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"Calix, Destiny's Hand" Spoiled, Sparking Debate – "Magic: The Gathering"

Magic: The Gathering has had a fair amount of issues pertaining to plot continuity, but generally one thing has held very firm to the truth within the auspices of the storyline. That thing is this: the Planeswalker spark, the essence of magic imbued within a Planeswalker that is the source of their ability to planeswalk, has rules, and those rules are only meant to be bent at worst.

"Calix, Destiny's Hand" Spoiled, Sparking Debate - "Magic: The Gathering"
Source: Wizards of the Coast

Those rules include the following:

  • Planeswalker sparks are literally a one in 1,000,000 occurrence. In other words, for every million humanoids on a plane of existence, one can planeswalk.
  • Planeswalker sparks can only ignite (or activate, in layman's terms) within living, organic, sentient creatures. (This means that angels, golems, and the dead are exempt from the ignition of any spark they may possess).
  • Planeswalker sparks can be transferred. This ability seems to be able to override the previous rule (see, Karn, a planeswalking construct created by Urza, whose spark was transferred into Karn – Karn later got Venser's spark as well).

And then, there's the matter of these rules being broken.

"Calix, Destiny's Hand" Spoiled, Sparking Debate - "Magic: The Gathering"
Source: Wizards of the Coast

The blurb here states that Calix was "created" – whether this means created in the eugenic sense or the artificial sense remains to be seen. If Calix was created through destiny weaving itself to naturally cause people to birth generations of people until Calix was born with a Planeswalker spark that got ignited, then this all makes sense, to be honest. However, if Calix was literally "created" by Klothys – as he is a Nyxborn, this isn't out of the picture – then we have a continuity error that shouldn't be overlooked by Wizards of the Coast.

"Calix, Destiny's Hand" Spoiled, Sparking Debate - "Magic: The Gathering"
Source: Wizards of the Coast

Don't get me wrong, Calix seems like a neat character and his function as Elspeth's foil in the story is necessary (although we do have Ashiok), but until we see more of this elaborated upon – much less fleshed out, as Wizards of the Coast have said there's not going to be any story material for Theros: Beyond Death(!!!) – his existence is more perplexing than we as players and plot connoisseurs deserve.

"Klothys, God of Destiny" Card Revealed - "Magic: The Gathering"
We could use some answers, Klothys! Source: Wizards of the Coast

What do you think? Should Wizards of the Coast have written some stories for us to read, with this set? Is Calix an artificial being? And if so, when are we getting our Angel Planeswalkers? Let us know your thoughts!


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Joshua NelsonAbout Joshua Nelson

Josh Nelson is a Magic: The Gathering deckbuilding savant, a self-proclaimed scholar of all things Sweeney Todd, and, of course, a writer for Bleeding Cool. In their downtime, Josh can be found painting models, playing Magic, or possibly preaching about the horrors and merits of anthropophagy. You can find them on Twitter at @Burning_Inquiry for all your burning inquiries.
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