Door #3 - Uh...Magic, Anyone?
    It's been a while since my last post (at least, relative to the once-a-week I planned). How quickly my plans fade...
    So here's the deal: I've been very busy with school, and it's basically crushed my creative juices. Writing an 8-page paper, 5 journal entries (analyzing rhetoric and arguments in pop culture sources), and doing 3 embedded electronics labs....yeah, my brain doesn't have much left. Yes, these are excuses, but here's the thing: my only creative outlet in about a month has been Magic: the Gathering. So that's what this post will be about.
    Magic cards are interesting. The game is complex, surely, but also very fun once you've learned how it works. The coolest part, to me, is that it's like a language: there are specific terms that mean different things, specific parts of each card, and specific cards and ways to combine them. Like letters, words, and grammar. Finding new combos is wonderful, and certainly creative. But I take it one step further.

Designing Cards
    I often will default to designing my own Magic cards, using a program called Magic Set Editor (MSE). Often they're one-off cards that I have a spark of inspiration to design, but sometimes they're ideas for entire sets. Problem is, sets consist of (generally) around 200 cards, and you know me with long projects--I never finish them. So I have plenty of started Magic set designs lying around unfinished--incomplete hobbies is the basis of this blog, isn't it?
    One of my older incomplete sets was called Cetibus (the Latin word for "crowds", here meaning "groups"). A quick and relevant primer for people unfamiliar with Magic: there are 5 colors, each represented by a different personality. White is the "follows orders, protects the group over the individual, soldier" type who like soldiers, angels, and humans; black is the "do anything to get ahead, even if I have to kill for it, selfish" type who like zombies, demons, and "horrors"; red is the "do what I want, you can't contain me, chaos" type who like giants, dragons, and goblins; blue is the "do anything to advance knowledge, science is power, mind over matter" type who like wizards, merfolk, etc.; and green is the "nature comes before everything else, unnatural things are bad, destroy technology" type who like elves and animals of all kinds. In my set, Cetibus is a plane (the Magic term for "universe") where each color is represented by a different faction.
    You have the Zersetz, which are black ("Zersetzen" is German for "decompose"). They live on a continent which spans half their plane, but is shrouded in darkness most of the year. Most things on this continent are dead or dying. The only things that live are zombies, demons, living skeletons--basically, anything that was never really "alive" in the first place. They absorb nutrients from decaying things, and so in their cards, this is represented by the "decay" ability: when you play them, they start with -1/-1 counters on them ("-1/-1 counters" are things that make whatever they're on 1 smaller in both attack and defense, called power and toughness), but then each turn you get to move one of the counters off them and onto something else--like an opponent's creatures.

    In blue, we have the Unistus ("Unistus" is Estonian for "dream"). They are a group who have evolved in a land very rich in mana (magical energy). They've become so dependent upon this abundance of mana that they literally cannot survive unless they're constantly using magic. In order to keep using mana while still living a life, the Unistus generally live in a simulated world within each others' minds--their dreams, if you will. This world is maintained by magic, and so every moment of life for the Unistus is created by magical means. This is represented in the cards by the "hypnotic" ability, which taps any creatures it hits and stops them from untapping for a turn (note: "tapping" means turning a card sideways, which represents something being used and stops it from being used again until it's untapped, usually at the start of your next turn). Tapping in Magic is often used to represent sleeping or inaction, so I thought it was fitting for the Dream Masters.

    For red, we have the Ephestus (coming from the Greek "Hephaestus", the God of Fire, as well as the basis for the word "ifaisteio", meaning "volcano"). They evolved around volcanos--lava rivers, magma chambers, etc. are normal environments for them. They basically embody the chaos of red by not caring about what's going on while trying to kill you if you annoy them. This "trying to kill you" (as well as their firey origins, which is a common theme for red Magic cards) is represented by the Spray ability, which spreads the pain of a successful player hit by then hurting all that player's creatures, too.

    In green, we have the Drivol collective (or the Drivolians; "Drvol" is Croatian for "tree"). They're jungle dwellers, very tribal in nature. This group inclination is represented by the ability "Kinforce", which gives them +1/+1 counters when you play them the more green things you already have (remember, +1/+1 counters add 1 to the power and toughness of the creature).

    And last but not least, the most important group: the white Atama ("Atma" is Hindi for "soul"). The Atama are spirit beings from the Ethereal Realm. They used to be warriors and kings until they evolved enough to ascend to a "higher plane of existence" (yeah, it's a trope, so sue me). But one king has found a way to return to the physical world, and he wants to use that to take over and rule again. And that's the main conflict for this set's backstory: the Atama trying to rule over Cetibus once more, with the other groups trying to stop them. Because the Atama are spirit beings, they have an ability called Shifting, where they come into play with a number of +1/+1 counters on them, and whenever they're hit, they just remove those counters one-by-one instead of actually getting hurt, until they have no counters to remove. This represents them returning to Spirit form to protect themselves, but in doing so, they weaken their physical forms little by little.

   So basically, that's the description. I got to 100 cards before I abandoned it--which, even though it's only half a set or less, is a lot for me! You can find the entire set as far as I got on my DeviantArt page, here. I had planned a 3 set block of this story arc...but I guess half of one set is all that will see the light of day. Unless someone else wants to complete it, in which case, please contact me on DeviantArt and I will be glad to send you the Magic Set Editor file :)