Designing Suvnica, Week 6: The Exiled (Worldbuilding)

Listen, child.
This wasn't always home. A few seasons ago, we didn't even know this place existed. If we had, we wouldn't have cared.

The place where we lived, it was incredible. I can’t even explain it to you. You don’t have the context to even understand what it would be I was describing. Buildings that were ten times the size of our shelters were commonplace. The gardens, beautifully manicured and flourishing with blooms that humble the imagination. And the cathedrals… I was never particularly invested in the Syndicate, neither figuratively nor literally, but standing in the shadow of one of the cathedrals never failed to halt my breath for a moment.

I was no one of importance there. A simple clerk, really. I worked in a property records office. My life was simple, and I was very content. I had a few friends, and no family with whom I was close. Perhaps it sounds like I had little to lose, but it was my home, my life.

One night I went home, read a book, and drifted off to sleep. And when I woke up, my home, my life, my city was gone, and I was here.

It wasn’t only me. Thousands of us had disappeared, and then here we were. No explanation as to why we were abducted, no kidnapper to identify, no way of knowing if it was even possible to get back home.

Those early days were anarchy. Our desperate search for answers and a way back home was exacerbated by the indigenous people to this place, who apparently had no more understanding of our situation than we did. We fought with them, we fought amongst ourselves, and we fought to survive.

After a time, still well before you were born, those of us who came here began to revert to the societal and hierarchical structures of our home. We formed alliances with those who shared our philosophies and creeds. We incorporated the locals into our guilds or else dominated them.

Many of us were desperate to find a way back home. Others resigned themselves to fate, begrudgingly trying to find a place for themselves in this new world. Some even saw this as a unique opportunity to escape from their previous lives.

For my part, I don’t believe that our exile is permanent, nor do I believe that we were banished here by accident or by a capricious whim. Someone is treating us as pawns. I will find out why, and I will find a way to return to my home.

Now hush child. Unlike myself and my followers, you truly are resigned to fate. Crying will not help you. I only tell you this as a courtesy. You were born of a native to this world and an exile from mine, and somewhere within you is one more clue to the mystery that haunts my every waking hour. I will find that clue. I regret that I will have to keep you alive as long as I can while I search, lest the information I seek be lost due to an untimely demise.

Listen, child. Cease your whimpering and tell me the secrets of this world.

***

First of all, I want to apologize for the delay. I’ve been very swamped with my bar review studying, and I haven’t been able to finish the design reviews from last week yet. Hopefully I should have them up sometime soon.

Now that we’ve taken a first crack at redefining the guilds from the ground up, I wanted to take a look at the larger picture to answer the fundamental question: What kind of world is Suvnica? At the outset, at least for my own revision of each guild, I didn’t want to adhere to the conceit of a city-plane, since a lot of the Ravnica guilds’ identities were tied up in filling certain municipal functions. But now that we’ve seen a number of creative and philosophical visions for our color pairings, let’s create a world for them to inhabit. What kind of world do we want this to be? What is the nature of the guilds, and what role do they play collectively and individually in this world?

The vision I’m currently playing with is one where thousands of inhabitants of an unnamed plane are whisked away in their sleep and brought to Suvnica. In the aftermath, guilds were formed based on their reactions and beliefs about the meaning and permanence of this event. Some indigenous Suvnicans have been adopted or conscripted into guilds, while others (most of the mono color humanoids in the set) are fending for themselves.

The Dimir I’m envisioning for this plane, for instance, are obsessed with gaining knowledge of how and why they were brought here, as well as any means of getting back home. They will get this knowledge at absolutely any cost. This reflects a number of the Dimir visions that we discussed.

So here’s the creative challenge this week:

• Choose or describe a creative vision for a plane where it makes sense to have ten unique groups vying for dominance in some way.
• This doesn’t need to be in short story format. A brief description will be fine as well.
• You can choose Ravnica’s city-plane motif if you want
• Choose at least one guild and describe its role in this world
• You can look to the Suvnica design reviews for summaries of creative visions already described
• Feel free to work within or modify any of those, or to create a new one from scratch
• Design some cards that reflect the creative decisions that you make.

Bonus Challenge!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As long as we’re doing big-picture stuff, let’s do some Planeswalkers. 

• Design a Planeswalker card
• It can be a new version of a planeswalker, or a brand new one
• Give some background on the PW. Is she from Suvnica, or is she visiting? What is keeping her on Suvnica for the time being? 
• If the PW is affiliated with a guild, he should be those guilds colors. If not, he should be monocolor.
• PW Design tips
• Don’t worry about the numbers too much. PWs are tinkered with so much in development that their numbers (and abilities) rarely even closely resemble what design handed off. Focus instead on abilities that tell us a story about that PW. 
• Also, some PWs have developed distinct mechanical identities (Jace and Gideon, for instance) so if you’re making a new version of one that does, make sure to riff off of the mechanical identity.

For my world vision, I thought it would be interesting to bring Karn into the picture. Aside from being potentially playable in any guild, the whole kidnapping people from other planes is tied into Mirrodin’s history with Memnarch’s use of the soul traps and the Phyrexians limitations on being unable to planeswalk. He’s looking for the same information that Otmar is: what brought these people here, what allowed them to travel between planes, why were they brought there. He also wants to know if the Phyrexians are involved in any way, and even if not, he wants to ensure that they won’t be able to figure out the trick that allowed for the interplanar travel.

***

Finally, I wanted to let you all know where we’ll be going from here. This world building project will continue through next week. After we settle on a definitive creative vision for Suvnica, we’re going to lock in the final creative visions for the guilds. Once that’s done, I’ll split the guilds up by set, and we’ll start developing the guilds mechanical identities much more.

Good luck guys. I’m really eager to see the kinds of worlds you all come up with.

-zeff