River Styx is the first full size Curio card to be discovered in Alpha packs, after the discovery of the 9-card collage Curio. The card is artist Elwira Pawlikowska's personal favorite from her portfolio of illustrations commissioned for Sorcery. This Curio shows an inside look into early game mechanics seen in other curios such as the Legendary keyword as opposed to Unique, the original design of Sites being in portrait positioning, and threshold being given in the top right akin to a mana cost.
Before the release of Alpha, we were introduced to River Styx as an Atlas site card as shown below...
Initial design showed the artwork portrayed in landscape layout, as we had come to expect for all Atlas site cards. The card was a "Unique" rarity with an interesting mechanic that likely proved challenging and problematic in early game play testing. Although flavorful, the mechanic was a bit confusing and use-case limiting.
During the Kickstarter Campaign in March 2022, we learned of a significant development
change that would forever change the fate of River Styx. The illustration was re-introduced as a "token" card, its title changed to "Death's Door", and its gameplay use case changed entirely.
Death's Door is now used when an avatar is reduced to zero life, placed on "Death's Door", and on the brink of defeat if it were to take one more hit point of damage to end the game.
Stylistically, we now see the Curio version harkening back to its original portrait form with the previous playtesting mechanics.