‘And you will rise with the morning
And shake off the teeth
Squeeze the rind, spit the pith, and drink the day in
Weighing all that it costs you to maintain belief
In the face of the grief that finds its way in’
J.E. Sunde- I Will Smile When I Think of You
Few things can curdle my skin like hospital silence and sterile cacophony. Ivory and pastel cotton hospitalers in hallways filled with so much death they whisper about Hinge matches and lunch orders to pass the time between their rounds. Liquid IV pools at the low places of the world where no one can bear to look and only cheap branded ink pens on fake stone countertops can assuage the cost to live. After everything, all the strained years, life well loved and weight of time on your shoulders, little is left of you other than what exists in people that knew you. Roots you leave behind. This is a story about a tree.
Richard was a strong man. Physically, he stood five-foot nine of pure Connecticut wrencher’s muscle, all chest and hands that alone could carry an engine block, or laugh in concert at a dirty joke his wife, Doreen, told. There was no shortage of nails to be hammered, junk to be hauled or cars to be resurrected. Neither his presence nor his mind were ever wielded against you. Mentally he was omnipresent, a force calculating pistons and planetary gears, carving the minutiae of his world with intrepid tools and pick-a-part equipment, rivaling besuited engineers, townies and monied weekend hobbyists. A true statue, smile beaming wide as sky, with a rare masculinity of compassion and thunder that echoed in every bellowing laugh and bark of his canine companion, Lupin. Again, this story is about a tree.
Doran, the Siege Tower by Mark Zug
“Each year that passes rings you inwardly with memory and might. Wield your heart, and the world will tremble.”
For Doran, power in Lorwyn/Shadowmoor can be measured in knowledge, magic, and the ability to protect. As an immense black poplar treefolk, he contains within him not only tomes of magic but a powerful medicine separate from his abilities; oils from bud and seed can be worked into antiseptic and expectorant, providing aid to the sick. The inhabitants of the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor would know to use these plants to the best of their abilities, healing those in need. Poplar wood, with its dark and resilient strata have led it to be associated with hope, power, and revival. Everything about Doran is immoveable, unflinching by outside sources. Time spent wandering between planes and growing his vast knowledge of magics provided the plane of Lorwyn/Shadowmoor with a bulwark to withstand even the poison of Phyrexia. But when the battles are over, realms are one and the reason to protect has departed, the only true menace against us all, Time, still works its way in at our seams.
‘Now the sun’s coming up
I’m riding with Lady Luck
Freeway cars and trucks
Stars beginning to fade
And I lead the parade
Just a-wishing I’d stayed a little longer
Oh Lord, let me tell you that the feeling getting stronger’
-Tom Waits, ‘Ol’ 55’
When the world passed the hippies by with the death knell of Hell’s Angel motorcycle rumbles in Woodstock 69’, there was little left to be proud of and years more injustice to protest. Richard and Doreen, who deserves a post all her own, took to the road, warmly settling and always making a home together wherever the work landed or a child was born. Time spreads from these events like ripples in ponds as deep as wheel ruts, and the tides crashed into my life around 1998. In the town where I met his family he quickly became a father figure I didn’t know I needed, with Doreen, a constant cheerful Charon, ferrying children to our public library and local Dairy Queen. They built a house 3 stories tall and told countless more, weaving pieces of their lives into everyone they met at Doris’ Diner on All-You-Can-Eat Catfish Friday. But one cannot stay the same after changing so many people. How could you expect them to?
Doran, Besieged by Time by Carl Critchlow
“Each year that passes rots you with scars. Shelter your heart, for the world is cruel.”
In Doran, Besieged by Time, this is all that is left. After multiple lifetimes of giving all that you can muster, all that you have ever truly been becomes apparent. Gone is the strength of bark to protect, the indomitable will to withstand. Heartwood itself is exposed and withered, a core with exposed purple veins of Shadowmoor energy feeding through intravenous vines connected to ancillary trees around him, capillaries of life support. Lorwyn Eclipsed is accompanied by the Bark of Doran, his protective energy physically shielding a people that can no longer see him. A shadow of self, Doran has withstood all the ages to be here, in this moment captured stunningly by the incomparable Carl Critchlow, jaded and atrophied. Doran stands defiantly, face gaunt, yet facing ever onward, with a pose that says ‘You cannot kill me in a way that matters. I will still be here’.
Richard left us on March 31st, 2025, three years after Doreen departed, the days collapsing between the losses like void. Both went far too fast, too soon. Richard passed from complications with sepsis, which I was sure wouldn’t stop him, he has antiseptic blood after all. His strength failed, which it couldn’t, right, didn’t he have iron bark, Herculean stoutness? He passed at home, in the same room and month his wife of 56 years did. Aprils are forever cursed. All the love is still there, all the learned history, guarded now by his family, my best friends. It’s in the walls they built, the children they raised, the magic they protected. I am in awe of the legacy, and can only hope to replicate it.
Doran may leave us soon with our time on Lorwyn/Shadowmoor ending, and we can find ourselves grappling with blaming the world for changing him. We will remember the stories. It has been 19 years since Lorwyn first entered my life, and I can forgive myself for aging too. With Lorwyn Eclipsed I felt like a kid again, a true ‘return to Magic’. It matters. Magic, in all it’s forms, has always mattered.
‘Now if you wander in the twilight hills out past the gates of Eden
Graze your pony where the dark spring spills and surely you will see them
They come down to the meadow at night, there they dance till the mornin’ light
And all the bounding saints come ‘round to greet them
‘cause Annie’s lover was a wildcat’s brother and the badger’s mad companion
In his rainbow beads and his straw hat he was the king of mercy canyon’
-Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer – ‘Annie’s Lover’
Doreen and Richard
Andrew Tinsley (He/They) is a classic Vorthos/Timmy hybrid with a love of all forms Golgari. A Tennessee native, he started his love of MtG with ‘Nemesis’ by Paul B. Thompson and a stack of 7th Edition he found in sock drawer, like most kids. Lover of Pre-Modern Clerics, Treefolk and winner of a New Perspectives Grant for MCVegas 2026, he loves to talk about art that inspired MtG and vice-versa at @oz-edgewalker.bsky.social