[FUR Friday] Worldbuilding, Pt V: The Plot Thickens

     Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! Last week in our series on Festival of Urbestia, the custom Magic set dedicated to anthropomorphic beast folk, we finished Vision Design with the Vision Handoff document. While we take the time to playtest the set, we're going to step back from design and put on our Creative hat. A while back, I promised that we would get into the story once we hit the Integration stage. Well, here we are!

    Magic's stories tend to revolve around planeswalkers. And if we're talking about planeswalkers in a world of beast folk, then of course it's got to be the lion man himself: Ajani Goldmane.

    Of course, he can't be the only one up on the stage, right? Thankfully, he's got some friends who might be willing to come with him to the Festival-- The Story Circle! Okay, maybe Tamiyo's book club hasn't gotten as much press as certain other planeswalker team-ups, but that makes this casual group of story-swapping travelers even more interesting to explore. Besides Tamiyo and Ajani, other members include Narset, Elspeth, and at one point Dovin Baan. As the name implies, these walkers simply share tales of the worlds they've visited; that sounds like a good enough excuse to have two or three Planeswalkers in one place without a cataclysmic event of interplanar proportions going on.

    A story needs characters, setting, and conflict. Now that we have two of the three, let's try to nail down that last element. Since we're not doing a predator vs prey thing, I want to try something that subverts the lighthearted tone and themes of the Festival. Here's what I have in mind:

    The Festival lasts six days, retelling the first six centuries after the "Awakening" of the beast folk. About a thousand years ago-- or one standard Fantasy Lore Time Unit-- something fell to the plane of Urbestia from beyond the stars. Over the course of six centuries, the base animals of this world rapidly evolved into bipedal, sapient creatures capable of forming a society. (If you've listened to The Adventure Zone, this may sound familiar.)  No one knows what that fallen something is-- so of course, that's exactly what the Story Circle is going to find out.

    However, because the something is from outside of the plane, it's either very dangerous or something dangerous is after it. Because this is a custom set, we can go as big and as wild as we want-- a new Eldrazi, a Phyrexian Praetor, a Bolasian scheme, an evil planeswalker twin, everything is on the table. I hosted a poll over on r/CustomMagic, and here were the results:

    Given that Jin-Gitaxias was later revealed to be on Kamigawa, it looks like we're leaning towards the Eldrazi option, which works well with the plot allusion anyway. (Seriously, go listen to the Adventure Zone if you haven't.) We'll figure out more on that as we move forward.

    That's the A-plot. To make the rest of the world feel more grounded, I would also like to tie in a B-plot involving the uncommon Legend cycle. In my mind, maybe they're kids getting into mischief who somehow get caught up in this larger event. This part is much less fleshed out, as evidenced by the fact that I could only write one sentence about it, so feel free to suggest ideas in the comments or over on the subreddit!

    That's all for this week. Next Friday's article will be another worldbuilding article focused on the uncommon Legend cycle. Until then, check out last Friday's FUR article-- the Vision Design Handoff-- to learn more about the set, as well as how to earn rewards and win prizes by playtesting! If you miss the usual design content, check out Monday's Musing where we analyzed the OG Champions of Kamigawa to see what went wrong and, just maybe, what to expect from Neon Dynasty.

See you soon!