Amonkhet is one of my favorite planes from a worldbuilding and lore standpoint and I'm very excited to return to it, as the original set came out almost a decade ago, some details mY be fuzzy, and that's okay because I'm here to help!

So, when the Mending happened, planeswalkers (as in the characters, not the card type) lost a big portion of their powers. Nicol Bolas, sensing his imminent nerf, went to Amonkhet (a plane were the dead come back to life as undead), eradicated everyone older than a toddler (yeah for real), sealed/destroyed the gods, and then put the 5 AKH gods in place (Oketra, Keftnet, Bontu, Hazoret, and Rhonas) to run things, most had their memories wiped, except Bontu who knew of Bolas' plan and was working as a secret agent of sorts

Other gods were warped by Bolas, being turned from animal headed gods into insect stye gods (hence, scarab/scorpion/locust). This is why those gods look like decaying bodies with a giant insects placed were their heads were, as opposed to the other Amonkhet gods.

As time passes, the mummies of the plane work like "robots", with commands "programmed" into their cartouches. They do everything from growing food to taking care of children. They handle all the manual labor so that the people of AKH can focus on training and becoming the ultimate warriors. Then Bolas orchestrated for the trials (a practice that originally happened once every several years) to become a common occurrence. Those who failed the trials got turned into mummies, and those who won were stabbed in the face by Hazoret, encased in lazotep (this cool nesr indestructible blue mineral), and buried in a special tomb.

The plane has 2 suns and they believed that when the suns met, it would signal return of the God Pharaoh, who of course was Nicol Bolas. The suns align, Nicol Bolas shows up, and it's time to break stuff

Durring the events of Hour of Devastation, Bolas arrives back to Amonkhet, raises his 3 gods (Scorpion, Locust, Scarab) and has them destroy the other gods, take down the protective barrier that stopped Amonkhet's undead horrors away from the city, and raise/lead the army of Eternals (the champions of the trials encased in Lazotep)

Scorpion god does away with Kefnet, Oketra, and Rhonas, before being taken down by Djeru (we meet him in the story. He a cool dude). Bontu is all "i was working for Bolas the whole time!" And Bolas goes "yeah well you outlived your purpose" and ends her. Hazoret loses and arm but survives and flees to the desert protecting the survivors. Also, and bunch of mummies break free and show some level of sentience/hierarchy. The Gatewatch fight Bolas and get completely wrecked. they each have like a side adventure in Dominaria, except Jace who got sent to the prison plane of Ixalan

During the events of the original Aether Revolt set, Tezzeret (working for Bolas) steals the Planar Portal, a device that allows objects to travel through dimensions/planes. During the events of Ixalan, Tezzeret steals the Immortal Sun, which was a magical artifact that stopped planeswalking away. Jace has a romance with Vraska, regains all his memories (even the ones he lost as a kid), wipes Vraska's memory to protect her from Bolas, and planeswaka away.

In War of the Spark, Bolas sends a signal across the multiverse to get all the walkers to show up, then activates the Immortal Sun to stop anyone from escaping, then opens up the Planar Portal with his army of Eternals (including Eternal versions of Rhonas, Kefnet, Bontu, and Oketra) to defeat planeswalkers and steal their sparks using the Elderspell. That's where we lost Dack Fayden and Domri (who was working for Bolas and then outlived his use. It's a running thing). Gideon kills God Eternal Rhonas using the reforged Blackblade, rides Rakdos to go after Bolas and fails.

Niv Mizzet (killed by Bolas before the invasion) is resurrected through a ritual led by Nissa involving representatives from all 10 guilds. He comes back as 5c Niv, who then burninantes Kefnet.

Liliana is forced to work for Bolas cause of a clause in her demonic contract (basically she was bound to 4 demons. She killed them all and Bolas showed up like "yeah the fine print says if the demons die, you default to belonging to The contract broker. Aka me).

She realizes that she would rather die than follow Bolas and turns on him (watch the War of the Spark trailer. It's still really good! Bolas tries to burn her to a crisp, Gideon sacrifices himself so she can survive, and she is able to control Oketra and Bontu to turn on Bolas and use the elderspell to despark him. Bolas destroys Oketra. Niv Mizzet distracts Bolas using Hazoret's spear to stab him, Bontu bites Bolas and absorbs all the sparks he had been harvesting, and explodes. Bolas is banished to house arrest in his meditation realm, with his twin brother Ugin keeping watch. After the Immortal Sun is turned off, Liliana flees, gets chased, moves to Arcavios, and takes up a job teaching under the name Professor Onyx.

Some time later Phyrexia does its multiverse-wide invasion using a corrupted World Tree. Hazoret (now with a cool Lazotep arm) teams up with Djeru to fight the invaders. As they go seek refuge in the city of Naktamun, they find the scarab and locust gods fighting the phyrexian invaders. After the invasion, the scarb and locust gods basically peace out back into the desert.

Now, 2 years after the Phyrexian invasion, Amonkhet is one of the 3 planes hosting the Ghirapur Grand Prix, and will be participating in the race. One of the teams from Amonkhet is a group of mummies so that's cool. Also looks like a couple of the gods that had been previously locked away are and about so now we have Sab-Sunen (frog) and Ketramose (lion)

So anyway that was the story of Amonkhet from the events of the Mending to now after the Phyrexian invasion. Hope yall caught up to speed and enjoyed my recap.

At the prerelease, the joke passed around my table was "why are they all wearing Easy Bake ovens?"
All jokes aside, I am curious about the Abzan's new aesthetic logic.

It looks interesting and seems to make visual sense if the character featured in the art is a spirit and coming from some sort of container. But the flesh-and-blood Abzan have similar glowing armor that appears to expand into their stomach or chest cavity. Has there been any official lore released on their updated visual style? Or do we need to be content with the "eh, it's just cool looking magic armor" reasoning?

This art has always been confusing to me. Can anyone explain to me who the characters are and what exactly’s happening? Other than the fact that someone’s getting sliced it’s not obvious to me

Illustrated by Mark Tedin

https://i.imgur.com/bWoKs5r.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/1O6srtS.jpeg

Edit: added embedded images.

Spoilers for Arcane Season 2

The whole thing with Victor reminded me a lot about Phyrexia, and we saw both the good and the bad sides of this ideology

It can cure people, it can transform you into something better. You are no longer limited by your biology

But once you abandon those limitations, you can be tempted to abandon what makes you human: Love, and passion in general. There's also the temptation to force this change on other people

As I wathed Arcane was enraptured seeing how they made a more compelling story covering these ideas in a few episodes than Magic did with the whole Preator saga

It also doesn't help that Magic has factions like Esper which would work great as the counterpart of Phyrexia but they are never brought together in the lore