Register
The ManaForge
Skip to Lorewalkers content

A lost mind, an unexpected captain and a poet who will not surrender her own account

Ixalan: Identities Beyond the Sun

Jace learns to live without his past, Vraska finds recognition beyond assassination, and Huatli discovers a wider calling. Their separate journeys through Ixalan ask who gets to define a person once the familiar story no longer holds.

Why this story matters

The route in brief

The race for Orazca is also a struggle over identity. Jace lacks the memories that once told him who he was. Vraska receives an opportunity that answers her deepest political ambition while placing her inside Bolas's design. Huatli discovers a power her emperor interprets before she understands it herself.

This companion route follows those beginnings and their aftermath, with the River Heralds' disagreements included as more than scenery. The broader Ixalan route remains the guide to the full contest for the city and the Immortal Sun. Here, the emphasis is on trust, interpretation and the right to tell a story.

The return of memory does not simply undo what people have learned, and removing the planar barrier does not decide how they should use their freedom. For Huatli, Jace and Vraska, departure carries decisions formed on a world that none of them could leave when they first wanted to.

Read in order or choose a turning point

Story Chapters

  1. Jace survives before he can explain himself

    An island tests the practical abilities left behind when his personal memories are gone.

    Jace awakens on Ixalan without a name or a reliable account of how he arrived. Attempts to planeswalk fail against the same strange sigil. Hunger and isolation become immediate problems that cannot wait for a recovered biography.

    He learns through failure, using the abilities and general knowledge that remain while becoming aware that illusions cannot replace food, shelter or judgment. Searching inward finds the part that should permit escape, but the world still holds him.

    The Belligerent eventually reaches him. Vraska recognises Beleren and approaches expecting an enemy, then finds someone plainly unable to play that old role. Rescue opens a new relationship because the past is absent, not because the past never happened.

    Open dedicated chapter

  2. Huatli's confidence meets an unfamiliar power

    Her spark reveals a golden city, and others rush to tell her what the glimpse means.

    Huatli returns from military success expecting recognition as warrior-poet. During an encounter with Angrath, the danger to her and Inti ignites a spark. She glimpses another golden city before the planar barrier throws her back.

    Angrath recognises another trapped planeswalker. Huatli does not yet share his understanding, and she interprets the sight as Orazca. Emperor Apatzec accepts that interpretation and makes the sought title conditional on finding the city.

    Inti helps her distinguish wanting a rank from wanting to explore. She chooses the journey, frightened but curious. The glimpse is real; its first explanation is not authoritative. Her new calling begins partly by stepping beyond the two roles in which she had always expected to excel.

    Open dedicated chapter

  3. Vraska becomes a captain under a dangerous contract

    Bolas offers leadership, but the experience of being trusted grows beyond his bargain.

    Bolas promises Vraska the Golgari leadership if she retrieves an object from Orazca. He provides the compass, a summoning spell and the knowledge to sail, while making clear that he can inspect her mind. The offer answers a real desire through a coercive patron.

    Aboard the Belligerent, leadership is practical. Her crew has its own expertise, and the amnesiac Jace contributes illusions that help them raid a Legion of Dusk ship. When a vampire seizes him, she petrifies the attacker.

    Jace responds with gratitude and admiration instead of the horror she expects. She invites him to remain with the crew. Bolas has hired her for a mission, but the voyage begins giving her a different basis for belonging: other people recognise her talents without reducing them to murder.

    Open dedicated chapter

  4. The River Heralds do not share one answer

    Kopala and Tishana face the danger of a powerful defender who has lost patience with restraint.

    Kopala's bond with his river defines stewardship through listening and exchange. The Shapers' agreement to keep Orazca hidden is under pressure from outsiders and from Kumena, who wants to use its power rather than preserve the old prohibition.

    Tishana accepts that secrecy may no longer be enough without accepting Kumena's solution. She leaves Kopala to rally the tribes and pursues her former student. Her superior control of the storm does not protect her from his sudden physical attack.

    The disagreement belongs within the River Heralds, not only between them and foreign claimants. Power can defend a people while tempting its wielder to stop listening. Kopala remains with responsibilities and uncertainty rather than inheriting a clean consensus from his elders.

    Open dedicated chapter

  5. The first race forces an unlikely partnership

    A shared chase gives Huatli and Tishana reason to cooperate without erasing their suspicion.

    Mavren Fein's dangerous hunger and religious certainty illustrate the Legion's own instability as the contest gathers speed. On the coast, ships are wrecked and competing claimants must find another route inland.

    Huatli joins Tishana in tracking a wake concealed by an illusion. Rumours of Vraska's compass make the pirate ship more valuable than a target to destroy. Neither side knows the city as precisely as its confidence first suggests.

    The partnership is unfamiliar to both women. They cooperate over a concrete need while arguing about methods and assumptions. This stage of the race has not yet delivered Orazca; it has made the limits of each faction's knowledge harder to ignore.

    Open dedicated chapter

  6. Memory returns, then is hidden by agreement

    Jace and Vraska choose a dangerous safeguard against Bolas's access to her mind.

    As Orazca rises, Jace's past breaks into the present through uncontrolled memories. Vraska witnesses the coercion and hurt behind his former life, including their earlier hostility. Neither treats restored knowledge as permission to erase the trust built on the voyage.

    Later, the Immortal Sun's value to Bolas makes their alliance dangerous to expose. Vraska asks Jace to hide her memories of him temporarily, allowing her to return as an apparently loyal agent while they prepare to oppose the dragon.

    The safeguard is negotiated and frightening, not a casual use of telepathy. She chooses the captain's title as the sign she will recognise when the memories return. The object leaves Ixalan, the barrier falls, and their next chance to act depends on a relationship she can no longer consciously remember.

    Open dedicated chapter

  7. Huatli refuses a victory rewritten for conquest

    Her family's encouragement gives the warrior-poet a reason to carry history beyond the emperor's agenda.

    With the Immortal Sun gone, Angrath can finally depart and Huatli understands that a wider world is available. The immediate contest ends with Orazca claimed, but that does not settle what its history should mean.

    Huatli urges Apatzec to seek peace with the River Heralds. He wants a triumph that will support another invasion and denies her the public oration that belongs to her new position. Recognition becomes another way of demanding obedience.

    Her family listens to the fuller account and encourages her to gather stories elsewhere. They retrieve the helm before she leaves. She departs intending to return, not abandoning her home; she refuses the narrower claim that serving it means telling only the ruler's preferred version.

    Open dedicated chapter

  8. The travellers leave carrying different futures

    Freedom permits reunion and exploration while leaving Bolas's deception in place.

    Huatli reaches Ghirapur and meets Saheeli, whose curiosity about dinosaurs welcomes knowledge rather than demanding conquest. Angrath returns to the foundry and daughters he has missed. The removed barrier means something deeply personal to both. His daughters Rumi and Jamira have grown into blacksmiths.

    Vraska reports to Bolas with a convincing set of altered memories. He rewards her with the location of Jarad, while an unexplained unease remains beyond her conscious reach. A successful inspection does not establish that he has seen the whole truth.

    Jace leaves for Dominaria and manages an awkward arrival aboard the moving craft carrying Gideon. His regained identity includes the pirate who learned to cooperate. These departures end imprisonment without resolving the approaching conflict for Ravnica.

    Open dedicated chapter

Keep exploring

Connected People and Places

Characters

Planes