Remember when I said last year I was going to start a thread to share my theories about the possible locations of some of the anthology stories set on Dominaria? It kinda got out of hand, and I've started to make notes on all sorts of things related to Dominarian geography. It's all very much a work in progress, and I wanted to wait until I had it all figured out like a boss, but then I checked Ethan's twitter and now I'm kinda panic posting this because I have a feeling it might be a little bit more urgent than I thought: https://twitter.com/EthanFleischer/stat ... 3796541440

(Ah, man, Ethan beat me to the Oneah thing... )

Since I'm not on twitter, I really hope Ethan still has an eye on our little corner of the internet... I would have started this thread eventually regardless of that, but if they're working on more Dominaria stuff behind the scenes right now, it would be awesome if we could actually do something to help. That's why I'll start by being a know-it-all and point out a typo on Ethan's map of Terisiare from his geography article, maybe they can still fix it before they publish it in print:

- On page 159 of Song of Time, Karjzia and Tralinga are mentioned, but the latter is spelled “Trilinga” on the map. No big deal, but why not fix it if possible?

- Speaking of possible errors, there is a passage in Dark Legacy that is at odds with Ethan's placement of the Ilesemare Sea to the west of Gulmany, but I get the feeling that the novel itself is inconsistent on that one. There is a scene that explicitly takes place in the eastern side of a building in the city of Iwset, but the Ilesemare Sea is visible through a window. Even if that particular room was in the north-eastern corner of the building and the window was facing north, the only sea that should be visible according to the map is the Endless Sea (cf. Dark Legacy, pp. 31-32). Then again, there are references in the nightmares Maeveen O'Donagh has that suggest more or less the entire setting of the novel (including Iwset) stretches along the west coast, which would mean the Ilesemare Sea has to be there (cf. pp. 196 and 179-180). I guess you could argue that the stretch of ocean where the Endless Sea is located should also be a part of the Ilesemare Sea to make everything fit, but I bet that would clash with other sources stating the location of the Endless Sea... It could well be that the naming conventions for the different stretches of ocean have changed since the Dark Age, or that the map reflects different naming conventions of different people in Terisiare. Either way, I'm not going to make a big deal out of one throwaway reference to a wrong direction in a story that's set 4000+ years ago.

But I really didn't create this thread to dwell on complaints, so let's move on...

Other miscellaneous notes

- “The great market town of Triven Fralli in Benalia” is only referenced in the Mercadian Masques novel (p. 48), so I want to mention it in case it slipped through in the research. It might not even exist anymore, but you never know. That novel is also the only source mentioning that Mercadia has two moons, but I haven't found the page where it says that yet...

- The home of the Aerathi Berserkers seems to have three different placements in the canon, although it's possible that they simply moved. In Legends I, they live in the Blue Mountains above Tirras, Emperor’s Fist says they used to live on an island that was destroyed by Bolas, the glossary at the end of Shadow Mage #2 states that Aerathi is “a region in the Domains”. Maybe we could argue that the island that was destroyed by Bolas is identical with said region in the Domains, but I'd argue it depends on the placement of the Legends II trilogy on the timeline in relation to the Shadow Mage comics. The info in the comic might actually be the most up to date one in the in-universe chronology, which means the island from Legends II shouldn't be around anymore for the two to be identical. But Legends II is tricky to place, so...

- What do we make of the fact that the flavour text on Jacques le Vert mentions "the lush forest of Pendelhaven" when The Art of Dominaria finally confirmed that Pendelhaven is a tree in Llanowar? Was Llanowar called Pendelhaven in ancient times? Or maybe someone planted a tree fom the forest of Pendelhaven in Llanowar, and the tree of the same name is all that remains of the forest of Pendelhaven?


Named places with unknown location

- the Duchy of Kelsh from the online short story "Prodigal Sorcerers": https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2016-05-25
- the Rundvelt Mountains (Also one of the most tricky points from the anthology stories. Almost certainly somewhere in the Domains, but I'll get to that eventually...)
- Riverspan (from Hinterland Harbor)
- the location of the Surran (?) slaves/pyramids mentioned in Bloodlines
- the bogs of Cannelbrae (Bog Wraith)
- El-Abar (Dwarven Demolition Team)
- Scryb, if that's even a place (Scryb Sprites and Scryb Ranger)
- Orms-by-Gore (Evil Eye of Orms-by-Gore)
- Gal-Shan (Gravity Sphere)
- the Quarum Plains (Quarum Trench Gnomes)
- Matopi (Matopi Golem)
- Scathe (Scathe Zombies, see also: Whispering Woods, pp. 126-127)

I have also taken an interest in Dominaria's night sky, which mostly boils down to lots and lots of constellations that are mentioned throughout the lore, but there are some other things worth mentioning as well.

Astronomy




I'll get back to working on the short story settings, but I thought I'd just dump this other stuff here for now for the reasons mentioned above.


#AllTheDominaria

[Reserved for future use]

I still peek in from time to time...



Good catch! That must have been a typo. I've fixed it on the big reference map. Thanks!



Hmmmm, I'm pretty sure I missed the morning sun reference when I placed the Ilesemare Sea there. If I still have the energy for it, I'll review Dark Legacy and re-evaluate my placement of that sea, but I admit that it's a pretty low priority task.



Triven Fralli is in my notes, but I never added it to the reference map because there was no indication of where it was (aside from in Benalia), but I guess I could just stick it anywhere. It's called a "market town" and not a "port," so I assume that it's inland somewhere. Benalia's borders are wildly inconsistent from source-to-source, and they've changed a lot in-universe over the years. I'm inclined to be conservative and put Triven Fralli on the peninsula that Benalia City lies on. I'll just stick it halfway between Benalia City and the Caligo Morass. Why not?



Yeah, I figure the Aerathi are more of an ethnic group then a geographically-centralized nation.



Either of these explanations make sense to me.




Hmmm, I think I missed that one.



Are we even sure there are Rundvelt Mountains, and not just Rundvelt Goblins?



Oh yeah, I should add Dominaria flavor text to my list of recent material to review.



There's so little to go on with these that I'd just be blindly adding them in random places. I generally like to have SOME hint of where to put things, even if it's a highly questionable or ambiguous hint. Maybe I'll think about these a bit more though.



I considered trying to track this stuff, but constellations are culturally-specific, so there's no guarantee that some of those different names don't refer to the same constellation! Considering the great number of names for Dominaria's moons, I wouldn't be surprised.



Yeah, I would just chalk the Otarian references up to a continuity error. If you wanted to get fancy, you could say that the Glimmer Moon was obscured for a century by a cloud of debris kicked up during the events that happened there during the Invasion, and everyone just assume that it had completely exploded until the debris cleared enough to see the moon again. I can virtually guarantee that there'll never been a canon explanation issued on this particular point.



Yeah, cosmic horror is weird, but kinda cool.

Glad to see the Bat Signal still works

No, thank you for doing all this and making the magic happen!

I mean, the morning sun isn't even mentioned, the scene just flat out states the characters are in the eastern side of the building. But the window they're looking out of has to be facing north (which is possible) for them to see any sea at all, because there is no sea to the east or south (and the eastern side of the building can't have a window facing west). Later parts of the book suggest that pretty much the entire setting is west of the Ronom Glacier, so there's definitely no sea to the east. So if you follow that reasoning, the entire stretch of ocean on the north-western coast of Gulmany should be labelled 'Ilesemare Sea' (they also explicitly call it that in the scene I mentioned), including the one that's actually labelled 'Endles Sea'. But since I can't tell you from the top of my head from which source the name 'Endless Sea' is coming and what's been established about it, the Endless Sea might have to be there for it to not contradict anything else. So it depends on why you put the Endless Sea there in this first place, and on whether an alternative placement would even be possible. As I said, it's also possible that naming conventions have changed in the past 4000+ years, which wouldn't surprise me considering how much else has changed in Terisiare since the Dark Age... So, yeah, I agree it's a really low priority thing.

Sounds legit.

True, though the comic suggests there's also a region called Aerathi... Then again, I could imagine them moving around and just claiming whatever land they are currently settling on, so maybe "Aerathi" is whatever region they are occupying at any given time. (I also theorised in the "Rathi influences on Dominaria" thread that the Aerathi might be the ancestors of the Dal people on Rath based on their similar look, but that's neither here nor there.)


I think thechnically it's probably a mountain range that could be attached to another mountain area. "Dochyel's Ride" in Tapestries mentions that “[t]here are over thirty villages in the Rundvelt range” (p. 126). I'll post my thoughts on the short story settings when I've gone through all of them, because some stories might affect my placement of others, so I want to have the full picture first. By a somewhat fitting coincidence, the stories that have goblins in them seem to be among the most tricky ones to place (the same is true for dwarves), but I'm positive they have to be somehwere in the Domains. You might remember that Ayesh, the protagonist of Ashes of the Sun, mentions the Rundvelt Goblins, and she makes it sound like she has seen them herself, but it's pretty clear from the novel that she has only travelled the Domains.


That is almost certainly the case, but some of those quotes are pretty descriptive regarding the stars involved and their movement, and I'd imagine the names are at least still valid in the cultures they were mentioed in in the books. If anything, this would be more interesting for the part of the worldguide that is given to the writers, so they'd have some constellations to namedrop for local colour. I'm not suggesting actually mapping out the night sky as well. Details like that are a great way of making the world come to life in stories, but they're never going to be used consistently by different authors if no one compiles them for reference somewhere.


That sounds like a pretty decent explanation to me actually. Whatever the case, the Glimmer Moon is so iconic to Dominaria that I'm glad you kept it in. Seeing two moons in the artwork of a Dominaria card always makes me feel like home somehow.


Man, now I regret I took so much time to figure out the short stories, but I'm at it!


It's a pleasure to have you around Ethan, as always! Please let us know if there's ever anything we can do to help. And on a completely unrelated note, I'm really looking forward to Commander Legends, sounds like the product I've been waiting for for years



Edit: You know what, I should probably also roughly keep track of the hemisphere and season in which the constellations are mentioned, so I'm going to edit the OP accordingly...

Thanks! I think you'll like Commander Legends. We made a lot of sweet Legendary cards of new characters and of old ones.

The Endless Sea is from Planeswalker. It's said to be north of Efuan Pincar.

Well, that's definitely much later than Dark Legacy, and north of Efuan Pincar is where you put it on the map, so I think you can rest that case and just leave it as it is.

I briefly double-checked some stuff from Song of Time and found a better reference with more information about the stars that are mentioned there, so I edited it in.

Oh, and here's something of interest from Twitter:



Here's a link to the story in question: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2018-04-25

Also, we have some of the Mirage-era documents archived here: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=13369

It has the following things to say about Ufunguo: "Ufunguo, a city immediately west of the Uktabi jungle and fed by a forest river, was the first Zhalfirin city to fall to Kaervek. When his evil army stormed the border and attacked Ufunguo, the Sidar Mwigo and her troops bravely held the city, allowing its civilians to flee. Their sacrifice allowed the citizens to take refuge at Tefemburu, but the city was badly damaged afterwards."

And about the Uktabi Jungle: "A small jungle south of Teremko and Mwonvuli, the Uktabi is located east of Ufunguo and is the domain of the Quirion elves. Foreigners who arrived with Mangara, the elves have colonized much of the forest, and their indomitable city of Salamzuri stands as its capital and as a beacon of sanctuary for refugees."

Now, Pete Venters mentioned they were working on this to a looming deadline, so I wouldn't be entirely shocked if not everything lined up in relation to everything else. But if the info we have is accurate, and if the city in the art of Zhalfirin Void is indeed Ufunguo, does this mean the Uktabi Jungle wasn't phased out? Sewa seems to be located between the coast and a sandy desert in the story with no jungle in sight, but maybe the Uktabi Jungle was destroyed (or at least severely reduced) during the Rift Era? Maybe it's just outside the desert, though, I guess everything is possible.


By the way Ethan, could you maybe tell us where exactly the Argivian University is? The MTG Salvation Wiki claims it's in Epityr, but they don't give a source for that. That confuses me because I always assumed the university must be in Argivia, considering it's the capital city and they have (or had) the biggest library in the world there. Besides, Epityr is in the mountains, which seems impractical, and they already have the Epityr College of Mages... Is there any published source for this?

Yeah, there were no deserts marked in western Femeref on the detailed Mirage War era map of northwestern Jamuraa. I assume that some of that jungle became desert in the intervening centuries. It's marked flat and brownish on the modern Dominaria map, so why not?

In the story "Phyrexian Creations" in The Myths of Magic a university in the city of Argivia features prominantly. Skimming through the story, I don't see an explicit naming of the university, but I think that the implication is clear.

Yeah, the Rift Era sure could have done that, it apparently was what destroyed Efrava as well. I remember that online short story that was released along Planar Chaos and that has a fight between Mirri the Cursed and Jedit Ojanen of Efrava, and IIRC, Efrava still sort of existed at that time, but had already been virtually destroyed by the effects of the time rifts. Even if it's gone, you could just call it the Uktabi Desert to get a little bit of name recognition and nostalgia out of it nonetheless.

It would be really awesome if we could get a detailed map of northwestern Jamuraa once the phased out region comes back for real, just saying. There are so many named places crammed into that corner, and it's not quite clear (to us the audience at least) where exactly the borders of the Zhalfirin Void are, so a map would make a lot of things a lot clearer. Did you guys have some old internal document to work with that states where the border is, or did you make educated guesses about what would make the most sense?

Man, I can't wait to visit Zhalfir and Co. again in a proper set. The flavour text writers still have a long way to go until every line of the Love Song of Night and Day is used up.

Okay cool, thanks for taking the time to check! I though maybe you might already have it in your notes... I only remembered the libary from that story, not necessarily the university. I'll probably get to The Myths of Magic tomorrow on my quest to locate all anthology stories anyway.


Thanks for replying, Ethan! We always appreciate hearing from you.

I don't think that we used any internal documents to establish the Zhalfirin Void's borders, we just took into account various published sources (which were, unfortunately contradictory, IIRC) and then drew something on the map that made the most sense. You could probably superimpose the detailed Jamuraa map over the big Dominaria map to get a rough idea of what's phased out. But yes, there are quite a few cities and other features mentioned here or there that aren't on the detailed Jamuraa map.

Okay, I want to throw my two cents into that Twitter discussion, too: https://twitter.com/EthanFleischer/stat ... 6122937344

I think you've done a great job with your deductions concerning unknown locations so far, but I have some objections here.

For starters, I can't really follow your line of thinking from pine trees to the forests south of the Tivan Desert. When you answered the geography question in the Story Podcast #4 (the one about the Church of Serra), you said there were "jungle kingdoms" along the coast there, and that that's where the eumidians are from and where that caravan runs into Wasitora in "Who is Queen?". But the word "jungle" would suggest - at least to me - a hotter or more tropical setting, and that's also how it comes across in "Who is Queen?" (that story also goes out of its way to call it a "jungle" in every other sentence). I get that a forest with pine trees would line up quite well with Norwood in Caliman, which is on the same latitude, but it would feel inconsistent with what has been established about Eastern Jamuraa. I'd say we could always use oceanic currents as an explanation why it seems to be warmer there than in Caliman.

The domed buildings on top of the portal ship have a certain Middle Eastern vibe to them for sure, but the buildings on the ground look more like a standard medieval fantasy village, especially the roofs. I'd argue the same is true for the names 'Alene' and 'Riverspan', so I think we are looking at a corner of Dominaria that might not be strictly modelled after one particular culture but instead have a mix of styles. For what it's worth, the closest thing to the domed buildings that we've seen in the Dominaria set itself would be one of the floating churches in the artwork of Serra Angel, down to the pointy thing on top and the sligtly overhanging edges of the dome. That might be a very loose connection to the Domains at best, especially when you consider that the Serran buildings were mostly inspired by Serra's Realm. But then again, we know from the Greensleeves novels that there are dervishes in Muronia, and then there are some Middle Eastern influences in the clothes, weapons and tents of Karli of the Singing Moon and her people (they are probably from the Erg Mirab, which also seems to have a blend of European and Middle Eastern cultural elements in "Thief's Flight" in Tapestries). North of Oneah is a kingdom called Amjad, which also sounds vaguely Arabic to me in a place where you wouldn't necessarily expect it. So I guess the Domains might have some corners that could have borrowed elements from other styles of architecture. (I wouldn't recommend using Amjad or Muronia themselves, though, because apparently Muronia is a blighted wasteland that has fallen to some mysterious corruption, and Amjad is very swampy).

The same argument could be made for Terisiare, though the names of the towns and cities there tend to be made up fantasy words rather than descriptive English words like 'Riverspan'.

I'd actually suggest considering Corondor as well. They have a similar cultural mix and some of the names there are descriptive English names (e.g. Stonehaven, White Woods, Sand Seas). I'm normally against putting named places into Corondor that weren't there originally, but Riverspan was newly founded after the Invasion, so it could fit in. IIRC, their domed structures look a bit different in the comics, with a single dome and pointy minarets, but architecture evolves and I'm sure they've had a lot of rebuilding to do since we last saw Corondor. In fact, Riverspan has bridges or catwalks between some of the buildings on top of the planar portal, which looks quite a bit like the 90's comic book architecture we know from Corondor.



So, in a nutshell, I get the impression that the forests south of the Tivan Desert probably shouldn't have pine trees in them, and that the architecture and naming conventions suggest more of a mix rather than a straight up Middle Eastern inspired place. Corondor might be my strongest suggestion, followed by the Domains.

I'm going to add Matopi (from Matopi Golem) to the list of unknown places. At least I assume Matopi is a place, but it's not on the Mirage map and I can't find it in any of the documents...

Hmmm... well-argued. I'd forgotten about the jungles from "Who Is Queen?"

Yay, turns out my Dominaria geekdom pays off once in a while!

The good thing about having jungles there instead of pine trees is that maybe that's where the original artwork on Ancestral Recall and Telekinesis could fit. Those stood out to me when I was going through the cards in Alpha and Legends to look for names of unknown places. They both look vaguely Meso-American, which is an aspect of Dominaria we haven't seen anywhere else. That's less fact-based geography and more me micromanaging the worldbuilding in my own head, but it's pretty much the only region in Dominaria where that stuff could conceivably fit without clashing with any of the established settings at this point. Granted, there are lots of tropical islands on Dominaria as well, but at least some of those have been described in Legends I and maybe some of the short stories and don't seem to fit... (The kingdom that is mentioned in "Who is Queen?" is apparently ruled by a "merchant king" (p. 8) and probably a Suq'Atan colony, but the coastline is long and some patches of jungle are separated by the ocean, so the Suq'Atans there could easily coexist with those Aztec folks.)

Speaking of "Who is Queen?", it mentions a Madaran village called Pelada (p. 13), in case you haven't got that in your notes and feel like adding it. And I've seen the mountains that are mentioned in that story misspelled as "Mayar Mountains" (with an additional 'a') in several different places online, when the story actually calls them the Myar Mountains (p. 14). In case anyone cares.

Another Rundvelt range tidbit: In Ashes of the Sun, Ayesh says that, "None but the Rundvelt goblins make [rock sleds]." Goblin Rock Sled is a card from The Dark, which is set in Terisiare. Obviously this isn't conclusive; Ashes of the Sun takes place millennia after The Dark, but it's something.

On the other hand, Ayesh strongly implies that she's seen these rock sleds with her own eyes, and that she's traveled around the Domains, which supports your idea that the Rundvelt range is in the Domains.

Yup, that's what I was getting at.

I've got that in my notes, too (it's on page 23), but there's a catch. In "Dochyel's Ride" in Tapestries, we learn the following things about the goblins' traditions:

"From [the goblin loremasters] I learned that the Rundvelt goblins were the only tribe of goblins who had taken upon themselves the task of teaching the old skills throughout the generations. For that reason, we were the only tribe who used rock sleds and the only tribe who had kept alive the craft of the war drummers." (p. 124)

So that seems to suggest that rock sleds used to be much more common among goblins, but that the Rundvelt goblins were the only ones who continued to use them in modern times. On the one hand, that's great because it means that both Goblin Rock Sled from The Dark and Goblin War Drums from Fallen Empires make sense in their respective context (the drums are also heavily used by the Sarpadian goblins in And Peace Shall Sleep). It even fits with the fact that the goblins from the Red Mountains that destroyed Oneah speak a dialect of the same language as the goblins near Mirtiin, because it suggests different goblins in different parts of Dominaria indeed have a common cultural ancestry. On the other hand, it makes some of the stories about goblins more difficult to place, because we also have to think about where they fit on the timeline.

We might also want to take into account Goblin Warchief's flavour text: Not since the days of Pashalik Mons have the Rundvelt goblins been so united or effective. If we take that at face value, we have to assume that the competence of the Rundvelt goblins peaked shortly after "Dochyel's Ride" (because Pashalik Mons was still around at that time, even though he had already retired from active raiding and become a council member). That would make sense since the goblins innovated on their use of rock sleds in that story, but it also means that any stories featuring more advanced goblins than in "Dochyel's Ride" probably aren't set in the Rundvelt Mountains. Or it could mean they might be set in the Rundvelt Mountains, but long before the days of Pashalik Mons, depending on how you want to interpret the flavour text. Of course figuring out which stories are set in the Rundvelt Mountains could be important for deciding where exactly in the Domains to place them... It's a bit of a kerfuffle, but I'm at it.

It's clear that the "over thirty" villages in the Rundvelt range aren't cooperating, and there's no mention of cities or a central human government. Assuming it's in the Domains (and I think you make a good case for that), we can probably list a few places where the Rundvelt range isn't:
Orvada: They're a powerful empire that would probably respond to generations of goblin banditry.
Urborg: We've seen a lot of Urborg, and I don't think I've ever heard of goblins living there.
Stahaan: There are two mountain ranges there, and they're both named (Stahaan and Mirtiin) so there's no room for a third. Plus it wouldn't make sense for the Rundvelt range to be there given the story in Ashes of the Sun.

Hmmm... Hmmm...

For what it's worth, we could also look at the two versions of the old map of Aerona side by side and eliminate many of the mountain ranges there that already have names or that are located in regions that don't fit for other reasons (assuming the Rundvelt range is big enough to even be on that map, but I think it probably makes sense to pick one of those). Technically the Rundvelt mountains could be a tiny speck on those maps, but if we're focussing on the somewhat prominent mountains in mainland Aerona for the sake of simplicity, the following ones stick out to me:

1.) the mountains between Barbar and La, north of Verdura (though that seems to be a pretty heavily forested area)
2.) the mountains adjacent to Hurloon north of the Rip
3.) the mountain range in Vernaria (that's the peninsula next to Sursi)
4.) the mountains directly south of Sursi
5.) the mountains south of those mountains, in the Green Lands (with the caveat that one of the mountains there is probably the Broken Toe Mountain the centaurs in the Greensleeves trilogy mention)

Technically there are also smaller mountains in Wrenna, but maybe I wouldn't put generic stuff like the Rundvelt range there in case future stories ever want to explore that mysterious corruption/evil wizard thing that is (or was) supposedly going on there (info from an old calender and from the Encyclopedia Dominia website). Of course I'm making some assumptions by just looking at the larger ones in Aerona proper, but I guess if you ever publish a more detailed map of the Domains, it might be more satisfying if the Rundvelt range is properly visible, especially since people might recognise the name from Goblin Warchief and Mons's Goblin Raiders.

I'm going through the anthologies in chronological order to take notes and draw connections where they arise, and I'm currently looking at The Dragons of Magic, but I could put that aside and finsih looking at all of the goblin stories first to see if there are any other ones that might also be set in the Rundvelt range and if that would change anything. Yeah, I think I'll do that.


On a not-goblin related note, do you have any idea where the name Barbar (that forested area in South Aerona) is actually mentioned in the lore? I always assumed that was just Pete Venters trying to find a home for Barbary Apes, but then I realised that barbary apes are a real species of apes... Then again, those look completely different from what's on the card (they're macaques, not gorillas), so maybe Pete Venters and the artist painting them weren't aware of the real-life barbary apes either? That confuses the hell out of me, but I don't remember the name Barbar from anywhere else...

Okay, nevermind, between everything in my notes on the other stories, the stories in the final two anthologies and Goblin Warchief's flavour text, I think "Dochyel's Ride" is actually the only story that's set in the Rundvelt range. So it should be enough to just look at that story in isolation and look for a location that might fit.

Edit: I really dig that Pashalik Mons card btw.

In general, if I'm going to label a mountain range, I want it to be big enough to appear on the big map we released in 2018.



Mmm hmm, that's a possibility.



The Rip separates Aerona from Icehaven. I have "Sawtooth Bay" marked on the bay north of the Ironclaw Mountains.



Venaria, yes.



I have the city of Janar marked right by those mountains, but it doesn't really preclude them being the Rundvelts.



Yeah, I've marked those as Broken Toe.



I doubt we'll see much of Wrenna again, but I guess anything is possible.



I don't think I've encountered Barbar anywhere in my research. I assume that it's just an explanation for why there would be things called Barbary Apes in Dominaria.

I'm glad you liked the Mons card. It was something I've been trying to make for the whole time I've been at Wizards. Finally pulled it off in Modern Horizons.