth) has a locator on him. The locator is Xantcha's "heart" that she had stolen from Gix when Urza invaded Phyrexia for the first time.
Phyrexians follow Urza into Serra's realm and corrupt it. Serra leaves her plane and leaves it under Radiant's protection. Radiant goes mad in the process and goaded by Phyrexian agents starts doing a purge against her own people. Urza tries to stop her but loses in a 1 vs 1 fight. Radiant rips the stones out of his eye sockets in the process and gets absorbed by them as they implode. This fragment is quite important. Urza becomes "reformed" from the stones even though his corpse is laying next to his avatar. He also gains some peculiar traits and a personality change, which would imply that Glacian borrowed some positive perks from Radiant. He's also completely free of any signs or effects of the Yawgmoth-induced madness.
Long story short, the new Urza prepares for invasion and Yawgmoth prepares to invade. Urza starts his eugenics program and it leads to him creating the Metathran and the Bloodlines, the pinnacle of which are Sisay, Crovax, Rayne and Gerrard. The near-perfect human beings. Yawgmoth creates Rath, an artificial plane designed to overlay over Dominaria one day and become the beacon for a Phyrexian invasion.
Let's skip the whole invasion part and focus on Yawgmoth taking on a black cloud form after the Phyrexian army becomes seemingly defeated. This is where Urza tells Gerrard of his plan and lies to him.
"If Weatherlight bears a hundred worlds in her, then merely by breaking her, those realms will rush out into being. If Gerrard bears a thousand heroes in him, then merely by breaking him, those heroes will join the battle." Gerrard gaped at the severed head,
unable to comprehend. "Sacrifice the ship," Urza said, "sacrifice yourself, and Yawgmoth will be destroyed." Brow knotting, Gerrard said, "This is your plan? You want to bring Serra's Realm into being here at Urborg? You want to awaken a hundred worlds on this side of the globe to see what happens?" "Yes," conceded Urza. "The devastation will be incredible. All creatures, all flora in this hemisphere will be destroyed, but the other hemisphere will survive to repopulate—"
Yet, what happens is something very different. Once Gerrard puts the eyes together inside Karn, the same process that applied to Radiant, applies to Gerrard and Karn. They become absorbed by Glacian's Stones and the energy from sacrificing Weatherlight's core directs the beam into Yawgmoth's core.
It is stated that Yawgmoth was defeated and that Gerrard and Karn perished, sacrificing themselves in the process. But in the final chapter Karn shows up next to Sisay:
The air beside the two women distorted. Images of water and sky twisted as if reflected in a silvery pool. A mercurial form took shape—tall, lean, quicksilver .. .. Sisay gaped in astonishment. "Karn! I thought you were dead." "I am," came the easy response. No longer did his voice sound like shifting gravel, but now like the delicate music of water. "The Karn you knew is dead, at any rate. I bear the name, but I am more. I am the sum of a legion of
artifacts and souls."
We learn that Urza did lie to Gerrard about him perishing to destroy Yawgmoth and that Gerrard still lives inside Glacian's planeswalker entity, which now favors Karn as his avatar, although it's not the silver golem, it's a new persona that's a mixture of the beings consumed in the process.
The question is - is Yawgmoth one of those beings?
There are several indicators that he is. First off, one of the first things Planeswalker Karn does is a knockoff version of Phyrexia, Argentum. Secondly, the Xantcha's heart that's part of Karn starts leaking glistening oil, but this oil is different from the typical Phyrexian oil that served as their blood. It's infectious and "compleats" beings it comes into contact with. It's important to note that Karn is the only carrier of Phyrexian oil that works this way. The whole Dominaria was covered in glistening oil as the result of Yawgmoth's invasion. There were Phyrexians trapped on different planes they have invaded in the past, and they didn't "infect" anything into becoming Phyrexianized. Only Karn.
Karn also starts succumbing into corruption, which could imply that Yawgmoth's part was responsible for this. The New Phyrexians refer to Karn as Father of Machines, not Yawgmoth, but then again Phyrexians never used Yawgmoth's true name when they referred to him.
There's a lot of loose ends going from that moment. First off, Karn becomes "cured" by Venser's heart transplant. If Yawgmoth was to be part of Karn, perhaps he got discarded along with the corrupted heart that was replaced.
Another factor is that Planeswalker Karn was a supreme being at the end of Invasion. An Oldwalker, a pre-mending planeswalker and a not neccesarily physical avatar of Glacian's entity. The Mirrodin Karn is closer to the physical golem Karn, and later stories refer to him as if he was the Silver Golem, Urza's creation obsessed with Jhoira. Perhaps the Mending was the reason for the Glacian Stones planeswalker's downgrade and the release of Yawgmoth?
A more important question is, if Yawgmoth was contained inside the "heart" Venser replaced, could Yawgmoth go from there with some new grand scheme that went beyond what Norn had planned?
