Avenger, Lion-Namer, Dragonslayer: The History of Dakkon Blackblade

Hello again!

Back when we first started getting details about Modern Horizons 2, you probably saw the armored figure pictured on the art for the draft and bundle boxes.

Between that and Mark Rosewater’s hint that we’d be seeing a planeswalker that has only before been depicted as a creature, many fans had a good guess just what character we’d be seeing.

Well, it was confirmed Thursday afternoon: Dakkon Blackblade is back after more than twenty years.

For those who are unfamiliar with Dakkon, you’ve probably still seen traces of his presence in recent sets: Dominaria specifically showed the return of Dakkon’s namesake Blackblade, which Gideon wielded in War of the Spark in an attempt to slay Nicol Bolas.

After all, the blade had already slain one Elder Dragon.

However, it has been quite a long time since Dakkon himself was depicted, and I’m expecting many to have little to no knowledge of him outside of ‘I know that name from somewhere‘. This isn’t meant to be a flex of ‘true fans’ knowing about more niche characters or anything like that, merely recognition that many people have started playing Magic in the last decade – or two decades – and if they haven’t delved into lore from before when they started, Dakkon might be unfamiliar to you.

So, I’ve decided to spend some time rambling about one of my favorite old-lore characters.

Dakkon of Corondor

Dakkon was originally born sometime before even the Brothers’ War which devastated Dominaria, though after the period where the Thran fell and Yawgmoth populated Old Phyrexia with the survivors of the Thran Civil War. A master blacksmith and warrior, one day Dakkon was visited by a planeswalker named Geyadrone Dihada, who offered to turn Dakkon himself into a planeswalker if he forged her a Black Blade, imbued with magics that would let the sword absorb the energies of those it slew. Supposedly working on the blade every day for ten years, the blade was cooled by slaying a slave with the blade after it was heated. Finally, the blade was complete.

And Dakkon, viewing his magnum opus, decided to test it out.

Making his name as Dakkon Blackblade for his feats in battle, Geyadrone revisted Dakkon and fulfilled her request by igniting Dakkon’s spark. However, immediately after she stabbed the Blackblade into Dakkon’s shadow, absorbing his soul but not his life. Dakkon was left to wander the plane, unsure why Geyadrone gave him such power only to make him her enemy.

(Even with later events, I am unsure if this specific action has ever actually been explained or if this plot-point was left hanging.)

Many years later, Dakkon found himself summoned to Corondor and bound to a young boy that he would later nickname ‘Son of Carth‘. Geyadrone had gone to war with the continent and a boy from the fallen kingdom of Carth had fallen into a prison under Geyadrone’s control, where a mad monk gave the Son of Carth access to the Amulet of Tu-Fi to use against Geyadrone. Using the Amulet, the Son of Carth was able to summon Dakkon to Corondor – and to Dominaria entirely, having originally been from elsewhere – and ensure that Dakkon would die if the Son of Carth would die. However, once Dakkon learned that Geyadrone was the Son of Carth’s enemy, the two found themselves working together to try and slay Geyadrone.

(A brief aside: funnily enough, the Amulet of Tu-Fi appears to entirely be a construct for the comic series. No cards bear the name ‘Tu-Fi’ – amulet or otherwise – and the amulet does not appear to return in any other story, on Dominaria or otherwise.)

Facing first a corrupted Force of Nature under Geyadrone’s control by the name of Sol’Kanar, then the Elder Dragons Piru and Chromium Rhuell when Sol’Kanar failed, the Son of Carth managed to steal back the Blackblade from Geyadrone while Dakkon banished Chromium and slew Piru with the Blackblade (which the Son of Carth had gotten back to its maker).

Unfortunately, Geyadrone revealed that the entire matter had been orchestrated from the start. Geyadrone had disguised as the monk and was the one to ‘give aid’ to the Son of Carth in that prison cell, giving him amulet to drag Dakkon to her. She even threw the elder dragons in his way – and made the Blackblade easy enough to steal back – in order to absorb the dragon’s power without putting herself in danger. Geyadrone easily defeated an attempt of Dakkon’s to strike her down after this reveal, marking him and saying he would serve her for all eternity.

At this point, for some reason Geyadrone did not immediately take control of her new servant, and afterwards Dakkon and the Son of Carth went to the continent of Terisiare, where the boy would later go on to found House Carthalion (inspired by Dakkon’s nickname for the boy, ‘Carth the Lion’).

(No, that is not the Blackblade Jared wields.)

Meanwhile, its assumed that Dakkon would at some point be summoned to serve Geyadrone following his time with the founder of the Carthalion line (or his descendants); however, a few thousand later years later both Geyadrone and Dakkon are seen participating in the Planeswalkers’ War that was unleashed on Corondor.

Unfortunately, with ARMADA’s later bankruptcy led to the cancellation of all their immediate projects, and the Planeswalkers’ War has not been depicted or elaborated on by later works, and thus Dakkon’s fate is uncertain. The Blackblade itself made more appearances – first appearing in the hands of Korlash during Future Sight, then again reappearing in Dominaria when it ended up in Gideon’s hands – but to this point we don’t know the whereabouts of its maker and original wielder.

Legends to Modern Horizons: 25 Years Later

Despite getting a comic expanding on his story – and how his story rippled out to touch over events through Dominaria’s history – Dakkon’s story was very-sparsely touched on in the actual cards. You can read an analysis of that comic here, but to sum the matter up: most of the history you read above did not actually appear in the cards or flavor text of the set Dakkon appeared in, but was instead expanded upon in this comic series.

Dakkon was first printed in the 1994 set Legends, the first set – as you might guess from the name – to introduce legendary cards. One of the sixty-one legends the set introduced, Dakkon premiered alongside creatures such as real-world allusions such as Nebuchadnezzar, vanilla legends such as Kasimir the Lone Wolf, and pivotal characters such as Nicol Bolas.

Dakkon had the luck to not only get his lore expanded in an original work but to also get an ability unlike eleven of the fifty-five legendary creatures – the other six legends being lands – but at this period the abilities did not care to try and map to what we’d think of as the color pie, let alone trying to map to a character’s actual lore. Dakkon scaling in strength with your land might be an allusion to the Blackblade’s ability to steal the energy of those it slays – notably, the Blackblade itself held such an ability when it received its own card in Dominaria, giving those it was equipped to +X/+X equal to your land count – but for a long period our only version of Dakkon was somewhat disconnected to the character’s actual abilities.

Then, twenty-seven years later, that finally changed.

To be honest? I don’t know if Dakkon’s loyalty abilities are any truer to what we could expect to be flavorful abilities, but ironically ‘has stats equal to land count’ has become iconic enough that its callback with Dakkon’s ETB ability is quite nice to see. Meanwhile, while Dakkon unfortunately cannot be used as your commander without invoking Rule 0, the appearance of a new Dakkon – and the fact he was illustrated by Richard Kane Ferguson, who did the art for the original Dakkon in Legends – is an all-around fun time.

As Urza to Yawgmoth, Dakkon to…

Meanwhile, as Dakkon’s history has mostly only appeared in a comic, we notably have never seen Geyadrone in a set…until perhaps Modern Horizons 2.

While we have only seen a handful of cards from MH2 so far, one of the cards shown on Thursday – also depicting art from RKF, in fact – shows Geyadrone has not been forgotten.

While it’s possible that the figure to the right of the card doesn’t depict Geyadrone, Dakkon does not possess notable history with any other humanoid figure other than the Son of Carth, and so it’s fair to expect this to be Geyadrone.

While it is possible this is just a shout-out to a pivotal figure from Dakkon’s history, a one-off reference, one of the three beings gracing the front of MH2’s draft boosters has been credited by the MTG wiki page for the set as Geyadrone Dihada.

While I cannot confirm where the declaration of identity came from – if it has been officially confirmed or if the person who added this booster art to the page assumed the identity – but considering this is the art we have of Geyadrone from the comics…

It is possible that with the return of Dakkon, we might also see his oldest nemesis get her own feature card in the next few days.

EDIT: In spite of my original thoughts, apparently Richard Kane Ferguson has illustrated cards more recently than I expected, so changed a reference to the last time he illustrated for Magic. Also, added a reference to Korlash, Heir of Blackblade, forgotten when the article was originally released.