Tarkir · Red · Green · Blue
Sarkhan Vol
Dragon mage born from a history he later erased
Sarkhan searched the Multiverse for dragons worthy of devotion, served the wrong one and rewrote Tarkir to save another. He gained the sky he wanted while making himself a man without a past.
Profile
Why Sarkhan Vol matters
Sarkhan was born on a Tarkir where the clans had hunted dragons to extinction. A gifted Mardu warrior, he found ordinary victories hollow beside the majesty preserved in bones and shamanic memory. During battle, the spirit of a long-dead dragon gave him a spell; the fire and destruction that followed ignited his spark. He left Tarkir looking not for a safer world, but for a living dragon worthy of absolute service.
Jund offered mighty predators, yet Sarkhan chose the intellect and age of Nicol Bolas as proof of true draconic greatness. Bolas treated devotion as a tool. In the Eye of Ugin on Zendikar, Sarkhan fought Jace and Chandra and helped create the conditions that released the Eldrazi. Abandoned after serving his purpose, he recognised too late that his master valued manipulation rather than the direct power Sarkhan believed he worshipped.
A voice led Sarkhan back to Tarkir and to Narset, who died helping him reach the tomb of Ugin. The voice opened a path more than twelve centuries into the past. Sarkhan intervened after Bolas struck Ugin down and sealed the Spirit Dragon inside a hedron cocoon. Returning to the present, he found dragonlords alive, Narset restored by altered history and no record that Sarkhan himself had ever been born.
The new Tarkir fulfilled his oldest wish without becoming a just world. Sarkhan helped oppose the Phyrexian invasion, then lost his spark as the Multiverse changed. The dragonlords later fell and transformed dragonstorms threatened the plane anew. He allied with Taigam in pursuit of restored draconic rule. His latest choice sharpens the question at the centre of his life: whether loving dragons means defending them, serving them or imposing their dominion on everyone else.
A route through the character
Key Moments
- 01Grows up in the Mardu among the bones of extinct dragons
- 02Ignites his spark through a dead dragon’s spell
- 03Searches other planes for a dragon worthy of devotion
- 04Serves Nicol Bolas and guards the Eye of Ugin
- 05Helps trigger the release of the Eldrazi on Zendikar
- 06Travels into Tarkir’s past and saves Ugin from death
- 07Returns to a dragon-ruled history in which he was never born
- 08Loses his spark and pursues renewed draconic power after the invasion