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Description
“P-I Dom Cycle 1:  Mana Margarita” (Tentative Title)

Synopsis:

When Half-Elf Planeswalker and Invasion-cycle refugee Jasmine Sparkfloe found herself washed up on an uncharted, unpopulated, volcanic tropical island not unlike the Caribbeans or Hawaii, she thought at first that she and this island were all that’s left of all of Dominaria.  Or all of the multiverse for that matter.

That thought is challenged by the arrival of several beings; including a child orphaned elf from Llanowar, the sole survivor of the Ilyssa clan named Knight, even a family of Kitsune from the recently-discovered—by Wizards of the Coast at least—plane of Kamigawa.  It was the foxfolk (called ‘Vintalli’ in Jasmine’s native tongue) that interested Jasmine, who desired to establish this ‘new’ creature race in Dominaria.  Meanwhile, Knight was interested in the island itself, and wants to start a vacation resort in this little piece of paradise.

A little piece of paradise that happens to be in a route between mainland Dominaria and the continent of Ortaria, the same land of the Odyssey and Onslaught blocks!  This means that two groups will be showing up and possibly clashing over this island:  The Cabal who wants to establish the trade route, and the Order who wanted to keep the Cabal at bay.

Both side give problems:  The Cabal is run by Knight Ilyssa’s bitter rival, their Patriarch; originally named Virot Maglan, sole surviving member of his own clan; only because he killed off the rest of both Maglan and Ilyssa clans.  And the Order has a bad habit with their heavy-handed tactics; they tend to destroy what they try to defend against.

Will Jasmine and company lose their island home when the two warring factions fight over the new island they discovered?

This will actually be the first of a series of stories with Jasmine Sparkfloe, my planeswalking femme fatale, who’s eventful life will lead her in various locations and situations, including the possibility of Modern Day Earth!

----------------------------

The first thing she was aware of is the sand all over her body, from her face across her chest, down her legs, and to her feet.  It took her a while for her to realize that she was face down on the beach she washed ashore upon.  This realization came when the umpteenth eleventh wave of ocean crashed over her back.  Salt water on a raw back can wake up anybody.

Even planeswalkers.

Her name is Jasmine Sparkfloe.  Half-elf Daughter of an Fyndhornian elf and a barbarian who hailed from Keld.  Ascended at her thirteenth summer after falling off a tree.  She was mentored by Freyalise during her early teenage years, and learned how to use her gifts of manipulating mana at the Tolarian Academy; being one of the few people there who knew that Master Malzra was really Ursa, the Great Artificer and the most known planeswalker of all.  (He was still a geek who didn’t know a student with a crush even if she fluttered her eyes at him.  And she’ll tell anyone that she tried.)

During the Invasion of the Phyrexians, Jasmine was among those charged with defending the less powered folk in the academy from Yawgmoth’s monstrosities, which she did with a passion inherit with her predominantly Red magical prowess.  Her fiery and passionate nature was closer to her father than her more spiritual and contemplative mother.

Jasmine fought well.  Up to the point when Urza detonated the biggest of his trademark planes-shattering bombs.  It was a bomb all who survived wished to never experience again.  It even paled the bomb that in play during the battle between Urza and his brother, Mishra.  It was even enough to actually kill Urza, the majority of the heroic crew of the Weatherlight, the entirety of Phyrexia, a good chunk of Rath, and heavens knows what parts of Dominaria were part of the casualties as well.

It was obvious to Jasmine Sparkfloe that she was a bit too close to that blast herself.

Jasmine wiggled each of her four limbs to check to check that, to her surprise, that she was still in one peace.  However, the next wave of ocean crashing onto on her made her realize that should move further inland before finding out that she still has all her fingers and toes.

The awareness of her body didn’t come with movement.  It took her some time to push herself from the beach and stand up; five waves of ocean on sore back were counted as she was doing this.  She managed to take about a dozen steps into the beach and out of the ocean’s reach before falling back down to her knees.

Jasmine has seen better days, that’s for certain.  Her purple robe was shredded into only strips of cloth that would fall off her body at any second.  Her hair was matted to her face by salt water, smoke particles, and stuff she doesn’t want to know about.  She pulled back some stray strands behind one of her sharp-pointed half-elven ears.  The exposed skin was reddened, windburned and raw with the various elements it was exposed to.

Yet her eyes still glowed with an inner fire.  The windows of her soul shone with the light of her planeswalker spark so much that the pupils cannot be seen.

“It’s going to take more than all of Phyrexia and one of Urza’s famous megabombs to kill me off,” she muttered to herself.  She knew she was talking to nobody; but talking to oneself, as unnerving as it can get at times, has proven to be a harmless sign of a planeswalker’s madness, and all who know of Jasmine are grateful of this being her sole sign of such.  “Ugh, if only I wasn’t do damned sore.  And I must look like something a Lhurogoyf dragged in.  But I live, that should count for something, and . . . where am I?”

She found herself washed ashore onto a tropical island, unspoilt and presumably undiscovered until right now.  An infinite splash of color laid before her, a lush grassland with various flowers never seen before, tall palm trees sporting various fruit, and off in the distance an active volcano oozing out a river of molten lava that snaked down the mountain and into the sea off to her left.  The sound of the hot rock flow and the sizzling of magma meeting sea water was just audible over the ocean waves from where she stood.  The area where the lava flow ends is enveloped by mist and vapor the float up into the sky above and returned to the lava-rich soil as rain.  Surrounding the island is a barrier reef that pokes out of the water with every other wave.

“Well, at least some of these fruits seem edible,” Jasmine said.  She then closed her eyes and started to see with her mind.  Having seen the island in color, she now wanted to take stock of the island in it’s mana.

It didn’t look promising.  There was just enough mana from three colors—Red from the volcano, Green from the trees and vegetation, and Blue from the flowing water and reef—for her to live rather comfortably in this island once the bare necessities were taken care of.  But there was barely a trace of White and Black here.

Jasmine’s stomach rumbled a bit, breaking her concentration.  She drew a tiny amount of mana that was floating around her and rolled it into a ball with her fingers.  She looked up at one of the tall palm trees and found coconuts ripening on it.  With an upward swing, Jasmine threw the ball of magical energy toward the tree, severing one of the coconuts from it’s single cord connecting it from the tree.  The coconut fell to earth with a crash of leaves and a thud as it landed in a bush.  The impact scattered two multicolored birds and a lizard.  The two strange yet elegant birds voiced their displeasure with loud unusual cries as they flapped their beautiful wings to safety.  The lizard only stuck out his tongue at the newcomer and walk off.

She reached into the bush, picked up the coconut, and found a fallen log in the sand to sit against.  She drew another tiny bit of mana and this time focused it at the tip of her finger.  Placing the finger against the coconut’s shell, it acted like a drill, boring a hole into it.  Once the mana pushed through, Jasmine was able to drink her fill of the milk inside the coconut.

Where she sat and drank, she got a look outside the island, and it really made her appreciate finding this island.  The sky is overcast, thick with dark clouds that blot out the sky in all directions, and only the presence of very muted light tell that it’s actually daytime.  Being that she’s in a volcanic island, the air is summertime hot to Jasmine, hot enough to just discard these rags covering her body—“Later!!”—but she had seen enough weather to consider what was on the horizon:  A cold winter storm.  Perhaps the return of the Ice Age.  And if that bomb Urza set off was any indication, she wouldn’t be surprised if Dominaria did indeed go into a second Ice Age.  The sea around this island may freeze solid, even though the volcano will ensure a local topical environment.

She closed her eyes to see in mana again.  This time she reached outward with her mind, trying to see as far as she could in all directions.  She looked for other sources of mana, any shred of land, in any and all directions.

There was no signs of land within what she considered to be a day’s walking distance in all directions.  In fact, the island’s amount of blue mana, caused by the flowing ocean, stopped where the barrier reef stops.

She dared to push further to a two day’s distance.  Still no land.

She had to strain a lot to get to two and a half day’s distance before her head hurt enough to stop.

And still no land.

It wasn’t just the area she covered that disquieted her.  Even from those distances, if there was any bit of mana-producing land even a long way from where she focused at, Jasmine’s spark-enhanced senses would have picked it up.

She couldn’t.

There wasn’t a shred of land outside of this sole island for, as her muttering mouth guesstimated, five whole days of unimpeded walking in any direction.

“That’s roughly the size of the Mercadian planes,” Jasmine commented out loud as she downed the rest of the coconut milk.  “And I can’t sense any thing beyond that.  Oh, sweet Urza, is this sole island all that’s left of Dominaria?  Did our plane took itself with Phyrexia?”

Her lower lip quivered a bit at the prospect of being the only person left in the only scratch of land left in her home plane.  Even with the sound of her own voice, she’ll be quite lonely, and just being alone in even the most paradisaical of places like this tropical island wouldn’t be good to anyone’s mental health, even a planeswalker’s.  Assuming that what she feared was true, that this island and herself was all that survived the Invasion, what would she do?  Should she up and leave for a better plane?  She could do it, after all, she is a planeswalker.

All of the sudden Jasmine felt tired; with her stomach full her exhaustion returned.  “Oh dear,” she said out loud as she sank down until she laid prone under the log, “how long have I been swimming in that ocean?”  Sleep began to claim her again, and she began to dream.  Her dreams usually tend to be about of her childhood, of the times with a loving mother and a strong father.  She also dreamt of the times with Freyalise, learning the ways of Mana, and her guidance through some rather traumatic chapters in her life.  “Of course it’s traumatic, my dear,” Freyalise told her as her enhanced senses kept her from thinking straight, much less sleeping at night, “Not only did you leap so far up above your fellow humans as humans are above common slugs, but this happened to you before you could easily bear the transition.  I know, I’ve been there.”  Despite a terse tone of voice and a manner that came off as cool toward humans, Jasmine would always consider Freyalise as a compassionate figure, likened to an Aunt.  She even calls her as her Aunt.

There was another thought that echoed throughout her mind as she slept:  The affirmation by her Elven mother that everything happens for a reason, nothing occurs in a vacuum.  There was a reason Mama found herself lost in Keld when she met Papa.  There was a reason Jasmine found herself floating half a foot above the ground at the trunk of that tree, eyes shooting off beams of light.  And there was a reason she was sent here after one of Urza’s trademark bombs sent her flying head over heels to the far end of the plane.

“There has to be others,” Jasmine softly said before her voice finally fell into a soft snore, “there has to be....has to be...”

The rolling of the surf, and the flow of the lava into the sea, seemed more vivid to her while asleep.    In Jasmine’s mind, it was as if the island was welcoming her, desiring her company.  She didn’t want to refuse such company even if it was from inanimate objects, she wanted to stay, of course she will.  Even if there was only herself and the island, she’ll make this island her home.

The lizard who wagged his tongue at her earlier returned to find her asleep, half-eaten coconut by her side.  The lizard returned from the air on leathery wings that wasn’t apparent until now.  It landed next to the coconut and eyed the sleeping human, wondering if she’ll wake up anytime soon.  After a moment or two, the lizard returned to the coconut, gnawing at the hole with strong jaws and blowing heated air into the hole until it split in half.  The lizard took one of the halves and settled down next to the human, munching in contentment pausing only to feel the occasional stroke on his back or tail.

Description
“P-I Dom Cycle 1:  Mana Margarita” (Tentative Title)

Synopsis:

When Half-Elf Planeswalker and Invasion-cycle refugee Jasmine Sparkfloe found herself washed up on an uncharted, unpopulated, volcanic tropical island not unlike the Caribbeans or Hawaii, she thought at first that she and this island were all that’s left of all of Dominaria.  Or all of the multiverse for that matter.

That thought is challenged by the arrival of several beings; including a child orphaned elf from Llanowar, the sole survivor of the Ilyssa clan named Knight, even a family of Kitsune from the recently-discovered—by Wizards of the Coast at least—plane of Kamigawa.  It was the foxfolk (called ‘Vintalli’ in Jasmine’s native tongue) that interested Jasmine, who desired to establish this ‘new’ creature race in Dominaria.  Meanwhile, Knight was interested in the island itself, and wants to start a vacation resort in this little piece of paradise.

A little piece of paradise that happens to be in a route between mainland Dominaria and the continent of Ortaria, the same land of the Odyssey and Onslaught blocks!  This means that two groups will be showing up and possibly clashing over this island:  The Cabal who wants to establish the trade route, and the Order who wanted to keep the Cabal at bay.

Both side give problems:  The Cabal is run by Knight Ilyssa’s bitter rival, their Patriarch; originally named Virot Maglan, sole surviving member of his own clan; only because he killed off the rest of both Maglan and Ilyssa clans.  And the Order has a bad habit with their heavy-handed tactics; they tend to destroy what they try to defend against.

Will Jasmine and company lose their island home when the two warring factions fight over the new island they discovered?

This will actually be the first of a series of stories with Jasmine Sparkfloe, my planeswalking femme fatale, who’s eventful life will lead her in various locations and situations, including the possibility of Modern Day Earth!

----------------------------

The first thing she was aware of is the sand all over her body, from her face across her chest, down her legs, and to her feet.  It took her a while for her to realize that she was face down on the beach she washed ashore upon.  This realization came when the umpteenth eleventh wave of ocean crashed over her back.  Salt water on a raw back can wake up anybody.

Even planeswalkers.

Her name is Jasmine Sparkfloe.  Half-elf Daughter of an Fyndhornian elf and a barbarian who hailed from Keld.  Ascended at her thirteenth summer after falling off a tree.  She was mentored by Freyalise during her early teenage years, and learned how to use her gifts of manipulating mana at the Tolarian Academy; being one of the few people there who knew that Master Malzra was really Ursa, the Great Artificer and the most known planeswalker of all.  (He was still a geek who didn’t know a student with a crush even if she fluttered her eyes at him.  And she’ll tell anyone that she tried.)

During the Invasion of the Phyrexians, Jasmine was among those charged with defending the less powered folk in the academy from Yawgmoth’s monstrosities, which she did with a passion inherit with her predominantly Red magical prowess.  Her fiery and passionate nature was closer to her father than her more spiritual and contemplative mother.

Jasmine fought well.  Up to the point when Urza detonated the biggest of his trademark planes-shattering bombs.  It was a bomb all who survived wished to never experience again.  It even paled the bomb that in play during the battle between Urza and his brother, Mishra.  It was even enough to actually kill Urza, the majority of the heroic crew of the Weatherlight, the entirety of Phyrexia, a good chunk of Rath, and heavens knows what parts of Dominaria were part of the casualties as well.

It was obvious to Jasmine Sparkfloe that she was a bit too close to that blast herself.

Jasmine wiggled each of her four limbs to check to check that, to her surprise, that she was still in one peace.  However, the next wave of ocean crashing onto on her made her realize that should move further inland before finding out that she still has all her fingers and toes.

The awareness of her body didn’t come with movement.  It took her some time to push herself from the beach and stand up; five waves of ocean on sore back were counted as she was doing this.  She managed to take about a dozen steps into the beach and out of the ocean’s reach before falling back down to her knees.

Jasmine has seen better days, that’s for certain.  Her purple robe was shredded into only strips of cloth that would fall off her body at any second.  Her hair was matted to her face by salt water, smoke particles, and stuff she doesn’t want to know about.  She pulled back some stray strands behind one of her sharp-pointed half-elven ears.  The exposed skin was reddened, windburned and raw with the various elements it was exposed to.

Yet her eyes still glowed with an inner fire.  The windows of her soul shone with the light of her planeswalker spark so much that the pupils cannot be seen.

“It’s going to take more than all of Phyrexia and one of Urza’s famous megabombs to kill me off,” she muttered to herself.  She knew she was talking to nobody; but talking to oneself, as unnerving as it can get at times, has proven to be a harmless sign of a planeswalker’s madness, and all who know of Jasmine are grateful of this being her sole sign of such.  “Ugh, if only I wasn’t do damned sore.  And I must look like something a Lhurogoyf dragged in.  But I live, that should count for something, and . . . where am I?”

She found herself washed ashore onto a tropical island, unspoilt and presumably undiscovered until right now.  An infinite splash of color laid before her, a lush grassland with various flowers never seen before, tall palm trees sporting various fruit, and off in the distance an active volcano oozing out a river of molten lava that snaked down the mountain and into the sea off to her left.  The sound of the hot rock flow and the sizzling of magma meeting sea water was just audible over the ocean waves from where she stood.  The area where the lava flow ends is enveloped by mist and vapor the float up into the sky above and returned to the lava-rich soil as rain.  Surrounding the island is a barrier reef that pokes out of the water with every other wave.

“Well, at least some of these fruits seem edible,” Jasmine said.  She then closed her eyes and started to see with her mind.  Having seen the island in color, she now wanted to take stock of the island in it’s mana.

It didn’t look promising.  There was just enough mana from three colors—Red from the volcano, Green from the trees and vegetation, and Blue from the flowing water and reef—for her to live rather comfortably in this island once the bare necessities were taken care of.  But there was barely a trace of White and Black here.

Jasmine’s stomach rumbled a bit, breaking her concentration.  She drew a tiny amount of mana that was floating around her and rolled it into a ball with her fingers.  She looked up at one of the tall palm trees and found coconuts ripening on it.  With an upward swing, Jasmine threw the ball of magical energy toward the tree, severing one of the coconuts from it’s single cord connecting it from the tree.  The coconut fell to earth with a crash of leaves and a thud as it landed in a bush.  The impact scattered two multicolored birds and a lizard.  The two strange yet elegant birds voiced their displeasure with loud unusual cries as they flapped their beautiful wings to safety.  The lizard only stuck out his tongue at the newcomer and walk off.

She reached into the bush, picked up the coconut, and found a fallen log in the sand to sit against.  She drew another tiny bit of mana and this time focused it at the tip of her finger.  Placing the finger against the coconut’s shell, it acted like a drill, boring a hole into it.  Once the mana pushed through, Jasmine was able to drink her fill of the milk inside the coconut.

Where she sat and drank, she got a look outside the island, and it really made her appreciate finding this island.  The sky is overcast, thick with dark clouds that blot out the sky in all directions, and only the presence of very muted light tell that it’s actually daytime.  Being that she’s in a volcanic island, the air is summertime hot to Jasmine, hot enough to just discard these rags covering her body—“Later!!”—but she had seen enough weather to consider what was on the horizon:  A cold winter storm.  Perhaps the return of the Ice Age.  And if that bomb Urza set off was any indication, she wouldn’t be surprised if Dominaria did indeed go into a second Ice Age.  The sea around this island may freeze solid, even though the volcano will ensure a local topical environment.

She closed her eyes to see in mana again.  This time she reached outward with her mind, trying to see as far as she could in all directions.  She looked for other sources of mana, any shred of land, in any and all directions.

There was no signs of land within what she considered to be a day’s walking distance in all directions.  In fact, the island’s amount of blue mana, caused by the flowing ocean, stopped where the barrier reef stops.

She dared to push further to a two day’s distance.  Still no land.

She had to strain a lot to get to two and a half day’s distance before her head hurt enough to stop.

And still no land.

It wasn’t just the area she covered that disquieted her.  Even from those distances, if there was any bit of mana-producing land even a long way from where she focused at, Jasmine’s spark-enhanced senses would have picked it up.

She couldn’t.

There wasn’t a shred of land outside of this sole island for, as her muttering mouth guesstimated, five whole days of unimpeded walking in any direction.

“That’s roughly the size of the Mercadian planes,” Jasmine commented out loud as she downed the rest of the coconut milk.  “And I can’t sense any thing beyond that.  Oh, sweet Urza, is this sole island all that’s left of Dominaria?  Did our plane took itself with Phyrexia?”

Her lower lip quivered a bit at the prospect of being the only person left in the only scratch of land left in her home plane.  Even with the sound of her own voice, she’ll be quite lonely, and just being alone in even the most paradisaical of places like this tropical island wouldn’t be good to anyone’s mental health, even a planeswalker’s.  Assuming that what she feared was true, that this island and herself was all that survived the Invasion, what would she do?  Should she up and leave for a better plane?  She could do it, after all, she is a planeswalker.

All of the sudden Jasmine felt tired; with her stomach full her exhaustion returned.  “Oh dear,” she said out loud as she sank down until she laid prone under the log, “how long have I been swimming in that ocean?”  Sleep began to claim her again, and she began to dream.  Her dreams usually tend to be about of her childhood, of the times with a loving mother and a strong father.  She also dreamt of the times with Freyalise, learning the ways of Mana, and her guidance through some rather traumatic chapters in her life.  “Of course it’s traumatic, my dear,” Freyalise told her as her enhanced senses kept her from thinking straight, much less sleeping at night, “Not only did you leap so far up above your fellow humans as humans are above common slugs, but this happened to you before you could easily bear the transition.  I know, I’ve been there.”  Despite a terse tone of voice and a manner that came off as cool toward humans, Jasmine would always consider Freyalise as a compassionate figure, likened to an Aunt.  She even calls her as her Aunt.

There was another thought that echoed throughout her mind as she slept:  The affirmation by her Elven mother that everything happens for a reason, nothing occurs in a vacuum.  There was a reason Mama found herself lost in Keld when she met Papa.  There was a reason Jasmine found herself floating half a foot above the ground at the trunk of that tree, eyes shooting off beams of light.  And there was a reason she was sent here after one of Urza’s trademark bombs sent her flying head over heels to the far end of the plane.

“There has to be others,” Jasmine softly said before her voice finally fell into a soft snore, “there has to be....has to be...”

The rolling of the surf, and the flow of the lava into the sea, seemed more vivid to her while asleep.    In Jasmine’s mind, it was as if the island was welcoming her, desiring her company.  She didn’t want to refuse such company even if it was from inanimate objects, she wanted to stay, of course she will.  Even if there was only herself and the island, she’ll make this island her home.

The lizard who wagged his tongue at her earlier returned to find her asleep, half-eaten coconut by her side.  The lizard returned from the air on leathery wings that wasn’t apparent until now.  It landed next to the coconut and eyed the sleeping human, wondering if she’ll wake up anytime soon.  After a moment or two, the lizard returned to the coconut, gnawing at the hole with strong jaws and blowing heated air into the hole until it split in half.  The lizard took one of the halves and settled down next to the human, munching in contentment pausing only to feel the occasional stroke on his back or tail.