I still feel like playing up Maraka as a full-fledged third location undermines the themes of division. I could work though.
Omenheim does sounds pretty cold (and windy) but the "heim" is too strongly Germanic to fit into an ostensibly Olmec setting. We're still going for a S.America feel, right? Omenchuha or Omenhul or Omanenan have a similar feel. How about one of those?

I think South America fits great on Illpyre but doesn't work for the cold side. Like if you look up the German word for cold (it's kalt) all the words port directly from it. Frost and winter, for example, are both straight from the German. That's cuz it was really cold there so they had words for it. It wasn't cold in South America. How can a culture evoke an environment that's cold if it's not cold itself? Plus, it's not like specifically Nordic imagery isn't underrepresented in Magic.

I think it's a mistake to base the different halves of the world on different cultures. That undermines the sense of division and the impact of the starstill. It's less a world forcefully divided, than a world with multiple locations. With separate cultural rootings, it may as well be two unrelated areas.

Innistrad is pretty German, and Lorwyn is Nordic, or so I'm told I think. I don't relate that much to Lorwyn tbqh.
I don't mind making them different cultures though, I think that just emphasizes it. Having North be culturally similar to a warm place and South to a cold place seems pretty sound to me. Its suppose to be a long time since the change, so it's natural that the locations would be very different. We should find ways to portray that they were identical at one point as well though, and ideally though cards that do different things.

Innistrad is Germanic, but primarily Dutch. Lorwyn was based in the British Isles.

So I've been brainstorming mechanics for the flavor we've established, but as the Pro Tour Semifinals proved, I'm really not as good at mechanics as some people (Mown). But nevertheless, I came up with some ideas to start a discussion.

Overheat (You may have this creature enter the battlefield with a -1/-1 counter on it. If you do, it gains haste.)

Freeze (When you cast this spell, you may tap target permanent. If you do, it doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step.)

These are really boring, but I think they illustrate the hot and fast vs. cold and slow dynamic really well.

As for Maraka, maybe something like Earthbond (This creature has all activated abilities of lands you control)? Not that exactly, cuz that wouldn't work well at Common, but something that conveys the connection to the land.

Really the only common connection between these three, though, is that they are all representative of their respective environment.

Maybe we can make World Lands? One for Illpyre, one for Maraka, and one for Omenheim? Make them kind of like planes? Not really enough to base a set around, but would make for an awesome cycle of mythics.

Basically my point is that I think the best way to go about this is to establish three mechanics—one for each zone—and build up the archetypes around that Alara style (since we've decided that the three areas are largely isolated from each other).

Overheat compares badly to unleash. I think it would be hard to cost and stat creatures that are attractive to use both ways.
For a cold-themed ability maybe you could have "you may have ~ etb tapped. If you do, tap target thing". That would necessitate a slow format where you want to go wide.
Wait, the areas are isolated from each other? What's between them?

Maraka. Dude, I got this from you!

Oh, I thought you meant all three parts were divided.

Nah, just the hot and cold side.

PS if you don't like Omenheim I have more names. Direholm? I just thought people were getting annoyed that I kept throwing out names.

Direholm is a cooler name. It also seems like more of a word that people would actually invent to describe their world.

Word! Also, illPYRE and DIREholm both have the same sound in them, so maybe we can say that the original name of the plane was Aiur (except spelled differently cuz that's the Protoss homeworld). And since the sound shows up in both names we can say that even though the original name of the undivided world has been lost, the phonetic root still lives on in the names of each hemisphere.

Here's an idea for a set theme!!! The entire set is mirrored pairs.

That sounds a little too daunting, but I'd love to see a bunch of them. One for every colour combo maybe.

What if I just open the design threads up? Starstill 2.0? Do a whole writeup, draw up a whole set map, and just do this over again with better direction because the flavor's already set up for us.

I think the better way to make this happen though is if we just treated it like Card of the Week. I'll just open up a Starstill 2.0 design thread, and have everybody encouraged to just throw in their cards. And then have a Starstill 2.0 nomination thread that worked like CotW. And then every week we'd vote on the cards we nominated yea-nay. And if you win with at least 60% yeas, you get into the set.

I think we need to decide what kind of format we want first, and also if we want to do anything crazy like a mirrored pair set. Then we can build a skeleton. Then we fill it in. Over the course of the whole thing though, it would be fine to do some one-of designs; not everything has to be about the big picture.

lol starstill

Do you guys think the mechanical theme of the set could be aggro allied pairs (Illpyre) vs. control enemy pairs (Direholm) vs. monocolor combo (Maraka)?

Oh geeze, I totally forgot about the ally/enemy thing. I just thought Illpyre would be aggro and Direholm control. Also Illpyre enchantments and Direholm artifacts.

Maraka could also be midrange instead of combo. And I still want a land subtheme in Maraka if we're gonna do the artifacts/enchantments theme

I don't know what value there is to give Maraka an archetype if it's going to be mostly green. I don't know if monogreen combo or midrange is all that viable. I could totally dig a land theme though.