The Dark, page one

These are The Dark months here up North.

 

 

Every now and then I go out on my balcony with a binder. Breath in the cold air, watch the dark city below, and then let my mind wander as I flip through the pages. These cards trigger memories and stories.

 

The Dark, page one.

 

There is a peculiar joy flipping through one of the old sets. Today in, celebration of the Nordic winter, I thought we could look at the first page of that The Dark binder. 

 

Having a track record of writing literary thousands of words on fringe hitters like Witch Hunter, Sindbad, Granite Gargoyle, North Star, Merfolk Assassin, City in a Bottle, Falling Star, Clone, and Syphon Soul to name a handful, I've decided to contain myself (and spare you, dear reader) by only listing a single trivia item or random thought that pop up for each of these nine cards.

I was mesmerized by Amnesia's art already as a kid, but these days the image of the forgetful man mainly reminds me of Arvika Festival organizer KungMarkus. Not that KungMarkus is really lobotomized or so, but rather that he's had the art as his avatar on the Swedish Magic forum for the last decade.

Angry Mob shows Drew Tucker's interpretation of the mob from the 1922 vampire movie Nosferatu. The rad art is basically a watercolor recreation of this scene.

The "background swirls" on many early Dan Frazier artworks was pre-printed patterns on the canvas paper. The pattern behind Apprentice Wizard appear very similar to the one on the paper used for Healing Salve, Sacrifice, Berserk, and Disrupting Scepter.

This is one of my favorite flavor texts in the game. Memoirs of a Soldier is one of a handful of fictional books quoted on The Dark cards, along with e.g. Witches and War, The Valeriad and Miracles of the Saints.

 

Ball Lightning was one of the true chase cards of The Dark, and the only creature in the set to have appeared in a Pro Tour Top8 this side of the Millennium.

While landing squarely as a red ability in modern design, "pinging" used to be a blue or black thing. The black pinging would however also backfire on the user, as seen on e.g. Cuombajj Witches in Arabian Nights and the Banshee above.

This card led to a bit of a lore issue, as it was originally intended for Barl to be the guy imprisoned in the cage ("Lord Ith" was a honorific for Barl). On the flavor text of Dark Sphere, guy is even referenced to as "Barl, Lord Ith". But due to some grammatical misunderstandings when writing the Ice Age novels, Barl got retconned to a dude who created the Cage, and the imprisoned Lord Ith became another, separate character.

Blood Moon is the first Magic card to reference non-basic lands, and is the most important card in The Dark from a game design standpoint. Fight me.

This iconic art is almost perfect as a reaction thumbnail gif. Feel free to take this one for a spin.

See, I can be brief too, even when it comes to thoughts and trivia. And this was a pretty fun (and easy) post to write, so it's likely that we'll turn to page two in the not to distant future. Lot's of cool cards in The Dark after all!