The more I think about Amonkhet right now, the less I like it.
Lore forum
Posted on Feb. 17, 2024, 6:19 p.m. by legendofa
I've had problems with the plane of Amonkhet for a while. As far as anyone knows, the entire non-monster, non-exiled-undead population lived in one city, which appears to have a population of several hundred thousand, definitely no more than several million. Outside of that, there's nothing of any particular importance--sand, ruins, and the aforementioned monsters and undead.
Then, that one city with the entire plane's population got destroyed twice in rapid succession. The citizens watched their gods get betrayed and killed right in front of them, and while pretty much everyone was a trained soldier, they were fighting against magically reinforced zombies who were just as skilled as them, not to mention a nearly omnipotent dragon. Very shortly after, almost before the dust settled and the smoke cleared, they were invaded Flip by psychopathic cyborgs from outside reality. Any survivors from the first apocalypse immediately had to fight Flip again to avoid assimilation Flip. Somehow, they won thanks to the surviving gods, two of which (the Locust God and the Scarab God) had been part of the earlier betrayal, and the magical zombies Flip that had been killing everyone a few (years? months?) earlier.
As it stands now, Amonkhet's population must be a tiny fraction of what it was, and everyone's been traumatized several times over. There can't be more than a few thousand people, and maybe only a few hundred. Some hero types like Djeru, Hazoret, and Samut seem to want to start rebuilding, but how? How many survivors are there, and how many of those are able and willing to work? What resources are available--building material, food, water, anything? The Luxa River got turned into blood. The Omenpaths offer another wrinkle, since if the people of Amonkhet are anything like real people, many of them will try to evacuate. If a reliable and persistent Omenpath opened nearby, I would expect pretty much everyone to leave the ruined, empty plane as refugees.
Is there any reason for the story to return to Amonkhet, or should it just be left as a dead or abandoned plane? I've asked this before, but the story has progressed and the plane seems to be less viable than ever. The only way I see an Amonkhet story progressing is if there's a previously unknown settlement that has never been hinted at, that made it through the God-Pharaoh's return and the Phyrexian Invasion unscathed, which to me is more unlikely than rebuilding a new settlement, which is more unlikely than recovering what they can and abandoning the plane if given the chance.
Caerwyn That's the problem I have with Alara right now. There was almost no resolution to the Conflux or description of New Alara before the Phyrexian Invasion, and I'm hoping it gets revisited in detail before the story tries to interfere with the plane again.
Aftermath: New Alara. Aftermath: Amonkhet. Aftermath: Zendikar. Aftermath: Ice Age. Just little independent stories that aren't Planeswalker Adventures or Kellan and Friends, but showing what happens when a world collapses and needs to be rebuilt--the aftermath, if you will.
February 17, 2024 7:13 p.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #4
I suspect a portion of the reason players feel this way with Amonkhet is because we are usually pampered with the stories. We tend to enter a world who knows peace, some violent conflict happens, and our heroes arise to save the day.
Amonkhet was not this.
We entered into the broken remains of a destroyed world, watched the last scraps of it get destroyed more, and our heroes all lost.
It was a story of loss and failure, and that is not something we take gently as a culture.
That isn't to say anything about how it was written, which wasn't very good. I'm just saying, from a story-telling perspective, it is the exact opposite of what we have come to enjoy.
February 19, 2024 3:54 a.m.
TypicalTimmy - I take three issues with your analysis.
For starters, I think saying Amonkhet started in the “broken remains of a destroyed world” is a bit hyperbolic. Amonkhet, in the first set, was in a world with issues - but it was hardly a “broken” one. The city was thriving, with an advanced, sophisticated culture. Everything about Amonkhet (the set) oozed with life. Look at Liliana, Death's Majesty, for example - though Liliana is shrouded in her typical dark colors, the elements from the plane (the mummies, the chair, the background) are in bright tones of yellow, gold, and blue, something uncharacteristic for Liliana cards.
This was one of the advantages to doing the story in two sets - they did not just give us a desolate world and rush to completion. They gave us a living, vibrant world, enough time to find it fascinating - then turned it on its head and made all its positive, hopeful factors into the very tools of its destruction.
Second, our culture absolutely can handle stories ending in loss and failure - dozens of examples from literature and film spring to mind. But, to choose one which closely resembles Amonkhet’s trajectory - Empire Strikes Back is almost universally considered the best or second best Star Wars movie. That is a film which starts bleak (the opening crawl says that the victory in the prior movie still left the Rebel Alliance on the run, since their base was discovered), gets more bleak when they are crushed on Hoth, and ends with the main characters all soundly defeated. People love it.
Finally, the single biggest complaint I see about Magic’s lore is that there are not more stories like Amonkhet; more stories where there are consequences which actually mean something.
Hour of Devastation is, perhaps, the only story in recent memory where everything did not wrap up in a nice little bow. Every other story tends to end with all the characters right back where they started and the planes devoid of any real lasting impact. Even the most recent Phyrexian invasion lacked consequences - the compleated planeswalkers look like they’ll be basically fine; the planeswalkers who lost their spark will still be able to use omenpaths and show up in whatever sets Wizards wants.
Contrary to your claim that players are not ready or able to handle stories like Hour of Devastation, the near-totality of players I have spoken with about the game’s lore are begging for more stories like it.
February 19, 2024 9:31 a.m. Edited.
Gidgetimer says... #7
Yeah, I HATED the monster of the week; good guys win, bad guys loose; lazy storytelling of the entire Gatewatch arc. I'm also pretty peeved that all is well for "our heroes" despite getting completed.
February 19, 2024 12:42 p.m.
plakjekaas says... #8
Full of life, maybe, but the life was short. All humans were in service of the gods, and the gods were tasked with finding the strongest warriors. All the humans that died in the trials, were turned into Dutiful Servants. All the menial, everyday life chores were performed by zombies, so that the actual humans could destroy each other and be harvested by their gods to either be turned into servant zombies, or soldiers for the dreadhorde army that was secretly gathering in Amonkhet, waiting for Tezzeret to bring the Planar Bridge to invade Ravnica.
That's why the surviving people were bred with trauma and battle as part of everyday life, I'd say they're way more equipped to bounce back from this than any other plane that was invaded. The bigger problem would be that they wouldn't know how to continue, being from a society with such a short lifespan. Their purpose was taken with the plane. But finding that out could be a story to tell. It's a very different struggle from the army vs. army avenger stuff we've seen lately, but in the current geopolitical situation it might be too sensitive to focus on.
February 19, 2024 2:24 p.m.
plakjekaas says... #9
Small correction on the above, not just humans, all the humanoid races were fighting in the trials, jackals, minotaurs, aven and naga.
February 19, 2024 4:02 p.m.
I just wrote a whole multi-paragraph response, got redirected to a spam page, and lost it.
To summarize, there were almost zero consequences for the Gatewatch through the whole story arc. Jace saved the day and got a girlfriend on his tropical vacation, Liliana got out of her demonic contracts, and Gideon got a new sword and died a heroic and noble death. Bolas, the supergenius planar conquerer and mastermind, had multiple opportunities to seal his victory and took exactly none of them. Pretty much only positive outcomes for any of the heroes except for Gideon, who got what he wanted anyway.
The citizens of Amonkhet have no engineers, no architects, no farmers, no infrastructure, nothing that keeps society alive and active. The only outcomes I see are
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Starvation, dehydration, and evacuation. The plane is abandoned.
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A person or group comes from somewhere else and rebuilds, either before or after option 1. While a potentially interesting story, it still requires outside intervention.
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An existing settlement gets _deus ex machina_ed out of the desert. This would take a lot of work and explanation to be satisfying.
I don't see how the story of Amonkhet as an independent plane can continue.
February 19, 2024 4:50 p.m.
Crow_Umbra says... #11
I kind of wonder if the storyline for the upcoming "Death Race" set will feature Amonkhet? The Death Race is supposed to take place across 3 planes, 2 returning for the first time since their debut, and 1 new one. I feel like WotC will probably "revisit" Amonkhet via the Death Race set, as a leg of the interplanar Omenpath Race.
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Gives a quick visit of the plane post-Phyrexian invasion.
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Desert setting provides for opportunities to do Mad Max style nods & tributes
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Inter-planar race could provide an opportunity to do stories about inter-planar migration without necessarily delving too deeply in the "politics" of migration (kinda like how they nixed the Brokers being a police force on New Capenna)
Since Outlaws of Thunder Junction is being billed as like a destination for villains from across the multiverse, I think this is their way to broaden the story elements for inter-planar migration beyond the core cast of characters, before broadening the scale to bigger populations from Planes.
TL;DR - Upcoming Death Race set could give us some looks at Amonkhet without a full set revisit, and continue story elements around inter-planar migration, which could also Deus Ex Machina what happened to the survivors of Amonkhet.
February 19, 2024 5:14 p.m.
Optimator I assume you're referring to the flavor text on Crested Sunmare. As I understand it, story influences flavor text much more often than the other way around (this is where Ghostfire deserves mention), and it's easy enough to interpret this as desperate speculation on Djeru's part rather than an indicator of future events. It's possible that it's simply another desert monster, alongside the cerodons and sandwurms.
Sure, the big horse is there, and it's somewhat out of place both mechanically and flavorfully, but that is literally the only suggestion that anything else might exist on Amonkhet. Even if Djeru is right, and the Sunmare comes from somewhere else on the plane, it would still have the Phyrexian Invasion to contend with. And if this hypothetical horse-land of Amonkhet is isolated enough to survive two separate planar invasions with nobody on- or off-plane being aware of its existence, how much influence can it have?
Crested Sunmare, by itself, is too vague and undeveloped to offer anything more than a kernel of inspiration.
February 19, 2024 6:45 p.m.
FormOverFunction says... #13
I think M:tG suffers some from what Star Wars has suffered from in the past, where THE WHOLE planet/plane is sand/ice/haunted mansion/etc. It’s an over-simplified setting, because the setting isn’t really the main focus to begin with. The concept of “plane” has always been sorta weird to me, because (for me at least) the concept of “plane” is completely mutually exclusive from the concept of “planet.” If they weren’t separate, then Innestrad could totally have a Bahamas-style island culture, in addition to a Hoth-style region (maybe even housing a Mt. Everest)... and that doesn’t fit in the set of cards. I generally just roll with a given plane the same way I imagine a fifth-grade-me would. Amonkhet is a big ol’ city in a desert, populated by people (because that’s what cities do), and we sorta never run out of people... or city... or nearby sandy terrain... unless that helps the story along.
February 19, 2024 7:01 p.m.
I'll probably stop obsessing about this soon, but an Amonkhet Diaspora story could be really good. Let's say there's a big Omenpath or whatever, everyone who can leaves. Where do they go, and how they adapt?
There are real-world parallels, but I think it's loose and fantastical enough to not be a specific reference to any particular real-world event. Many, I would say most, regions of the world have seen a mass emigration from conflict or disaster at some point. It's definitely a mature subject, but a realistic and universal one.
This can even give Kellan, or whoever the arc protagonist would be, something to do. He meets a group of Amonkhet refugees, listens to their story, and offers to help rebuild. They make their way to Amonkhet, where Samut and Djeru are struggling--Hazoret's zeal can only take them so far. Good stuff happens, Kellan accomplishes something, and the story gets a happy and inspirational ending. Or in a darker ending, they make their way to Amonkhet, where Samut and Djeru's efforts have ended in failure, and Hazoret is the only living being left around the ruins of Naktamun. Where does the story go from there?
February 19, 2024 7:55 p.m.
FormOverFunction says... #15
Now I’m just chuckling to myself about comic-shop-style debates about the planet shape/size and makeup for Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, and other stories. Arguing over what percentage of Eldraine’s planet’s core is nickel. I guess I think of these planes as flat-earth-style entities. Sort of like Asgard in the Thor movie. It’s just sorta... there. I hadn’t really thought about this specifically before. Fun stuff! Thanks for the post!
February 20, 2024 11:43 a.m.
FormOverFunction Yeah, the actual physical characteristics of the planes aren't well-defined at all. I probably could go off on a tangent about how much nickel Eldraine has, at least near the surface. I just looked up common nickel alloys...
Best I figure is that the known areas of most planes are on the scale of Earth countries, maybe continents for the bigger ones. Dominaria is close to Earth, Ixalan might be close to Earth, Kamigawa and Innistrad are fairly small, and this is the sort of thing I think about when I'm trying to sleep.
February 20, 2024 2:52 p.m.
FormOverFunction says... #17
legendofa I wish I didn’t know what that was like... :P
February 21, 2024 10:07 a.m.
Scaling in planes has always been a funny thing... I got a kick out of New Capenna, where it was described as the sprawling-super massive multi-tiered (art-deco) city. But, when you are storytelling travel through a MASSIVE super-city/plane you probably shouldn't make Elspeth be able to jog from the skyline down into Ziatora's warehouse district seemingly in a single chase-scene with some vampires :) .... She apparently should have carried Frodo to Mt. Doom, seems like it would have saved a lot of time.
Anyway, I have always struggled just a bit with the concept of a plane being a planet, or what?
I think they are more character-driven than they are plane-driven though, for what that is worth. I just want to see a pirate leading a band of eternals (with free will) throughout the Omenpaths with a freshly repurposed Skyship Nemesis as their flagship
February 21, 2024 11:13 p.m.
Come ON: Neheb, the Eternal - there are no strings on you any more! Let your omenpath pirate freak-flag fly!!
Also, we need MtG's version of (Marvel's Weirdworld).. Basically a plane where all the unkillable/indestructible, but exiled, things end up deposited. A sortof Superman Phantom Zone.
February 21, 2024 11:18 p.m.
Gleeock Maybe New Capenna is a super-megalopolis, and all the action takes place over two blocks or whatever...
That Eternal pirates idea sounds awesome.
Maybe it's just me, as a very setting-driven person who likes world building details, but if you describe a city as massive, I'm going to want to know exactly how massive. Like, there's thirty-ish metropolitan regions with ten million or more people on Earth here and now, and ten-ish with twenty million people. Chicago in the 1920s and '30s had a population of about three million, and New York had around six million. Where does New Capenna fall here? Is it realistically big for the apparent time period, realistically big for modern times, or unrealistically big, with hundreds of millions of people? Tying this back to Amonkhet's population, that's why I think it's well under a million. In card art, the city of Naktamun is fairly open, with wide streets and large temples and monuments, constrained by a boundary wall. It's not cramped or overdeveloped. The entire population of Middle Kingdom Egypt was somewhere between three and seven million. At the risk of quoting Wikipedia, "Memphis had some 30,000 inhabitants and was by far the largest settlement worldwide from the time of its foundation until approximately 2250 BC and from 1557 to 1400 BC." (Memphis, Egypt article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis,_Egypt) So I'm being very generous with even several hundred thousand.
This is probably meaningless to most other people, and I know it doesn't affect the story at all. But it's this sort of detail that really sells me on a plane, more than just "this city is really, really big."
February 22, 2024 1:04 a.m.
legendofa All I can figure is that they describe New Capenna as being "tiered", by description it is sortof roaring 20's New York, except crowded from skyscraper level down to the warehouse district (so I sortof reason that if each tier is fairly packed you're talking multiplication of 20's New York).... and it is an entire "plane" of this. I couldn't really imagine just having an on-foot chase through all tiers of this setting in less than a day without more to that journey instead of just sprint to destination... It actually seems like being a vampire in THAT setting would be HYPER advantageous, unless you had to stop your chase for blood &/or not catching your quarry before daybreak, which would be much better storytelling elements for time/size/travel scale to aide in the world-building that you enjoy.
Amonkhet's world-building could have been much-improved by describing architecture IMO. If you have a mega-God Pharoah coming back you could really exaggerate some of the structures, pillars, etc... Dude's a megalomaniacal dragon, the structures should reflect that... They actually did do some of this on some of the cards, like the lands.
Storywise, I feel like Eternal-pirates make tons of sense & is intriguing. They are already built to withstand interplanar travel, the story of finding purpose after you were duped is a neat one too. Also, if Compleated walkers can be "undone", rekindling undead sparks in a nigh-invulnerable shell seems doable. Also, why wouldn't someone copy Bolas if the blueprint is out there? Heck, wizards make themselves into Liches... which actually seems less appealing than eternalizing. I think an Amonkhet involved story regarding what to do with all these spooky Lazotep husks would be good. Would someone assemble a task force to gather them & just lock them up in a tomb somewhere?
Caerwyn says... #2
One of the big problems I have with the recent Phyrexian invasion - it took a bunch of planes that could have had interesting stories… and just kind of supplanted that.
Amonkhet had a fascinating story to tell. Here is a plane that based its entire existence, its entire culture around the very trap which destroyed it. That is a fascinating dynamic to explore, with some great potential for many different reactions.
We did not get that story. Instead, we got one poorly-written, rushed set that tried to do an entire year or more of content in a single release. Rather than examine the fascinating period of redefinition for an entire culture, Amonkhet, like so many other planes, was a rushed footnote in a poorly-paced set.
This is one of the reasons I am interested in the expansion of these Aftermath products from a lore perspective. Wizards has always ignored the falling action with their lore, with most of their stories ending rather abruptly. Aftermath provides a lore option for exploring the fallout of a set, without the need for a full story.
February 17, 2024 6:48 p.m.