A TASTE OF LORWYN

Posted on September 13, 2007 by Doug Beyer

Hey, I'm Doug. What's going on?

Meh, that's enough with the biographical info, at least for the time
being. We're here to plumb Magic's limitless realms, explore the
knotted skein of character and setting in that mirror-world beyond the
cardboard, and get behind-the-scenes glimpses at the art and flavor
aspects of making Magic cards, right? Right. For those who are dying to
hear the Doug backstory—uh, hi Mom—well, Taste the Magic today is
not for you. I'm anxious. Lorwyn's been brewing over the creative
cauldron for over a year now, and I'm fit to bust. So let's get on with the
Tasting of the Magic already.

Pendulums and Drool

Not all the planes scattered across the seething intraplanar chaos are
as vast as Dominaria, home to city-state archipelagoes and continent-
spanning civilizations. Some lurk on the edges of planeswalker
consciousness, ancient and steeped in mysteries, protected by their
own obscurity. Lorwyn is such a place, a green little world largely
untouched by the strife and powermongering that often squeezes
other reaches of the Multiverse.

Which is just the sort of thing that makes me drool. As a sort of

Pavlovian response, I salivate whenever pendulums swing. See, just like
mechanical themes (and almost everything else in Magic), creative
aspects of the game—such as its scale and its tone—swing back and
forth across the space of possibility, just like pendulums on some giant
Cartesian grid.

Scale is the scope of a setting's conflicts, a kind of overall measure of

what's at stake in whatever scenario is playing out there.
Sometimes Magic is all about multiverse-spanning disasters, like the
catastrophic time rifts of the Time Spiral Block.
Other times it's about the daily trials of down-to-earth people as they
live out their lives on one single plane.

Tone is a setting's emotional content, the sum of the feelings it arouses

through its words, art, and the intangible texture in between.
Sometimes Magic's tone is one of despair and desperation, portrayed
through an apocalypse-devastated landscape pitted by acid and
erosion and ravaged by storms of time. Sometimes it's a sense of
surreal wonder—of daydreams gone mad and come alive according to
some fevered mind—of exaggerated tales of old crossing paths with
powerful magic, peopled with figments only steps away from sheer
impossibility—and portrayed on a fitting stage: an idyllic world
blooming with natural beauty.

Magic's many pendulums are swinging. My advice? Don't duck—let 'em

hit you full in the chest. Grab on and let them carry you all the way to
the other side of the grid. Ladies and gentlemen, Vorthos and Melvin,
hold on tight—we're bound for Lorwyn.
Lorwyn Flyover
Lorwyn Lexicon

cla∙chan (klah-KAWN)
noun
A kithkin village, headed by a cenn.

cenn (SEN)
noun
A kithkin town leader, similar in role to a mayor.

spring∙jack
noun
A domestic beast a bit like a cross between a shaggy sheep and a
jackrabbit, which kithkin use for riding, milk, fur and mutton.

Lorwyn is storybook world of pastoral beauty: rolling, golden meadows;

sunlit woodland trails, sometimes trodden by a flamekin pilgrim or an
ambling treefolk; stony-bottomed, babbling brooks awash with
tideshaping merrows; kithkin clachans (see sidebar) ringed with
springjack farms. The weather is summery year-round, and it doesn't
even have nighttime—the sun almost goes down, but then never quite
manages to set. Glowy dusk is about the closest you get to night on
Lorwyn, and then the sun climbs back up to midday.

If a doughty kithkin pilot strapped you onto the underbelly of his

springjack-hide balloon and took you for a sightseeing flight, you'd see
a system of rivers branching all the way to the horizon, dominated by a
central trunk called the Wanderwine River. Together these rivers and
tributaries are called the Merrow Lanes, waterways patrolled and
controlled by Lorwyn's crafty merfolk, the merrows. Lorwyn has no
large seas or oceans, only the Lanes and some ponds and small lakes.
There are some mountain ranges, but they all seem pretty far off in the
distance no matter how far you walk.
The rest of Lorwyn is verdant. With the sun never going down and
winter constantly held at arm's reach, Lorwyn's growing season is
unending. The color green dominates here—in the visual sense, not the
mechanical. Although Lorwyn isn't a green Torment, this plane is
nevertheless nature at its most prevalent.

You may have seen in a Magic Arcana last month how the art of some
of the Lorwyn basic lands line up to form a diptych or mural. Basic lands
are Magic's primary method of showing off its current setting, since
basic lands are in front of you more than any other type of card. Take a
look at a few of these murals. They're an excellent way for Lorwyn to
introduce itself.

"Hi, how ya doin'. Name's Lorwyn, good to meet you. Nice party... So, how
do you know Doug? Oh, friend of a friend kind of thing? Got it. Yeah, I'm a
purposeful departure from the war-torn strife of post-apocalyptic
Dominaria. What do you do?"
"Oh yeah? Cool, cool. Sounds interesting—I actually took a class or two on
that in school. Right now I'm mostly doing this eternal midsummer thing...
Yeah, yeah, it is pretty nice. Can't complain. I'm into a lot of stuff... Bikram
yoga, Netflix addict, tribal enchantments... Oh, but really my main thing
right now is my creatures. That's really my passion. I call them my soul,
because they carry with them—oh, you have no creatures yourself? Well, I
gotta say, it changes your life. And it's different for everybody, totally."

"Like, plenty of other worlds have elves, right? But my elves are—well,
actually they're kind of a handful. They're exquisitely beautiful, but a little
full of themselves. And they have this kind of primal, predatorial edge to
them, such that they enjoy hunting in packs through my dappled glades and
savagely murdering other—oh, but listen to me going on and on about my
creatures, I must be boring you to death. Well, thanks for looking at my
wallet pictures—does a plane proud, you know. Enjoy the party. Nice
meeting you."
Tone Poem
No Humans? That’s right, there is no human civilization on Lorwyn.
That’s a first for any plane in the multiverse! More on this in another
column.So there are elves, and flamekin, and merrows, and treefolk,
and kithkin. Also giants, boggarts (the goblins of Lorwyn), and
mysterious beings known as greater elementals. And faeries, did I
mention there were faeries? Yeah, they're a major race here. I was
pretty serious when I said the tone was shifting. For some of you, it'll
take some getting used to—there's no question that the Lorwyn setting
is a challenge. Of course that's kind of true by definition, because
every Magic setting goes somewhere, does something new that no
other block has done before. However, Lorwyn might just push the
boundaries beyond your comfort zone. It's a place where faeries flit
around and powerful spells are represented as storms of flower petals.
I like to think that every step Magic takes past the boundaries of
tradition make it a vaster, even more important and all-encompassing
phenomenon. At the very least it's a breath of fresh air from a region of
the possibility grid where we've never inhaled before.

Still, there's more going on in Lorwyn than the happy-go-lucky frolicking

of elves and kithkin. This is a place of powerful magic, where deep
mysteries slumber and age-old tensions smolder. If Lorwyn were a field
of fortune cookies, you could spend a week walking around crushing
delicious cookie shells and still not uncover all its cryptic fortunes and
lottery numbers. We're just beginning to uncover the juicy tidbits here,
and we'll get to taste more and more of them right here in this column.

So let's get started with Lorwyn's lineage.

Lorwyn draws inspiration from the folklore and mythology of the British
Isles. You'll find influences from Irish, English, Welsh, Scottish, and Celtic
stories, languages and cultures in both the look and world details of the
setting. That pedigree gives Lorwyn a built-in storybook feel, even as it
diverges dramatically from that source material. The result is a world
that feels original and unique to Magic, yet draws from long folklore
traditions for an impression of rustic, well-worn history.

It's interesting to note that the folklore from which Lorwyn takes its
inspiration makes very little distinction between these words:

 Elf

 Fairy / Faerie

 Goblin

 Spirit

 Leprechaun

You find fairies described as "helpful spirits," and goblins described as

"mischievous elves." Of course, Magic makes very hard, important
distinctions between these terms, especially in a tribal block. The real
meat of Lorwyn, when it comes down to it, is its creatures. So in this
column, over the next couple of months, I'll be taking you on a tour
through all the tribes (walking backwards as I talk, like any good tour
guide), giving you the down-low on all the woodsy folk who live here.

Today we start with the big one.

Elves: Laws of Beauty, Law of the Jungle

Lorwyn is a world of nature. And what thrives on nature-dominated

planes? Elves, of course. But these elves are a departure from Magic's
usual, upstanding nature-lovers; the elves of Lorwyn are aristocratic,
ruthless, and predatory.

Elves are paragons of beauty. Their society revolves around the laws of
beauty, a code that specifies how one's cunning and personal
attractiveness determine one's social rank. If you are only moderately
beautiful, you are a low-ranking elf. If you are ugly or disfigured—or a
non-elf, which is by definition a truly ugly thing to be—then you are
an eyeblight, a creature unworthy of respect or even, if it is deemed so,
life. There are four official ranks of elves, determined by measure of
beauty—plus the non-rank of eyeblight for everyone else.

 Faultless. Any elf who possesses the minimum threshold of

beauty and grace is granted this basic rank.

 Immaculate. Dignitaries, VIPs and higher-level functionaries

among elves attain the rank of immaculate.

 Exquisite. Packmasters (lords of elvish hunting packs, which

we'll talk about in a moment) and important courtiers are of
the exquisite rank. They have the privilege of being able to
speak directly to perfects.

 Perfect. The perfect (note: not "prefect") are elves so beautiful

and so shrewd that they rule all other elves. There are only a
few of these in the world. Perfects can kill those of low rank
with impunity.

And then...

 Eyeblight. The ordinary, everyday creatures of Lorwyn. You and

me. Or, disfigured elves.
Elves have horns and hooves in this setting, drawing some elements
from deer and satyrs. Their look is imperious, severe, and sculptural. If
you'd look an elf in the steely eye, you'd get the sense of a predator
sizing you up—they're constantly comparing themselves to others,
figuring out predator / prey relationships, and preparing to defend their
right to territory.
Lorwyn Lexicon

cer∙vin (SER-vin)
noun
An elegant, swift, deerlike creature without antlers.

Elves hunt in packs, riding cervins into battle, sometimes leading

trained wolves. One of the functions of a pack-hunt is to search out
particularly ugly or dire eyeblights—and kill them. Elves charged with
culling eyeblights are called winnowers. You'll find that the Lorwyn
novel has a lot to do with these hunts, and an elf who changes rank
quite rapidly.

Speaking of hunting, what if you're an elf with particularly nasty prey?

What if you're tracking a giant, or some enormous, old-growth treefolk?
Even an elf's naturally superior hunting skills only go so far. That's why
some elves cultivate a white flower called moonglove, from which can
be derived a potent poison. This poison is deadly even in small
amounts, taking down even towering giants. In precisely controlled,
highly diluted trace amounts, its necrotizing properties can be used to
etch or carve living tissue—such as skin or bark.

See, the elves of Lorwyn have a different relationship to nature than

other planes' elves. They regard nature as something to be improved,
cultivated, and if necessary, rearranged. One elvish perfect named
Eidren had all of the trees of his native Gilt-Leaf Wood uprooted and
rearranged to create a pattern he found more beautiful.
Once Lorwyn releases, you'll also see evidence of vinebreeding—the
practice of intermingling magical, thorny vines with living creatures,
producing living works of art that can be easily controlled like puppets.
Elves use vinebred beasts and warriors to help them secure their
position of power in the world.

Did I mention elves are green- and black-aligned in Lorwyn?

A Quick Word of Thanks

I'm beyond excited to be behind the controls (or under the chef's
toque) of Taste the Magic. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Scott
Johns for establishing the column, Kelly Digges for his editing prowess,
Monty Ashley for his behind-the-scenes code work, and especially Matt
Cavotta for creating such an amazing set of shoes to step into. I
wouldn't be in this job on the Creative Team if it weren't for Matt, and
you all wouldn't be showing up to see what I had to say if it weren't for
the community that Matt grew around his enthusiasm and gooberiffic
charm.

Stay tuned for next week, when I get my first card preview (okay, other
than Chandra).