Grixis

Grixis is a hellscape of decay and madness, a world founded on the axiom that power trumps death. Cut off from all sources of white and green mana, the remaining light and life of Grixis dwindle. The undead, mad necromancers, and demons all feed on the remaining scraps of life, exploiting the weak and enslaving the willful to realize their dark fantasies of power. Meanwhile, the free-willed living scar their own hearts and minds for the sake of survival under the plane's cruel conditions.

Humanity is nearly extinct here; the survivors cower in hermitages, defending their life essence from rampaging horrors. Rampant death magic and demonic influence make Grixis an abominable destination best avoided by most.

Grixis's landscape does not look or smell healthy. Its skies are purple-gray, stormy, and ominous. Lightning cracks the earth and thunder tolls doom. Its hills are drifts of bones, its valleys are decaying flesh, and its seas are murky, polluted deathtraps. Its cities are lairs of undead hordes and necromancer barons, and every parcel of land between them is a battlefield for their constant power struggles.

Grixis's terrain is a landscape founded on the oozing strata of bygone corpses. It is a prime world for necromancy. Corpses, whole or in part, are the standard currency among necromancers and demons.

Despite its intangibility, vis is the most important resource on Grixis. On many planes, vis may be taken for granted, but Grixis is a world of death and decay. Black mana and its allies, blue and red mana, are plentiful and relatively easy to come by, but the magic of life is not. The mana of Grixis is entropic and self-destructive Without white or green mana to protect and strengthen it, it dissipates over time. As a result, Grixis, a plane of death and decay, is itself dying. The only thing that extends its survival is vis.

Vis can be used to power necromancy and other magic that extends life - and unlife - against the overwhelming forces of decay that besiege the plane. Necromancers, horrors, and especially the undead crave vis to survive, and they reap it from corpses or vitals through any of several methods. Vis can be consumed directly from a living host by magical means, but is usually gathered through the blood or thoughts of the living. Spilled blood or a drained mind can be a powerful source of vis used for ritual magic.

What becomes of a world without new life? The dark wasteland of Grixis answers the question. Its denizens desperately cling to its remaining lifeforce. Without the communal forces of white and green to bring life and compassion, it's every ghoul, demon, and necromancer for themselves. Life's circle has become inverted in Grixis, the same old energy endlessly recycled and becoming more stagnant with each pass. Rather than a circle of life, Grixis seems to be in a downward spiral.

Most of the beings on Grixis are undead - or like demons and other horrors, neither living nor dead. Living beings, including humans, kathari, ogres, and some lowly vermin like insects, bats and rats, are called "vitals" by the sentient undead. Vitals are the living vessels of life-essence so coveted by the undead of Grixis. This life-essence, the animating principle that makes a being alive, is called vis. Vis suffuses all tissues and bodily fluids of a living creature, but is not itself physical material. Though it is also present in scant amounts in dead tissue, the vis present in living beings, suffusing living thoughts and desires, is far more potent and vibrant.

Before Grixis split off from the mega-plane of Alara, things were different. The land was called Vithia, a white-aligned empire of humans and other races, a land proud of its dynasty of wise and honorable monarchs. If you wanted to be part of the solution rather than the problem, you lived in Vithia. If you wanted protection from the necromancers and demons who sometimes plagued the outlying ruins and trade routes, you lived in Vithia.

But when the subplane became separated from the others, it lost access to beneficial and growing magic. At the same time that Vithian mages and clerics lost the main source of their magic, they also had to contend with the rise of black mana, and the associated rise in power of the necromancers and demons. Over time, the defenses of Vithia failed. Vithian citizens became prey for the necromancers' growing armies, slaves to rampaging demons, and victims of treachery of corrupted forces within the kingdom.

Strongholds across the kingdom became prey for those mages who practiced necromancy with a military bent. Vithian knights became overwhelmed by, and then part of, the rotting armies. Over time, proud castles became cities of the dead, ruled by necromancer barons, ogre warlords, vampires, or demons.

The surviving Vithians still had a chance, however - they still had military superiority over the mindless minions of the necromancers, and they had something even more precious - they had life. As decay gripped the world, Vithia remained a sanctuary for the living, a beacon of optimism in the increasingly dismal and angel-free world, simply by the magic inherent in the simple cycles in people's lives. As long as the Vithian kings remembered this faith in the fundamental power of life, Vithia would never fall.

The Vithian king known as Sedris was human once. He ruled Vithia as one of its wisest kings in the early years after the plane's separation from Alara. No one knows what triggered him to give in. It's unlikely that anyone alive today even remembers that he once sat on the throne in Vithia's capital. For Sedris was seduced by evil forces. Demons, unable to assault the kingdom directly, instead tempted its leader with dreams of power, and he fell. Sedris handed the lives of thousands of humans in his kingdom to demons in exchange for the power and unlife of a lich.

The kingdom flooded with demons and the forces of the undead. The capital fell, and just as Sedris had changed, the capital of Vithia, too, became something else. Today it's known as Sedraxis, the largest necropolis on the plane, named after the last of the Vithian kings. It's still ruled by Sedris, now a lich warlord, whose mastery of the combined arts of battle and necromancy remains unsurpassed throughout the world of Grixis.

After the corruption of Sedris, the plane became known as Grixis, after an old Vithian word for traitor. The necromancer barons and demon lords conquered more and more of the lands that formerly belonged to the living. As the power of white and green mana ebbed away, the only sources of life that remained were the survivors. Creatures that depended on life energy, such as demons and blood-sucking vampires, couldn't feed on the dead. As the supply of living humans dwindled, their power struggles became more violent. Even necromancers have learned to seek out the precious energy of life, known as vis, to power their spells, causing the surviving humans to seek shelter in remote, ward-covered strongholds called hermitages.

The living humans of Grixis today don't remember much about Vithia, even as they crouch in its ruins. They fight the forces of undeath with cleverness and magic, focusing on the power of red and blue mana to thwart the death magic of their predators. They still call themselves Vithians, the word a tattered reminder of times long past. But it's a losing battle. Every time a human being (or an ogre, or a kathari, the plane's vulture-aven) dies, it becomes a resource for necromantic warlords like Sedris, meaning they add to the enemy even as they subtract from their own number. If something doesn't change, humanity will go extinct on Grixis in a matter of years.

Sedraxis, the largest necropolis on Grixis, is the ruins of the Vithian capital. Filled with gothic arches and cobblestone streets, the once-great city is now a maze of crumbling walls, half-collapsed spires, and roofless shells of buildings. The lich king Sedris rules this place, though he is usually content to let chaos reign within its walls.

They say the ruins of Sedraxis were once a shining capital in Vithia. Now it is a blight, a place to be avoided by the living." -Olcot, Rider of Joffik (Crumbling Nexropolis)