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I am greater than rain and nourishment. I am glistening oil and perfection.
~ Yawgmoth
From void evolved Phyrexia. Great Yawgmoth, Father of Machines, saw its perfection. Thus The Grand Evolution began.
~ Phyrexian Scriptures

Yawgmoth is one of the main antagonists of the Magic the Gathering franchise, being the overarching antagonist of all of Urza's arcs from The Thran novel to the Invasion block, a major antagonist in Scars of Mirrodin Block and the the New Phyrexian story arc.

Once a prominent but cruel doctor, Yawgmoth is the creator and god of the Phyrexians, a race of monstrous beings of flesh and steel, and who seek nothing more but to turn the rest of the multiverse into versions of themselves. In the most recent storyline, a new Phyrexian menace led by Elesh Norn seeks to achieve the vision of Yawgmoth of turning all of the multiverse into horrifying beings like themselves.

Personality[]

Even as a human, Yawgmoth was obsessed with understanding and improving the human body, and had no quarrels about causing mass death and suffering to others to achieve this. For instance, he infected entire nations of cat-people with rabies merely to observe them ravage each other. He was deceiving, cunning, cold-hearted and inexplicably cruel.

As a god, his dark impulses remained the same and his ambitions only grew larger. He would seek to complete his vision by exterminating all life and replacing it with his own twisted followers. More than anything, he believes his creations, the Phyrexians, are the true perfect form of life and desires all beings to fit into that mold.

He is also very cruel even with his own subjects, which can be seen when Gix, a key ally of him for millennia, was sent to eternal torture in Phyrexia's seventh sphere after a failed invasion in Dominaria.

While many planeswalkers like Nahiri tend to have a different notion of scale due to their age and immense power, Yagwmoth's vision of the multiverse is so devoid of empathy and riddled with cruelty that other planeswalkers could only see him as an irredeemable monster. It would end up being that his archnemesis Urza would be the only one that could "understand" Yawgmoth's creation.

Biography[]

Early Life and The Thran[]

At first Yawgmoth was a prominent doctor in Thran. When a civil war struck, the city was divided in two: the imperialists (who believed in artificial supremacy) and the republicans (who believed in eugenics). Yawgmoth joined the republicans as one of their most prominent figures but they ultimately lost the war and were exiled.

During his exile, he conducted all sorts of atrocious experiments, causing mayhem and death wherever he went. These included, setting the Black-Cough upon the dwarves of Oryn Deeps, inciting a workers' rebellion that nearly killed the dwarven king and ended 1,000 years of dwarven rule, turning the Creeping Mold of Argoth into a virulent plague that ate away the elves there and kidnaping their priest Elyssendril Lademmdrith and her healers, ordering the elves to pay ransom for their leader and the cure she had developed for the plague. When the elves paid, he delivered to them only sweetened water and 12 dead healers, setting the White Death upon the minotaurs of Talruum, just to study its effects, infecting the leaders of the cat people nations with rabies, after which they tore each other to pieces, poisoning the human tribes of Gulatto Meisha, and pithing and vivisecting the Bey of the Shivan Viashino.

However, Yawgmoth would be called back to Halcyon, the capital city of the Thran Empire, with most unaware of the physician's inhumane actions. His knowledge would be of great importance when Glacian, leader and technological genius of Thran, fell ill and contacted the evil doctor. Yawgmoth understood that the cause of this disease was from radiation from the powerstone he was stabbed with called phthisis.

Glacian was attacked by a group of renegades called the Untouchables lead by a man named Gix, that were all sick because of the powerstones, and inflicted the same disease to him as payback. After convincing the elders to grant him more funding for research and consulting the healer Xod, Yawgmoth was able to create a serum infused with metals that could heal those affected. Upon learning that Gix was planning on creating a massive rebellion, Yawgmoth offered to give the rebels the serum for free to stop it. From there, a truce was enacted and Gix and his followers would receive medicine for their ailments. Yawgmoth also fell in love with Glacian's wife Rebbec whom also shared his feelings, though neither acted upon them.

However, as time went on his serum was being more and more diluted and thus the truce was broken and riots commenced. But Yawgmoth had created a special artifact that would give him total control of anyone afflicted by the powerstones. The rebels' actions allowed Yawgmoth to receive more funding and granted him complete control over the Halcyte Guard.

During this time, Yawgmoth was working with a planeswalker called Dyfed who wanted to provide him a plane in which to enact his vision. The two traveled to an artificial plane whose creator was deceased. A ritual was performed to make Yawgmoth the god of this plane and many infected with phthisis were brought here to be treated. This is where Phyrexia got established, named after an illness Yawgmoth was studying called phyresis, and he commenced his true experiments: the creation of the mutiversal horrors known as the Phyrexians. With them, he was able to fend off against the warring nations.

The Thran-Phyrexian War[]

A celebration was about to be held honoring Yawgmoth after Halcyon's reconstruction, but many representatives from the civilizations he "experiment on" revealed the physician's actions and planned on waging war on him and his allies. The Thran Council held a vote on whether or not to once again exile Yawgmoth. It came down to a 50/50 split with the only holdouts being Rebbec and Yawgmoth himself. They both voted to allow Yawgmoth to stay in the city. With his safety assured, Yawgmoth overthrew the council and imprisoned the elders and delegates.

With his enemies brainwashed under his control, he gained control of Thran, but now a new menace was ahead: the nations that had been victims of his experiments were declaring war on him. Facing an internal political crisis, Yawgmoth took complete control of the government and chose to defend himself. Using the Halcyte Guard and his new Phyrexian soldiers, Yawgmoth managed to fend off those who sought to kill him.

However, it was clear to Dyfed and her long time ally Rebecc that he was becoming a true monster. Dyfed was killed by Yawgmoth who stabbed her in the head with a powerstone to understand more about her spark, but Rebecc removed it to mercy kill her friend. In retaliation, artificers including Rebecc used a gas leak from the Null Moon to force Yawgmoth and his followers back to Phyrexia through a portal with the rest melting away from the gas. A powerstone was used to seal it to prevent them from returning at the cost of their lives and the Thran's empire.

The Brother's War to the Urza Block[]

Frustrated by his separation, Yawgmoth continued to create Phyrexians that would travel into other worlds via magical portals. He would systematically infiltrate and destroy planes and use their resources to create an ever growing Phyrexian army. After 5,000 years, the powerstone preventing the portal to Phyrexia on Dominaria from opening would be split in two allowing Yawgmoth the opportunity to once again compleat his home plane.

Still, he couldn't break into Dominaria. This is where Gix, by now a compleated Phyrexian demon and his personal praetor, was sent to Dominaria to manipulate two brothers, Urza and Mishra into declaring war and gain control of their factions. The end result was supposed to be that the two brothers would destroy themselves and their forces allowing Yawgmoth to easily conquer the plane. This would fail however when Urza activated the Sylex, a magical device that causes great catastrophes, which caused brutal amounts of destruction to both of the brothers' armies and forced Gix and his followers into retreating.

Yawgmoth still had his sights on twisting his former home, but a secondary consequence to activating the Sylex led to the creation of the Shard of the Twelve Worlds that would isolate Yawgmoth from Dominaria completely for thousands of years. After learning about Gix's failure, the Father of Machines banished him to Phyrexia's seventh sphere to suffer in agony for thousands of years. He would eventually release Gix to allow him to test out his new sleeper agents. Though the initial batch all looked identical allowing them to be easily detected, the idea would be improved upon in the future to devastating effect.

Urza would then learn that his brother was corrupted by the Phyrexians and would enact revenge on them. He was able to erase a significant section of the plane, saved a city from being overrun by sleeper agents, and destroyed Gix (the one who personally compleated his brother), however this would only backfire. Urza traveled through Phyrexia in order to destroy Yawgmoth, but the plane proved to be far more dangerous than Urza anticipated and he could barely traverse through the plane's fourth sphere. By this time, Yawgmoth was an immensely powerful god and easily corrupted the planeswalker's mind. Urza was barely able to escape.

He fled across the multiverse to hide from the Phyrexians for several years until he reached Serra's Realm. Though Serra managed to heal Urza, the Phyrexians infiltrated the plane and corrupted it to its core. The plane's guardian angels became militant war mongers as a result that slaughtered many civilians. Those who could escape were sent to Dominaria while the plane itself was compressed into a powerstone.

Planning an Invasion[]

It was after Freyalise undid the Shard by casting the World Spell, that Yawgmoth would finally be able to infiltrate Dominaria once more. He would devise a variety of plans, from infiltrations, to global scale invasions to take over the plane. His main plan was to create another artificial plane called Rath that served as a massive staging ground for Phyrexian troops. Once the time comes, Rath would planeshift on top of Dominaria allowing the bulk of the Phyrexians to attack the entire plane simultaneously. Knowing Urza would continue to inhibit his schemes, Yawgmoth sent troops to intercept him and stop his counter offenses. A sleeper agent known as K'rrik managed to infiltrated the Tolarian Academy, a school where mages were being trained and artifacts were being created to fight the Phyrexians, and also destroyed the institution. However, this was partially undone when the silver golem Karn was sent back in time to stop this though the Academy was still eliminated.

While the overlay was being formed, creatures from Dominaria were transported to Rath allowing the Phyrexians to experiment on them. Through their research of the Kor, they discovered Urza's bloodline project, a gambit to manipulate the breeding patterns of several Dominarian groups to create super soldiers to fight Phyrexia in the form of the Metathran. After learning about this, the Father of Machines more aggressively targeted Urza's operations with a main focus of slaying those born of the bloodline project. While most perished, Gerrard Capashen, the true heir of Urza's Legacy and whose sole purpose is to destroy Phyrexia, and the Legacy Artifacts escaped the mad god's grasp. Yawgmoth's infamy at this time earned him the title of the Lord of the Wastes.

The Phyrexian Invasion[]

Toxic-deluge (1)

Yawgmoth corrupting Dominaria as a giant death cloud

After many centuries of planning and preparation, Yawgmoth was ready to conquer the plane of Dominaria. Throughout most of the invasion, Yawgmoth remained deep in Phyrexia monitoring his forces while subordinates like Tsabo Tavoc and Crovax led his forces. The former devastated nations by unleashing plagues and shock troopers upon them while the later was in charge of the overlay allowing numerous more Phyrexians to assault the plane.

Though the Phyrexians proved to be a brutally effective fighting force, the denizens of Dominaria managed to hold their own for several months preventing their total victory. Yawgmoth no longer saw Urza as his greatest threat. He believed Rebecc's spirit escaped the Thran's demise and became the plane's worldsoul Gaea which was determined to stop her former love from returning for 9,000 years.

Ironically, Urza would end up betraying the army he himself assembled known as the Nine Titans to destroy Phyrexia, simply out of his admiration of Yawgmoth's efficiency and vision, incapable of destroying a plane with that much knowledge and brilliance. He also managed to have another of his mortal enemies, Gerrard Capashen, submit to him as well at the promise of resurrecting his dead love Hanna who died from a Phyrexian illness. Yawgmoth had the two fight in an arena to prove their loyalty resulting in Gerrard decapitating Urza.

During the final hours of the war, Yawgmoth finally returned to his home plane, in the form of a giant death cloud that covered the entire sky and was corrupting everything, killing enemy troops and resurrecting them into Phyrexians. He covered most of the plane and victory seemed imminent.

Dominaria-Remastered (1)

Yawgmoth's demise from the Legacy Weapon

Gerrard realized Yawgmoth could not truly revive Hanna and betrayed his new master. He along with Urza's still living severed head boarded the Weatherlight skyship and punctured the Null Moon. Sensing what was about to happen, Yawgmoth attempted to flee back to Phyrexia, but the portal was covered in magma. Using the white magic of the light of the moon and the combined Legacy Weapon infused with Glacian's spirit, the Weatherlight skyship tricked Yawgmoth into believing it was a form of Rebbec's soul, and he tried to gain control of it by corrupting. The blast instead decimated the dark cloud, eliminating the multiverse's greatest threat. After millennia of genocides and wars, Yawgmoth was no more and all Phyrexians were either destroyed or deactivated. Without its god maintaining the plane, Phyrexia eventually ceased to exist.

Legacy[]

Yawgmoth’s corpse is a wound in the universe. His foul blood seeps out, infecting the land with his final curse.
~ Lord Windgrace

During his shaping of Phyrexia, Yawgmoth modified the oil that existed in the plane and turned into some kind of infective substance, but it was not fully functional as a contagion agent even by the time he invaded Dominaria. However, when Karn, who ironically played a large role in Yawgmoth's demise as a part of the Legacy, left to explore the multiverse after obtaining Urza's planeswalker spark, he unwillingly spread a dangerous version of this oil to every plane he visited. Unbeknownst to the golem, Urza used a heartstone of a Phyrexian sleeper agent in his construction, unintentionally allowing glistening oil to enter his body. This would end up corrupting the entire plane that Karn had created: Argentum. The plane's warden Memnarch would grow mad after coming into contact with this substance and thus kidnap creatures from across the multiverse and terraform Karn's world into what would be known as Mirrodin.

The oil's corruption would extend to the point Mirrodin would twist into a Phyrexian Nightmare named "New Phyrexia". The Phyrexians now dominate this world transforming it to structurally resemble the original Phyrexia with very few non-Phyrexian lifeforms left on the plane. This new breed of Phyrexians would absorb different kinds of mana (rather than black, which was the main color of the original Phyrexians due to being influenced by Mirrodin's five mana charged suns) and create factions built around them each based on a different color of mana. Though collectively they had no foreseeable weakness due to being aligned with all five colors of mana, the unity that the Phyrexians once had was lost due to each colors' different ideologies. As a result, a sole figure would rise to lead each group. These would be the praetors. Though these new Phyrexians are unaware of Yawgmoth and the older Phyrexians, the glistening oil gave them implanted memories of their creator and ancestors as well as knowledge about how to speak and write the language.

Karn would become corrupted by the oil after losing his spark by sealing a time rift and would be groomed by the New Phyrexians into becoming their new Father of Machines. He would ultimately be freed from this fate leading the praetors would wage a civil war against each other to claim his throne. Elesh Norn, the white aligned praetor, dominated the forces of Sheoldred, the black aligned praetor, and Urabrask, the red aligned praetor, leading her to become the Mother of Machines. With most of New Phyrexia united under her rule, she seeks to compleat all beings in the multiverse and have them live under her rule. She even titled herself after a modified version of Yawgmoth's Phyrexian name which to her means Mother of Machines.

However, it is not clear how much this new breed of Phyrexians worship Yawgmoth, although it is likely many of them at least respect him as the original creator of the Phyrexians. For instance, Jin-Gitaxias, the blue aligned praetor, admires his ambition and cunning, but recognizes he would sometimes not think things through. Others like Vorinclex, the green aligned praetor, have a more negative view of him: rather than obeying a single leader, specially one who already failed, the Tangle would continue its cycle of improvement by its relentless fighting. The black aligned Phyrexians are the ones who follow Yawgmoth's desires the closest thanks to Sheoldred. Others like Elesh Norn and Sheoldred attribute Karn as their creator and still revere him as the Father of Machines even after he was cured of phyresis. He rejects that title and considers the New Phyrexians a mistake he caused so he seeks to destroy them to prevent their influence from spreading across the multiverse. They would eventually fully reject Karn as their leader.

As the main overarching antagonist of a large portion of the Magic the Gathering Story, Yawgmoth's actions have had a profound effect in many of the most important characters in magic's history: Urza, Mishra, Karn, Serra, Gerrard, Teferi, among many others.

Trivia[]

  • Yawgmoth's name in Phyrexian which translates to jɒ’gmo’θ in English means "Father of Machines" in Phyrexian.

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