I've always been a big fan of Fisca Vane.

Well the big irony is that this project in part was inspired by irritation over how easily planes were smashed and characters killed off in canon. Lots of bad feelings from Time Spiral. Looooots of bad feelings.

But we've been going on for... what, at least four years now, yeah? And we've never had a character death, and War of the Wheel is the first really major sweeping event that we've had. The only other really huge world changing thing that comes to mind easily is the capture of Renn Winmoore by Vasilias.

Raleris is definitely an obvious choice since death is kind of written into his character. I'd like to see some more Raleris stories before the end though. (And there are actually Plans being made in the shadows for some stuff with him...) It's not that I actually want to see any given character die because they're all a useful resource to us and they're all pretty interesting in their own right but... I dunno, it's something to at least consider as maybe a bit more on the table than it was back in 2010.

Out of all of my characters... lemme see...




So yeah, my numbers are pretty evenly split.

and as to character death... well, Sri Hara is an old man. Very old. His entire character is tied into his death, but so far that has been largely unrealized because... well, because I can't find any place to use him.

Yeah, I really don't think we need to go out of our way to kill off characters. It's easy enough to create characters for the purpose of killing them. Just to continue talking about my own work and mentioning yet another of my old stories, I created both of the characters in Dead Man 'Walking just to kill them off. The characters in the archive are there, essentially, because people thought interesting stories could come from them, so I like the idea of having them around.

Yeah Raleris and Sri are the real old ones. I'd love to see what someone here could do with him, honestly... I don't think anyone but Szat and Jedi were around for his creation--Aaarrrgh, Raven, Ruwin, OL, and all the other newcomers who aren't M:EMbers yet (except Fakeartist) all came to the project quite a while after he was created.

@Raven:

This is a fair point.

I think there's a different impact between Xenagos dying and Elspeth dying though, to use a very tangible recent example. I think it's sometimes valuable to have an Elspeth like death.

...Of course it's valuable if you have regular readers and I'm not sure we really have those >_<

Yeah, that is true. Although many of those characters we're talking about, despite being in the archives for a long time, haven't had many, or any, stories tied to them. So while the effect is certainly different for the M:EMbers who were there at their creature, it won't matter to most readers, unless you create stories for them to build that history and that relationship with the reader.

@Keeper: You are right, of course. People do place a higher emotional weight on characters they have had time to connect to, as opposed to ones that just crop up. It's why no one ever really cared about those poor Red-shirts on the Enterprise, but when Tasha Yar died...

@DisGo: I think I both agree and disagree here. I think the mere fact that they are in archives, and that readers could find info on them if they wanted to, means that some readers would care more.

So, yeah, I grabbed my entries to the PW creation contest of so long ago. They're up in their own thread. Read and comment on one or more as pleases you. I think there's some good there. If you're limited on time, I'd tale looks at Lourima and Halea (the first and the last) first.

I am coming a little late to the discussion here, but wouldn't the notion that humans are so prolific in the multiverse provide a possible, pragmatic, answer to why they are so overrepresented? There should still be a lot more planeswalkers that aren't human, but I think there's something to be said about the sheer numbers of humans. Perhaps that's the real oversight, not that there are so many human planeswalkers, but that humans appear to be the universal multicolored template for humanoid life in the multiverse with a couple rare exceptions.*


*Correct me if I'm wrong and things have taken a strong move away from the "Humans everywhere that isn't Lorwyn"

Yeah, that is a good point. I just think we have an opportunity to push things a little bit, not that we ALWAYS should, but that we can. There are a lot of sapient races in the Multiverse, and I think that they (and we) deserve to see them represented.

The thing about using the numbers argument is that goblins breed quicker than humans and in litters and should actually swarm virtually everything if they didn't die with quite so alarming a frequency.

And since violent death is a common trigger to planeswalker ascension, it seems like pretty much every goblin that has a spark should become a full planeswalker. Isn't that a scary thought?

Well between Gruff and the Ruk Gang we already do have four so we're well on our way to getting the proper number, proportionally, of goblin 'walkers

I would be remiss if I did not mention that this made me laugh really, really hard.

Unfortunately, I don't have anything else to add. O.o

And that's only if the three goblins in The Pinch are, in fact, the Ruk Gang.

EDIT: Numbers updated because I am an idiot.

Also, I did a quick count of characters involved in the large now-singular story cluster from my map. The count: 15 male characters and 13 female characters, with a few exceptions made -- for Jackie DeCoeur for having multiple stories despite not being a 'walker; the Dual-Walkers and Larara and Morgan each counted as 1xMale+1xFemale; and Lyssia Crutoriae was excluded for not having any stories.

My current map of the M:EM, which is by no means complete, includes a grand total of 28 characters -- 16 male and 12 female, with four of those characters being non-planeswalkers, 3 of them female, 1 of them male. Atalan and Katalin are counted as 1xMale+1xFemale non-planeswalkers for this purpose.

That's... odd. Because by my count, in the archive itself we've got 7 female 'walkers and 16 male with a margin of error of like one because I'm kind of tired right now. Even adding Lyssia and Jackie that's still only 9.

EDIT:List updated because I am an idiot.

Okay, the full list from my map alone and not double-checked against what's actually in the Archives because I have to trust myself on some points:

1. Asher - M
2. Kirsh of the Flats - M
3. Raleris, The Lorekeeper - M
4. Vasilias, Lord of Ariva - M
5. Renn Winmoore - M
6. Lyssia Crutoriae - F
7. Illarion Vale - M
8. Larasa - F
9. Morgan -M
10. Lia Xin - F
11. Jackie DeCoeur - F
12. Fisco Vane, The Shark - M
13. Aloise Hartley - F
14. Beryl, the Heart-Scarred - F
15. Alessa Rehn - F
16. Syl - F
17. Chardis -M
18. Daneera - F
19. Kahr-ret Taris - M
20. Gruff -M
21. Molcru - M
22. Ellia the Endbringer - F
23. Atalan - M
24. Katalin - F
25. Zhiran - M
26. Rishima - F
27. Denner Fabellian - M
28. Lukas Harran - M

Ok Lia Xin, Alessa, Atalan and Katalin, and Lyssia aren't actually in the archives yet, so that's the issue there. (Also only two of those four is a 'walker.) (This is also why Jackie isn't in my numbers--not a 'walker.)

I just added Lukas Harran to my map because I'm an idiot and didn't make a space for him when I was first making the map (though I think I may have had a different set of mental rules when I first made that section, hence why I had forgotten to link Kahr-ret-Taris to Arbagoth).

Also, shouldn't Lia have made it into the Archives by now, and just isn't yet because I've been busy? Or is there still another week left and we're just arguing technicalities because it's obvious she's going to end up in being Accepted?

She is sadly plane-bound, and unlikely to spark up anytime soon.

If she did, though, man, would that be a hoot.