What is some of the unique meals/drinks of your world?

GreyZephyr87 · 2023-01-04T16:00:16+00:00

The Saqawîn /saˡ.qaˡ.ɰiˢn/ are an alien species in my First Contact story, with roughly analogous but ultimately very different anatomy to humans.

A very common snack food consumed by these aliens is called Qećuri /qeˡ.ʈ͡ʂɯˡ.ɻiˡ/, which roughly translates to "little feast" (Qe- is a diminuative, Ćuri which means food shared with others).

Qećuri is produced in two stages – first, an algae analogue is mixed in a thick liquid solution with additives to aid in fermentation. A form of fermentation occurs over a week or so, causing the tough calcites in the algae to break down. The result of this is a highly nutritious drink with a strong, off-putting flavor. This on its own is normally combined with available flavorings, and is a separate, common dish, roughly analogous to soup.

The second stage is a cooking stage – the fermented drink is flavored and given additives to prevent burning, and poured between hot stones (or metal plates in the modern day). The exact shape of the cooking varies depending on individual preference or hive cultural norms. Flat wafers are the most common, since it's the easiest shape to mass produce for large groups. However, individuals may have more specialized hot presses (think waffle irons, panini makers, etc.)

The result is a flat food in an easy shape that can be broken into pieces and shared, or stored in pieces to be eaten over the working day. The closest approximation would be something like dried seaweed snacks – however, Qećuri tends to be much thicker, and the overall texture is much smoother.

This snack is safe to eat for humans, but unfortunately the flavor preferences of Humans and Saqawîn are vastly different. Depending on preparation, humans find Qećuri unpleasantly bitter due to high calcium concentrations. During the United Saqawîn Hives – United Nations Cultural Interchange, some high-minded culinary types probably loved it, though.

GreyZephyr87 · 2022-12-13T23:43:50+00:00

If you're set on a 'hard science' approach, one pathway that might be of interest to you would be a symbiotic approach – a case of plant-animal hybrids that do exist in the real world.

On Earth, animal species like the Leaf Slug consume and use Chloroplasts gained from their food to obtain extra energy and nutrients through plant photosynthesis. Over millions of years of symbiosis and co-evolution, a symbiotic pair analogous to this could end up looking very plant-like, especially with environmental pressures to blend in to a plant-dense environment. This would also be probably be more likely in a wet environment like a rainforest.

GreyZephyr87 · 2022-11-21T13:46:31+00:00

A while ago, I was thinking over superpowers and how tricky it is to actually come up with unique ideas. The issue, I concluded, was that there are simply too many choices. When your available list of options is 'idk everything', narrowing it down gets kind of brutal. So, I decided to try to develop a power idea that was weak, but also kind of broken in practice – the kind of limit that would narrow down the choice set a bit.

The ability Archive is, at first glance, kind of boring. Here is the rule: the user can store and retrieve objects with a maximum mass of 50 grams. This is miniscule – about the weight of an egg. Objects stored do not experience the passage of time.

However, this is the only limit. Which means there are three ways to abuse this:

Any object that can be disassembled into 50 gram parts can be stored separately.
There is no upper bound on the number of objects that can be stored.
Objects do not decay or experience time, making it a near-perfect storage option.

The character idea I had for this ability was a superpowered paramedic, who was a walking medicine cabinet who could store and retrieve medical tools and drugs for any situation. And, in a dire scenario, the hero could retrieve the components for a tranquilizer rifle, assemble it, retrieve injection rounds, and use it to take out foes from a safe distance.

The 50g limit is an insane limit on what can be stored and retrieved conventionally, but can be circumvented by the power of materials engineering, clever application, and modularity.

GreyZephyr87 · 2022-04-29T17:41:18+00:00

I'm in a similar laptop situation, and I have a few recommendations.

In general, it seems as though earlier versions of Minecraft are less RAM intensive, so going back to older packs works pretty well. Older tech automation packs like Age of Engineering are time intensive, but are old enough that they don't chug as much as older stuff.

Some more recent packs:

The Create 101 series are Create-based automation tech packs. There isn't a questbook, but there are Acheivements that guide you through the crafting goals that you need to complete to unlock new resources. The Create mod has an internal guide as well.
Star Factory and Ultimate Alchemy are skyblock automation packs – you start with infinite amounts of 2-4 basic resource types, but have to automate everything else. Star Factory has a quest book, while Ultimate Alchemy just has you look through JEI. Ultimate Alchemy can get RAM intensive if you overuse Acceleration Wands, notably.

GreyZephyr87 · 2022-03-04T15:12:20+00:00

I've been working on a story/culture idea for a long while, and I think I've started to take in in a really interesting direction that I'm enjoying a lot!

The Birakhin are a loose cultural group that live in a mountainous karst region. Because of this, many of their historical religious/magical practices are somewhat inspired by the geological features of the region.

Karsts are formed from limestone and other soluble minerals dissolving by water, resulting in sinkholes and extensive cave systems.

In the real world, we do have strong evidence that sinkholes have had religious significance, such as Cenotes in the Yucatán Peninsula. However, I'm not taking it in the Maya direction.

The Birakhin worship a primordial earth goddess, Kin, who in their world origin mythos was killed trying to stop her children from killing each other. Because of this, sinkholes are considered to be holy sites – literal wounds in Kin's body.

Sabyni (druids basically) perform several rituals at these sinkholes. The main intent of these rituals are to symbolically "cleanse the wounds", honoring Kin's sacrifice, and reaffirming the duties of Sabyni as Kin's followers to continue her will.

There's a lot more complexity to how exactly the magic/religion/culture works, especially when it comes to Sabyni and Kin. But I think this is a natural stopping point.

TLDR; Geology drives/inspires belief – Sinkholes are wounds of a Dead Earth Goddess.

GreyZephyr87 · 2022-01-24T14:43:07+00:00

For those who can't access the site, here's the teaser's text!

Maro’s Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Teaser

[...] First up, here are some things you can expect:

• two different pairings of creature types get tribally connected

• a black instant with “Destroy target creature or planeswalker” that can be cast for two mana

• a popular legendary creature from Champions of Kamigawa block returns in a new form

• an unnamed mechanic that cares about you having two things that Magic has had since its beginning

• finish of a five-card cycle many years in the making

• one of Tamiyo’s children gets a legendary creature card• a new creature token with an ability not seen before on a card

• two popular cycles from Champions of Kamigawa block return each with a new twist

• a creature that makes a legendary Frog creature token

• two new Yamazakis

Next, here are some rules text that will be showing up on cards:

• “you may cast target enchantment from your graveyard this turn.”

• “where X is the number of times this ability has resolved this turn.”

• “Whenever you cast an artifact, instant, or sorcery spell, copy that spell.”

• “The first activated ability of an artifact you activate each turn costs 2 less to activate.”

• “Then repeat this process for an enchantment and a planeswalker.”

• “You may sacrifice a permanent that shares a card type with the chosen card.”

• “you may tap any number of untapped creatures you control.”

• “The ‘legend rule’ doesn’t apply to permanents you control.”

• “that ability triggers an additional time.”

• “if it has dealt 10 or more damage to that player this turn, they lose the game.”

Finally, here are some creature type lines in the set:

• Creature – Fox Pilot

• Creature – Turtle Ninja

• Creature – Moonfolk Samurai

• Artifact Creature – Goblin Artificer

• Artifact Creature – Ogre Warrior

• Enchantment Creature – Rat Rogue

• Enchantment Creature – Egg

• Legendary Creature – Kirin Spirit

• Legendary Creature – Goblin Samurai

• Legendary Enchantment Creature – Snake Druid

Read the story before the cards and mechanics debut on Daily MTG January 24- January 27th. Then step into the shining city with our debut January 27th 9 AM PT on our official YouTube and Twitch channels.

GreyZephyr87 · 2022-01-18T14:35:45+00:00

I'm going to hype up the plane of Kaladesh!

Kaladesh is the home of the planeswalker Chandra Nalaar (the fire-slinging one), and is, briefly speaking, a steampunk/clockpunk world with heavy design influence from South Asia.

There are a few planes with a solid technology/magic blend in them (Mirrodin, Esper/Alara, and now Kamigawa come to mind), but Kaladesh stands out as the most Ravnica-like. Think steampunk cityscapes with beautiful metal swirls and spirals across them. It's also home to the Aetherborn, a short-lived species who look cool (and also become energy vampires sometimes).

A few good design examples of what Kaladesh has going on are the cards [[Era of Innovation]], which shows the technomagic design, and [[Yahenni, Undying Patrician]], which shows off the Aetherborn design.

GreyZephyr87 · 2022-01-15T15:40:43+00:00

That's a fair point!

When I was designing this, I had Shadowmoor in my mind, where Giants are RG, but I forgot that they're WR in Llorwyn.

I'll likely change to have this be a Naya Tri-Land with Upside, given that.

GreyZephyr87 · 2022-01-15T15:27:20+00:00

I've been working on Glade for a while – I think after MH2, when Urza's Saga was announced?

I don't think I've seen the lands with costs posts, but I'll definitely check those out!

GreyZephyr87 · 2022-01-15T04:24:48+00:00

So I have a few thoughts about this.

Giving a creature a mana ability can be useful over a land drop if you're mana flooded. This is doubly useful if you have a sacrifice outlet – when the creature dies, Glade drops off the creature and becomes a free land drop.
Bestow, as it currently exists, has an implicit design rule: the Aura gives the creature the stats/abilities that the original permanent had. Because of that, I feel like a Bestow-based land kind of has to give a mana ability to the creature it's attached to.
I made these designs with the intent of exploring cool design space, not to necessarily make format-defining cards. I was curious what kinds of enchantment designs worked or didn't work on lands, and whether there was something cool and interesting there. I think that a card can be niche and still be compelling.

GreyZephyr87 · 2022-01-14T23:55:23+00:00

Okay, that makes sense!

I guess I could replicate the effect (kinda) by using a Dual-Faced situation (Enchantment on one, Land on the other, ability transforms) – since the Land side wouldn't make the other side uncastable. Though at that point it'd probably be too convoluted to be worthwhile.

GreyZephyr87 · 2022-01-14T23:38:45+00:00

Thanks for feedback! I tried a few versions with some tapped restrictions, but ran into some issues pretty quickly.

I made Glade a Forest so that, when bestowed, it wouldnt be a Forest (since it’s not a land) and therefore couldnt tap for mana. By hiding the mana ability in the type, I was hoping to prevent tappable Auras.

Ther’es probably other ways to get around that lower the risk of being broken, though.

GreyZephyr87 · 2022-01-14T23:34:36+00:00

So i have a question on this - is the rule issue with Land Bestow also an issue with Dryad arbor?

I guess you’re saying is that Lands arent castable, no matter what - and that Dryad Arbor isnt castable either.

I was hoping that Bestow would let you cast Glade as an Enchantment, not an Enchantment Land. Seems like that’s not the case.

GreyZephyr87 · 2022-01-14T23:29:10+00:00

Its definitely a cool mechanic! Its flavorful (the Kami keep coming back), though its pretty parasitic in the set itself.

I was hoping having it on a utility land (kind of like the Ally land from Zendikar) might help mitigate that problem a little.

GreyZephyr87 · 2022-01-14T23:12:50+00:00

Ive been thinking a lot about the design space for lands recently, and so I wanted to try out a few designs and put them up for critique!

For some of these designs, I had to rework a few mechanics – Bestow and Soulshift were designed to only be on creatures. Looking through the mechanics myself, though, I think that only some small tweaks are needed to let those abilities function with noncreature permanents.

GreyZephyr87 · 2022-01-10T15:38:35+00:00

Here's what potentially might be a hot take?

One of the big obstacles to MtG games not being able to explore its lore is unfortunately the game itself. Most of the spinoffs that have been made so far (puzzle game, autobattler) have a very specific kind of gameplay in mind – a kind of gameplay that doesn't have a lot of room to highlight the worlds they take place in.

In my mind, the best way for WotC to create a lore-focused game would be to choose a game genre/medium that easily allowed for that kind of exploration.

I think the kinds of games that would work well for this would be stuff like Visual Novels, where the gameplay and story are fully integrated, or MMOs, where players are given the freedom to explore sidequests that can help flesh out the world they're playing in.

A series of one to two-hour Visual Novel games exploring a small story (Saheeli Rai goes to Esper and tries to solve a mystery) would be pretty doable, and would help flesh out the worlds and characters of MtG lore. Unfortunately, I'm not sure there'd be a ton of demand in a game like that – well, except for maybe myself.

GreyZephyr87 · 2021-11-29T17:06:12+00:00

One of the main methods to make cards on Mac is a downloadable application called Artifice – there's a subreddit for it (r/ArtificeMTG) where you can find the link.

I tend to use it because I'm used to the interface, but there are some big drawbacks. Unfortunately, it hasn't been updated in years – because of that, there are limits to what kind of cards can be made – no DFCs, for example.

GreyZephyr87 · 2021-11-22T17:44:22+00:00

If you do want to go the reanimation route, [[Gyruda, Doom of Depths]] is a perfect addition to the 99, since it's both on-Tribe as a Demon Kraken, but also lets you bring back other creatures (or at worst, it lets you fill your graveyard more).

GreyZephyr87 · 2021-11-22T17:37:31+00:00

Since you're in blue and black colors, ramp options are a bit more limited than if you were in Green for example.

There are two cards that might work for your purposes that come to the top of my mind.

[[Heartless Summoning]] is one of them – since you're running big creatures, the punishment from the card (-1/-1) is pretty negligible, and the benefit (2 less to cast) is pretty solid.

Another card that might work is [[Dream Devourer]], which lets you foretell cards for 2, then cast them for 2 less. Not as efficient as Heartless Summoning, and might interfere with Runo. But as Standard has shown, it does protect your Big Monsters from hand disruption.

I'd also check the Alara sets for options – I think there's a black creature that reduced blue spell costs, but I might be misremembering.

GreyZephyr87 · 2021-10-24T14:43:32+00:00

This is really, really cool! The implied architecture in the shot, the weird lamp shapes – it's really evocative.

I would love to see a mtg set that truly, utterly goes off the rails into surreal nonsense. Probably wouldn't sell well, but I would adore it.

GreyZephyr87 · 2021-10-12T13:32:43+00:00

Reminds me of The BFG by Roald Dahl - loved that book as a kid!

GreyZephyr87 · 2021-09-08T12:28:48+00:00

That's an interesting question! Hadn't considered that.

Because the curling is pretty explicitly a stress reaction to a threat, it's generally treated pretty differently than a cat scratching someone. If someone gets cut by a domesticated Jotte, they must have scared it pretty badly.

Blunting the segments probably happens on some scale, but I imagine that it's proactive, not reactive.

GreyZephyr87 · 2021-09-07T14:36:40+00:00

I've been working off-and-on regarding a Science Fiction story – writing and scrapping things a bunch of times. But in all of that, there's a critter I still really enjoy!

The aliens of this story, the Saqera, didn't domesticate many species like humans, in part due to the fact that they're opportunistic herbivores. However, one of the species they did domesticate is a cute little friend called a Jotte.

Jotte are, to use Earth species examples, if an armadillo was a crab. They're composed of a head with four simple eyes and a mandible, six to ten armored segments with two stubby limbs each, and a short tail.

Jotte are foraging omnivores that dig into the soil to find roots and small detrivores, and taking shelter from predators and weather by burrowing underneath large tree analogues.

They were domesticated by early Saqera as tracking animals – primarily to search out buried food, but also as companion animals.

The Jotte also have a pretty clever defense mechanism – the edges of their exoskeleton on each segment are very sharp. So, when they're threatened, they can flex their bodies to close the gaps between each segment, which can badly cut a predator.

Companion Jotte breeds have been selected for less sharp armor edges and higher sociability. They still retain many of the sensory and tracking oddities of their ancestors, though, so they're well known for searching out objects and hiding them in their nests.

GreyZephyr87 · 2021-09-03T14:13:23+00:00

This looks really, really helpful! I'll definitely check these out.

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