Huh. So we know for a fact that they were always a separate race. I grew up thinking they were humans who had gotten trapped and mutated (ditto the Kor, actually) so this is really interesting.

And yet... not uh... not a lot to go on

Hmm. With the Soltari, we might be able to play up an specter/spirit sort of thing. They will be flesh and blood and mortal, of course, but maybe the vague memory that the god who created them used was somehow crossed with the spirits of the dead. That way, we could play up their skeletal/ghostly form in an organic way, and we could probably darken up the color a bit, too.

Surprisingly the Dauthi had their own separate section. And it said absolutely nothing besides their capabilities.

It's... not a lot, but I told you that going into it. We have at least a few precious kernels that we can work with, and other things we can extrapolate from both the books and the cards at least.

There's some wonderful concept art of the "whole" Soltari in here too.

@Raven: I think the best thing to do is completely divorce Shadow from what we're doing. Play to the organic and material and not get hung up on the Rath side of things because they were NOT originally half-beings.

Yeah, you're probably right. It's too bad, because shadow is one of my favorite abilities, but it did clearly come from the Rath side of things.

Well, in that case, scratch what I said, and we should probably go the opposite direction and fill them out a bit more.

Any chance you could scan and post the concept art? It'd be a big help if I'm doing concept sketches for this plane.

Also, is there art of the Thalakos and Dauthi?

I think the Soltari might be a good place to explore the more traditional ideas of religion, caste systems, ritual, everything that we'd associate with strict religion. I feel like having a god that you can see would do interesting things for that sort of tight gothic influenced religion, but what it means that there are multiple gods is a good question. It might be interesting to play on the Duty, Grace, etc etc cycle as applied to the other gods, as if there are sects specifically dedicated to the... white veneration of those gods.

What else to take from that, I'd have to go and browse through the cards to pick things up, but I'm open to suggestions.

I feel like I'd have to tear the book up to get good scans. I could maybe take pictures with my phone, but I'd need somewhere to send them.

There aren't any good pictures of the Dauthi and Thalakos, both are very abstract. There ARE blueprints for the weatherlight and predator in the book. That has little to do with anything, but it's impressive how much work they put into realizing the ships.

Oh, and as an aside, I've been thinking of things, and I feel like this is a good place to have Vampires as black's icon rather than demons.
I still intend Angels, Dragons, and Sphinxes too. I'm... at something of a loss for Green. Big bloody surprise there....

I like the idea of Soltari religiosity.

There's a lot of mention of ruins on Soltari/Dauthi flavor text. Is there anything explaining that in the book? It might be a notion we want to play with since these soltari are literally birthed from the ruins of another world.

Definitely don't break your book for this though. You have my e-mail if you need a place to send the phone pics.

I'd... like to hear more about vampires as Black's iconic here before making a judgement about that, I think.

Not sure why you're having trouble with green since Wizards has decided to make hydras the green iconic and that solves the problem just as permanently and unambiguously as they've solved the problem of white's characteristic race!

Actually though, the one/all dynamic fits well with the hydras. Just a thought.

I'll need to browse magic.info for the Soltari cards, but I don't think there was much about the Soltari in the book beyond the Erratic Portal and Ertai's deal.

I like the idea of the black icon being a preternatural corruption of form that feeds on life. It's... actually, conceptually, somewhere between a vampire and a demon in this space, because it would be an actual separate race created along with the other icons. The reason I lean on vampire is because I'd like there to be more vampire tropes associated with it than demon tropes.

Gods I hate the hydra. They feel so forced and it astounds me how many times they can find new ways to play the exact same mechanical identity. Which isn't a compliment.

That being said, you must be at least THISsapient to be an icon here.

Honestly, I would love to avoid angels here. Part of it is my personal dislike of them, but I also feel they're overplayed, and it seems to me that the avatars are active enough on their own world that they wouldn't need angels to represent them.

I mean, I won't argue if everyone else really wants them, but I would really love to find a different White Iconic. Of course, on that note, I like going Vampires instead of Demons, for the same reason.

Actually, I view the icons as being more closely tied in creation to their gods... and the vampires would be g/b while the angels would be w/b, which inherently ties them into a COMPLETELY different build space.
Sphinxes in U/R and Dragons in W/R
This is, at least partly, in defiance of expectations since there are a buttload of W/R Angels, as so much as there are any consistently multicolored angels. They really like that combo for them.

The idea is that these aren't servants of the gods either, so the angels would have a lot of running room available.

I know, I already have it in the Underrim.

Perhaps one of the Gods is Vampire-like, or Demon-like. Not in the stereotypical sense, but in the aesthetic lore sense. Both of those things allow races like the Dhamphir - Half Vampire/Half Human and the Yokai Half Demon/Half Human things to come about. Not in the literal sense of parentage, but when the process for creation was occurring and people were already partially formed this God wanted to make them more like itself, and in so doing created something that was similar to it in its essence, but still entirely mortal and resembling the human frame.

Fae might work too, but I am less enthralled by that notion.

Shadows could work, but it might not fit in too well.

----

Could someone be kind enough to fill me in on what's decided for the plane? I've scanned through the topic, but I am not sure what is decided on and what is kind of just an idea that's being run with.

That's not what they were aiming for.
They were trying to recreate the races from the memories of the precursor race that gave birth to them. They weren't crafting them in their own images, but instead crafting them from fuzzy second hand half-memories.

God domains, some of the races. Large parts of the backstory.

Then perhaps their own essence and powers are infused within the creations anyways, instead of in an act of creation like themselves, more so using themselves as a template to fill in the blanks when they are otherwise unsure?

Same result, different process.

I know there is some work on symbolic dichotomies, five separate races that are humanoid but not human, the realization of divinity coming from realizing there are things that are not divine, as well as some themes being worked with.

What's decided about the backstory? What are the God Domains?

No, they're more disagreeing on the details they remember rather than trying to fill in blanks. One of them remember the beings as being shorter, with bigger, floppier ears, and sort of leathery skin, but another has a different image in their head.

These are gods, totally divorced from the form of the things they are restoring.


Order/Chaos in W/R dictating Time.
One/All in U/G dictating the World.
Stillness/Motion in U/R dictating the Heavens.
Substance/Void in W/B dictating Eternity.
Life/Death in G/B dictating Fate.

Nominally, all of them are colorless though, with one of the two sides representing a color they can lean towards. They also are gender neutral with the two aspects under their control having opposite genders.

The backstories include the origin of the gods, how they came into their powers, what they did when they began creating.
Eventually we'll get to the origin of the Avatars as the gods start to see things going wrong on the world, but being unable to directly influence things.

So, for a general overview of the societies forming up, these are the vague concepts I'm kind of working with. The trick is, I've tried to just sort of shade them with the other color that their god used, but without actually making it stand out itself.

Moonfolk: Crafted by Cosmos. Mountaineers and astronomers who spend most of their time stargazing, either as a hobby or profession. They're driven by deeply seated drive for discovery, whether it be the exploration of the oceans, underlands, or heavens. They see the world in vertical terms more than most races, thinking fully in three dimensions rather than two. The way they relate to their god is by trying to unravel the sciences and magics to grow closer to the divine.

Soltari: Crafted by Eternity. Tightly regimented caste society. Even though they acknowledge all of the gods, they... tend to have a white centric view of it all. Everything relates to how it is seen through their culture, regardless of the intricacies of other faiths. Surprisingly tolerant despite that, though that's mostly just choosing to focus on the similarities rather than the differences. They should have at least 4 striations of society. The Clergy (ruling class), the Military (the military), the craftsmen (the middle class), and the serfs (the slaves). I like the idea that they have some inkling of there having been something before and as a consequence getting kind of obsessed with permanence.

Goblins: Crafted by Time. Progressive society more or less built from UNDER the ground up. Tends to spread out rather than build up, mostly because of the sheer numbers they're dealing with, but also because of their need for constant frenetic expansion. They've made a surprising amount of breakthroughs, though everything tends to be slapped together just at the cusp of working. Regardless of that... dubious technological breakneck speed, they are quite handy as artisans, though their sense of beauty is a little questionable. Nominally ruled under the aegis of a monarchy.

Satyrs: Crafted by World. Though their origins begin in the woods, they've developed a fairly complex culture that has grown beyond the gatherer lifestyle they'd started with. Though they keep much of the woods sacred, they've moved further up into the rocky foothills and started constructing cities out of the unliving stone. This revolution has brought about a lot of social changes as they've expanded their society. (won't lie that this is... a little close to the goliaths of Ellysium, but... they at least embrace social progress rather than getting hung up on tradition like the goliaths. Plus, Mountain Goats for the pun.)

Jackalfolk:... I got less than average here. Mostly just vague motes of ideas floating around. Rather than focusing on this to try to bring it up to speed, it'd be better to develop the others with bigger leads and see if something doesn't stir around here.

So the slippage away from the enemy color binaries is deliberate here, yes?

I like these. The Moonfolk and Soltari feel like they have the strongest sort of base, while the Goblins and Satyrs are a little weaker. Jackalfolk, I think you're right to put them off till later.

Yeah. I'd like color identity, and really identity PERIOD to be a strong theme here.

In fairness, I've thought less about them so...

I have a few nebulous ideas about our Jackalfolk, but nothing solid. I agree that they'll likely come together a little better once we nail down the rest of the world.

So, in that spirit, I'm going to throw some random thoughts at the Satyr wall and see what sticks. This is literally off the top of my head, so if something works, cool. If not, shoot it down. No problem.

I was thinking that with the Satyrs, we could play around with the religious aspect that the Soltari have, but in a completely different way. I see the Satyrs as being tied somewhat to a ritualistic tradition, and they have one major ritual for each of the five gods. How this translates to their society, naturally playing off the Satyr trope, is a great Festival for each of the gods. So five times a year (or ten, if we're talking about the avatars and not the gods themselves) the Stayrs gather in massive festivals in celebration of the gods.

Do you think we could get away with having five seasons on this world? That would fit nicely. Conversely, if we're going the avatar route, maybe the Satyrs have a ten-month calendar? Could work.

Now, admittedly, I've been trying to find a word to put in a sort of Helix Pinnacle for a while now, but I think with Satyrs having been created by Eternity, the helix might be a really cool symbol. So I wonder if we can use something like the Helix Pinnacle for their festivals.

On that note, maybe dancing would be an important thing to the Satyrs. I have honestly no idea where I'm going with that one.

Music, too. I'm not sure it this is spiritual or disturbing, but what do you think of them turning the horns of their honored dead into instruments? It could help play into the Eternity thing pretty well.

Mechanically, we should probably consider a regenerate theme, likely tied to shamanistic or druidic magic rather than anything inherent in the Satyrs themselves, but again, playing into Eternity.

Okay, that's my brainstorm for Satyrs. Thoughts?

I still love the idea of finding a place to work Minoan-style bull leaping into one world or another. Maybe the dancing could be bull dancing?