Given that fisco has been around for a very long time, how is he still alive?

I suppose since I'm around I'll go ahead and answer this.

Mostly, I always intended to handwave this sort of thing. Like, "mumble, mumble, Oldwalker stuff." I mean, he's obviously getting up there in age - he just ages about three times slower than normal people or something.

The plan, really, was never to answer this question.

But since you care, I may as well let you know!

Originally, he had set up several powerful ans subtle enchantments to help keep him youthful and fit (while still in the 20 year throes of his godhood) the magic wasn't exactly POWERFUL, but it was persistent, and served its purpose - just how Fisco liked it. When the mending hit, and he lost the vast majority of his godhood, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the youth spells had diminished in power, but were otherwise still intact. All he had to do was shore them up a little and they would work in the background without detection or much upkeep. So, like I said "mumble mumble Oldwalker stuff" and he ages three times or so slower than most humans. Hence 146 = about 50.

Later, he would meet Diana, and her continued influence helps to keep him healthy and young, despite his best attempts to smoke himself into oblivion and be old.

Unfortunately, the whole "youthful outlook" part of the enchantment - you know, the one that made him happy to be alive and and happy to be filthy rich - sort of fell off during the Mending, so the creeping melancholy he's struggled with for most of his life has been able to resurge and rear its ugly head. He's in more danger from that than he is from most of his enemies.

Hope that helps, thanks for taking an interest in the Shark!

Two new questions popped into my head today:

Do we have any mortality range on flamekin (i.e. do they die out naturally)?

Is there any indication for certain creatures needing mana survive? Specifically, I have in mind Angels, Demons, and Zombies.

(all answers provided are for the Lorwyn variety)
Kind of a catch 22 in that.
They sustain normal wear and tear, but their bodies don't repair well. This means that if a Flamekin took care of themself, they could effectively live forever, but the practicality of that is another matter. It's tied directly into their body's condition, rather than age.
The more active a flamekin, the shorter their lifespan probably is. Very much a candle that burns brightest sort of scenario.

Angels and Demons are a self contained system of mana, so they don't need any new influx of it to survive.
Zombies are a lot less clear as far as that goes since they didn't come by mana naturally.

[Burns]Excellent.[/Burns] I can work with that.

Archiving this in the question thread. The following was found in the Introductions and Shop Talk thread on page 41, back in July:

Also archiving this: a three-page thread started by squinty_eyes with the question "What does planeswalking require of the Planeswalker? What part of his power does he use for it, how does the travel seem (the Blind Eternities and all that), and how often can one use this ability?"

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3817

I wonder some things Wurm-related now:
1. What would people think the average size (length) of a Wurm would be? I was thinking at least 100 feet long easily, but are there any kind of averages known?

2. What are the stylistic differences between Wurms and Serpents? It it simply that Serpents can breathe water (and do they even breathe water)?

Theoretically, Serpents aren't descended from Elder Land Wurms? I don't know why not (or why Hydras aren't of Draconic descent, either) but that seems to be the consensus.

Stylistically, I don't see any significant difference between most Serpents and the draconic Wurms. Some Serpent cards look more like giant fish, and Ronom Serpent and some Wurms look like huge bugs. But I don't consider them to be part of the same biological group as the usual Wurms and Serpents.

I'm not sure on Serpents, but Wurms are supposed to be descendents of the Elder Land Wurms, who themselves were the losers of the Elder Dragon War (or so the Salvation wiki tells me). As you say, there doesn't seem to be any real stylistic differences between Wurms and Serpents other than "Serpents are , Wurms are (predominantly) ". I was hoping maybe our local dread god might be able to shed some light on the subject, though I hope I can get others' opinions as well since a large part of why I ask is to gauge what audience expectation is.

I'm always assumed that Serpents were aquatic and Wurms prefer to burrow, or perhaps just smash. I would guess that an average Wurm is bigger than an average serpent, although we have certainly seen some utterly massive serpents, as well, so maybe not.

Basically, as far as aesthetics go, there isn't any difference other than how generally reptilian vs piscine a serpent is.
But there again, we run into issues surrounding wurm aesthetics as well, and the drift they've had from reptilian nature. According to MaRo, that's largely because people keep confusing Wurm with Worm and they just got tired of fighting against that.

Serpents, to me, are more closely related to leviathans than they would be to dragons. Of course, there isn't any real lore attached to serpents at all, so we more or less have to go with the expectations that real world myth bring to the table.

Wait, what kind of "worm" are we talking about here? My first instinct is that there's a mythological beast called a "worm" that I'm not overly-familiar with, but I have a feeling it has to do with the oddities among Magic Wurms, like the phallic bug-looking Wurms, the strange-toothed Odyssey or Ice Age Wurms, or the more recent strange and alien builds. I'd be interested in seeing the original article, if you have a link on-hand. Feel free to tell me to search it myself if you don't have it handy.

It was on blogatog, so you'll have to go digging through hundreds of inquiries because Maro doesn't tag anything.
But no, it kind of goes into the fact that people don't really understand what wurm means or how it is connected to wyrm, so they assume it's a typo and people mean... worm.
I would be remiss to say that chances are there's some influence from the likes of Frank Herbert and the Dune series too.

Oh, okay, now I understand. I assume that's why most Wurms nowadays are portrayed as burrowing?

Some of those I'd still consider draconic, but stuff like the Vastwood Gorger aren't related to Elder Land Wurms in my headcanon.

Here's a question -- do we have any evidence for what happens if a planeswalker 'walks while pregnant? Does it make no difference, or could it potentially cause complications?

It would be bad.

Now, if you're fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing, let me put it this way:

Imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule of your body exploding at the speed of light.

It would probably be slightly less bad than that, but the health of that baby would be significantly endangered. The Blind Eternities are not pleasant to those who travel through it.

And we aren't even going to get into the issues of if the mother's body would protect the baby.
Seriously, Brady straight up told us he wasn't going to go into that, and I think Doug has expressed a similar sentiment. It would probably be best to avoid the issue, because we are NEVER EVER going to get an official answer.

Amusingly, there's been some talk of just this over at Salvation.

"It would be bad" is a sufficiently complete answer for my purposes.

Thanks, Raven and Barin!