The entirety of Oath of the Gatewatch is now available on the card image gallery, and with it, all of the newest cards to be created for our return to Zendikar have been revealed. That means it’s time for me to serve you another healthy portion of Okra-Twinkie-Tofu. Why? Because it does a body good!

For those of us who don’t know, what is O-T-T?

As explained by both the original Vorthos Matt and Creative Team member Doug before me, Okra-Twinkie-Tofu takes a look at some of the not-so-well-known words found gracing the faces of Magic cards and attempts to place them into one of three food types:

Original image found here.

Zendikar is filled with glorious morsels of delicious Magic flavor, so it's time to take a bite out of our newest plane of exploration and enjoy the flavorful snacks:

Salvo

Let’s kick things off with a very real word. Salvo is defined as a sudden, vigorous, or aggressive act or series of acts. Salvo lines up perfectly with the Surge mechanic found on this card.

Surge gets turned on after you or your teammate has already cast another spell earlier in the turn. Let’s say your teammate just launched a Lightning Bolt at an opponent’s creature. Following up with a discounted Boulder Salvo on another enemy dood can leave your opponents feeling like they are facing down a sudden barrage of destruction and death.

Unrelated to the name, my favorite thing about this card is the art. It’s one thing to use magic to sling a large rock at your opponent, but it’s another thing entirely to summon a gang of earth elementals and task them with hurling boulders at your opponent's face. There is an underlying beauty there I find amusing. I want to meet the mage/planeswalker responsible for inventing this spell.

Gnarlid

Totally and completely fake, Gnarlids are ugly, drooling, bear-dog-wolverine beasts inhabiting Zendikar.

According to The Art of Magic: The Gathering – Zendikar, Gnarlids “have an innate ability to grow larger by drawing on green mana in the environment, nearly doubling in size as well as ferocity.” Knowing that, it makes sense that this particular gnarlid would have a landfall trigger that causes it to grow.

I find the gnarlids to be gross. If the Eldrazi ate them all, they would not be missed.

Hedron

On Zendikar, hedron is a word used to name the large geometric structures left behind by the Planeswalker Nahiri.

In English, hedron is used in combination with other identifiers to form words that describe geometric solids having a specified number of plane faces.

For example, a dodecahedron would be a solid figure with twelve plane faces. If the hedrons of Zendikar followed this construction, they would be called octahedrons, as they are geometrical shapes with eight plane faces.

Original images found here and here.

Where Zendikar is different is that it completely drops the defining prefix and uses hedron to describe these strange floating stone shapes.

Benthic

This one is keeping it real. Benthic is the adjective version of the noun Benthos, an ecological term meaning, “the flora and fauna found on the bottom, or in the bottom sediments, of a sea, lake, or other body of water.”

Benthic Infiltrator is a slippery little aquatic drone of Ulamog, slithering through the muck along with other creatures on the deep.

I love the use of this word because the Eldrazi are Lovcraftian horrors too strange to fully comprehend. The deep sea is equally mysterious to us land dwellers, and so this name is playing into our already established understanding that deep waters hold all sorts of unknowable denizens.

Roil

Roil is interesting in that it is a real word that is given a new meaning in the context of Zendikar. Similar to how hedron is given a new meaning above, the roil refers to Zendikar’s inherent volatility—a natural defense system against the invading Eldrazi swarms.

The word roil’s definition is, “to make a liquid turbid or muddy by disturbing the sediment, or to move in a turbulent and swirling manner.” It can also be taken as a form of the word rile, which means, “to annoy or irritate.” Combining the two, Zendikar is irritated by the presence of the Eldrazi. It’s response is to undulate the land in turbulent whirlwinds of water, earth, and fire.

I am a fan of Creative’s decision to use this sort of naming convention for planar phenomena, as they are similar to how we would handle similar situations on earth. Creative could have easily given the roil a completely made-up name, but by using known words with already similar definitions, they are playing into a behavior humans would exhibit.

If our world were exhibiting similar behaviors, we would refer to it as “a turbulent roil” before we would use “The Rokaunse” or some equally strange and fantastical made-up word.

Murasa

A totally made-up word for one of the continents of Zendikar, Murasa is a vast island characterized by the towering cliffs that surround it.

Murasa is relatively isolated from the rest of Zendikar, resulting in many unique varieties of flora and fauna. The land itself is blanketed by a vast and deep jungle; Murasa is home to extremely tenacious growth and inhabitants.

Murasa is the homeland of the elf race, and it’s the refuge containing the largest surviving tribes in wake of the Eldrazi.

Abstruse

This word is one hundred percent real and is defined as, “difficult to understand, obscure.”

Fitting, no?

Let's break this card down.

You are walking along on Zendikar when you come across an Eldrazi of the Kozilek brood. Being the spunky red mage you are, you launch a Lightning Bolt at its face first and ask questions later. The Lightning Bolt seems to connect, but then you realize it struck some invisible wall of force instead, fracturing along unseen obstructions as the electrical energies break down into unknowable geometric designs. As if that were not already strange enough, the patterns begin to coalesce and form an Eldrazi Scion out of the displaced energy.

Umm . . . What!?

I would say this card is pretty abstruse, wouldn’t you?

Nirkana

Nirkana is a fake word used to name one of the five major vampire houses that dominated the former city of Malakir.

Again looking to the art book for information (this thing is an insane Vorthos resource), Nirkana’s bloodchief Tanali was killed in the Culling (a result of Ulamog’s awakening). The house fractured, some Nirkana vampires joined Kalitas, while others joined house Kalastria.

Nirkana is famous for its assassins, notorious for their stealth and skill. This particular card informs us of a potent poison employed by these deadly denizens of the shadows.

Obligator

Obligator is interesting in that it is a real word that has never been used in a card name before. Obligator is a derivative of the word obligate meaning, “to bind or compel, or to restrict to a particular function or mode of life.”

When this Eldrazi enters the battlefield, if enough colorless energy fueled its arrival, it will cause creatures to bend to its will, forcing upon them an obligation to fight for your side temporarily.

As a writer Vorthos, I am always on the lookout for new words and terms used in naming Magic cards, and I was excited to be reminded that even though there are well over fifteen thousand uniquely named Magic cards, there are still words out there waiting for their shot.

Fumarole

If I were to ask you to pick between fumarole and obligator as a word that has not seen print, I bet most of you would have said fumarole. I sure would have. This word has been used before on an Ice Age uncommon, but I still cannot believe someone knew to use it for this Oath of the Gatewatch rare.

A fumarole is an opening near a volcano through which hot sulfurous gasses emerge.

How on earth did the writer of this card know that? He or she must have been watching the Discovery Channel or been a geologist or something.

Anyway, we now know that the Elemental depicted on this card is an animated volcano vent that can unexpectedly spew sulfurous gasses at the enemy. Neat!

Sicilian Fumaroles, found here

Lithomancer

Lithomancer is a word made-up of very real roots, but it has a made-up definition. Traditionally, the suffix -mancer is used to define a person who practices a form of divination. The prefix that -mancer follows is meant to define what that individual uses to perform those divinations.

For example, pyromancer would be defined as “divination by use of fire or flames,” or, in other words, an oracle who stares into the fire and sees the future.

Fantasy literature has adopted this convention and applied the twist that a pyromancer is instead a powerful mage who can control fire or cast fire spells.

Lithomancer would normally mean, “divination by use of stones.” In Magic, the term is interpreted as a mage who is able to control stone or cast spells relating to stone.

Miasma

A real . . . ly disgusting-sounding real word. Miasma is defined as “a highly unpleasant or unhealthy smell or vapor” or “an oppressive or unpleasant atmosphere that surrounds or emanates from something.”

Rising Miasma can be interpreted a couple different ways. A rising miasma can be an increasingly unpleasant odor. That’s simple enough, and it will definitely cause creatures to become sick (-2/-2). Where this card’s name gets really clever is that “rising” has another definition in which it refers to something getting up or waking up. This second definition perfectly aligns with the awakened version of Rising Miasma—a cloud of nasty gas that “wakes up” and starts punching you in the face.

Pro tip: The next time you fart, be sure to comment on your freshly released miasma. If your stench doesn’t turn some heads, your intellectual prowess sure will.

Deepfathom

This is a fake word created by mashing to smaller words together that both have multiple meanings.

Naming Eldrazi is a difficult task. They are by definition meant to be unknowable entities impossible to understand. If that is the case, how can one properly name them? One trick I used while writing for this set was to take words that have multiple meanings that could not only apply to the creature at face value, but also retain an inherent level of mystery all Eldrazi should employ.

Deep can have numerous meanings, from the simple “far below the surface” to the more abstract “dark and intense.”

Mike swam deep under water.

“That song is deep, yo,” said Ant

Fathom also has numerous meanings, from “a measure of depth in water” to “understand something after much thought.”

Mike swam six fathoms under water.

“I cannot begin to fathom the meaning of this song,” said Ant

To skulk is to move stealthily or keep out of sight. Combine it all, and you get a Deepfathom Skulker. Is it a creature that just cruises the deep waters of Zendikar or an abstract horror slinking around in the recesses of your mind? It’s up for you to decide.

Of the cards I named in this set, this one is probably my favorite.

That’s all the time I have for today. I hope you enjoyed this installment of Okra-Twinkie-Tofu, and until next time, may all your experiences be filled with that Magic taste.

-Ant