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Renaissance Set - Creative Team
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I thought of Monstrosity as well, but I figured I could cut down a little on the word count by rewording the beginning part. But you're right that we should try to stay true to the formats of existing mechanics.
It could be a religious version of the Obzedat for instance.
With that in mind, I'd personally lean towards a generally optimistic depiction of religion (like the Church of Serra) because religion is a major source of inspiration in Renaissance, so it would have to be more inspiring than threatening if we make cards representing people depicting religious stuff through art. I'd say 90% good and then 10% dirty secrets, but not like their main definition would be "corrupted" or "overly pious and seeking to convert the world".
One of the way we can define the religion of Rezatta better (and make it unique enough that nobody takes it as an offense against their real-life religion) could be to look at the colour pie. We can look at how religion has been treated previously on cards, define how those different religions fit on the colour pie and then choose what colour identity we want for Rezatta.
ON DOMINARIA — MONO-WHITE & MONO-BLACK
Religion in Dominaria is very well defined and has two different aspects which is why I classified it as "mono-white and mono-black" instead of "black/white". It's basically an active fight between the force of good and evil, the angels and the demons.
The mono-white part is depicted through the Church of Serra and the Knights of Benalia, with references to a book called "Song of All". They show knights and divine punishements, with just a touch of protection. They also have a strong visual theme with colourful stained glass everywhere.
The mono-black part is a demonic cabal centered around Belzenlok. It's a very classic depiction of black magic meant to contrast with the Church of Serra with ritual sacrifices, necromancy, liches, etc.
ON IXALAN — MONO-WHITE & WHITE/BLACK
Religion in Ixalan is mostly depicted through two lenses (I'm skipping over the Merfolk's magic which is barely depicted on cards though they do seem to revere the river streams which would be an example of Gren/Blue religion.)
1) The Empire of the Sun reveres... the Sun. It's a mono-White religion, and is mostly depicted through channeling the power of light, playing on the divine punishment trope.
2) The Vampires have a cult around the character of Elenda. It's a White/Black church that plays the corrupted trope as they were once pacifist but have now become bloodthirsty conquerants. They emphasize knights and the army aspect on the more corrupted vampire cards while the pacifist "true-to-their-religion" cards have a more peaceful aspect with a life-matters theme.
ON AMONKHET— WHITE/BLUE/BLACK/RED/GREEN
Amonkhet has a polytheist religion, every colour has its own god so everything is roughly balanced. Obviously it's skewing towards BLUE/BLACK/RED once Bolas, a.k.a. the God-Pharaoh, returns in Hour of Devastation, also bringing the three insectoids Gods. It's a very personified way of dealing with religion as the gods have their own cards.
ON KALADESH — None
Kaladesh doesn't depict religion. You'd think they would have gone with some mention of indian gods with their very characteristic and visually-appealing multiple arms, but there isn't a single religious card. The reason is simple: they didn't want to offend anyone since those gods are still revered in actual religions nowadays. For instance, here's a post talking about why they specifically avoided Loxodon on Kaladesh to avoid hurting people's beliefs: LINK.
This actually gives us some important information on how to handle things. Angels and Demons have been declared fair game but there's a line we must not cross as it can still be sensitive (for instance, did you know that Demons were removed from the game and replaced by Beasts for a while for similar reasons?)
ON INNISTRAD II — WHITE/RED/(BLACK)
In the Shadows Over Innistrad block, we have once again the "corrupted church" trope but it's maily depicted in White while using Black's rethoric, White is actually the bad guy in this story. The church is mostly white/red to show the madness of the angels that slaughter their own people. Religion is depicted in a really ruthless way, and most religious-themed cards emphasize damage and destruction. Once again, religion brings out White's army aspect with cathar soldiers and battle angels.
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Based on that, what kind of church would be most suiting for Rezatta?
Sagas would be complicated because they count as a mechanic by themselves (a rather complex one on top of that), and we can't reproduce them properly on MTGCardmsith (I'm not even sure how long it will be before we can reproduce them on MSE.)
That said, they *would* be super cool, especially if we wanted to reproduce famous art pieces through cards! But they'd bring a lot of issues.
I like the idea of a White/Blue religion, it's different enough from the White/Black and White/Red that are the most commons. I like the idea of patron saints because that sounds like something that could inspire art pieces, though I wouldn't want them to be too clearly defined by the cards because it sounds like they would compete with the Muses of Emotion as inspiration sources. But having a list to mention in the story and flavour text could be quite cool.
I think that we should stick with the idea that there is a religious ruling council, not a single person, so that we can have corruption, as well as pious individuals, and biased individuals, and normal, good people all represented, without the danger of a perceived negative light being cast on Christianity.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/grim-cathedral?list=user
I made some temples a little while ago.
Cool designs with the temple ^^
The effects are a bit strong (remember that lands are for free and have very little opportunity costs), ask yourself how much an enchantment with the same abilities would cost, the answer must be "0" otherwise you need to nerf your lands. Additionally, one of the main rules for land design is that they can't consistently give you coloured mana the turn they arrive if they have an additional ability (unless they have an appropriate drawback to compensate.) Those lands would need to enter the battlefield tapped.
I read a question on Blogatog about having a child as a planeswalker. I found the idea cool so I looked for kid illustrations but the're kind of hard to find. I figured the mute character could very well be a kid, which made me think again about the princess illustrations from WLOP I was talking about before. So I made a planeswalker frame for her. It's just for inspiration:
Originally, the mute character was created as "Ekoma" but it sounds more like japanese to me because each syllab is very distinct, also the k in the middle would be very unlikely with an italian influence, and I couldn't find a recognizable root (I actually found traces of the word Ekoma in two languages spoken in Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo, so I don't think the sounds are realistic for an european setting.) So I went with Eco, which literally means Echo in italian, because she has no voice, and it's an actual name (a nymph in greek mythology). It also reminded me a bit of the game Ico, which has this same poetic aura of mystery as that character. It's mostly a place-holder though, I'm not especially attached to that name x)
The character was originally created blue, but if she's a planeswalker it's going to create friction with Da Vinci who we can hardly pull away from Blue, the colour of science.
That's exactly what MaRo replied x)
Link: THE MAGIC STORY PODCAST: THE CHURCH OF SERRA
After listening to this, my main thought is that it's such a perfect fit for Rezatta I'm super sad it's already been done xD I kinda want to revive Serra and make the Church of Serra the religion of Rezatta now, especially when they said Serra was incarnating rebirth x)
The stuff about making values as pillars of the religion sounded like a good way to define a religion storywise. The Church of Serra even have Art as one of its pillar apparently!
http://media.wizards.com/2017/downloads/magic/Plane-Shift_Kaladesh.pdf
It's a supplement material that WotC made so that you can explore the wonders of Kaladesh in DnD! It gives a better look at the world design of Kaladesh than what we are normally given from the MtG community, and it even touches on how angels (like Exquisite Archangel and Whispweaver Angel) and demons (like Herald of Anguish and Demon of Dark Schemes) come about in Kaladesh! It doesn't really touch on religion per say (especially that of Indian religion), but it does touch on how these benevolent beings are represented in Kaladesh!
I really recommend looking at these Planeshift materials as they give you a little bit of insight on how these planes are built!
Admitting we try something Serra-flavoured, we have the tools to decide mechanically the balance between life gain and life loss, we just have to adapt the story to our needs so I'm not too concerned about something like this for now ^^
@ManaChrome
Planeshift files are really useful indeed! Actually, look at the intro of the Kaladesh one:
"The World Kaladesh is a living work of art—a vibrant, beautiful plane where anything is possible. Optimism, innovation, and the spirit of creativity fuel an intoxicating renaissance of invention and artifice across Kaladesh. Its inhabitants frequently assert that “anything can be built,” and brilliant inventors seem to prove that saying every day."
We really have to be extra careful defining how Rezatta is different from Kaladesh flavourfully ^^
What i'm trying to say is that you should mention and consider what this plane is, for lack of a better analogy, being reborn from? The cycle of winter between when the muses show up should be as important as what is happening now. What was it like before the muses came back? were we in a medieval-ish dark age? What repercussions does this have? Is class struggle a thing are the rivalries between multiple nations? Will the innovations in military technology, firearms which became prevalent during the renaissance escalate conflict? Is it possible that the muses bring nothing but a calm period of growth before everyone uses what they learned to kill each other once the muses are gone? Is this what the cult is trying to stop? Is this what happened last time the muses were here? Are we repeating a endless cycle of death and rebirth? Side not: someone make a phoenix that can rebirth endlessly.
I think things like this should be considered and answered, it will help deepen the lore and drive the plot forward by giving it a solid foundation.
I personally picture the winter as a metaphor of Middle-Age on this plane yes ^^
That said, if we want the set to feel like Renaissance, we can't make cards showing the winter itself, that would be flavourfully confusing since we can't control in which order players see the cards. But we could see some remnants of it maybe, for contrast?
Yeah, I think a Renaissance phoenix is bound to happen, the trope is too good to miss x)