Magic Untapped takes a look at one of the side characters that dates back all the way to the era of The Brothers' War, a dragon engine named Ramos.
Video transcript:
Welcome back to Who Is on Magic Untapped as we take a look at the origins and stories of characters from throughout the Magic: The Gathering multiverse. I’m Barry White.
In this episode, we are going to look at the story of a dragon engine from the era of The Brothers’ War on Dominaria. One that eventually found itself on a different plane altogether from the conflict, only to be seen by the natives as a god.
I’m talking about the dragon engine, Ramos.
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It’s late into the conflict between the artificer brothers, Urza and Mishra. Decades of warfare and scorched-earth policies have passed and the plane of Dominaria seems balanced on the head of a pin.
At one point through the generations-long war, one of Mishra’s best weapons, a dragon engine, fell into the hands of his brother. Urza repaired and reprogramed the metal beast and tasked it with protecting the people of the brothers’ home continent of Terisaire in the event the war would threaten life there.
In the final hours of the war, just before the catastrophic blast that would end the conflict and change not just Dominaria, but the multiverse itself forever, Ramos could sense something bad was about to happen. The immense sentient construct gathered as many humans and merfolk around the Terisaire city of Argoth that it could, then planeshifted back to its home plane of Phyrexia before accessing a planar portal there into the skies of another plane: Mercadia.
Unfortunately for the dragon engine, and those below, its descent to the ground in Mercadia was not a graceful one.
Ramos plummeted, landing violently on a Mercadian town, killing many.
Thankfully, the refugees harbored within the dragon engine were largely unscathed, if not a bit shaken.
Over time, they built up villages and cities in the area around where Ramos had crash-landed. Over many generations, these people began to revere the construct as a god – their savior and creator.
A millennia later, something new came through the very portal that Ramos had used and, just like the dragon engine, it crashed onto Mercadia’s surface. This time, though, it would be the plane-travelling Skyship Weatherlight and its crew.
In their time on the plane, the crew, which included the likes of Captain Sisay, Gerrard Capashen, the goblin, Squee, silver golem, Karn, and others, would come to learn of the myths surrounding the diety, Ramos, and the significance of the Bones of Ramos – items sacred to the people of Mercadia’s outlands. These items, in actuality, were some of the powerstones that gave the dragon engine life.
They were also parts of Urza’s Legacy – a collection of specific special artifacts designed to help in the war against the Phyrexians and its leader, Yawgmoth.
In order to recover them, a portion of the crew traveled to a holy place known as the Henge of Ramos in order to meet with this supposed “god.” Once there, the dragon engine greeted them and shared with them his history before granting them five of his powerstones – his “bones” as his worshippers called them.
Later, as the Weatherlight and its crew were attempting to escape Mercadia City, Ramos took to the sky and intercepted an airship hot in their pursuit and captained by the Phyrexian shapeshifter, Volrath, known as the Recreant, destroying the vessel. Its destruction would then trigger a revolution that would sweep the streets of Mercadia city, forever changing its future.
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As for Ramos, well it’s unlikely that the dragon engine would have survived such an encounter – especially being down five powerstones at the time.
Will we eventually know for sure? Maybe if the game ever returns to Mercadia, though that seems unlikely as in the 30-plus years Magic has been around, the game’s only really ever been there once – and that was some 25 years ago.
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Thank you very much for watching.
