practicalcat

Posted by Seanan McGuire

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/2025/12/12/if-we-shadows-the-dvd-extras/

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/?p=686

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

Probably our longest Shakespeare quote, and our most famous to date. I simply cannot bring myself to truncate one of my favorite speeches ever. So you get the whole thing.

The time is come for me to dissect Lorwyn Eclipsed for your amusement.  Because this is time-consuming, I only know people are enjoying it if they comment, and that means I really am holding future DVD extras hostage against comments. Sorry about that.

Welcome to the “DVD extras” for the fifth main story installment for Lorwyn Eclipsed, “If We Shadows.”  This story is copyright Wizards of the Coast, although it was written by me, and can be found in its entirety here: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/magic-story/lorwyn-eclipsed-episode-5-if-we-shadows

It feels important to call out that this is not the complete story; this is an unauthorized Pop-Up Video version. Go to the link above for the full story, please. Give them some clicks.  Convince them that you love me and I should get to keep writing things.  Seriously, though, please click the link, even if the story isn’t relevant to you.  Click-throughs are how Wizards knows that Story matters.

So what is this?  This is little excerpts of the story, with my thoughts on them, because, IDK, I thought it was funny.  I’ve also tried to include context for people new to Magic Story, to help you understand what the hell is going on.  If people continue to like it, I will probably continue.  If you don’t care about Magic Story, skip on over, although I’d still like it if you clicked.

And here we go!

As always, from this point on, plain text is bits from the story, italic text is my commentary on the same.

Following Maralen, Sanar and Tam ran to the edge of the palace grounds, where a potentially deadly fall to the ground awaited them. Maralen glanced over the edge, then led the students to a long, curving stem with a bud at the top, big around as an ox. “Does either of you have a sword?” she asked.

Living in a palace that is basically a giant flower lifted into the air by its stem is complicated when you don’t have wings.

Sanar and Tam stared at her. “We’re students on a field trip,” said Tam. “We’re not armed.”

Thus proving that it was not a field trip on Innistrad or Fiora.

“Well, I can’t call a faerie swarm to help us, or Rhys will follow them!” snapped Maralen. The faerie on her shoulder giggled like he was having the time of his life.

Oh, hey, the asshole faerie got pronouns.

“Do we just need to cut the bud off?” asked Sanar. Maralen nodded, and he started dredging things up from the depths of his pockets, bits of mud and flattened leaf, crushed snarlflowers and a flier for Mage Tower tryouts. He smashed them all together, mashing the mud and vegetation until the paper was saturated. With this accomplished, he packed it around the bud’s base and backed away.

“What are you doing?” asked Maralen.

“Prismari study track,” said Sanar.

This is, quite simply, one of my favorite exchanges of the entire story. I would have put up with so much more pushing characters from point A to point B if it meant that I got the calm “Prismari study track” as an explanation for mashing incomprehensible objects into explosive goo. Thank you, Sanar. Thank you.

That was enough information for Tam, who covered her ears and ducked, while Maralen stood there looking bewildered. Sanar planted two fingers in his mouth, whistling.

Tam pays attention.

Nothing happened.

Maralen frowned. “I don’t understand what—”

The bud exploded, sending sticky chunks flying in all directions. Sap splattered across the trio, and Maralen cried out in bewildered disgust.

“Did you have to blow it up?” asked Tam.

“Yup,” said Sanar.

He is gonna do great in Prismari.

Sanar followed enthusiastically. Tam looked back, hesitant, before jumping after the others.

Sanar likes new experiences. Give him something totally new and he’ll pretty much always do it enthusiastically. Tam is more aware that all flesh can die.

“You’ve been ready to run for a while,” said Tam, observing. “It’s like you created a world you knew you couldn’t live in. That’s why you asked Rhys to do you a favor and ran when he tried.”

A coracle boat like the one they’re using is a traditional type of boat used in Ireland and Wales. They’re curved, and seem sort of like the shell of a very large nut, or the cap of an even larger acorn, when you view them as a child views them.

“I needed—Oona was my creator, and I needed to know I wouldn’t become her if I had the same power she did. I needed to know that Lorwyn-Shadowmoor would be safe from her return. But I’m still myself. Even if parts of her live on in me, I’m not her, and I need to make Rhys see that.” She climbed into the coracle. “Come along. We need to find someplace safe to hole up until I know what to do next.”

Maralen is having a little identity crisis, and she’s pretty freaked out about it, and she rarely has anyone to talk to that isn’t either a giant day elemental or working for her.

“So why don’t you just release him from his promise?” asked Tam.

Tam has effectively just asked Maralen “so why don’t you kill your friend?”

“The only way I had of keeping someone beside me who’d known Maralen of the Mornsong when she was an elf and not a faerie’s dream.” Maralen looked levelly at Tam, not blinking.

Maralen is complicated by her own origins. She’s telling the truth both when she says that Oona made her from a petal, and when she says that she was born Maralen of the Mornsong, an elf who grew to strength and authority within her people. The original Maralen did exist, and was replaced by Oona’s creation, who truly believed she was that Maralen. Her memories tell her she was an elf first, even as she knows she was a faerie first.

Tam found herself wondering whether they had gorgons in Lorwyn, because Maralen didn’t flinch before meeting her eyes. Neither did most of the students she knew from Arcavios. They didn’t know to be afraid of a gorgon’s gaze, and so they weren’t. It was strange. At home, even her teacher would sometimes flinch, and she couldn’t have hurt him if she wanted.

I do appreciate that Tam doesn’t think less of people because they’re willing to meet her eyes.

“This was our destination all along,” she said. “I have friends in this bog. This is the home of the Stinkdrinker Warren of boggarts, and unless she’s moved along since last she sent word, we’ll find Ashling here.”

More characters and locations from the original Lorwyn story. We didn’t want to be married to it–we couldn’t be, really, since they had three full novels worth of word count, and we had 35,000 words plus a few side stories by other authors; everything we did had to be intentional, and even when it seemed meandering, like the Wanderwine, it had to flow straight toward its destination. But we wanted to call back as much as we could, since it’s beloved for a reason.

“She’s another I’ve known almost as long as I’ve been myself. She’s one of the flamekin of Mount Tanufel, from which the Wanderwine River springs. We’ve been enemies as often as we’ve been friends, and she knows what it is to have people assume that you’re a villain even when you’re not. The only reason I don’t see her more often in Glen Elendra is that she thinks me a fool for keeping Rhys so close when his purpose is to end me. If anyone knows anything of your friends or the path that brought you here, it’s Ashling. She runs the length of the river and back again, carrying stories and secrets to the mountain. The pilgrim’s path, once walked, is not so easily set aside.”

Maralen and Ashling met shortly after the original version of Maralen was replaced by Oona’s creation. So Ashling really has known this Maralen almost as long as she’s existed to be known.

“Maralen,” replied Ashling. Her face was a mask of the same black glass as her body, crowned with a shock of blazing bonfire. More flames leaked out along the line of her throat and from the creases of her joints, making her look like a barely contained inferno. She turned toward Tam and Sanar, burning.

Flamekin are a species of sapient fire-people pretty much unique to Lorwyn (I say “pretty much” because WotC could decide tomorrow that they’re also found on Aranzhur, and I really don’t want anyone going “AH-HA Seanan lied to us!” when I only spoke from a position of “what we know now.”

“Whoa,” said Sanar, scrambling out of the coracle and staring at Ashling. “You’re beautiful.”

“Sanar,” hissed Tam.

“What? She is. Fire is always pretty, but letting fire decide to be a person is a special sort of pretty.”

Sanar really, really likes things that burn, and things that explode, and natural disasters. Ashling may be his perfect woman.

“Boggarts” turned out to be the Lorwyn equivalent of goblins—friendly, curious people of Sanar’s height, whose skins came in a dazzling variety of colors, like a patch of verbose, sometimes oddly scented wildflowers. One of them had hauled Sanar off to learn how to fish for eels as soon as it was established that the three would be in the warren for a few hours—although not much longer, as Maralen didn’t want to give Rhys time to catch up if she could help it.

Sanar is having a very enriching day! Maybe Ashling would like a bouquet of eels?

Now, she sat at a table made from a section of petrified wood, caught between tinder and stone, with Ashling on the other side, her story having flowed out of her like so much poisoned honey. It covered the table between them, viscous, sticky, and almost visible, while Tam watched from the corner.

I just like the imagery here.

“The elves and their high perfect Morcant are also aware that the night beast is walking,” said Ashling. “They’re concocting a plan to kill the creature. They’re seeking poisons that might allow them to complete the task.”

Ashling is sort of the gossip broker of the area, not because she’s being catty, but because she hears things and passes them along, inevitable as the tide.

“Wouldn’t that be a good thing?” asked Tam. “Forgive me, but it seems like your world is better in the daylight. Our allies turned against us when night fell. If we can stop the night forever, we can perfect your world. Wouldn’t that be better?”

Congrats on finding Oona’s arguments, Tam.

“Not in the least,” said Maralen. “Lorwyn isn’t meant to exist unchallenged. We need the balance Shadowmoor provides—the true, transforming night. Isilu and Eirdu are balanced forces, equal in all things, and we’ve seen what happens when we have one without the other. I don’t want to die. If I were to agree to ending the night forever, I would deserve the death Rhys promised me. Eternal day is Oona’s way, not my own.”

Lorwyn-Shadowmoor is a dual-natured plane for very good reasons, and needs to be allowed to exist in balance within itself. Anything else is doing the plane a disservice.

“Isilu would regenerate; the balance would be restored over time,” said Ashling. “Oona destroyed both the great elementals when she created her aurora, and they found a new balance between themselves after the aurora fell.”

Hence why they’re new to this set.

“That doesn’t mean I can condone an attack on the natural order of Lorwyn-Shadowmoor, not when we’ve just gotten it back,” snapped Maralen.

Also fair.

“Then I suppose we’ll have to stop the elves,” said Ashling, sounding deeply put-on. “I’ll find that boat you need, and I’ll be coming with you.” She rose, heading for the door.

Okay, fine, I’ll help you prevent the destruction of the world as we know it, I guess. If I don’t have any other choice…

Ajani frowned, then started toward the dolmen gate. As he moved, a creature like a serpent with the tiny, jointed legs of a millipede loomed up behind him, mouth gaping to show venom-coated fangs.

Ajani has helpfully agreed to demonstrate the fauna of Lorwyn-Shadowmoor further, since there’s been a shameful lack of terrible beasts in the story thus far. Say thank you, Ajani.

Breathing hard but uninjured, Ajani finished his walk to the dolmen gate. It was unmarred: no blood or damage. He crouched, scanning the ground until he found the distinctive prints left by hard-tooled Strixhaven shoes, unlike anything that normally occurred on this plane. They were pointed away from the gate, the students clearly fleeing from something.

Kirol may be mad about their shoes, but those same shoes are going to help rescue find them.

Beasts of Shadowmoor and beasts of Lorwyn, both driven to attack by the sudden change of day into night. This wasn’t how things were meant to be. Even as Ajani fought off the boar, he could tell how out of sync with itself the plane was—and how unhappy.

Remember that continuity of memory isn’t guaranteed between planes. The change is disorienting, and creatures that weren’t expecting it are lashing out.

The boat supplied by the boggarts was large and luxurious, at least compared to the coracle; it had an upper and a lower deck, and an actual wheel, allowing it to be steered by someone who understood boats. That wasn’t Maralen. It wasn’t Tam or Sanar, either, and although Ashling was accompanying them, she didn’t know how to steer. In the end, several boggarts agreed to take them down the Wanderwine, allowing them to return the boat to the warren once their passengers had been dropped off near Goldmeadow.

Bonus goblins!

“Friends are important,” said Tam. “But they can leave you vulnerable, too.” She looked back at where Sanar looked over the railing, dangling one blue hand in the water.

Tam has never made a lot of friends, and unlike the others, she is not completely thrilled to be trauma bonding with her classmates. The more people you care about, the more people who can hurt you.

Tam frowned. “You’re running from this Rhys because he wants to keep his word. Please forgive me for not putting too much stock in your promises.”

“I meant it when I asked for his word,” said Maralen. “It’s … You weren’t here. Things were different then. I didn’t know how much the world would recover from what she’d done.”

Tam has fallen into the middle of an ongoing story and is not entirely handling it well.

“She tells that truthfully,” said Ashling, moving to stand beside them. “The old fae queen, Oona, she managed to capture the auroras that naturally flare between night and day and braid them into a single great aurora that kept the whole plane locked in one state or the other for centuries at a time. Night never fell. Day never rose. We’re meant to be creatures of balance, shifting between night and day as Eirdu and Isilu command, and she stopped us where we were to stagnate. Lorwyn doesn’t remember Shadowmoor, nor does Shadowmoor remember Lorwyn, but a creature knows when it’s only half of what it’s meant to be.”

Recapping the original Lorwyn block with Ashling!

“Oona broke the world,” said Maralen.

Maralen is a lot more succinct.

“She made me,” said Maralen.

“And? Just because she’s your mother—”

“She’s not my mother,” said Maralen. “She made me. She pinched off a piece of herself, like plucking a petal from a flower, and she made me.”

Maralen often calls Oona her mother, because it’s easier: we have a word for mother, we don’t have a word for “pulled off her own toe and modeled it into a person.” Maybe Sedna, who is an Inuit goddess who did something similar, but that would be inappropriate on a Celtic-inspired plane. Maralen’s doing the best she can.

“Never heard of such a thing, little stranger? Did you think all lives began with a loving embrace and a family to welcome you? Mine began in Oona’s bower, petal-born and larval, distinct from the faeries around me in that I was half-finished, waiting to be put through my instars by Oona herself. I was to be her avatar, a part of her, carrying her consciousness ahead of my own. She fed me nectar, royal jelly for a queen, and she plucked the wings from my shoulders when they began to form. She kept me as a weapon, not a child. She could see the restiveness spreading through the world, the cycle struggling to reassert itself, and I was meant to become her when the world inevitably rose against her. She made only two mistakes, my maker-mother, and I was one of them.”

“Instars” are stages of insect life. When an insect molts, it’s passing from one instar into the next. Lorwyn faeries are closer to insects than anything else. Maralen was made in a very real, very intentional sense.

“What was the other?” asked Ashling with sudden interest.

Maralen turned to blink at her. “What?”

“You said she made two mistakes. You’re the only avatar of Oona I know. What was her other mistake?”

We found a part of the story that Ashling doesn’t know. Huh…

“Ah.” Maralen shivered. “She made and molded me, and when the time was right, she slipped me into the shed skin of Maralen of the Mornsong, who had no more need of it. She made an elf of me, to rule Lorwyn, and she didn’t consider what the heart and hopes of an elf might do to her careful plans. She made me someone else when she married me to my mask.”

If Oona had let Maralen be a faerie princess, a little clone of Oona, she might have won in the original Lorwyn. Or they might both have died. Hindsight doesn’t always tell you what would have happened, just what you might want to have happened.

“No.” Maralen looked at the water. “My creation was her second mistake. The first was my brother.

The idea of her having a brother is new information.

I was meant to rule Lorwyn when Oona could no longer carry the crown, but I wasn’t her first choice. She wasn’t sure any piece of her could remember itself as she did when subjected to Shadowmoor’s light, and so she made another before me, intended to be Shadowmoor’s prince in waiting.

So the brother didn’t get personality-melded with a convenient dead elf, he was allowed to be himself, if hollowed out in a way, not fully made to fit the Lorwyn-Shadowmoor model of dual people. Oona wanted to be sure that if her Aurora fell, she’d have an avatar to keep the dark side of the plane under control.

She already knew he was flawed when she chose to make me, from the other half of the same petal; he fought her, he defied her, and he demanded to be left to rule Shadowmoor according to the natural cycle of things.

Maralen’s brother was a more complete person than she was at that age, for all Oona’s efforts.

What memories I have from before I was Maralen came originally from Oona, and they’re colored by her experience of them. I remember my older brother fighting her so hard I thought the palace might fall. He wanted to be himself and his own, not hers. He befriended a giant, a sage who carried stories of Eirdu and Isilu, who were legends then, not parts of our living world. He called the man ‘father,’ pledged to be a good son to him, and Oona was infuriated. She ordered the giant killed where we could watch and told my brother the only lesson he should take from fathers was this: That fathers will always leave you. Fathers always fall. My brother was … He was shattered, and he swore he would never forgive her, or any part of her, however half-formed. I didn’t see him after that.”

Family trauma!

Sitting on the edge of the table, the faerie that had been accompanying them frowned up at Maralen, wings at half-mantle. It opened its mouth, looking for a moment like it was going to speak, only to flinch as the boat jerked to a sudden stop, running hard against the bank. Ashling and Maralen rushed to shout up at the boggarts who were steering them along the river, demanding to know what was happening.

That whole story was new to our little troublemaker, too.

At the helm, the old boggart let their shouting wash over him, then leaned forward and yelled, “Look to the river! All the new experiences there are don’t mean a thing if I can’t carry them home.”

Lorwyn boggarts are all about having new experiences and then sharing them with the warren. That’s why

“We walk,” said Ashling. “My memory is as unbroken as yours.”

Ashling’s memory isn’t disrupted when she moves between night and day.

“People don’t change between night and day where we come from,” said Sanar.

“Even better,” said Ashling. She bowed to the boggart at the helm, then led the others to the side, where they descended the ladder to the aurora-rainbowed bank below.

Sanar doesn’t realize he just passed up a chance to insist on holding hands with the pretty fire lady as they walked. That’s probably for the best, all things considered.

“Silence,” said Morcant sharply.

Not a nice lady, no.

“You make it sound so easy,” grumbled Kirol.

“It is. You just have to pick some flowers.”

For a Lorwyn elf who fears transitioning to Shadowmoor, getting the flowers is impossibly hard. Lluwen would change, forget what he was doing, and wander away. For someone who doesn’t change, it really is as easy as enter a glade, pick a flower.

“Picking flowers is what got me into this situation in the first place!”

Kirol is going to wind up with a fear of florists.

Lluwen prodded Kirol in the back with his spear, and they shot the hunter a wounded look. Lluwen jerked his head toward Morcant, a pleading expression on his face. Kirol sighed and kept their mouth shut. If they’d done that sooner, Morcant might not have figured out they could pass between night and day without losing their memory or getting distracted by transforming into their “Shadowmoor self.”

Lulu is trying to help.

“They don’t understand what—”

“Are you contradicting me?” Her voice was poisonously pleasant. “What a fascinating choice.”

Lulu could be in real trouble if they force the issue.

The dawnglove flowers grew in small patches, glowing pink, purple, and blueish white, like dawn distilled into something so beautiful it seemed impossible. Their bound hands shook as they reached out to pluck a sprig, and they found themself wishing, desperately, for their school-issued shears, designed to prevent bruising a single petal.

Kirol appreciates beautiful things.

A branch snapped behind them. Kirol tensed, and their vampirically sharp ears heard the crackle of distant, hard-banked fires creeping closer. They turned and saw dark outlines, humanoid shapes crackling with barely contained heat, like banked charcoals. It was easy to miss them in the dark, their presence betrayed only by the dim embers in their eyes. Leaping back to their feet, they ran, and the cinders gave chase.

Rimekin are the Shadowmoor equivalent of flamekin. They’ll burn you just as badly.

“Kirol did it!” said Lluwen, taking the dawnglove reverently from Kirol’s hand and holding it up for Morcant to see. “But the cinders …” He looked uneasily at the figures on the night side of the veil, unwilling to pursue further, burning in the dark.

Lulu is like, “we have enough, we can stop now.”

“The stranger evaded them once; he can do so again,” said Morcant. “Send him back.”

Morcant does not agree.

“It’s ‘them,'” said Kirol, getting back to their feet. “And no. I won’t go. I’m not dying for you people.”

“You’re dying for whatever I say you are,” said Morcant. “We need more dawnglove. Go. Lluwen, make him go.”

Morcant doesn’t believe in being corrected by anyone not as perfect as she is. Her repeated use of the wrong pronouns for Kirol here is intentional.

“I won’t,” said Lluwen. “They don’t deserve to die that way.”

“Lluwen—”

“No.”

For a Lorwyn elf to defy a perfect is unthinkable, and could see him branded an eyeblight, something flawed and thus deserving of destruction. Lulu’s taking a big risk here.

Morcant was glaring, clearly prepared to push the issue, when a white blur burst out of the trees and landed between them, a massive two-headed axe in his hands, fur on his shoulders bristling. He snarled at the aurora-line, and the cinders retreated. He snarled at Morcant, and she snarled back, less bestial, more arrogant.

Thank you, Ajani.

Then he rounded on Kirol, who moved in front of Lluwen ready to defend the elven hunter from the massive lion-man. Instead, the lion spoke. “Are you one of Professor Vess’s missing students?” he asked.

Kirol is willing to take risks for someone who just took a risk for them.

“And we shall,” said the lion. “My name is Ajani, and we are leaving.” He turned his glare on Perfect Morcant, who tried, and failed, to match it. One hand on the small of Kirol’s back, he began guiding the student away.

High Perfect Morcant is scary, but she’s got nothing on Ajani Goldmane in a bad mood.

Lluwen had an instant to make up his mind. Looking between Kirol and Ajani and the furious Morcant, he moved, darting after them before she could stop him. Her face contorted in anger as the forest took them.

Lulu has chosen a side, and it’s not High Perfect Morcant’s.

Ashling stepped into Shadowmoor, blue light racing along her skin and her deeply banked inner fires melting into something frozen and shimmering, like the magnetic lights that sometimes danced in the sky above the Furygale back on campus. Sanar gasped. Tam stopped walking and stared. Ashling turned to face the pair of them, a small smile on her transformed face.

Pretty fire lady is basically the living embodiment of the Prismari campus. Sanar is now officially and hopelessly crushing on her.

They were less than halfway there when arrows began thudding into the ground around them, herding them closer together. Ashling blazed blue-bright and ominous. Maralen cried out in confusion. And the moon-eyed Shadowmoor residents of the city emerged from the brush and bushes all around them, spears and knives in their hands, the transformed Brigid at the front of their pack.

Shadowmoor does not mean “evil,” but Shadowmoor kithkin are severely xenophobic, and don’t want outsiders near their homes. Amusingly, this attribute of the Shadowmoor kithkin was part of what allowed them to beat back Phyrexia.

“We can’t fight them, or we will hurt them,” said Ashling, still blazing. “What do we do?”

“We find out where they’re taking us,” said Sanar.

The kithkin are acting as antagonists here, but they aren’t villains, and neither Ashling nor Maralen wants to punish them for following their natures.

“It just … It feels like hot tea on cold nights,” she said. “Like when you know the frost is coming, but you have a good book and a hot fire. Why does it feel like that?”

“It felt like that in the cave,” said Sanar.

Isilu is all the best things about the night, no matter who or what you are. To a frightened Shadowmoor kithkin, being in the presence of Isilu probably feels like deep shadows and safe burrows, no one unknown for miles. You can learn a lot about yourself by lingering near the night elemental.

They turned, all of them, even the kithkin, and saw Isilu walking serenely toward them, a small green speck flitting in front of the beast’s moon-crowned head. Maralen gasped, clapping her hands over her mouth.

Okay, so the faerie went and fetched the night elemental. Thanks. Good job!

“What?” asked Ashling.

“That’s … I know that faerie,” she said. “That’s—”

Well this is a total shock to all of us who’ve been paying any degree of attention. But she really hadn’t seen him in Shadowmoor-mode before this.

“—My brother,” finished Maralen. “I-I only know him in his Shadowmoor form, from Oona’s memories, but I know him.”

She just didn’t recognize him as a Lorwyn.

“Shadowmoor tells lies,” said Ashling warningly. “He may not be who you believe he is.”

This may be the most openly negative sentiment any of our characters have expressed toward Shadowmoor.

On the horizon, where the edge of the forest met the fields, a line of torches appeared.

“The elves,” said Maralen.

“Elves?” demanded Brigid. “In our fields? You strangers are bad enough. We won’t allow it.”

Time for a big brawl! West Side Story dance fight time? Please?

The kithkin began to cluster together, shaking their spears and notching their bows as they eyed the torch-line. And all the while, Isilu came closer, the living night descending on the drowning dregs of day.

I know it’s bad form to be pleased by my own prose, but “the drowning dregs of day” is just nice to my ear. It’s a fun phrase to chew on.

See you Monday!

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/2025/12/12/if-we-shadows-the-dvd-extras/

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/?p=686

Posted by Seanan McGuire

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/2025/12/11/fetch-me-that-flower-the-dvd-extras/

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/?p=683

Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,
And maidens call it love-in-idleness.
Fetch me that flower; the herb I shew’d thee once:
The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid
Will make or man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.
Fetch me this herb; and be thou here again
Ere the leviathan can swim a league.

The time is come for me to dissect Lorwyn Eclipsed for your amusement.  Because this is time-consuming, I only know people are enjoying it if they comment, and that means I really am holding future DVD extras hostage against comments. Sorry about that.

Welcome to the “DVD extras” for the fourth main story installment for Lorwyn Eclipsed, “Fetch Me That Flower.”  This story is copyright Wizards of the Coast, although it was written by me, and can be found in its entirety here: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/magic-story/lorwyn-eclipsed-episode-4-fetch-me-that-flower

It feels important to call out that this is not the complete story; this is an unauthorized Pop-Up Video version. Go to the link above for the full story, please. Give them some clicks.  Convince them that you love me and I should get to keep writing things.  Seriously, though, please click the link, even if the story isn’t relevant to you.  Click-throughs are how Wizards knows that Story matters.

So what is this?  This is little excerpts of the story, with my thoughts on them, because, IDK, I thought it was funny.  I’ve also tried to include context for people new to Magic Story, to help you understand what the hell is going on.  If people continue to like it, I will probably continue.  If you don’t care about Magic Story, skip on over, although I’d still like it if you clicked.

And here we go!

As always, from this point on, plain text is bits from the story, italic text is my commentary on the same.

“I’m still not wearing hiking shoes,” grumbled Kirol as Lluwen continued urging them deeper and deeper into the trees.

Poor Kirol is having some serious footwear-related regrets. They’re arguably the toughest member of our group, but as an athlete, they also have a profound appreciation for appropriate footwear.

The elf responded by pushing them between the shoulders. “What are ‘hiking shoes’?” Kirol looked at their captor’s hooved feet and swallowed. It was one thing to be on another plane of existence. It was something else to have the time to slow down and realize what that meant.

As a Lorwyn elf, Lulu is entirely outside Kirol’s experience, and his existence is forcing our genial jock vampire to confront the fact that no, really, this is not Arcavios; they are somewhere else entirely, and they may or may not be able to go home from here.

“See my feet?” they asked. “How they’re sealed inside leather boxes?”

“I know what foot covers are,” said Lluwen, sounding insulted. “Kithkin wear them all the time because their feet are soft and delicate.”

I play a hooved tiefling in one of my D&D games, and was able to stop the entire table dead one day by asking if she had feet. The feet/hooves divide is both more and less complicated than we make it out to be.

“Kithkin?” asked Kirol, then they shook their head. “No, we don’t want to get distracted. All right, so we call these foot covers ‘shoes.’ Or ‘boots,’ sometimes. Or sandals I guess—you know what, never mind. Hiking shoes are meant to be worn on soft, delicate feet when you’re going to be walking for a long time. They absorb more of the impact, and they help to keep your feet from hurting.”

Behold as Kirol, our historian, tries to explain the functionality of shoes as if they were historical cultural artifacts. Which they really kind of are.

“Do your feet hurt?”

“More than I would ever have believed possible,” said Kirol mournfully. “I play Mage Tower at school—that’s a sport. Actually, it’s the sport, as in the best one—and I run laps and all, to stay in shape, but I’m usually wearing the right shoes when I do that sort of thing. These are class shoes. They’re soft and thin and meant for wearing when you’re going to sit around for hours listening to people talk. They aren’t meant for walking miles and miles through forests full of roots and rocks and uneven ground.”

Poor Kirol. So much could have been avoided if Dina had sent out a memo about proper footwear.

“My feet don’t hurt at all,” said Lluwen.

“That’s because you don’t have feet,” said Kirol. “You have hooves.”

“I walk on them, so they’re feet.”

“Anatomically speaking, they’re not. If we dropped you in a dissection lab, the doctor who took them apart would say they weren’t.”

Who’s on first? What’s on second?

Lluwen prodded them with the tip of his spear again. “No one’s taking me apart,” he said, voice low and dangerous.

“I didn’t say I was going to—oh, come on. It’s hypothetical.”

“Hypothetically, keep walking. We’re almost to Lys Alana.”

I love these two as a comedy team.

“Only the most beautiful city in the world, in the most beautiful forest in the world,” said Lluwen, voice turning reverent and almost wistful. “You’re so lucky to see Lys Alana for the very first time. I wish I could see it for the first time again. The way the sun shines through the trees, the way the whole world gleams golden—oh, it’ll take your breath away.”

Lorwyn elves basically deify beauty. Lys Alana is very much a manifestation of this fact.

The bark of the trees was broken up, almost like a pattern of scales, and the space between the “scales” was covered in a thin layer of smooth, gleaming sap that blazed gold when the sunlight struck it, giving the whole forest a delicately gilded air. Kirol stared at it as Lluwen continued urging them onward, until they stepped between two trees and Lys Alana appeared before them.

Getting through descriptions of Lys Alana without reaching somatic satiation on the word “gold” was difficult as hell.

“No,” said Lluwen, sounding confused. He turned to look at Kirol. “If you don’t know right from wrong, or insult from flattery, you can make mistakes, but you can’t give insult. That’s very important.”

“What happens if I insult the high perfect?”

“She has you killed.” Lluwen shrugged. “So this is better. Follow me.”

As a method of protecting children, “you can’t break the rules if you don’t know them” makes a lot of sense. As a way of protecting strangers, it gets a little squishier, since people will be offended by a strange adult saying weird shit way faster than they will be a kid doing the same thing.

“What? Have they never seen a vampire before?” grumbled Kirol.

Kirol, buddy, you’ve never seen an elf with hooves before. Maybe chill about the judging people by your home standards.

“Not many elves get to see the high perfect,” he said. “This is an honor.”

“An honor you won’t tell me anything about!”

Hard to be honored in the total absence of clear disclosures, buddy.

“I am Lluwen the faultless, hunter of the Nightshade pack,” replied Lluwen, looking nervous for the first time since they’d arrived in Lys Alana. “I’ve found a stranger in the forest who knows something of Isilu and why he walks out of sync with his promised time. Their knowledge nests inside them like a bird’s egg, and I have not cracked it, for my ears are not yet worthy of truth’s perfection.”

“Lluwen the faultless” is a very Lorwyn elf sort of title–since they prize beauty and perfection above all else, having a name like that sort of broadcasts “hey I have passed the baseline beauty exams and can now be allowed out of my room.” As I have said before, Lorwyn elves are not very nice people.

Kirol took several steps into the chamber without intending it, eyes fixed on the woman. She was tall and beautifully rounded, with a symmetrical build that they could have admired all day. Her hooves were larger and sharper than Lluwen’s, polished and gilded in gold, and her horns were breathtaking, so large that it seemed they must be too much for her long, elegant neck to support, their tips bending out and then spiraling inward, like the emulation of a crown. They, too, were tipped in gold, and as the sunlight through the window struck her, she gleamed.

Meet High Perfect Morcant. She’s a very pretty lady, and a very shitty person.

She looked at Kirol, and the weight and beauty of her gaze was such that, for a moment, they thought they might collapse beneath it.

High Perfect Morcant has basically turned beauty into a cudgel, and poor Kirol was not prepared to be repeatedly smacked with it.

“My name is Kirol, ma’am,” they said. Should they bow? They bowed. That felt wrong, but there was no way to take it back, so they worried their lower lip between their teeth and offered, “I’m a student from Strixhaven. I’m not supposed to be here. Lluwen found me in the woods, and he stole me so I could come and talk to you.”

Kirol needs a bucket of cold water and maybe some better shoes so they can go run a few laps.

“I was, but now I’m not,” said Kirol. “If he hadn’t stolen me, I wouldn’t get to look at you now. You are … perfect.”

I’ve seen new herpetologists have this reaction when confronted with their first in-person king cobra or Komodo dragon. I was so dazzled by the beauty of the moment that I started crying when I saw my first tuatara.

“Our world is defined by day and night,” said Morcant. “Perfect, beautiful, faultless day, and wicked, twisted, bitter night.

Morcant is a little bit biased here.

Once, the Great Aurora kept the night contained and the day protected so that we were shielded from one another. But the aurora fell, and in its place, two beasts arose, one glorious and good, one embittered and evil. Eirdu and Isilu. Lorwyn and Shadowmoor.

As a Lorwyn elf, Morcant believes all things coming from Shadowmoor are evil. She is not a very nice person. And her delivering this philosophy is part of why it was so important to highlight that night is not evil earlier in the story.

Kirol blinked. “That isn’t quite what Brigid said …” they said, carefully. “I think maybe I’m getting multiple historical accounts of the same thing.”

Kirol is uniquely equipped to seek the reality between conflicting narratives.

“There are always many sides to the same story,” said Morcant. “You speak of Brigid, the hero of Kinsbaile, do you not? Kithkin are a simple, uncultured folk, close to the land, concerned with their community, not with the needs of the wider world. She would only see what was before her, not its implications or the possibilities it presented.”

Yeah, because Brigid’s not an opportunistic jerk.

Her voice dropped, turning thoughtful. “Isilu is out of cycle—vulnerable, perhaps. And what an opportunity, if someone could seize upon that vulnerability. If they could end the night forever, and welcome endless day in its place. We would no longer work to undo in the moonlight all we had accomplished in the sunlight. The Gilt-Leaf Empire could rise again!”

This is…bad. The Gilt-Leaf Empire is worse than the Kor when it comes to treating people like they’re people, and not just inconveniences. I do not recommend restarting it if it can be avoided.

“Um,” said Kirol. “I’m not from around here, and I’m not sure it’s appropriate for me to be involved with anything that begins with an empire rising again. I’d like to go now, if that’s okay by you.”

Pretty can get you a long way, but it will run up against reality, and Kirol is having doubts.

“I’d really like to go now,” said Kirol, taking a step back. “I need to find my friends.”

“Oh, no,” said Morcant, and she smiled a terrible, perfect smile. “We need you. You’re not going anywhere.”

Kirol’s in trouble.

Tam looked conflicted. “We need to get back to school so we can finish our project,” she said. “It’s not safe here.”

Tam is definitely more focused on her studies than is necessarily a good thing in a friend.

Abigale narrowed her eyes, puffing her feathers out even farther. Kirol is our friend, she signed. I’m going to go find them. You can wait here if you like.

Abigale is a worse study partner, but a better friend.

“I’ll go. You wait here,” said Sanar. He bounced onto the balls of his feet and ran after the unhappy owlin.

We have well and truly split the party.

He hadn’t quite managed to catch up before everything went wrong. Abigale, focused as she was on looking for Kirol—something she was trying to achieve with broad turns of her head, sometimes rotating it almost all the way around—didn’t notice when the brush to one side began to rustle and shift. Sanar, who heard the branches scraping, froze immediately. Abigale did not and was taken purely by surprise when the massive, gnarled head of some unfamiliar beast, crowned with antlers made of tangled, grasping branches, rose out of the brush. The head was attached to some equally massive creature based on the sounds now coming from the trees.

Abigale hears intentional speech, not environmental disruptions. She was caught completely unaware by one of Lorwyn’s many, many exciting monsters, of which there are plenty. Lucky Abigale.

Sounds Abigale couldn’t hear. Horrified, Sanar watched her begin to backpedal away from the creature into the brush on the other side of the trail. He grabbed a branch and rushed forward, intending to defend her from the advancing beast.

Sanar is impulsive and chaotic and a very, very good friend.

Abigale made an unhappy hooting noise and rushed the beast, which bellowed loudly enough to trigger the function of her hearing aid meant to alert her to alarms and explosions. She clapped her hands over her ears. The ringing was enough to make her dizzy, and she staggered deeper into the brush, away from both Sanar and the beast.

A fire alarm just went off in Abigale’s ears. But when you attend a university with the Prismari College of Blowing Shit the Hell Up, you need to be able to hear the really, really loud sounds for your own safety.

She didn’t even see the edge of the tributary Brigid had told them to watch for. As she stumbled, her foot hit the top of the sloping bank that led down to the water, and she fell.

Birds can absolutely fall, if the distance is short enough and you surprise them sufficiently.

She had time to think Kirol would tease her for forgetting how to fly, again, before she hit the water. It saturated her feathers almost immediately, dragging her to the middle of the deceptively deep stream where the current was at its strongest. It caught her, keeping her suspended below the surface and above the bottom as it pulled her rapidly toward the Wanderwine.

Unless their feathers are designed for water, wet birds don’t fly very well. Once Abigale is waterlogged, going airborne is not really in the cards for her.

Clinging tightly to her forced calm, she began moving her hands in quick, restrained arcs.

A mage who needed breath to work their magic would have been in terrible danger in the depths, but all Abigale needed were her hands, and the gestures that told the whisper of her internal winds where to go.

You can’t necessarily speak underwater, but you can absolutely sign, and so–while most of her magic has a linguistic component of some sort–Abigale can access all her skills even in a sound-muffling environment.

Her hands moved, and bubbles began to form around them, answering her call. When both Abigale’s hands were full of air, she raised them to her face and pressed them over her beak, creating a mask of sorts. Gratefully, she took a deep breath, then pulled her face away from the bubble long enough to spit out the water she had swallowed.

So she’s made herself a diving helmet, sort of. Good job, Abigale!

As she grew closer, the forms resolved into fish-finned bipeds with long arms and elegant, scaled tails, clutching spears and tridents. They pointed to her and swam forward, menacing her with their weapons.

Lorwyn merfolk were one of the original typal groups in the card game, and are very well-beloved by the player base. They had to get at least some of the focus.

Desperate to remain calm, Abigale did what she had done since she was a small child trying to avoid getting into trouble with her parents: she held her hands in front of herself and started to babble, fingers flashing. I’m sorry is this your river I didn’t know this was your river but I guess it might be your river anyway if you can just help me out of the water I’ll go away and nobody needs to get hurt I really didn’t mean to bother anyone I’m so sorry—

I love that Abigale manages to be a motormouth without making a sound. It just delights me as a character note.

Her hearing aid was intended to help her communicate and had been designed by a Silverquill upperclassman with a flexible definition of the concept of “hearing.” It took a moment for it to interpret the stranger’s signing, then the words began appearing in her mind, clear and comprehensible:

Abigale didn’t need the hearing aid when she was home with the owlin, all of whom had learned to communicate with her. The period between arriving at Strixhaven and being fitted with the device must have been very isolating. But yes, it also handles sign. I don’t know whether it would handle written material; I assume not.

Sanar came running back to where Tam waited, breathing heavily and covered with little scratches from where he’d blundered into a thorn hedge.

Sanar isn’t having his best day ever.

“Drowned?” asked Tam, even more alarmed.

Tam is pretty sure that letting another student die will impact her grade.

“I don’t think so. Her feathers just got soaked and she couldn’t fly out of the water. The current was sweeping her back toward the river last I saw.”

Sanar at least has a good reason not to have jumped in after Abigale. He knows she’s not dead, and didn’t want to leave Tam entirely alone.

What would her teacher want her to do? Tam didn’t talk about him much—didn’t even like to think about him much, to prevent the mind-mages in her theory classes from catching a glimpse of him in her thoughts and starting to ask questions—but she knew he would have wanted her to choose the option that would protect herself and save the most people at the same time.

Tam must have a really close relationship to her advisor.

“You say she found the tributary?” she asked. Sanar nodded. “Good. Take me there. We need to reach the waterfall.”

Sanar frowned, looking unhappy, but didn’t argue; he could see the logic as clearly as she could. “This way,” he said and turned, slouching back the way he’d come.

Sanar would rather follow Abigale downstream, but as it says, he can see the logic in continuing on even as Lorwyn Wonka factories them one by one.

“All right,” said Sanar. He ran forward, plunging into the shimmering wall of water. He didn’t reappear. Tam gasped.

Impulse control? Never heard of her.

Following more slowly, she reached out with one unsteady hand to touch the cascade. Her fingertips slid smoothly into the water, which was cool and smelled so sweet. She had never wanted to drink something so badly in her life. She took a deep breath.

That’s how you get exciting new diseases, Tam. Please don’t, or Jay Annelli and I will have to set up an interplanar disease response unit and wait I really want to do that. Please drink, Tam.

Her classmates needed her.

Where was this compassion two pages ago?

Maralen dropped to her knees on the floor of her chamber, clutching at her hair with both hands as she moaned. “No, no, no,” she snarled. “I refuse.”

Maralen shares the fear of becoming her mother with many others. Sadly, in her case, becoming her mother would probably be an entirely literal transformation, complete with memories and personality overwrite.

The drift of flower petals covering her dressing table and the floor around it remained as they were, unchanging and accusing. They were small and fragrant, and they came from no flower that bloomed in Lorwyn or in Shadowmoor. But Maralen knew them. Oh, how well she knew them. She had been born of them, once, when she was made by Oona, before she had taken on the shape and memory of Maralen of the Mornsong, whose name she still carried.

Lorwyn-Shadowmoor faeries have a very odd life cycle.

Unless the twist of magic that had allowed one of her creations to become independent and alive without her consent was somehow coming unmade. It shouldn’t have been possible for Maralen to be her own person. She should have been a part of Oona even to the end—and maybe, under it all, she still was.

Maralen became her own person due to the events of the original Lorwyn block. She was originally meant to be a vessel for Oona, and her being Maralen was a little upsetting for everyone involved.

Eirdu had left her, and whispers were reaching the court that Isilu walked, and day and night were clashing. They would go to war. After the war would come a new aurora, the binding and breaking of the cycle. It would seem so reasonable, so rational, the best way to preserve their world.

It would make her into Oona reborn, and Maralen would be washed away.

Death of the individual sucks.

She pushed herself to her feet and swept the petals from her dressing table with a motion of her arm, then sat and stared at her mirror. Instead of her own slowly transforming eyes, she met the terrible gaze of Oona and pushed herself away from the mirror so hard that she hit the floor again, this time on her backside.

I think she’s seeing things here, her mind starting to eat itself out of pure panic.

Maralen was on her feet in an instant, her reflexes not softened by her royal life. A group of faeries swept in, surrounding a small blue creature who looked something like a boggart, and a tall, humanoid elemental with red-striped green skin and tendrils that faded from white into red in place of hair. Maralen gasped.

One of the defining attributes of Lorwyn is its lack of humans. Elementals are common, however, and most of them blend attributes of multiple species. Assuming Tam is a snake-elf elemental is not unreasonable. Especially if you’re not looking at her feet.

“The one appears to be an elemental,” said Maralen. “Elementals are weapons.”

She’s not wrong.

“Who, me?” asked the tall stranger. “I’m not an elemental. I’m a gorgon. My name is Tam—Brigid sent us. We’re not supposed to be here, anyway. We’re from a place called Strixhaven, on the plane of Arcavios, and we just want to get back to school.”

Tam is very tired.

“Whoa,” said Sanar.

“What?” asked Tam.

“I’ve never heard you talk that much.”

Tam is also not super loquacious most of the time.

Maralen winced as another peal of laughter rang in her ears. “Do any of you hear that?” she demanded.

Tam, Sanar, and the faeries looked confused. Maralen turned a sharp look on her faeries. “Leave us,” she said.

Oh, dear.

“Now,” she said. “This is Lorwyn-Shadowmoor, and you are very far from your Arcavios. What happened? How did you come here?”

Maralen doesn’t know what an Arcavios is. She just knows she’s never heard of it, which must mean it’s very far away.

“There are flower petals everywhere, and the cycle is out of true,” said Maralen. “Oona is returning, and this time, I don’t know if I can stop her.”

“Wow. I don’t know what any of that means,” said Sanar.

Sanar is a joy and a delight, because he won’t “yes, and?” things he doesn’t understand, like, at all. He just sort of smashes his way through them like a small blue wrecking ball.

The door of her chamber slammed open then, and there was Rhys, a small blue faerie sitting on his shoulder and pointing at Maralen. Sanar yelped and pointed to the faerie.

The faerie who’s been making all the trouble has found some more trouble to make.

Rhys had eyes only for Maralen, his expression cold as the dead of a winter night, a strange, terrible relief in his eyes. “You weren’t going to tell me. You were keeping it secret, weren’t you?”

Rhys has been alive too long. He’s pretty done by this point.

“Rhys, you don’t understand,” said Maralen desperately.

“Could it already be too late?” He closed his eyes as if in great pain. “Maralen. I made a promise to you long ago.”

“We don’t know—”

He didn’t wait for her to finish. The elf drew a dagger from his belt and lunged.

Well this is fun.

Now thoroughly out of control, Rhys took two wild, stumbling steps and tumbled out of a nearby window. The faerie on his shoulder leapt into the air, scolding like a startled magpie. Everyone watched in stunned silence—except for Tam, who was doing something geometric and glowing with her hands.

“What was that?” asked Sanar, stunned.

“Probability magic. Who was that?”

Go team Quandrix.

Maralen lowered her arms, giving the faerie a betrayed look. “You’re supposed to serve me, not betray me,” she said. “Why don’t I know you?”

The faerie turned toward her, still scolding, still not forming actual words.

Okay, well, that’s weird and kind of annoying.

“What’s going on?” asked Tam, urgently now.

“We have to go,” said Maralen. “That was Rhys, my adviser and oldest friend, and he’ll kill me if he thinks Oona is coming back.”

“Why?” asked Sanar.

“I made him swear that he would.”

“You just said—” began Tam.

So Maralen makes people make bad promises. Check.

“I know what I said!” snapped Maralen. “But I’m not ready to die, and if we can settle Isilu and restore the cycle, I may not have to. Now, we have to run, before he comes back.” She eyed the little faerie. “You, with us, now.”

Looking deeply amused, the faerie flitted to Maralen’s shoulder. She turned toward the door and ran. Tam and Sanar, not seeing much choice in the matter, followed close behind.

And possibly keeps bad company. I suppose we shall see…

And I’ll see all of you tomorrow.

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/2025/12/11/fetch-me-that-flower-the-dvd-extras/

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/?p=683

Posted by Seanan McGuire

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/2025/12/09/shake-off-slumber-the-dvd-extras/

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/?p=673

While you here do snoring lie,
Open-eyed conspiracy
His time doth take.
If of life you keep a care,
Shake off slumber, and beware:
Awake, awake!

The time is come for me to dissect Lorwyn Eclipsed for your amusement.  Because this is time-consuming, I only know people are enjoying it if they comment, and that means I really am holding future DVD extras hostage against comments. Sorry about that.

Welcome to the “DVD extras” for the second main story installment for Lorwyn Eclipsed, “Shake Off Slumber.”  This story is copyright Wizards of the Coast, although it was written by me, and can be found in its entirety here: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/magic-story/lorwyn-eclipsed-episode-2-shake-off-slumber

It feels important to call out that this is not the complete story; this is an unauthorized Pop-Up Video version. Go to the link above for the full story, please. Give them some clicks.  Convince them that you love me and I should get to keep writing things.  Seriously, though, please click the link, even if the story isn’t relevant to you.  Click-throughs are how Wizards knows that Story matters.

So what is this?  This is little excerpts of the story, with my thoughts on them, because, IDK, I thought it was funny.  I’ve also tried to include context for people new to Magic Story, to help you understand what the hell is going on.  If people continue to like it, I will probably continue.  If you don’t care about Magic Story, skip on over, although I’d still like it if you clicked.

And here we go!

As always, from this point on, plain text is bits from the story, italic text is my commentary on the same.

Sanar was the first to turn and bolt. Not out of cowardice: out of self-preservation.

Impulsiveness can cut both ways: moving toward danger and booking it for the exit.

The darkness flowing from the strange creature had swallowed and extinguished his little globe of light, blanketing the glowing lichen and obliterating their comforting dimness. He couldn’t see anything. All the spells he knew that might be helpful in this situation were destructive ones, and if he cast them, someone would get hurt. Running was the only sensible choice.

We don’t have as much time with these characters as we’d get in a book, so I’m trying to shorthand, fast, the fact that while Sanar causes problems (sometimes on purpose), he’s not doing it to get anyone hurt; he really does care about his friends and want them to come through this situation as safely as possible. Also, he’s very Prismari, and most of his party tricks explode.

Kirol was close behind. As a vampire, their eyes were better adapted to seeing in the dark than most, but they needed some light; they could make out the vague shapes of their companions, and of the great beast lumbering toward them, moving slowly in the confines of the chamber.

Confirmation that Kirol is a vampire!

They weren’t sure whether the beast could fit through the tunnel, but something about the way it moved made them think it probably could, that it was like a cat or a ferret, with flexible ribs that would compress to let it go free. So Kirol ran and hoped the others would be smart enough to do the same.

Speculative anatomy on the run. Very Lorehold of you, Kirol.

Abigale couldn’t hear the screaming, but she could see the beast. Her dark-adapted eyes were even keener than Kirol’s, and she knew precisely where the danger was.

In the dark, Abigale is the only one who can really see where she’s going. Kirol gets outlines, she gets actual details. And she is booking it.

She scrambled to grab Tam’s arm, then stumbled as Tam jerked herself away, resisting the attempt to help. Abigale turned to flee, unwilling to save her classmate at the cost of herself.

Abigale is a smart girl.

The tunnel was too narrow to let her spread her wings, and so, as in the forest, she ran, feathers puffed out and crest standing erect. It was a natural physiological response, meant to make her look larger, but what it did in this instance was scare Sanar so badly when she came charging out of the dolmen gate that he screamed and bolted for the nearest standing stones.

I learned owls could run when a juvenile great horned owl hurt itself and got marooned in my front yard. Being chased by an angry, puffed-out owl is terrifying, and I will accept no notes on this point. Sanar made the only sensible choice under the circumstances.

Abigale swooped lower, wings silent in the sudden night, then recoiled as the head of the beast emerged through the dolmen gate, the moon at its crown growing brighter as soon as it was in the open air. The beast came and kept on coming, step after ponderous step, until the whole of its vastness was free.

Owls have special feathers on their wings that allow them to fly in perfect silence, sneaking up on their prey. Abigale is taking advantage of this to hopefully move around the field without getting caught. “The beast” is somewhat pejorative, but they don’t have a better name for the night elemental just yet. They’ll get there.

The darkness wasn’t its wake; the darkness was its herald and attendant, both racing ahead and following behind, cloaking everything around it in transformative night.

Shadowmoor is not the “evil” side of the plane. Yes, Shadowmoor kithkin are kinda shitty, but so are Lorwyn elves. It’s just another natural part of life in Lorwyn-Shadowmoor. So it was important to me that we not use purely negative terms to describe the all-consuming dark.

Kirol scanned the fields around them, looking for any escape from this sudden, swallowing dark, and in the distance, they spotted a glimmering dapple of what looked like sunlight. “This way!” they shouted and ran. This time, their companions listened, and the four students ran for the remains of the day as hard and as fast as they had ever run for anything.

In Lorwyn-Shadowmoor, day and night are physical states as much as times, and they can co-exist even when it shouldn’t be possible for them to do so. Kirol is chasing the patches of day not yet swallowed up by the night they’ve accidentally unleashed.

This is impossible, signed Abigale. Night and day don’t behave like this.

“Maybe not on Arcavios,” said Tam. “Here, it seems the rules are different.”

An excellent summation of the situation, Abigale and Tam. Thank you so much for stating the obvious for us.

Tam stiffened, pointing toward a tall standing stone in the daylit distance. A stout humanoid in archer’s leathers crouched there, waving frantically for them to join her. Kirol and Abigale exchanged a glance, then nodded and took off toward her, Sanar and Tam close behind.

A new species has entered the chat! There are no humans on Lorwyn, and those familiar with the plane will have already identified her as kithkin, a species of short, sturdy humans who are often conflated with halflings or brownies. They’re communally linked in a sort of light hivemind situation–not complete enough to lose individuality, but enough to keep them connected with one another, and help them act for the greater community good.

Every path to the woman took them through patches of darkness, and she winced when she saw them step into shadow, only to relax when they emerged. It was like she expected something to happen when they went into the dark.

Natives of Lorwyn-Shadowmoor have two sides to their natures, and transform when they move between the sides of the plane. None of their species are familiar to her, and she doesn’t know what their other sides would look like, so she’s understandably concerned. But our students don’t have double natures, and are not transforming.

She led them between several standing stones and into the fringe of a tall ash forest. The trees were tall and straight, with the increasingly familiar spirals etched into their bark. Kirol took a moment to get a closer look and blinked as they saw that the spirals weren’t carved or etched; they appeared to have grown naturally with the tree. They took a step back from the tree, feeling uneasy. The last time they’d seen patterns appearing spontaneously in nature, it had been an immediate precursor to the Phyrexian invasion.

When Phyrexia broke through into other planes, the symbol of their Invasion began appearing everywhere, warping the landscape and scripting itself across the sky. So the spirals of Lorwyn make our students a little uneasy, since they don’t have context for a world that naturally patterns itself like that.

It was a fair question. It just wasn’t one they had the vocabulary to answer. Abigale finally stepped forward, following her poet’s instincts, and signed, We’re students at a grand academy in a place very far away from here. We slipped and fell, and we wound up in your meadow. We don’t mean any harm, but we don’t know where we are, and we don’t know how we’re going to get back.

Abigale is going to be Silverquill, the college of eloquence, and she’s well-positioned to be the group spokeswoman when she needs to be.

The stranger winced. “I’m sure you mean well, but please stay out of my head. You’re not part of the thoughtweft. You’re not meant to be there.”

The thoughtweft is the kithkin mental network that I mentioned before. Abigale’s hearing aid broadcasts her words telepathically, and that doesn’t necessarily sit well with kithkin. Conflicting accommodation needs ahoy!

The stranger sighed. “I can see you mean no harm, pretty bird. Forgive an old hero her frailties. As to the passage, it’s been happening since the inneal ionnsaigh cracked the shell of the world. People tumble down tunnels and fetch up here in Lorwyn, if they’re lucky, or the other side of the division, in Shadowmoor, if they’re not.”

The people of Lorwyn naturally see Shadowmoor as “the bad side” of the plane. The people of Shadowmoor do the same for Lorwyn. It’s fun for the whole family! “Inneal ionnsaigh” is literally “machine invasion” in Scots Gaelic. Every plane has their own term for the Phyrexian invasion.

Kirol frowned. “Inneal ionnsaigh …” they said, mentally comparing the words to some of the older archaeological texts they’d read. “The metal invasion?” they finally guessed.

The woman nodded. “That’s what the boggarts call it.”

Boggarts are the Lorwyn-Shadowmoor equivalent of goblins in the rest of the Multiverse. And honestly, if that’s the way she describes the invasion, it’s not just what the boggarts call it.

“My name is Brigid Baeli, hero of Kinsbaile, and I’m pleased to welcome you to Lorwyn. You’re a lucky lot. Most who run afoul of Isilu don’t make it back to the daylit side of the world any time soon.”

Brigid was one of the heroes of the original Lorwyn-Shadowmoor block, and it’s nice to see her again. And we finally have an in-story name for the night elemental!

“If there are any other night elementals roving about, we’re going to have problems bigger than a single hero can solve,” said Brigid. “Yes, that was Isilu. It’s supposed to be sleeping right now, not stomping through Lorwyn and seeding Shadowmoor in our territories.”

The crux of the matter! Shadowmoor isn’t evil or wrong, it’s just ahead of schedule and messing up everyone’s days.

“No—oh, you’re not from around here at all, are you?” Brigid shook her head. “I’ll explain more once we’re away from this place. I didn’t change in the Great Aurora, and I don’t care to now.”

Poor Brigid did not ask for this mess, but it seems it’s her problem now.

“I mentioned you weren’t the first strangers to come tumbling into Lorwyn. Well, we’re still trying to figure out exactly how that happens—no one’s ever caught your sort arriving, or departing, for that matter. There have always been rumors, but they were rare before, and now it seems like you can’t turn around without hearing that some crew on the Wanderwine has taken on a stranger, or some pretty, pretty fool has been captured by the elves and carted back to Lys Alana for questioning. So, when I heard rumor of a strange light in the sky, I thought to myself, ‘Why, Brigid, that might be where the strangers are coming from,’ and came out to see whether I might be right. And here I am, and here you are, and there it is.”

Omenpaths are damn confusing when you’re not from Kaldheim or starting from a planeswalker position. Funny fact: a lot of set stories didn’t involve planeswalkers at all, back before they’d been codified as the magic X-Men they are today. Early planeswalkers were more like gods, and didn’t really care about problems that they viewed as that far beneath them.

No! signed Abigale, a hard, involuntary gesture of negation, and threw herself into the air, wings flapping hard as she rose toward where the Omenpath had been. The others watched and saw the moment when she confirmed that it was gone, when her posture changed, hope fading. Slowly, she drifted back down to the ground, landing beside the others.

Temporary omenpath disrupted by the spread of Shadowmoor and closed. Oops.

Sunlight and moonlight slanted through the loose weave of the tree canopy, throwing splashes of bright gold and cool silver on the lush ground, night and day falling within inches of each other, no auroras to divide them in this hidden glen. The grass was so green it could have shamed emeralds, but it paled in comparison to the incredible profusion and array of wildflowers. Every color of the rainbow was represented, as well as white flowers the size of an elf’s palm and tiny black blossoms shaped like a child’s drawing of a falling star. Their centers were darker still, the color of the space between stars, and they smelled as sweet as blistered honey drizzled straight onto an open fire. Those that grew in moonlight rather than endless sun glowed like stars in their patchy darkness, and the result was a third light joining the celestial two, a faerie-light that could be found nowhere else.

I enjoy this descriptive passage, so we’re going to look at it for a moment. It also marks a scene transition, as we leave Brigid and the students for an old friend who needs our attention.

Its petals were silver, gold, ivory, recreating the three kinds of light. They formed a scalloped cup, their tips reaching higher than the tops of the trees. Where the stamen and pistil should have been, there was a palace, timelessly elegant in its simplicity, built from bricks of molded bramble instead of stone, but large as any palace had ever been. It had ramparts and towers, even a courtyard large enough to host jousts or outdoor feasts. It was impossible, and in its impossibility, it was infinitely magical, a monument to every capability of the faerie court. Patches of night and day dappled the walls and grounds, beautiful in their chaos.

Yes, the fairy castle of Lorwyn-Shadowmoor is basically a giant lotus blossom. It’s pretty and I like it.

This was Glen Elendra, the stronghold of the faerie queen, once protectorate of Great Mother Oona, now home and holding of Queen Maralen of the fae. Faeries danced through the interlaced branches and flitted through the palace halls, light glinting off their carapaces until they shone like jewels. Much like the wildflowers, they came in every possible color, and their silhouettes cut an endless kaleidoscope of shapes and angles as they flew. They flew to keep themselves in either shadow or sun, not allowing the transition between the two to distract them from their tasks.

Oona was the villain of the original Lorwyn block–an oversimplification, but this is an annotation, not an essay. She was destroyed, and replaced by her “daughter,” Maralen of the Mornsong, a faerie who had been disguised as an elf. She’s the boss now. Her faeries are split between Lorwyn and Shadowmoor, but they don’t switch sides in mid-shift. They have jobs to do.

At the briar wall, the faerie that had slipped through an Omenpath to Arcavios and lured a group of students into another world squeezed through a gap between the thorns. The gap was narrow—too narrow for anything larger than a faerie—and this was a large example of its kind. Once through, the faerie shook itself to straighten out its tattered wings, then stepped into the nearest patch of light with all the eagerness and enthusiasm of a thief being led to the gallows.

Our faerie, which was Lorwyn-side when we first met it, seems to be unhappy about leaving Shadowmoor behind. Huh.

Once it reached Glen Elendra proper, it vanished into the clouds of faeries thronging the halls, no more or less eye-catching than any of the rest of them. Some were sweeping the halls; others were in the kitchen, feeding bits of fallen briar into the fire and mixing batter for the afternoon’s cakes. The palace was sized for use by elves but populated almost entirely by faeries who were scarcely taller than an adult human’s hand. It was a contradiction that ran all through the place, worked into every wall and doorframe.

Maralen can’t change shapes, and the palace suits the queen.

The bed’s occupant was a strange creature indeed. Tall as an elf, but with pale green skin that appeared hardened and semi-crystalline, almost opalescent. Her hair was long and black and fanned out around her in her sleep to form the shape of wings against her bedclothes. She had the curved antelope horns of a Mornsong elf, even greener and more crystalline than the rest of her, nearly pearlescent in the light. And from the way her face was screwed up and her cloven hooves were digging into the mattress, she was having a truly terrible dream.

Lorwyn-Shadowmoor elves are unique in that they have hooves and horns, almost like deer, although the horns will vary between Lorwyn and Shadowmoor. This is Maralen. She looks more fae than she used to, but she’s still Maralen. Hopefully.

With a gasp, Maralen awoke and sat upright in her bed, clasping the blankets around herself. The motion knocked the spray of foxglove from her pillow, and she turned to stare at it with wide, wounded eyes. Cautiously, she reached out to pick it up, still staring as she did. The flowers gave no indication where they had come from as she lifted and studied them, and so she dropped them again, clutching at her head.

Maralen didn’t ask any of her faeries to bring her flowers, and she’s not happy to find them in her bed. Oona bled flower petals, all the time, and she has reasonable concerns about what this might mean.

Something was very wrong. Something big enough to seep into her dreams and twist them out of truth. Maralen shivered and turned her face away from the flowers, then released her grasp on her own temples and ran one long-fingered hand through her hair, coming away with a palmful of delicate lavender petals. These she scattered through the bedding around her, letting them fall to join the others already there. Carefully, she shifted herself to the edge of the bed.

Maralen can make flower petals out of nowhere–she’s the faerie queen–she just usually doesn’t.

As an avatar of Oona who rejected her maker so vociferously, it was difficult for her to properly connect to her subjects. Her name didn’t carry the weight of her maker-mother’s. If the faeries wanted to bond themselves to her more tightly through service, she would allow it, and gladly.

Maralen has been queen for decades now, but still feels like the crown doesn’t quite fit, thanks to the way she was made.

She was still trying to decide what this might mean when the chamber door swung open and an elven man stepped inside. He was dressed in the greens and browns of a Gilt-Leaf hunter, and a complicated glamer made it look as if his long-destroyed horns graced his head with the span and majesty they possessed on the moonlight side of the cycle, where his Shadowmoor self walked without the injuries of his Lorwyn past. Like the faeries who thronged the halls, he had long since learned the art of stepping around shadow, keeping himself on the side of the aurora that contained his memory of the moment.

I forgot to mention this before: Lorwyn-side people don’t remember themselves when they switch over to Shadowmoor. Most people avoid the change at least in part to have continuity of existence. This gentleman is currently a Lorwyn elf, and a glamer is an illusion intended to change something about his appearance–in this case, his horns, which were broken on the Lorwyn side.

Rhys was far older than any elf was meant to be, ancient by any standard of their once shared people, but like her, he showed none of it on his face. Any who saw him would have thought him a hunter in his prime, if not for the silent warning provided by horns, which were larger and wider than they would ever have had time to grow under normal circumstances. He was her friend, her confidant, one of the only people who understood how much she had changed and how much she feared the changes yet to come—and should the need arise, her executioner.

Another fun fact about Lorwyn-Shadowmoor elves: they are incredibly short-lived, surviving only thirty to forty years on average. Given how long ago the original Lorwyn story was, for Rhys to still be alive, something must be keeping him that way. Rhys knew the original Maralen of the Mornsong, the elf who was replaced by Oona’s creation.

Maralen was born of Oona, and Oona had been the rot at the root of Lorwyn-Shadowmoor’s very heart. The death of the old faerie queen had been a gift to the world, given at great cost, and Maralen refused to allow herself to follow her creator’s path into cruelty.

Maralen is an entirely made creature, and has good reason to worry that she might be turning into Oona. Especially with her body slowly changing, and with mysterious flowers appearing in her bed.

As long as Maralen needed him to kill her, Rhys would live. And as long as Rhys lived, Maralen would fight to not make him carry the burden of her death.

Rhys is being kept alive by his promise to Maralen, linking him to her much longer-lived magic.

“Really?” asked Rhys. “How can you tell?”

“After living among them so long, how can you not?” snapped Maralen before pausing, ashamed. “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.” She turned back to Camey, still hovering. “Get the others and go looking for Aherin,” she said. “I’ll stay in the palace until you tell me he’s found.”

They both have excellent points. Lorwyn faeries are basically big fancy insects. I keep big fancy insects as pets. I can tell them apart. I know all their names. Most people do not. It’s all in hhow you look at things.

Camey nodded and flew for the window, the flock following. Maralen watched them go, then turned back toward Rhys. Midway through the motion, her eye caught her mirror, and for a moment, it looked like there was a third person in the room with them, smaller, made entirely of living flower petals and glaring at her with unending menace. Maralen jerked backward, and the reflection was gone.

Maralen is not having a good mental health day.

To be beloved of Eirdu was to be beloved of the sun in all its impossible vastness. Maralen sometimes thought the day elemental was too great to be fully perceived by anything less than itself; when it stood, it seemed infinitely large, but when it curled close and content, it could fit into almost any space it chose. Like a courtyard, like the company of a queen.

Eirdu has just been chilling with Maralen. You know. As one does.

Not far away, the little blue faerie listened to their exchange and frowned, visibly perplexed. It looked around, spotting a newly opened patch of Shadowmoor, and dove into the moonlight, letting its transformation repeat in reverse, blue becoming green, smoothness becoming jagged and ornate. Now giggling and delighted, it took to the air, following Maralen’s path through the palace to her room.

We need to keep an eye on this little fellow.

Liliana Vess had been at Strixhaven long enough, both as a professor and a student, to understand how Introduction to Magibotanical Environments worked. The students would sign up, learn about the magical plants of Arcavios, and when the time was right, they’d go out to gather specimens while she got an afternoon off from teaching and could catch up on her grading. And so far, that was exactly what she’d gotten.

You know Liliana teaches this class solely so she can deal with her paperwork and still be officially teaching.

In the hall outside her office, Ajani Goldmane stood and met her stare directly, expression as endlessly gentle as always. “Hello, Liliana,” he said.

Ajani doesn’t do casual visits with Liliana. If he’s here, something has happened.

“I suppose it is,” he agreed, stepping inside so she could close the door. “I needed to see you. I needed to be sure …” His voice trailed off, like he wasn’t sure how to continue.

Liliana took a sharp breath. “Tea?” she asked. “I don’t have anything stronger; this is a school.”

Ajani needing to be sure has told her more than he realizes.

“That doesn’t stop everyone.”

“Sadly, when you’re trying to apologize for as much as I am, following the rules becomes essential.” She turned to cross to the tea set on her sideboard, then stopped, pressing her hands flat against the wood, back to Ajani. “Who died?” she asked.

Liliana has been a bad guy for quite some time, and is trying to atone. So it’s very important to her that she do everything by the letter, at least for right now.

“I’ve been a necromancer a long, long time. It’s not always about zombies and cackling in the moonlight. Sometimes it’s about telling people you weren’t fast enough, and that just because you can make them get up and walk around, that doesn’t mean you can bring them back. So please, Ajani. Let’s not kid ourselves that we’re old friends, or that you just came to see how I am. We’ve lost someone, and I know that’s why you’re here. Who died?”

Liliana has a very specific set of experiences and skills.

“Jace.”

It was such a small word. One syllable, four letters, and yet it fell into the room like the end of everything, like a hammer against the hardened walls of what remained of her heart. Jace? Jace Beleren, that brilliant, beautiful disaster? He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be gone. Not after everything he’d survived, not after Tezzeret and Bolas and New Phyrexia. He had been his own necromancer so many times, bringing himself back from beyond the point of no return. He couldn’t be dead now.

Liliana and Jace were lovers once, but that’s not the reason for her reaction. Jace Beleren really has been a force of nature since his introduction, and the idea that he might be dead is essentially impossible. She’s allowed a little denial.

She looked at her denial with critical eyes and decided it was the only reasonable response. She’d loved him once. She didn’t love him, not anymore, and she was never going to love him again, but that didn’t mean he was allowed to be dead. She’d buried too many pieces of her heart to let another one go this easily.

I’m sorry, Liliana.

Her hands didn’t shake as she began preparing her tea, and she didn’t say anything, letting the silence hang until Ajani asked, uncomfortably, “Did you hear me?”

“I heard.” She added honey to her cup and finally turned, looking at him expressionlessly. “I just don’t believe you. What happened?”

Denial is a hell of a drug.

Ajani almost flinched. Then, in a low voice, he began: “You know the dragonstorms we’ve been experiencing? I was on Tarkir. I helped Elspeth and Narset stop them. We wound up following the signs back to the Meditation Realm, where we found Jace. He was—” He paused for a moment, swallowing. “He wasn’t Phyrexian anymore, but he was wrong, somehow. He was casting something none of us could identify, and he lost control. He lost control of the spell, and it came apart in his hands, and then he came apart with it. The spell took him, and he was gone. Just light and energy on the wind.”

“He …” She stopped and shook her head. “There was no body. He’s not dead. Jace Beleren wouldn’t die without leaving a body.”

You know, I can see where she’s coming from here. She’s wrong, but she has a point.

“Liliana—” Another pause; another swallow. “There’s something else I have to tell you. The storms wracked the Meditation Realm. They ripped through everything. And Jace lied. When he let you go on Ravnica, he let Ugin capture Bolas at the same time and allowed us all to think that he had died.”

“So?”

“So Bolas escaped.”

Her teacup shattered as it hit the floor.

Nicol Bolas is another villain from Magic’s history, one of the bigger, badder ones. He has a history with Liliana. Liliana is suddenly not having a very good day.

Liliana was still staring at him when the office door banged open and Dina barged inside, leafy hair askew. “Professor Vess, four of the students I took out with me today are missing!”

Liliana’s day just got worse.

Liliana and Ajani exchanged a look.

“Weird flying thing? Like a big bug?” asked Liliana.

“That could be too many things,” said Ajani.

“There’s nothing like that around here,” said Liliana.

Arcavios doesn’t have a lot in the way of extremely large flying insects. The pests have long since eaten them all.

And now it’s time to go find our missing students, and hope they’re alive when we reach them! Dina is definitely not going to get a failing grade in babysitting first years! Liliana is definitely not going to raise an entire graveyard to process her feelings! What a great day we’re all having!

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/2025/12/09/shake-off-slumber-the-dvd-extras/

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/?p=673

Posted by Seanan McGuire

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/2025/12/08/on-the-seventh-day-of-hogswatch-your-seanan-gave-away-9/

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/?p=668

…a copy of Laughter at the Academy!

Hello, readers, writers, and terrifying couch gremlins, and welcome to the Thirteen Days of Hogswatch, the game where the points are made up but the rules really do matter.  This is our seventh giveaway for 2025, a day late because I had food poisoning yesterday, which sucked. I hope you’re all excited!  Here are a few things you should know:

1. Every post will have its own prize, and its own rules.  This is to filter out people linked here from the “hey, free stuff!” blogs, who are less interested in our prizes than they are in the fact that they don’t cost anything.
2. There will be one redistribution draw for unclaimed prizes. Any remaining after that will be returned to my office to think about what they did. If you fail to claim a prize, you cannot win another.
3. I cannot afford international postage.  If you are outside the US/Canada, you must state so in your entry.  Someone else has volunteered to cover these costs, but I still need to know.
4. All posts automatically mirror to Dreamwidth.  For RNG reasons, comments left on Dreamwidth do not count as entries; you must enter via the root post on my blog (seananmcguire.com/blog) if you want to be eligible to win.
5. If you haven’t commented here before, your first comment will go into moderation, and be approved as soon as I see it. So if your comment does not appear, please don’t comment again. It still won’t work, until I manually approve you. I promise to approve before prizes are drawn.

So here.  We.  GO!

Our seventh prize this year is a copy of Laughter at the Academy. To enter…

1. Comment on this post.
2. What is your favorite short story?
3. If you are outside the US/Canada, tell me so.

All winners will be selected at 12PT on December 15th.  So now, as the sages say…

…GAME ON!

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/2025/12/08/on-the-seventh-day-of-hogswatch-your-seanan-gave-away-9/

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/?p=668

Posted by Seanan McGuire

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/2025/12/05/on-the-fifth-day-of-hogswatch-your-seanan-gave-away-9/

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/?p=660

…a copy of Sleep No More!

Hello, readers, writers, and terrifying couch gremlins, and welcome to the Thirteen Days of Hogswatch, the game where the points are made up but the rules really do matter.  This is our fifth giveaway for 2025! I hope you’re all excited!  Here are a few things you should know:

1. Every post will have its own prize, and its own rules.  This is to filter out people linked here from the “hey, free stuff!” blogs, who are less interested in our prizes than they are in the fact that they don’t cost anything.
2. There will be one redistribution draw for unclaimed prizes. Any remaining after that will be returned to my office to think about what they did. If you fail to claim a prize, you cannot win another.
3. I cannot afford international postage.  If you are outside the US/Canada, you must state so in your entry.  Someone else has volunteered to cover these costs, but I still need to know.
4. All posts automatically mirror to Dreamwidth.  For RNG reasons, comments left on Dreamwidth do not count as entries; you must enter via the root post on my blog (seananmcguire.com/blog) if you want to be eligible to win.
5. If you haven’t commented here before, your first comment will go into moderation, and be approved as soon as I see it. So if your comment does not appear, please don’t comment again. It still won’t work, until I manually approve you. I promise to approve before prizes are drawn.

So here.  We.  GO!

Our fourth prize this year is a copy of Sleep No More. Is that going to be paperback or hardcover? It’s a mystery! It will be signed, unless you tell me you don’t want it to be. To enter…

1. Comment on this post.
2. What is your favorite story about or centered on sleep?
3. If you are outside the US/Canada, tell me so.

All winners will be selected at 12PT on December 15th.  So now, as the sages say…

…GAME ON!

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/2025/12/05/on-the-fifth-day-of-hogswatch-your-seanan-gave-away-9/

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/?p=660