I wrote this as a sample of work for a possible job opening at Wizards of the Coast, taking their new Planeswalker characters and writing where I felt their stories should go. All the background information on the characters was taken from this website.
Jace Beleren, a young planeswalker from Dominaria, is visiting the plane of Rhua, a hollow plane filled with webs of structure spinning out from the Central Palace. Rhuan culture is built around radial symmetry and Platonic solids. He hopes to get King Jorome into to allow him access to the Central Vault, to study (and probably steal) the Point, a magical artifact of immense power. To gain entrance to the Palace he first works himself into the good graces of Duke Ruron, helping the Duke deal with a bandit problem in his farm-nodes. Ruron offers Jace a place in his court as magician, and Jace accepts. Soon Royal Court is held, and Jace is taken along in the Duke’s entourage. While taking advantage of the Royal Library, he meets Yiron, a beautiful young library assistant who helps him research the Point and the Vault. Impressed with her knowledge and magical skill, he begins to fall in love but keeps his motives to himself. Yiron begins to suspect that Jace has some hidden agenda, and goes to his chamber in the night to try and convince him that the Point must not be interfered with. She finds him sneaking out to go to the Vault, and follows him as he magics the Vault Guard to sleep, unlocks the Lock, and gains entrance to the Point Chamber. There she reveals herself to him, trying to warn him that he does not understand the Point, that it is not a physical artifact, but a mystical focus derived from the perfect symmetry of Rhua and in return ordering Rhua symmetrically, a perfect feedback loop. Jace tells her that it’s just a superstition, and casually grabs the Point in one hand –
Rhua collapses, symmetry shifting off-balance, cracks in reality cutting across every web and splitting every node. The Point wails, cracking in sympathy. Within the space of three seconds, Rhua is gone, and Jace is left scrambling through the Blind Eternities for the safety of any nearby plane. He cannot come to terms with the fact that he has just exterminated an entire world through his own arrogance, he believes there must be a way to fix it if only he were stronger. He seeks out the plane of Chron, home to a race that has mastered time. On the strange dust-coated and dimly-lit plane of Chron, he spends three thousand, three hundred, thirty and three years learning the teachings of the Chronal. On that day, they say they can teach him no more while he still remains human. He casts a great spell, reaching out across time to send him back to Rhua, the Central Vault, to stop himself from moving the Point. He arrives one second too late, and again his past self grabs the Point and Rhual collapses, and Yiron dies screaming.
He tries again, but again, one second too late, and he tries again, this time Yiron stutters and loops her speech like a broken gear, and he fails again. Again, and the strain and the cracks on the plane’s time are apparent, he can see trails of the past starting to loop into the present, and again he cannot stop his past self. He strains his magic to the limit, burning his mana, but every time he loops time back he always fails, every time Rhua cracks more and more, broken echoes of Yiron taunting him. He sees down through her timeline through a crack in her face, and he can see every smile she’s ever formed simultaneously weaving along the web-roads of Rhua, back to the house of her birth. Yet still he is always one second too late. He tries again and again, two thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-nine times, his mana long since gone until all there is left to power his spell is the spell itself, and he casts the spell one last time, burning all he has gained from Chron from his memory. And still, one second too late. Once again he travels away from Rhua, and arrives on the edge of some gray sea-cliff. Tears run down his cheeks, his hair and eyes gray now from the strain and effort. He finally realizes that there are consequences for all things, and he swears that he will guide other planeswalkers, to keep them from making the same mistakes he did. He swears he will not fail again.
Ajani does not know why his brother Khajo was murdered, which is part of why he hunted down his killer, Uloru, a packmate he never knew well. After a fierce chase through the savannahs and jungles of his home plane, he finally cornered Uloru, Uloru’s latent spark ignited, for nine years Ajani hunts Uloru across the planes. Eventually Ajani tracks him to the plane of Vho-Shu, a highly religious plane of rolling hills and tranquil, meditative landscapes. He finds that Uloru has become an important guru there, with many devout followers in his mountain temple. He challenges Uloru to face him, but he will not face Ajani, nor will he say why he murdered Khajo, insisting that the past is no longer important. Enraged, Ajani strikes down Uloru with a single blow. None of the followers turn against him. Feeling no satisfaction, only anger, Ajani kills some of them as well, eventually razing the entire temple in a pillar of light. Looking at the destruction he has wrought, he understands now why Uloru fled, and that moments of passion are meaningless, only conscious courses of action matter in the long term. He returns to his home plane to find his people scattered, and reunites them in a glorious new spiritual age, honoring Uloru’s teachings.
Chandra Nalaar is a young planeswalker who has already found herself in great trouble. She is being hunted across the multiverse by some powerful being of pure light that is collecting planeswalkers of great potential, and, although she has always been one step ahead, she knows that she is tiring. She decides to make her last stand on the Plane of Wonders, the grandest plane in all of Dominia, hoping the use the red mana of the Skywall Peaks, tallest mountain range in Dominia, to fuel a spell that will be able to kill her strange pursuer. Facing off against the being, she calls on all her energy to cast the spell – but it is more than she can handle. She incinerates not only the being, but a good section of the Plane. Tens of thousands are dead, millions of wonders lost to the universe forever.
The Council of the Wisest asks the planeswalkers gathered there to hunt down Chandra and put her to death, reasoning that she cannot control her power, and she is a threat to all of Dominia. All the planeswalkers agree, and set off to hunt her – except for Jace, who tries to track Chandra down, and plans to hide her from everyone, giving her the chance to learn how to control her fire. But Chandra is used to being hunted now, and she evades not only those who seek to kill her, but Jace as well, until it is too late, and she is cornered in the oceanic plane of Deepfathom, where her fire magic is useless.
Again, Jace arrives one second too late, and he watches as Ajani executes Chandra in the name of justice. Deeply saddened, and filled with self-hatred at his failure, Jace swears that the next time, he will not fail.
Garruk Wildspeaker is visiting the Plane of Wonders for an interplanar hunting championship. Since he has managed to kill one of the Nephilim of Ravnica (and bring back its great glinting eye as a trophy), he is confident that he will win. As all the contestants compare their tropies in the Hall of Infinite Stories, with a crowd of planeswalkers watching, a traveling planeswalker suddenly appears, excitedly announcing that he has discovered a new plane, rich in untapped mana. He invites all present to follow him.
Upon arriving, Garruk discovers that the new plane is an unspoiled paradise. The walker who discovered it says that its natives seem to call it Muraganda. This is the plane that Garruk has always dreamed of, an endless stretch of untouched wilds. But the gathered crowd of planeswalkers has other plans. They all want to tap Muraganda for its power, to have it all for themselves. Fighting soon begins, and by the end of the day alliances have already been formed. Garruk finds himself fighting alone against the two main armies of planeswalkers – one led by the Old Man of Ten Thousand Jewels, leading seventeen ancient and powerful wizards who want to share Muraganda between themselves and no others, and one led by Lilana Vess, an army of evil black magicians who want to corrupt Muraganda and turn it into the largest source of black mana in the multiverse.
He joins forces with the First Men of Muraganda, and, with the help of his friend Jace, turns the Old Man and Liliana against each other, keeping them both fighting while he weaves a spell that will keep outsiders out of Muraganda forever. When the spell is complete, all the outsiders on Muraganda are ripped from the plane and flung back into the Blind Eternities – including Garruk. But he can still be happy, knowing that there is at least one plane out there that shall remain unspoiled, and he lives on in the legends of the First Men as their great protector god.
Liliana Vess is finally called back by her masters to of the plane of Trimundi, a plane of light and a plane of dark squishing together against a plane of humans inhabiting a Victorian-style city. The Black Kings, Liliana’s masters, are preparing for their final offensive to take the Third Land, the human city. Finally calling in on their end of the bargain, they reshape her into a tool of their will, twisting her form horribly and bending her mind to serve them. As she is forced to lead the first offensive to secure the Third Land, she uses her last reserves of willpower to call to her onetime compatriot, Jace Beleren, and ask him to help free her from her servitude.
Jace arrives in the Third Land in time to witness the wholesale slaughter of its citizens by the forces of Dark. He is horrified, and decides that he will do everything he can to help Light triumph. Confronting Liliana, he tells her that he will not help her, that she has brought this fate on herself, and that she and her masters will be defeated no matter the cost. He then leaves for the Bright Land, to meet with the White Queens and offer what assistance he can.
As he fights alongside their forces, he realizes that they will inevitably lose the battle, and that the cost to the Third Land will be high. He presents the White Queens with one final option to guarantee victory, which they accept: use their magic together to merge with him into one godlike entity, and then use his amplified psionic magic to project the essence of the Brightness into the mind of every man, woman, and child in the Third Land, protecting them from the cruelty of the Dark forever but removing their free will, in essence binding the Bright Land and the Third Land together forever as one god-entity.
The spell is cast, and the forces of Dark are completely routed. Liliana is killed, and the Black Kings are destroyed along with the entire Dark Land. Jace is now practically a god, holding dominion over two planes completely subservient to his will.
