#onakke

[niuttuc]

The Onakke?

They've long been ogre.

[loreleywrites]

Answers in the Void

The Eldritch Moon story concluded last week with “The Promised End.” The story raised more questions than almost any other single moment in Magic fiction, and today I’m going to delve into the biggest mystery of the story.

No, not the purpose of the Eldrazi. @vorthosjay already covered that last week, and I largely agree with his assessment. The Eldrazi are much like Maxwell’s Demon, a character in a thought experiment that could fight against the forces of entropy.

Rather, I’m interested in the Onakke Ogres that dwell inside the Chain Veil. They had plenty to say in this story, and their words provide some more clues as to what they are. The mysterious Raven Man chimes in too. I’ll talk a little bit about him as well, as he’s very much wrapped up in the Chain Veil narrative.

What Do We Know About the Onakke?

Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient by Slawomir Maniak

The best place to start with any Vorthos speculation is with what we already know. I wrote a whole article about the Onakke a few months ago, so definitely go read that if you’re interested.

Otherwise, here are the basics:

The Onakke perished in an unknown cataclysm on Shandalar an unknown time ago.

Their spirits reside in the Chain Veil, a mighty artifact that they created.

The Raven Man has manipulated the life of Liliana Vess so that she would come to possess, and use, the Chain Veil.

The purpose of the Chain Veil is to use the wearer to revive the Onakke race.

The Onakke are waiting in a place called the Void, which happens to also be where Liliana accidentally sent her brother, Josu, when she tried to heal him.

Despite all this information, we’re still missing critical pieces of information about the Onakke, the Raven Man, and the Chain Veil. If the best place to start is with what we already know, then the best next step is to ask what we don’t.

Who killed the Onakke? When did they become extinct? If we knew these things, we could begin tying their civilization to other characters or relating them to other Multiversal events. We at least know that their civilization ended over 1000 years ago; Ob Nixilis courted the Chain Veil (which cursed him) and was trapped by Nahiri on Zendikar prior to Nahiri leaving the plane to find Sorin. This means the majority of Magic’s story has taken place after, the fall of the Onakke.

Who is the Raven Man? What is he? He’s been tormenting Liliana for two hundred years without aging. He’s followed her from plane to plane. He’s able to see into her mind and disappear at will. If he’s a planeswalker, he has somehow survived after the Mending and wields an incredible ability to easily planeswalk. He’s not a figment of Liliana’s imagination, as Jace saw him on Innistrad too. Most importantly, what does he want with the Veil? Liliana suspects the Raven Man told Kothophed, the Demon who sent her after the Veil, about the artifact. He wants her to use the Chain Veil and kill with it. So do the Onakke.

Finally, what is this Void? It’s specifically capitalized in both Liliana’s origin story and the Chain Veil stories. She allegedly sent Josu there. The Onakke live there. Finding out where “there” is might help answer questions about what the Onakke are capable of and who the Raven Man is.

What Did We Learn on Innistrad?

Liliana’s Indignation by Daarken

I mean, besides the fact that geistmages have nothing on the Onakke.

The benefit of Liliana rushing headlong into combat with Emrakul is that she ended up having quite the chat with the Onakke spirits and Raven Man, all inside her head. Coincidentally, that happens to be where Emrakul first attacks people too. Liliana’s mental fight in “The Promised End” revealed a wealth of new information about both the Onakke and the Raven Man. I’ll take each revelation one by one.

First, we hear both her psychic residents commanding her to flee the moment she decides to take on Emrakul:

“We must flee this plane. This...it is insanity to stay. Not her thoughts, but the Raven Man speaking directly in her head, sounding...scared. Liliana took some pleasure in the fear. So you can feel fear. Her zombies moaned in unison, "Vessel of destruction. Root of evil. Flee." Liliana was startled. She was used to the Chain Veil talking nonsense about vessels and roots, but flee. Whatever Emrakul was, the Chain Veil wanted no part of it.”

While this isn’t really a clue as to the nature of the Onakke or the Raven Man, this is the first time they’ve shown fear. Up until this point, both have been confident and demanding of Liliana using her powers. What is somewhat surprising is how early in battle they want Liliana to flee.

But then the Raven Man let’s something slip:

“We must leave here. This is madness. I thought you wanted to conquer death. The entity you face here is older than time, and more powerful than you, even if you wielded a hundred Chain Veils! We must leave! The Raven Man tried to issue it as a command. Never had he sounded so naked, so vulnerable.”

How does the Raven Man know that Emrakul is older than time and more powerful than a hundred Chain Veils? Liliana just met Emrakul, so it’s not like he could have read her mind and been this freaked out. Somehow, he knows Emrakul and her potential.

But he’s not the only one with eldritch knowledge:

“Still the voices of the Veil whispered in her head. Vessel. Vessel of destruction. We must flee the World-Ender. The World-Creator. Vessel! The Raven Man's voice choked with panic. Listen to the Veil, you idiot! Flee! Her zombies. "Root of evil. Vessel of destruction. Vessel!"”

How do the Onakke know to call Emrakul the World-Ender and World-Creator? As I said, this is not information that Liliana has in her mind for them to read. Even stranger, the Onakke have been dead for centuries upon centuries. It’s not like they’ve had time to do some multiplanar research.

Finally, the Raven Man lets another juicy bit of information slip:

“If you're lucky, Liliana, your death is now the best possible outcome of today. You have doomed us both. The Raven Man spoke without contempt, without hatred or fear. He sounded...resigned.”

The Raven Man needs Liliana alive. He’s threatened and fought her plenty of times throughout her life, but it’s clear now that he had no intention of killing her. I don’t think the big question is why the Raven Man wants Liliana to avoid death, but why her death dooms him as well.

How Do the New Clues Answer Old Questions?

Art by Joseph Meehan

Hm. So we had a bunch of questions and got a bunch of clues, but the clues don’t really line up with our questions that well. Frustrating.

But we can put a few things together and start offering possible educated explanations for the things we’ve seen. Essentially, we have parts A and C, but still need to confirm the part B that connects them.

Let’s start where we just left off. The Raven Man is doomed if Liliana dies. Can this help us answer any of our questions about him? At the very least this means he has plans for her that probably don’t involve killing her. But is this possibly an insight into what he is as well?

Liliana’s death dooms the Raven Man. The simplest explanation is that his life force is somehow tied to hers. Magic is a fantasy game, so we already have a way to explain this kind of relationship. Liches store their souls in phylacteries, extending their lives until those phylacteries are destroyed. If the Raven Man is a lich using Liliana herself as a phylactery, it explains why he wants to keep her alive. It also explains why he’s constantly inside her head. It also explains how he hasn’t aged in at least two centuries.

Thanks to @vronos for sharing this idea with me. If true, it might even go further. Liliana’s origin story was written by James Wyatt, who previously worked on Dungeons & Dragons. In that property there are beings known as void (!) liches, abstract monsters that can cross over into our world and become liches. In Magic, this could be expressed with the Blind Eternities. If the Raven Man is a being of the Blind Eternities using Liliana as a phylactery to anchor him in space, he might even know who and what Emrakul is. Or maybe he’s just a planeswalker who got stuck there. We don’t know, and this is all just conjecture, but it’s an interesting theory that has potential to answer other questions about the Raven Man.

We’re in a similar situation with the Onakke. New clues don’t really answer the old questions, but we can hypothesize a link that does. Namely, the reason the Onakke know so much about Emrakul.

Void has a linked meaning in the Onakke narrative, but it’s not an uncommon word in Magic’s history. In what is certainly not a strange coincidence, it’s a word seen on many Eldrazi cards. There, void is referring to the Blind Eternities. It has a similar meaning on other cards (usually Blue bounce spells), which use it to refer to the nothingness that things return when you reduce them back to raw aether. Raw aether, wouldn’t you know, is what the Blind Eternities is made out of.

Is the Onakke Void just the Blind Eternities? If so, then they could also have “seen” Emrakul at some point. The Ogres are stuck in the Void and need Liliana to bring them back. If they’re old enough, the Onakke could have been stuck in the Blind Eternities when Emrakul was wandering around in her natural habitat. Even if not, they could have sensed her when she arrived on Innistrad.

And Now We Wait…

…for more clues. Because there’s a lot of speculation up there. But this article should give you some ideas to chew on and highlight the questions you should be asking. Who is the Raven Man? How did the Onakke know Emrakul was a destroyer and a creator? What is the Void that Josu was sent to? Know the questions you need answered and you can better pick up on the clues in future stories.

Prepare for the future, planeswalkers, for we will eventually find the answers we seek.

[loreleywrites]

Rogues Gallery: The Onakke Ogres

Magic’s villains are as numerous and recognizable as its heroes. The elder dragon, Nicol Bolas. The mechanized horrors of Phyrexia. The inscrutable eldrazi titans, Ulamog, Kozilek, and Emrakul.

But one of the game’s greatest villains is hardly known. The Onakke ogres are virtually unseen, buried in darkness until the time is right to emerge.

That is, they’re extinct.

So how are the Onakke such a potent threat? Who were they when they were alive? What do they have to do with the current Magic stories? These questions are difficult to answer because information about the Onakke has been sparse. We’ve only received little tidbits over the last eight years. Today’s article will answer these questions but also ask many more.

Fallen Empire

Onakke Catacomb by Nic Klein

The Onakke ogres are natives of Shandalar, the wandering plane often featured in core sets since Magic 2010. They built an enormous empire in the heart of the Kalonian jungle that had a population of at least one million members when it fell (more on that later). They were a Red-aligned race (like most of Magic’s ogres), but the Onakke were not brutal savages. We get most of our information about the life of the Onakke from a vision Liliana has in “Veil of Deceit,” and here’s an except about the majesty of their civilization:

“The buildings, no longer choked with jungle growth and worn by the passing ages, were elegant and stately, decorated with masterful carvings showing all aspects of life—hunting and war, sowing and reaping, feasts and what she assumed were religious rites, childbirth and sex.”

More like the Onaked ogres, right?

One of the traits of the Onakke that we’ll see mentioned a few times is their impeccable craftsmanship. Their architecture is just one mode of expression; even their buildings exhibit the passionate stories of their people.

Liliana isn’t very descriptive here, but that makes the Onakke seem sort of regular. While they were an artistic culture, they don’t seem that dissimilar from any other ancient race. They eat, war, and pray like everyone else.

Even the location is relevant. Liliana isn’t in some war room or private house; her vision places her in a lively market. Artisans interact with the people of the Onakke. It’s also so regular looking.

But Liliana’s vision isn’t meant to show how normal the Onakke ogres seemed. It was meant to show their downfall. Their entire civilization fell in a single moment that begins with darkness:

“The running ogre fell on his face, but his body sloshed forward as if melted, turning into a black smear on the ground around a scattering of bones. And around him roiled a purplish cloud that washed over the remains and surged onward, extending new tendrils ahead of it as though it were dragging itself along the ground.”

The marketplace erupts with panic, but then is swiftly silenced. Meteors rain of the heavens and obliterate the elegance of an aesthetically-minded people. The Onakke are gone.

We don’t know the origin of this attack at the moment, nor do we have any hints as to who is responsible. I promised more questions to go with the answers, and this is a big one. Who killed the Onakke? Who built the catacomb lined with their skeletons?

Death wasn’t the end for these ogres, however. They threaten the Multiverse at this very moment. How? Through a little artifact you know as the Chain Veil.

Darkness Ascends

The Chain Veil by Volkan Baga

What does the Chain Veil have to do with the Onakke ogres? Everything. They are the ones who crafted it. They were master artificers, after all. Fortunately, they’re also the ones that first explained what the Veil was for.

The webcomic “The Hunter and the Veil” begins this whole story arc. Liliana is sent to the Onakke catacombs by her demon master, Kothophed, to retrieve the Veil for him. She is met in combat by Garruk, and the spirits of the Onakke offer some insight into their plan.

Chain Veil basics: it’s an artifact that contains the Onakke souls. They are trapped in the Veil and form a mental bond with the wearer. They tell Liliana that she is now “a million in one,” a reference to those souls that whisper in her mind. These souls utilize the power of the Void to amplify the magic of the Veil’s wearer.

The Onakke aren’t selfless benefactors, however. They are ogres with a mission. They’re trapped inside the Chain Veil and they want out. They have deemed Liliana their Vessel of resurrection, whispering sweet somethings in her ear whenever she taps into the Veil’s power.

What the Onakke plan to do when they get out of the Veil is still unknown. More questions. It seems like they’ll be up to no good, however, as even Kothophed warns Liliana not to use the Veil. He tells her that she’ll regret using it and to “keep it in the light.” One might assume that Kothophed is trying to scare her into not using it against him. But in the next webcomic, “The Veil’s Curse,” his death pleas are not to stop killing him:

Panel from “The Veil’s Curse” illustrated by Mark Texeira

He’s not worried about dying. Not worried about Liliana’s contracts. He’s worried that the Veil is being used. We don’t know what the Onakke are capable of once they’re resurrected, but it’s enough to scare Kothophed, an incredibly powerful demon.

It’s also not yet known how exactly the Onakke will be resurrected. We know Liliana is carrying their souls in the Veil. We know she’s the Vessel of Destruction. The Onakke even let it slip that they wanted Garruk to be corrupted in “The Hunter and the Veil." Using the Veil is part of the plan, but so many mysteries await us in the future of Magic’s story.

Fate Forged

Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient by Slawomir Maniak

But don’t worry, folks, there is plenty of nuance in the tale of the Onakke and the Chain Veil. It’s no coincidence that Liliana is the one who took it away from Shandalar. Stories of the Veil usually end with the one searching for it dead. So why did this not happen to Liliana? Why wasn’t she turned into a demon like Ob Nixilis, who spoke of that tragic encounter with the Veil in “Dreams of the Damned?”

After her vision of the Onakke downfall, Liliana meets the lingering spirit of one of them: Kurkesh, master of dark arts, implied forger of the Veil. They have a short discussion in which Kurkesh reiterates much of what we know about the Veil, but he adds a much more interesting nugget of information:

"The root that was planted in you so many years ago, when you killed your brother."

The root spoken of here is the root of evil, one of the motifs that the Onakke spirits speak in. They desire to nurture the root of evil that has taken seed inside Liliana until it blooms into destruction (and her death).

Was Liliana the destined bearer of the Chain Veil since its creation? Did Kothophed know this, leading to him dissuading Liliana from using it? The Onakke were not a multiplanar civilization. They could never have known about Josu on Dominaria. They can read Liliana’s memories, sure, but then why is their plan tied to her corruption of Josu?

Language is once again our bridge. The Onakke speak often of the Void, capital letter. The location of the Veil in their catacomb is said to be where “the Void drew its first breath,” (“The Hunter and the Veil”), but also where “the seed took root.”

Let’s jump back to “The Fourth Pact,” Liliana’s origin story. After she turns Josu into a zombie, he screams to know where she sent him. He later says this:

"The Void will have you, Lili. Its hunger will never die. It will have us both."

Capital Void, connecting two points in Liliana’s life, just as Kurkesh said. Liliana has spent her unnaturally long life running from the grip of death, but somehow she’s managed to fall right back into its clutches. A strange coincidence or an elaborate scheme? A race she’s never met inhabit an artifact she literally cannot put down and threaten her very existence. There is one single threat that runs through all of these coincidences:

Raven Man by Chris Rahn

But the Raven Man is another mystery for another time.

Shadows over Liliana

A mystery becomes much easier to understand if you put all the pieces in the correct order. The pieces of the Onakke ogres have been scattered through years of Magic stories, but today’s article has gathered them together to provide a more comprehensive look at one of the looming menaces of the game.

Great artificers of Shandalar, the Onakke were destroyed overnight by a devastating spell. Their spirits reside in the Chain Veil, a mighty artifact possessed by Liliana. She has become the Vessel of their resurrection, a flower of destruction, and a victim of the same Void she sent her brother to many long years before. And somehow the Onakke, Liliana, and the Raven Man are connected in shadow.

And we may not have to wait for our answers very much longer, planeswalkers. As Kurkesh says:

"Soon enough, the time will come. You will finally see clearly."

[loreleywrites]

“Who killed the Onakke? #Vorthos #MTG #QuestionsYouShouldBeAsking”

GO VOTE

[loreleywrites]

Onakke Watch 2015

Ob Nixilis in today’s Uncharted Realms:

I've had far too much experience with people trying to put things in my head that don't belong there.

He’s a confirmed former owner of the Chain Veil, so this sentence likely refers to the voices of thousands of Onakke spirits trying to dominate his mind. His failure with the Veil is what turned him into a demon in the first place. He seems bitter about it.

[scrollsoftarkir]

Very interesting.