Wait, the Raven Man is...

[Krishnath]

...friggin' Lim-Dûl? HOW? He died on Shandalar.

*is visibly confused*

[void_nothing]

A bit of his soul was still in Mairsil's ring. Man was/is one of the strongest "ordinary mortal" necromancers there ever was - death's not the biggest problem for him. My only issue here is Mark officially acknowledging leaked pages of a reference guidebook

[Krishnath]

A bit of his soul was still in Mairsil's ring. Man was/is one of the strongest "ordinary mortal" necromancers there ever was - death's not the biggest problem for him. My only issue here is Mark officially acknowledging leaked pages of a reference guidebook

Holy heck, now I wonder if the tumblr post is going to get removed and MaRo is getting a stern talking to for getting tricked like this, or if WotC is going to acknowledge that Raven Man and Lim-Dûl are the same dude publicly. Maybe both?

[5colorsrainbow]

Naw it's now public knowledge now;
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2022-08-12

[void_nothing]

Naw it's now public knowledge now;
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2022-08-12

Cool, then, I guess there's no leak-based issue.

[Krishnath]

Naw it's now public knowledge now;
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2022-08-12

Awesome.

So basically, Lim-Dûl, the scourge of Terisiare is back from the dead.

[JovialJovian]

Back? Sounds more like he's been hanging around for a LONG time.
Liliana met him before the mending, right?

[Krishnath]

Back? Sounds more like he's been hanging around for a LONG time.
Liliana met him before the mending, right?

The Mending was not that long ago, all things considered. At least not timeline wise. There was a rather big gap between the Ice Age and the Mending after all. A several thousand years long gap if I recall correctly.

[void_nothing]

The Mending was not that long ago, all things considered. At least not timeline wise.

62 years ago in storyline present, looks like. I think what Jovian is getting at is that - Lim could have been around in this diminished form for at least as long as his regular lifetime. That, to be fair, was actually interrupted by at least one genuine death which Leshrac revived him from.

[JovialJovian]

But Liliana became a planeswalker long before the mending, and she knew The Raven Man as a child.

[Krishnath]

But Liliana became a planeswalker long before the mending, and she knew The Raven Man as a child.

Lily is at the moment a little over 200 years old. So, the Raven Man/The Resurrected Lim-Dûl has been around for at least that long. Or roughly since the Kahmal era.

Which means.... Liliana Vess and Braids are around the same age. Interesting tidbit there.

[wildfire393]

The story involving Lim-Dul is fairly complicated, but it all wraps up fairly nicely.

It starts with Mairsil during the Dark Ages following the Brothers' War but before the Ice Age. Mairsil ends up being killed by Jodah and Ith, but imbues his essence into a Ruby Ring.

Lim-Dul's story picks up in the Ice Age, nearly 2000 years later. He finds Mairsil's ring and it grants him great necromantic power, but Mairsil also starts taking over his mind. He joins forces with the Planeswalker Leshrac, and tries to kill Jodah. He fails, squandering Leshrac's troops, and to punish him for this, Leshrac severs his hand (cutting of Mairsil's influence), then basically tears him to pieces while keeping him alive, drags the pile of pain-feeling shredded flesh with him to Shandalar, and then reassembles him.

Lim-Dul is effectively split into two at this point - part of him is in Mairsil's ring, and goes on to take over Jaya and takes another stab at taking out Jodah, but Jodah manages to trigger Jaya's planeswalker spark to separate her from Mairsil/Lim-Dul. The other part, including his body, is with Leshrac on Shandalar and wages several campaigns to try to take it over, and ends with his essence being bound to the Chain Veil.

Ring-Mairsil-Lim-Dul somehow ends up buried at the Vess estate, and he manifests himself to a young Liliana as the Raven Man and pushes her into the events that cause her to zombify her brother and ignite her own spark. Once he's got his hooks in her, he subtly and overtly manipulates her into retrieving the Chain Veil, which she increasingly relies upon to kill the demons holding her contracts and eventually take out Bolas in the War of the Spark, after which she relinquishes the Veil as "proof" that the bounty hunters sent after her for her role in the War have killed her, so that she can live a life in hiding.

In the latest Dominaria United side-story with Liliana, he tries to get her to exhume and take up his ring from her estate, hoping to be able to take her over like he did Jaya previously. She recognizes what he's attempting and rejects it, pushing the ring deeper into the earth.

[The Fluff]

a little late into this thread. But wow, that's a surprise.. Lim-Dul is actually the Raven Man.