Evasive Maneuvers — Lure and Deathtouch

<h6 style="text-align: right;">(<span class="edhrecp__link"><a class="edhrecp__link-a" content="Abzan Ascendancy" href="#" target="_blank">Abzan Ascendancy</a><span class="edhrecp__link-image"></span></span> | Art by <a href="https://www.originalmagicart.store/collections/mark-winters">Mark Winters</a>)</h6>
<h1 class="p1"><strong><span class="s1">Backstory, Please!</span></strong></h1>
<p><a href="https://articles.edhrec.com/historically-speaking-the-mardu-vs-the-temur/">Last time</a> on <em>Historically Speaking, </em>we examined the hypothetical battle that might take place if the Mardu decided to attempt to take over the territory that belongs to their rival clans, using real-world historical precedent to examine how these battles might play out. Today, we're revisiting this idea by following the Mardu in their next target: the Abzan.</p>
<p>First, let's revisit the events and conclusions we reached in the previous article, where the Mardu fought the Temur.</p>
<div class="edhrecp__cards"><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Zurgo Helmsmasher"></div><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Surrak Dragonclaw"></div></div>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The Mardu Empire under <span class="edhrecp__link"><a class="edhrecp__link-a" content="Zurgo Helmsmasher" href="#" target="_blank">Zurgo Helmsmasher</a><span class="edhrecp__link-image"></span></span> has seized the Temur territory of Qal-Sisma. The Temur are the least organized of Tarkir’s five clans—hardy, fierce, unflinching, but also chaotic, and, without their khan, at best only able to mount a guerrilla campaign against the Mardu. The Mardu Horde have swollen their numbers with Temur recruits and conscripts, having been promised glory in the new Mardu Empire. <span class="edhrecp__link"><a class="edhrecp__link-a" content="Surrak Dragonclaw" href="#" target="_blank">Surrak Dragonclaw</a><span class="edhrecp__link-image"></span></span> is dead or fled to the northern glaciers with the last Temur holdouts: the shamans, hardliners, and those who are too young to hold a spear.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The acquisition of Qal Sisma increases the Mardu potential resource base—wood for bows and carts, grazing lands for horses. It has also added more mouths to feed on his campaign, and thus urgency. The Mardu couldn’t conquer all the Temur lands—why would they need to? The Temur that march with them are hungry, either for the glory of battle, to see distant lands, or simply follow the strongest. Some are there unwillingly, for all that that matters.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><span class="edhrecp__link"><a class="edhrecp__link-a" content="Zurgo Helmsmasher" href="#" target="_blank">Zurgo Helmsmasher</a><span class="edhrecp__link-image"></span></span> is building an empire, and the next building block is the Abzan Houses of the desert. He’s already seized a few trade caravans—proof of concept that his empire is working. The Abzan are specialists in deflecting Mardu and Sultai raids; the Temur auxiliaries and their unfamiliar magics of ice and colossal beasts scatter the Abzan caravans, imbuing the newly strengthened horde with confidence and booty.</span></p>
<div class="edhrecp__cards"><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Ambush Krotiq"></div></div>
<hr />
<h2 class="p1"><span class="s1">Where We Are Now</span></h2>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The Mardu horde, newly reinforced by Temur auxiliaries, comes closer and closer to core Abzan territory. Ainok archers and shamans march side-by-side with bear-cavalry, who rub elbows with orcs, goblins, and humans atop horseback. Ogres cast long shadows as they trudge across the steppes. The horse-mounted archers and heavy cavalry are the core of the Mardu, the secret to their culture’s survival. Without their speed, or the courage of their riders, there would be no Mardu Horde.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The strengthened horde moves from the steppes to the desert. Full Abzan territory. They have enough supplies for some time... but do they have enough supplies to last a siege? </span></p>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;">The Horde comes upon the Sandsteppe Gateway. <em>The Planeswalker’s Guide to Tarkir</em> describes the Sandsteppe Gateway as follows:</span></p>
<blockquote>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><i><strong>“Close to the border of Mardu territory, where the desert gives way to the rolling steppe, sits the great Sandsteppe Gateway. It is a fortress bridge spanning the gap between two mountains that are divided by a river, which flows out from Abzan lands.”</strong></i></span></p>
</blockquote>
<div class="edhrecp__cards"><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Sandsteppe Citadel"></div></div>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The Mardu stop well outside the Gateway. Scouts on horseback are sent out for reconnaissance. Time passes, and the Horde waits.<br />
</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The scouts return before evening falls and report. No sign of reinforcements or ambushes. The citadel has geared up to repel invaders. The next day, the siege will begin. </span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Zurgo Helmsmasher means to do what no Mardu Khan has ever done before and take an Abzan city by force. Instead of rushing the walls with ladders or building siege engines, Zurgo has a more audacious plan: diverting the river to undermine the twin fortresses. He has more than enough strong backs to drown this proud Abzan stronghold—the first of many to fall to his new empire.</span></p>
<hr />
<h2 class="p1"><span class="s1">Who are the Abzan?</span></h2>
<div class="edhrecp__cards"><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Abzan Banner"></div><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Unyielding Krumar"></div><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Anafenza, the Foremost"></div></div>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The Abzan Houses are a coalition of families that live in Tarkir’s deserts. Like the Temur, they also have some ainok members, as well as krumar—children from other clans whose parents died fighting the Abzan but are raised as full members of the clan. This is how the majority of orcs originally entered the Abzan Houses.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The Abzan Houses are led by Anafenza. Unlike Zurgo, Anafenza doesn’t rule through fear or intimidation, but through acclaim. She has managed to rule the Abzan capably. She protects the trade routes that are the lifeblood of the Abzan way of life from attacks from the Mardu and Sultai, according to the Planeswalker’s Guide to Tarkir.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"> We will be examining the Abzan’s primary strengths. The principle advantages of the Abzan Houses under Anafenza are threefold:</span></p>
<ol>
<li>Political unity and social cohesion. The Abzan houses are ordered along the principle of family. Treason or betrayal are known to happen, of course, but they are the exception rather than the norm. The Abzan are a unified, organized front, in contrast to the Mardu or the Temur.</li>
<li>Fortified positions (and knowing how to use them efficiently). Even when the Abzan go to war, they take the high ground with them. To use a few tropes—the Abzan are the mighty glacier of Tarkir’s factions, and the Mardu are glass cannons. One is made for survivability above all else, and the other one prioritizes a devastating first strike and neglects its own defenses as a result. On their home turf, the Abzan are difficult at best to confront.</li>
<li>And lastly, what their clan is renowned for, the thing they took as inspiration from the Elder Dragons and made it their own: endurance. The Abzan will wait as long as is necessary to wear down their opponents. Before committing to battle, the Abzan will ensure that they are better supplied, better armed, and better prepared than their foes.</li>
</ol>
<hr />
<h2><span class="s2">History, History</span></h2>
<p><span class="s1"><em>Wizards of the Coast</em> has claimed that the Abzan are based on the Ottoman Empire, and that may be so. For our purposes, however, we will be examining the Abzan Houses through the context of the early Mongol Empire. For our purposes, they will be analogous to the Western Xia and Northern Jin empires of northern China, and the first settled societies that Genghis Khan’s newborn Mongol empire attacks. Like the Jin and the Western Xia, the Abzan Houses are technologically advanced, have intricately walled cities and advanced agriculture. Against walled cities, in the early years, the Mongols had no recourse, since they had no siege engines.</span></p>
<div class="edhrecp__cards"><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Siege Rhino"></div></div>
<p><span class="s1">The Mongols under Genghis Khan won by defeating the Tangut and Jin armies in the field. The first campaign against the Tanguts of the Western Xia dynasty ended in a draw—the Mongols could beat the Tanguts in pitched battles, but were hopeless at sieges. To quote historian John Man:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><em><span class="s1">“Now [the Mongols] faced a problem. Yinchuan was a well defended city, and the Mongols were fast moving nomadic cavalrymen. They had never tried to take a city before. They had no siege bows, catapults, incendiary bombs or flamethrowers. A remedy lay to hand: Yinchuan’s ancient canal system, which led water from the Yellow River to Irrigate Western Xia’s fields. The Mongols broke the dykes and tried to flood the city into surrender. This was not a good idea. Yinchuan’s surrounding agricultural land is as flat as Holland. Flood waters spread far, but remained shallow. Buildings stand clear of shallow floods. But horses and tents do not. The Mongols flooded themselves out and were forced back to higher ground.” </span></em></p></blockquote>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The Mongols declared victory and struck an unsatisfactory trade deal with the Tanguts—Genghis Khan never forgave the Tanguts for refusing to strengthen the Mongol war-machine by providing auxiliaries. They retreated back to the steppes for the moment.</span></p>
<blockquote><p><a href="https://articles.edhrec.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Mongol-invasion.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-41927" src="https://articles.edhrec.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Mongol-invasion.png" alt="" width="436" height="304" /></a></p></blockquote>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">But how the Mongols defeated the Jin is a complicated picture. Genghis Khan was a leader who absolutely did everything possible—diplomatic, economic, what would now be called espionage—to give himself an edge over his opponents. That wasn’t necessary yet for the Jin—they weren’t having a good 13th century. Even still, according to Frank McLynn, Genghis took no chances:</span></p>
<blockquote>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><em>“Even with all the considerable advantages the Khitan revolt and internal turmoil in the Jin empire handed him, he waited until the famine of 1210-11 had bitten deeply before he crossed the Chinese front.”</em><br />
</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The Jin, in short, were riven by internal divisions that made them vulnerable. Their military was demoralized by a sketchy recent record. The Jin couldn’t be more ripe for invasion if the branch holding the dynasty was bent like a bow. All of this is m</span><span class="s1">ade worse by the fact that the Mongols made a strong showing against the Jin on the battlefield, prompting several of their most experienced and capable generals to defect (with their armies, siege equipment, and knowledge of how to make said siege equipment) to the Mongols.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The Mongols would be fighting in North China—Jin China—for the next two decades. It would be long and brutal. But the Jin ultimately fell before the Mongols.</span></p>
<hr />
<h2 class="p1"><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;">Back</span><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;"> at the Sandsteppe Citadel</span></h2>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;">The Mardu may be the faction <em>based</em> on the Mongols, but they clearly are not the Mongols. A quote from the ever-quippy HG Wells seems appropriate here that applies to the Mardu in this context:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><em><span class="s1">“The career of conquest of Genghis Khan and his immediate successors astounded the world and probably astounded no one more than these Mongol Khans themselves…” </span></em></p></blockquote>
<p class="p1"><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;"> Zurgo Helmsmasher is not Genghis Khan. Even if we swapped their places, I doubt Genghis leading the Mardu could have defeated the unified Abzan Houses. The Mongols never had ogres to light on fire or suicidal goblin charges, for starters.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><div class="edhrecp__cards"><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Roar of Challenge"></div></div></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">For all their advantages—the Temur recruits, the newly found political cohesion, the focus on a larger goal—the fact is that the Mardu can’t win an effective war of conquest against the Abzan Houses. The Mongols were both skilled at creating and exploiting political discord in their enemies before launching assaults. The Mardu were effectively handed a freebie with the Temur. Even with the Temur auxiliaries' undoubted battle prowess, I don't believe they would be enough to turn the tide of a siege into the Mardu's favor. Open battle, maybe, but the Abzan are practiced at not committing to open battle till victory is certain.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The Abzan also have no political divisions for the Mardu to exploit, unlike the Temur. The Abzan political system is stable, their whole clan being based around the idea of family, found or otherwise. The Abzan would likely be more than content to wait and outwit the Mardu, where even at their best the Mardu prefer a lightning strike and dislike a long campaign.</span></p>
<div class="edhrecp__cards"><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Abzan Ascendancy"></div></div>
<p>To summarize: the Abzan's greater military sophistication, patience, and political unity gave them insuperable advantages over the Mardu attempted siege of the <span class="edhrecp__link"><a class="edhrecp__link-a" content="Sandsteppe Citadel" href="#" target="_blank">Sandsteppe Citadel</a><span class="edhrecp__link-image"></span></span>. They had no real weaknesses for the Mardu to exploit, unlike what the Mongols had with the Northern Jin: no defecting armies, no quislings willing to roll the dice to see if life as part of the Mardu Empire would be any more profitable than Anafenza's reign.</p>
<p>Zurgo's forces dug for days at the river by Sandsteppe Citadel. There was no sign of Abzan reinforcements to relieve the outpost. Slowly the river altered course, and it seemed as if this mad plan would work after all, that it would undermine the Abzan's defenses. But the Mardu awoke one morning to find their entire camp flooded. The river they had worked so hard to divert had turned on them. Whether it had been a miscalculation on their part or whether the masterful Abzan siege engineers had re-routed the river made no difference; the majority of the plundered supplies taken from the Abzan caravans were now useless.</p>
<div class="edhrecp__cards"><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="flood"></div></div>
<p>Zurgo was of course furious at this setback, but realized his whole enterprise was in danger of falling apart. A defeat like this could spell the end of his imperial ambitions. So he would most likely do what any good leader would do with a horde of sodden, mutinous troops: declare victory and attack another, apparently more vulnerable target.</p>
<p>Like, for example, the Sultai Brood.</p>
<p><em>To be continued....</em></p>
<hr />
<p class="p1"><strong><span class="s1">Sources:</span></strong></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The Planeswalker’s Guide to Tarkir 1: <a href="https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/planeswalkers-guide-khans-tarkir-part-1-2014-09-03"><span class="s2">https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/planeswalkers-guide-khans-tarkir-part-1-2014-09-03</span></a></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Man, John. </span><span class="s2">The Mongol Empire: Genghis Khan, his Heirs and the Founding of Modern China</span><span class="s1">. Corgi Books. 2014.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">McLynn, Frank. </span><span class="s2">Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy.</span><span class="s1"> Da Capo Press. 2015.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Ratchnevsky, Paul </span><span class="s2">Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy</span><span class="s1">, Blackwell Publishers, New York 1991.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Wells, HG. </span><span class="s2">The Outline of History</span><span class="s1">. Doubleday Press 1970.</span></p>


Historically Speaking - The Mardu vs. The Abzan

<h6 style="text-align: right;"><span class="edhrecp__link"><a class="edhrecp__link-a" content="Temur Banner" href="#" target="_blank">Temur Banner</a><span class="edhrecp__link-image"></span></span> | Art by Daniel Ljunggren</h6>
<h1>On the Frontier</h1>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Tarkir’s Temur Frontier takes a lot of inspiration from Siberia’s past and present—from the use of mammoths and mammoth ivory, to the adaptation of indigenous shamanic practices, to</span><span class="s1"> the indigenous people. In this installment of <em>Historically Speaking, </em>we're going to look at the ways real-world Siberia helped inform the lore, setting, lifestyle, and overall character of Tarkir's Temur clan, and end with their assimilation into the Atarka Brood in the present timeline.</span></p>
<p>It's the final frontier... bivouac!</p>
<div class="edhrecp__cards"><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Frontier Bivouac"></div></div>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">A brief qualifier: Siberia is a big place. When we say things like ‘Siberian natives’ or ‘Siberia’, those are, by nature, non-specific terms. It would be like using the term African or European to describe a small subset of the populations of these continents. When I say ‘Siberia’ going forward, I’ll do my best to qualify who and where in Siberia we’re talking about. For exmaple, the Chukchi are different from the Mongolia-adjacent Buryats, who differ from the Yakutsk and the Kirghiz tribes, and so forth. Even the word, Siberia, from the Tartar '<em>sibir</em>' conveys an air of mystery: translated, it means, 'the sleeping land'.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">According to historian Benson Bobrick, Siberia is a truly colossal bit of land, taking up a significant part of the Eurasian continent that could easily contain the continental US and what we call Europe inside its borders, and still have room left over. Thus, when making general statements about Siberia—from the arctic northern expanses to the inland sea that is Lake Baikal in the border of Mongolia—we are, of course, generalizing.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Bobrick continues:<br />
<strong>“The overall topography of Siberia divided rather neatly into three broad horizontal zones. To the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>north lay a great treeless tundra, extending along the whole Arctic coast from Novaya Zemla to Bering Strait; through the middle stretched a belt of broad forest from the Ural Mountains to the Okhotsk Sea; and to the south, arable land that shaded into semi-arid desert steppes from the southern Urals to beyond the Mongolian Frontier.”</strong></span></p>
<p><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter" src="http://go.grolier.com/map?id=mh00112&amp;pid=go&amp;spid=spot005336" alt="Russia, 1533-1914, expansion in Asia" /></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The frozen land of the Temur Frontier requires hardy people to survive its many perils: bears, mammoths, shrieking winds that pierce through skin, avalanches, yetis, and of course other tribes. </span><span class="s1">Small wonder that <em>Wizards of the Coast</em> based the frost-bitten and tough Temur on traditional Siberian culture and geography!</span></p>
<p>(Also, they punch bears. We're not here to talk about bears, but about mammoths, shamanism, and survivalism, but still, bear punching is rad.)</p>
<div class="edhrecp__cards"><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Surrak Dragonclaw"></div><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Savage Punch"></div></div>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"> Mammoths have quite a presence in Siberian history and economy. Long ago, as the mammoths wandered up from the newly fused Indian subcontinent, they made their home in Siberia, and even crossed the Bering Strait into North America. They eventually died out, but the permafrost kept their bodies perfectly preserved—even down to the contents of their stomachs.</span></p>
<div id="attachment_32022" style="width: 675px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32022" class=" wp-image-32022" src="https://articles.edhrec.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/woolly-mammoth-revive-restore-org.png" alt="" width="665" height="171" /><p id="caption-attachment-32022" class="wp-caption-text">Credit to Revive and Restore.org</p></div>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">This has raised some debates about the utility/morality about raising the extinct mammoths from the grave via cloning and using them to combat climate change and change the Siberian biome, which as of this writing are unresolved issues. In pre-industrial times, mammoth tusks were used as sacred items or scrimshawed upon by the indigenous Siberians, who eventually hunted them to extinction.</span></p>
<p>However, the marker that mammoths have left upon the Siberian land has proved indelible, both in history and in the present.</p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Mammoth bones lie thick upon the central plain of Siberia—where rivers cut through the permafrost, their bones blend with dried and bleaching wood—indistinguishable till examined closely. Bones that would have corroded away inside of a decade last ten thousand years inside the embrace of permafrost.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Author Benson Bobrick recounts the significance, economically, of the mammoth to Siberia after the Russian conquest:<br />
<b>“Under the Russians, digging up mammoths became a kind of heavy industry and between 1650 and 1900 the tusks of an estimated 40,750 mammoths (each tusk weighing between 150 and 200 pounds) were taken out of Siberia. Between 1825 and 1831, the annual shipments exceeded 60,000 pounds was great quantities of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>fossil ivory were collected with each summer’s thaw from crumbling embankments along the Arctic coast…on the international market, Russian ivory, as it was called, competed successfully with that from Africa, India and Ceylon.”</b></span></p>
<p><img decoding="async" class="aligncenter" src="https://s14-eu5.startpage.com/cgi-bin/serveimage?url=http%3A%2F%2Ft0.gstatic.com%2Fimages%3Fq%3Dtbn%3AANd9GcSn_hQYu5u166wbgxTHtjtIsFMaw4v0mPnlLhDE7B-uEtFeZFiD0Q&amp;sp=efbc2f20460a6f8d6a12d1dc80aa3278&amp;anticache=144343" alt="Mammoth tusks are serving as a cover for illegal traffic in modern ..." /></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">This fact has not gone unnoticed by adventurous and unscrupulous ivory traders even into the modern day. Responding to pressure banning African elephant ivory in china, ‘tuskers’ have swarmed the central areas of Siberia near Yakutsk to dig up ivory from the mammoths. Where once they used sharp sticks to locate the ivory in peaty ground, they now use firehoses to blast away the earth to get at the precious stuff. Naturally, this is all wildly illegal. </span><span class="s1">Even in death, a mammoth has value.</span></p>
<div class="edhrecp__cards"><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Frontier Mastodon"></div></div>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Mammoths are alive in well in the Temur clan of Tarkir. However, unlike in our world, they aren’t just confined to their tusks. The Temur use them as weapons of war and use their skins and tusks to keep warm or ornament their shaman’s hoods or even to keep records of clan skirmishes or genealogies. A huge amount of Temur art feature's mammoth ivory--as building materiel, as landscape decoration, or even simply aesthetic appeal for their shamans (whom we will get to in due time).</span></p>
<div class="edhrecp__cards"><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Temur Charm"></div><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Temur Ascendancy"></div><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Temur Banner"></div></div>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">For the Temur, like the Paleosiberian people they are based on, life is difficult. Historically, the Yakutsk, Chuchki, and Tungus tribes fought the Mongol incursions into southern Siberia as viciously as they did the Russians who arrived hundreds of years later. The land itself, unless you specifically adapt to it - and sometimes even if you have - is punishing. Sub-zero temperatures are common in winter along with brutal storms, driving winds and icefalls.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"> In summer, the invaders baked in the sun, wallowed in thick mud, and swore at thick black clouds of flies. The tribes of the Paleosiberians were small and not united—things that served them well in sustainability and mobility through this land, but made successfully repulsing first the Mongol and then the Russians much more difficult. The land is tremendously varied; even housing an inland sea, Lake Baikal, with its own species of freshwater seals and giant sturgeons that swim through waters nearly a mile deep.</span></p>
<div class="edhrecp__cards"><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Feed the Clan"></div><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Barrage of Boulders"></div><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Bear&#039;s Companion"></div></div>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The Temur seem to favor similar tactics and lifestyle choices to the Paleosiberian tribes. They excel at ambushes, using the terrain to their advantage through avalanches or rock falls, and operating in small clan units. I can find no historical account of Siberian tribesmen strapping as many swords or spears to their sleds and charging downhill on them, as the Temur do, according to the Planeswalker’s Guide to Tarkir. However, they are a tough people, well suited to their environment in a specialized way. They were of the land in a very significant way, because to be out of touch with the Siberian environment was to join it - you know, by dying. Even for the native Siberians (and later the Russian diaspora that married into them or displaced them en masse), life is never easy. </span></p>
<p>The Temur Frontier, in many ways, is worse, because at least Siberia doesn't have yetis. That is at least one good thing you can say about Russia: low yeti population.</p>
<div class="edhrecp__cards"><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Hungering Yeti"></div><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Frontier Bivouac"></div><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Temur Charger"></div></div>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Shamanism was/is a key way of interacting with/understanding not only the Siberian environment but also its wildly disparate indigenous cultures. </span><span class="s1">Shamanism is too wide a term to be defined, but from our primary sources we know of several common<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>themes, including invoking spirits, astral projection, and making oneself immune to various types of harm. </span><span class="s1">Historian Benson Bobrick chronicles the words of a 16th century explorer who met with a group of Samoyed tribesmen and was given a taste of shamanic power:</span></p>
<p class="p1"><strong><span class="s1">“Then he [the Samoyed] took a sword of a cubit and a span long [a cubit is the length between the longest finger and the elbow, or thereabouts] and he put it into his belly halfway and sometime less, but no wound was to be seen. Then he put the sword into the fire until it was warm, and so thrust it into the slit of his shirt and thrust it through his body, as I thought, in at his navel and out at his fundament; the point being out of his shirt behind. I laid my finger upon it, then he pulled out the sword and sat down.”</span></strong></p>
<div class="edhrecp__cards"><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Roar of Challenge"></div></div>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Siberian shamanism is also replete with claims of the spirit existing outside of the body and being able to travel about. </span>The Pleistocene Manifesto says of Siberia::</p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>"The visit to Duvanii made the idea of the “mammoth steppe” extremely real. There was something elemental about being surrounded by Pleistocene bones in a melting tundra landscape. You could close your eyes and feel how rich this ecosystem was before it was hunted into extinction."</b></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">This evokes similar language to the Temur shamanic experience. It is clear that <em>Wizards of the Coast</em> borrowed this idea and expanded upon it to create the Temur-shaman network called the Wide Whisper. Using the Wide Whisper, Temur shamans could travel and communicate in spirit over vast distances, similar to the concept of the . Clad in the bones of animals that are extinct in our world, the Temur shamans enter a trance and traverse the spirit realm, visiting the past, the present, and future.</span></p>
<div class="edhrecp__cards"><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Rattleclaw Mystic"></div><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Whisperer of the Wilds"></div><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Shamanic Revelation"></div></div>
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<h2><strong>Dragon to an End</strong></h2>
<p class="p1">The Temur's shamanistic spiritual network has been driven underground in Tarkir's present timeline. <span class="edhrecp__link"><a class="edhrecp__link-a" content="Dragonlord Atarka" href="#" target="_blank">Dragonlord Atarka</a><span class="edhrecp__link-image"></span></span>, the head of the Dragon Brood that overthrew the Temur Clans, fears the shamans and their links to the past and future as much as any of the other Dragonlords. The Temur even take on her name and are forced to range ever farther afield on hunting parties to keep the great beast fed. The mammoths have been hunted out to please Atarka, and there are precious few of the bears left - Atarka's fires melted the glaciers and flooded the land. In a fit of irony, the faction once most closely associated with the stewardship of nature on Tarkir has become one of the largest threats to the natural order on the plane.</p>
<div class="edhrecp__cards"><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Berserker&#039;s Onslaught"></div><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Atarka Monument"></div><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Dragon-scarred Bear"></div></div>
<p>In this current Tarkir, like Siberia over the last few centuries, we see great and nearly irrevocable changes. The Russian civil war, World War Two, Stalin and his successor's gulags - this vast and beautiful land does not lack for horror in its past. Siberia, a land of hidden treasures and near-infinite natural resources has added the bones of countless men and women to the those of the mammoths and sabertooths in the ground while technology and lack of regulation foul the waters and sky.</p>
<div class="edhrecp__cards"><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Dragonlord Silumgar"></div><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Dragonlord Ojutai"></div><div class="edhrecp__card-container" name="Dragonlord Atarka"></div></div>
<p>It is tempting to see Tarkir's Dragonlords as literal avatars of late-stage capitalism or imperialism: an endless, rapacious hunger that is dedicated to stamping out all traces or interests in a world before their reign while consuming far more than their share. Indeed, I may explore this metaphor in a future essay.</p>
<p>For now, though, I leave you on the image of a land where the bones of the past can be glimpsed in a riverbank and the land sleeps fitfully.</p>


roar of challenge

Evasive Maneuvers — Lure and Deathtouch

Historically Speaking - The Mardu vs. The Abzan

Historically Speaking - Siberia and the Temur