Ever since the Fallen Empires expansion of Magic: the Gathering came out, I've been bombarded by questions about the Ebon Praetor card. I was kind of used to people asking the regular questions like "Where do you get your ideas?" and "How do you know what to paint?", butwhen Ebon Praetor came out the big question became "Why is there a bunny rabbit on the Ebon Praetor card?" At first, it only happended at conventions; then people started writing in and asking about it. For some reason, it seeems to be one of the big mysteries of the game. When I went to Eindhoven in May I met a lot of really nice Dutch players who would come up to get their cards signed and then ask that familiar question (usually with almost no accent): "Umm, I was wondering, why is there a rabbit..." Even in Holland! It got to the point where I would tell people that I would tell them the answer - for a price! The deal was I would tell everybody in earshot about the rabbit, but then they would be obliged to tell 10 people. This seemed to work pretty well at first, but somehow I know that something more had to be done. After the show closed each night, a bunch of us went out on the town to take in the night life. We were wild, we were crazy, we got ... well, never mind. The upshot is that in the middle of it all I pleaded with John Zinser of SHADIS for help. I told him of my plight and he said I could write this article telling the whole world why there's a cute little bunny rabbit in the Ebon Praetor card! So here goes. It's not the answer to Life the Universe, and Everything - everybody knows that is 42 - and the answer is not that I am crazy (well, not completely, that is the answer for a different question), the answer to this "hare-y" question is... Once upon a time, in a reality far, far away, Sandra Everingham, the art director of Magic: the Gathering, called me up and asked me if I could do a few cards for Fallen Empires. The first list she had didn't include any black cards, but I really wanted to do a black card, so she offered to call me back as soon as she knew what they would be. Not too long after, Sandra called back with a list of black cards and a suggestion for one that didn't have a title yet. I was told it was a counterpart to a white judge and we could call it a dark judge for now. I wanted to know more. "What does it do?" I asked. Sandra went on with a loose description about sacrificing cards to the judge to get more power, or something like that. If you sacrifice a mutant you get more. "A what? What kind of mutant?" I wanted to know what they would look like. As it turned out, I pretty much got to invent the mutant, but now the mutant seems to be a thrill, and my blue woman in the center is just a creature. The next step was to knock out the black and white line sketch. This is the stage when I figure out what the picture is going to look like. I decided that since it was about a "dark judge" that I would play him up as the judge of the fiery pit. He has a deer skull face and his hat and robes are a parody of the medieval heraldic ecclesiastic emblems from real history. I also dug deeply into the past for inspiration about what the hellish underworld could be. The Greeks believed in an underworld where cities and castles existed and the dead moved as shadows. I decided that if there could be castles, the castles would probably get wrecked every once in a while, especially with all of the evil nasty guys running around and the lava flows. The background is inspired partly by Dante's poem Inferno and partly by the wretched paintings of the Renaissance which depicted the horrors of war in that time when war, pestilence and famine were commonplace. Lava boils out of the ground to form vast molten lakes Where the sulphur is so thick that I could almost smell it while painting. Meanwhile, the judge sits on his marble throne which looms up from the pit on a spire pedestal. The title of Ebon Praetor, which was assigned to the card after I painted it, couldn't be more apt. The Ebon makes him black and a Praetor was a magistrate position in ancient Roman government. Thus, he really is the Dark judge. Before him opens a tunnel directly to the surface. Through this tunnel the evil spirits rise to the upper world where they find the helpless and drag them down to the pit for judgment. We see before us two such demons (this is the answer you've been waiting for!). On the right is a vile, disgusting caricature of blatant evil. On the left, a Pooka. He is a Celtic spirit representing disguised evil. Did you ever see the movie Harvey with Jimmy Stewart? Yup, it's the same kind of 6' tall white rabbit with an attitude. Not quite the head-hunt~ ing bunny from Monty Python's flirtation with Arthurian legend, and definitely not Thumper! However, if this rabbit bugs you, you had better be really careful! So remember, the next time you go into a German restaurant and that hasenpfeffer is beckoning you from the menu, consider the Ebon Practor card and order a nice plate of cabbage. Back to Shadis #21 Table of Contents Back to Shadis List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master List of Magazines © Copyright 1995 by Alderac Entertainment Group This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com