That's pretty different. For what sake is he that different?

Whenever this question crops up, I say: "think of Medea".


Medea in hellenic literature is an extremely Red aligned person, driven mostly by her whims and passions. Yet all her magic would be rather Green flavoured (herbs), White (all her spells derived from her grandfather Helios), or both (healing). Is she thus with abilities, or full on ?


The answer most commonly offered in canon is that she would be the latter. We've had many cases in which speciation = affinity, so even if there's something iffy ("How can that girl murder so many people willy nilly?"), if your character is too proffecient/attached to a specific school/color of magic, chances are that such will impact the mana cost.


And that's perfectly okay, because the color pie is expansive enough for your character range in a specific color to be vast. Medea herself could be constructed as Green in her savagery and primordiality and White in her self-righteousness, even though she is far more indicative of Red's chaotic and dangerous side.

Naturally, I can't speak to how Barinellos would answer this, but coming from a place where snow dominates the landscape for a depressingly long stretch of the year, it definitely makes sense to me that mana behaves differently. I mean, at the height of winter, it's a lot like a Desert out there. It's a Wasteland. I mean, people who work the land for the rest of the year can't get anything "normal" out of it, so it makes sense to me that a mage wouldn't get colored mana from land blasted by snow and ice. When the temperature is below zero almost every day, the ice looks almost like Crystal Veins, and the rivers are usually frozen over, or at best massive Ice floes.

In Magic, we have seen how ice can be put to powerful purposes, even without the influence of colored man. It can be used to stave off attack, deal direct damage, see the future, exert control, and even produce colored mana!

So yeah, I'm personally fine with a character just using . And the world where Aerik comes from makes further sense that he would be dependent on that sort of spellcraft.

That all sounds pretty cool (pardon the pun) but that just supports the notion that a lot things are absolutely fine if you explain them in and out of universe where applicable. I'm fairly certain 2 distinct individual members of 2 physically similar races are completely capable of coming together and having a child. If I was doing it frivolously I would certainly do it more than this time. Behind it, since the type of magic is canonically primarily on Zendikar (and turns out to mostly be Green & White, thus affecting this character's color identity) the character's dual heritage is to emphasize his/her place between nature and society

You don't have to ask me to pardon puns!

Except for the fact that halfbreeds are not even CLOSE to common in the Magic universe.
The dual heritage you want to use, particularly, really clashes. The kor and the elves don't get along, culturally, so not only are you having to justify why there is a half-breed (potentially from two races that we aren't even sure ARE compatible), you have to justify why the parents got together to begin with.

Aside from that, you're also dealing with making a walker from a canon plane that is already loaded down with walkers.

Characters that use magic without mana of any color are super uncommon, through a few half-elves and even a merfolk-goblin, half-breeds are a least out there, and hence my point. The challenge merely lie in explaining. A star-crossed lovers plot is perfect for this result, it even drives home the "you are the epitome of supposedly incompatible forces coming together" thing.

The merfolk-goblin isn't what you think it is, first off.
And I don't think I'd buy a star-crossed lovers plot for this. Culturally, it just puts too much strain on the characters involved.
Besides that, like I said, it's sort of moot since involving Zendikar will already be an equally large red flag for the project.

I assumed it wasn't, but still point towards there being cross-breeds in general. Also, so far there's 2 neowalkers from Zendikar atm, I'm not sure how 1 more is too many.

First off, just the fact you're using Zendikar as an origin could be a problem for us. We largely avoid using canon planes like that for ANY of our walkers (with Rabiah being kind of a notable exception.)
But aside from that, it's an exponential problem. For every one walker you add from a plane, that's a statistical data point, and the odds of even 2 walkers being from the same world at the same time are enormous. Three is astronomical.
We know WotC doesn't have the same compunctions about loading a world down with walkers, I mean just look at Ravnica, but Zendikar is a popular setting, so there's a good chance they might add MORE walkers to Zendikar as it is.

And yes, we have half-breeds even in our archives, but importantly, they are half breeds we KNOW are possible. Elf-Kor combos have no indication as being possible, and the fact that WotC doesn't use them hardly at all in Magic is telling. This isn't DnD.

Was Rabiah even fleshed out enough to be used for original characters?

Actually, Rabiah had a lot of interesting development. It helped that it was drawn from such obvious real-world source material, but even beyond that, the stuff with Taysir really helped flesh out the setting.

And then, the fact that there are a thousand of them that can be fairly significantly different helps make the setting "available."

Yeah, with a thousand planes, it allows us some really great liberties to play with because we can always essentially just say "oh, it wasn't THAT Rabiah, it was the Rabiah across the block. Maybe the one from two doors down."

Yeah, but it ends up violating the basic principles behind the reasoning attributed to keeping canon out of the M:EM, and that is stepping on the toes of MtG canon in terms of potential overlap. Saying that N/1000 are "______ Rabiah" isn't really any more justified than visiting a Planechase-only plane. One day it's possible a number of those Rabiahs might be revealed, no less possible than other ambiguous worlds (Arkhos, Valla, Kaldheim, Utoparia)

... there are worlds of difference between a singular world with murky canon being used given the number of unknowns* there as well as the fact that there is only a single world with no plausible variety.
And there is no way in hell they are going to visit 1000 iterations of the same plane. Besides even that, they aren't interested in revisiting Rabiah at all, claiming that since so much of it was cribbed from Arabian Nights in the first place. They've stated that if they ever want to do a setting similar to Rabiah, they're going to develop a world with their own IP instead.

*I want to make special note of this because Rabiah isn't murky either. We have a good grasp on what belongs there, as opposed to the unknowns of a barely used plane.

Yeah, this argument troubles me. In order for this to be the problem you claim it might one day be, Wizards would not only have to develop all 1001 Rabiahs, but then make those develops clear and distinct to MTG consumers. How many planes has Wizards developed fully? A dozen? MAYBE two, if you're generous on what "developed fully" means? No offense, but are you honestly telling me that in your mind, there's an equal likelihood that Wizards will develop Valla as that they will develop 997 more Rabiahs? Even just mathematically/statistically speaking, it is in fact VASTLY more likely that Wizards will develop EVERY SINGLE PLANECHASE plane than that they will develop every single Rabiah, and that doesn't take into account the fact that they're unlikely to revisit even a single Rabiah for several reasons, some of which Barinellos mentioned. The planechase planes are a lot like the Timeshifted cards in Future Sight. They're a pool of possible resources for creative to look at down the line. Most Wizards products start out mechanically, and then creative decides what sort of world would best fit that. Planechase gives them some starting points if they want them. Rabiah, for their point of view, gives them practically nothing.

No, you misunderstand my meaning. Though you have brought to my attention the fact that there would still be elbow room regardless, but my point is that when you make ______ Rabiah and build it up, you're almost definitely making one that Wizards wouldn't make, or in a way they wouldn't, so there's still that developmental overlap, and yes, they probably won't develop Rabiah (Wizards has an issue with separating certain related factors from the settings themselves. Rabiah can still be an IP of its own, removed from its original incarnation, and Kamigawa's actual failures that fans still won't overlook all fall into a mechanical viewpoint, and they don't have to come right out and say they recycled Arkhos and Mongseng) and even less likely to reveal all 1000 and thus reveal your fan-Rabiahs are not plausibly among them, but then my point again is that it is still an ambiguous world from this point on, just as much as other planes (some of which have been admitted to become fodder for future sets, which is up for debate whether that means they have been retconned out of the multiverse or are just abandoned)

Also, as I bounce around character concepts and get interpretive feedback, I am reminded that my creative intentions do not coincide with the M:EM's. If nothing else, the hugest divide is the reluctance to include canon elements, minus exceptions. As it stands, besides admiration for some of the more popular fan-planes (like Jakkard) and some of the storytelling (anthologies, short stories, one-ofs, etc) the M:EM isn't something for me. What generally does serve me in my creative endeavors is merely other like-minded fans that can offer help bouncing ideas off and can point out to me when a particular detail I've conceived is in fact over-the-top and/or nowhere in the ballpark of plausible considering the parameters. In this case, my parameters consist of characters (Planeswalkers or otherwise) within the canon multiverse as it were, with the only severe stipulation being avoid being smack-dab in the middle of canon (or potentially canon) events. The limitations of the M:EM do not suit me or my parameters, though the community is still one I connect with.

Well, I'm certainly sorry to hear that, although I understand where you're coming from. The restrictions we have were created for several reasons, including our protection (in a variety of ways, not least of all mental). It would certainly be an unpleasant experience, for instance, to put a ton of work into a project set on, oh, let's say Belenon, only to have Wizards use it as a setting and invalidate everything we had written on it, thus making whatever we had written incompatible with canon.

Now personally, in most cases, I like to stay as far from canon (specifics) as I can, and instead base my work on the themes and metaphysics of the Multiverse. It's just where my predominant interests lie. I don't expect anyone to agree with me if they don't want to. So like I said, if the M:EM doesn't fit your style and your tastes, that's fine. Just know that we do things this way for a reason. Similarly, though it may not appear so to you, in those instances where we make those "exceptions," they are made for a reason and with careful consideration.

Best of luck with your character creations!