New Capenna

One City. Five Families. No Laws.

The world of New Capenna is not as it once was. Centuries ago, it was once a lush, vibrant plane of castles and knights, in many ways akin to Alara’s Bant. However, all that changed when the plane was invaded by the original Phyrexians. Invading through planar portals at the behest of Yawgmoth, the Phyrexians stood to entirely overrun Old Capenna, if not for the unified front of resistance the plane offered led by the hosts of its powerful archangels. Able to set up a small area of refuge for the plane’s mortal survivors, the angelic and mortal host had a limited amount of time before they were eventually overwhelmed.

In a desperate act, the archangels of Old Capenna struck a deal with the archdemons in order to stave off total defeat. The magic of the two created a fortress known as New Capenna that would be able to repel any Phyrexian force, and acted as a safe haven for the plane’s mortal survivors. After two great exoduses, the city was sealed, a city-sized bunker against a Phyrexian apocalypse.

Despite its massive size and powerful defenses, New Capenna would not hold off a Phyrexian invasion forever. Interestingly, the nature of Capenna’s angels is uniquely damaging to the Phyrexian invaders, something made apparent in the initial conflicts of the war. The archdemon force within New Capenna devised that they could trap and distill the divinity of the angels, creating a tonic and ward against the Phyrexian menace. The archdemons would have to sacrifice themselves to complete this grave task, and so they appointed five families to rule New Capenna in their stead, infusing their essences and powers into the heads of each family. These five became demonic hybrids, bound to the demonic contracts set forth by the archdemons, and became the leaders of the five modern factions today: The Obscura, The Maestros, The Riveteers, The Cabaretti and The Brokers.

The demon’s plan is a success. As the archangels of Capenna are locked in a form of stasis, their physical bodies are slowly coalesced into a liquid known as Halo that is both incredibly poisonous to Phyrexians and protects the mortals of the city from any form of compleation. The families distribute Halo around the city, and the war of attrition continues.

Now cut off from their god Yawgmoth, and running low on ‘resources’ (mortals to compleat), the Phyrexian invaders quickly lose steam. By the time the planeswalker Elspeth was born, the Phyrexians are reduced to small pockets and dungeons amid the otherwise utterly wasted surface of the plane. In the years since, the Phyrexians have entirely died out.

With no-one on the outside to inform them it’s safe to return to the surface, the inhabitants of New Capenna remain in their skyscraper-like bunker, and they slowly begin to run out of halo as the angels are finally used up. That is, until the return of the planeswalker Elspeth. Recent events have seen the remaining living angels released from their stasis, and a possible return to the surface of the world.