Okay! So, I've already said this, but I'll say it again. Sorry I haven't gotten to this yet (or before now, I suppose, since I have now gotten to it.) I've already discussed my reasons, and I'll probably get into a few more as we go, but either way, sorry!

So, there is a metric ton of information here, so I'm going to give a few general comments, and then a few brief comments on each of the shards.

Let me just say that you obviously put a lot of work into this. There is, as I said, a ton of stuff here, and you really go into some great detail about a lot of it, and that's something I can really appreciate. I think you do a good job of creating not one, but five pretty vivid worlds.

In my opinion, your single biggest problem here is impenetrability. Even the name, Namacanaan, makes me feel like it's going to be a challenge to read through everything, and the subsequent wall of text only heightened that. Now, admittedly, it was not nearly as inaccessible as I feared it would be. But I thought it only fair to let you know that there seems to be a psychological barrier with your presentation that makes this task seem daunting. I think some reorganization and perhaps a cleaner presentation would help you.

Now, the other thing I was thinking as I began reading through this was that it, in a few different ways, reminded me of The Wheel, particularly with the metaphysics of a central "hub" as it were and planes around it. The orbiting planes also lacked colors of magic, as the planes of the Wheel do. There are definite differences, of course, with yours forming a series of wedges instead of monomanic (tm) planes. But this actually poses a different metaphysical issue. Do these five shards have any sort of shared history or anything in common apart from that they happen to be falling into the Namacanaan? Because if not, it's a huge coicedence that the Namacanaan's draining happened to create five unique color combination, all of three mana each, and all in wedges. Alara made some degree of sense because it had originally been one, so I just sort of question the odds here.

That being said, though, I am pretty fond of this idea of a sort of AEther black hole gimmick. Also, in the intro section, you mentioned that it is theorized that this set of planes is not the first to descend into the Namacanaan. While I find this concept pretty interesting, I have to wonder who this is theorized by?

One last general note, and it's not a problem, but something I noticed... you seem to use the term "zealotry" a lot. I could be mistaken, but I believe it's in four of the five shards. Anyway...

Unaktil
The name is slightly off-putting and awkward, but not too bad, all things considered.

Speaking of the Wheel, Unaktil reminded me a lot of Kokkinos, though admittedly more treacherous and savage. I wasn't really digging this plane much at first. The humans were fine, but nothing special, and the elves were cool but overly psychotic in one or two ways. Once you started getting into the Merfolk and their war with the elves, I found that dichotomy very interesting, and when the viashino entered into it, it got even more interesting. Speaking of the viashino, I thought it was a cool little inversion of expectations with them and the dragons. Overall, I would say the plane is only mildly interesting, but the history and current tensions make it pretty interesting.

Bhamarivo
Ditto the name on this one. I think it might make you stop just a little more than you might want, but it's accessible enough that I'd probably give it a pass.

However, the name of the plane is only one of the names in this section that give me a problem. With the other shards, the races are what you would expect; human, elves, merfolk, dwarves, that sort of thing. With this one, they are stranger creatures, all with unique proper noun names that made them hard to parse after you get past humans.

Speaking of humans, I like the caste system you set up here. It's pretty simple, fairly easy to follow, and it makes sense to the world, I think. I liked that. The Rahonafolk, which I would have just called Aven for simplicity, were pretty interesting. I really like them visually and culturally. My only minor complaint is that you seem to be falling into that trap that everyone on the race is the same. It was the power of their spirit that worried me, because it suggests that every single Rahonafolk becomes a cleric, which seems a bit implausible. Other than that, though, I really like these guys. I like the other races of Bhamarivo, but I don't feel I have a good sense of the Posa. Like, for instance, I'm not even sure what they look like.

Daganavia
I don't have much to say about this one, but it's because of a personal hang-up on my part. I don't like sky-worlds. If they're done on a relatively small-scale, like Emeria on Zendikar, I'm okay with it, but for some reason, entire skyworld planes or planets have always bothered me.

I do think you chose some good flying races to populate the world, so that's good. A minor complaint I have here is the "sky pirates." If the entire world is sky, would they be called "sky pirates?" That seems to imply that there would be another form of piracy on the plane that predates the sky pirates, which may be true, but I'm not getting that impression.

So for this one, I can't be objective. It's probably pretty decent, but not my personal taste.

Shemaharesh
At this point, not to belabor the issue, but the wall of text was beginning to get to me, and so my comments are getting pretty short, so sorry about that. With this plane, the only thing I really want to talk about is the patriarchy. I love it. See, most of the time these days, everyone goes for gender equality in fantasy settings, and that's great, because we're making the world into what we wish it were, for the most part. But fantasy settings can still be used to deal with real-life issues, and while in most places in the world, gender equality is getting better, there are absolutely things we can explore in a world where women are aggressively oppressed, as long as we do it with a degree of self-awareness. And I think your inclusion of the Angel Daggers show that. In fact, I thought using the Angels vs Archons as a sort of gender analogy was pretty clever. So again, the world itself is only so-so (not bad, but not great) is greatly enhanced by what you have going on here. I like this one.

Ranmin
Again, I'm probably not giving these last couple the attention they deserve. With this one, I just kept thinking "Waterworld" as I was reading. I do like that you don't have humans on this plane, though. I was wondering if you were going to do that on one of these, and I'm glad you did. This on is pretty solid, I think.

Well, that's what I've got for the time being. If you have specific questions I might be able to answer, just let me know. Ultimately, this is pretty decent. It is very ambitious, as you essentially designed five separate worlds and presented them in such a way that they pretty much have to be judged and analyzed together, which is a hefty challenge to overcome. You do a good job of making the worlds very different from one another, and the color philosophies you choose to play up, I think, mostly hit the right notes.

Thanks for all the work you put into this. I'll refrain from giving any sort of ultimate conclusion on this until after I see a story or two from the plane(s), but I'm leaning toward liking them, in general.

Thanks!

Thank you a lot for your time, it means a lot to me





This is indeed the one thing most people criticise me for, and I simply don't know what to do. Most fantasy planes, period, seem to get away with weird names and terminology and don't seem to suffer this issue. I've tried some reorganisation and simplification tricks before (compare the planes of Namacanaan to Matahouroa in terms of linguistic elaboration), but they didn't work.


Any special tricks?





This is going to be explained in a short story down the line.





Planeswalkers and a spoiler character.





It's not that they're all the same, it's just that in a caste based society there's kind of restrictions to one's life choices, especially for a mono-White race that has a standard of expectation to keep.





Basically like this, only with leonin style anthropomorphication.





It was for the sake of convenience, but yes, in retrospect it was a rather stupid move on my part.

Some ways to make names easier to digest:

1. Name things in English. Sometimes you should just take the path of least resistance. Your audience is English-speaking, so any English name is automatically a thousand times easier to remember than a non-English one. As a bonus, the meaning of the name itself can remind the reader what it is. Good examples of English naming are "the Forgotten Realms," "Hogwarts," "the Masquerade" and "Planeswalker."

2. Make the name snappy. One big problem with Namacanaan and your other works is, the names are simply too long and difficult to pronounce for the average English reader. If you just had one or two difficult words, that might be acceptable - but a full four of your wedges have three or more syllables, and that's not counting the terminology of a world like Bhamarivo. If my first reaction to a name is "how do you pronounce that?" that's already a red flag. Good examples of foreign but snappy names are "Pelor," "Frodo," "Buffy," and the names of the Alara shards.

The more crazy, "out-there" proper names you give, the more readers will subconsciously resist them. One or two? Not a big problem, especially if they're not very similar. But a bunch of them in a row, the mind tends to shut off and skip them, or sometimes resist the entire piece. Look at the canon planes. Apart from Dominaria, which has been meticulously established since the earliest days of MTG, how many are made up of more than three syllables?

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not even suggesting changing Namacanaan. I actually don't think it's all that bad a name. But I have noticed that your names in general tend to be long, foreign-looking, and as CKY pointed out, difficult to figure out how to pronounce. Now, again, once in a while, that can absolutely heighten the fantasy experience to have names like that. So I'm not saying cut them out entirely. But once they start interacting with one another, or we as readers are expected to remember them, it get's increasingly difficult. It literally becomes like trying to learn a foreign language. One thing I tell my students all the time is "be as kind as possible to your Readers."

I don't know if you've read any of the Jade stuff, but she's a perfect example. Her "real" name is Nephractanini. How do you pronounce that? Where is the inflection? Are the vowels long or short? Is the "ph" an "F" sound like in English, or pronounced separately? When you use names like that, you are forcing your readers to stop and try to work these things out. Now, in her case, that was the point. She has a name that most humans can't pronounce, so she almost always goes by "Jade." It has storyline meaning, it's short, simple, and recognizable, and it helps the reader. Win-win-win.

So, the problem, as I see it, is not that you come up with unique names to fill out a fantasy world. The problem is that your narrative sort of "demands" that readers learn and memorize them all. Now, you are absolutely right. When I glanced through Matahouroa, I think that Namacanaan is a big improvement in that area.

Another thing to thing about is phonetics. Some sounds just work better together than others. I mentioned that the plane of Unaktil was slightly off-putting and awkward. After thinking about it, I think it's because of the hard "-ak" sound coming right up against the hard "T" sound in "-til". Compare, for example, Unaktil to Nakutil (I'm not suggesting you change this, mind you. Just for comparison.) The basic rhythm of the sounds reads more smoothly because of vowel break. With Bhamarivo, you have the two similar vowel sounds right away juxtaposed with change to the "-rivo" which moved faster and changes the sound. Again, these names are horrible by any means, but I think all five could probably be stronger. Shemaharesh, for instance, sounds to me like it really wants to be three syllables, like "Shemharesh." Just my opinion, of course.

A while back, Tevish wrote up an interesting thing on naming conventions in fantasy that was really good. I'll ask Lord Luna for the link. Here (Thanks, Luna!). There might be something here to help!

But yeah, I would say the best trick I can advise is that if you're going to give them far-out-there names, also provide a synonym. So, for instance, with the Rahonafolk, be willing to simply call the Aven interchangeably. It helps.

Anyway, I hope that clears things up a little, or gives you some ideas. As far as the wall-of-text syndrome, my main suggestion is to use spoiler blocks to help break up the text. It makes it look a little shorter and makes the divisions even clearer.

I disagree with naming things in English, personally. Every English name I see in a fantasy story or setting breaks my suspension of disbelief just a little bit more.

"Shemharesh". I like the sound of that. The other plane names will stay - I personally have a fondness for Unaktil's simplistic pseudo-Inuktitut, while the others are kind of thematically important -, but "Shemharesh" is actually much better than what I called the plane.

I always think of it as a translation of the in-universe name for the benefit of the reader. There are many similar cases in real life, such as "Zhong Guo" vs. "the Middle Kingdom," or "Médecins Sans Frontières" vs. "Doctors Without Borders." Sometimes you just call a spade a spade.

I should clarify. I don't mind regular English words like The Forest of Doom, but when people use names that are based on English but not actual English words, or give their characters real names like Charles and Frank. Same with using names that are clearly based on other real languages without actually using those languages (like the Sylvok, Neurok, Aurok, etc.).

Decided to add in phoenixes to Shemharesh and Daganavia. I don't think the previous posts can handle more edits, so they're here seperately.


Shemharesh Phoenixes


Once proud creatures of the wilderness, the phoenixes of Shemharesh proved to be a challenge to the Archons. The divine lords of the plane tried to wipe the fire birds out, but they quickly found that killing a phoenix would be a hard task: whenever a phoenix dies, its essence rekindles into a solid, red, gold-patterned gem-like egg, radiating an intense heat that melts metal and stone. When this egg is destroyed, or simply left to its devices for a week or two, the phoenix is reborn, fully regenerated and often violent, making the trouble of killing it in the first place rather pointless.

So the Archons solved this problem by binding the birds to the ziggurats, not managing to kill them but instead imprisoning them within large, circular craters located at the center of the temples, the holy pyres. Thus the Archons both got rid of a potential threat to the Empire's stability and gained symbolic places of worship, where sacrifices are thrown in honour of the archontic overlords. The phoenixes are sapient beings, and in their bondage they are willing to do anything to regain their lost freedom.

For this reason, the phoenixes have become especially respected and venerated the Angel Daggers, seeing them as fellow oppressed. The rebels long to free them, believing that their violent fire magic will help kill the Archons for good and restore the Angels to their rightful place.

Phoenix egg shell fragments remain throught the plane. They are highly treasured thanks to their magic properties, fueling pyromantic and emotion spells. Most have been intercepted by the Archons and destroyed, but the Angel Daggers have found to acquire many. To use the fragments often means physically destroying them in potions, so they are especially mindful when exploiting their power.


Daganavia Phoenixes


Daganavian phoenixes reside in the endless skies, travelling wherever their whims desire. Bearing wing feathers on their hindlimbs, these phoenixes are generally quite drab, having grey or brown feathers. They are associated with violent storms, particularly a phenomenon named "plasmaclones", in which tornadoes of searing plasma fill the air suddenly and viciously, destroying everything in their path; they often occur in the death and rebirth of a phoenix, the dying bird exploding in a plasmaclone and being rejuvenated by it. Mindless and raptorial, these phoenixes hunt everything on their path, from flying wildlife like birds to ships, tearing their prey with their powerful beak and eating chunks of just about anything, organic or inorganic.


Nonetheless, daganavian phoenixes are widely sought over, usually for their feathers, which while drab certainly aid a lot in casting the storm spells favoured by the pirates. A phoenix can be killed, usually by snuffing out the plasmaclone with magic; this is why they remain relatively rare, even though they can breed and are immortal otherwise. Their meat is said to be very dry and tasteless.