Interlude: Damn Good Yogurt
Excellent. Thank you. And if you don't know why I'm thanking you, go back a chapter and read the author's note.
Now, while I have your attention, there's a tale I wish to tell, and it will go well with the one you're reading. How will not be immediately clear to some of you, but I'm sure the cleverest have already figured it out. In any case, let us begin:
Once upon a time, there was a faerie kingdom that had no king. It did have a queen, though, and like any self-respecting fairy tale queen, she bore that particular blend of self-interest and casual malice that simple minds refer to as "evil." She didn't trust the wheel of sun and moon, and thus stretched out the cycle of day and night until neither could see the other, but not so far that she couldn't keep an eye on both. Thus, in time, only she remembered that the two had anything to do with one another.
Or so she thought.
There were other thinking creatures aside from the queen and her subjects in the kingdom, many of whom had the understandable but mistaken belief that they and their concerns were in any way important. Elves, the wardens and judges of beauty; kithkin, who wove their very thoughts together for better and worse; giants, ponderous beings for whom the other fleshy races were as mayflies in size, longevity, and—depending on the giant—relevance; and so on and so forth. There was a notable lack of humans, but the rest of the Multiverse has enough of them as it is.
All of this, however, is little more than stage decoration for our true tale. For though the queen and the land are one, both were young once, and this story begins when the queen was more of a princess. Sun and moon still kept in touch, and of the many races that were to come, only the patient treefolk had even begun walking the path to sapience. Even then, that meant little more than saplings with unusually active dreams.
Still, dreams are powerful things. The princess knew this, and in time, dreams would come to define her and her subjects. But it is her own dreams that we focus on here. As I said earlier, the princess and the land were one, and what the land knew, the princess knew as well. But there were things that the land either didn't or couldn't notice, and chief among them were the princess's dreams.
As you know, remembering dreams is iffy at best. (For most, at least. You may be a lucid dreamer, but rest assured, the princess wasn't.) The princess was fascinated by something she couldn't remember, knowledge that escaped her, information that denied her until-then unchallenged omniscience. It was the world's first mystery.
And then something amazing happened.
Such is the nature of dreams that what the princess forgot could have been anything. All the infinite possibilities, far too many even for the princess's waking imagination, came together as one and asserted their existence outside of her head. They could be anything, and thus took their appearance from everything: animals, plants, emotions, ideas, and even things that by all rights wouldn't, couldn't, or shouldn't exist. And then this great horde of notions began to explore the strange physical world in which it found itself.
Of course, the world noticed that, and thus so did the princess. And this unexpected development introduced her to several novel experiences: surprise, uncertainty, and worst of all, fear. She didn't like any of these one bit, but she still felt them, and when someone so powerful felt something so strong just after one idea made itself known to the world… well, is it any surprise what happened next?
The second creature forged from elemental concepts, wrought in the primal beyond that the princess would learn of only after birthing several more of the creatures, was quite a sight. The menagerie appearance of the first left quite the impression on the princess, and so the second exaggerated that to an astonishing degree. No two limbs the same, the tail different from the body, horns unlike anything else, and a mouth full of teeth that could barely agree with themselves, much less each other.
Ah. I see those of you in the back of the class may have finally realized just who I am.
For a not inconsiderable number of centuries, this slapdash mishmash wandered the world as most of the concept elementals did, sparing little attention to the young queen's gambit of spacing out night and day. The state of the sky mattered little in perpetuating the confusion, shock, and havoc that defined the creature.
But one day, as befit an incarnation of elemental chaos, something unexpected happened. It asked itself, "Why?"
Perhaps the question was the key to an invisible lock. Perhaps it was the land's duty to respond, as the creature was, in a sense, a child of the queen, and thus technically a prince. Perhaps the world simply wanted to be rid of it before it asked "Why not?" Whatever the case, the creature got its answer. It planeswalked.
You might think the creature would have enjoyed the eternal, endless chaos of the Bastard Plane. You would be wrong. It was forged from the chaos of life, the blend of drive and passion and instinct that spurs anything with a pulse to make tomorrow different from today. The space between planes permitted no such complexity. It reduced anything not like it into more of itself, a chaos so profound that it had become a sort of order.
Needless to say, this made something of an impact on the creature. There could, in fact, be too much of a good thing. Thus cautioned, it resumed its peregrinations, though on a much greater scale and with rather more purpose. It was not enough to merely spread chaos. A chaotic state was unstable by definition. Left to its own devices, such a state would eventually settle into some form of order, possibly that of the Blind Eternities.
The newly ignited planeswalker soon learned the proper term for this state of affairs: it wouldn't be fun.
To maximize fun, chaos had to be maintained. Sustained. Nudged here and there to keep it going. Fed a twig now and again. Seeing the reaction proceed was more than enough of a reward for such ministrations.
And so, amidst wars between flesh and spirit and between flesh and blood, from the days of legends to those of the modern masters, through the Mending and beyond (which didn't really change much for me,) I have wound my way about the Multiverse, not spreading havoc so much as seeding it. The seeds sleep, sometimes for longer than I spent mindless. But they always sprout. And I am a very good gardener.
Hmm. Looking back, there seems to be something of a lack of proper nouns in this little autobiography. Well, I'm sure you've all figured it out by now, but I have been known to overestimate at times. I may as well spell it out, just to be sure.
Hello. As Oona dubbed me in the time before the sundering of Lorwyn and Shadowmoor, I am Discord. The pleasure is mine, as is usually the case.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled horsewords.
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>Wheel of Sun and Moon
>Horde of Notions
>Legends
>Modern Masters
Avoiding giving all of those capital letters just by instinct must have been hard.
Is this in a different continuity than your Sideboard? Because I'm sure I remember that story giving a version of Discord's genesis that doesn't agree with this one.
Okay, that was pretty clever.
I don't know if I'm thinking of Douglas Adams or what, but reading the titles here (specifically Epil/Damn Good Yogurt/Logue) I expected the narrator to get distracted and spend the whole thing raving about the most delicious yogurt in the multiverse.
At the start of this chapter, I thought we were going to be talking about a very different bug queen. Boy was I wrong.
And Discord being a 'walking Lorwyn elemental makes FAR too much sense.
4460664 You missed the much newer Peregrination (and a possible, very vague Flesh // Blood).
4460806
Sideboard of Harmony is part of the Elementals of Harmony. The Implicit Neighs as a whole are part of a different continuity (like Planar Chaos is to the rest of Magic).
4460806
4461566
The Implicit Neighs is Ral Zarek looking into The Divinitory Transreliquat (the "What If?" machine) at the end of A Sly Toll Tot.
Lorwyn. A storybook world. No humans. And the coming eternal night.
Smells like a crossover to me!
You magnificent bastard you.
I feel like the title here is a reference to something, but I don't get it. Also, is the Bastard Plane just a name you came up with for the Blind Eternities?
9955442
It's been used in several Magic novels.
The chapter title comes from the Discworld novel Thief of Time, which involves a different chaos avatar who learned how to exist in harmony with the world around him. As a milkman. Because Terry Prachett.
9955443
Ah. It's been several years since I read Thief of Time, so I'd forgotten. But now that you mention it, I remember Ronnie Soak. That book in particular had a lot going on.
Well, that was amazing. :O
10814470
Equestria not being a thing has some wider ramifications than just one city-world.
Oh I got fucking chills. It's been so long since
Discord was the big bad I forgot how amazing he is at being evil. Oh this is so good. I love it so much. I'm going to have nightmare about Discord aka the best villain.