Liliana Vess MTG Lore: Her Complete Story and Latest Fate

Liliana Vess has spent most of her life refusing to belong to anyone. That refusal drove her to make four demonic contracts, steal the Chain Veil, join the Gatewatch, serve Nicol Bolas, and finally turn Bolas's own undead army against him.

Her pursuit of freedom began with the mistake that destroyed her family. Liliana was a healer before she was a necromancer. She wanted to save her brother Josu, and her certainty that she alone knew how to do it turned a cure into a curse.

Centuries later, the same certainty still defines her. It makes Liliana dangerous, but it also lets her resist demons, dragons, the Phyrexians, and the Echoverse version of Jace Beleren. By her latest appearance in Reality Fracture, she has not become gentle or selfless. She has learned to choose other people before it is too late.

The healer who tried to save Josu

Liliana was born into House Vess on Dominaria. Her father was a general, and the family estate stood near the Caligo Forest in Benalia. She trained under Lady Ana in the healing arts, but ordinary medicine did not satisfy her. Liliana secretly studied necromancy and told herself that power over death could make her a better healer.

That belief was tested when Josu returned from battle with a magical illness. Lady Ana needed esis root for a cure, so Liliana entered the forest to find it. The grove had been burned, and the root was gone.

A stranger appeared among the ravens. He never gave Liliana a name, so she called him the Raven Man. He pushed her toward an answer she already wanted to believe: use necromancy to restore the burned root, then make a stronger potion from it.

Liliana did exactly that. She took life from enemy witches, forced the dead root to grow, and returned with a golden elixir. Lady Ana warned that the potion could do more harm than good. Liliana gave it to Josu anyway.

The medicine killed him, then brought him back twisted by death magic. Josu attacked Liliana and blamed her for the torment he had experienced in the Void. Their fight killed servants throughout the estate. Trapped in his magic, Liliana raised those bodies as zombies and sent them against him.

The horror ignited her planeswalker spark. She disappeared from Dominaria and arrived on Innistrad, leaving Josu and the ruins of her home behind.

James Wyatt's Liliana's Origin: The Fourth Pact makes her responsibility clear. The Raven Man manipulated her, but he did not pour the potion. Liliana ignored her teacher, trusted her own forbidden work, and made the choice that damned Josu.

An old planeswalker bargains for youth

Liliana's spark ignited before the Mending changed the nature of planeswalkers. In that earlier age, a spark granted immense power and agelessness. She spent more than a century traveling the Multiverse, studying death magic, and trying without success to undo what she had done to Josu.

The Mending took away much of that power. Liliana began to age, and the prospect terrified her. Death did not look like a natural end. It looked like reunion with the brother who had promised that the Void would claim them both.

She turned to Nicol Bolas. The elder dragon could not restore her old immortality outright, but he could introduce her to beings willing to trade youth and strength for service. Bolas brokered four contracts with four demons: Kothophed, Griselbrand, Razaketh, and Belzenlok.

Kothophed was the last to sign. He stripped away Liliana's aged skin, restored her young body, and carved glowing contract marks across it. He also warned her that all her power was nothing beside his.

Liliana heard the threat and immediately began imagining how to kill him.

Jace, Tezzeret, and the first betrayal

Liliana later became entangled with the Infinite Consortium, Tezzeret, Nicol Bolas, and Jace Beleren. The principal account is Ari Marmell's 2009 novel Agents of Artifice.

She and Jace became lovers, but Liliana was also working toward Bolas's ends. She pushed Jace into a confrontation with Tezzeret rather than tell him the whole truth about her bargain. Her feelings for Jace were real. So was the manipulation.

That combination became one of the longest relationships in Liliana's story. Jace understood that she had betrayed him, yet the two repeatedly returned to each other. Liliana wanted his help and affection, but she treated honesty as a weakness an enemy could exploit. Jace became one more person she tried to keep by controlling what he knew.

The Chain Veil and Garruk's curse

Kothophed sent Liliana to Shandalar to recover an Onakke artifact called the Chain Veil. The relic held enormous power, along with the voices of the dead ogres bound to it.

On the way to the Onakke catacombs, Liliana killed a beast claimed by Garruk Wildspeaker. Garruk followed her into the ruins. When he attacked, Liliana drew on the Veil and infected him with its death magic. The curse poisoned his connection to nature and sent him hunting Liliana across the Multiverse.

She did not return the artifact to Kothophed. Liliana used it to kill him.

The victory removed one demonic master and replaced him with another form of bondage. The Veil split Liliana's skin when she used it. The Onakke whispered inside her mind, called her their vessel, and resisted every attempt to leave the artifact behind.

In Veil of Deceit, Liliana returns to Shandalar hoping to abandon it. Even a skeleton she animates refuses her command and places the Veil back on her arm. She leaves with the artifact still attached to her life and the Onakke still waiting for whatever they intend to make of her.

Griselbrand and the Helvault

Liliana's second target was Griselbrand on Innistrad. She discovered that the demon had vanished after fighting Avacyn. Both were trapped inside the Helvault, the silver prison that held some of the plane's worst threats.

Liliana raised the murdered Mikaeus, leader of the Church of Avacyn, and forced his corpse to reveal where Griselbrand had gone. She then confronted Thalia at the Helvault and made the cathar choose: destroy the prison or watch her soldiers die under Liliana's spell.

Thalia saved her people. The Helvault broke, releasing Avacyn, Griselbrand, and every other prisoner inside.

Liliana killed Griselbrand with the Chain Veil. The result restored Innistrad's guardian angel, but that was not Liliana's purpose. She had terrorized the church and risked releasing a vault full of monsters because one of her creditors was inside.

Two contracts were broken. Two remained.

Innistrad's last hope

When Liliana returned to Innistrad years later, she found Jace investigating a spreading madness. Nahiri had drawn Emrakul to the plane, and the Eldrazi titan's influence was changing people, angels, and the land itself.

Liliana initially wanted no part of another apocalypse. Then she thought about Jace, gathered the dead of Thraben, and marched into the battle with a zombie army.

Emrakul's influence reached even Liliana's corpses. The Raven Man and the Chain Veil both urged her to flee. She refused them and drew deeper on the artifact than she ever had before. Its power let her reclaim her army and resist Emrakul's mental pressure, but it left her near death.

The other planeswalkers healed her after Emrakul sealed herself in Innistrad's moon. Liliana took a practical lesson from the experience: allies could help her achieve what the Veil could not. In The Promised End, she joins the Gatewatch with a deliberately unheroic oath: "I'll keep watch. Happy now?"

She joined partly because the group could help her kill the remaining demons. That motive did not erase what she had done at Thraben. When the Gatewatch needed her, she stayed against the advice of every voice that had controlled her.

Chandra, Kaladesh, and the road to Amonkhet

Liliana's first campaign with the Gatewatch took her to Kaladesh. She followed Chandra home, encouraged her to face the Consulate, and recognized Tezzeret as the force behind its crackdown.

Her methods repeatedly put her at odds with Gideon. He wanted to protect life even when that made a mission harder. Liliana killed enemies when leaving witnesses looked inconvenient. Yet she also learned when to retreat, warned the rest of the Gatewatch about Tezzeret, and fought beside the renegades.

During their confrontation, Tezzeret revealed that Nicol Bolas was on Amonkhet. So was Razaketh.

Liliana urged the Gatewatch to strike first. Her proposal sounded like strategy against Bolas, but it also pointed her new allies directly at her third demonic master.

Razaketh takes control

Amonkhet exposed the limits of Liliana's freedom. When Razaketh appeared, he invoked their contract and took control of her body. She could not simply will herself out of the pact.

The Gatewatch attacked him and gave Liliana the opening she needed. She seized the corpses of great beasts in the blood-filled Luxa, turned them on Razaketh, and let the dead tear him apart. Feast ends with Liliana exhausted and delighted by what she thinks is another step toward independence.

That victory lasted only until Bolas arrived. He defeated the Gatewatch one by one. Liliana fled before the others, knowing that the dragon had spared her and that his mercy would have a price.

The defeat shattered the team. Jace vanished. Nissa quit. Chandra left to grow stronger. Liliana still had one demon left, and she asked the survivors to follow her to Dominaria.

Returning home to Josu

Gideon was the one who stayed.

Liliana found her childhood home swallowed by the Cabal's corruption. She also found Josu. Belzenlok's followers had transformed her brother into a lich and placed him in command of their dead.

The Raven Man refused to free him. Belzenlok expected Liliana to spend the Chain Veil's strength on Josu, leaving her too weak to face the final demon. Gideon agreed to help even after Liliana told him why she needed him.

Josu met her in battle and condemned her for the fall of their house. Liliana destroyed him. It was not a correction that restored the brother she remembered. It was the only mercy she could still give him.

The flavor text of Final Parting captures her farewell: "Sleep now, brother. That is the one gift I can give you."

Liliana and Gideon then joined the crew of the Weatherlight against Belzenlok. The coalition used the Blackblade to kill him, ending the last of the four demonic claims.

Liliana expected freedom. Instead, Return to Dominaria: Episode 12 revealed the final trap. Bolas had brokered the contracts, and their terms passed to him when all four demons died. Liliana had escaped four masters only to belong to the dragon who arranged the entire bargain.

Dreadhorde general and Gideon's sacrifice

Bolas forced Liliana to command the Dreadhorde during the invasion of Ravnica. Her control reached the Eternals and the God-Eternals, making her one of the most visible faces of his war.

She tried to limit some of the destruction without openly disobeying him. That did not make her innocent. The army still moved at her command, and Ravnica's defenders had no reason to know which deaths she had quietly prevented.

When Bolas ordered the final assault, Liliana chose to break the contract. She turned the Dreadhorde and the surviving God-Eternals against him. The pact began killing her for the betrayal.

Gideon took that death onto himself.

He had stayed with Liliana on Dominaria when the rest of the Gatewatch left. On Ravnica, he gave his life so that her decision to resist Bolas would not be her last. His body crumbled while Liliana survived.

Her revolt helped create the opening that stripped Bolas of his stolen sparks and ended the war. It did not erase her role in the invasion, and many people on Ravnica still held her responsible. Jace warned her to leave.

Hunted after the war

Greg Weisman's 2019 novel War of the Spark: Forsaken covers the hunt for Liliana after Bolas's defeat and what became of the Chain Veil. By her next appearance in Magic Story, she was alive and hiding on Arcavios under another identity.

Professor Onyx

At Strixhaven she called herself Professor Serafina Onyx. She searched the Biblioplex for a way to bring Gideon back.

The work repeated the mistake at the beginning of her life. Once again, she was trying to answer grief by refusing death. This time she stopped before turning loss into another Josu.

Strixhaven gave her a different way to remember Gideon. She warned the school about the Oriq, helped Will and Rowan Kenrith resist Extus Narr's attack, and chose responsibility for students who had come to trust her.

At the end of Final Exam, she shelves her resurrection research and enters a classroom. She no longer introduces herself as Onyx. Her new course is Introductory Necromantic Arts, taught by Professor Liliana Vess.

She has not renounced necromancy. She has decided to teach it without pretending death can always be reversed.

The Raven Man finally has a name

The Raven Man continued to haunt Liliana's dreams until research at Strixhaven gave her a name: Lim-Dûl, the ancient Dominarian necromancer.

In Homecoming, Liliana returns to the Vess estate and finds Phyrexians excavating her land. They want the object anchoring Lim-Dûl's spirit, a ring buried beneath the estate.

Contact with the ring shows Liliana the larger design. Lim-Dûl was one vessel in a chain of necromancers whose power and identity passed from host to host. The Raven Man had cultivated Liliana as the next link. His guidance in the forest was not a single cruel trick. It was the beginning of an attempt to shape her into a body he could use.

Liliana rejects the mantle. She draws on the death around the ring without surrendering herself, raises the fallen Phyrexians against their commander, and drives Elas il-Kor away. Then she orders the buried dead to hide the ring deeper.

She chooses to protect the prison that binds her tormentor rather than let Phyrexia claim his power. Lim-Dûl watches her leave and believes he has manipulated her again. Liliana leaves believing that the choice was hers.

Both can be true.

Defending Strixhaven from Phyrexia

Liliana returned to Dominaria as the Phyrexian invasion approached, but she did not join the strike team sent into New Phyrexia. When that mission failed, she chose Strixhaven as the place she would defend.

Most of the school's professors had been killed or compleated. Liliana sent Quintorius, Dina, Killian, Zimone, and Rootha to find the Invocation of the Founders, an old spell that could oppose an interplanar invasion.

The students cast an incomplete version. Its power tore Phyrexian machinery from the school and gave the survivors time, but it also wrecked the Biblioplex. Quintorius vanished when his planeswalker spark ignited.

Liliana took command of the rescue. Then she reached into Strixhaven's catacombs and raised generations of its dead. In A Radiant Heart, skeletons and zombies form a wall around the surviving students, an army that will stand as long as Liliana can sustain it.

The woman who once raised her household servants to escape the disaster she created now raised a school of the dead to protect the living entrusted to her.

A professor without easy answers

Liliana remained at Strixhaven after the invasion. By the events of Lorwyn Eclipsed, Dina was her teaching assistant and the students were unmistakably hers.

Ajani arrived with news that Jace had apparently died while trying to repair the Multiverse. Liliana did not accept the report as final. Before they could investigate, four Strixhaven students vanished through an Omenpath.

Liliana helped trace them to Lorwyn. When Ajani asked her to choose between her students and her pride, she answered immediately: her students. She stayed behind while he crossed the planes to retrieve them.

That choice is quiet compared with killing demons or defying Bolas. It shows more change. Liliana did not make the rescue about proving that she could do it herself.

Professor Opal and the Echoverse

Liliana's next visitor was another Liliana.

Jace had created the Echoverse, a second Multiverse built around his belief that he could remove suffering. Its version of Liliana was Professor Opal, a healer in white. In her life, Josu survived, her spark never ignited, and she rejected the demonic contracts.

Opal kidnapped Liliana and imprisoned her in the Echoverse version of Strixhaven. The contrast was meant to break her. Opal called herself the Liliana who had made the right choices and promised that the Echoverse would overwrite the original.

Liliana refused the premise. Her pain was hers. Erasing it by replacing her with someone else was not healing.

Tam, the person Jace created as his student, asked Liliana what an overwrite would actually do. Liliana answered as a necromancer: it would smother the souls of everyone in the original Multiverse and leave other beings in their place. The answer helped Tam understand what her teacher was planning.

Tam eventually smuggled a package of dead chicken into the cell. Liliana animated it, used the distraction to escape, overwhelmed Opal with dead rats, and killed her counterpart. Then she raised Opal as a lich.

It was a brutal rejection of the life she might have lived. It was also completely Liliana.

Facing Jace one last time

The version of Jace ruling the Echoverse called himself the Theorist. He had removed memories, empathy, doubt, and other pieces of his personality so nothing could distract him from merging his creation with the original Multiverse.

Liliana confronted him while he began the overlay. She admitted that she had betrayed her allies and herself in pursuit of power, and that the result had been loneliness. The Theorist tried to stop her. The Opal lich attacked him instead.

That interruption gave Vraska and Jace's severed selves their opening. Vraska stabbed him, and the scattered parts of Jace forced their way back into his mind. The Theorist became one part of a whole person again.

The restored Jace understood that the merger could not survive his death. Before he died, he thanked Liliana for lessons she had taught him without meaning to. Liliana opened her mind and gave him something she had rarely offered when they were together: an honest apology.

"I'm sorry, Jace. Rest unburdened."

Vraska killed him at his request, and the Echoverse began to collapse.

Where Liliana stands now

Emrakul arrived to consume the dying Echoverse. Liliana and the others had only moments to escape.

Garruk used those moments to confront her over the curse she had placed on him centuries earlier. Liliana did not defeat him or ask for forgiveness. She offered him the chance to kill her, then told him the truth about Rowan and Will. Garruk lowered his axe and left.

Liliana could have followed. Instead, she turned back for Vraska and Jace's body. She pulled Vraska to her feet, ordered her to hold on to him, and dragged them both through the final mage-ring before the false Multiverse disappeared.

That is Liliana Vess's latest confirmed action. She is alive. The story does not show where she goes after escaping or what she does following Jace's funeral.

Her story began with a body she could not save and a death she refused to accept. It has not ended with repentance that wipes the record clean. Josu still died because of her choice. Garruk still carried her curse. Gideon still paid for her freedom. Jace still remembered how she treated him.

Liliana has changed because she no longer treats those debts as something power can erase. In the end, she goes back for the dead man and the woman mourning him, even when leaving them behind would be easier.