Dominaria · Black
Liliana Vess
Necromancer, survivor and author of her own debts
Liliana spent centuries treating attachment as a weakness others could exploit. Her bargains won youth and power but made freedom another form of debt, until chosen loyalties forced her to risk the life she had protected at every cost.
Profile
Why Liliana Vess matters
Liliana began on Dominaria as a gifted healer desperate to save her brother Josu. Manipulation and forbidden magic turned that attempt into catastrophe. The guilt followed her even when her spark opened an escape into the Multiverse, teaching her to conceal fear beneath confidence and control.
After the Mending reduced her old planeswalker power, Liliana bargained with four demons for restored youth and strength. The contracts solved mortality by replacing it with ownership. She pursued the Chain Veil and eliminated her creditors one by one, only to discover that Nicol Bolas held the final leverage over her bargain.
Liliana joined the Gatewatch for practical reasons and repeatedly insisted that loyalty was temporary. Practice made that claim less true. Fighting beside Gideon, Jace, Chandra and Nissa created obligations she had not signed and could not dismiss as easily as a demonic contract.
On Ravnica, Bolas forced Liliana to command the Dreadhorde. She finally turned the army against him despite knowing the contract would kill her. Gideon took that death onto himself, leaving Liliana alive with a freedom purchased by someone else's choice. Her later life as Professor Onyx on Arcavios shows a woman still sharp, secretive and dangerous, but no longer able to pretend that grief and responsibility belong only to other people.
A route through the character
Key Moments
- 01Tries to save Josu and instead unleashes a family tragedy
- 02Ignites her spark and leaves Dominaria
- 03Makes four demonic bargains after the Mending
- 04Claims the Chain Veil
- 05Joins the Gatewatch while pursuing her creditors
- 06Defeats her final demon and falls under Bolas's contract
- 07Turns the Dreadhorde against Bolas on Ravnica
- 08Survives Gideon's sacrifice and later teaches as Professor Onyx
Continue Their Journey
Stories
- Amonkhet and the Hour of DevastationThe Gatewatch went looking for Bolas’s weakness and discovered a world engineered as his weapon.
- Kaladesh and the Aether RevoltA festival of invention became a confiscation machine, and a family reunion grew into a fight over who owns the future.
- Reality FractureJace builds a painless second Multiverse and discovers why no mind can improve existence by cutting away its contradictions
- Shadows over Innistrad and Eldritch MoonA mystery beneath the silver moon became Nahiri’s revenge—and Emrakul’s chosen prison.
- Strixhaven: School of MagesTwo royal siblings enter Arcavios's greatest university just as the Oriq turn its oldest wound into a weapon
- War of the SparkRavnica · Nicol Bolas · The Gatewatch