 Planeswalkers, Lesser Planeswalkers
| Dav Flamerock |
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The Gods
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This was taken from a recent MTG Article on Planeswalkers. I am basically using their version of the Planeswalker, so I figured their description would suit best.
| QUOTE | | Planeswalkers are the prime movers of the Multiverse, beings who got a little more of the dust of destiny swirled into their souls than the average populace. They're wandering sculptors who wreak great and terrible things from the clay of AEther and raw mana. They're among the most important protagonists—and antagonists—in our story. |
| QUOTE | Imagine for a moment that you were able, with some amount of careful concentration, to teleport to several other habitable planets in the universe, far outside of our own solar system. For the sake of argument, this power is not effortless, so you can't do it every moment—but it works. You get this stern look on your face, a little vein pops out in your temple, and later you're standing on the surface of another planet a hundred million light-years away, a little out of breath but perfectly intact. You have a repertoire of a handful of worlds to which you can travel in this way. For the purposes of this thought experiment, that's your only superhuman ability; everything else about you is the same. You're a traveler, and that's your whole power.
Even then, however, you would have a strong claim to being the most powerful person in history. Just in virtue of being able to think, observe, and learn while on your intergalactic travels, you'd grow to know more than any human being in history ever has. You'd see wonders of other worlds, meet denizens of inconceivable civilizations, learn secrets of our universe unknown to any other scientist, philosopher, or theologian of your entire race. You'd be the most important human being in Earth's history, and we haven't even started talking about other powers yet.
Imagine the kind of perspective you'd have. Physicists wouldn't have to guess and theorize about how the other side of the universe behaved—they'd just ask you what it looked like when you went there. World leaders wouldn't consult their committees and advisors for guidance—they'd ask you to share the cautionary tales of other intelligent civilizations that you observed directly. You would be an incredible resource to humanity, perhaps even its hero. You'd probably be worshipped by some and feared by others—some would probably even try to control you and the power you possess.
You might, in fact, choose to keep your ability a secret. Keep a low profile. Try to do the best you could with the power you wield, or just reserve your abilities for your own edification. It would pain you, day in and day out, to watch your ignorant homeworld make so many mistakes, mistakes you could have prevented with the knowledge you possessed. But that's better than being a slave or weapon for petty powermongers, or whatever other kind of tool you'd be used as.
The more you realize what a disaster revealing your secret would cause, the more distanced you feel from your own community. You begin to feel like an alien on your own planet, a stranger in an all-too-familiar land. You might teleport away from home more and more, or you might stay in some secluded corner of Earth while your sanity slowly frays, knowing what's possible but unable to handle the fullness of it. Either way, you might begin to wonder whether your birth on Earth was not your preordained destiny, but rather a cosmic happenstance that could easily have gone otherwise. You begin to wonder where, exactly, you belong in the universe, and whether your gift of travel is a sign that your true purpose is to find that mysterious place where your soul can finally rest.
Whoa. This planeswalker stuff is not for the faint of heart. But we're just getting started. |
| QUOTE | Okay, back up a bit. New thought experiment. Re-ravel your hypothetical sanity and rewind back to the point where you first learned you can planeswalk—er, planet-teleport. Now imagine that, in addition to your teleporting ability, you had the ability to weild magic. (Start rubbing your hands together, folks, because now it's getting good.)
The first spell you know, let's say, allows you to shoot a small bolt of flame at a nearby person. It's not enough to kill anyone you'd fire it at, but it's flashy, and it's extremely easy for you. You can basically do it as much as you want—given enough time, you could destroy anyone who stood in your way just with this little, repeated jab of flame. Zot. Zot. Zot. No sweat. You get the point.
The second of your spells takes a bit more out of you, but it's much more powerful. You can instantly destroy just about any living thing by, say, causing a mote of plasma-hot stellar matter to appear inside of it, at the cost of a huge investment of personal will and concentration, and immense fatigue afterward. But just think—almost everyone you see, even the bizarre monsters you meet on your interplanetary journeys, is potentially ash in your eyes. If you're willing to take on the migraine it would cause, you could burn just about anyone from the inside, no matter how important or powerful. Got a little power rush going on? Good—you're starting to get it. Moving on.
Your third spell is something special—and something frightening. You've never cast it, so you're only intuitively aware that it's even an option to you. You can cause everything around you, from horizon to horizon, to erupt in a blast of flame that will engulf everything, including probably yourself, in a cataclysmic moment of omni-destructive rage. This inferno smolders inside of you at all times, threatening to come to the surface when you have the most access to mystical energy. At times when you're at your most powerful, you feel this spell begging to be cast, and you barely have the willpower to keep it in. Hot.
That's your list of spells. You carry these powers wherever you go, on Earth and on any planet you visit. You're a loaded gun of magical potential, combined with the knowledge and perspective gained through of all your intergalactic travels. You were a shoo-in for the title of "most powerful and important human being in history" even before you were some sort of pyrokinetic wunderkind, but now you're a dead lock.
You're also probably a tremendous, swaggering ass.
Which leads us to the third and final part of our thought experiment. |
| QUOTE | Now suppose that, during all your travels chasing secrets across the stars, you run into someone else who can do the things you can. You meet another person, not necessarily human, who also has the power to world-teleport and to cast a few signature spells.
Holy crap. This changes everything.
You'd probably have mixed feelings. On the one hand, this person might be someone you could reach out to, literally one of the only people in the universe who could truly understand your experiences and your potential. This person could temper your growing sense of isolation, and perhaps ward off the insanity that you knew was gnawing at the edges of your mind. This person could be a beacon of hope for you and your strange life, a kindred spirit set against a backdrop of a scale that no one of either of your homeworlds could ever imagine.
But on the other hand, this person could represent a unique threat. You're no longer the only one with your powers. The existence of this other world-teleporter jeopardizes your position of importance in the universe—and for the first time, you face real competition. What if he or she is better at it than you? You may have gotten a bit lazy after so many years of being hardly challenged—you've always had all the answers, and whenever your vast perspective wasn't enough to figure out a problem, you could always burn it away. But this person can do everything you can do—and possibly more. What if he decides to use your own powers against you, or do something you've never seen before? What if he's been using his powers for longer, or has access to more far-flung worlds—and their wealth of secret knowledge—than you? This other person is the unknown, the X factor, in a universe that you thought you had almost figured out. |
Well folks, this is it. Our main characters will be planeswalkers, and while this particular planeswalker being described was an arrogant pyromancer, yours could be any number of things. Imagine a planeswalker as a normal character – a mage of one race on your plane – except with the ability to teleport between planes and with a tripled (or something) magic resource (however your magic happens to work). Planeswalkers are mortal, they still have limits, but their limits are far beyond anyone else’s. And the ability to planeswalk isn’t only the ability to go between planes – it can be used to teleport within your own plane as well.
What’s interesting is that there’s another kind of planeswalker – one that’s more powerful and less common – and there’s only five of them in existence. They are Greater Planeswalkers, and none of us get them (well, for the record the staff gets them to make major things happen, but they basically exist to make the condition of the Multiverse where it is now come about.)
PS: Almost forgot, all Planeswalkers are immortal.
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| Dav Flamerock |
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The Gods
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Joined: 17-September 07
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Ok I FINALLY figured out what I felt so unsure about regarding Planeswalking in Planar Chaos/Worldfolding. Luckily, some further exploration into Jace Beleren has helped me figure out just what I need to articulate to make PC work in a way that is... well, better. Planeswalking is not a simple task. It takes large amounts of concentration, so you can't just flit around like mad. That makes fighting boring, because you can just Planeswalk all over the place. However, teleporting, if it's available to your character's magic (aka, Marie would not know how to teleport). YES you can planeswalk in the plane you're already in, but it's subject to the same difficulties as other planeswalking. YES you may teleport with the ease that we have been able to planeswalk up until now, if it would make sense for you to have that ability. This shouldn't affect the story too much, except that it will eliminate things like planeswalking-as-you-fall or planeswalking-in-battle (teleporting is still an option). |
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| Zennshi Dormu |
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PIME TARADOX
Group: Moderators
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Joined: 27-September 07
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Zennshi can't teleport, although one would assume that he can slow down time long enough to planeswalk quickly.
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