Hey, I've been reading lots and lots of Magic novels lately. I think I finally got bit by the bug or something.

Something that came up that interested me was interplanar immigration.

Thran to Phyrexia
Thran elders and goblins emigrated to Mercadia
Dal (or was it the Vec? I always get those two confused) kidnapped to Rath from Dominaria
Rabians founded Suq'Ata
Rabians settled Fallaji territory?
Djinns from Wildfire to Jamuraa?
Kamigawans in Madara? (or was that just Toshiro Umezawa?)
Goblins to Dominaria from ???
Kor from ??? to Rath? Is there evidence to support their abduction from Zendikar?
I haven't read the Mirrodin books yet. Was it stated what planes those people came from?
Dwarves settled Ulgrotha from ???
Baron Sengir was from... Dominaria originally?
Serran refugees settled in Jamuraa and Benalia
Soltari and Dauthi from Dominaria to the shadow zone or whatever.

This list is getting long. Am I wrong on anything? Am I missing anything? It's an interesting topic to me, and something we don't really do much of anymore in our worldbuilding.

(I am a Wizards of the Coast employee.)

Back when Creative liked having a more connected multiverse. Now all the planar portals are gone and planeswalkers cannot carry anyone with them, making interplanar immigration utterly impossible

This only bodes well for us. You've done such good work delivering us stuff like Feldon, so this is great.

Plus, just good you're enjoying them.

Both, as far as we're aware.
Apparently by way of Rabiah as well.
Just Toshi, but clearly he ended up warping their culture.
Not even close to enough evidence, but that hasn't stopped anyone from claiming otherwise. Which is vexsome.
No, even though we get a glimpse of it at the end.
It may very well be more than one world too.
Unknown, but he and Ravi knew each other a long time before the war.

Aven settling in Otaria from ?????

And yes, since the mending, it seems there has been a ban on anything other than walkers traversing planes. Which is kind of a shame since natural portals add something to the worlds.

I feel so bad you have to do this now.

I'm pretty sure portals being "gone" was never officially stated anywhere, though.
Aaaanyway, trying to address the things I feel comfortable addressing... Nnnnever mind, I just clicked "Preview" and saw that Barinellos ninja'd me pretty hard. In that case, the only things I have left to say are:


- I have a feeling the Future Sight printing of Graven Cairns is supposed to show the place where Baron Sengir's from, for whatever little that's worth.

- I'm pretty sure the dwarves on Ulgrotha came through the portal under Castle Sengir from the unknown plane at the other end. I'll try to find a definite source for that, though.*

- Not sure if you're counting that as immigration, but the original Phyrexians spread to a lot more planes other than Dominaria, partly for gathering artefacts and other resources, and partly for hunting down Urza. There are probably still a few cells or colonies out there (like Elspeth's homeplane for example).



Planar portals are really interesting to me, too, and it's something I would encourage you guys at WotC to consider doing more often.

It's always amazing to see WotC officials digging through novels and asking about obscure stuff. Good to see someone cares





*EDIT: So, I checked the Homelands Document, which is archived here:
viewtopic.php?f=31&t=3645

So, yes, the dwarves came through the portal beneath Castle Sengir (before it was built) and nothing is known about their homeworld. There are a few complications involving that portal, though, which I'll put in spoiler tags.



Edit edit: The Homelands Document also gives an explanation for why there are Sengir Vampires on Dominaria and suggests the Baron isn't from there:

While he [Baron Sengir] spent time being summoned from world to world by a number of planeswalkers, he created a large number of Sengirian Vampires which still exist in the modern day, and torment those who live on Dominaria.

I don't get why he has to do this now. It isn't like the mods here would let anyone randomly use a WotC tag like that.

is it worth mentioning Slivers at all? Does the Rathi overlay count as immigration to Dominaria?

It's company policy now that anyone interacting in the social mediacircles has to stipulate they are wotc employees.

That seems a bit moronic.

why.

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/ar ... 2016-07-22
This is pretty much all they said.

It's always nice when WOTC staff do this, digging stuff like these (though, Werefrog's case still lingers at the back of my skull, tingling whenever this happens)




I always fancied myself to being updated with Serran lore... but I didn't know that some ended up in Jamuraa. Where was this stated? Barinellos, Pavos... Halp?

So, some preemptive legal BS. Okay.

*Rummages around in his Magic bookshelf*

The info about Jamuraa comes from the final chapter of Time Streams (before the epilogue). 363 human refugees from Serra's Realm were brought to Zhalfir on board the Weatherlight by Jhoira and welcomed by Teferi. The ones in Benalia are first mentioned in Chapter II of Bloodlines. Some of the refugees stayed at Tolaria to study there.


Other tangentially related trivia:

- Davvol was brought to Rath from a place called Coracin, but the book (Bloodlines) is ambiguous as to whether that's the name of the plane or just a place on that plane. Or maybe the plane is really tiny and everything there is just called Coracin.
- Both Rabiah and Kephalai have items from other planes show up in their markets for unknown reasons.
- There's a portal leading from Sursi on Dominaria to the Koskun Mountains on Ulgrotha, though given the weirdly specific nature of the portal, it seems unlikely that many people ever stepped through it. And it seems to be a one-way trip because apparently you just appear on Ulgrotha out of thin air without a way back.

Oh yeah, Coracin. I'm reasonably certain it's a plane. Davvol had different cranial anatomy than humans, and IIRC either Coracin's days were a different length, or their years were a different length, than Dominaria's. (Note: I'm not a member of Creative. Just floating my own opinion here.)

@Moppi: There Werefrog case? When he told Brady which planeswalkers were still alive? This is just idle curiosity because I read too many Magic novels in rapid succession. I'm not planning on killing a bunch of interplanar immigrants! (Too soon?)

@Pavor Nocturnus: Where was the Sursi-Koskun portal mentioned? That's... oddly specific.

(I am a Wizards of the Coast employee.)

I'm sure it's a plane we haven't seen anywhere else, but what I was trying to say is that it's not quite clear whether that unknown plane itself is called Coracin or if it's just the name of a location on that plane.

Here's hoping the premise of this thread is just a cover and you're secretly doing research for Return to Ulgrotha...

The original source can be found here:
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/ar ... 2007-05-08

And yes, the whole thing is oddly specific. Everyone who ever managed to dive through that gate probably died of pneumonia two days later
Though admittedly, the "appearing out of thin air" thing is more ambiguous than I remembered and might not be true. But the description kinda makes it sound like you just appear on Ulgrotha without a gate at the other end...

We should turn this into a Doctor Who running gag and always respond with "Yes, we know who you are"


Edit: If you don't mind me asking, which MtG novels have you been reading lately? And which one(s) did you paricularly enjoy?

I seem to remember in The Quest for Karn novel that Venser was addicted to Blinkmoth serum... that he had on a plane that wasn't Mirrodin. I'm also fairly sure he said that students used it like how athlete's use steroids. I could be wrong as I only read the novel once YEARS ago and spent most of it disliking that book.

It also said serum was made with zendikar baloth poop flying wildly in the face of even the Mirrodin book.

So I wouldn't pay any attention to it at all.

Venser was the proto-Nissa

Oh, I see.



No comment.



Huh. Weird, but kinda interesting, and definitely relevant to the topic I was interested in!



Oh, there were so many... The Artifacts cycle, the Ice Age cycle, Agents of Artifice, The Thran, and I played the Battlemage video game a bit.

I actually really enjoyed Timestreams. All the fast-time and slow-time bubble stuff was explored in a really satisfying, science fictiony way.

Lot of fantasy sci-fi fans here. I suppose mentioning specifics to a WOTC employee is taboo, but we have a YMTC plane with an astronomical phenomena for its schtick and an alchemy plane in the M:EM. I believe that planes like the artificial Mirrodin and timey-wimey ball that is Tarkir make the best use of the concept of a multiverse.

I like the interest in the books. I don't have much to add but wanted to put something positive in here.

At this time I don't remember if it was ever mentioned where the elves and merfolk of Skyshroud/Rootwater came from before they ended up on Rath. Also while I remember that Skyshroud forest ended up on Dominaria after the overlay (obviously), stuck in the frozen wasteland of Keld, and that the elves sorta turned out okay thanks to some help from Freyalise, I'm not sure what happened to the rather cool looking Rootwater merfolk.

MtG Salvation's Wiki says that Skyshroud and Rootwater were originally stolen from a Dominarian ocean somewhere, but that information isn't really sourced and I don't remember it.