The starting point that prompted my investigation was Doug Beyer's article 'The Planes of Planechase' from 2009 (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/savor-flavor/planes-planechase-2009-12-30). In it, Doug writes about the Dark Barony (emphasis mine):

On the plane of Ulgrotha, the vampire known as Baron Sengir controls a whole region of tightly clustered small villages, cast in perpetual night: The Dark Barony.

Is it, though? The art on the Planechase card clearly shows the place at night time, but that's of course no proof that it always looks like that. It also does not quite line up with what was suggested in regards to the current state of Ulgrotha in 2007's Future Sight novel where it's described as "a dusky, green world that seemed permanently wreathed in twilight" (p.256). So... it's the whole world that's 'wreathed in twilight' then, not just the Dark Barony? Even if something like that is the case in 4500 AR when the scene takes place, it clearly wasn't originally. Things are somewhat ambiguous in 4205 AR when Urza picks up Daria and Taysir on Ulgrotha in the Invasion novel. It mentions "gloaming" (p. 244, 246) and "twilight" (246), but not actual night time like we see in the Future Sight novel. Nothing in this scene suggests anything ominous or unnatural, and you'd think Taysir and Daria would have taken action if the Baron had set up planewide shenanigans to cast all of Ulgrotha in eternal night (or started a full scale vampire invasion for that matter).

Going back even further, it is clear that both the Dark Barony and the plane as a whole had a perfectly normal day/night cycle in the original sources like the Homelands comic for instance. In addition to the comic, the Homelands Document, although not strictly canonical, clarifies the intention of the creators of the setting when it states the following about the Dark Barony: "The sun can shine here, it is not always cloudy and grey, and there really is blue sky just beyond the mists. It should be a place of oppression by the Dark Baron, but he does not control the weather by any means." (https://forum.nogoblinsallowed.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=3645). An old Library of Leng article by Scott Hungerford implicitly confirms this: "Until the day when Baron Sengir has exclusive power in the Homelands, he will continue to enjoy life, watch the sunset, and occasionally bicker with his subjects over their obsessions with wooden stakes and swamp garlic." (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/library-leng-2009-10-19), emphasis mine. For what it's worth, the new artwork for Sengir Autocrat also shows the Barony during daytime, and Elixir of Immortality shows the sun shining through a window. In addition to that, the flavour text on Barony Vampire reads: :"Poor little sun-dweller out past curfew. And to think, you might have survived if it wasn't so close to suppertime." So I guess daytime is still a thing there, otherwise there would be no point in setting up a curfew and calling humans sun-dwellers. All those cards are from undefined points in time, but they all reiterate the original spirit of the setting.

What do we make of all this? The most obvious answer seems to be that whatever unnatural darkness was suggested by Future Sight and by Doug's article is a relatively new phenomenon that started some time between 4205 AR (perhaps when the Baron realised there were no 'walkers around anymore) and 4500 AR. There is actually another hint that suggests that a perpetual night time on Ulgrotha was very much at the back of everyone's mind behind the scenes a few years ago. The fact that Laura Resnick wanted to use Ulgrotha and Baron Sengir in The Purifying Fire, which got changed to Diraden and Prince Velrav respectively might be a clue to that as Diraden is indeed cast in eternal night. It is unclear how the original script looked like and where Resnick got the idea from originally, though.

However, even if the Baron (or Ravi) could do such a thing, what would be the point? He's dependent on his subjects as a food source, and they in turn survive mostly by farming. In short, taking away the sunlight would kill his main food source in the not so long run. It would only make sense in the final stages before a full scale vampire invasion where the Baron's army would have swarmed out to converted everyone into more vampires. Well, that lines up perfectly with the scenario in Future Sight, right? Sure. Does it make sense, at that point, to block out the sun, though? Well, not really, at least not without a few assumptions. "But they are vampires!", you may shout. "Surely the reason for keeping them out of the sun is obvious?" Not quite, but let's have a look at the next question and its ins and outs:

Well, let's go through the sources real quick here. The Homelands comic has the Baron walk around in Onella during the day, and Chainer's Tomrent (chapter 7) as well as Whispering Woods (p. 47) has vampires of the Sengir bloodline (in various stages of degeneration) fight people in broad daylight without being harmed or hindered by it. (Admittedly, I have no idea whether it ever comes up in the Serra Angel comic, since I don't own it...)

On the other hand, there is the short story 'Song for the Plague Rats' from the anthology The Secrets of Magic (published in 2002), which pretends to be Baron Sengir's origin story (more on that in a moment). The moment after the boy - who will turn out to be Baron Sengir - has been turned into a vampire by his father's strange ritual, he groans and asks the girl who is with him to close the window shutter, declaring that: "The light... hurts me" (p. 67). Compared to the other sources, this clearly stands out, but it could be explained by saying that only newly sired Sengir vamps are hurt by sunlight. They could build up immunity as they grow older or, more specifically, as they drink more and more blood over time. Baron Sengir clearly seems stronger than the classical Sengir Vampire, who seems stronger than, say, Barony Vampire (who also isn't able to fly), so clearly building up resistance to sunlight over time as part of a general maturation isn't too much of a stretch. It's also the only reason why the Baron would want to block out the sun on Ulgrotha as he gathers his amry. Clearly, all those newly sired undead thralls would still need to be protected!

This also helps us make sense of our newest piece of Sengir lore in the form of Arvad the Cursed. Here is what his info snippet says about him (https://www.facebook.com/MagicTheGathering/photos/a.10160186832600307/10160186832950307/?type=3&theater): "Holy magic allows him to tolerate sunlight and partially suppress his hunger". While it's not clear what that means exactly or how he would normally react to sunlight, the same caveat of sunlight being painful only for relatively 'new' Sengir vampires could apply here, especially if building up resistance and becoming more powerful over time is tied to the amount of blood that they drink - Arvad goes out of his way to not snack people! If that's the case, that might lead to some interesting internal conflict down the road...

The most glaring problem with 'Song for the Plague Rats' is, to make it short, the fact that the Baron is still a child when he is turned into a vampire, and the story itself suggests that that's never going to change. When the boy talks about his father's plans to turn himself into a vampire, he explains: "It means he's going to change himself, so he won't get old - well, get any older anyway. He's going to make himself live forever." (p. 60). When they overpower his father and kill him in the process, this results in the boy being afflicted by the curse his father was going to put onto himself, and he declares himself the new Baron Sengir. So... if the vampiric condition stops people from getting any older, that boy simply can't become the Baron Sengir we know and love, class dismissed, thanks for playing. Yeah, it was published by WotC and is official revisionist canon, but it basically strikes itself from continuity by being completely illogical and stupid and I'd prefer to never see it referenced again. Besides, there is one more problem to that story...

So, that girl from 'Song for the Plague Rats'? Her name is revealed to be Ravi and her new friend believes she "could be a planeswalker" and that he "will likely serve [her] one day" (p. 68). As Squirle already pointed out on his blog (http://multiverseinreview.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-secrets-of-magic.html), that's one hell of a weird coincidence. In the Homelands comic, we learn that Baron Sengir was abandoned in the Homelands after a planeswalker duel and that he freed Ravi - who would then become Grandmother Sengir - from her magical sarcophagus. Granted, he wouldn't recognise her and she has completely lost all memories of her former identity, but I still don't like the implication that they randomly knew each other before, especially since the Baron's part of their new origin story makes even less sense than Ravi's. Like, can we just pretend that damn story doesn't exist? Please?

Here's another odd wrinkle from an obscure source, though. In 2006, Matt Cavotta wrote an article for Vampire Week on the old Magic website: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2006-02-15

In it, he digs deep into the subject of the Sengir bloodline, and it is clear to me that he knew what he was talking about, referencing info from the Homelands comic and possibly even from the Homelands Document. Everything is very accurate and detailed, and he confirms the story of the Baron's arrival on Ulgotha (with no Ravi in sight). However, when he gets to Ravi's backstory, we get this oddly phrased nugget:

Before her welcome into the Sengir family, Grandmother was known as Ravi, a wizard with a past somewhat similar to Sengir's. She was a powerful pupil of a planeswalker, traveling the multiverse, studying magic, and learning to wield it. Her mentor was also destroyed by rival planeswalkers, leaving her on Ulgrotha alone, desolate, and without direction. She decided to end her suffering by using a mighty artifact she received from her mentor.

No mention of her being a planeswalker in the whole article! Whut. (Oh, and also, there's this bit a bout the Baron's origin: "For that matter, how did Sengir come to be a vampire in the first place - was he the product of a crafty necromancer, or the focus of a convergence of death and black mana? These are tasty questions - tastier, I think, than the answers would be.") So I guess Matt Cavotta either wasn't aware of the anthology story or somehow deliberatedly decided to ignore it. But regardless of that, the parts about Ravi being "a wizard" and the parallels that are drawn to the Baron's arrival on Ulgrotha and hers makes me wonder whether they intended to retcon Ravi's backstory behind the scenes at the time to take away her planeswalkerhood.

Considering the Ulgrotha related cards in M11, initial plans to use it as the setting for the Gothic horror block before Innistrad was conceived, the glimpse of the vampire army in Future Sight, and Creative telling Laura Resnick to not feature Ulgrotha in TPF because they might want to save the return of Baron Sengir for a better occasion all might suggest that Ulgrotha was brought up repeatedly behind the scenes and that they were trying to figure out what to do with it at some point.

Well, we know what it looked like during Future Sight, and we somehow squared the eternal darkness thing with what we know about (new) Sengir vampires and sunlight, but how about the present day in 4560 AR? I think - conveniently for WotC - the answer all depends on the Baron's timing in regards to the Mending. We have another hint from around that time that suggests to me they more or less had an idea what Ulgrotha would be like at the time, though unfortunately it's not much help. I'm talking about a question in the 'Ask Brady' thread on the old mothership (https://forum.nogoblinsallowed.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=13330&p=409021#p409021):

- Q: What is the current state of Ulgrotha?

- A (Brady): Too involved an answer for this venue, nor would I want to divulge it.

Until very recently, we didn't know for sure what the Mending did to the planar portal under Castle Sengir. One episode of the Magic Story Podcast (http://media.wizards.com/2018/podcasts/magic/MS_Podcast_20180503_8xaU1g.mp3) finally confirmed that the Mending shut down all planar portals whatsoever. That might affect the plane in a number of ways:

- Depending on how successful the efforts of Serra and Feroz were, the plane's mana has either fully recovered since then and doesn't need the influx from the Baron's portal OR it hasn't and the plane is doomed, with its mana being drained away by the effects of the Apocalypse Chime once again.

- The Baron might have made it through the portal and to whatever plane lay beyond before it closed, either with or without (most of) his army. If all or most of his army got left behind without a place to invade, the plane was probably doomed and everything collaped in on itself.

- Either way the population was probably severely reduced due to being drained by/turned into vampires in the final stages of the Baron's invasion plans.

- Would be interesting to see how Ravi was affected by the Mending. Somehow Elixir of Immortality always struck me as a possible way out and a means to present her at whatever age Creative sees fit.

- I guess there go our chances of seeing the Timmerian Fiends ever again...