The fae, traditional fae at least, feel much MUCH more black than blue.
The problem there though has to do with expectations I think, because doing the tiny sprite-like faeries are what most people would expect, and I'd want to run the full gamut.

I'm not shooting the idea down mind, but just sharing my take on what we'd do if we did it.

Yeah, honestly I'd kinda want to do the same thing, which might be a problem since Magic has only ever really done small fay to my knowledge...

Still, Ikass has large fay so there's precedent within M:EM... but on the flip side, Ikass already has a bit of a gothic fantasy feel and adding fay here might stray too close to what that plane is doing.

The closest thing we've ever had to something else was Oona.

Yeah. Which in fairness was very interesting conceptually!

It certainly was. I've really wanted to play around with the concept of the Greater Fae ever since then. One of the planes I have floating around the unfinished atlas featured the Greater Fae, and there's also the Ice World, which has at least an Oona-equivalent with the Fae Queen.

So, to reiterate and open the floor to suggestions, I originally had a snippet meant to explore how the Icons got set up as well, but as I tried to piece it together, I was more and more unsatisfied because of how much it stepped on the feature of the Avatars when they became active. Given that, I've basically had to throw out the plans I had for them as Keepers of the god's stories.
The principle was that while the gods knew about the world, they... couldn't exactly interact to tell their side of things and set up actual myths and lore. So they would have created the Lorekeepers to spread it around, but that ultimately didn't feel right, and if the gods were going to interact with Empyrean, they'd probably skip straight to the avatars who would be created with a SPECIFIC task in mind, even if they end up taking on a life of their own.

Hm, I mean, it could set up an interesting thing where the Avatars and the Lorekeepers aren't necessarily in agreement on how best to proceed or what the true nature of their reality is.

It also calls to mind the comic Testament, where the intrusion of gods into reality was represented by them passing through the panel borders as flame, or energy, or something like that--like they were outside of reality and could only enter it as something other than themselves. ...which in turn reminded me that I should probably read that for my thesis since it's super relevant to what I'm trying to study o_o

The thing is, that ultimately the Icons being tied to the gods sort of downplays what we'd eventually end up with them. The idea behind them was that even though their ancestors had been tasked with spreading the lore, after that was done, their heirs basically said "screw that" and started doing just whatever they felt like doing.

Meanwhile the avatars, even though they are created for a specific purpose, after they've accomplished that, they more or less try to act in accordance with what they THINK the god would want. At times they even come into conflict with each other as a result. A few of them have more or less inserted themselves into the hierarchies of various governments to shape things in their own not quite human way. There is a clear disconnect between the mortals and the avatars to sort of express the fact that the avatars are slivers of the gods and have a integrally different perspective of the world.

Well what if the Avatars were created later as a way to compensate for the collapse of the original plan? I'm talking maybe even millennia later.

Also, hold up, if each god created one mortal, why do they break down on color lines rather than the enemy pairs of the gods?

Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, we never finalized whether this was one of the worlds born of the Endbringer War. I still really like that idea, personally, but I'm not sure how other people feel.

Well, that was the original plan, but I feel like it's still not beneficial to hit the same note more than once.

They were created by one god, but the mortals worship the aspects that align with their colors. It's because the gods don't view the world in terms of possession. The entire world belongs to them collectively, but they don't own specific PARTS of the world. They're more concerned that the world remains balanced.


I mean, I'm cool with it.

Then I guess we're good! That puts the destruction somewhere around, I think, -4780 AR or so, or a little over 9000 years ago. Sanctuary was created right after the end of the war (I think Szat put that at 4770 or 60) but this would presumably take a bit longer. I mean, if Memnarch took years to just contemplate the nature of Argentum surely it'd take longer for nascent godlings to process all the information of countless dead worlds.

I don't think it's terrible if we hit the same notes. Creation myths are full of recurrences after all.

Raven, what do you think?

Just "A" dead world, not all of them.
Though this one couldn't have been torn apart by an Aether Vent since it was built in a Planar Void. Which actually says something worse in some ways for someone that could destroy a planet.

I guess my only concern is whether this gives us enough time to adequately develop everything. Essentially, we have about 9000 years of history with which to establish the gods, their natures, their understanding (or lack thereof) of their existence, the actual creation of the world, the creation of the races, the creation of the avatars, and all of the history and culture of the worlds. Now, the fact that the gods' vague memories gives them a potential running start helps there, but in fantasy terms, it's not a great deal of time to go one.

However, I do sort of like the juxtaposition between this world and Sanctuary. Being about the same age, but developing in opposite directions (one populated and crafted from magic, the other not populated and resistant to magic), makes them sort of interesting mirrors of one another.

A lot of our worlds have <2000 year histories, as I discovered when we first started putting the timeline together, so this is actually on the far end of the spectrum. Heck, it's 50% longer than some Biblical reckonings of our own history.

I had thought of that. Of course, Biblical literalists hold that God created the world in six days. I'm wondering how long it took ours. However, it is true that the cultural and historical development can take place in a fairly brief span of time, as we've seen from real life. So ultimately, I'm cool with it.

I actually tend to lean more towards less than 9000 years since I imagine there was a fallow period after the destruction.
The gods coming into being was essentially instantaneous after the aether had enough time to permeate with the echoes.

A few hundred years from inception to pulling the world together, and then followed almost immediately by the creation of the races. Since the races didn't evolve into that state, we get a jump start on that as well.
The races have a running history before the avatars come into play too, so there's no worry about having to take time OUT for that.

Okay, then! As long as the timeline isn't a problem for anyone, I think we should be golden, at least on that front.

So then, what do we have in terms of the races. So far, Moonfolk in blue, Goblins in red, Satyrs in green, and potentially Jackalfolk in black. Is it too "on-the-nose" to have dogfolk in black and catfolk in white? If so, I think kithkin are a potential fifth race, since we're not trampling too much on Lorwyn yet.

Yeah, I think catfolk and jackalfolk being in opposite colors might be a little thick with irony.
I'm... not really all that on board with kithkin for this world, not unless we specifically divorce them visually from Lorwyn ENTIRELY and play stronger to the Amrou kithkin who... for all intents and purposes were leprechauns as much as halflings.

Not really all that on board, but I'm open to it.

Yeah, I'm just throwing out options here. I'm personally against humans on this world, because I sort of like the idea that all the races have humanoid shape, but none of them are human. It's like all the gods got a human image in their minds, but none of them could quite get it right. I also think we should avoid foxfolk, both for Kamigawa reasons and because they'd be somewhat close to our jackalfolk.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of redefining and repurposing the Soltari. Looking through our non-human, non-cat options, it seems out main humanoid options are fox, kithkin, kor, centaur (precedence: Theros) bird and giant. But we have an interesting cross-section of creature types going on. We have the established, nearly-every-set creature in Goblins, we have a mid-era MTG creature in Moonfolk, a late-era MTG creature in Satyrs, and a basically brand new creature with the jackalfolk. But adding an early-era MTG creature in the Soltari, we'll sort of have our bases covered.

I think we've sufficiently differentiated Moonfolk from Soltari visually so I think that'd be ok. We just need to know what information was in the Tempest guide to see where we can expand. But I do like that notion.

Can we play around with THEIR color pallet a bit?

Okay, here is the information we have available about the Etherics of Rath.