Yeah, but Kamigawa was littered with spirits, and while Lorwyn was a little too lighthearted for the undead, the Shadowmoor side had plenty (including the entire Divinity cycle).

This brings up a fascinating question that I haven't thought about before. Were Shadowmoor spirits originally human? Their morphology really doesn't fit any of the established races of the plane. If so, that begs a very interesting question as to why there were no humans in LorMoor.

Tormentor looks pretty Kithkin with its big round eyes and big round head. Korrigan lacks horns (that we can see) but is drawn and has the ears of an elf. Bloodied I always read as Kithkin. Banshee is a little weird.

I honestly think Korrigan and Banshee might not be undead, but rather spirits in the sense that they are beings not primarily of the flesh.

Shadowmoor spirits are not meant to be undead, but just generic, usually malevolent supernatural beings (and, in regards to the demigod cycle, its deities, even though Oona is the worldsoul). They're also not exclusive to by any means.

The spirits in shadowmoor were Sidhe inspired, or at least that's how I've always read it.

There was a big to-do yesterday where Maro warned Dovin Baan was key to the story and Saheeli Rai played only a minor part. He has retracted that because he got it exactly wrong. So Saheeli may indeed turn out to be very important.

RE: Everyone poo-pooing the market research data. I am not defending their stance. Their stance is worrying to me. I am just reporting what they are saying their stance is. This is not my opinion.

Also, (and this is genuinely my opinion) Mark Rosewater is a tremendously scrupulous and honest person. If they were seeing data that concerned them, I have absolutely no doubt at all that he would be telling us exactly that. If you want to continue disbelieving him, that's your look-out.

I think MaRo is a very stand up guy and wouldn't intentionally lie about anything.
He will, however, speak authoritatively about stuff he didn't double check before saying.
I mean, I'm not really trying to naysay the market data there, I'm just going on to say his record in general is spotty at getting stuff right.

I don't think it's even that he's not trying to fact check or the like, but that he might be speaking from his limited experience with the story.

I'd wager that in early drafts of the story, Saheeli was less important than she is currently.

That is fair and accurate. I now preemptively groan whenever I sense he's about to try to answer a rules question. But I think that he has been paying close attention to how the story is being received, precisely because it does now have a huge impact on a number of design issues: what mood they will try to present in the gameplay, what characters need cards, and what mechanics will best sell the story. I recognize that story isn't really his purview, so I would really like to see someone put out an article following up Jenna Helland's from 2015 announcing the change breaking down more of what they wanted to do, how well they think they have done it so far, and what they are looking to try to do next. A "State of the Story" column, if you will.

Really, I wish literally every department in Wizards had a Mark Rosewater to give us incredibly deep and detailed insight into the inner workings.

Anyway, back to Kaladesh stuff. If Aether Revolt ends up being yet another "us vs. them" two-faction battle set, I will be very irritated.

Is there a world in which it won't?

I mean, the rebels have so far failed to garner my sympathy, which happens when one of the tragedys you call out is the Maulfist factory being shut down. After all, what sane and loving government would shut down this?



Or even harmless, freedom-loving, societal-value-creating, not-at-all-criminal this?



... yeah. The treatment of the lower classes seems pretty cruddy but Pia's moral high ground is a pair of stilts named "Kiran" and "Chandra".


I'd hope for an "Us versus them versus Mutual Destruction" but that's a structure that would have worked better with three sets, and as of Kaladesh for sure they knew that's all they were going to have and were able to write for it from the ground up, unlike BFZ (Truncated) and Shadows (Picked up BFZ's scraps)

The Consulate pretty much seem to not be good guys either though:

Confiscation Coup certainly hints at it, and they seem to be into human gladiatorial combat given Fateful Showdown, on top of that, the one in charge of allocating aether is pretty clearly corrupt, Kambal, Consul of Allocation and probably not giving aether to who it is supposed to go to, and instead to those who he wants to for his own personal power and wealth, as much as he can get away with, and people not getting the aether fairly seems to be a big part of why the renegades are active, or at least what Pia and Kiran were originally up to secretly trying to correct for.

I like the idea of neither side being fully the good guys, although I strongly suspect Tezzeret plays a large role in why bad guys have gained and maintained power in the Consulate side of things, and why the Renegades didn't eventually manage to infiltrate and work within the system to make things better.

Is that merely a feeling you have (i.e. him simply never having been caught lying so far) or substantiated by something more specific? I generally don’t really follow the guy or what he says so I just don’t know.

How did return to innistrad finish?with a cosmic horror twist. Therefore kaladesh will end in an indian way: nonviolent march lead by pia to reclaim indipendence from the consulate confirmed!

“Twist”.

It will finish with a dance sequence.

I CACKLED at the thought.

Then we're in agreement.

Pia herself seems like a pretty standup gal even if she's relying on the support of much more questionable folks. There's not really a question whether Kambal or Baral are bad (one's horridly corrupt the other loves his job when killing children is in the description) but we see virtually nothing of the rest of the government power structure. We know that they kind of try to have surveillance up though a Thopter Spy Network seems pretty tame next to what modern governments can and will do, that they take out Gremlin infestations the same way you'd deal with termites (Fair, Gremlins have about the effect on everything they build that termites have on wooden structures, only much faster), and they have a kickass flagship. Even the probably-meant-to-horrify Authority of the Consuls seems fairly pedestrian unless you're red-aligned to the deepest crimson. "Citizens are free to do as they please within the confines of the law" I think is how laws work... The biggest problem with all this is that I feel like Wizards wants us to immediately and totally sympathize with the renegades, and they didn't make the consulate nearly totalitarian, oppressive, and Orwellian enough for that.

I think what might frustrate me more, though, is that from Origins Vryn had the better setup for "Renegades versus Central Government for control of resources", even as a two-sided issue, while Kaladesh had its ducks in a row for grabbing the dark side of with both hands and giving us a really despotic, repressive, and authoritarian regime which they only halfheartedly dipped their toes into instead.

It does follow The Purifying Fire in the same basic problem, in that Chandra also caused more problems than she was worth, though at least the Order of Heliud and the enforcers that murdered her vilage were nuanced enough in both directions to be both sympathetic and horrifying.

Children with magical powers that defy the imagination, making them a danger to themselves and others.

Let’s not gloss over that. Not necessarily an excuse by itself but we’re not exactly talking about poor Orphan Annie here.

True, to the Consulate, this may be more of a "Carrie" situation that could blossom into "Children of the Corn" if left uncontained.