Lorwyn Eclipsed lores provide major hints for Magic: The Gathering's next set

Lorwyn Eclipsed hasn’t been fully revealed, but there are clues

Magic: The Gathering’s upcoming Marvel Super Heroes set may have stolen the spotlight this week, with a Dec. 9 preview revealing dozens of cards, but the next set due out in a matter of weeks is actually Lorwyn Eclipsed. Only 33 cards from the full set have been revealed thus far (compared to 38 Marvel cards, for the record). Wizards of the Coast has confirmed that full previews won’t happen until after the holidays, but several cryptic teases have given us a clearer picture of what to expect.

Head Designer Mark Rosewater published a retrospective — the first of two — on Dec. 8 looking back at the creation of the Lorwyn block. It was originally conceived of as a “world that went through a radical change” as it shifted between light and dark. Lorwyn focused on creature types (sometimes called typal or tribal) in a whimsical fey world, whereas Shadowmoor experimented with colors, utilizing hybrid mana to showcase the duality. A handful of previously revealed Lorwyn Eclipsed cards utilize hybrid mana, allowing you to pay one of two different colors rather than forcing you into a single option. In other words, a white-black hybrid mana card can work in a pure white or pure black deck. We’re bound to see plenty more in the set.

In terms of creatures represented, the original Lorwyn bucked a few trends. Green naturally had elves and blue merfolk (a species the design team had tried and failed to phase out). Instead of goblins for red, Magic’s former creative director Brady Dommermuth pitched an idea for “fire people” that evolved into the elemental flamekin. Rather than angels, white was represented by Hobbit-like kithkin. All of these species are represented in Eclipsed cards already, though “kithkin” doesn’t appear as a creature subtype; instead, they’re labeled as “elemental.” Rounding out the pools of creature types from the original block are faeries, treefolk, and giants. Of those three, only faeries have appeared — though it stands to reason the other two will show up in the set.

Celtic mythology heavily influenced the setting, which also led to the inclusion of boggarts as a kind of goblin in the black color scheme. The team also developed a shapeshifter species that led to changelings (represented in one of the cuter new cards revealed thus far). Notably, changelings are all creature types, so mechanically they might work well with other typal mechanics like Allies in the Avatar: The Last Airbender set or even the Hero/Villain subtypes present in the Spider-Man and Marvel Super Heroes sets.

Wizards of the Coast’s wider approach to Lorwyn lately has been a bit unorthodox. The Forgotten Realms Dungeons & Dragons digital deluxe edition also includes Lorwyn: First Light, a short supplement at 32 pages that adapts the setting to the TTRPG. While not explicitly tied to Eclipsed, it foreshadowed a growing investment in the setting across both tabletop games.

The same day Rosewater published his retrospective on the Lorwyn block’s mechanics, Wizards also began publishing a daily series of Lorwyn Eclipsed short stories presented as audio dramas. At MagicCon Atlanta back in September, Wizards confirmed a narrative throughline between Lorwyn Eclipsed and the upcoming Secrets of Strixhaven set slated for release in April 2026.

These new short stories double down on that plot: The Lorwyn Eclipsed story opens at Strixhaven, where four first-year students chase a strange faerie into a glowing tunnel and fall straight into Lorwyn, and they accidentally awaken a colossal elemental known as Isilu. This causes Shadowmoor night to spill across the land. (Isilu’s card has already been revealed as a flippable elemental god that transforms to Eirdu, its Lorwyn light counterpart.) This eclipse erodes the long-stable boundary between Lorwyn and Shadowmoor.

The group is rescued by Brigid Baeli, the kithkin hero from the original Lorwyn novels who will probably appear as a Legendary creature in the new set. An entire kithkin town gets dragged into Shadowmoor. Brigid transforms into her night-self and turns on her fellow kithkin when exposed to Shadowmoor. On this plane, the difference between day and night is about more than just light and dark, it’s about competing versions of the people who live there.

At Strixhaven, the Planeswalker Ajani speaks with Lilliana and claims that Jace Beleren died in a magical misfire and the villainous dragon Nicol Bolas has escaped his prison via an Omenpath. Ajani then uses an Omenpath to go to Lorwyn in an attempt to rescue the missing students.

Ajani appeared in the Tarkir: Dragonstorm story earlier this year but didn’t get a card in the set, so perhaps we’ll see him pop up in the new Lorwyn Eclipsed set.

Lorwyn and Shadowmoor have always been two halves of the same plane, but because these halves are bleeding into each other, we’ll probably see more mechanics that represent “day-self / night-self” versions of characters.

What’s more, by tying Lorwyn’s instability to the broader multiverse through Ajani’s appearance and all this talk of Omenpaths, the story positions the set within Magic’s current narrative era. Lorwyn Eclipsed seems to be building a world where hybrid mana, typal archetypes, and the plane’s signature light-and-dark duality aren’t just callbacks to 2007—they’re the foundation of a story where the two faces of Lorwyn are colliding, and no one on the plane can remain just one version of themselves for long.