While Urza was inadvertently acquiring the reins of power in Yotia, Mishra was doing the same with the Fallaji desert people, becoming a close advisor to the Fallaji ruler over several years. The stone then took on Urza's consciousness. Urza ignited the planeswalker spark within the re-fused powerstone after the detonation of the Golgothian Sylex. However, he threw himself headlong into his new position of Chief Artificer, working obsessively on his attempts to improve his artifacts. However, being wed did not make him any more affectionate towards his wife - on the contrary, he left her bed on their wedding night to study the Thran book from her dowry. He succeeded and was wed to Kayla bin-Kroog. Urza wasn't particularly interested in the daughter, but in an attempt to acquire a Thran tome that was in her dowry, Urza built a gigantic machine to move the statue. Shortly thereafter, a public contest was announced by the ruler of Yotia: Any man who could move a gigantic jade statue across a courtyard would be married to his daughter. A mutual desire for the other brother's stone led to a falling-out between Urza and Mishra, as well as the inadvertent death of Tocasia.Īfter Tocasia's death, Urza moved to Yotia and put his skills with machinery to work as a clockmaker's apprentice. Urza and Mishra kept the two halves of the stone, which became known as the Mightstone and the Weakstone respectively. On their first visit, Urza and Mishra discovered the powerstone sealing Phyrexia, and in their haste to grab the stone before the other brother, they broke it in two. A mysterious cave filled with old Thran artifacts, the Caves were also the location of a long-sealed gateway to Phyrexia, used in almost every Phyrexian infiltration and invasion of Dominaria. While the most obvious of these was the ornithopter, the most important turned out to be the Caves of Koilos. Over their years at Tocasia's camp, Urza and Mishra made several important inventions and discoveries. Rarely having a hands-on approach, he would prefer to study the artifacts the excavations uncovered rather than participate in the diggings. During this time, Urza developed a talent for study. Under Tocasia's guidance, the two brothers learned a large amount about the manufacture of artifacts from the archaeological excavations of the ancient ruins of the Thran, the mysterious civilization that ruled Terisiare thousands of years prior. In 10 AR, their father fell ill, so he sent them away to his old friend, Tocasia, to serve as students at her archaeological dig. This woman treated Urza and Mishra with indifference at best and contempt at worst.
Urza's mother died while he was a child, and his father married another member of the aristocracy. They were born to a noble family of Argive, one of the three coastal kingdoms of Terisiare. Urza and his younger brother Mishra were born on the first and last days of the same year, marked 0 AR by later historians.