Centuries ago, Ob Nixilis was a ruthless human tyrant on a hellish plane of unending war. No tactics were too merciless—and no magic too dark—to secure his ascendancy. By the time he was forty years old, he had dominated the entire world. With nothing more to conquer, he was left without purpose…until his Planeswalker spark ignited.

Infinite worlds opened to him, undreamed-of vistas just waiting to bow before the vast new power he had unlocked. Soon, however, he learned that there were others like him—other Planeswalkers—whose power and ambition equaled his own. To best these new rivals, Ob Nixilis would do what he had always done: betray any trust, commit any blasphemy, and pay any price for power. He thought himself invincible, but then he suffered a cruel defeat. He sought to seize the power of the legendary Chain Veil for himself, but instead suffered its curse, which stripped him of his humanity, transforming him into a monstrous demon. At last, he found a price he was not willing to pay.

In search of a cure for this curse, he made his way to Zendikar, a world of powerful but unpredictable mana. Before he could begin to draw on this power, however, he was ambushed by Zendikar's self-appointed protector—the Planeswalker Nahiri, the Lithomancer. She bound Ob Nixilis, placing a hedron in his skull and suppressing his Planeswalker spark. Trapped on Zendikar, powerless, Ob Nixilis became obsessed with recovering his spark and escaping his imprisonment.

He schemed and scraped to acquire the relics he needed to unlock the merest fraction of the power he once wielded, nursing a fury toward Zendikar that grew over the course of centuries. Eventually, Nixilis began channeling dark magic even other demons feared. After years of plotting, he was finally able to remove the hedron that bound him to the plane, and soon after used the mana released by the near destruction of Zendikar by the Eldrazi Titans to rekindle his lost spark. His freedom and reascension to power has reopened the vast expanse of the multiverse to his dominion.