Deck # 17: The Crafty Spirits (EDH / Commander)

Dr. Kylie Moriarty awoke in a part of the Underworld, having been taken by her goddess, Pharika, God of Affliction. She found it baffling that Erebos was not here and was giving no rulings. Instead, all there were here were a bunch of spirits who are making artifacts at the command of a run of dragons. The clone of Lathliss, Dragon Queen, recognized Kylie as her creator, but forbade her from leaving the Underworld because of Pharika's command.

Pharika is not actually here, finding it far too red for her taste. But Kylie can hear her voice in her soul. Kylie quickly realizes that everyone here is working for the rather selfish Hellkite Tyrant. Unwilling to be a slave like the spirits and dragons are, Kylie begins going around doing what she does best: Tending the wounded and treating the ill.

During her time in here, she witnesses what uncontrolled rage can do as the Hellkite Tyrant simply doesn't have any patience with his enslaved dragons and spirits. And in that anger, horrible things happen. Things that Kylie is condemned to undo with her medical expertise - and oddly enough, without her magic. Her spells don't work here.

During this time, Kylie is forced to reexamine her life. She loved her life and most of her decisions, until the planeswalkers first entered her life by bursting into her Simic classroom, forcing her to protect her students. Realizing that her quest to cleanse the multiverse is destroying her, Kylie accepts her new fate in the Underworld. This allows her time to rediscover and fall back in love with medicine.
During this period, Pharika informs Kylie that she is first and foremost a healer. Everything else she has ever been is secondary, perhaps even tertiary. A doctor like her has no business getting to feuds with planeswalkers in the first place. "Since everything ultimately dies, Kylie, what does it matter?"

 Kylie meditates on this question, until she comes to the realization that she doesn't agree with it.  What doctor would be content to treat people knowing they were only prolonging their suffering instead of solving it?

 Too many bits and pieces of things simply don't add up, and Kylie eventually realizes she's in the Underworld in England, not Theros.  

 Though in truth it's only been a few days, to her it feels like months.  She tires of treating the spirits and dragons all the time just for them to be wounded again.  So, without magic, using only her crafting brilliance, she creates a Prototype Portal.  Then she brings it to the Hellkite Tyrant, saying it will make him endless copies of any artifact.  But he can only have it if he releases the slaves.  
 He excoriates her for her hubris, taking the Prototype Portal away from her because he thinks her powerful magic isn't there anymore.  

 Deciding not to fight, Kylie instead goes into a section of the Underworld, and at last agrees to the ordeal of Pharika.  What happened in the ordeal of Pharika is between the doctor and the goddess, but at the end of it, Kylie's soul had been reforged.  Instead of mere forgiveness, she was now fresh and now, with the ability to control her anger instead of letting it control her.  Pharika knows Kylie can't give up the quest to cleanse the multiverse of the damage the planeswalkers are doing, but she can do it secretly without confronting the planeswalkers.  

 And it was at this point that Kylie understood her druid magic had never been gone; she just was required to think it was so she wouldn't have it to draw on during the ordeal.  
 She returns to the Hellkite Tyrant, and tells him he can have the Prototype Portal but that everyone else is leaving.  He scoffs, until he gets a mere taste of her druidic magic:  She uses Naturalize on one of his favorite artifacts.  

 He is angered with this, and demands she recompense him.  Her response is to offer him the wasteland of America.  All the silly technology they wasted their lives on is waiting for him to take it - if he can find a way to restore the electrical power.  

 Since no fight happened, and Kylie controlled her anger, a clone of Garna, the Bloodflame entered the room.  She had been sent by Pharika to tell them that the sentence was over.  The doors opened, and everyone was free to leave as long as they followed Garna, for she knew the path and they did not.  

 They come back into America, only to find a group of people of indeterminate species squabbling over who got what.  It was America all over again.  Garna led the dragons and spirits in a battle to drive them out, for this land was now theirs.  
 Kylie decided to stay out of it.  She waited on the sidelines healing the wounded, but made no moves to participate in the battle.  

Okay, this is my idea of a Rakdos deck. I hate, and will not join in, the sheer evil and nastiness the color is known for. But it took me time to come up with a non-violent and reasonably decent way to play the deck. Though I had to wait until I could afford him, the answer was Hellkite Tyrant and an artifact deck. These are colors I don't approve of and don't understand. But it's over and done with now.