Beyond Dominia

Beyond Dominia: The Role Playing Mill: Slivers come to Phaema!

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By Sengir on Sunday, September 03, 2000 - 01:09 am:

A Dark cloud appeared suddenly in the sky above the traveller. He looked up in surprise and interest. A form began to appear, then two, now ten, soon there were tousands of forms in the cloud. And then they began to come out, at first they seemed only wings and a head, then the traveller matched them in his memory with a picture. He recoiled in terror.He began to mutter "No no it cant be. These... these are slivers! But those are from Rath. How?..."
suddenly a face as dark and evil as is possible was floating, laughing in the air. Rain began to pour down, lightning flashed, thunder rolled. The Slivers came down in a tide. The traveller was dead before he knew wat was happening

By Stiles on Sunday, September 03, 2000 - 06:28 am:

How did Slivers get here? As in how did they know Phaema existed, it being out of the multiverse and all? Second of all, how did the traveler know of Slivers? Only Elro and a handful of others are planeswalkers, and for a traveler to know of slivers is wierd. And if he was an unknown planeswalker, he wouldn't die so easily.

I just love playing devil's advocate, sorry :-p.

By Ravyson on Sunday, September 03, 2000 - 07:01 am:

Not that I don't like slivers, I just don't want to see them here. But that's just my opinion.

By Shadow (Shadow) on Sunday, September 03, 2000 - 05:04 pm:

Using slivers is perfectly alright, but

A. Stiles is right that people wouldn't know about slivers in Phaema, unless slivers are native to Phaema.

B. It's probably a bad idea to try and mesh Phaema with existing m:tg story, but, then, Thrak does it sort of, so whatever. Anyway, it might be a better idea to just have slivers, rather than have slivers come from Rath.

Of course, now you probably feel suffocated and will never post again, but I hope not. We're just all really anal (sometimes with good reason). Don't worry too much about it.

By /\/\ist Phantom on Sunday, September 03, 2000 - 11:05 pm:

Hmmm....interesting....slivers in Phaema wouldn't be an entirely bad thing, just so long as 1. They were somehow mistakenly deposited on Phaema, since it's normally all but barred from entrance to most, 2. the inhabitants of Phaema have never even heard of slivers, with the possible exception of whatever few Skyshroud refugees may remain in Deepshadow forest, 3. Not many of them can arrive all at once, or else it would have to mean that all the slivers of Rath were deposited here, and that wouldn't make sense. And the sliver queen likely wouldn't be with them, at least not exactly...
One possibility I can think of, is that maybe Crovax got a little hasty and uncomfortable of waiting, and planeswalked/shifted/whatever a small batch of slivers along with a baby-queen, meaning to deposit them in a hidden spot upon Dominaria, but some mistake of fate or something deposited them on Phaema, without Crovax knowing that anything had gone wrong. I could see why he would do something like that, at least if he were the crafty and cunning sort. Perhaps Ertai advised him after being compleated (if you don't know that, Ertai was captured and made a servant of Crovax in the last book of the Artifact Cycle). He could've planted a small batch of slivers on some remote island or other on Dominaria so that the slivers could grow and multiply, feeding upon the abundant plantlife of Dominaria and expanding their hive much easier. After a decade or whatever, when the phyrexians invade Dominaria through Rath, they could use the slivers planted on Dominaria as a surprise first strike, or maybe to move in behind their enemies during the major battle and catching them off guard that way? Heheheh...

Anyway, don't feel too discouraged Sengir. You can probably continue whatever storyline you had in mind as long as you remember that the people of Phaema have never even heard of Rath.

~ /\/\ist Phantom ~

By Stiles on Monday, September 04, 2000 - 01:15 am:

Just because we don't care about the storyline of M:TG we could make a large colony of slivers on the new continent or maybe another one. We could, because the other world of M:Tg is slightly relavent, we could call them something like Corona Beings because the make light. Erg. scary thought to have millions of slivers running around Phaema. (I can just imagine it: Sengir the Sliver God summons up hordes of slivers to destroy the already dead guilds:)

By Sengir on Monday, September 04, 2000 - 09:01 pm:

The Idea was that the traveller saw the face of Baron Sengir who somehow became, like, a planeswalker and found rath transported a sliver hive with an adolescent queen to create an empire for him to come to.

By Sengir on Monday, September 04, 2000 - 09:03 pm:

oh yeah he had met a Planeswalker before(the traveller) thats how he knew of Rath and the Slivers

By Shadow (Shadow) on Monday, September 04, 2000 - 09:21 pm:

Ah, now I remember what I was trying to say.

In general, taking elements from existing m:tg is not so bad, but taking plots is. As far as I'm concerned, existing m:tg plots are irrelevent, don't exist, etc.

I.E.

I don't care if you use Slivers or Rath for that matter,

but

stories here should be entirely independant of stories made by WotC's story department. Thus, some guy named Crovax never lost his lover, brothers named Urza and Mishra never had a war, etc.

Elro, I know you want to comment. Help me out here.

By Elrohir (Elrohir) on Monday, September 04, 2000 - 10:26 pm:

Shadow, you have me pegged. :) I've been staying out of it until I can get a better internet connection (I moved rooms, so I haven't got cable reestablished in my new room yet), but I'll give this a shot.

I'm totally against such an incursion, especially how Sengir presents it. This goes back to the basest levels of the War Mill itself, and the work I've put into driving out such inanity. The presentation of it simply sickens me. Stiles summed it up best when he "mocks" Jake the Atog God; that's for all intents and purposes what Jake did. He showed up claiming he had limitless hordes of atogs and summarily decimated the world. I've worked hard to push things into a more realistic zone (especially since I was one of the principle components of rendering such childlike behavior "acceptable" in the first place) in order to correct past wrongs. This sliver thing is a step in the wrong direction, and I could go to great lengths to shred every portion of the post via logistics, and I probably will have done so by the time I'm done making this post.

This mill has for a long time been separate from mainstream "Dominia"; the multiverse that houses M:TG storylines. (Mutters to self about having made this argument so many times in the past...) Things simply do not intersect here as easily. As described elsewhere on the homepage, we borrow concepts from the game, but don't actually follow or care about M:TG storyline here. Characters and whatnot don't co-exist (though they have in the past). In the early days there was a definite trend to use M:TG places and people such as Phyrexia and Yawgmoth (I, Phyrexia, and Thrak, Yawgmoth). We've steered away from those, especially since Armageddon, and have tried to make this our own place. (If only I could get rid of Hammerheim... :) In general, the use of M:TG concepts is frowned upon. No outside planeswalkers are coming in (and those that do were here prior to the effective "ban" on planeswalker characters: Thrakkiss and Sage Advisor are examples). For the most part, what we have in common with the game are the balance of the five colors of magic, as well as the concept of mana to cast spells. Planeswalkers have existed, and the world is explained in its relation to the multiverse, but beyond that very little remains in common, and shall remain so.

We had a little problem a while back with "Eladamri" coming from Rath or whatever, and eventually he returned to that plane, but even I can't explain how that got through my razor sharp grasp of things other than the fact I wasn't paying much attention due to other turmoil in my life.

The starting thread is an excellent example of EVERYTHING a new character (or perhaps even an ancient returning player/character who doesn't know what's going on here anymore) shouldn't do.

Now for the aforementioned dissection...

A random traveller glances up and sees slivers. Fine. But he remembers them. How? No slivers have ever been on Phaema before (that I recall; my records are in my room right now and I can't access them). He could have no memory. But the author claims that the traveller "met" a planeswalker at some point and learned about them. This still would not confer a memory, simply knowledge. And besides, which planeswalker would this be? For much of the past several game years, there have been no planeswalkers around, those that were have tightly woven stories that leave no room for a random traveller to meet them, and those planeswalkers had similarly never seen slivers. The problem lies therefore in the fact that no known planeswalker (and don't pretend there are unknown planeswalkers here, there aren't) has ever been in a position to give the traveller the knowledge of a sliver. Therefore, that character could not exist based upon the circumstances of the world.

The then goes on with the idea that Baron Sengir had somehow become a planeswalker - not gonna happen, and had gone to Rath to send (for all intents and purposes) a baby sliver queen to Phaema so he'd have his own army. If Shadow hadn't erased all my big background explanations of magic and the planes in relation to Phaema, I'd refer to those and how it's exceptionally difficult for any planeswalker to get here, let alone a fledgling undead vampire planeswalker who had just discovered his powers. Yeah, Jake made it here when he just discovered his powers, but Phaema was much closer in relation to the other planes, and wasn't so heavily shielded from outside incursions at the time.

Ultimately, in theory slivers can be indigenous to Phaema as well, but have not yet been discovered (since they reside on another continent away from where the main core of stories takes place). I'm not against slivers being here. I don't think they should be, and the presentation of their arrival was simply abhorrent and needs to be thought out better, but I'm not going to disallow it if a more reasonable explanation can be made clear. And another thing; don't introduce something just because you want to. It needs to have a definite purpose - if you're bringing them here, they had damned well better end up in a plotline sometime shortly thereafter, and had better not be in some deranged lunatic's plot to take over the world. I'll be sick if I have to come up with a way to squash him/her/it.

By Sengir now Tev on Monday, September 04, 2000 - 10:41 pm:

Fine.and I HAD a storyline but you have effectively squashed that.But I want to keep the Slivers. They Can come through some Portal from another continent or something. And their ARE unknown planeswalkers. You would Know that if you had read some stuff on Invasion it says that they will be introducing some new planeswalkers for the Invasion cycle. Also, in Eternal Ice it says this was the age of the planeswalkers and it mentionds some of them BUT it also says and many others or something to that extent. So there huck-phooey

~Tev~

By Thrakkiss on Tuesday, September 05, 2000 - 12:40 am:

Heh. Elro can be a bit abrasive, and I apologize for the rough treatment it may seem you've received. :) Basically the gist of what we're getting at is:

1) We don't mind slivers being in Phaema (much), but it's glaringly unoriginal. Certain properties in magic are universal in nature (Phyrexia, Planeswalkers as a group, basic spell effects) but a lot of the more recent story elements from that game are VERY specific in terms of where and when you can find them (Slivers -> Rath, Licids -> Ditto, Wumpus -> Mercadia, Merfolk of their respective names, Soldiers of their respective kingdoms, you get the idea). Yes, you can explain their presence here, but make sure to -explain- (not just a one-paragraph introduction).

2) Don't powertrip. Elrohir's more paranoid about it than most, but basically the essence of a powertrip is creating some immense, far-reaching effect with very little description ("I arrived in the kingdom of Dantimos and killed its leader and took over the country," "Ten thousand slivers appeared and wiped out the Kobold army," stuff like that). Make a story out of it, elaborate, but don't bring sweeping world changes in a single sentence.

3) Use the magic novels as a reference (hell, I do), but don't take them as canon with regards to Phaema; there's a lot different here from the rest of Dominia. That's the whole point of the phrase "Beyond Dominia," after all. Basically there's a partial shield around our far-flung world, which is why it's not active in the realms of M:TG storylines, not generally affected by M:TG storylines (I think we're actually set before the Weatherlight saga based on current timelines, can't remember for sure), and that's why we're no longer rife with planeswalkers. There's frequent magic use, but the common person has no idea what a "planeswalker" is. The entire world was reborn a couple years ago (about 3 years in game time, IIRC) and what little people knew of these beings before that was wiped from the collective memory. The goddess who created the world restored it to its pristine state; basically levelling the playing field for the "little guys".

Basically, have fun, explain what you're doing, and try not to step on too many toes. Read through the homepage for some good guidelines.

-Thrakkiss, Dark Warlord

By Elrohir (Elrohir) on Tuesday, September 05, 2000 - 01:10 am:

Hey, I've gotta get my ego-trip somehow these days! :P

Though I admit, I can be excessively abrasive and protective about what we've made here, and I more than anyone am probably responsible for driving people away from this place because of it. I'm just trying to clear up some confusion on your part.

Yes, the site in general is a Magic: The Gathering site, and as such, the Role Playing mill tries to retain a few ties to M:TG. The sad reality underlying this is that several people who frequent the board (Shadow, Thrakkiss, Ley Druid, myself, and probably a few others) no longer play the game nor follow it all that much as extensively as we did when we initially came to the page. Because we've been around *here* a lot longer than most, we (and I in particular) tend to have a certain view of this place in light of the historical events that we have all taken part in. We have something that exists almost completely independently of M:TG storylines, and try to keep it that way, so we look down upon those who just jump in and throw stuff around that doesn't immediately belong (in otherwords, things that clash with many prior established and accepted "facts").

Among these is the planeswalker issue. Because of the very real tendency for people to use planeswalker characters as all-powerful cues to do and undo massive changes, from a "game play" standpoint they are considered overpowered. Players used them frequently in the beginning, but as the flaws became more readily apparent, it became obvious that they needed to be dealt with. Summarily, all new planeswalkers are banned, and ones still in existence are infrequently used and often at a far lower power than in the past. Because of the nature of this place, all planeswalkers past and present are known, and none will be introduced. Whether or not there are unknown planeswalkers in Dominia is irrelevant. They have no bearing here.

That's key. Take everything you know about M:TG and forget about 95% of it, because it's useless to you here. Take some time to read what has been painstakingly written for the homepage, as well as the stories posted on the mill itself to see how things are done and what is acceptable. If there is something you don't know about, ask. I, Shadow, or Thrak will probably respond and clarify things. I'm the foremost historical and otherwise knowledge guru of Phaema, if I don't know it no one does. I will either dig through my archives or give you an answer based upon everything else I know to help you. If I make something up, it will fit exactly with everything else, and I'll tell you it's hard sometimes to make things fit in. The way you introduced the slivers didn't fit. Whenever I tell someone they've done something wrong, I always give an option that better fits with everything else, so you have the chance to tell your story, and I'll have the sense of continuity we're trying to maintain.

When I write stories and want them to go along with someone else's, I always start sending them e-mail asking them about things, telling them how I'm trying to do things, and generally arrange for things to go the way both of us plan. Everyone posts their e-mail addresses (for the most part) in their stories, so you can get ahold of them. Just don't get in the habit of asking if you can do every little thing you want to. That gets annoying. In general, anything massive that is written on the spur of the moment, especially by a non-established character such as yours, is likely to meet with just the response you've gotten, for overstepping unspoken but very restrictive bounds. Just take a while, test your bounds (the best way to learn about this place!), please don't get discouraged if I yell at you, and you'll find the groove that fits you best. Everyone knows we can't be driving people away when we need everyone who comes.

By Tev on Tuesday, September 05, 2000 - 04:27 am:

Thanks for clarifying

~Tev~

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