Golgothian Sylex

The Golgothian Sylex (also known as the Argivian Sylex) was a massively destructive artifact created by the Thran or an earlier civilization. Urza used it to unleash the Sylex Blast and end the Brothers' War.

History

Discovery and use

The Sylex was accidentally netted by Yumok fishermen in 36 AR, and sent to Feldon in Terisia City for study. It was made of an unknown copper-like metal, roughly one foot in diameter, and described as a cross between a bowl mounted on a thick pedestal and a squat, wide-rimmed goblet. Its interior was carved with glyphs in several languages, including Thran, Fallaji, and Sumifan, making it a Rosetta Stone for the others.

Those glyphs named the item "sylex" and its origin "Golgoth". Feldon could not determine whether Golgoth was a location or a person responsible for the item's creation without sufficient context. He translated the Fallaji glyphs as:

A counterfeit Sylex named Ashnod's Cylix was said to have been created by Ashnod from the hollowed-out skull of the Qadir of the Fallaji Empire, whom she killed during the Fall of Kroog.. In truth, she had created it by more traditional means - coppersmithing. This cylix was used to fool the Brotherhood of Gix, who craved the real Sylex, even as Mishra himself refused it.

Shortly before the Fall of Terisia City to the siege by Mishra's forces, some of its population escaped under the cover of a sandstorm. Among them, Loran fled the city with the sylex, intending to keep it away from either of the warring brothers or anyone else who might be able to use it. She was later wounded, captured, and relieved of the sylex by Ashnod. During the Battle at Argoth, the final battle of the Brothers' War, Ashnod passed the sylex to Tawnos, who conveyed it to Urza. Having just engaged in a face-to-face duel with his brother, Urza had become acutely aware of the scope of the damage the war had done to the land itself. In remorse, he performed the ritual of the sylex, cutting his forehead and allowing his blood to fill the bowl, along with his grief and pain. He spoke the words of the inscription, and the sylex activated.

The ensuing Sylex Blast destroyed both armies and the island of Argoth, altered Dominaria's climate to begin the Ice Age, and caused the downfall of most of Dominaria's major civilizations. Caught at the epicenter of the blast, Urza's spark ignited.

Destruction?

The planeswalker Ravidel obtained the Golgothian Sylex through a bargain after a duel with Ash Warlord Embereck in a sunken city of Terisiare after the Ice Age. In Year One by the Reckoning of the Sages of Minorad, Ravidel appeared at Minorad and threatened to use the Sylex unless the five planeswalkers present — Liana of Minorad, Ash Warlord Embereck, Kristina of the Woods, Grenfell Mor of Golthonor and Altair of Coloni – promised not to interfere with his actions on Dominaria, to which they agreed. In the year 1281 by the Reckoning of the Sages of Minorad, Ravidel threatened to use it again, so Jared Carthalion and Kristina found the long-daggers that would destroy the Sylex. Jared used the daggers to make it vulnerable to a shatter spell, which finally destroyed the artifact.

There are some arguments for a theory that the destroyed Sylex wasn't the original.

Retrieval and certain destruction

During the events of Dominaria, sixty years after the Mending, Karn dug up the Sylex in Yavimaya, planning to use it to destroy New Phyrexia. He later investigated the Caves of Koilos to find information about its use and found a clay tablet that seemed to refer to the Sylex. He secreted the Sylex and the tablet away in a closet of Jhoira's on the Mana Rig in Shiv.

The Sylex was a pivotal object in the Second Phyrexian Invasion of Dominaria. Karn's plan to detonate it at New Phyrexia served as the strategic focus for the Phyrexian sleeper agents led by Sheoldred. During the assault on the Thran Mana Rig, the compleated Ajani crumpled the Sylex and took a disabled Karn to New Phyrexia.

A perfect replica

However, Saheeli Rai, another artificer planeswalker, made a perfect replica using the plans Karn had uncovered. Unfortunately, the mystery of the Sylex's activation was not mechanical — it was magical, a spell buried in history. To discover the secret of its detonation, Teferi Akosa travelled back in time with help of Saheeli's Temporal Anchor.

Teferi's spirit engaged in conversation with Urza after the Sylex Blast and learned that there was no unknown spell to discover, no secret mechanism by which Urza had activated his Sylex. The trigger to detonate the Sylex was not a spell or an artifact — it was a person, possibly of a certain desperate mindset.

The Temporal Anchor short-circuited directly after Teferi's discovery, rendering him unconscious in the stasis chamber. This left Kaya, who had been in contact with him, as the only person with an idea of how to operate the Sylex. However, she allowed Jace Beleren to telepathically extract this information from her. Traveling with a group of other planeswalkers, she took the duplicate Sylex to New Phyrexia to destroy Realmbreaker.

The averted blast

Traveling through the Mycosynth Gardens, the group reached the Seedcore and Realmbreaker, just as it established its connection to other planes through the Blind Eternities. Jace Beleren had become infected with phyresis and his compleation progressed steadily, but he staunchly held on to his sanity and insisted on being the one to detonate the Sylex. Jace prepared to activate the Sylex, but Kaya expressed concerns that the collateral damage of the Sylex blast had the potential to destroy one or more planes, or even the Eternities themselves. Jace acknowledged the possibility, but moved forward anyway, considering these planes the price for an un-compleated Multiverse. Kaya and Kaito attacked him to interrupt the blast, but Jace evaded them with illusions. He ran his thumbnail across his forehead, dripping the ichor from the wound into the bowl. He also poured his grief, fury, suffering, and sorrow-drenched agony of all Mirrodin, regret for the Multiverse, and the love of Vraska into the sylex. Although he believed the words to be unimportant, he spoke the bowl's inscription to complete the ritual.

As he was about to set off the Sylex, Elspeth, who had been fighting the compleated Ajani to buy them time, burst into the chamber, impaled Jace with her halo-infused blade, and seized the Sylex, planeswalking away. Possibly as a result of the replica sylex's detonation in the Blind Eternities, many planeswalkers lost their sparks in the aftermath of the Invasion.

Continuity issues

It was at first unclear if the object that Karn retrieved, originally referred to as "the Cylix," and said to be "created by Urza to help defeat the Phyrexians" was meant to be the same object as the Golgothian Sylex. The spelling of the name, the origin story, its location (Yavimaya instead of Argoth) and its survival seemed to contradict the established continuity. At some point between April 2019 and May 2020, the term "Cylix" in Wells' story was edited to "Sylex," the original spelling. Dominaria United also rectified the origin story, while the description of the object exactly matched the one from the Brothers' War novel.

According to Ethan Fleischer, it is "definitely the original Golgothian Sylex that Urza used to blow up Argoth. Or it's Ashnod's counterfeit Sylex. Or it was one that Urza made later." It "probably isn't the one that Ravidel used to threaten the Sages of Minorad".

The continuity issues were addressed in-world in the Magic Story for The Brothers' War:

Rules

The card Golgothian Sylex is one of the three released expansion hosers and has its rules section. It originally affected cards printed with the expansion symbol . However, modern rules policy states that all cards sharing a name are identical. Therefore, the expansion hosers have received errata to avoid referencing the expansion symbol and use the names of cards originally printed in those sets instead.

In-game references

Trivia

• “Golgotha” (“The Place of the Skull”) is the name for the hill upon which Jesus of Nazareth is reported to have been crucified.
  • There is no in-universe explanation for the word Golgotha.
• A kylix or cylix is a broad drinking cup common in Ancient Greece. Though the Golgothian Sylex has always been referred to as a "sylex" on the cards, a fictional spelling not used for the real-world object, it has occasionally been referred to with the spelling "cylix" in extended lore, and its art depicts a kylix. It is unclear why the alternate spelling is used, but it may be to differentiate the object from other "cylixes," which do appear on cards.

References