Visual Spoiler removed until further notice.

Seal of Churned Earth:

Though his time was filled with strife
While walking through the sand,
Bring this pour soul back to life
And make his body stand.
—Seal inscription

Encapsulate:

Frostwynd artificers will often try to capture magical entities to use their energy to power their machines.

Cheapshot Enthusiast:

"No sunlight, no honor."
—Coldhollow saying

Also turned Frostblight Scavenger into a Human Artificer, Sun Spirit into a Spirit Soldier, and Cheapshot Enthusiast into a Vampire Assassin. All to fit the art KFM and I found for them better.

Boo.

Ug faction is yetis right?

I don't know anything about yetis, but you're free to sell me on how they are blue.

Ok, it's back to a Rogue. People seem not to like it when I play with names and creature types that made it into the spoiler, so I'll change the other ones back too and stop doing that. I'll change Encapsulate's flavor text back, too, because that's not my card to change. Sorry for getting my flavorful little fingers in other peoples' designs.

But I'm still going to write flavor texts for cards that should have them and don't.

Apostle of Elori: "Step with me into the light, my child. The past has no meaning there."

Shackles of Order: The chains used by the Order of Elori to bind their prisoners aren't all made of metal.

Spellbound Serpent: It feeds off of magic. One spell a day is enough to keep it sated. But magic isn't the only thing it eats.

Restoration Spirit: She remembers when the plane still moved, when Frostwynd and Illpyre were both part of the same vibrant world. Now, each day, she brings a small part of that world back.

So, here's something I'm really not getting. As far as I can see, it hasn't been explicitly discussed in this thread, and I haven't seen it elsewhere, though I haven't read every thread, or even most of the threads.

What exactly is the flavor behind Card Type Matters?

How does it fit this setting? What about Starstill leads logically to mechanics of Card Type Matters? Or, what leads from that mechanic to a world that looks like Starstill?

I'm not sure this is the answer you're looking for, but... it... doesn't?
Before the set begun, there was a thread to decide what the community set was about.
Some of us chose top-down designs, others chose bottom-up designs.
Some things happened, and it was decided that the most popular of both sides got combined.
End of story.

Hm. Shouldn't you folks be thinking more, then, about ways to make the two things fit together?

Like it's good to think about creature types but that stuff is window dressing. Figuring out the core intersection between mechanics and flavor is way more important than that, but I haven't seen a whole lot (besides relics) that really brings the mechanics and flavor together in any kind of viable way.

I was going to have us vote on a top-down or bottom-up concept, then extrapolate a mechanical theme (if top-down) or setting (if bottom-up) from that original concept. But the thread was kind of stagnating, and I wanted to get moving, so I just fused the two ideas together. I don't think it's the worst fit in the world, though. If I had to pick a mechanical theme for Lily's idea, it would probably include split cards, DFCs, possibly Morph, and snow as a sixth color. But we kind of already have a colorless vs. colored thing going on with artifacts vs. enchantments. On the other hand, if I had to come up with a flavorful setting for a Card Type Matters set, I have no idea what I'd do because it's such a vague, abstract concept in flavor terms, and I think this is about as good as anything we're going to come up with. I know that's kind of a lame answer, just to say "It's like Odyssey, deal with it!" But it's really the best answer I've got.

I think it is a perfectly reasonable answer.

Yeah, honestly type-matters only really makes sense as a tie-in to the set's dualism themes.
When I originally proposed the mechanical theme I was picturing a world going through its Renaissance. Knowledge, experimentation, figuring out how the world works and old versus new ways of doing things would be the flavouring. I can probably promote these themes more on the Frostwynd side of things. Then on Illpyre maybe they blame artifice for the Starstill?

Part of the reason I'm riding oblation so hard is because it ties the "short-lived cultists in a scorching desert" setting in with the big "card types matter" theme. Like, Sunchaser Elder cares about creatures because he's part of an order that believes its members can become one with the sun or something. Crushtread Order, my green card that lost last round, does because it worships giant beasts as destroyers of civilization. Loamblood Druid cares about lands because it's trying to restore Illpyre to a more natural state. It's pretty easy to come up with reasons for certain card types to matter.

It's certainly not a complete solution but I think it's still useful.

Odyssey had a theme though. The graveyard theme reflected the fact that Dominaria had just been devastated by a plane-wide invasion which concluded when a literal living cloud of pure death entered the world. Did Odyssey have the tightest implementation of mechanics and flavor? No, I don't think so. But an attempt of some sort was made, and there doesn't seem to be that much interest in finding a way to make it work here.

Maybe finding a solution will require actually ripping out the guts of what you've flavored already and rebuilding it with an eye more to what TPman is suggesting, which seems like at least a productive line of inquiry. But you're already in the process of doing that with your mechanics, so I'm not sure why it would be a problem here.

Maybe it won't even require that. If you can nail down some solid factions that reflect the particular mechanical identities, as Shazzeh is suggesting, that could go a long way toward making this world more coherent.

Like... there are solutions out there, and flavor is kind of one of the huge important keys to contemporary design, so I'm nooot totally sure why you're treating this as an insurmountable obstacle, Parad, or something you can just ignore and pretend isn't a problem, Knifethrower.

I think that the key link between the design of the world and the "Card type matters" theme is Separation. You have a world of binary opposites, light and dark, hot and cold. It only stands to reason that broad categories might be seen themselves as belonging to one side or the other. For example, if you feel that instants are light and sorceries are dark, enchantments are light and artifacts are dark. At that point, using subsets by card type makes sense, because you're looking for light or for dark or for light-versus-dark. I dunno, maybe the mechanics would be more Tarmogoyf or domain like and just want to count the total, but if you have a lot of "doing things by card type", defining types as largely belonging to the heritage of one side of the world or another makes sense.

I'm not saying "Every instant must be lightside themed and every sorcery darkside" -- instead "Cards that care about instants should thematically care about the light, and cards that care about sorceries the darkness. Cards that care about both should care about the twilight or the opposition between the two." There'd still probably be a designer revolt on the flavor of cards already made, though.

How's this for some flavour?
The moon - Starstill has has a moon. The moon's orbit is perpendicular to the equator. In the parts of Illpyre directly beneath the moon's path, it may be the only source of shade all month. Since journeying in the shade is much less exhausting, the Moon Path, as it's called is essentially one huge trade route crossing half the planet.
Throught Illpyre, the moon is revered as a figure of mercy. While the sun is venerated as a harsh god,eliciting equal parts veneration and fear, the moon is seen as a lesser, but wholly benevolent figure. Near the terminator the light reflected by the moon makes it the brightest thing in the sky. Deep in unlit Frostwynd, the moon's passing is only noticeable by the starlight it obstructs as it passes by. That, or maybe it glows softly.
I also had the thought that perhaps the climax of the first set's story might be the creation of Starstill's moon. I was thinking that it was a plan hatched by artificers in Frostwynd who crafted/uncovered the moon. They need help from the cult of Elori to complete their plan however (teleporting a mile-wide object into orbit is no mean feat). The story would be about two opposing factions coming together for the greater good. A theoretical second set could be called Moonrise or New Moon.

Yo guys I just realized something. We should be using 1/1 colorless Sand tokens for all our Illpyre token makers.

So maybe, say, this requires a fuller understanding of the different components that make up reality. Let's say that the culture of Starstill (also we need a name for the plane before it became Starstill because boy howdy does that name not make sense before the sun stopped moving) already developed a somewhat rigid systematic understanding of the world, dividing it into Separate Magisteria--the Terrestrial, the Biological, the Sorcerous, the Enchanted, the Mechanical, and the... whatever the hell instants are. Magecraft? Maybe divide Sorcerers, working slowly and ritualistically, from Mages, working quickly and haphazardly? Anyway, the point is, as with early Science, different realms are treated as fundamentally subject to different laws. As we once believed that birds could fly and machines could not because birds were alive and machines weren't, so is the knowledge of Starstill divided. Throw the confusion of five colors of magic in the mix and you have a recipe for miscommunication.

But to raise a whole moon into orbit, a moon that can alleviate some of the extremes of Illpyre and Frostwynd... that would take an understanding of magical knowledge as unified rather than divided.

As a story it's interesting because it both serves to highlight the divisions and binaries that Szat talks about, and the factionalism Shazzeh is working on, and it's a conflict with GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS but LOCAL PLAYERS--the conflict doesn't have to involve everyone on the damn plane, even if it'll have a global impact, so the story itself can be a bit more grounded. Not every group has to agree with the plan, or get involved in the plan, or even know about the plan, just enough to make sure there's some localized conflict. And you could have other localized conflicts play out as a backdrop that are all going to be affected, though they don't realize it, by the Moonrise.

I like the unity angle. That lets us sort of explain the card type "domain" stuff, which is pretty abstract.

Magic has been a successful game for many years despite not using "contemporary" design, and will probably be successful for years yet to come using some new evolution of current principles. In fact, these principles change on a nearly yearly basis, and not always for the better. I find no particular need to adhere to the design principles "de jour."

In fact, since the only possible thing I ever plan to do with this set is maybe print it up and draft it with my friends, I have literally no concern for whether this Frankenstein monster shambles out of the laboratory with a semblance of cohesive flavor. Literally no concern.

Literally zero.

Just to clarify, I am using the word literally literally, and not figuratively. The only thing I care about is whether it has the mechanical cohesion to make it interesting to draft, and frankly, I plan on bastardizing the final product and retuning it [thanks for all your extra submissions, folks ] to best achieve my goal.

Since the greatest problem this set has (in my opinion) is the classic one of "too many cooks in the kitchen" (young internet-y types LOVE democracies, even in situations where it is pretty well documented they work poorly), I'm hesitant to endorse anything that requires us to undo work and reach some kind of democratic consensus, especially on a subject that is of no concern to me.

I also take this stance knowing that, to my knowledge, YMTC has never actually completed any kind of group set.

So, in summation, the lack of strong flavor isn't a problem I'm ignoring or pretending doesn't matter; it's something that, to me, literally doesn't matter.

Also, I came up with my own flavor intended for my bastardized and retuned version.