Karina's Explorations

Karina's Explorations is the 13th expansion of the Cajuniverse. It was released on June 1, 2022.

Karina's Explorations follows Karina Oblay on several smaller stories across her life and across the Multiverse, ranging from her childhood in Festenya and The Arena in the late 60s PM to her experiencing the aftermath of The Extraction Project in 87 PM (73 PM from her time-traveling perspective.)

Set Details
Karina's Explorations contains 312 cards (107 commons, 83 uncommons, 65 rares, 20 mythic rares, and 37 bonus).

Karina's Explorations introduced the following mechanics:

Death knell (As a creature you control dies, trigger one death knell of that creature or another permanent you control.)

First contact (You make first contact the first time each turn you cast a spell with a name not in your graveyard or control already.)

Advance  (Cast this for to advance it as it enters. : Advance this as a sorcery.)

Karina's Explorations returned the following mechanics:

Explore (Reveal the top card of your library. Put it into your hand if it's a land. Otherwise, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature or a loyalty counter on this planeswalker, then you may mill that card.)

Codex (As this enters, conjure its contents into a shuffled face-up additional library.)

Watermarks
Every card in Karina's Explorations other than the planeswalkers has a watermark representing one of the ten planes in the set.
 * The Smoking Skull for Usona
 * The Shock Baton for Volaria
 * The Venom Loop for Duwinda
 * The Cold Heart for Skalor
 * The Trusty Spyglass for Tirvana
 * The Opera Mask for Festenya
 * The Fox Tail for Chikyu
 * The Star Compass for Calavan
 * The Abandoned Sword for The Arena
 * The Book Tower for Tena

Tirvana
"What does the future hold?" Reyhsia takes 12-year old Karina to her home plane of Tirvana to introduce Karina to her culture and Ve'aja, the Tirvanian deity of blood and family. Ve'aja is initially pleased that Reyhsia has finally started a family, if through unconventional means, but then bemoans when she learns Karina is dating a girl. "“I should have guessed Reyhsia’s kid wouldn’t make things easy. You do seem more fun though.”" Ve'aja allows Karina to keep her bloodweaving spell that she had copied from Reyhsia as long as she agrees to continue this new lineage in whatever strange form it may take next.

Skalor
"What goes on in the shadows?" Now 16 years old, Karina is assisting Pidge on Skalor to get practical experience on the trade routes of the Multiverse and more intensive planeswalking. Additionally, she asks Pidge to help her learn technology better, hoping to impress and better connect with Hannah. In her occasional stays on Skalor, she learns bits and pieces about one of Pidge's local competitors, a vampire artificer from House Valinov who's innovations are unlike anything the plane has ever seen, and who is extremely hostile towards anyone asking questions as to how exactly their machines work. "“Those Valinov designs seem like they ain’t from anywhere on Skalor...”"

Volaria
"Do you belong here?" In 4587 AR, Entela began to locate magical youth on the plane of Virilin and protect them from the plane's anti-mage military forces, sometimes escalating to relocating them to Volaria or other planes in The Extraction Project. As more extraplanar fugitives arrive on Volaria and Virilin escalates to violence in the wake of The Extraction Project, there is a growing air of protest in Entela. Anger turns to harassment turns to violence as Entela's own law enforcement becomes spread too thin across the Multiverse. Karina tries to step up to defend her extraplanar friends and only finds herself added to the line of fire as another "extraplanar," made worse still by her relationship with Hannah and alleged interference of her Power Scripts, hereditary spells of which Hannah is among the last few users of. "“Hey, don’t you worry about what they say about us. We can get through this together, just like everything else, right?”"

Duwinda
"We don't want your meddling." While exploring around the Multiverse, 17 year old Karina stumbles into the plane of Duwinda, and starts looking around and documenting the strange new creatures she runs into, much like she had on Chikyu. All seems well until she crosses paths with Irbek, who is frustrated that Karina is wandering around this place, and grows even angrier when he learns she is part of the 7CI, taking her notes away from her and trying to scare her off. Karina tries to protest this, but Irbek has little patience for arguing with a child. While she is not fully swayed by Irbek, she does relent some, and promises Irbek that she will do what she can to keep the 7CI off the plane. "“If you don’t want any trouble, then you and yours will stay on that side of that black stump. I don’t want to see you one step further.”"

Usona
"Do you want to forget your troubles?" Flynn had taken Karina on many questionably safe escapades across the Multiverse, but this time she had something quite different in mind. Both girls were aware of Mei Liva, another planeswalker that Reyhsia had attempted to take under her wing many years before she had successfully done so with Flynn and Karina. Flynn wanted to track her down, both as she was an honorary sister, and for her ability to take memories from people, with Flynn and Karina both having more than their share of bad memories they wished they could forget.

While the two girls did not know Mei very well, she knew of them from Reyhsia and entertained their plans when they finally tracked her down on Usona. Rather than take their requests to remove their memories, she gave them a short tour of the plane, explaining its history to them: That the denizens of Usona had once sought a similar thing, and received it. But they would find forgetting their sorrows did not cure sorrow, for some the same problems would return to them, for others they would just find more problems they wished to be rid of. And so they would forget, again and again and again, until for many of them, they just became shadows of their former selves. After her tour, Mei returned to their offer. She would take their memories, if they still wished, but only this once. "“I can take what haunts you. But I can’t take what it’s done to you. And I can’t promise it’ll make anything any better. But... it shouldn’t make things any worse.”"

Notable Cards

 * Creativity, a entry into the Villainy megacycle started in Storytime.
 * Lovebird Lounge, a entry into the Parrot Pools megacycle started in Kahembo: Olde Dawn.
 * Unrelenting, the card of the Unraveling megacyle started in Villains: The Musical.
 * Twilight Vigil, a mirror to Lunar Vigil from Monsters of Chikyu.

Featured Planeswalkers

 * Karina Oblay
 * Flynn Skara
 * Pidge
 * Mei Liva
 * Reyhsia
 * Irbek

Trivia

 * In addition to the set's planeswalker cards, 13 other planeswalkers from The Arena are referenced:
 * Aiden of Sunspear
 * Base Zero
 * Dokucu, the Ominous
 * Experiment Zero
 * Hyle Seritani
 * Khon Vasq
 * Kirino Oblay
 * Okus
 * Rixos Ker
 * Rudara
 * Saia Evigal
 * Sevid Fese
 * Srethi.
 * Karina's Explorations was the first set added to MSEM that was named after a character, and it and Feanav: The Apothecary's Progress together were the first to have an apostrophe in their name.