MTG Cardsmith Community Forums
Lore of the Ghettash block
Since I don't currently have premium available (yet) and I'm trying to make a dramatic return to the community, I figured I should host my first challenge! The challenge is for you to help me develop a new plane Ghettash. The entire plane itself is a large city ruled by 3 criminal factions.
The Alterra, founded by a group of mages with the intent of creating a city to observe and experiment on in order to obtain as much knowledge as possible. Primarily mages and artificers, though enforcers exist within their ranks.
The Glatorians, known for there utter ruthlessness, are a group of thugs with no other intent but to rule the city and obliterate the opposing factions. They almost exclusively think short term and don't have a definite end goal.
The Hultaria, a faction operating similarly to the mafia, are intelligent, organized criminals. They also happen to be the biggest of all the factions. Not one person on the plane truly doesn't fear them.
There are, of course, those who would rather not choose a side. Just simple shopkeepers, tailors, and smiths who would just like to live normal lives. These deserve praise too. Today I would like to form a name for the plane. I'm simply drawing blanks. Lore too. I would like this to be a community made set/plane. Feel free to ask questions and leave suggestions. I advise you to remain active on all discussions. This allows for you to stay informed and for me to not repeat myself
Card discussion here: http://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/2758/let-s-develop-cards-for-my-set
Mechanic discussion here: http://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/2760/the-three-factions#latest
Voting poll here: http://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/2765/voting-poll-set-name#latest
The Alterra, founded by a group of mages with the intent of creating a city to observe and experiment on in order to obtain as much knowledge as possible. Primarily mages and artificers, though enforcers exist within their ranks.
The Glatorians, known for there utter ruthlessness, are a group of thugs with no other intent but to rule the city and obliterate the opposing factions. They almost exclusively think short term and don't have a definite end goal.
The Hultaria, a faction operating similarly to the mafia, are intelligent, organized criminals. They also happen to be the biggest of all the factions. Not one person on the plane truly doesn't fear them.
There are, of course, those who would rather not choose a side. Just simple shopkeepers, tailors, and smiths who would just like to live normal lives. These deserve praise too. Today I would like to form a name for the plane. I'm simply drawing blanks. Lore too. I would like this to be a community made set/plane. Feel free to ask questions and leave suggestions. I advise you to remain active on all discussions. This allows for you to stay informed and for me to not repeat myself
Card discussion here: http://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/2758/let-s-develop-cards-for-my-set
Mechanic discussion here: http://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/2760/the-three-factions#latest
Voting poll here: http://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/2765/voting-poll-set-name#latest
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
As for the lore, if you truly intend to make more than one set around this plane, it'll need to follow the 'block' set up. This means the first part is exploratory and focuses heavily on presenting the base mechanics that'll be introduced in the block without too much complex and/or unique combinations and variants. (see both the old and latest mirrodin block, the old zendikar block and the old and new innistrad block for reference)
With this in mind, this first set should focus heavily on the factions, their base players, soldiers, employees, etc and the regular people that slip between them.
Lore-wise this also means that this should be seen as the intro for the story this block is telling, bring in a few characters and preferably the main protagonist(s) and a few first secondary antagonists. (the big villains only appear at set 2 or 3, with 3 being the climax.)
As for how the story would go, that's actually up to you, you're in charge of creating the characters and explaining who their are, their background etc, yet if you really want... I've always wanted for my set's main antagonist to be more of a Nicol Bolas and less of a Yawgmoth if you know what I mean?
• Haldan
• Duskan
• Torremor
• Ghettash
• Ment
Haldan: Not too fond of this one. But it's okay.
Duskan: Has been used in other games fairly often. But always sounds cool.
Torremor: Something derived from this could be right for the plane. It just needs to flow better pronunciation wise.
Ghettash: I Like this one as it sounds trashy. (Not bad!) Which may describe the morals of many on the plane.
Ment: You'd have to add a prefix to this to make it feel complete and roll off the tongue so as to speak.
But it's up to yall as you seem to be doing well. I'm mainly wondering if multi-color cards should stretch into the lower rarities or if this will be less focused on pressuring color pairings.
The Alterra seems blue primarily, Glatorians are red, and Hultaria is black. Though being an urban setting it is hard not to think of them in Ravnica terms. Alterra is primarily the Azorius Senate in structure with House Dmir methods, and maybe some Simic and Izzet? The Glatorians feel like Rakdos with some Gruul. The Hultaria would be pure Orzhov Syndicate.
Plane names might be Novadoma, Eminence, or Vicedora.
Novadoma is the New Home. The old empire fell, its capital lost to barbarians and catastrophe. Civilization endures in the sister city, ruled by its criminal guilds as the defacto order.
Eminence for the majesty and greatness of the plane. Also it has the same suffix as Florence, so your coins could be Emintines like Florentines. You could name things like the Eminent guard, the Emintina Palace, etc.
Vicedora (Veechaydorra) seems like an artistic plane to me, a place with a lot of marble everywhere. Also Vice city? Hell of a game.
http://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/2664/masterpeice-challenge-final-round#latest
I'll post a refined lore soonish
These are the suggestions that have been entered so far (that passed my judgement) with how I think they're pronounced
Solyra [so-leer-uh]
Haldan [hall-dann]
Ghettash [get-ash]
Duskan [dusk-an]
Novadoma [nove-uh-dome-uh]
Eminence [that's already English]
Guar'nell [gwar-nell]
Maybe the pronunciations were unnecessary.
Sashiokra and Torvania are two that has been floating in my head a lot recently.
Ghettash sounds best to me.
to represent those that choose no sides in the Stone District.
Here's an example card:
One of the districts should be the lowest point of the city, where all the sewage and garbage ends up, and the tanners and leather workers hang out there. It could be the 'swamp' of the city, with wild trolls and bog monsters mixed with scavengers and the very poorest of the poor.
I think the Stone District might have some sort of neighborhood watch/district militia/community policing that would enforce their desired neutrality, and keep the gangs on their toes.
There's at least two races (probably three) depicted. I didn't (and don't) know what to do.
Suggestions?
Here is an example, and potential offer:
Humans
Orcs (The subtle ones as well as the violent ones)
Goblins
Elves
Scriptfolk (They are creatures composed of paper and runes. Scriptfolk are created by wizards with the intent of delivering messages or other means of communication. Once delivered, the Scriptfolk disintegrate. Scriptfolk can be manifestos of independance, death threats, or vassals of discovery. But they must convey knowledge in a way.)
White/Blue-centered: Alterra. They want control, and mages and artificers tend to be WU.
Blue/Black-centered: Hultaria. They are secretive yet widely feared, and are incredibly intellegent. Will work nicely for UB
Black/Red-centered: Glatorians. Bloodshed and mindless carnage? BR says sign me up!
Green/Red-centered: [name here]. What about a faction that wishes to restore a malignant nature spirit to power and to destroy order?
White/Green centered: [name here]. What about a faction that is bound by a complex religion that justifies crime for the common good and seeks to spread its influence to all the nonbelievers? Best crime-like thing I could come up for WG.
Any objections? Or will Red/Green and White/Green be focused on the common folk?
Might I note, the factions are three color. Each with a primary, secondary, and tertiary. Similar to Tarkir's clans. Here they are, listed in order from primary to tertiary.
Glatorians-Red Green Black
Alterra-Blue White Red
Hultaria-Black White Red
Nature cult-Green White Blue?
In both the Alterra and Hultaria the third color is used to represent the combat capabilities they posses, however small. The Glatorians actually have almost an exact balance of green and black, though I went with green being second as the Gruul color combo isn't seen often. I went with three color for two reasons. 1- diversity for the cardsmiths. 2- honestly to avoid comparisons with Ravnica. I didn't want to copy a plane.
Will the 11 be tied to color? Stone quarter is colorless, the other 11 could be color combos? If we want to avoid duplicating ravnica we could do 5 pure color districts, with 5 mixed color districts. If so, we can add sub-districts and outskirts to represent missing colors in the next set.
Does this delta come from one big river at the top and split into many, or do we have many join to create one big river? Does this delta empty into the ocean or a lake, in which case we have a waterfront district? Waterfronts are great for smuggling and criminal elements.
I would say we stick with three core races that make up the majority of each gang, and then you can have the secondary races with less frequency. I would almost say make the Hultaria the exotic merfolk, make them shark featured so the mafia is run by actual sharks. Otherwise intelligent zombies, vampires have been done too recently.
District halls: as I plan to have lands that alternate between players (representing faction takeover), I would say that district halls sound like a great idea. The bridges could do the same.
11 districts: I actually meant 12. I apologize. The twelve would be primarily, a 5 color central hub, colorless stone district, 1 district for each color, and then I'd leave it up to the community to create the rest. I avoided going 5 basic, 10 nonbasic, 1 colorless and a five color was simply because 17 districts is too many. There are outskirts to the city. This is the edge of civilization. It is viewed by most citizens as a dead end, as no explorer has lived to map it out.
Delta: I'd imagine structure-wise I like the delta that splits into many. Flavor wise I love the idea of all the colored districts meeting to one hub of 5 colors. The waterfront would be Dimir colored and be a super popular area for the Hultaria.
Races: I LOVE the sharkfolk. Three core races technically sorts to 9, but with three automatically being human, it's more like 6 which is very do-able. I would like each race to be very exotic compared to it's normality. Or at least relatively.
I'm making a huge change. The Hultaria are going to be aligned with blue rather than red. This is to avoid color imbalance a little more, as well as add a more intelligence based statute on the Hultaria.