THREE ERAS, NOT ONE CONTINUOUS PRESENT
Tarkir: Power and Possible Histories
Narset questions war, Sidisi punishes dissent and Sorin finds a lost ally's grave. Separate glimpses of ancient and dragon-ruled Tarkir keep the changing history legible.
Why this story matters
The route in brief
Tarkir's changing history demands a little orientation before any account of its leaders can make sense. A khan in one present can be a servant or a memory in another. Similar names do not make every event part of one uninterrupted campaign.
The first three chapters remain in the original, dragonless present: Narset searches beyond the war her position requires, Sidisi answers disobedience with calculated cruelty, and Sorin finds Ugin dead. The final two chapters are contextual windows, first into the ancient past and then into the rewritten dragon-ruled present.
Those windows are comparisons, not memories all the characters share. Reading across them shows what power preserves and what it suppresses, while keeping a failed search for an ally distinct from the later history in which that ally survives.
Read in order or choose a turning point
Story Chapters
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Narset's search leaves the prescribed meditation
An escape to the archives and an assassination attempt deepen Narset's doubts about the conflict her people accept.
As Jeskai khan, Narset maintained a disciplined public appearance while privately questioning the war consuming her people. She left a decoy behind to study old records, looking for possibilities beyond the rivalries her followers treated as permanent.
Disowned Abzan orcs ambushed her guard Shintan. Narset helped defeat them, and their testimony named Taigam as the employer. They claimed retaliation for an assassination attempt, but Narset had ordered no such attack.
The elders' readiness to dismiss the testimony did not answer her larger worry. Violence could be plotted by her own people as well as their enemies. She returned to solitary meditation seeking a different understanding, not a demonstrated cure for Tarkir or a victory over every opponent.
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Sidisi's rule leaves no safe form of protest
Jhinu's revenge uses an acolyte as a weapon; Sidisi survives and treats a quick execution as misplaced kindness.
Sidisi's missing crown became an excuse to demand results and punish a servant, Jhinu, for a false account of its recovery. Holding him while destroying his family made the consequences of failure deliberately larger than his own life.
New demands for soldiers drew even children into the Sultai's machinery. A young acolyte approached with a poisoned weapon, and Sidisi recognised a plot that had made the boy a disposable instrument. Jhinu's attempted revenge ended with the acolyte dead.
Sidisi killed Jhinu quickly rather than prolonging his suffering, then regretted the restraint as an error. Her meaning of mercy exposes the cruelty of the system she controls. Plans for an attack on Zurgo follow; the story does not show that later campaign completed.
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Sorin's search ends before the alliance can begin
In the original present, Ugin's frozen remains leave Sorin without the ally he sought against the freed Eldrazi.
Sorin came to Tarkir because the Eldrazi were loose and an old alliance needed another mind. Ugin's absence was not a small inconvenience: the vampire sought the dragon's understanding of a danger that could extend far beyond Zendikar.
A journey through Temur lands brought him to ice containing Ugin's remains. Sorin found no living presence to address and no obvious way to recover the ally he had expected. The long wait had already become a final silence.
He feared what the loss meant for Innistrad and the wider worlds. That fear is not evidence those worlds had already been consumed. This is the original timeline's failed search, not Sorin remembering two histories or finding the surviving Ugin of the rewritten present.
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Earlier: the clans survive beneath dragon tempests
Ancient Tarkir's five clans fight living broods while Ugin's magic sustains the storms that produce them.
More than a thousand years earlier, Tarkir's clans faced dragons as immediate threats rather than vanished models for their emblems. Ugin's magic gathered into tempests that produced distinct broods, binding the plane's skies to a powerful living source.
Abzan families built collective protection, Jeskai monks trained against aerial attackers and the Sultai spent undead bodies freely. Mardu warriors sought dangerous glory, while Temur whisperers helped communities survive the mountains. Yasova led those Temur as Dragonclaw.
These differences explain the world into which the later change of history would reach. They do not describe Narset ruling alongside ancient khans or Sorin's frozen discovery happening in the same period. Revering a dragon's qualities did not mean accepting its attacks.
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After the rewrite: protection has new owners
Kolaghan, Atarka and Dromoka impose different forms of dependence, while hidden traditions survive beneath their rule.
In the rewritten dragon-ruled present, strength no longer meant the same kind of authority for humanoid leaders. Kolaghan's followers organised around violent opportunity; Zurgo sounded her bell rather than ruling as the Mardu khan he had been elsewhere.
Atarka demanded food from hunters whose own survival depended on remaining useful. Shamans hid their elemental traditions after her purge. Under Dromoka, organised families received real protection, but ancestry worship was forbidden and could cost its practitioners their lives.
These are different systems of dependence, not interchangeable versions of benevolent guardianship. Anafenza's ghost and the surviving spirit speakers make the loss of older traditions visible. This contextual portrait belongs to the changed present, not a dragon invasion Narset witnesses during the earlier chapter.
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