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Kyodai (Soul of Kamigawa)

Kyodai

Magic: the Gathering

Kyodai's History

Kyodai is a dragon spirit entity from Kamigawa, that used to be an important part of O-Kagachi himself. She is the Worldsoul of the plane.

Kyodai was stolen from the Kakuriyo and imprisoned by daimyo Takeshi Konda in a stone disk known as That Which Was Taken, or simply The Taken One. This act was the primary cause of the Kami War.

Kyodai was bound to Michiko Konda, the daimyo's daughter. With the help of Toshiro Umezawa she was freed from the disk and manifested physically. She looked like Michiko's serpentine twin and took on the name Kyodai (which means "sibling"). Kyodai brought Michiko in the Kakuriyo, showing her how her life was before being kidnapped by Konda and how awful it became during her last twenty years spent imprisoned in stone. After that, she gave Michiko the power to fight alongside her.

Michiko and Kyodai, known together as the Sisters of Flesh and Spirit, defeated Konda and O-Kagachi, and claimed themselves to be the new guardians of the barrier between the Utsushiyo and the Kakuriyo.

Many centuries after the Kami War, when Leshrac Nightwalker planeswalked near Kamigawa, the Sisters stood in his way and ordered him to go away from their plane. Sensing it would take too much out of him to confront the pair, Leshrac retreated. This has been retconned, as Michiko lived a normal life span and the human sister can be assumed to be whoever the Emperor of Kamigawa was at that point in time.

After the prosperous reign of Michiko Konda, her descendants worked tirelessly with the great kami Kyodai to maintain her legacy and uphold order and justice in Kamigawa. However, as generations passed, these noble pursuits gave way to dynastic in-fighting.

Eventually, an emperor died young without an heir, creating a crisis of succession. Some believed it should be her brother, others her husband. Eiganjo descended into all-out war, and it spread across the kingdom when local lords saw the opportunity to seize individual power. Many died, noble and peasant alike.

The Yamazaki clan had served the Konda military for decades and earned a reputation for their unshakeable sense of duty to their citizens. A young Yamazaki solider felt the two warring successors were betraying and endangering the Kamigawan people. Inspired by his own ancestor's story of challenging a deadly imperial decree, he took it upon himself to end the contest for the throne. He successfully assassinated the late emperor's husband, but when he went for the brother, he found his target armed and ready for battle in the throne room.

Upon seeing such confrontation in her own chambers, Kyodai had enough. She stripped the Konda family of their hereditary duty as rulers. From then on, they would be ordinary citizens, and the emperor would never again be chosen by blood. Now, the kami would elect rulers for their noble qualities and commitment to the nation. With the guidance and wisdom of Kyodai, the Imperials ushered in an age of collective peace and prosperity.

More than 1200 years after the Kami war, Kyodai has a prominent temple in Towashi, near the Imperial residence. Himoto, the Kami of the Spark, is the embodiment of the emperor's relationship with Kyodai. The mortal and spiritual realms of Kamigawa now peacefully exist together. Kyodai oversees the spiritual side, while the current emperor oversees the mortal side. Early in the Wandering Emperor's reign, the planeswalker Tezzeret attempted to control Kyodai using a prototype Reality Chip. His plan had unforeseen consequences, igniting and destabilizing the emperor's latent spark on top of failing to control the great Kami. Upon her return ten years later, the emperor was able to reconnect with Kyodai briefly, and the two agreed to appoint Light-Paws as acting Regent of Kamigawa.