Teferi's History
Teferi is an ancient being who has seen many things. He is a philosopher and scientist. He eschews violence and will attempt to deal with opposition via the control of its allies and the eventual removal of its power-base. He is a chronarch, a wizard who can manipulate the flow of time. This profile deals with only his Pre-Mending history. Anything after the Mending is covered
here.
Although the young Teferi was a prankster and at times a bully, he had considerable magical potential and was thus brought to Tolaria, where the planeswalker
Urza had founded an academy to train the mages of Dominaria and prepare the plane for an attack from Phyrexia. It was at the academy that Teferi first met
Jhoira,
Karn, and
Barrin. Although they would become his best friends later on in time, he got off on the wrong foot because of his constant practical and less practical jokes.
One day, the Phyrexians attacked the island, and Teferi and Jhoira were killed. Urza sent Karn back in time to prevent the attack; the golem was successful, but the time machine overheated, causing a massive explosion that killed many and completely disrupted the time stream of Tolaria. Teferi survived but was caught in a slow-time bubble for many years. After some time Jhoira, who had also survived and was stranded in a normal time zone, found him like that and threw a wet blanket at him. Five years later that blanket put out the fire on his clothes.
After Karn, Barrin and Urza returned and rebuilt the academy, Jhoira fell into a coma. When she awakened 10 years later, she had discovered a way to free Teferi. She constructed a machine that used the water of Tolaria (which wasn't affected as drastically by the time anomalies as organic material) to create a portal between the normal time zone and Teferi's bubble. It was only a prototype, but the resilient bodies of Karn and Urza could pass through and pull Teferi out. For a while, he felt depressed and out of sync with the world because everyone he had known had either died during the explosion or had aged 20 years while he had been in stasis. But with a little help from Karn and Jhoira, he was back to his usual tricks soon after.
Some years later a more mature Teferi was told by Urza that he should accompany Jhoira to her homeland of Shiv, where the two worked on the Thran Mana Rig that could produce the powerstones needed to fuel the artifacts Urza built to battle the Phyrexians. Although there had always been an age difference between them (which had only become more pronounced while he was trapped in the time bubble), some romantic feelings developed between Teferi and Jhoira. Time had little meaning for students of Tolaria anyway.
For a while Teferi stayed closely involved in Urza's crusade against Phyrexia, helping out in the battle against
K'rrick and the battle for
Serra's Realm, but after a while he became a royal mage of his homeland of Zhalfir, becoming a protector of the region. What happened to his relationship with Jhoira during this time is unknown. He did befriend the reclusive Jolrael, but this never became more than friendship and he didn't try to persuade her to return when she forsook civilization to live in the deep jungle.
As his power and influence grew, he used it to conduct risky experiments related to time magic and phasing - until one of them went horribly wrong. But instead of disaster, something else struck in its stead. Something inside of him activated. A Spark ignited. Teferi had become a Planeswalker. Feeling the urge to wander the planes, he created the guild structure of Zhalfir to aid the country in his absence. Thus the Civic Guild, the Shaper Guild, the Shadow Guild, the Armorer Guild and the Granger Guild were called into existence.
When he returned, however, Teferi found the continent on the brink of war. Southern Zhalfir had split off and formed the theocracy of Femeref because the churches didn't agree with the fact that Teferi had left control of the dead in the hands of the Shadow Guild. When Femeref had found gold in the mountains, the northern country of Suq'Ata had invaded part of Zhalfir and had driven the dwarves there from their mountain homes. When the dwarves had aided Femeref in harvesting the gold, increasing their efficiency greatly, Zhalfir felt cheated out of their rightful portion of the gold. Teferi tracked down and tutored a capable girl of royal descent. After Teferi crowned her as Queen Yormeba she brought peace to the nation but failed to unify it. Tired of the petty squabbles of his people, Teferi left with a group of trusted advisors, sages, artificers, and sorcerers. They sailed for a hidden realm in the Chaza Isles, where Teferi wanted to manipulate time to make it easier to summon creatures.
The experiments met with limited success, but after years of trial and error, Teferi realized that the process was inherently unstable. By then, however, the damage was done. The earliest experiments of Teferi had been clumsy and had damaged the temporal balance. Teferi attempted to correct the problems by unleashing a blast of mana to repair the hole in the stream. Although he had anticipated danger, he did not anticipate the results of his "cure". The unleashed mana burned into all plants, animals, and buildings on the isle. Instantly everything but the bare rock of the island phased out of existence.
After several years,Teferi's Isle returned. For a long time, its people were unaware that any time had passed, but when one of Jolrael's dragons attacked the isle, they began to realize something was terribly wrong. Teferi did some research and discovered that they had been absent from time for quite a while and that his "cure" for the timeline had indirectly caused a great war on the mainland.
The energy surge had attracted three powerful mages. The first was Mangara, a wise man from Corondor who was versed in politics and had been attracted out of curiosity. The second was Teferi's old friend Jolrael, coming to see what happened to her friend. The last one was Kaervek of Urborg, who wondered if he could use the power for his own gain. After realizing that there was nothing on the island but bare rock, the three moved to the mainland to monitor it from a more comfortable place. Mangara involved himself in the local politics and with his brilliant diplomacy, he solved the struggles between the countries and managed to put himself in the position of de facto ruler. A jealous Kaervek manipulated the xenophobic Jolrael into joining his side and the two of them had amassed an army. After imprisoning Mangara in an Amber Prison, they declared war on the three nations.
Unable to interfere directly with the war because of his need to monitor and reconstruct the timelines, Teferi aided the defenders with visions and sometimes helped empower their spells. However, during the remainder of the war, he remained at the sidelines. Still, he felt tremendous guilt over his role in causing the conflict. After Jolrael had defected to the defenders and Kaervek had been defeated, Teferi remained a recluse in the Chaza Islands and gave up manipulating with time. Teferi later appeared during the Planeswalkers' War on Corondor to save Daria from an Amber Prison.
Shortly prior to the Phyrexian Invasion, Keld attacked Jamuraa. For reasons unknown, Teferi stayed out of the war until the last moment when he defeated the Keldons. They made Teferi realize that he didn't want to be part of Urza's plans to fight Phyrexia anymore and he began to devise an alternative.
When the invasion began and a portal opened in the sky over Zhalfir, Teferi convinced Urza to join him in teleporting in and out of the portals with him, overloading them. Teferi told his former tutor that he had a plan to use the resulting energy, but when Urza found out what this plan was, he wasn't happy about it. Teferi weaved it into one gigantic phasing spell that removed northwestern Jamuraa and the part of Shiv that Jhoira stayed on from the time stream to save them from the horrendous attacks of the Phyrexians. A furious Urza ordered Teferi to stop, for this action would remove many powerful allies from the time stream, but it was too late.
One hundred years later the goddess
Karona was looking for beings like herself. While doing so she pulled Teferi back into the time stream. Although he couldn't help her, he did get to see Dominaria again and realized the Phyrexians had been defeated. He left contemplating whether it was time to bring the phased-out lands back.
Three hundred years after the Apocalypse, Teferi and Jhoira returned to Dominaria in an effort to return Zhalfir and Shiv safely to their home plane. Teferi was terrified to find that Dominaria was almost completely barren of mana. After consulting
Freyalise, Teferi was shocked to learn that he was reportedly seen speaking with Karona nearly two hundred years ago. Teferi apparently has no knowledge of the meeting, which casts doubt on whether or not the gathering did in fact take place.
Teferi allied with Radha, a Keldon half-elf, and Venser, an Urborg artificer, in an effort to permanently close the time distortions that had gathered at several key locations of Dominaria. After losing a battle against
Nicol Bolas, Teferi gave up his powers as a planeswalker to seal the time rift over Shiv, restoring the continent to its rightful form. The Zhalfirin rift suffered a different fate.
Jeska, manipulated by Leshrac, used Radha as a mana lens, forcefully closing the Zhalfirin rift. Without precise timing, the phased lands of Zhalfir were seemingly lost forever, although Teferi said that he could probably save it if he was still a planeswalker.
