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| - Inhabitants of Zendikar had their first hint that something was up when they laid sight on the innumerable hedrons dotting the land. These large, oftentimes floating blocks of stone were filled with mysterious insignias, glyphs, and runes, none of which the races of the land could decode. However, sometimes the most obvious clues are also the most hidden from sight. After centuries of living in lands adjacent to these gigantic blocks, everyone treated them as part of the terrain and relatively few believed that they would have some ulterior purpose still relevant to life in the present. Hedrons are so common in Zendikar, in fact, that Alternate Rise features the Hedron as a token card.
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| abstract
| - Inhabitants of Zendikar had their first hint that something was up when they laid sight on the innumerable hedrons dotting the land. These large, oftentimes floating blocks of stone were filled with mysterious insignias, glyphs, and runes, none of which the races of the land could decode. However, sometimes the most obvious clues are also the most hidden from sight. After centuries of living in lands adjacent to these gigantic blocks, everyone treated them as part of the terrain and relatively few believed that they would have some ulterior purpose still relevant to life in the present. Hedrons are so common in Zendikar, in fact, that Alternate Rise features the Hedron as a token card. Image:Hedron.png The hedrons of Zendikar and Worldwake are asleep, as were the gigantic creatures of the past they safeguarded. During all that time no one realized why these artifacts even existed. With the awakening of the Eldrazi, however, the hedrons have awoken as well. Their primary reason for being is to sap the power from the Eldrazi, making it so that the peoples of Zendikar's past stood a chance in fighting these titanic creatures, in the process absorbing the mana that the Eldrazi were known to collect. The peoples of ancient Zendikar had an order of lithomancers, magi of the stone if you will, who used the only magic they knew to combat the Eldrazi when they first appeared from the Blind Eternities. As the war progressed and more of the world's mana was devoured by the Eldrazi, the lithomancers began running out of the mana with which to craft their spells of stone. Having seen the terrible power of the Eldrazi magic, the lithomancers devised runes and glyphs for their artifacts of stone that were basically imitations of the Eldrazi's absorptive auras. This was the turning point in the war against the Eldrazi. Without spending any mana, the hedrons could weaken creatures to the point that they became helpless, all the while storing or channeling the mana absorbed in this way. In a sense, the hedrons' own existence came about because of the arrival of the Eldrazi to Zendikar. Hedrons primarily have a single mechanic, Drain, which is "Image:T.gif: Target creature has -1/-0 until end of turn. Add Image:1.gif to your mana pool." This meshes perfectly with the role of hedrons as the prison keepers of the Eldrazi. With the world literally swarming with hedrons, the Eldrazi soon lacked the power to combat them, and eventually were so drained by the hedrons that they fell into an interminable stupor. Meanwhile, because the Eldrazi were so massive and tough, even the forces of Zendikar and the magic of the lithomancers were not enough to destroy them; hence they were content to merely seal away the Eldrazi, either in underground catacombs the lithomancers created and then lured the weakened Eldrazi into, or simply on the plane's surface. Over the course of time, Zendikar grew over the slumbering bodies of the Eldrazi, burying them underneath meters of earth and stone. By the current time, no vestiges of the Eldrazi were left visible. The ultimate hedron was the Eye of Ugin, the final creation of the lithomancers that ended the war with the Eldrazi. The Eye of Ugin had taken the Eldrazi's absorptive auras one step further to the point of actually trapping away the Eldrazi into itself. Should the Eye ever be broken, hundreds of Eldrazi would be freed. But for the interceding millennia, the energies the slumbering Eldrazi took away from the land would be stolen away by the Eye of Ugin and returned to replenish the land in a perpetual cycle. However, not all was well with the hedron strategy. Over the course of centuries, more and more of the hedrons became corrupted by the auras of the Eldrazi, an influence which the lithomancers could not have foreseen in their short lifespans. And as the hedrons became corrupted, they began stealing energies from the world and returning them to the Eldrazi, gradually lifting them from their slumber. Also, the hedrons stood guard, waiting for their Eldrazi masters to awaken, when the hedrons could accompany them in the second war for Zendikar. Given the theme of the set, you'd expect a lot of very large, very powerful creatures, as well as the attendant mana issues. Alternate Rise solves this problem, not by using the Eldrazi Spawn tokens used by canon Rise, but by the use of the hedrons' Drain mechanic, which can essentially give you one colorless mana each turn. (You can't play hedron tokens directly but as you'll see there are plenty of other hedron-like artifact cards that have Drain.) Not only does this make it easier to get out multiple Eldrazi into play in a single game for even more chaos and destruction, but it is also a terrific boon to the level-up creatures widespread in Alternate Rise. Essentially if you're playing Eldrazi you would want to play with hedrons - their weakening powers will prevent opposing players' creatures from doing too much damage to you early game before you have time to play your large Eldrazi, while simultaneously giving you the mana you'll need to put those giants into play as quickly as possible. And for players who aren't using Eldrazi, the weakening powers of the hedrons can be essential in keeping your leveling creatures alive while you stave off enemy attackers and level up your own creatures, not to mention consistently giving you more mana with which to level up - an incredibly mana-intensive strategy!
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