Quick Links
There’s no shortage of iconic villains in Magic: The Gathering. From the meticulous schemes of Nicol Bolas, to the cold destruction of New Phyrexia’s Praetors, players have always had a valid target for their boos and hisses. In such esteemed company, however, it’s easy for some genuinely compelling villains to slip through the cracks, lost in the sizable shadows of the big hitters.
Lim-Dûl is one such villain. While rarely seen or mentioned within the cardboard confines of the game itself, his legacy of evil in the lore is long-running, spanning two Planes, three wars, and more despicable acts than we can count. Here is gathered Lim-Dûl’s bloody history of greed and hatred.
The Ring Of Mairsil
Lim-Dûl began life as a humble Human, serving as a Soldier in the army of Kjeldor, a kingdom located in Dominaria’s frozen northland of Terisaire. During a seemingly-routine Goblin-slaying expedition, Lim-Dûl’s squadron found themselves outclassed and overwhelmed, with only Dûl himself having the good sense to flee. In doing so he escaped with his life, while his comrades all perished in the battle that ensued.
Lim-Dûl’s troubles were far from over, however. His escape took him out of the frying pan and into the freezer, as a thick blizzard swept over the land, forcing him to take refuge in some nearby ruins. Unbeknownst to Dûl, these were the remains of the Conclave of Mages, a centre for magical study founded by Tawnos and Ashnod during Dominaria’s Dark Age.
While almost completely destroyed, a trace of the Conclave’s legacy remained: a ruby ring that once belonged to Mairsil the Pretender, a cunning and ambitious mage who usurped Ith as the Conclave’s ruler. This ring contained the essence of Mairsil himself, and an incredible amount of dark magical energy. Lim-Dûl discovered the ring, and harnessed its power to create the castle of Tresserhorn upon the bones of the Conclave. He also tapped into necromancy, raising an undead army and establishing himself as a major player on the continent of Terisaire.
A Puppet With Two Strings
While Lim-Dûl gained immense power from the ring, it came at a steep cost. Mairsil himself, preserved within its crimson confines, reached out to Lim-Dûl and began to subtly influence his mind, bending him towards the goal of revenge against Jodah: the Archmage responsible for Mairsil’s defeat in the past.
His wouldn’t be the only dark will to influence Lim-Dûl. Shortly after his rise to power, he was approached by Leshrac, a planeswalker with plans to conquer Shandalar, a travelling “Rogue Plane” that held untold riches of mana. Leshrac hoped to use Lim-Dûl’s rapidly-growing undead army to aid in his conquest, and so the two struck a deal.
Led by Mairsil’s unseen hand, as well as Leshrac’s grand plan, Lim-Dûl managed to bewitch Jodah with the help of a traitorous fellow mage, and force him into researching the secrets of Shandalar. Covertly, he also had the Archmage research methods for killing a planeswalker, in the hopes of ridding himself of his new master. Leshrac discovered this scheme, however, and warped Lim-Dûl’s body in response, cursing him with stag-like horns as a reminder that he was “just a working animal” to him.
The Battle For Kjeldor
While Leshrac’s Shandalar scheme bubbled away, Lim-Dûl worked towards evil ends of his own, plotting the domination of Kjeldor at the hands of his undead legion. At this time, Jodah managed to escape from his imprisonment in Tresserhorn with the help of soon-to-be-planeswalker Jaya Ballard. He tried to warn the people of Kjeldor of the threat Lim-Dûl posed, proposing an alliance with their bitter long-time enemies the Balduvians, but his warnings fell on deaf ears, as the upper echelons of Kjeldor were, at the time, consumed by pettiness and self-interest.
Taking advantage of this, Lim-Dûl established the Knights of Stromgald through a reanimated Kjeldoran general, and led them to attempt a coup against the kingdom’s then-ruler, King Darien. The plot failed thanks to the efforts of Jodah, and Lim-Dûl had shown his hand: now fully aware of his power, the people of Kjeldor, Balduvians included, rallied behind Darien in an effort to resist his coming conquest.
The war that followed was hard-fought, with Lim-Dûl’s forces outnumbering those of Kjeldor, while simultaneously resisting the death and cold that were commonplace in the continent. Darien’s forces held on throughout, enduring the Winter and preparing themselves for a counter-attack in Spring. When the thaws came, they finally struck back, and the decisive battle of Dominaria’s Ice Age was fought.
Lim-Dûl, now fully under the control of Mairsil, faced down Jodah in a climactic duel, but their battle was cut short by Leshrac. Having finally learned how to reach Shandalar after the Summit of the Null Moon, he was ready to put his grand scheme into motion, and was furious that Lim-Dûl had lost so many of his minions in a petty war in Kjeldor. In retribution, he cut off his hand, inadvertently freeing him from Mairsil’s control. He then warped and tortured the Necromancer, dragging him to Shandalar to serve him once more.
The Wars On Shandalar
Upon arriving in Shandalar, Leshrac and Lim-Dûl, along with the planeswalkers Faralyn and Tevesh-Szat, were met with unexpected resistance from the Plane’s guardian, Kenan Sahrmal. Faralyn was killed and the others fled the Plane, leaving Lim-Dûl behind to face capture and execution. By transferring his soul into another body, Lim-Dûl managed to survive his beheading, and live to plot another day.
Such schemes would come to a head 12 years later, when Lim-Dûl returned, now at the head of a sizable undead army. He planned to use it to do what Leshrac never could: lay claim to Shandalar, and the huge amounts of mana it held within. Initially, his conquest went well. The Plane’s cities fell, one by one, to his horde, until just one remained: the city of Ardestan. Lim-Dûl surrounded the city, placing it under siege and seemingly extinguishing all hope for the people of the Plane.
A glimmer remained, however. Since his last run-in with the Necromancer, Kenan Sahrmal had trained two apprentices, one called Azar and another known only as The Guardian, to eventually take on the might of Lim-Dûl. While Sahrmal counselled caution, Azar went forth and faced Lim-Dûl during the siege of Ardestan, determined to seal away his spirit and use it to power a protective barrier around Shandalar, preventing this kind of invasion from happening again in the future.
The plan went sideways when Lim-Dûl transferred his spirit into Azar’s body, leaving the two grappling for control of the vessel. While their battle raged, Lim-Dûl’s captured spirit was able to sustain the barrier Azar wanted all along, and so his body was buried to maintain the Plane’s protection.
Many years passed, and Lim-Dûl’s spirit finally prevailed in the ongoing struggle for Azar’s body. Emerging from his tomb, the Necromancer went about forming a new undead army, for a second attempt at his conquest plan. When he did so, however, he found Shandalar a changed Plane, now under the protection of five powerful wizard guilds, each founded by The Guardian. In the ensuing conflict, which would come to be known as the Wizard’s War, Lim-Dûl finally fell at The Guardian’s hands. His soul was transferred into a magical artifact, where it could continue to power Shandalar’s barrier for the rest of time.
Or so they thought. Some years later, through the machinations of an evil planeswalker called Arzakon, the guildmasters of Shandalar were tricked into destroying the artifact, thus allowing him access to the Plane. In doing so, they scattered Lim-Dûl’s spirit across the Multiverse. How much of it remains, and where, is yet unknown.
The Raven Man
Despite the utter destruction of his original form, Lim-Dûl’s Multiversal meddling was not yet at an end. Within the ring of Mairsil, which we last left on the finger of Lim-Dûl’s severed hand on Dominaria, a fragment of his spirit remained: tiny, but still enough to have a profound influence on two of the Multiverse’s most well-known planeswalkers.
First the ring reached out to Jaya Ballard, the combined spirits of Lim-Dûl and Mairsil coercing her into betraying Jodah, slitting his throat, and using his blood to reactivate Mishra’s war machines from the Brothers’ War. She led this force against Jodah’s School of the Unseen, destroying it and sating some of Mairsil’s thirst for vengeance. Jodah survived the attack, however, and used a magical mirror to free Jaya from the pair’s control, igniting her planeswalker spark in the process.
Later, the ring was found again, this time by an ancestor of the Vess family. Sensing its great power, they buried the ring on the Vess estate, where it would sleep soundly for years. Eventually, Lim-Dûl’s spirit would reach out to Liliana Vess, taking the form of the mysterious Raven Man. He began to manipulate her with his cryptic advice, leading her to turn her brother into a Lich: the event that would trigger her planeswalker spark.
The Raven Man would go on to subtly sway Liliana at many key points in her life, appearing to her on various Planes and instigating important events, such as her discovery of the Chain Veil on Shandalar. Dismissing him as a mere figment of her imagination thanks to his appearance on multiple Planes, Liliana finally learned the truth about the Raven Man from a book in Strixhaven’s library.
Returning to Dominaria to address the problem of Lim-Dûl once and for all, she encountered Phyrexian invaders also searching for the ring. Lim-Dûl’s spirit whispered to her, promising the power necessary to repel the invasion, but Liliana resisted his allure, and fought off the Phyrexians herself.
As things stand, Lim-Dûl’s spirit lives on, still held within the ring of Mairsil on Dominaria. While dormant for now, as long as a mere sliver of his will remains in the Multiverse, the Necromancer has the potential to carry on his wicked work in one way or another.