I'm not Barinellos, but my take on this is that I don't think you can get two viable embryos out of one egg: either they'd both run out of yolk in development and die or one would absorb the other as food. Then again, you might get a huge, abnormal egg that could hatch into two, but it would be VERY weird and special, not like twins for placental mammals.

I'd think that egg-layers would have a degree of siblinghood we don't: Nest-mate, representing two entities from the same clutch, same parents. Closer than brother/sister (for mammals or from other clutches) but a little less close than twins for mammals.

What ever happened to the community project to create the planeswalker character The Countess?

Some other planeswalkers that I remember but haven't noticed in the archives, I'm wondering if they're just un-transferred or struck from canon: Raef, Sri Hara, Kayin.

I think it would be really useful to pin in the Archive lists of every canon Planeswalker, Plane, and Legend. Not just those that have their own separate entries in the Archive, but every one that's named or mentioned in a canon Archived work. (As the Archives get long enough for simple searches to return multiple pages, a one-stop index would also be handy.)

Raef has gotten further development from Barinellos with "The Choice of Freedom," which was originally known as "Legacies." The thread for it is here: The Choice of Freedom. I do not remember if it has gone up for vote yet or not.

Sri Hara is still around, although to the best of my knowledge, no one has used him in a story as of late.

I'm afraid I am unfamiliar with Kayin.


This... strikes me as a profoundly good idea. The list could easily provide links directly to the entries in the Archive, too, which would make navigation through it considerably easier. I really like this idea.

There is sort of a thing like that on the old boards that needs to be ported.

It'd be kind of like an encyclopedia within the encyclopedia, for less important stuff that's been established via stories. I know I have trouble keeping track of who's had what homeworld established or namedropped what planes...

Honestly, in a situation where with even two viable offspring sharing an egg, at least one of them would likely KILL the other one during the hatching process. It's an extremely violent process during a very fragile time in its life, so no two ways about it, they'd probably kill each other trying to get out of the egg.

As to nest-mate, it is likely a much more intimate relationship. However... one shouldn't attribute mammalian baseline emotions to non-mammalian creatures, even sapient ones. Rorix, after all, ATE his siblings and this was not considered a social faux pas.


Actually called "The Duchess".
Her rival is the Shifter, and they are both... definitely around.

As to Kayin, I think she was dropped due to lack of development.

Yeah, I know I have a bad habit of mentioning planes as simple drop-ins that I never even really intend to develop. There are, I believe, several such planes mentioned in War of the Wheel. I occasionally do it with characters, too, particularly as it relates to the Amphiseum. Trs'kl, Keledon, and Jari Sholandorin all have literally hundreds of years of possible development, and we know relatively little about any of them (particularly Jari).

But honestly, even for our well-established characters and planes, it would be very useful, particularly as a navigation tool. And those who are not familiar with our Archives or even our project will find that a lot easier to use than just the Archives for finding particular stories. Like, say someone wants to read everything that Fisco has appeared in. They could go to the stickied thread, and his stories would all be linked right there, rather than having to search for them.

If we used the Wiki, we could even adapt our work infoboxes to be "at a glance" character cards

Something like this

That could be handy, yeah. And wouldn't be difficult at all--it's just a matter of figuring out what information should go in those entries.

I believe I wrote the original version of that list, but it only included planes and planeswalkers who didn't have their own threads in the Archive, and of course it's now horribly out of date.

Yes, this is one of the reasons I brought it up. Despite being one of the early M:EMbers, I'm quite unfamiliar with the current state of the project. The archive map is a great thing and an index could also be a great thing. I personally feel that I can't responsibly write more for the M:EM if I don't know what's already written, but don't know what order to read things in, or what places and characters already exist...

Ideally, an index would include 6 types of entries:
1. planeswalkers
2. legends (any important characters who aren't planeswalkers)
3. organizations (like the Cabal and the Coven)
4. planes (and the Dark Spot, and groups of planes like the Wheel and Helkavin)
5. locations that don't yet have a defined plane
6. major events (like the Ending War, and the collapse of Taramir)

I suppose that considering the Cabal records, that "characters who may or may not be planeswalkers, or may or may not have ever existed" could be rolled into Legends or given a 7th category.

Major Artifacts could be a category if you guys think that's worthwhile, too.

So, wait though, couldn't the index just be rolled into the archive index as it exists now? Note that we do in fact have access to spoiler tags now so some of the information can be collapsed by default.

Oh you have no idea yet.
I've designed something close to...30? or so. Though I've only posted about 20 of them so far.

What archive index?

I was thinking that, rather than making the Archivist soley responsible for editing an increasingly unwieldy and inherently unsortable post (or multiple separate posts), it could be maintained in a Google docs spreadsheet with a separate sheet/page for each category. Assuming Google docs has spreadsheets that are anything like Excel.

Well, but, that's what the wiki is for.

See: Magic: Expanded Multiverse Archive. This is what I mean by the index. Like, all of that information could be added to this page if we wanted to add it to this page. The characters and planes should probably be given descriptions anyway so adding a spoilered section on the page for minor characters and planes and such that don't have their own pages would be fine, I think.

Oh, yeah so that could be expanded into what I'm talking about. At present it's far from complete, though.

Is there an easy link to it from our forum?

Up there next to the FAQ button and the Search button on the upper right side.

Hm, there should probably be a stickied post in the actual Archive subforum with a bunch of handy wiki links huh?

It... actually is fairly complete as far as what is in our archives here. The last few weeks haven't been added (except for some entries by Szat and Barinellos for their own work, but I think I need to fiddle with the formatting on some of those to standardize them) but beyond that, everything else that's in the archives currently is in the index.

Anything missing from that page either hasn't been added because it was archived in the last few weeks and I just... honestly have not had the time, or it hasn't been moved from the old forums.

This is a good opportunity for me to thank Keeper and Luna for helping out around these parts by doing all this under-the-hood work of managing the Archive and the Wiki. I just post stuff up, and it magically appears where it's supposed to be!

Thanks for keeping things running as smoothly as they do, gents!

Heh, I just wish I had more time to get all the story pages finished and the most recent stuff moved in...

But you're welcome.

It's okay Keeper, you do so much for us as it is.
And all we ever do is give you chocolate and lacy underthings... and we all know the latter is really a present for ourselves.

That's a gift to the whole world.