A Revelation to Destroy Phyrexia
Phyrexian culture as we know it centers around the Father of Machines's legacy and an endless march towards his ideal of perfection. Of course, as Phyrexia has diversified across the planes, so have its viewpoints, and it’s by no means a monolith. Yawgmoth’s legacy remains a huge driving force behind praetors’ tyranny, though, and the goal of compleating the multiverse in his name.
So what if Phyrexians learned that there was life before Yawgmoth, that the Father of Machines was not a god but a mad, megalomaniac mortal, that they were created to serve his agenda with no real power of their own? That they’ve been living a 9000-year-old lie?
From The Thran, we know that glistening oil existed on the planet of Phyrexia before Yawgmoth co-opted it for his own ends. What properties did it have back then? Has it always had the memory-storing quality that gives Phyrexians access to their ancestral memories now? If so, that means—if they dug deep enough—a Phyrexian could remember the time before Yawgmoth.
Yawgmoth, being the cunning and power-hungry being he was, would never have allowed such ideas to persist. So he must have done everything in his power to erase it, his presence making such an impression on the oil as to make everything before it seem insignificant.
If a skilled ichormage in New Phyrexia managed to uncover such a revelation, the thought monitors would likely be on them quickly, detecting the most heretical of aberrant thoughts. But if the information could be spread, it would quickly become unstoppable. There’s one thing in the Multiverse more contagious than phyresis, and it’s an idea.
Who knows if the praetors could still hold on to their power, if this became widespread knowledge? If the legions of Phyrexians they commanded felt empowered to take back their lives and selves from Yawgmoth, from his agenda, and from them?
It would change the face of Phyrexia as we know it, and I like to think it could be a key to allowing Phyrexians to coexist with the other species of the multiverse.
(Shoutout to @myrsphere for helping me piece this all together over a late night Discord conversation)