These are notes taken from various MTG source materials as I read through them. As these may be fairly extensive, not everything here deserves note in its corresponding articles.
The Gathering Dark
Notes in italics are taken from the in-universe character, Arkol, scholar of New Argive.
- Acknowledgements: "A particular debt is owed to Jesper Myrfors; the original visionary who conceived The Dark. Jesper has been invaluable in providing background data and clarifying the original vision and intent of the card set. Jesper was the only one who could have proved that, regardless of what the final card text said, Barl the artificer and Mairsil the pretender were two different people."
- 1: Most scholars and theologians agree that the Dark began with the devastation of Argoth in 64 AR, and it extended several hundred years, until the continent of Terisia was at last firmly in the grip of its Ice Age... During this ancient period the first true convocation of mages occurred, carrying on the spirit of Terisia City.
- 2-4: Lord Ith is imprisoned beneath the Conclave Citadel in a cage of watersilver, "as clear and opalescent as a frozen waterfall... thin as gossamer and as tough as steel," above an apparently infinite abyss. The abyss "had always been here... before the now-vanished monks of artifice had made it their home, before the time of the Brothers." The cage wears at Ith's mind and leeches his powers, and he "could do nothing to affect his cage, and indeed his spells only strengthened [its] power." He casts a single spell through the cage.
- 5: Mairsil the Pretender claims to have kept Ith encaged for over a decade.
- 9: Mairsil is keeping Ith imprisoned to extract from him "Urza's secret".
- 10-12: Ith's spell summons a Rag Man, and he beseeches it to "Seek help. Bring me one with the key. Bring me one who carries the secret." The Rag Man departs and Ith descends back into madness.
- 13: a number of legendary figures... Ith, the horrific Rag Man, Vervamon the Elder, and Tivadar of Thorn. Yet one figure is an enigma among enigmas. Time and again throughout the period of the Dark—and up to the end of the Ice Age itself—there is reference to a folk figure known as Jodah. It has been suggested that Jodah is the surname of a family of sorcerers, or a honorific title of respect, or that Jodah is a previously unknown Planeswalker... Jodah... is today regard as one of the founder of magic as we now know it."
- 14: Jodah is apprenticed to Voska. Jodah has an ancestor named Jarsyl.
- 16: Voska was raid among the Kher peaks. Jodah is from Giva province. Thargrin was his grandfather, and "mighty" Jarsyl was his great-great-grandfather. His family's lands "were overgrown with weeds, and the surrounding farms were mostly barren [and] overfarmed". He lived in a manor house built by Jarsyl's mother after the Devastation, but that house was abandoned during Jodah's lifetime.
- 20: Voska describes means of keeping track of spells, but describes writing them down "like trying to write down a dance."
- 21: Voska gives Jodah a pre-Devastation mirror, which he received from the hedge-wizard who taught him.
- 22: The Church of Tal bans books on magic.
- 23-24: "Urza's Devastation", "Also called Mishra's Devastation, also called the Brothers' War, also called the Antiquities War." "Destroyed the land. Sank whole islands. Burned whole cities. The world is colder and darker and more dangerous now because of what the did. Some stories say they killed each other. Others said that one killed the other, then went insane and fled to find new lands to destroy." "They weren't wizards. [Jodah's] grandmother told [him] stories, and she said they weren't wizards. They were powerful, and they had great machines, but they weren't wizards." "They were powerful, and they were different and had abilities beyond most people, and that's why everyone thinks they were wizards. That's why the church seeks to burn the magical books. That why they hound mages and put wizards and artificers on pyres."
- 24-30: The two are ambushed by goblins, and then again by soldiers from the Church of Tal, from the coastal city of Alsoor. They are taken into custody.