A rebuilt Weatherlight gathers a new crew while Liliana's oldest debt draws the Gatewatch toward Belzenlok and a victory owned by Nicol Bolas
Return to Dominaria
Jhoira rebuilds the Weatherlight as Liliana hunts her final demon. Their paths unite old heroes and new crew, but victory transfers her last debt to Nicol Bolas.
Why this story matters
The route in brief
Dominaria is where much of the Multiverse's history was written, but history has become a weapon. The Cabal no longer presents itself merely as a cult or criminal empire. Under Belzenlok it occupies cities, erases inconvenient names and assigns every old victory to its demon lord. People who remember the truth become a threat simply by speaking.
Two journeys answer that theft. Jhoira raises the Weatherlight from the sea and builds a crew for a world that has outlived its legendary heroes. Liliana Vess returns to the home she abandoned, intending to kill the last demon holding her contract. Gideon follows because he still believes loyalty can save her from the choices she makes alone.
Their routes eventually become one campaign across Dominaria: through Benalia, Tolaria, Shiv, Yavimaya and finally Urborg. The result restores names, friendships and a symbol of resistance. It also hides a poisoned consequence. By ending Belzenlok, Liliana does not become free. The ownership of her pact passes to Nicol Bolas, turning a hard-won homecoming into the road toward the War of the Spark.
Read in order or choose a turning point
Story Chapters
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A Homecoming Written by a Demon
Belzenlok steals Dominaria's past while Jhoira raises the Weatherlight and the broken Gatewatch discovers how little of itself remains.
Belzenlok's Cabal controls more than territory. Its preachers replace the names of fallen heroes with the demon's own, presenting him as victor of battles fought long before his rise. The lie works because monuments can be smashed, archives can burn and frightened communities learn to repeat whatever keeps soldiers away. Dominaria's history is not disappearing naturally; it is being edited under occupation.
Against that campaign, Jhoira recovers the wreck of the Weatherlight. The ship once carried a crew whose adventures shaped entire ages, but nostalgia will not make it fly. She treats the vessel as a promise that must be rebuilt piece by piece, including its powerstone and the relationships required to crew it. Her project begins far from Liliana's mission, yet both are attempts to reclaim something that corruption has renamed.
The Gatewatch arrives carrying the defeat of Amonkhet. Jace is missing, Nissa walks away after learning how Liliana used the group, and Chandra leaves because anger without control nearly killed them all. Gideon alone remains beside Liliana. She wants Belzenlok dead and calls it the final step toward freedom; he recognises that she is returning to the place where guilt first taught her to flee.
Open dedicated chapter -
The Brother Beneath Caligo
Belzenlok turns Liliana's dead brother into a weapon, forcing her to end the tragedy that first drove her from Dominaria.
Liliana enters the ruins around Caligo expecting memories and finds evidence that Belzenlok has been excavating them. Her childhood home is part grave, part accusation. The Raven Man appears where shame is easiest to exploit, insisting that every disaster follows from the same source: Liliana tries to escape consequences, then calls the next bargain survival.
Belzenlok's cruelest discovery is Josu. Long ago, Liliana tried to heal her brother and transformed him into an undead horror; that catastrophe ignited her spark. The demon has raised Josu again as a lich and sends him against the sister who never properly buried him. Gideon and the Benalish defenders can hold back the surrounding dead, but this confrontation belongs to the history Liliana has avoided.
The Chain Veil gives Liliana enough power to overcome Josu and finally grant him rest. It also leaves her dangerously depleted, proving again that her strongest weapon never acts without a price. Gideon sees neither a triumphant necromancer nor the manipulator described by their allies. He sees someone grieving the brother she failed, and his decision to stay becomes more personal just as her contract becomes more dangerous.
Open dedicated chapter -
A Ship Needs a Future
Jhoira recruits heirs rather than replacements, asking a new generation to decide what the Weatherlight should mean now.
Repairing the Weatherlight is easier than answering who belongs aboard it. Jhoira could chase copies of the original crew, but Dominaria has already suffered from living inside its legends. She seeks people connected to that past who still possess ambitions of their own. The distinction matters: a legacy survives only when its inheritors are allowed to change it.
Shanna carries Captain Sisay's bloodline and the weight other people attach to it. Raff Capashen belongs to another famous family, yet his curiosity and wizardry pull him in directions tradition does not expect. Danitha Capashen refuses Jhoira's invitation because her duty is in Benalia. The refusal is as important as the acceptances; joining a heroic ship cannot become a test of whether someone values the world.
The emerging crew is inexperienced, argumentative and alive. That makes it suitable. Jhoira is not restoring a museum exhibit but creating a place where different forms of courage can cooperate. As the ship takes shape, the Weatherlight stops being proof that the old age can return. It becomes evidence that Dominaria can remember its past without surrendering its future to it.
Open dedicated chapter -
The Angel and the Vampire
Tiana and Arvad join a crew built from apparent contradictions, each finding that the Weatherlight can give an old oath new direction.
Tiana has spent years guarding an empty place after the purpose she was created to serve disappeared. Duty keeps her moving, but it cannot answer what duty becomes when its original object is gone. The Weatherlight's call reaches that uncertainty. Jhoira offers no divine command, only work that matters and companions who will need the angel's skill.
Arvad presents the opposite problem. The Benalish knight remains bound to honour after becoming a vampire, yet every hunger makes him suspect in the eyes of those he hopes to protect. Aboard the Weatherlight, its powerstone eases the pressure of his curse. That relief is practical, but acceptance matters just as much: the crew judges what he chooses, not only what was done to him.
Bringing an angel and a vampire onto the same deck declares what kind of institution Jhoira is building. The ship does not erase Tiana's uncertainty or Arvad's danger. It gives both a structure in which restraint, service and trust can be practised. Dominaria's factions define people by inherited roles; the Weatherlight begins to work because it leaves room for a chosen one.
Open dedicated chapter -
Old Allies, New War
Ajani reconnects Jhoira's mission to the Gatewatch, and the Weatherlight turns from reconstruction toward a campaign against the Cabal.
Ajani's arrival brings news that links several unfinished stories. Karn survived, while Venser did not. The report gives Jhoira both hope and another absence to carry. It also confirms that the Multiverse is moving toward a confrontation larger than Dominaria: Nicol Bolas is gathering power, and scattered heroes need allies before they can challenge him.
Gideon brings an exhausted Liliana to the Weatherlight. The meeting is uneasy because her reputation travels ahead of her, but Belzenlok's Cabal threatens everyone Jhoira hopes the ship can protect. Their objectives align: find the intelligence required to enter the Cabal's stronghold, keep Liliana alive long enough to face her demon and turn a symbolic vessel into a functioning resistance.
Ajani leaves to seek support elsewhere, trusting the others to finish the Dominaria campaign. The choice prevents the Weatherlight from becoming a reunion staged only for sentiment. Old heroes cannot solve every front themselves. Jhoira's new crew, Gideon's damaged Gatewatch and Liliana's private vendetta must learn to operate as one expedition before Belzenlok's rewritten history becomes permanent.
Open dedicated chapter -
The Puzzle at Tolaria
A search for Cabal intelligence leads to Tolaria West, where Teferi must decide whether repairing Dominaria includes reclaiming his own power.
The route to Belzenlok runs through Tolaria West, where Cabal interference has left fear and missing information behind. The academy preserves formidable knowledge, but knowledge without trust can be isolated and manipulated. The Weatherlight crew must separate useful evidence from traps while proving that their famous vessel is more than another demand placed on the school.
Nearby, Teferi works with his daughter Niambi on a problem rooted in his oldest failure. He phased Zhalfir out of time to protect it and has never found a way to bring it back. Recovering an artifact from a monument to Urza offers another attempt, though the puzzle carries Urza's familiar habit of turning cooperation into a test only he fully understood.
Jhoira recognises the trick in the monument and helps Teferi reach what was hidden. Their reunion exposes the difference between regret and repair. Teferi has built a family and a life after surrendering his spark; taking power back could reopen every temptation that once made him careless. Yet refusing all power would not restore Zhalfir either. The Weatherlight leaves Tolaria with intelligence and with a question Teferi can no longer postpone.
Urza's monument cannot be solved by Teferi simply calculating the pattern correctly. Niambi derives the moving blocks' mathematics, Jhoira notices an additional concealed variable, and Liliana detects and counts the trapped ghosts that distort the apparent sequence. Teferi follows the changing path as his companions hold off the attacking automatons. The recovered artifact is the result of several kinds of knowledge working together, not one prodigy finally outsmarting his former teacher.
Open dedicated chapter -
The Life Teferi Built
A remembered caravan rescue explains how Teferi met Subira; the spark Jhoira preserved offers a later choice, after he has built a family.
The caravan episode belongs to Teferi's earlier life without a spark, before his marriage to Subira and the birth of Niambi. Accused of killing Maket, he meets a caravan leader willing to question the accusation rather than accept the feared name behind it.
A magically raised sandstorm endangers the camp. Teferi's time magic gives him enough space to weaken it, leaving him exhausted. Kwende's plan to take vengeance for Zhalfir unravels when Subira confronts the danger he knowingly brought to her people and helps Teferi escape.
Their shared life follows that meeting, not the other way around. Later, Jhoira offers the spark she preserved in a powerstone. Teferi accepts because refusing a means to repair Zhalfir would also be selfish. Returning power does not erase the family and judgement he gained while living without it.
The decision about his spark becomes explicit later, on the Weatherlight above Yavimaya. Jhoira reveals Teferi's spark preserved inside a powerstone in her pendant, not inside the earlier monument puzzle. He initially declines to answer and eventually accepts after considering Zhalfir, Bolas and the responsibility he still bears. Receiving the stone does not recover Zhalfir: that distinct restoration still lies in the future.
Open dedicated chapter -
The Teacher Behind Mother Luti
Chandra searches Dominaria for Jaya Ballard and discovers that the patient mentor she left behind has been the legend all along.
Chandra comes to Dominaria believing that greater firepower will fix the failure of Amonkhet. If she can find Jaya Ballard, the most famous pyromancer in the stories that shaped her, perhaps technique can turn anger into certainty. The search carries her through unfamiliar lands and repeats an old mistake: she imagines a teacher as a shortcut to becoming somebody else.
The answer has been close for years. Mother Luti, the patient figure from Keral Keep, reveals herself as Jaya. The disguise allowed her to teach without letting reputation dominate every lesson. Chandra feels deceived, but the revelation also exposes what she overlooked. Jaya has already been training her whenever she encouraged discipline, observation and responsibility instead of spectacle.
Jaya refuses to hand over a secret that makes power safe. Control is not a phrase or a larger flame; it is the practice of understanding why fire is being used and what remains after it burns. Chandra must unlearn the belief that strength can outrun grief. Her route toward the Weatherlight therefore begins not with a new spell, but with a more honest reason to return.
Chandra's resentment exposes a double standard. She repeatedly discounted Mother Luti's patient instruction yet sought Jaya Ballard as if a renowned name could offer a technique that the old woman lacked. They are the same teacher, and Jaya had already challenged her impatience at Keral Keep. Learning whose advice she ignored forces Chandra to change how she listens before she can use fire responsibly.
Open dedicated chapter -
The Sylex Beneath Yavimaya
Karn's buried weapon and Multani's anger force Chandra to prove that restraint can solve what raw power would only deepen.
Karn enters Yavimaya searching for the Golgothian Sylex, the weapon Urza once used to end the Brothers' War at catastrophic cost. His objective is New Phyrexia. If the plane cannot be healed, he intends to carry destruction into its heart. The plan is understandable precisely because it is terrifying: Karn is preparing to answer one inherited apocalypse with the instrument of another.
Multani attacks when the forest reads the excavation and gathered machines as a renewed violation. Fighting the maro-sorcerer would confirm every fear Yavimaya has learned from artificers. Chandra instead remembers Nissa's approach and reaches for communication before conquest. The pyromancer who came seeking more force succeeds by refusing to make force her first language.
The confrontation settles without turning the forest into another battlefield. Karn recovers the Sylex, Jaya sees that Chandra is ready to train with greater purpose, and the Weatherlight gathers allies whose plans extend far beyond Belzenlok. The chapter quietly assembles the next era: the answer to Bolas is forming, while Karn's answer to Phyrexia is already waiting inside the ship.
A separate reunion on the Weatherlight changes the threat the group faces. Jace unexpectedly planeswalks aboard the moving ship after tracing its unusual aether signature and the intersecting traces of his friends. He warns Gideon and the others that Bolas is preparing a trap for planeswalkers. His return follows the early report that he was missing and precedes the Urborg assault; it is not part of Karn's separate effort to recover the Sylex.
Open dedicated chapter -
A Family Grows on Deck
Slimefoot's quiet life aboard the Weatherlight shows that the ship's real restoration happens through care, not legend.
Between missions, the Weatherlight becomes a home. Its newest and strangest resident is Slimefoot, a saproling who tends the living growth around the ship and produces small sprouts of its own. The crew initially treats the discovery as a problem to classify. Slimefoot experiences it as family, a distinction that reveals how quickly practical people can overlook the lives created by their solutions.
The sprouts turn routine travel into responsibility. Crew members who joined for heritage, revenge or adventure now share food, space and concern for beings who cannot contribute to the campaign in obvious ways. These domestic negotiations are not interruptions to the heroic story. They are evidence that the vessel is becoming worth defending rather than merely useful in a fight.
Jhoira's project succeeds most clearly here. The old Weatherlight was remembered through world-saving deeds; the new one earns meaning through daily choices that no monument records. By the time the ship turns toward Urborg, its passengers are no longer a collection of specialists. They are a crew capable of risking themselves for one another because they have learned how to live together first.
Slimefoot's story is a real sequence of encounters, not just a metaphor for the crew. Arvad and Tiana find the saproling and its sprouts near the engine; Raff helps identify their stowaway. Slimefoot then explores the ship, encounters Gideon and Teferi, helps Jhoira at her worktable, and listens to Karn's worries about destroying New Phyrexia with the Sylex. Its children and curiosity place ordinary care alongside the ship's preparations for war.
Open dedicated chapter -
The Road into Urborg
The Weatherlight joins Urborg's resistance while a small infiltration team enters the Stronghold under the cover of Liliana's dead.
Urborg reveals what Belzenlok's rule costs on the ground. The Cabal's Stronghold is protected not only by monsters and walls but by the belief that resistance has already failed. Radha and local fighters preserve another truth through action. When the Weatherlight arrives, it joins an existing struggle rather than claiming to begin one.
The attack divides according to strength. Jhoira and the crew keep the ship alive above the battlefield. Liliana raises fallen panther warriors to create a diversion, a morally uneasy use of necromancy aimed at the regime that killed them. Teferi bends time long enough for Gideon and Chandra to cross the Stronghold's defences in disguise. Karn brings the weight needed when secrecy ends.
Each role depends on another. No single Planeswalker can simply challenge Belzenlok at the gate, and the famous ship cannot win by symbolism. The plan works because resistance fighters, new crew and old heroes accept partial tasks inside a shared objective. That coordination is the answer to the demon's propaganda: history is not made by the one name carved above the door.
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Keep exploring
Connected People and Places
Characters
- Liliana VessNecromancer, survivor and author of her own debts
- Gideon JuraShield-mage, founder and the promise at the heart of the Gatewatch
- Chandra NalaarPyromancer, rebel and emotional heart of the Gatewatch
- Teferi AkosaTime mage, teacher and guardian of Zhalfir
- KarnSilver golem, creator and keeper of a difficult legacy
- Jaya BallardTask mage, pyromancer and mentor who never mistook age for obedience
- Ajani GoldmaneLeonin healer, mentor and survivor of Phyrexian control