The card Gate to the Afterlife gives us some strong hints at Nicol Bolas’ plans for Amonkhet. It references another card, named God-Pharaoh’s Gift, that has yet to be printed. With the clues we’ve been given so far, however, I think we can figure it out what Bolas is up to, and what his ‘Gift’ might be.

Loyal Retainers by Bastien L. Deharme

Let’s break down Gate to the Afterlife into its flavor parts. The triggered ability gains you life and lets you loot whenever a non-token creature you control dies. The activated ability can only be used once enough creatures have died.

“Birth and death are both reversible.”

—Nicol Bolas (Soul Manipulation)



From a flavor perspective, it’s clear that Bolas’ goal is centered around the dead on Amonkhet. He’s not looking for living Worthy or minions. He wants the people of Amonkhet to die, but he wants them to be in the best possible shape before that happens.

So what is Bolas’ end game? The clue is located in The Hand That Moves, from one of Nissa’s visions:

Giants, covered in metallic blue, stomping through streets.



Metallic blue giants? I think I know what’s happening. Let’s talk about Lazotep.

What is Lazotep?

Stone Quarry by Florian de Gesincourt

If you read my stuff regularly, you know I’ve mentioned Lazotep as being way more important than it first seems. The spin-down life counters of Amonkhet are made to emulate it. Wizards of the Coast even made special four-sided dice for it. It shows up on a number of cards, from Stone Quarry (above), to Quarry Hauler, Sacred Excavation and Shimmerscale Drake. Shimmerscale Drake even has an interesting bit of flavor text:

They are drawn by the brilliant blue glint of the mineral lazotep from the mines below.



Blue glint, eh? That sounds metallic. And the stuff is everywhere. Just about every single creature within Naktamun wears a cartouche made of the substance:

Cartouche of Zeal by Kieran Yanner

The color can change, but the ones worn by the Anointed are uniformly blue in color. There’s no way making cartouches alone would require the ridiculous amount of the mineral being mined, though. The population doesn’t justify the huge amount of excavation going on, even when you consider the volume of corpses being produced.

Why is so much of the stuff being used then? We learn in Servants that they’re a mechanism for controlling the Anointed, and theoretically anything afflicted with the Curse of Wandering on Amonkhet. They can even be used to control the living, per Judgment. We know that everyone who doesn’t earn a glorious death becomes one of the Anointed. But what happens to the Worthy?

The Fate of the Worthy

Those who pass the Trial of Ambition and earn a glorious death in Hazoret’s Trial of Zeal get a place in the afterlife. Once dead, they’re sent to the Gate to the Afterlife. Per Final Reward:

Those who earn a glorious death are given the highest honor. They are carried on funeral barges through the gate to the afterlife.



So what happens to them after they pass through the Gate? My best guess is that their bodies are then turned into something like our buddy on the right:



Notice what this mummy is made out of? It’s covered from head to toe in Lazotep, gleaming a dull metallic blue. It looks like mummified remains of the Worthy are coated with the mineral, and it’s laid on them in such a way that it becomes almost a kind of armor. Undead without the squishy bits seem pretty handy, more so than your average skeleton, anyway. We don’t know much about Lazotep’s unique properties, but I guarantee you it will soon rank with Etherium in terms of importance.

As Nissa reveals in Judgment, Lazotep seems to have its own inherent power, much like Etherium. In Agents of Artifice, part of the conflict between Bolas and Tezzeret is over mining interests on various planes. And in the dubiously canonical Test of Metal, Bolas is after the secret of Etherium. Why would Bolas care so much about metals and minerals? If his plan has been to create super-powered warriors like the Undead Worthy, it would make sense that he’s been pursuing other means to do so.

Ashnod’s Transmogrant by Mark Tedin



It’s not the first time a super-powered army like this has been created. Way back in The Brothers’ War, the ruthless artificer Ashnod coated living subjects with a metallic substance, turning them into her transmogrants. Even though Bolas didn’t have a hand in those events (that we know of), he’s familiar with the history of the plane.

Bridging The Gap

And why would Bolas go through the trouble of creating a super-powered zombie army on Amonkhet, when it’s just a dead world? Seems like a major flaw in his plan, right? Not really.

Because he has no intention of keeping them there.

Planar Bridge by Chase Stone

Bolas has been after interplanar technology for a while. Although there’s a Saheeli-sized hole in this plan, his minion Tezzeret has managed to finally acquire the technology to create a bridge between planes. Only problem? Living things can’t get through it. But you know what probably could?

Lazotep-coated Zombies. They’re both dead and metallic, and could probably survive the trip. It’s possible that Bolas has had Tezzeret involved in this plan for a long time, given the Infinite Consortium cells that once belonged to Bolas were the ones pursuing the mining interests I mentioned earlier. And once Tezzeret became Bolas’ thrall again, the first place he was sent was Mirrodin, the place in the multiverse most likely to have interplanar technology, either through the soul traps or the New Phyrexians rebuilding old interplanar phyrexian tech.

Walk Lich An Egyptian

While I’m positive that Bolas’ plan involves making Lazotep zombies, there’s another possible element here. Scroll back up and take a look at the art for Loyal Retainers. It appears like they’re walking down the stairs from the site of the Trial of Zeal, doesn’t it? So why are they carrying a canopic jar instead of just a corpse, like we see in Anointed Procession? Especially a jar giving off the same wisps we see on soul magic elsewhere on the plane?

Scornful Aether-Lich Steven Belledin

Here are my thoughts. Nicol Bolas isn’t just creating an army of super-powered zombies. He’s creating an army of super-powered Liches. Perhaps the bodies of the Worthy are transported to the ‘Afterlife’, but their soul is stored in a phylactery (like the canopic jar) and kept someplace safe. Probably somewhere deep under the surface where no one will ever find it once Bolas lays waste to Naktamun.

“With no flesh, there is no pain, no hesitation, no emotion of any kind. He is crafted perfection.”

—Tezzeret (Scornful Aether-Lich)



The Anointed are useful, but need to be given direction to accomplish anything. If instead Bolas is creating Liches out of the Worthy, the Trials make a lot more sense. Being a Lich would allow them to retain some of their individuality and magical ability, and the Trials would ensure those made into Lichs (the Worthy) had all the qualities Bolas would desire.

Of course, the Lich thing is just a fancy of mine, but it would make sense he would want his undead army to have leaders with some autonomy.



What About the Giant Part?

We’ve discussed how the regular Worthy would become this super-powered army for Bolas. But you know who else has to prove themselves Worthy? The gods. And it would take an awful lot of Lazotep to coat one of them, wouldn’t it? It would certainly explain the huge mining operation for the stuff.

The gods of Amonkhet are made from leylines, right? Well you know what else interacts with leylines? From Judgment:

She gave off the suggestion of a mental shrug. They work like leylines, she thought. A different mana source, but the same principle.



The Lazotep Cartouches! So all those blue metallic giants Nissa foresaw? They’re probably the gods, perhaps able to move off-plane from the magic of the Lazotep. It’s possible that Bolas has already done this to those three missing gods. Maro mentioned recently that in the original plan for Amonkhet, there were only three trials, and to ask him about it again after Hour of Devastation comes out. Perhaps those three Bolas-themed Trials will show up again in Hour, helmed by these three missing gods?

Come to think of it, Tezzeret wanted the Planar Bridge big enough to transport a Gearhulk, right? And while I still don’t like the Planar Bridge being an essential part of Bolas’ plan for Amonkhet for a few reasons (namely it relies on happenstance), the requirement for the Bridge’s size may have been to transport Lazotep-armored gods.

The Gift

So what is the God-Pharaoh’s Gift? If it’s representing making this Lazotep Army, the only explanation is that it can resurrect creatures and give them a boost of some sort. Perhaps it even makes zombies indestructible, to go along with the theme. My personal hope is that it’s a sort of Mass Transmogrify, like Ashnod’s Transmogrant.

An important note about the God-Pharaoh’s Gift is that you can search your graveyard for it, which leads me to believe we’ll sacrifice it for some effect. Given that you can also search your hand, perhaps it functions like the Trials, where Cartouches allow you to return it to your hand.

In any case, I for one am ready for my Lazotep Zombie Overlords.