Ravi used an artifact called the Apocalypse Chime, given to her by her master, to destroy all life and mana on Ulgrotha. The plane became a prime battleground for wizards, until the planeswalker Feroz happened upon it. He wished to protect the plane, so he, along with the planeswalker Serra, created a ban to keep other planeswalkers out. Feroz later died in a lab accident while studying a fire elemental trapped in ice. Serra later allowed herself to be killed by a mugger who wanted to take her wedding ring (Serra would appear briefly in the novelization of a later set, Urza's Saga, but that appearance occurred prior to her coming to Ulgrotha). The events surrounding the set begin many years after Feroz's death, when his ban begins to fade. The residents of Ulgrotha (now known to its inhabitants as the Homelands) are at war with one another. Design According to Aaron Forsythe, Magic Director of R&D, "it seems Homelands started design as a story first". While most Magic sets have a background story, it is rather unusual for a Magic set to have the story dictate most of the design of the cards in the set. The 140-card set introduced no new mechanics or keywords; however, it did use some of the mechanics previously unique to Ice Age. Most notably, Homelands used the "cantrip" ability: a cantrip spell in the Ice Age block allowed a player to draw a card at the beginning of the next turn in addition to a normally minor spell effect. Later cantrips allowed a player to draw a card immediately. Homelands also included single-color legendary creatures, first published in Ice Age. In Homelands, each color had at least one legend, with some colors having as many as five (Black has Baron Sengir, Irini Sengir, Grandmother Sengir, Veldrane of Sengir and Ihsan's Shade). Reception The expansion, on average, had an unexpectedly low power level compared to previously released expansions. Initially, very few cards were used for competitive play when the expansion was legal in the Standard tournament format. More problematically, the cards weren't considered interesting even ignoring their weak power level; Magic head designer Mark Rosewater labeled Homelands as "Magic's all-time design low". According to Rosewater, the set had been designed by friends of Wizards of the Coast CEO Peter Adkison, and Adkison ignored warnings from R&D that the set wasn't very good when publishing