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Renaissance Set — Creative Design
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Revising the Muses: The Muses are a part of the archipelago like the sun, stars, and seasons are. They each represent the collective emotion of the intelligent races on the archipelago. Revered as the sources of ultimate inspiration, the Muses are detached, seemingly omnipotent, and utterly inscrutable.
The Muses can interact with mortals during a process optimistically called 'The Gifting.' During a Gifting, the mortal forms a mental, emotional, and spiritual bond with the Muse, allowing him or her to connect with collective emotions of all the intelligent races. The bond stays forever in some form with the mortal throughout his or her life.
If the person becomes properly attuned to the Muse, he or she becomes enlightened and becomes Gifted. I changed it from being Touched because it sounded rather creepy.Those who do not attune properly become physically and mentally ravaged and become the Unwanted, who still embody the opposite emotion of the Muse
Following @ningyounk's advice, I revised the focus of the Primary Muses:
W - Muse of Joy
U - Muse of Discovery (Surprise)
B - Muse of Desire
R - Muse of Love (Or Passion)
G - Muse of Certainty
Another Idea: Voices of the Muses An idea I had yesterday was the idea of a Gifted hierarchy, where the people at the very top become entitled as the 'Voice' of their Muse. They effectively become the great teachers for all, and their teachings are regarded as the truest intentions of their respective Muse. Generally the Gifted with the most power and skill rank higher on this hierarchy, but political skullduggery and deception can ascend an unscrupulous Gifted to becoming the new Voice. Yay or nay?
Revising 'Art Comes to Life:' As requested, I changed the concept of 'art comes to life' to embody the entire plane as a whole. The whole plane's fabric is comprised of mystical patterns, fundamental shapes, and certain sounds. It is like a magical and mysterious system of coding that dictates the foundation of reality. Artists who study and reiterate the enigmatic language in their artwork can effectively control some reality.
Examples include painters grabbing objects out of pictures, statues coming to life, music controlling minds, and poetry magically inciting hundreds to action.
The greatest and seemingly impossible deed an artist can accomplish is create a complete list of the sigils and sounds that control the universe. Through their artwork, they could literally become a god. Some people object and try and convince others to not pursue this goal because of the potentially sinister applications, but they often admit of wanting to create such a list as well.
The Corrupt Muse: What if the corrupt muse is actually the corrupter? The Muse of Desire could unconsciously inspire the artist group to capture the Muses and use their powers. The idea fits nicely, but maybe a little bit too nicely: I don't want to create another Bontu god.
So here is another attempt at the story:
- The main characters engage in the festivities welcoming back the Muses, but one or more finds suspicious activity among a famous artisan group some of the characters are part of.
- Upon investigating, the characters find a plot inside the artisan group to capture the Muses and siphon their powers to themselves, making them demigods. None of the characters know this beforehand.
- The artisan group will try and capture the Muses at a massive masterclass of sorts called The Reckoning of Talents. They will use a secret army of living paintings and sculptures to capture the Muses, then break their wills with enchanted music, so they will be able to control them.
- To add more drama, the group of characters split, with some of the characters supporting the artisan group and others going against it.
- The characters who try and save the Muses almost sabotage the attempt, but the other characters salvage the plan and lead the assault against the Muses.
- The attack goes on as planned, but the Muse of Desire invades the artisan leader's mind and compels him to seize the power of the other Muses for himself. The Muse of Desire, inhabiting the artisan leader's body, goes on a rampage.
- The characters all survive, and vow to take down the artisan leader. They rally the forces of the archipelago, invoking their collective emotions like the previous Muses had done.
- The five characters defeat the Muse of Desire, then become the new Muses with the new power Each one becomes a Muse embodying their own beliefs and primary emotions.
Name for the plane? By the way, is there any other official name for the set besides "renaissance set"? If there aren't, I can make some up later!
Thoughts?
- This version of the Gifting delivers just the right level of interaction with the Muses while staying mysterious and more importantly rare (considering we have someone that is gonna spark during the Gifting, we probably don't want dozens of people touching the Muses every day ^^) That's a hit to me!
- "I changed it from being Touched because it sounded rather creepy." I'm still laughing X'D (Please send help.)
- I like how you managed to make the Muses mostly about positive feelings, it does fit the optimistic nature of the set pretty well! I'm almost sold about this version personally. Basically, I like the concept of all 5 of them, it's just a matter of choosing the right word for each of those concepts. In any case, as a non-native speaker, I'll trust your judgement so you take the final decision on this one:
Muse of Joy --> I found "Bliss" more original.
Muse of Discovery --> The only one where I really ask for a change because it creates friction with a mechanic in the set (Discover.) Muse of Surprise, Awe, or Curiosity all sound like fine replacement for instance ^^
Muse of Desire --> Is there a word to say "want" without the lustful aspect that creates redundancy with the red one (Love/Passion)? I was thinking "Envy" but apparently it has a very negative connotation. If not, it's fine ^^
Muse of Love or Passion --> I personally prefer Love.
Muse of Certainty --> I found "Faith" more flashy.
- On the Living Art subject, you went a little far for me with the God thing, other than that I love how you gave different interpretations to different kind of arts, it's really cool.
- On the Corrupt Muse, I feel it works without the Muse of Desire being corrupt, maybe we can put the whole idea aside for a second and see if this actually helps the story ^^
On the story:
I think it felt pretty solid, my only bemol is for the last part. The Muse of Desire felt too manipulative for an alien being in my opinion. Maybe an almost identical version where it gets corrupted into the Muse of Greed or something? (The difference is that it never really do anything that has a specific goal, once again I think the eldrazi analogy by @MagicChess was really good.)
E.g:
- As the artisan leader seizes the muse of Desire, it gets corrupted into the Muse of Greed.
- The corrupted Muse goes on a rampage and kills the bad guys on the spot (except one that's important.) Then the corrupted Muse kills the other muse and things start to go souther than south.
- Everyone's emotions become a mess because of what just happened, and the people is suddendly on the verge or rioting.
- The four heroes fight the corrupt Muse and defeat it with the help of the redempting bad guy.
- As a last resort, they manage to become the five Muses themselves, and restore balance to the plane.
We would really need a name for the plane yes, it's just a bit difficult to settle on one. But if we can find one before the design starts, it would be really useful to make card names like "Therosian Soldier", "Lord of Innistrad" or "Avatar of Amonkhet ^^
At any rate, I think getting "Re" in there at the beginning is a good call.
What I especially like is that it sounds like Reset, was it the starting point? xD
I don't know that it sounds too close, but I'd not heard of Regatha.
Maybe just R(i)sotto? XD
capriccio also has some linguistic variations that also translate to "capricious", a detail that could be a very subtle hint to the twist we're adding to the story.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/accomplished-sculptor
Well Rezatta is my personal favourite so far ^^ You don't pronounce it like Regatha? I pronounce them Reh-za-ta and Reh-ga-ta personally ^^ Maybe changing/adding a letter could be enough to erase the similarity? Rezatti ? Rezalta ?
@Terramorphic Caprizio sounder really good but a bit too much like the real word in my opinion. I know there are multiple restaurants with that name, it may actually mean something though I can't seem to find it. A little twitch of letters may do the trick?
@Gelectrode: Well, as long as it doesn't require to keyword anything I don't think this card would be a problem to implement in the set
On the names, I'm having difficulties tracing back the original idea, what was it? Out of the three, my favourite is Resoria because of the Re- mostly ^^
I was thinking Ree-za-ta personally.
=D
I have a suggestion, though: Earlier, we decided that we wanted the black character to betray the others in some way. What if it turns out that the black character is the guy who gets corrupted and embodies the Muse of Greed?
I'm not sure exactly how the "list of sigils" relates to the plot, since the antagonist(s) aren't using it, or anything. But otherwise, I think we should totally go with it!
@Everbody: @Lujikul proposed "Julvenia" for the set name. I think @ningyounk was looking for that one
@MagicChess, thanks! As for your suggestion, it sounds nice, but it is up to @ningyounk.
Julvenia: As I mentioned earlier, I'm not really fond of this one for two reasons:
1) Even though the "Juvenile" root has an optimistic feel that fits the set, it's hard to find a reason why the plane would be called that. I think it was more tied to an alternative plot about childhood/adulthood that we really never brought up again (we could still dig this trope though, I liked the idea of talking about childhood.)
2) The letter J is not part of the italian alphabet and the phoneme "lv" would be very unlikely which makes the name sounds not very italian, in my opinion.
Estoria: It makes me think more of "History" more than "Creativity", which is not a bad fit but it's so close to the real word that it's actually the portuguese translation of History. It think there's an interesting lead but it requires more transformation in my opinion.
Resoria: We find back the Re- prefix to my delight, I just don't really get the rest of the name, where does it come from?
@Gelectrode Nothing is up to me, technically this is not even my set XD If you find a deal that you like, you don't need my approval ^^ Even though I tend to argue a lot about everything (yes, I know ;p), my voice is not worth more than the voice of MagicChess ^^
@Gelectrode, @ningyounk:
Ningyounk is very vocal and has become somewhat of a figurehead for this set design (not that I have a problem with that; you are very adept with creative design and have steered things back on track more than once
I think that it is poignant that the five main characters are Gifted by the Grand Muses, so it makes sense that there has been no mention of the minor ones so far; there's only been two story articles, after all XD But yes, we need to extrapolate on that theme. The minor Muses will have to be represented in the cards, as well. For example, "Pride-gifted Artisan" or something like that.
I like the idea of butterflies for the little Muses, like tiny sprites, but the Grand Muses should probably be something else than Butterflies.
For those wondering, you have to "cheat" to equip it.
@Faiths_Guide Funny design xD The art is really beautiful!
Ya, the art is brilliant!
Quick poll on the name to see where we're at so far: (Please tell me if the link works)
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1SrbpGUeEEADBHq8Zrsz_nfJXnV6UgrJft9wmrSCyDNg/prefill
It doesn't work. Try changing the sharing setting on the document to people with link can access it and then post the link it gives you.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdW-bszseRyiPQbdJh1vbZNQ1uvaYIxk5RzuyCNXAERPe0GsQ/viewform?usp=sf_link
EDIT: YOU CAN NOW ENTER THE POLL FOR THE SET NAME VIA THE LINK ABOVE
(It's just informative, we don't have to choose the one that comes ahead, but it gives us a better view of what everyone likes/dislike ^^)
@MagicChess There's McPotato that have a few but her style is a bit different from the traditional Magic art. http://mcptato.deviantart.com/
We could try to broaden the definition if we can't find enough. For instance, "animals made of light" should be quite easy to get in good quantity I think. Taking back the idea of the antropomorphic animals and making them the little muses could be an option too.
Otherwise, we can still abandon the idea, as I mentioned earlier we haven't commited anything to the little muses, so it's just a flavour restriction from now. If we don't find a satisfying way to do them, it's easy to just declare that only the big muses exist ^^