Spooky Illpyre Things

- The sand eats people.

- Well, maybe. But the sun is like death out there, there's nothing to drink, and everything is poisonous. It's possible.

- There are antlions. If you walk too close to random landmarks, the ground caves in and you get dragged to your horrible insectile death. Don't walk too close to random landmarks.

- There are demons. You always have to watch out for demons near the volcanoes, because some of them really lead to Hell. They look like black carnivorous beasts that laugh like hyenas and eat your flesh. Not very interesting conversation.

- Ghouls are like demons but much more numerous. If you die of starvation, you turn into a ghoul.

- Jackals are like ghouls but even more numerous. Also, they don't turn you into a ghoul. You just die horribly.

- There are haints here, too. Illpyre haints are the spirits of people who died of heatstroke. They are slightly more exciting than the Frostwynd ones because they're on fire. But they are still more likely to murder you than offer to cook your crocodile meat.

- There are sandwurms. They're blind serpents that sense vibrations in the ground and burrow towards their prey. Then they burst out and swallow people in a single gulp before disappearing into the ground. Don't walk on the ground.

- There are slavers. These are just mundane jerkfaces who threaten you with scimitars and bring you to their slave camp to work for the rest of your natural life. But they are really big jerkfaces.

- There are locusts. Zombie omnivorous locusts.

- There are phoenixes, very rarely. They fly high overhead in the desert sky with their multicolored plumes and bring good luck. But don't wave to the phoenix, because it will probably eat you.

I like the haints quite a lot. Just giving a proper name to the spirits of this setting does a lot.

The demon designs are cool though if we're using found artwork it'll be difficult to get a visual representation of that, unfortunately, unless we can find some more actual artists to help us...

Might I suggest once more that we use Elder Land Wurms rather than Dune-esque sandworms? Since we're already tying things to the Elder Dragon War it just seems like an obvious choice.

Maraka being all linked together is interesting but I worry that it's transforming the middle region into too much of a unified faction. There should probably be groups in that region that aren't aligned with the forest itself. I dig the utility treefolk designs though.

What if Glacinorak caused the Starstill against Anjomeddon's wishes, and now Anjomeddon wants to get the plane moving again?

I... honestly can't say I like that nearly as much as TP's Moonrise idea. It feels much more obvious, and much less weird and innovative. Plus, it A. sets up an end point for the plane that would destroy what makes it interesting (never a good plan) and B. it takes the drama of different groups vying against one another and reduces it to a conflict between two big superpowered beings.

The moonrise idea should probably start showing up on cards in some capacity soon, incidentally.

Ok, that makes sense.

It's just, our story lacks a true protagonist at this point, and that needs to be addressed.

@keeper: Yeah Maraka's cool but it's a tough fit. Just by it's nature it kind of wants to be the major player in the region. I was thinking it was hemmed in by geography or something? It can't expand any further unless maybe it helps out with the moonrise? I don't know, we might be better off just leaving Maraka as a plain old forest.

@CKY: I like locusts. We've been trying to keep the zombies on the Frostwynd side though and let Illpyre get the fleshless (skeleton/spirit) undead.
Also antlions, we need one of those.
A phoenix has to happen.

@Parad: Yah, we definitely need a protagonist. I was imagining someone from the academy/Institute. It just has to be somebody who can unite diverse viewpoints and inspire people to actually do a project like this. A forward-thinking treefolk could be another option.

Plot twist: the ghouls are hungry skeletons! They're easily reflavored by calling them "ghuls" and putting bleached bone monsters in the art.

@TP:

Treefolk could work, though it strays a bit close to Lorwyn's plotline then. Colfenor and all that.

But yeah, beyond even a central protagonist I think there needs to be some solid thought to a wider cast of legends. We've got factions but no real major names beyond the Lesser Elders.

Also keep in mind that since there's at least SOME interest in linking this to M:EM, you've got access to our 'walkers, if you need them for secondary protagonists/antagonists.

Ah yes, I forgot to bring that up. I'm not too familiar with the M:EM, any walkers that leap to mind for our cause?

Well, it depends on what you want to do with them.

There's a number of characters that might be interested in visiting just because they might find the plane interesting:

Illarion Vale is an interplanar tourist
Larasa and Morgan are scholars who escaped a dying world and are wandering around studying different worlds
Raleris is a scholar in search of a Planeswalker apprentice to take over the Infinite Library for him
Aloise is an explorer
Gruff is a goblin. He's lost. Starstill isn't his home. He misses home.

So they would essentially fill a Tamiyo slot.

Mechanically speaking, there's a few characters that might fit in with the plane:

Maral is a smith and is interested in rare and powerful artifacts
Lia Xin is an artist and mage who casts spells by painting characters with her brush
Denna, the Walking Forest is... a walking forest. She might actually be good because she has almost no characterization or information about her, so there's lots of room for expansion.

I'm not sure how involved you want M:EM walkers to be in the main story of the plane, though, since I'd expect this to also sort of be its own thing. Maral or Denna, though, could be very interesting in support roles for the main project, and Illarion Vale has a history/running joke of not intending to get involved with the planes he lands on, then inevitably failing.

I can entertain thoughts of Gruff challenging Anjomeddon with his big stick.

I would emphatically not be opposed to someone writing that story, particularly if Gruff still survives somehow.

It wouldn't be nearly as fun if he died in the process.

I think we could retcon that Gruff made Anjomeddon so angry that Anjomeddon got sick of being bothered and put an end to visitors; aka Gruff indirectly caused the Starstill.
Either way, Gruff should be a planeswalker for the story.

Not sure how the timeline would work on that one (I don't think it does, since I think we're looking at maybe nearly a century or more of starstilledness) but if people were petitioning Anjomeddon for stuff and Gruff managed to make zin so angry that zie shut off all contact, as you suggest, that could be a pretty awesome plot point. It has a great sort of... little actions have big consequences feel to it.

Which might be a theme worth exploring, incidentally. You guys have MECHANICAL themes but you don't have NARRATIVE themes as of yet, I don't think, besides the "coming together despite ideological differences for the betterment of all" theme that plays into the Moonrise plotline.

Maybe planeswalking takes time? Or maybe there was something else; like in order to cause the starstill time had to be "rewritten"?
Maybe starstill is actually frozen in time, rather than it simply doesn't rotate/revolve etc. That could be a cool theme to explore. No running water, it can be manipulated, but it doesn't move on its own. Sand that doesn't fall through your fingers, things stay put wherever you place them in space. Thoughts?

As for an overlying narrative theme, i think the dragons play the biggest role in it.

The plane itself I see as having seasons (for now four) with summer and winter being Anjo and Glac favorite respectively. I see it as they both migrate with the seasons aka they are constantly moving in order to stay comfortable (and by comfortable I mean not in agonizing pain yet still alive). I see it that Glac was more open to visitors than Anjo, but that neither enjoyed constantly being on the move. When Anjo proposed the starstill, Glacinorak agreed.

Maybe one of the dragons was favored more than the other? Maybe Anjo was jealous because Glac was "famous"? Or maybe vice versa and Anjo hated the popularity?

I think the starstill was Anjo's idea, and Glac simply agreed. Maybe that SHOULD be the starting point of our story, and that the set should be telling the story of Starstill falling apart? With the starstill odd things start happening, the plane is dying. The dragons don't care (maybe they have limited knowlede of the multiverse and have a plan), but the citizens do. The set could be about the citizens versus the dragons / cults behind them. I see cards with mastery being the "balanced" people and the point where the starstill has the least effect while the poles are the exact opposite (most wild and dramatically changed).

Possible Narrative:
I think we should be telling a story where the starstill happened three to four generations before and nobody (known) is still alive from before the starstill. The dragons have their respective cults, citizens are worried about some ill effects from the starstill that are happening (either finally happening or simply finally unable to be ignored); meanwhile people in Maraka being mostly unaffected in their almost-entirely balanced state.
People bring these problems to the attention of the dragons / cultists and wars break out. Maraka stays out of it for the most part, but people realize, slowly, that it is the least affected among the entire plane. They realize that it's because they keep a balance of everything while the rest of starstill have simply adapted without the other half. They unite and finally the people turn against the dragons / cultists.

A pseudo Kamigawa/Alara mix?

I don't think we'll have any problem fitting in with the M:EM timeline. Right now there's nothing saying the set didn't take place 10000 years ago or is a glimpse 10000 years into the future.

Well, I mean, I guess, but... I'm not a huge fan of sticking things in the far future of the canonical storyline's present day, and putting something far in the past rules out most of our current roster of 'walkers from participating unless Time Shenanigans happen, and I'm gonna be very up front about the fact that I HATE Time Shenanigans. Between several years of everything being explained by giant sucking Plot Holes Time Rifts, Mirrodin continually fouling up any attempts to construct a sensible overarching timeline, and the narrative disaster that was Clockworking, I'm pretty well put off Time Shenanigans for the next foreseeable eternity.

Anyway, I'm not a big fan of making Gruff the cause of the conflict in any case. That seems like taking a good joke too far. But people seem to really like him (because he's adorable!) so that almost certainly places the narrative of Starstill as seen in the set, if Gruff's gonna be in the set, in the present day (roughly 4600-4607 AR), and even if it doesn't, it's DEFINITELY post-Mending (post 4505 AR) because there's no way Gruff is an oldwalker.

Oh I wasn't suggesting any time shenanigans. I was just allaying fears of not matching up perfectly with the M:EM by pointing out that Starstill could take place before whatever event would cause a plot hole.
Do any narrative themes come to mind for Starstill? I was thinking maybe looking beyond your horizons. I mean we have essentially two whole worlds of people that couldn't possibly imagine the worlds the other lives in. Maybe a bit of people forgetting about a world before the starstill and the paradigm shift that is the Moonrise.

I like that theme! It's a good sort of compliment to the ideas about division vs seeing beyond division to work together that are inherent in the Domain mechanic and the idea of the Moonrise as a collaborative project...

That could be interesting too because that sort of positions the Dragons as part of an old guard (VERY old guard) that literally plopped down at opposite ends of the world.

I also do like Altimis's idea of there being problems from dragon cultists with the dragons themselves kind of taking a back seat (because I mean... who's going to have the power to defeat a Lesser Elder?) since that sort of cements them as a dogmatic force on the plane.

With that, I actually think Aloise Hartley might be an interesting fit for the plane, since her whole Thing is seeing beyond differences and fighting fear of the Other. I HIGHLY recommend reading The Hermit's Burden both because it's a really, really good introduction to the kind of person Aloise is, and because it's just a really good story. (Content warnings for violence and abuse.) We'd have to talk to OrcishLibrarian Ruwin (derp derp herpa derp) about her inclusion but she seems like she'd be a good fit here, if it works on her particular timeline.

One question for me is why a red aligned dragon would cause a world to remain static and unchanging. What's Anjo's motivation here?