You walk carefully down the stone corridor.  Each step is an inevitable shock of pain, demanded by the sores and contusions on your feet.  You have waited patiently as the old man asked of you, but today you are exhausted and hope to hear a story.  You make it to Issar Roon’s door without any excessive cries of pain and consider your journey a success.  You grab the handle and open the door.

It is good to see you again.  Have you been working hard?  Well, no matter.  My study is not a place to talk of such labors.  Sit on the floor and get off of those horrid feet of yours.

A low chuckle comes from the old man, but you are unable to understand his joke.  At least he’s in a positive mood today.

Perhaps you noticed a bit of information I left out within my last tale?  I bet you have been waiting like a Stoic Roc to hear about Karn’s plane.

You do your best to erase the evident confusion on your face, but are unsuccessful.  A tired sigh comes from the old man’s mouth.

No?  It seems I still have a lot to teach you.  It would be a gift to this old man if he could choose his pupil.

The old man says the last sentence to no one, almost as if he expected the very air to listen to him.  Surprisingly, the old man does not wait for an answer and begins to pull a volume from the middle of the stack closest to him.  Unlike his scroll of Phyrexia, this book is new and shows no signs of age.  The cover has a dull grey tone to it, and you are about to turn your attention elsewhere when a glimmer catches your eye.  You watch carefully as the old man opens the volume on Argentum.  Sure enough, there is a shimmer around the cover as it hits the correct angle.

Argentum was an artificial plane, not unlike that of Phyrexia before Yawgmoth corrupted it.  Its creator, Karn, had no intention of populating the plane with life, and as such, refrained from creating the necessities one would need to survive.  It was to be Karn’s refuge, a place of respite from the unhappiness he perceived within other planes.  Of course, the flow of time always seems to manipulate people’s intentions, even those of planeswalkers, for its own ends.

After the incident on Dominaria, Karn brought the Mirari back to Argentum to prevent further trouble.  He gave the former probe a golem body and sentience so that it could watch over the plane during Karn’s absence.  It was this new sentience, called Memnarch, that would transform Argentum from Karn’s sanctuary into a living plane.

Curious as to why the servant of Karn would do such a thing you listen attentively and forget the pain on the soles of your feet.

I preface the rest of my story by stating a simple fact.  You should not think ill of Memnarch, for he was like a child, naive.  He was corrupted by forces he could not understand or predict.

A bit confused, you open your mouth to speak.  The old man waves it closed with a hand as he continues his story.

Karn had created Memnarch as a fully intelligent being.  He, if it had had a gender, could learn, reason, and compete with the more intelligent races of the Multiverse.  Sadly, Karn had not anticipated a sinister threat attacking his faithful servant so quickly or subtly.

Shortly after Karn’s departure from Argentum, Memnarch set about exploring and understanding his creator’s plane.  He understood the difference between Argentum and planes like Dominaria, and he was precariously close to replicating the rules by which Karn had created the plane.

It was during this time that a strange substance appeared before Memnarch, and lured him to his eventual demise.  The substance, an oil of sorts, was a tiny blight upon Karn’s plane.  The Warden would have none of it, and made sure to remove it.  He was unaware of the oil’s true origins, or the fact that it had infected his mind as soon as he touched it.

Under the influence of the corruption, Memnarch set about changing Argentum into his own ideal plane.  To start, the Warden changed the plane’s name to Mirrodin for reasons unknown to all, including himself.  He then set about pulling living entities from nearby planes, populating Mirrodin.  The Warden changed the landscape of Mirrodin for the purpose of creating an environment within which they could live.  He was helped along his quest by two strange occurrences.

The first was the appearance of another unusual organism, this one called mycosynth.  Mycosynth is a very odd organism indeed.  Its origins lie within the fungal growths that you often see on a dead tree.  Unlike those fungi, this one had evolved or been manipulated to feed on metal.  Perhaps feed is not the correct word.  You see, it would change the metal it touched into flesh and living tissue.  It could even reverse the process in a way, encouraging metal growth within living tissue.

The other perplexing event involved Mirrodin’s core.  In the very center of the plane’s hollow core, Karn had left a ball of pure mana.  It is unknown where or how he created such an anomaly, but the core was a perplexing puzzle to Memnarch.  Over time, it launched five moons into orbit around the plane, one for each color of mana.  These moons helped to encourage the new life on Mirrodin to flourish, and it quickly became disparate from Karn`s original vision.

The old man`s voice continues, droning about the changes to Mirrodin, and your mind begins to wander.  The words slip from your mind as soon as they enter, leaving no imprint behind.  Slowly, you fall into a deep slumber while the old man continues his tale.

This is a work of fiction based on the stories and entries provided by Wizards about some of the early characters. The author takes some liberty with the story for dramatic purposes. So the story portrayed here may not be the exact story according to Magic Canon. The author has found references and art to use in the following locations: Encyclopedia Phyrexianna and the MTG Salvation Wiki. Written by Brendan Weiskotten.