Ixalan Story Details

>Europe are decadent bloodsucking monsters on a mission to destroy the new world's natives
Wew they don't try to hide it anymore

If I recall, the artifact they're there for was actually stolen from them. So if anything the conquistadors are at least semi-justified.

>Color me surprised, a mesoamerican inspired world that DOESNT lump the Aztec and Maya together.

See, you say that...but the maximum extent of Maya civilization was about the western most part of the Grijalva River in Mexico, which the Aztecs at their height never actually crossed. That is, the Maya and Aztecs certainly knew about each other and interacted with each other on probably a regular basis, but the Aztecs didn't replace the Maya anywhere. Tenochtitlan was more than a thousand kilometers from Tikal.

Yeah I think this is what they are going for, to kind of justify the Legion just coming and fucking shit up, because something was stolen from them.

This is a really cool sounding world.

So the Imperial Vampires aren't just acting out of greed and are actually trying to stop being reliant on blood, while the rebel pirates are seemingly in league with an agent of Bolas? And the Plane isn't a monoculture, has a history outside of the main plot.

Did.....Did Wizards do something right?

I think it was just coincidence, a broken clock is right at least twice a day

>And the Plane isn't a monoculture, has a history outside of the main plot.
People ssy they esnt this, but in realoty... does it really mstter if it ex8sts if we never see it? I mean, its all well and good if Ixalan has other continents, but if all we ever see is Ixalan, does it matter that there are others? All planes have distinct cultures among the races there, sometimes different ones even among the individual races.

yes, it does. Thats part of what separated early blocks like Ravnica and Mirrodin, where you had the feeling of entering an entire new place, from Kaladesh, where all you did was playing antifa in Ghirapur

>Europe are decadent bloodsucking monsters on a mission to destroy the new world's natives
Have historians in the last 100 years said it was anything other than this?

I think it helps limit some of the grumbling about forced diversity, if only slightly. I mean, Innistrad has other continents, so non-Europeans that cropped up in cards had an,easy excuse as to where they came from. Meanwhile, you get something like Amonkhet where literally everyone lives in a single tiny city, and there's no room for anything out of place that hasnt already been established as existing in that city.

I repeat, if we never see those places, does it matter? You didnt actually explain anything. For example Kaladesh had 3 distinct elf cultures, including one that eschewed technology. If we get the same depth in culture even when those cultures arent spread across a globe, why does it matter whether it is or not?

I mean, theres room for both. You can have places where most of the world is devastated and we just fish eye the licing civilization like Amonkhet, and we can have places like Ixalan. But Innistrad is an especially notable example of why I feel it really doesnt matter if theres other continents or not, and at best can be used to explain there being brown people. We know they exist, but we'll almost certainly never see them and they probably will not have an impact on the overall tone and feel of the plane. In other words, the world wouldnt be much better or even really worse if we didnt know Innistrad had other places

. I think by nature of the theme of the world of Ixalan, they had to conceptualize other continents, but Ixalan is the designated "New world" mesoamerica plane, so its doubtful we'd ever get a full thing set displaying the old world on Torrezon for example. I think at best theyd get the aztecs dinosaurs across the sea somehow and kind of do that maybe.

I think having more room in the setting for such things is better than having less. No, we might not ever see those other places on Innistrad, but it's better that the writers have an established place they can pull new elements of the setting from.

Im just not a fan of extraneous things. They gotta be there for a reason. Im sorta okay with Ixalan because by nature to have a new world you gotta have an old one.

>yfw Baron Sengir is the villain of Ixalan

>when we discover Ixalan is a continent on Ulgrotha, and the monarch of the Legion of Dusk is Baron Sengir and the religious are the faithful to serra

I didn't know I wanted this till you said it.

Fuck yes.

The entire premise of Ixalan is about multiple cultures interacting. Its a literal race race.(Like a Race War, but less focus on outright combat and more on finding the mcguffin).

We have two continents of people with two factions from each. AND each Pirate faction has its own style.( Angrath's crew is more SMASH BURN PILLAGE while Vraska's seems focused more on treasure.)

Licia is probably from Torezon.

It's the type of diversity I've been asking for, for years now, rather than just "It's okay, now we have a monoculture with some [whatever] people." I'm surprised at how pleasing the setting of this set is looking.

Vraska has a plan?

Yeah. Diversity actually works when you pick a setting that accommodates it readily, rather than trying to cram it in somewhere that leaves everyone scratching their heads.

Fantasy settings arent 1:1 copy pastas anyway. Ixalan is based on real historic events but for something like Innistrad which is about a genre of fiction, its not like having an asian there breaks the setting apart.

Khaladesh had multiple races with different cultures and attitudes.

Willing to bet money that she is not.

Such wonderful one-note cultures as artificers, rebels, street thugs, and autists. I'm not saying Kaladesh didn't have a lot of potential, but they did almost nothing with it. I'm hoping they'll do better with Ixalan.

I had a stroke trying to read the first sentence of this.

>m-muh conquistador atrocities
>m-muh genocide of the inca and maya
when will darkies shut the fuck up about this, the conquistadors did nothing wrong

We've already established that they're seemingly justified in Ixalan, so I'm not sure what you're bitching about.

The use c17 to seed and olay off main sets though. For example Nahiri and Ob Nix were in c15 as previews for BFZ and SOI.

C17 introduced W vamps to lead into Ixa and had Cat tribal to pkay off AKH, so a flavor connection isnt out od the norm.

The lore implies Licia's Vampire Rome were the invaders of Saskia's not!Briton and that fits the backstory of Torezon(the Roman Catholic Vamps taking over and pushing Humans, Orcs etc out)
Not saying its a shoe in, but its a solid theory.

>Color me surprised, a mesoamerican inspired world that DOESNT lump the Aztec and Maya together.

I'm genuinely interested in the actual difference. Care for a quick rundown?

If you actualy give a shit about worldbuilding, please buy the artbooks if you dont want to sound like you dont know shit. Or at least read the Planeshift PDFs.

We know they will do a not!roman plane so i bet it will different from this.
Also Licia is not pale like the Ixalan vampires seen so far and also seem more "profane" than these "Holy conquistadors" and i think also not all torrezon is vampiric, sustaining a continent only with the blood of the criminals is unviable.

Also note that some of the vampires has elves ears (ancient immortal e the legendary monk).

The Aztecs drove on the right side of the road, while the Maya drove on the left.

>Please spend additional money to get the lore of a setting for a card game.
How about they just print the cards with lore on them? Or am I talking to an intern from WotC? If so, I hope they pay you for this.

The Planeshift PDFs are lazy as fuck, and even then you only get a barebones summary of everything. I cracked up when the stats for the Eldrazi titans were "Just use a Tarrasque statblock from the MM or something" in the Zendikar one. Unless the artbook is manna from heaven, Kaladesh was one-note as fuck, get over yourself.

>How about they just print the cards with lore on them?
because that doesn't work. because storytelling doesn't work in a completely non-linear format, and worldbuilding can only go so far when they have to dedicate room to mechanical test on cards, and art can only be a few inches across. or are you proposing a huge bloat of card numbers to allow for piles of vanilla shit with more flavor text?

What the fuck do the stats of Eldrazi for D&D have to do with the worldbuilding informstion they use for the rest of the pdf? Thats a nice deflection. The worlds are deep enough that they literally can't put every aspect of it on a card, especially when a particular story doesnt focus on it. And a lot of the refer3nces are just flavor text mentions people like you who just want to bitch about something but don't actually give a damn about the world don't pay attention to. The elves who choose to live and thrive in cities are known as Vahadar. Theyre the ones we mostly see in ghirapur. However, elves out side the cities are generally agriculture based and grow the food snd wood and such used by city folk called Bishtahar. And then theres Tirahar, who are elves that forsake technology entirely, and due to the fact elves don't typically identify their alignment, some don't know Tirahar even exist. This is all straight from the PDF, which are only excerpts from the art book. You can boil down any work of fiction to its simplest from and make it sound shallow.

>55136959
OP, surely you wouldn't just tease with that Cathedral Ship thing and then not provide an actual piece of art for them, right?

Dont have the art but titus lunter posted the full version on leddit. It looks sick as shit. I hope we get a legendary one.

I'm saying that they have the stories on the website, so you have the plot right there, you'd just need to focus on using flavor text for worldbuilding, not stupid quips from our protagonists and "story spotlights" you can already read elsewhere.

Christ you're salty. It speaks to the general effort that goes into these. As for the lore on elves, yeah, I knew that. Some elves live in the city, some elves live in the woods, and some elves are luddites isn't fucking interesting, and it sure as hell doesn't need four paragraphs to be conveyed, contrary to what the dude writing the PDF seemed to think.

Is there a reason people jump to play Kaladesh Defense League so hard whenever I say it wasn't handled well? I never see this kind of asspain when I talk shit about other settings.

I got you, senpai.

Except all of that is still depicted and referenced of the cards of Kaladesh. City Elves, Garden Elves, Wild Elves. Except the city elves aren't really any different than the city humans, the garden elves don't do much because Wizards doesnt know how to depict farming in an,interesting way on cards, and you point out yourself how the wild elves are so secretive they basically might as well not exist, but even they get cards and fall into exactly what you'd expect from a plane of artificers. People who don't like machines? How innovative.

Whew, that art really is fucking awesome. They better have a bunch of these.

No the art is shit!
Look at how fucked the perspective is!
The big ship looks like the smaller ships scaled up with more sails, the keel is way to high too.

>so its doubtful we'd ever get a full thing set displaying the old world on Torrezon for example. I think at best theyd get the aztecs dinosaurs across the sea somehow and kind of do that maybe.

Watch !notGodzilla destroy New Vampire City and WU veldaken saying "leylines find a way"

>caring about proper scaling
I'm a Warhammer 40k player, out-of-scale ridiculousness is right up my alley.

Guy asked for it, I posted it. Biggest issue is the lack of contrast imo. It's kind of a recurring plague in the newer art.

its not like having an asian there breaks the setting apart.
But it does. Innistrad is a small plane. Why would we have different races up there? The people should be rather homogenous.

Innistrad actually has other continents, we just never get to see them. It could be a really interesting setting if we ever saw how the world interacts, but Wizards (or at the very least, MaRo) is chronically afraid of juggling too many cultures at once in one plane. Not sure why. A better example would be something like the diversity of Theros.

In the podcast Alison had this whole part talking about the evils of imperialism. And how they talked to the Latin American office to make sure no fee fees were hurt.

They were two entiterly different culyures and langauges that just interacted at times and have somewhat connected religions.

Its like trying to explain the difference between say, Greece and Italy.

I read that they'd written them as arriving to retrieve the artifact, as it had been stolen from them. I'm thinking they're either trying to cover their asses w/ the SocJus side of things or there's some failure to communicate internally. Maybe they'll change it to make them flat villains before it actually drops. Hope not, that'd be a shame.

Innistrad has other continents, including one with were-tigers. Are you seriously trying to say that an Asian cropping up is that out of place when the plane,is big enough to have were tigers we've never even seen?

Its kinda crazy this is only a 4/5.

Sky Soverign was a floating small CITY and it has the same toughness as an elephant.Its not a culture theme its a theme thing. You dont want planes canabilizng or a set overstuffed with too much stuff. Too Many Cooks and All. Scale is flexible anyway.

Ixalan is cross continental
Amonmhet was a city and a vast desert
Kaladesh was a New York style city with lots of different neighborhoods and stuff
Soi was continental
Zendikar Global
Tarkir a fukhuge continent

I think a certain tact should be used with adapting a historical genocide into a children's card game.

I mean, from the sound of thimings it seemed like the faction was built around that idea.

Vampires exist, at odds with the normal people. Someone finds magic sun orb that lets vampires not need to feed off people. Being a Vampire is now immortality with little downsides. Church and conversions spring up around it. Some people leave across the sea, become pirates. One of them probably steals the fancy orb, leading to vamps not having enough food. They're still organized enough to promote fasting and conserve, but have to declare a crusade to the new world for their rock back.

They're still gonna be a bit morally gray due tp building their entire society around some clearly dark magic, but it does give a good reason why simply giving up and leaving the natives alone isn't an option, for good or for ill.

I actually really like the lore in this set so far
The conquistadors are justified and so are the natives
The pirates are dick holes but that makes sense cause pirates

>"Children's card game"
Here's your (You)

MTG is literally designed for 13 year olds and has been for at least a decade.

It has a decent sized adult demo like Transformers and MLP do, but the vast majority of its playerbase are kids who play casually. The whole FNM-Pro-Format-website ecosystem is basicay this little enclave in a much larger group.

But the Pirates are just the survivors od the Torezon cultures the Vampires over ran to built there empire.

okay, I didn't know that. other continents and were-tigers, eh? Still, we all know they put in those few asians and blacks just because of "muh diversity", heck, they even included a black angel which is just outright wrong.

The Pirates are refugees because there Great Grand parents got kicked out there homeland by a blood cult.

Everyone has reasons to get the Immortal Sun amd everyone is kinda a dick (except maybe the merfolk)

So a closer look reveals that this might be some of the worst art we've seen in a long, long time.

There were asians and blacks in the first Innistrad. Or I suppose I should say Asian and Black, since i think it was just one of each.

Still, while the diversity was a bit forced in spots, the fact that it does have those other areas of the world helps in that regard.

Either way, the complaints I've been seeing about the diversity they're pushing in Ixalan feel laughable by comparison. People bitching about pirate women or black pirates existing.

Vampire Faction: Legion of Dusk
>So these vampires are part of the Legion of Dusk. It is an alliance between a powerful church and an iron-fisted monarch. The Legion of Dusk comes from the continent to the east, called Torrezon. The vampires who lead the Legion of Dusk are viewed as holy figures, dark paladins and their undead existence is full of ritual and taboo. Most importantly, they feed only on the blood of the guilty: enemies of war, rebels of the state, or heretics who defy the church. They seek an item called the Immortal Sun, which once belonged to them, but was stolen and brought across the sea to Ixalan. And they pray its power will allow the hopes of the church to be fulfilled and eternal life be available to all without the need to subsist on the blood of the wicked.

>To kind of go into a bit more history about them, the Legion of Dusk began a series of wars centuries ago in Torrezon and eventually kind of took over the whole continent. So they spread their kingdom across this entire place, really disrupting pretty much everything else there. And they have brought their ships and their conquistadors to find this item that they think will allow them to live an eternal existence without needing blood to survive.

Also, if you're referring to Goldlight Castigator being wrong, I would point out that Angels are supposed to be White mana constructs, while she's mono-Red and is going around murdering people thanks to Eldrazi influence.

It isn't exactly a 'right' angel.

this was supposed to be artist's mother, lol

>hired to draw legendary lady pirate
>don't draw inspiration from any really famous pirates
>just draw my mom lol

This pisses me off more than anything.

Dinosaur Faction: Sun Empire

>AL: Dinosaurs. So dinosaurs are native to Ixalan. They have colorful feathers, like in science! The dinosaurs are closely tied with the Sun Empire, one of the four key groups of Ixalan. Like South America and Mesoamerica’s great empires, the Sun Empire are an empire with a capital and a central power structure. The Sun Empire has awakened after long years of quiet. Besieged by pirate raids and the advance of the Legion of Dusk, caught between the invaders from the sea and the wall of jungle behind them, the Sun Empire rises with the ferocity of a dinosaur and the righteous light of the radiant sun to fight off its enemies.

>BR: Also with actual dinosaurs.

>AL: Also with actual dinosaurs. The Sun Empire is in a new era of prosperity. Fueled by the magic of their sun priests and the dinosaurs that they command. Their cities are built to accommodate their dinosaur riders with high arches to allow their knights to pass through unobstructed. And just for some chronological stuff, the Legion of Dusk only started arriving maybe two years ago, like fairly recently. And the Sun Empire is strong enough that they can fight them off fairly easily. Also they have dinosaurs.

>BR: And they ride them?

>AL: And they ride them, yes. They can ride dinosaurs, they can command them, they are their steeds in their fight to not only rule their own empire on Ixalan but also to prevent other people from coming onto it.

>BR: So are the dinosaurs all—domesticated isn’t quite the right word—but are there wild dinosaurs?

>AL: Oh yes. There’s a lot of them. They are definitely not just like cows and horses. There are definitely wild dinosaurs, there are pterosaurs, there are all sorts of very familiar looking dinosaurs to our modern sensibilities. And there are also ones that the Sun Empire uses and rides for domestic tasks.

angels being red and murderous was nothing wrong - lore explains it properly, all angels had it in themselves. Now, why a living mana construct would be black (given how pretty much everything else (humans and not) is white caucasians), now that's something that rustles my jimmies.

Can you link the article so I can bounce it over to a friend? I want to confirm the legitness as well

Kaladesh isnt just Ghirapur and irs various districts. Peema, where rishkar is from, for example is a completely different place. The consulate is just centered in Ghirapue and the story was about them.

Merfolk Faction: River Heralds

>So merfolk are the River Heralds, that is the name of their group. So they are people of the water. They wield the natural, raw force of nature to protect the world from disaster. They were once the dominant inhabitants of Ixalan with a large power of their own, and their strength was once enough to drive the Sun Empire out of the interior. Nowadays that the Sun Empire is a lot bigger and a lot more powerful, they live a more nomadic lifestyle. Powerful shamans can shape the rivers and jungles around them and they believe that this place that—no one really knows where it is—called the Golden City, houses the Immortal Sun and must be kept hidden from all, even themselves.

>The merfolk in the set are visually striking; jade jewelry and weapons and armor. And their appearance is one of my favorite depictions of them in Magic. Their fins are colorful and bright like tropical freshwater fish and a lot of Ixalan, the continent’s, history is between the struggle of the merfolk and the humans who live there. Kind of like struggling against each other like who’s in charge, who’s not. Their history is pretty vast. I’m certain part of it will end up in the art book later, which you should totally buy because it’s really pretty, but yeah.

>The merfolk have kind of taken it on themselves to defend the Golden City since they believe that no one should have the power that lies inside of there. So to protect its secrets, the kind of know where it is, but not the exact location. They’ve been making sure no one gets there for centuries.

>They have colorful feathers, like in science!
This annoys me to no end. Wizards clearly knows nothing about science or dinosaurs. Putting feathers on anything that isn't small/medium theropods is anti-science as much at it gets. They could try covering their asses by saying that it's a reference to feathered serpents from the mythology, but NOOO, they "scientifically accurate" dinosaurs.

Pirate Faction: Brazen Coalition
>Our pirates are also the descendants of refugees. Their ancestors are from Torrezon, the continent to the east. The Legion of Dusk conquered the continent over hundreds of years of war, and the pirates we see today are the children’s children etc. of those that escaped to the sea. They formed the Brazen Coalition, a society that answers to no one but themselves. They may not have a land to call their’s, but they own the seas. They seek the Immortal Sun as well, an ancient prize rumored to be more valuable and powerful than any other in existence. One that could possibly be the key to returning to Torrezon and driving out the Legion of Dusk to reclaim their ancestral lands.

Well, firstly you aren't questioning why a white mana construct resembles a humanoid at all, let alone them all looking like human women. That's standard for,magic though.

Of course, the reasonable answer is that Angels resemble inhabitants of the plane, so it's possible that an angel may wind up resembling someone from one of those other continents of Innistrad.

Of course, you seem to dislike that idea, as well as the idea that the Eldrazi influence might cause some 'glitches' as it were, so it sounds like you just want to complain rather than actually sort out why that might be the case.

...

It plays off the feathered serpents of mesoamerican lore.

>why algels look humanoid
gee, I don't know, maybe it's because that's what angels fucking are?

>dislike eldrazi glitches
I have not said a word against eldrazi corruptions. I'm against there being a black Angel on a plane that has it's primary population consisting of caucasian people.

The t rex had feathers

>They could try covering their asses by saying that it's a reference to feathered serpents from the mythology
that's what I'm saying, but instead they keep bringing up them being this way because "science lol". However putting feathers on everything is actually quite the opposite of "scientific accuracy".

What exactly in the lore of Innistrad means a black angel doesn't make sense?

Fucking Khaladeshi Angels are bright pink

not anymore. I think such claims were "scientifically accurate" for about a year or less and then became "outdated science". Google it up.

vronos.com/magic-story-podcast-transcripts/magic-story-podcast-ixalan/

Where are you getting the idea large dinosaurs didnt have feathers?

>I have not said a word against eldrazi corruptions

You seemed to dislike the idea that this particular angel might be atypical for that reason.

>a plane that has it's primary population consisting of caucasian people.

Again, continent, not plane. Secondly, you said yourself primarily. Angels resemble the inhabitants of the plane to a degree. That's pretty clear. So what's the trouble with a minority of the angels resembling a minority of the people?

consistency. things can look whatever way you decide - in one plane one way, in another - a different way (angles on Amonkhet - male, everywhere else on magic - female for example). However on Innistrad every angel was looking like white female and the "muh diversity" happened just because.

I am, what I'm getting is that earlier T rexs had more plumage while later on ones were mostly scaley with pummage limmited to the back.

As in it depends on the type of t rex.

Which loops back to my point that yeah not all dinosaurs had feathers aparrently, but size didnt have anythign to do with it.

Ixalan merfolk are the most fuckable

Why does an angel have to physically resemble the majority of the human population? Can you cite a source for that rule? I don't recall that ever being a part of MtG's lore but I could be wrong, if you can show me where you found that information.

Are you seriously saying that out of the countless angels of Innistrad, one of them (that we saw) being black doesnt make sense?

Are you assuming Sorin made all his angels white on purpose or something?

It doesnt. Khaladesh angels are pink and multi armed