The Molting House | A Guided Tour of Duskmourn
This essay investigates the haunted plane of Duskmourn – an endless labyrinth of chimeric monstrosities, manifest anxieties, and outdated technologies. Below, a moth feeds on all its fear.
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Prologue: The Moth
“When an insect grows and develops, it must periodically shed its rigid exoskeleton in a process called molting…Many insect species also transform in body structure as they molt from a juvenile to an adult form—a process called metamorphosis.”
Introduction to Metamorphosis – BFW Textbooks
About six months ago, long before my introduction to The House, I began to notice a congregation of moths decorating the tall white walls around my apartment. Every morning, they arrived in a different assemblage – new moths appeared while others vanished. I took photographs to document the variety of their species. There seemed to be no repeating patterns.
In some languages, they call these creatures “butterflies of the night.” Research implies, however, that the moth evolved first, that pollinating rituals began in the darkness, that the nocturnal butterfly preluded those that flutter through the daylight.
The symbolic value of the moth is inseparable from its moonlit domain. Like butterflies, they represent transformation, change, and growth. Unlike butterflies, they are maligned. Rare is the moth stitched onto dresses and ties. Unwelcome is the moth at patio dinners through late summer nights. Disallowed is the moth from gardens and pavilions, enchanting locales for museum visitors and birthday parties. People typically do not fear butterflies.
The average infestation period of the fungus moth spans between four weeks and two years. Eggs produce tiny larvae that chew through proteins found in animal hair, like those in a wool cardigan or a silk robe. They then spin cocoons, pupate, and hatch as adults. The dark recesses of the common home are the moth’s preferred habitat. Tucked away into closets and buried beneath mounds of clothes, they feed and grow and feed and grow and feed. Despite the total absence of sunlight in these environments, they nonetheless prefer to eat at night.
In the cavernous Below of Duskmourn, more commonly known as The House, there exists a malevolent entity. Suspended in blackness, its horrific wings thread the walls and lace through every crack and crevice. Entwined with the sentient structure, the entity sees all through its infinite insectoid eyes. Those who have witnessed it claim that it resembles a moth.
And like a moth, it wants only to feed and grow and feed and grow and feed.
Chapter I: The House and Those Who Haunt It
“Unfortunately, the dichotomy between those who participate inside and those who view from the outside breaks down when considering the house, simply because no one ever sees that labyrinth in its entirety. Therefore comprehension of its intricacies must always be derived from within.”
Zampanò – House of Leaves
Long before The House was built, a moth appeared on the wall of Ovidio Cartagena’s childhood home in Guatemala.
Ovidio Cartagena: “One day it appeared on the wall…I was told to just leave it there because it had news for us. One week later, a relative passed away. When you are young, it hits you like a truck that type of revelation…The moth stayed in my mind for decades.”
The memory of the moth returned to Ovidio’s mind for the Duskmourn concept push. In its imagery, he felt the presence of a character, an atmosphere, and a mood. The moth on the wall became the moth in the wallpaper as all the tiny details of the set took shape.
Ovidio: “I was very particular about everything…Most concept artists make a castle and a mountain and a lake and the sky, but you don’t immediately know what the door lintel looks like, or what the window frame is like, or what the fixtures are like…At one point, I had on – we have something called The Art Wall…at one point I have half of it covered in just wallpaper designs! Just wallpaper after wallpaper…all original! Each mana color has its own design. Each mana color has its own wallpaper design. And they were telling me, ‘why are you doing this?’ It has to feel like a character…At this point, mind you, I don’t know what the villain looks like. Valgavoth. But I did have the idea about the moth being very important.”
As development of the set’s visual language progressed, the five colors of Magic moved into The House. White filled The Mistmoors, a place where empty foyers ring with eerie silence. Corridors are lined with mysterious marble statues and billowing drapes. Hazy campgrounds offer the illusion of an outdoor space, but a ring of floating portals reminds us we are still, somehow, inside.
These soggy streams lead to The Floodpits, an icy realm of subterranean lakes and rivers, an anchorage for Blue. Walls of water pour from suspended windows, cabins float submerged above footbridges, pools fill the ceilings overhead. You get the sense it’s freezing cold here.
The Black spaces of The Balemurk are dim and dank. Rotting floorboards lead to haunted attics, spiderwebs stretch through rooms like tendons over bone, staircases threaten to collapse underfoot. Crypts and coffins are found here, depositories for the dead.
The fervor of Red fills The Boilerbilges, a charred labyrinth of metal pipework and ravenous flames. Roaring furnaces and overfed fireplaces pollute the rooms with suffocating smoke. Hellish rollercoasters spin through the acrid air, a carnival of agony.
If ever the flames escaped these rooms, they would devour the hallways of endless vines and brambles in The Hauntwoods. Carnivorous vegetation grows aplenty in Green’s wicked forest. Vines spill from thorny cages, gnarled trees remind us that The House is made, in part, of wood.
In its totality, The House is an impossible space. It cannot be mapped. It expands and contracts and folds onto itself, as if locked in perpetual regurgitation. But it was not always this way.
Long ago, the Vendrell family lived here. This was their home. Their young daughter Marina, shy and bookish, was ridiculed at school. She became reclusive. She withdrew into The House, and The House welcomed her in. It condoled her suffering. It promised to right the wrongs. In desperation, Marina agreed to its offerings.
Thus ascended Valgavoth, the Terror Eater, the Harrower of Souls.
Bound by its contract, the demonic entity suspended Marina in a bubble of unreality while it cast its influence over the entire plane. As all around her fell, she remained ignorant, a blinded inhabitant of The House as it was before. Her world is still alive and beautiful.
Valgavoth’s world is an endless horror, a menagerie of atrocities.
Crawling in The House’s hidden corners are the lanky limbs and wretched shapes of Cellarspawn. These are Valgavoth’s daydreams. They harvest fear for his feeding end and reduce victims to nothing more than floating spinal columns called Spindrells.
The Razorkin, once human themselves, now prey upon the living for sport. They set sadistic traps and puzzles, then revel in their victims’ pained attempts at escape. Spiky silhouettes prelude their arrival in the fog.
Wickerfolk are petrified constructs of skeletal twigs. They were witches and warlocks before Valgavoth’s ascension. But wayward rituals entrapped them permanently in this form. Slowly and silently, they skulk about The House.
Over time, a small sect of worshippers assembled around Valgavoth. They organized a cult dedicated to promoting his glory. They are brainwashed fanatics, their bodies empty husks, their eyes devoid of all emotion.
Ovidio: “There’s a faction devoted to Valgavoth. They’re the cultists, and they dress like moths. They have moth motifing, their capes have the eyes and the pattern of a moth. They have secret altars. Jokubas did this cool thing where there’s like a person trapped in a, wrapped in fabric in front of an altar. Which is great. When you get folks like that, it starts creating an atmosphere, it starts getting scary…the plates start getting a little spooky, a little interesting, you know…”
The dead return to Duskmourn glitching through the walls as ghosts. Some are benevolent, eager to help the living survive. Others haunt them with unresolved anger, violently unaware they are no longer part of this world. These spirits travel through mirrors and screens, windows to the supernatural beyond.
Perhaps the most abstract of all the terrors here are Nightmares, avatar of collective fears. These projections embody our most personal anxieties – burning alive, losing teeth, getting stuck. They are bound together by the clouds of souls that swirl around their heads.
Ovidio: “The coolest idea, and the most unifying, was – okay, these are kind of chimeric, and they always display the faces, the souls of the dreamers that were eaten. The ones that had this nightmare and couldn’t control themselves, and became too afraid. So they were devoured. The nightmare always carries them around, and they’re always screaming, wailing, they’re always agonized.”
Besides the ghosts and nightmares and humanoid monsters, there are quickened toys, mischievous gremlins, and goat-like demons roaming about The House. There are tentacled oculi and treacherous leeches and poisonous centipedes. Encircling these mutant beasts are piranha flies and blood slugs and spineworms and ticks walking on disembodied hands. The House has corrupted every living being down to the most insignificant of creatures.
Against these endless abominations, there are groups of nomads who persist and endure. The Survivors are the last remnants of those who existed before The House swallowed Duskmourn whole. They are the underdogs of our story, the final bastions of hope.
Chapter II: Hypermodern Folklore
“Back in the 60s, there was a procedure in TV Guide, I think, describing that if there was a possibility of tornadoes one could tune to an empty channel, then turn the brightness down to barely see the noise on the dark screen. If severe weather began to build, there would be bright flashes on the screen, and a tornado would make the whole screen get lighter and lighter as it approached. I played with this quite a bit.”
Ron Garret – Quora Forums
Outfitting the faction of human survivors on Duskmourn is a collection of high-tech gadgets and gizmos that seem out-of-sync with Magic’s traditionally high-fantasy feel. Evoking the 1980’s through fashion and technology has aesthetic ramifications for Magic as a whole, but these designs were employed to meet specific narrative and conceptual needs on the plane. The 1980’s were forty years ago. For some, this era is nostalgic, and for others, it is unfamiliar and strange.
Ovidio: “When the first Dracula movie was made, the book was maybe thirty years old. Not more than forty. All that Gothic had ended fifty years earlier, the movement. It wasn’t that old. Right now, there are people for whom a videotape is scarier than a phone. Distant enough. We are at a historical distance from many of these things that we don’t intuitively know what they do at a glance. And I took advantage of that!”
The Survivors are a stylish bunch. Signature to their appearance are flowing jackets with tall collars and shoulder pads. Thick, neon bands move diagonally across the midsection, while baggy joggers meet high-top sneakers at the ankle. Headbands wrap around asymmetrical hairdo’s, like the ones our parents took to proms. Often, The Survivors carry bulky scanners attached to glowing meter boxes at the belt. Connecting the equipment is a coiled wire, the kind you would find exiting an old, rotary telephone. The kind of wire that is difficult to untangle.
When a Survivor is visited by The Ribbon Man, their body unravels like a phone cord pulled to length across a kitchen.
On Duskmourn, tech is twisted and turned into its own source of fear. Like the escapee in every scary movie who jumps into the runaway car and starts the engine, only to look down and see a stick shift (they’ve never driven manual), the electronic devices in The House are objects of apprehension. Only if you know how to wield them will they work as they should. Even then, all tools run the risk of an untimely malfunction. It’s hard to fully trust anything with a circuitboard. Maybe more frightening is the tape that worked as intended. What will be found in the footage? Are we sure we even want to know?
The glitch motif heightens this sense of technophobia. At the superficial level, it provides an easy gimmick for artists and world-builders to leverage on final cards. This is especially true in the Showcase Frames. The borders lean into the chunky, plastic shape language of The Survivor gear, while the illustrations dance in aberrations of magenta and cyan. Magic has been playing with pastiche to communicate a set’s thematics for a while now, and more often than not, these cards end up looking pretty cool in person. This batch is no exception, with Omnivorous Flytrap being a standout piece for me. Artist Chun Lo really sold the illusion here.
At a deeper level, though, the glitch marks a key feature of Duskmourn’s horror. Ovidio was very precise about its look: he wanted the shapes and colors to stay true to old UHF and VHS static, as if the images were transmitting from just outside of signal range. Welcome was wavelength banding and white noise, rejected was any resemblance to defects from the digital age.
Ovidio: “Back in the day, you could tune into a channel and maybe sometimes catch a radio station. This static is noise from the universe that you’re catching. There’s mystery there…You get a glimpse that there is something bigger than what you want, bigger than who you are, bigger than the device you’re catching. How do you communicate that? You put spirits on the other end. The spirits look like the static because that is the matter of the other world. That is what the otherworldly is made out of.”
Glitch ghosts are semi-organic expressions of a technology that relied on heavy machinery to communicate information. In the space between senders and receivers, there was energy, matter, unwelcome artifacts, a stray voice from a talk-show host or the weatherman’s floating head. There was tension and uncertainty in the airwaves. Only a portion of those who play Magic will have experienced turning the dial of a television set firsthand; for others, these are just tall tales.
This is precisely where Duskmourn lives: at the intersection of different pasts, a collision of multi-generational fears. Unlike the Gothic trappings of Innistrad or the body horror of Phyrexia, Duskmourn sets its stage in a very old house and fills it with all sorts of outdated objects and monsters from decades long gone. Intrinsic to the terror of the haunted house is that which came before. It is impossible to be haunted by the future – you can fear it, of course, but you cannot be followed by it.
As Professor Sarah Burns writes,
“…in the modern age the Victorian house became home to psychological demons. Each house was a vessel, a lid clamped down on a stew of powerful emotions, both personal and cultural – fear, dread, trauma, anxiety, disgust, repulsion, grief, guilt – meant to be shoved to the back of a dark closet and forgotten. What the house contained, though, always threatened to seep out, no matter how strong the desire to subdue and repress it…What haunted these houses were memories that refused to die.” (pp.15-16)
Marina Vendrell is stuck in time, but The House has moved on without her. We have done the same – the scary stories we tell have changed, and so have the media and objects that contain them. Narratives have moved from novels to films to message boards and now web fictions and trading cards. In this migration, Ovidio saw the potential to tap into new folklore.
Ovidio: “We went into a lot of modern myth here. The way folklore works with modernity is a unique way of folklore that we haven’t seen before. Have you heard about the black-eyed children? They show up outside your car, outside your door, and they want to come in. They compel you. So it’s all the creepypasta stuff. That’s the way folklore is starting to come out. The globalist way of doing it. In Duskmourn, there’s ways we’re doing some of that.”
Creepypastas of cryptids, chain emails of mysterious origin, texts from unknown numbers: these are the urban legends of the Internet era. Duskmourn drew minor influence from this sub-sect of horror, as seen in the design and behavior of the Cellarspawn. More explicit are the references to aliens and abductions. If incorporating electronics into Magic marked a departure for the game, cards with crop circles and hoverships provide a full-flung leap into the previously uncharted. The irony of the information age is that UFO sightings have become more enticing, more prolific, more mysterious. Folks are now congregating online in forums to recount these experiences, leading to new genre conventions. Of course aliens don’t exist, right? Right? Duskmourn embraces this paranoia.
More obvious were the movies and shows that lent major influence to this world. Just as Innistrad had Delver of Secrets and The Meathook Massacre, Duskmourn repeatedly nods to its filmic inspirations. Among the team of concept artists involved during the push was John Tedrick, a movie-monster aficionado who worked incessantly on designing creatures for this plane.
Ovidio: “He was over the moon because he loves 80’s horror. He loves practical effects. He loves all those monsters, he studies all that stuff. He gave me I don’t know how many monsters for this. So many monsters...”
The silver screen has been host to countless frights. The taxonomy is vast, from killer dolls to children stalking cornfields to demonic clowns and animated puppets. More iconographic are the hometown slashers who toe the line between ordinary citizen and otherworldly force. Often, their weapons become extensions of their characters. Duskmourn does not shy away from its source material. It follows in the footsteps of the figures who have become so deeply entrenched with popular culture and iterates with new, dreadful ideas. The Jolly Balloon Man is one such case, a horrific miniature all its own. At the same time, there are many players who may not recognize all of these references, no matter how mimetic. Once again, this world is a multi-generational haunt.
Importantly, horror flicks are defined by predictable narrative structures and familiar set pieces and repeating plot points. Translating these tropes onto Magic cards gave more opportunities for tongue-in-cheek card names and designs. “Let’s Play a Game,” invites the maniacal Razorkin from behind a series of floating screens. He may have been the mastermind behind Trial of Agony, a mechanical replica of Sofie’s Choice. In order to Get Out, you may have to Split Up. You may have to Break Down the Door. This might be the most cited image in the history of horror cinema.
Unfortunately, some members of your party won’t survive – sorry, but it’s written into the script in red ink. Artist Domenico Cava mimics those infamous screen-grabs to tremendous, pulpy effect on this apt reprint of Murder. The saturated pinks, the pickaxe foreshadowing the poor guy’s demise, the petrified and nearly lifeless gasp; this painting oozes with giallo charm.
Now, what about that delightful moment in every scary movie when all goes quiet.
When our breath-ridden hero must hide behind the sofa as the villain paces, seeking.
When it feels like it already knows where you are.
Shh. Don’t Make a Sound.
They can hear you.
[Jump Scare]
Alright, I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist. This card is just too good. John Tedrick strikes again!
Besides, it’s all in good fun. We can have a laugh here and there.
Chapter III: Laugh Attacks
“The philosopher Noel Carroll asserts that the difference between horror and humor boils down to the presence or absence of fear. He writes, ‘fear is the métier of horror fiction. In order to transform horror into laughter, the fearsomeness of the monster – its threat to human life – must be…hidden from our attention. Then we will laugh where we would otherwise scream.’”
Sarah Burns – Better For Haunts: Victorian Houses and the Modern Imagination
In her defense of It and Pennywise, Mariana Colín posits that clowns, once parodies of adult life, only became monstrous when they were repurposed as entertainment for kids. Given that children cannot relate to the hardships at the crux of the clown’s jokes, their self-inflected humiliation instead reads as sinister and cruel. After fifty years of iteration in American culture, the clown’s mask has now become almost exclusively a fixture of evil. We’ve long lost the spirit of the madcap, court jester.
The clowns of Duskmourn are cut from that same, devilish cloth. “Scared, are you? Need a hug?” reads the flavor text of Turn Inside Out, a riff against the open maw emerging from the creature’s torso. Their antics hinge on their threats: Grab the Prize, I dare you! This card is a sideshow game at the county fair, the ones slightly rigged in favor of those who work the booths. But imagine snagging this key unharmed, how quickly the joke would betray the jokester. Suddenly the clown is the fool. In conquering him, we walk away with the real prize of the last laugh.
Attack-in-the-Box exists here at the boundaries between sinister and silly. Sure, you’re one turn of the lever away from a spring-loaded heart attack, but ultimately, this is just a toy. The same could be said about Hand that Feeds. Magic has always favored the occasional pun, and this card name resets audience expectations. You’re supposed to chuckle, and in doing so, you create distance between yourself and the danger. Even the aforementioned Scrabbling Skullcrab and Piranha Fly are, in their own right, hilarious creature designs. With the caveat that these monsters are not chasing you through a maze of tricky doors and false floors, there is something comical about their appearances.
So much of Duskmourn toes this tenuous line between horror and humor. As much as this world seeks to frighten you, it provides just as many avenues to laugh your way out of the haunted house. For some, this entire set may just be another addition to the shelf of C-grade horror flicks, beloved for their bad acting and tacky soundtracks and cheap special effects. Let’s not forget that the 80’s were campy as hell, a certified cheese pizza. Duskmourn takes its slice from the same box.
Ovidio: “Unintentionally, 80’s horror gave us a queue on the other creatures. Some of the stuff is so over the top. There’s a Razorkin who just goes on a single wheel with a chainsaw. You have to laugh at that. There’s no way you’re going to take this seriously!”
There may be no card more emblematic of this dualistic tone than Meathook Massacre II. The sequel! What better way to evoke the excess of slasher tropes than to release a second installment of a cult classic, the fan-favorite from Midnight Hunt. As far as I can tell, this has never happened on a Magic card, and you better believe I’ll be on the lookout for the trilogy and the remastered box set and the deleted scenes in the future. My only gripe is that this card has no room for an epithet or flavor text to really sell the fact that this is The Meathook Massacre Part Two!
If that doesn’t make you grin, maybe The Rollercrusher Ride will do the trick. Roller coasters are constructed with comedy and horror in equal measure. The morbid allure of the roller coaster is that riders can pretend to be at risk, that the insecurity of the track’s dips and dives is all make-believe. Unlike heavy turbulence in an airplane, the roller coaster is designed to make you feel completely out of control while remaining totally fastened and secured to the plastic seat beneath you. This is the illusion that makes the long lines worth the wait. Placing full faith in the ride allows you to let go of the impulse to operate it, often leading to guttural screams and flailing limbs and laugh attacks. The thrill is physical and impulsive. Even in its most unendurable moments, you know the ride will end, and that it will end safely. Of course, there is always the tiniest chance that it won’t, and maybe that, too, is part of the fun.
The most overt sources of levity in The House are The Beasties. These are the pets of Duskmourn’s former citizens. They are enormous and lumbering, and they offer protection to the living with unyielding conviction. In their clumsy attempts to appeal to Survivors, they outfit themselves with objects found around The House: a rocking chair here, a string of lights there. This one is looking for the supposed monsters that hide under beds. Central to their appearance are a collection of smiling masks. These conceal their most guarded secrets: their faces are dried and tethered to their ancient skulls. Beasties live in constant fear of revealing their grotesque nature to their companions. If a mask ever slips, a Beastie will flee in shame, or potentially lash out in rage.
Masks are fundamentally horrifying objects. In the case of clowns, a mask exaggerates facial features often to the point of burlesque. Clown makeup has deep roots in pantomime theater. It gives actors the ability to communicate subtle gestures across the long gap between stage and audience. Seen up close, this makeup is unnerving. It conceals the identity of the performer with an impersonal barrier bordering on the uncanny. In the case of the Beasties, the mask projects a suspicious feeling of unease. No matter how kind they are, you must remain reserved. Disturbing are their attempts at relating to you through objects of human use, and especially through the most human feature of all, that of the face. Do not confide in anyone, or anything, wearing a mask. There will always be hidden intention.
Despite these accents of amusement and momentary bliss, Duskmourn nonetheless is a house possessed. Nothing is exempt from its demonic influence. Nothing is pure. Notable to me is the creative team’s return to the goat as an unholy omen and symbol. Recurring waves of cultural Satanic Panic have pushed the goat to the periphery – Duskmourn marks a dramatic return to form. Its demons are reminiscent of the earliest years of Magic. They are decidedly evocative of the counter-cultural imagery found in heavy metal and witchcraft. This is a bold decision for a game that has distanced itself from its own past. Magic has been afraid of The Dark for a long time: perhaps it wants to sequester that which was stolen from religious fear-mongers and superstitious parents. Perhaps it misses its own traditions. Perhaps it, too, wants to return home.
Overlord of the Balemurk by Babs Webb is my favorite card in Duskmourn. This is the image I will remember ten years gone. In the foreground floats a horrifying contortion of three arms and three legs, as two animal heads emerge from a single, open eye. Cobwebs peel from the gaps between appendages. Two, symmetrical staircases bend and warp through the background, a thematic framing device that reminds us of the setting. This painting captures the dark essence of The House. It reminds us that this is an unhappy place. It is haunted by a moth-like demon suspended deep beneath its foundation. Like all desolate places, its despair spreads like black mold, the kind that makes you hallucinate surreal monsters, the kind that kills you slowly, and then all at once.
Chapter IV: The Fun House
“It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope.”
Shirley Jackson – The Haunting of Hill House
Deep beneath Duskmourn, there grows a moth-like entity that spreads malevolence and fear through every room of The House. As the terror germinates, the entity molts and swells further into its cavernous tunnels. Its lair is the one chamber whose location never changes; it remains fixed while all others transform. In her analysis of the haunted house, the folklorist Dr. Sylvia Ann Grider comments that “The attic and the basement are the…most remote locations…and, therefore, the farthest away from reality…The basement is organically at the bottom of the house; it is below the ground, in contact with the forces of the underworld. Whereas the roof or windows of the attic provide tantalizing hopes for escape and reunion with the outside world, escape from an earth-dug cellar is hopeless and impossible, psychologically analogous to being buried alive.”
Magic’s haunted house is not so sullen or severe. The characters and creatures here exist under the roof of good, safe fun. The card game takes precedence over analogy and social commentary, and it demands balance – mechanical balance between the five colors, tonal balance between horror and hope, thematic balance between good and evil. Duskmourn is a theme park ride filled with charming tropes and fantastic monsters and delightful cliché. It is a house built with love and care and a sharp attention to detail. It is a fun house full of fears to gather and collect and conquer, like bugs in a light box.
Somewhere between science and superstition, there is an empty field. In the middle of this field, we construct our stories. We build them from the plastic materials of experiences – real and imaginary. We populate them with composite characters and furnish them with false memories. We decorate them with symbols. We speak in metaphor so our stories feel like shared spaces, or rather, like houses.
Duskmourn reminds us that all houses are haunted. Their pipes burst, their furnaces explode, their circuits arc and overload like lightning. They threaten to collapse under loose soil, they propagate fungus in the drywall, they settle and scar and age. Windows shatter from wayward baseballs, moths creep into closets and chew through clothes, babies outgrow their cribs, then their rooms, then their parents, in time. Eventually, all of us become Valgavoth, our hearts extend through every corner of the places we call home. Our memories interlace with the structure and become inseparable in our minds. Inevitably, we’re forced to pack everything into cardboard boxes and hire moving vans to haul it all away. We’re forced out. In the rear-view mirror, the house remains, and within it, something within us. It keeps us there, and we become the ghosts. We all haunt the houses we live and leave.
This episode was sponsored by Wizards of the Coast, who provided me all the necessary guidance and materials to write and produce this video. Thank you Wizards for the confidence and the trust.
Sources
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