Simply in the process of adding the information to the backup Drive copies of the Archive, I noticed a slight problem with the Dominia Cabal "data sheet." It has no intro. It dives straight into the member list. It doesn't really explain what they do or were responsible for to a newcomer. It's kind of designed (or at least, the information is ordered to give the impression) for M:EMbers who were already involved in crafting the Cabal.

So, I call the M:EM to write a brief description of The Dominia Cabal, to quickly explain what it was to someone who isn't familiar with them.

I would also ask if it is the preference of the community to leave the information in spoiler blocks or to format it like most dossiers and plane pages have been formatted thus far?

"The Dominia Cabal was an order of Planeswalkers in ancient times, existing until around -5000 AR. They destroyed themselves in a brutal civil war that completely destroyed many planes, ruined others, and left its mark on an untold number. Few now live who remember those times and no wholly accurate record exists, rendering the days and deeds of the Cabal shrouded in myth."

maybe "a brutal civil war [between the Loyalists, followers of The Master who rallied after his murder in an attempted coup, and the Traitors, led first by The Chamberlain and then by The Scientist. This civil war] completely destroyed..." just for some added clarity.

Also, "The violent destruction of the Dominia Cabal ultimately led to the creation of the magic-nullifying plane of Sanctuary. Zhiran, who experienced the conclusion of the conflict firsthand, ultimately used the end of the war and the founding of Sanctuary as the Year Zero point for the Sanctuary Calendar."

That helps, I'm grateful for an intro. I'll see if I have time to read and vote on it this week.

I think it's theoretically already in based on having a majority of participants at the time of vote closing but yeah you should check it out since it's pretty cool if I do say so myself

OK, I read the main page, and there's still a ton left unexplained for anyone who wasn't participating from the start of the project.

Is there any more summary of the War than the bare timeline?
What are AEther Vents? What are Bells? Who used them?
What was the Master's plan that he unveiled? What world was he planning to destroy?
What were the Grail and Black Grail?
Is there a description of Sanctuary anywhere?
What is the Empyrean?

Is there a summary somewhere of the project and the ramifications regarding M:EM overall (such as this Calendar that gets mentioned, as though it's going to be our dating method now instead of AR).

Not really. A lot of the history of the War has been left intentionally obscure, both to provide for possible development/stories later on, and because the entire thing is supposed to be clouded in a certain degree of mystery anyway. There was few left alive who really know what happened besides Ellia, and she doesn't see too inclined to speak about it.


Both the AEther Vents and the Calling Bells are Artifacts of the Dominia Cabal, a write-up of which I have just linked. The AEther Vents are sort of the nuclear weaponry of the War, designed to relentlessly funnel pure AEther into whatever world they were detonated on, essentially tearing that world completely apart. The Calling Bells were created by the Mentalist, and used by the Cabal both before and during the war to control the mortal populations under their control. An exploration of those bells can be seen in this story: The Deluge at Carakera


To be honest with you, I'm not sure. Tevish may have to answer that one.


Planeswalkers, and their inherent pre-Mending powers, were a finite resource for the Cabal, both for the loyalists and the rebels. The grails were created in an attempt to rectify that by allowing ordinary mortals to become planeswalkers. The Mender created it. She had the best of intentions, but was unable to succeed in any real way. After the War began, the traitors usurped the project for darker means. I assume it was the Scientist (though I don't know that for sure) who darkened the intention of the grail and found a measure of success. Although it was not a true Spark, it did provide the mortal with immense power and the ability to walk the planes, but at a tremendous price. The black Grail figures into Tevish's story: The Planeswalker's Daughter


Unfortunately, we haven't gotten that far yet. Sanctuary was my brainchild, and so I have some thoughts, but nothing has been decided on yet. I envision it as a large world devoid of sapient (but not sentient) life that actively restricts and restrains magic. Planeswalkers are able to come and go, but working magic there apart from simply 'walking is next to impossible. I see it as a world of pastoral peace.


Empyrean is another world created in the crucible of other, destroyed worlds, but it was created in a much different manner than Sanctuary was. The development of Empyrean is still on-going in this thread: The Work of Gods, though admittedly, development has stymied a bit. (Any help would be much welcomed!)


The calendar was actually the genesis of this entire thing. We really need to pull the trigger on that. Basically, we need to decide where on the AR calendar ours will start, and how long our year is in comparison to a Dominarian year. A lot of this ties in to Zhiran, who is the original creator of our reckoning, and the idea I've been going with is that one year in Zhiran's calendar is equal to one year on Sanctuary...whatever we decide that should be.

1) No, there's no more summary of the war than the bare timeline and what can be gleaned from the bios of cabal members.
2) The Aether Vents and Calling Bells are described in Artifacts of the Dominia Cabal. In short, Aether Vents are plane-destroying bombs, Calling Bells are mass-brainwashing devices (less mass for the surviving example, which is much smaller). By the end, The bells were mostly used by the Loyalists, the Aether vents mostly by the Traitors (particularly The Scientist/The Endbringer/Ellia)
3) We don't have many details on this, but the answer to your second question is probably "Lots of 'em, or maybe none. Whoever wants to resist purification and harmony or is in my opinion beyond salvation."
4) The Grail (later, Black Grail) is described in Artifacts of the Dominia Cabal. The Grail was a device intended to turn a mortal into a Planeswalker. It never worked and was at best able to improve their magical potential somewhat. The Traitor faction eventually stole it and turned it into the Black Grail, which would turn a mortal into an entity capable of challenging and even killing an oldwalker, but at the cost that said ex-mortal would die very quickly thereafter.

Maybe Sanctuary is Earth.

I mean no it shouldn't be but wow I absolutely cannot dislodge that idea from my head now.

If it is somebody dun messed up and introduced humans. Who coincidentally left some really convincing evidence that humans evolved totally naturally and stuff.

And then what is going on with Rabiah and every other plane with blatant parallels of Earth cultures and legends I don't know...



In seriousness: It occurred to me that, if the Sanctuary Calendar is going to be our interplanar calendar, then connecting any plane-specific timeline to it requires defining that plane's year relative to Sanctuary's. Otherwise you get situations like with Ravnica, where we know when the Decamillennial was in A.R. was but not when year 1 was because nobody knows how long a Ravnican year is relative to Dominaria's.

I support having a calendar, because watching Creative muddle around with "it's all vaguely in the present" has made me wince many times. Consistent story needs a good timeline, especially if we ever reveal any information at all from the past, ever.

Yeah, we actually have been working on that. Unfortunately this isn't up to date with the Cabal information and everything's still in AR but here's the timeline as it currently stands:

The Long Timeline

Recent Decades

Sorry to ask but.....is the intention to keep it on that software, or to move it to a text format like the Salvation Wiki Timeline?

Because that software is almost unusable with my mouse, and largely unreadable to my eyes with all the overlapping flag things and lack of precise dates.


Regarding years, are the years for those various Planes already defined relative to Dominaria's?

I'd rather have something more dynamic than text alone. Unless someone has a better idea I'm pretty satisfied with this system, to be honest.

Some of the planes are defined, others are estimated. Like Acharu I think is all just sort of slotted sloppily in place based on simple subtraction rather than trying to figure out the actual mathematical difference.

Also I just updated the long timeline with the info for the Cabal

But... I specifically gave Acharu dates A.R. equivalent dates, so the calculation is already done!

To the software: it's dynamic? How do you get text to be legible, or control the scrolling? Is there a way to view it up-and-down instead of left-to-right?

Oh, nevermind then, the dates should be accurate. I think.

No way to view it up and down unfortunately. You can zoom in though on the timeline. And if you click on the tags on the timeline it blows up the text quite large, so it should be readable.

For a brief mad moment I contemplated reverse engineering the setup but uh... yeah that's written in a mass of js and I don't read that yet.

So, while we're on the subject, I just want to pose this question:

What else do people think we need to solidify with the Cabal? Obviously some things we want to leave open, but is there anything people think could use more development or a specific story?

What was the purpose of the Cabal (before the Master revealed his evil plan)? Is this one of the things lost to time, or should it be established/recorded? Zhiran was asked to join them, so he may know. How much does the Record of Zhiran, or whatever it's called, have to say?

Ostensibly, the original purpose of the Dominia Cabal was to establish and provide order throughout the Multiverse. It was, potentially, to be a way to ensure peace throughout all (or as many as possible) of the planes of Domina. Sadly, as the years went on, the methods employed to ensure that peace became increasingly...questionable.

Well, that one is simple. The Planeswalker who brought the humans to Earth took them from other Planes. Being a human, himself, he didn't bring any nonhuman races here, or anything capable of challenging human dominion over the world (such as giant wurms and the like). Originally, the world was inhabited by massive reptiles, but the Planeswalker caused a massive cataclysm which killed all of them off, so that he could make room for his human world. The new humans he brought here had all the memories of their worlds, and though the legends often became distorted over time, they remained a major part of the human culture.

Yeah but that doesn't work with the evidence of evolution.

If Earth was the original human homeworld, humans could have been transplanted to those other worlds.