In the last paragraph of Bkackrock:

Should be "an outside observer".

that it should

One last one before falling asleep:
Fift paragraph of Kemil:

Should be "must venture out" not "much venture out".

I feel like you're using the Archivist's mod powers to insert typos that I absolutely didn't make just so you can point them out and make me feel bad

I'm onto you, Luna

Third paragraph of Korrath:

I might be wrong here, but shouldn't that read "taking leave from the old"? I might be wrong on the specific tense here, since tense isn't my strength.

wow I am just the worst

no you're right, that should be taking

In the first paragraph of Telimar:

I think these three lines need to be reworded slightly. As far as I understand, grammattically "they" in the third line refers to the trees, as the last stated subject, when it should be pointing at the Dryads.

Then in the second paragraph:

I believe it should be "laid siege" to be the proper tense.

Well, I was finally able to read through this. First off, as Ruwin said in the voting thread, you clearly put a ton of thought and effort into this, and I think the overall effect is wonderful. There is a ton going on in this plane, and myriad little story possibilities. The various political and militaristic intrigues are really fun to explore, and work together on both a micro and macro sense very will. So basically, good work, and congratulations!

Now, having said that, I have a few concerns. These are in no particular order, although in general they came in the order in which the elements were presented. First of all, I echo Luna's annoyance at the lack of capitalization. I know that's sort of a stylistic thing for you, but I personally found it irritating.

Secondly, I found it odd that Borrogrove was listed, quite specifically, as having a territory of about one square mile. At the beginning of the Blackrock section, you state that "each [troll] stakes out a massive territory for itself," and that Borrogrove was "unambiguously the greatest druid alive." It seems like a troll that "great" would have staked out a territory far larger than a square-mile. That really stuck out to me as odd.

In the Dryad section, there was a typo: "once their tree has fallen, their are homeless" - should be "they are homeless".

The name Kimil stood out to be as being confusingly similar to Kemil.

I was wondering why you went with Goldkin for the elementals when there were several other metals. I'd have thought Metalkin would have been just fine. As a larger comment, the Elementals didn't really do much for me, personally. I found them a bit boring. Maybe it was just because they were by far the most alien of them, so I had less to associate with. I'm not sure.

Typo in the Bats section: "Piker fears the bloodbath that will occurs" - should be "occur"

I would personally suggest dropping the little reading disclaimer in "The Council of Ossia" section, as I don't think it's necessary. People will likely either read the thing in the order its presented, or they will search out the information they are specifically looking for.

I have a slight problem with the Whisperwood, as that's a place that already exists in Magic official canon. It's a slight issue, and I think I've mentioned it before with your Wolf story, but I wanted to mention it again.

In the Tidepoint Seal section, you have a typo: "but we have still have one last stop" - The first "have" is unnecessary.

I would personally prefer if the physical descriptions of the races were in their appropriate sections, rather than in a separate section.

So, all those are relatively minor concerns. Surprisingly, perhaps, my biggest issue with this dossier is not the plane itself. It's Vella. For one thing, she reminds me a lot of the Immerstrum, but that's neither here nor there. I'm concerned that a planeswalking shapeshifter who likes to wreck things for the fun of it steps heavily on the toes of The Shifter, another M:EM character who, well, does that sort of thing. Now, I'm not suggesting that you can't have powerful characters. Many of us do, of course. But her ability to divine exactly how to unravel the, quite frankly, extremely complicated lock of the Tidepoint Seal, leaves me wondering about her age and relative power level. I appreciate that you backed off on the Ulrexes/lich thing, but I feel that if Vella Voss is going to be tied so intrinsically to Ossia and her fate, I would need to know more about Vella before I voted in this dossier, because voting this in makes her implied canon. So, while I hate to give people more work, I would like to request a dossier on Vella Voss, as well.

But again, I would like to stress that overall, this is excellent, and I really do like the setting a lot. Great work!

a square mile isn't big? again, my frame of reference for size is that Blackrock is roughly the size of Sicily, about ten thousand square miles. given that it has about a hundred thousand trolls, a square mile seems pretty large. I suppose I could bump it up a bit, but

yeah, that kinda bugs me too, but for various reasons it's not something I'm comfortable changing. plus, from a realism standpoint it's always bugged me that fictions never include characters with similar names. I get why they do it, but given how many Joshes, Daves, and Mikes I know, it's not really plausible. plus, Kimil is older than the war, so when she was born no one on Telimar knew the name Kemil anyway, so why would they avoid similar-sounding ones?

largely meter. note that the Lightkin could be perhaps more accurately named Lightningkin or Thunderkin or the like as well, but I purposefully stuck to a single emphatic syllable for all of them. it's a subtle unifying thing.

I find them fascinating, but I can see why someone else might not.

I guess.

maybe. I separated them for a couple reasons. first, the Isle write-ups are mostly narrative, designed to depict the culture, and slotting the descriptions in would break that up in an awkward way. second, I think it's a handy reference tool to have separately available. if you want to know what the bats look like, you don't have to dig through a bunch of stuff about their culture and geography, you can just flip to the descriptions section and read it there.

yeah, I'm not super concerned about redundancy. I don't know the Shifter well enough to say for sure, but there are numerous aspects of the plot that rely specifically on details about Vella that I suspect the Shifter doesn't share, so the story is better served by the existence of Vella. and since I don't care that much if she ever gets used by anyone else it doesn't seem to be a big issue that there is already another character that you'd be more likely to use in similar settings in the future. also, redundancy isn't necessarily a bad thing in worldbuilding. consider the stable of actual-canon planeswalkers. Jace, Tamiyo, and Narset could all be painted as basically the same thing, knowledge-hungry hero-sages, but they each have their own little quirks, making each of them worthwhile. plus having a second shapeshifting prankster gives you the opportunity to tell the story of what happens when the two cross paths. what happens when Vella shows up to mess with a society that the Shifter is already toying with? how do they react? what does Vella do in response? do they even notice each other? juxtaposing similar characters lets you highlight their differences.

to be fair, it took her 15 years, with the assistance of the Hand of Gold, and that was just to get to the point where she was comfortable getting started. it's taken her 40 years to get from her initial visit to current events. she is fairly old, probably in the mid- to high three digits, but I wouldn't say she's absurdly powerful, just clever and persistent.

I was planning to work on that anyway, so sure, no problem!

fixed Raven's typos

well, my typos, but the ones Raven pointed out

An average human can walk a mile in about 20 minutes, and run it in less than half of that. Therefore, a square mile could be adequately patrolled in, what, an hour or two? To me, that in no way suggests "massive," particularly for one of the greatest of them. Personally, I would drop the word "massive" there, and you should be fine.


This is a fair point, but you've worked with these names a LOT more than I have. Most of these proper nouns I do not have committed to memory, so if you were to casually drop one of those two names, I would have no idea what you were talking about apart from context, which is not foolproof. It's not a huge problem, by any means, just one I noticed while reading.



You have a point there, but it does create this odd effect that we end up knowing the concise history of these races without being able to "accurately" visualize what they look like. Still, like I said, minor issue.


I would never point to what Wizards does as an example of good storytelling, so the fact that they have a lot of overlap in their characters is, to me, more an indication that they can't handle subtle nuances of the colors than anything else. Still, you have a point, and there are a lot of overlapping characters in the M:EM already. My point was mainly that there seems to be a lot of common ground between the two, which is why I feel I need to know more about Vella before I make up my mind.


Mid- to high three digits as in approaching 1000 years old? So she's obviously a pre-mending walker whose power would have been affected by the Mending. I...think?...it's canon that shapeshifters have naturally longer lives? I might need Barinellos to weigh in on that one. Regardless, that does have some implications, the fact that she's still alive. And ultimately, that's where my concern comes from. Most of our planes do not have histories so thoroughly tied to specific 'walkers, and this dossier would introduce at least one new heavy-hitter into the M:EM canon, if not three, with Ulrexes and Narissa.

so in my mind I'm comparing it to human territories. and I could patrol the borders of my house, or even the lot it's on, in about a minute. so while it's not massive on a township scale or something like that, for the scale of an area belonging exclusively to a single individual it seems pretty massive to me. I can drop the descriptor if you'd like though.

yeah, I'd change it, but there are specific project-related reasons why that's not really an option. I do think context will usually take care of it, but I understand that there's potential for confusion.

entirely fair.

also fair. I couldn't find a dossier of the Shifter, is there somewhere I can look for an overview of the character?

very roughly, yeah.

I mean, I'd assume it varies based on where they're from. there's no reason that Lorwyn's changelings would need to share much physically in common with evil twin or a vesuvan shapeshifter. all you'd need is to say that shapeshifters from Vella's home plane live a very long time or don't naturally die, which, considering Vella's home plane is one of largely my design, is not a major hurdle to clear.

four, if you count the one who made the Seal in the first place, although there's nothing establishing who that is so they may be dead or they may be one of your existing oldwalkers. then again, it's not introducing Narissa, Tevish already did that. and I don't think Ulrexes comes off as much of a heavy hitter in the canon aspects of this story, since all he does is show up and get bound in a deathtrap. I suppose the fact that Vella feels the need to collapse an entire plane in order to kill him implies some level of strength.

but I do take your point, and I'd be happy to do a separate dossier for Vella. just won't have time before voting closes.

so out of curiosity I decided to see how many words this was total, and it's only about 16 thousand. which is a lot, but not as many as I thought it'd be. huh.

added a thing to the end about languages.

Your face is introducing a thing to the end of language!

April Fools!


... did I do that right?

I was reading through this again for don't-worry-about-it reasons, and I remembered I'd promised to make a dossier for Vella. can someone show me a good planeswalker dossier so I have a model for what to include and how to structure it?

Well, I don't know about "good," but here's my Kahr-ret-Taris dossier that I use as the basic template for my other planeswalker dossiers.

Raven's example is a good one; a dossier is meant as a summary of the character for future readers, but above all a guideline for everyone who might want to write for that character, I think; so keep in mind what a fellow writer might need to get a good grasp of the character.

I apologize in advance for my rambling:

-Physical Description: a character may even lack a definite appearance (Gale is described as athletic, tanned and covered in tattoos, but there's not a word on her face and on the color of her hair and eyes, at least in her first pieces), but usually having at least a summary description doesn't hurt.
-Personality: that's basically the core of the character. How do they act and react? Including a list of the character's quirks and mannerisms is important too, especially if there are no pieces to showcase them yet: the way an individual express themselves is a key aspect in their characterization. Think about it: if we had a dialogue including Raiker, Gale and Fisco we could probably identify each speaker without needing speech tags.
-Backstory: the past of the character shapes their present: they could react specifically to peculiar behaviours, items, words and events because of a special connection in their history; it also helps to shed light on their personality and how it formed, and defines the character's fields of experience.
-Powers (or Magic): this point kinda speak of itself: what can your character do? Defining the character's options during a combat is also important in some storylines (not that I know anything about it ), so including the character's martial training and behaviour is a good idea (I use a separate entry named Combat, but I just love watching/reading about fighting with supernatural powers)
-Gender and sexuality: very important traits for a person, these may be overlooked if you don't want to focus on them: you'll notice not many dossiers talk about the planeswalker's sexuality, the Kahr-ret-Taris is one of the exceptions. By default most readers will assume a character is cis and at least mildly heterosexual, as you may be well aware.
-Meta and other elements: are there aspects of the character's past (their pre-Ascension life, for example) you don't want to be clarified? Things that a fellow writer should keep in mind when defining a storyline with your character in it? (Example: the character suffers from vertigo, but they never experienced it so they actually don't know about their problem; you may want to explore this problem yourself, so you could tell that your character shouldn't encounter this problem before you deal with it) Particular interactions or traits that you think are important but you couldn't add to the previous sections?

Awesome. That's how real MTG plots should look like.
Bet it's Warhammer-inspired.

Dryads work on photosynthesis? Seems unlikely, given that trees only have so much photosynthetic energy to not die, produce seeds, and maybe grow a millimeter a week. And dryads think, speak, move and fight.

Map is unrealistic - should have more water between the isles.

Also, now I know the hardest profession in the Multiverse: