Don't ask me. I spent, like, 20 whole minutes trying to figure them out. Then I gave up and just ran around screaming and slapping people.

Their dark magic is far beyond your fragile minds or mortal ken. Dare not tread the gliterry path to madness, I warn you this.

Well, it ends up I'm going camping with my family (the ones I'm visiting in Las Vegas right now [out to Mount Charleston for those that now the area]) this weekend. We'll be leaving Friday and coming back Sunday I think. I don't expect to even have cell phone service, much less the internet. That means I'll either need to get at everything that's up for vote in the next two days, or I'll have to skip on some things.

All I can really think is: "Dang it, Tevish, can't you space out your entries better, gah."


In completely unrelated news, my sister-in-law just bought a new drying rack and threw out the old one because "it looks dirty". It disgust[s/ed] me.

So, I have new plane kind of lurking in the background of my mind, but... well, yeah, my last few worldbuilding projects have been SOOOO successful.
And by that I mean, I haven't finished... umm... any of them. Ever.*

Anyways, this one has been building itself almost without me trying, and I pretty much HAVE to feature it in a story because it's been so vibrantly in my head. Well, in fairness, it was going to be in a story by someone else, but those plans just kind of... ended up being a non-starter.

But I'm wondering if I should start a thread for it, because even though it's all assembling itself very nearly without my interference, there are still all sorts of corner cases that are being a total bitch about clicking. Among everything, that long held bane: The Blue Characteristic Race.

In other news, largely unrelated to any of this, I finally broke down and bought my own copy of the Divine Comedy.... I have to sort of agree with Voltaire, even if I recognize its brilliance.

*Sort of an aside, if I have what I consider to be a critical mass of information, do you guys think I should just pull the trigger and put them for vote or what?
I mean some of them suffer from "no name-itis" which is almost as fatal as "boneitis".

Well, I think you know my take on worldbuilding, so take this with a grain of salt, but I think most of your planes are more developed than the ones I've put up for vote, and it hasn't seemed to be a MAJOR problem. I mean, I think Elysium is done, and I think Ice World is done apart from the name. So yeah, I'd say at least a few of yours could be voted on based on what you've got.

Ellysium had something that wasn't clicking, but I have no idea what it was. I'm fairly certain it was the blue section, which I've recently called into question altogether. I think Vedalken might just suit the world better than Moonfolk, but when I brought it up in the Atlas it... kinda got ignored. It'd end up shifting around some of the work that needed to be done for it, but I can't help but think it might tighten things up, because moonfolk were always a little weird there anyways.

Ice World is missing the name and the actual write ups about the angels and vampire hunting foxfolk. Aside from those aspects, I'd call it done.

Another world, which has recently had an overhaul is Sri Hara's World, which still needs a name, but has really come together. The human sections need a bit more weight, but everything else about it is what I would call ready.

As long as Sri Hara's world contains the word "pachyderm" somewhere, it'll be an easy hit for me!

Oh, crap.

I knew I was forgetting about something.

I'll see you all in 1,000 years.

It's a bit of a Kamigawa problem for Sri Hara's world, since it is based off Sikhism and Hinduism. It's made discussions kind of REALLY hard to have about it.

But yeah, there are obviously loxodon on the plane. It wouldn't be out of my way to say the word "pachyderm" somewhere in there.

@Orcish: I set that one up just for you my special little guy!

I've got a question about planar development. There's bits and pieces of a plane lurking in the confines of my mind for a future CAC project. The thing is, I'm not sure how to approach the actual construction. There's two approaches that I'm weighing:

1.) Should I look to a particular country/culture's folklore in order to derive an entire plane, as was done with Tarkir, Theros, Kamigawa and, to an extent, Mirrodin (well, more a particular genre in this instance)?

2.) Should I construct a plane with several continents, each continent playing host to a particular set of races from Magic the Gathering's lore. Here, the continent's fantasy races would be determined by the culture/cultures that inspired the continent. It seems that this was kind of the approach used for Dominaria.

What approaches have worked for you in the past, and how did you go about building your plane(s)?

Ellysium has always felt a little bit five-note to me. It's so rigidly structured...

Ice World feels very much complete to me.

I tend to like worlds that are pretty mixed up and don't have one clear origin. Jakkard is Western World but it has elements from all over sort of jumbling together. Ice World as I recall has a bit of norse but also some Japanese inspiration.

Well, it is a world defined by its factions. The best I could do was try to delineate the geography, but the political separations are kind of what make it what it is. The best I could do is keep it from being Mirrodin.
I just won't be satisfied until I get that last piece out of the way.... and uh... and the name.
Blugh....

Celt, Norse, and Germanic, primarily, with a little Chinese finish on it.

Ah, but is there any Finnish China in the plane? You know, like a porcelain plate from Helsinki?

No. Strictly Nordic dinnerware.

Think of it this way: You have 8 stories up in the archive, by my count, and three of them made the list. I, on the other hand, have 18 things in the archive by my count, and I only got three. By my count, that means you are mathematically 2.25 times better at writing than I am. That's pretty good!

Don't even get me started...
I'm just going to factor in the idea that my stuff is not starter friendly and try to salve my feelings with that.

Well To Choose Freedom is going to be in there when you finally settle on a title and get it voted in

And Loss was the first or second work that I definitively chose to include in the list so there's that too.

You know full well that intricacies of the eldritch creativity is far beyond the mortal mind. You have to remember that despite how you write your stuff, WE can only read it in ONE direction on the space/time continuum.

You're missing all the best subtleties in the fifth one too!
I mean, that's where it all really works...

Then again, at least with Alessa, you get a touch of the fourth dimension.


Yeah, The Choice of Freedom stands as one of the more complete works. Right now it's not the title that is the hang up, but the rewrites.
And in your defense too, neither of the really good Alessa stories were voted in yet either, just the introduction piece, which just like Dead Men, doesn't really capture the intricacies of the characters as much as showcase them.

When it comes down to it, despite what I've written, there's a lot of it that's still hanging in limbo because it hasn't gone to vote yet.

By the way, if anybody notices that I didn't update the Armory on its regular schedule, I'm skipping an update because I'm elbow deep in an accidental world build.

Yeah, I was thinking of pointing out that a lot of your work isn't actually in the archives yet...

But yeah 2 Choice 2 Freedom: Ravnica Drift is probably a good introduction to what we're doing, and I don't think it relies too heavily on Ravnican politics for it to make sense (particularly now that the Interlude is gone).