T. Karlov, Esq.

I am Teysa Karlov, the Baroness Utvara, doctor of public and canon law, advokist, Mouth of the Hallowed Patriarchate. Although I am the official envoy of the OZD, my statements should not be confused with ex cathedra pronouncements of the Ghost Council except when explicitly noted. Neither I nor the Ghost Council are responsible for abuses or misinterpretations of legal and theological counsel.

[oligopsony-deactivated20160508]

Slovakian fascists ranked by how comfortable I would be attending a summons to meet them in a dilapidated castle, based upon the first picture I could find of them

Andrej Hlinka

As I knock on the door to the old castle, Father Hlinka opens the gate to greet me with a pot of ginseng tea. “Please come in,” he urges, “and drink it while it’s still hot!” He brewed it himself and has replacements for my wet clothes. He makes an offhand comment about “The Jews,” but I dismiss it as simply old-fashioned. 

Keep reading

[marriedtotheseacomics]

[askteysa]

[ladyhawke81]

Thalia by ~merkymerx

[askvraska]

Such wasted potential.

[markrosewater]

How come white doesn't care about the discontent it causes by being too authoritarian? My way or the highway sounds like a black ideology.

Because white believes what it’s doing is the best for the larger group.

[askteysa]

And as for that infinitely more subtle and refined mixture of the two colors? Let us turn to our Theran friends:

"Plutarch, in one of his accounts of Alexander the Great and his achievements, writes that Aristotle advised his pupil to distinguish between Greeks and barbarians and to deal with the former as a leader or hegemon, while behaving towards tha latter as a master, a despotes. Alexander, says Plutarch, did just the opposite. Refusing to divide men between Greek friends and barbarian foes, he chose rather to distinguish simply between good men and bad, whatever their origin. Alexander, it has been said, was in effect inventing the notion of a cosmopolis, which received its theoretical expression in Stoic philosophy, replacing the polis with a universal human community and stressing the equality and fraternity of humankind as against the particularisms of the polis.

"Whether or not the story of Aristotle’s advice to Alexander is authentic, it does correspond to a distinction between different kinds of rule that the philosopher draws in the Politics:

There is a rule of the sort which is exercised by a master [over slaves]... But [beside the rule of the sort exercised by their ruler over persons in a servile position] there is also rule of the sort which is exercised over persons who are similar in birth to the ruler, and are similarly free. Rule of this sort is what we call political rule; and this is the sort of rule which [unlike the first sort] the ruler must begin to learn by being ruled and by obeying - just as one learns to be a commander of cavalry by serving under another commander…

"Aristotle later elaborates on this distinction by contrasting two modes of government: ‘One way is to govern in the interest of the governors: the other to govern in the interest of the governed. The former way is what we call “despotic” [i.e., a government over slaves]; the latter is what we call “the government of freemen.”’ The rule of a master over slaves, ‘though there is really a common interest which unites the natural master and natural slave, is primarily exercised with a view to the master’s interest, and only incidentally with a view to that of the slave, who must be preserved in existence if the rule itself is to remain.’ Here, he introduces another category, household management (oikonomeia), rule over wife, children, and the household in general, which ‘is either exercised in the interests of the ruled or for the attainment of some advantage common to both ruler and ruled.’" (Ellen Meiksins Wood, Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Antiquity to the Late Middle Ages, pp. 99-100.)

[drasthenes]

As you can see, there’s a lot of work to be done on this rough draft of the Theros world map.

Please help on this collaborative Google Drawing file. Thanks!

[ask-keranos]

Mortals, help this cartographer with his mission.

[incorrectmtgquotes]

A good map can be the difference between victory and utter defeat. Help this cartographer.

[dougbeyermtg]

So is Elspeth less dead on Theros than she would be on any other plane? I mean the underworld is a known location on the plane even to the mortal Therosians right? Shouldn't she be able to planeswalk right out without having to become a returned and lose her identity?

Like other mortals who die on Theros, she went to the Underworld, where she will reside for eternity unless she’s able to find some way out. She’s unable to planeswalk out of there, sort of in the same way she wasn’t able to planeswalk directly into Nyx — those realms have special properties that are not travel-able by planeswalking. Elspeth will have to find some other way out of the Underworld if she ever wants to planeswalk again someday.

[magicexpandedmultiverse]

I am deeply irritated that death effectively means nothing in this situation.

[askteysa]

Doesn’t that strike you as a rather impoverished conception of death’s meaning? Is the dying-and-rising sequence in the Third Rite of Investment meaningless as well? For shame.

[magicexpandedmultiverse]

It’s official M:EM policy to not comment on Church of Deals doctrine, sorry.

Our lawyers have advised us that it would not be in our best interests to answer this question.

[dougbeyermtg]

So is Elspeth less dead on Theros than she would be on any other plane? I mean the underworld is a known location on the plane even to the mortal Therosians right? Shouldn't she be able to planeswalk right out without having to become a returned and lose her identity?

Like other mortals who die on Theros, she went to the Underworld, where she will reside for eternity unless she’s able to find some way out. She’s unable to planeswalk out of there, sort of in the same way she wasn’t able to planeswalk directly into Nyx — those realms have special properties that are not travel-able by planeswalking. Elspeth will have to find some other way out of the Underworld if she ever wants to planeswalk again someday.

[magicexpandedmultiverse]

I am deeply irritated that death effectively means nothing in this situation.

[askteysa]

Doesn't that strike you as a rather impoverished conception of death's meaning? Is the dying-and-rising sequence in the Third Rite of Investment meaningless as well? For shame.

[askteysa]

"average orzhov aristocrat is responsible for the murder of 3 ravnicans per year" factoid actualy just statistical error. average aristo is responsible for murder of 0 ravnicans per year. Substitutionary Atonement Georg, the sacrificial pig who lives in a temple & is Responsible for killing 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

[thesylverlining]

i’m not a social justice warrior

i think i’m more like a social justice cleric. i don’t do a lot of attacking but i’m there to heal and give buffs and blessings and reviving fallen party members. (maybe the occasional spell that’s super effective against the undead.)

[hexmeridian]

I think I’m a social justice necromancer - but the true neutral kind of necromancer who takes control of undead from other necromancers and then sends them off to do their bidding while energy draining living enemies, killing them, and then reviving them as zombie thralls to promote and support the social justice movement. 

[sunspotpony]

*highfives for good-guy necromancy and our skeletons*

[hexmeridian]

heckyeah good(ish)-guy necromancy. We should make the skeletons dance!

[sam-keeper]

Hey melissadoom this is relevant to your worldbuilding

[hexmeridian]

I have a lot of Opinions and Feelings about necromancers not always being evil (notallnecromancers), basically that you can be any alignment and a necromancer. Wrote a novel featuring a good-aligned necromancer, and in that ‘verse, healing was part of the necromancy school of magic. See also the Abhorsen series by Garth Nix for examples of non-evil necromantic types.

Hit me up for more discussion, I love this stuff.  

[sam-keeper]

Yeah you definitely need to talk to melissa because she’s got this amazing campaign setting where the world is dominated by an institution that controls magic essentially via licensing fees and copyright trolling (possibly with literal trolls????) and necromancers are basically covert transhumanist anti-death freedom fighters and it’s all really, really cool.

One of the things from Magic: The Gathering’s storyline that made a HUGE impression on me when I was younger was the character Lord Dralnu, who was this lich lord who had created an entire city of the dead, where the people he (and other necromancers) had raised could basically have some semblance of an existence after death. He unfortunately turned out to be evil, which even as a dumb teenage brat I found really frustratingly lazy and pointless and actually very off-message from stuff happening in the set that the novel was supposed to represent.

But we did get some cool cards out of the whole thing:

[askteysa]

Have you considered Social Injustice Necromancy? I understand, of course, that you may have gone into N-School hoping to "stand up for the little guy," and it may not be your initial idea of the most glamorous gig - but, hey, those student loans aren't going to pay off themselves, and the Church of Deals is always hiring at competitive rates. And, indeed, you may just find that it allows you to give voice to the voiceless after all.

[mtgfan]

Let the speculation begin.

[apocalyptic-procession]

[valyriano]

[darkface-deactivated20141008]

[askteysa]

Finally, Theros produces a proper Gild.

[ask-oona]

((100 followers yall, woot woot, hail to the Queen baby.))

At last, with such a following I can take back Lorwyn! Come my loyal subjects, to war!

[askelspeth-blog]

((exCUSE U))

[ask-oona]

((U WANNA GO SON))

#QueenOff2014

[askteysa]

I may not be Number One, but I'm not too worried.

I mean, don't get me wrong; ambition is one of the Orzhov virtues. But for some reason I just feel very satisfied about where I am. Very... mellow.

[askteysa]

As you gather around the dinner table for this time of year, it's perhaps inevitable that you may find yourself in the midst of awkward political and/or religious conversations with your relatives. Perhaps your uncle has some indelicate opinions on the hit Simic documentary Duckcat Dynasty, or your cousin wants to douse the tree in blood in honor of Lord Rakdos. In times like these, when you may find your beliefs and assumptions offended, it's worth keeping in mind the spirit of the season, and the question "what would Santa Claus do?"

The answer, of course, is that Santa would punch people in the face for having a slightly different theology than he did.