Who Is: Thelon of Havenwood

Magic Untapped takes a look at Thelon of Havenwood – a character from Magic: The Gathering’s Fallen Empires days.

Magic Untapped takes a look at Thelon of Havenwood – a character from Magic: The Gathering’s Fallen Empires days.

Video Transcript:

Welcome back to Who Is on Magic Untapped as we take a look at the backstory and origins of Magic: The Gathering characters both popular and obscure.

Today, we take a look at Thelon of Havenwood – a character from Magic’s Fallen Empires days.

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Thelon of Havenwood was an elven druid from the southern Dominarian continent of Sarpardia who lived not too long after the plane-altering cylex blast that ended the catastrophic Brothers’ War on the other side of the globe.

As the plane’s climate was changing, food was becoming scarce.  As such, Thelon set out to find a new, sustainable food source so that he and the rest of the elves of Havenwood can survive.

He found that there was a type of fungus that not only grew but thrived under these increasingly harsh conditions.  Thelon channeled strong green mana into his discovery, forming a new breed the elves would come to call thallids.

Saved from starvation, the elves of Havenwood clamored around Thelon.  Those who followed him closest called themselves the Thelonite Order.  These druids and monks, not all of whom were elven, took Thelon’s miracle and furthered it, turning to blood sacrifices to strengthen and evolve Thelon’s thallids.  And the saprolings that grew off of these fungal creatures proved an excellent source for their rituals.

As the thallids matured and evolved, however, they became more and more sentient and aggressive.  Furthermore, there was a growing divide within Havenwood as to whether the thallids were to be respected as a new life form or if they should be regarded as nothing more than food and fodder.

Tensions rose to the point that a Thelonite druid ambushed and killed a master scout due to his opposing viewpoint – the murder instantly causing a major rift within the community and drawing the attention of everyone to the grizzly scene and away from tending to the growing population of increasingly agitated thallids.

The lapse in focus was enough for the thallids to run amok, nearly overrunning all of Havenwood in slightly more than a single day.

As for Thelon, it’s unknown whether or not he survived the thallid swarm.

What is known is that thousands of years after, during the time-anomaly events on Dominaria that occurred during Time Spiral, Thelon – along with many other of Dominaria’s historical figures – came into being, out of time and out of place, whereupon he witnessed the plane in a post-apocalyptic state.  He also noticed that, despite all of the time that had passed, his thallid creations still roamed the plane.

His futuristic stay would not last, however, as he was suddenly returned to his original timeline once the temporal rift he was tied to was closed.

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So far we’ve covered three of the main named characters in Magic’s Fallen Empires lore – Oliver Farrel, Tourach, and Thelon.  Join us next time as we take a look at one final such character: the merfolk goddess Svyelun.

I’m Barry White.  That you for watching.