my favorite part of Strixhaven's story is when the cult leader goads a mentally broken unstable man who had nearly starved to death/died of thirst a few days ago into attacking a college campus lmao

also how Rowan just leaves for Strixhaven and Will is forced to follow. I feel like it is not used for comedy nearly enough that they can drag each other through planes bc they're not strong enough to resist it if one chooses to leave ksjdksjkdsj

also, uh. Lukka might have just been preparing to lay down to die at one point??? he comments on having not eaten recently and not having had water in 3 days, rescues Mila from being pinned under rocks, tells her to go, and then just passes out. When he wakes up, he's super grateful for the food she's left him, and only then does he bond with her and seem to have some fire to do anything more than look for food in Arcavios ksjskjdksjds

Seriously when this man arrived in Arcavious, he went to an inn for food, and they assumed he was Oriq bc of his starnge clothes and unwillingness to tell them where he came from (KIND OF A SORE SUBJECT, also they wouldn't know!). This culminated in them throwing spells at him! unprovoked.

I'm kinda glad he had dogs and horses maul them tbf, he was NOT looking for a fight and they decided "oh strange clothes. ORIQ. No food for you"

Oh I love Vaalin art and that card is so good, can you tell us a little about Vaalin

Vaalin is my main Tolarian character (well, planeswalker, I have some side Tolarian characters that are planebound.) He’s half-merfolk and half-human, and to escape any prejudice from the... questionable Vodalian cast system, his mother raised and kept him in Tolaria of the Depths, the underwater branch of the Academy installed near the ruins of the old sunken island of Tolaria. He spent most of his life there and of course, in such an environment, grew to be a part of the Academy himself.

He’s a Barrinite by philosophy (of course), and specializes in a narrow area of time magic, one that is deemed mostly safe. His main magic allows him to slow down or speed up the perception of time, to allow more time to think. When every second takes a minute to pass, you have plenty of time to react and devise the best plan. He can speed up his body as well, but that takes much more effort and he can’t do it to nearly the same extremes as his mind. Similarly, it’s harder to affect others than himself, so he isn’t able to go too far with others.

More recently, Vaalin has visited Ikoria and met there a curious animal, the Eon Frolicker, who took him to a frozen moment in time to play with him. They ended up very friendly with each other, and from studying it, Vaalin learned a new trick: to move himself, body and mind, in-between moments, in stopped time. He’s able to move freely there, and then return either to the moment he left (possibly in a different place) or skip ahead the amount of time he experienced while frozen, essentially “jumping ahead” in time. Unlike his usual trick, this spell only requires magic to enter and leave, not to maintain, and he could technically stay there as long as he wants... But he still needs food, water and sleep, and the one time he slept in frozen time was... Very disturbing and disorienting. So he avoids doing that. It’s a quiet place to read a book though. Unlike the Eon Frolicker, he’s not yet able to bring anyone else into frozen time, and whatever objects he brings with you always come back in regular time as he does.

In this art (by @reubenyeoart) he’s pictured on Arcavios, where he’s spend a bit of time over the last few months. He’s an occasional guest lecturer at Strixhaven, where his Tolarian diploma is recognized for what it is, but also started a letter exchange program between a specific class of tolarians and a select few of Strixhaven’s own, carrying letters back and forth every so often. It is slow, but it is a unique occasion.

Secondary to his time magic, he has some amount of practice in telepathy, just enough to open communication and receive back, not enough to read minds or manipulate them. It’s about the only reliable way of communication when he perceives each second to be an hour and can’t really coordinate speech. If you want to see what this feel like, here’s a video. It’s about as far as he can go with other people, but he rarely does that because it’s VERY distressing to be trapped in your own body that way especially without warning or being used to it.

The illusion magic we see here for his study isn’t his doing fully, it’s his bracelet device on his forearm, able to convert his thoughts into monochrome illusions near him. It can keep up with him no matter how fast he thinks, and he uses it as a whiteboard of sorts to keep track of information and do calculations on. It has five settings for five colors (I’ll let you guess which those are), and each remembers what was last “displayed” when it’s switched off of, so he can keep some amount of information in it to be called back later or layer the different colors. When he’s in accelerated time, it can look like a flickering kaleidoscope of colors as he takes notes faster than the eye can see.

As far as his personality, he’s curious and inquisitive, always interested to learn more, particularly in his domains of study. He’s aware of the privilege he has being a planeswalker, and tries to serve the Academy as he can as one of their few planeswalking faculty members, surveying other planes for interesting phenomenon or temporal anomalies. But sometimes he gets distracted by the beauty of the Multiverse or by its people, unable to resist helping people he meets along the way. He can be a bit oblivious and aloof, very used to being alone in his thoughts, but he’s made some friends across the Multiverse in his travels. And of course, very patient.

And sometimes, he takes a moment (ah!) to stop (ah!) and observe the world, and the beauty of a snowflake as it falls and spins, something very few people can see from up close.