Planes and planets
Lore forum
Posted on March 16, 2015, 7:58 a.m. by Named_Tawyny
So I was thinking about Origins, which got me thinking about Planes, which got me thinking about Planets.
Have we ever been to more than one planet on a Plane? does anybody know if planets are limited to one world or if, for example, there are other, non-city worlds in Ravnica?
Is there canon on this?
The Doctor says... #3
My personal headcanon for the Magic universe is similar to that of LotR. Where each plane is just a single world that expanses a massive and vast distance.
March 16, 2015 11:56 a.m.
asasinater13 says... #4
Innistrad has a moon, that kind of shows that there's more to space than the individual world.
March 16, 2015 12:21 p.m.
A lot of cards reference celestial objects (Sway of the Stars, etc.), so I think it's safe to say there are universes, just no visited planes have the means to reach them.
March 16, 2015 12:24 p.m.
DarkMagician says... #7
I like that we've seen planes with the technology to traverse the Aeons but not space.
March 16, 2015 2:25 p.m.
Named_Tawyny says... #8
Jay, surely if there were other habitable planes, a Planeswalker could planeswalk to them instead of the ones of which we're familiar, though?
March 16, 2015 5:20 p.m.
Named_Tawyny says... #10
That's okay. I'll try to explain it in simpler language. Sorry about that.
Planeswalkers travel astrally, from place to place, across the blind eternities. They do this by a magical means.
When they travel across the planes, they aren't bound by normal rules of space and position. (Probably. I suppose it's theoretically possible that each planet on each plane is in an identical co-location. But that just opens up way more issues, especially given that they have different heavenly bodies.)
This means that even if people native to the plane (who can't magically travel) have no way of visiting other planets on their plane, the planeswalkers shouldn't have that same issue. (Because if they can just appear somewhere, they should be able to just appear somewhere else).
March 16, 2015 7:13 p.m.
I know how planeswalking and stuff works, your wording was just confusing ;)
Anyway, maybe the Planeswalkers are on another planet. Maybe Ravnica exists with other planets in its plane which are larger/more important, but Ravnica is just where they landed.
March 16, 2015 7:16 p.m.
CastleSiege says... #12
For all we know, planes could actually be planets and the Blind Eternities/Void are the vastness of empty space between them.
March 16, 2015 10:23 p.m.
Even if a plane had several planets, if there's no life/community there, then why would a planeswalker visit that? do you want a whole set with a single walker and all Artifact Equipments?
March 17, 2015 12:42 a.m.
Named_Tawyny says... #14
Well yes, I suppose I should have specified 'inhabited planets'.
March 17, 2015 7:51 a.m.
That's how I view Planeswalking as well, but I also view the various visited worlds a 'anchor-points' of the Plane.
So if a Planeswalker is on Mirrodin, and travels to the furthest Moon... then 'walks' to Ravnica, they would end up on the main Planet on Ravnica. - Pulled there by the anchor point that is the planet. - Not out in space, the distance that Mirodin's moon was.
March 17, 2015 8:39 a.m.
To be more specific, the 'anchor points' draw-in Planeswalker Sparks. - This is why sparks bind with life to begin with... drawn to the anchor-point, then binds with intelligent life as it is forming.
When 'walking', the spark within the Planeswalker is drawn to the 'anchor-point', and the Planeswalker ends up on the surface of the planet.
March 17, 2015 8:44 a.m.
Named_Tawyny says... #17
That's a really interesting way of looking at things, Rayenous. So, under that system, would planeswalkers always arrive at the same place on the planet?
March 17, 2015 8:49 a.m.
No... the entire planet acts as the anchor. They would end up arriving at the closest relative location on the surface of the planet... with practice, there may also be some limited control of their arrival location. Sort of a last minute 'effort' to adjust their arrival point. - Like a Mars lander using thrusters to adjust its position after entering the atmosphere. - With further practice they would eventually be able to select any location on the surface.
March 17, 2015 8:55 a.m.
There is a point in "future sight" book (pages 255-256 for anyone who wants to look it up and read the full description) when bolas is running from leshrac through the multiverse and leshrac is arriving at diferent planes just a few seconds after bolas planeswalks there and away and one of the planes is a "strange plane....like equal haves of the same exotic fruit, two tear-shaped bodies that together formed a perfect sphere" so this seems to be a dual planet of sorts to me not sure if this counts or not but it's the first thing that came to mind when I read this thread
March 22, 2015 3:15 p.m.
copy this into google and open the doc. i didn't read all of it, but it sounds like it answers everything
https://www.wizards.com/d20/files/v35/Planes.rtf
March 28, 2015 4:22 a.m.
I think that the document posted by tempest above is almost completely wrong. It's from the Pathfinder Tabletop Roleplaying game also published by WOTC, and unless someone can confirm that the Planes in that universe and the Planes in the MTG Universe are the same deal then that link means nothing. However i think it's safe to say it holds some relevance, since it might give us some insight into how WOTC view the Planes they designed for MTG, and that they may be similar. However the Pathfinder planes have certain very specific names and they're 100% just alternate realities. Like the celestial body(planet) would be the exact same in every plane, which is unlikely the case in the MTG verse since, well, compare Mirrodin and a larger world like Zendikar or smaller like Ravnica. It has more moons, different size and whatever. But i can't really say much on this subject since, as noted above, different planets may be different anchors depending on the Plane. I still strongly believe that document doesn't belong here :)
April 2, 2015 5:34 p.m.
haha. i didn't really look at it. google searched it and that was what came up first. read the first dozen lines or so and thought "this sounds about right" XD forgive me lol
April 2, 2015 10:21 p.m.
Planes are all different with different setups in terms of space, physics, magical laws, etc. The only common threads to every plane in the multiverse are: Lands produce mana, mana comes in five colors. (Which leads to the lovely stoner theory of, "What if the multiverse is all real and we just got screwed on the one plane where lands don't produce mana?)
As to Named_Tawyny's original question about Ravnica: No, we have never been to another planet on Ravnica. And we never will. Why? Because as we learn in the Dissension novel, Ravnica has no outer space. You go too high and the plane just ends, that's it. Weird, huh? It kind of feeds into the whole cityscape, overcrowding feel, because there's just nowhere else to go. This is also why the spirits of the dead tend to linger on Ravnica, because apparently nothing can escape the boundary of the plane.
Something else of note is that at the time this is revealed, we also learn that boundary means that planeswalkers are not able to visit Ravnica, although there is knowledge that they could and did visit during Ravnica's past. However, it is never said when exactly PW's stopped coming.
Clearly, this is no longer the case, but it was never made entirely clear what caused PW's to suddenly be able to 'walk to Ravnica again, although the Mending, the dissolution of the Guildpact, and the destruction of Sunhome and it's reality warping core engine are all likely candidates and all happened around the same time.
Ravnica is also a globe, albeit a rather small and kind of wonky one. There are east and west poles, underground oceans, and it took the Nephilim under a day to make it almost halfway around the sphere.
April 4, 2015 5:52 a.m.
@Kozelek The plane that passage is referring to is Kamigawa, as the plane is comprised of the physical world and the spirit world, where the Kami dwell. They sort of exist alongside of each other in the same space like parallel dimensions. I haven't read those books, but as far as I know there's no indication that Kamigawa is laking in outer space, only that for every part of the plane there exists a counterpart in the spirit plane.
And for everyone mentioning Mirrodin, keep in mind that Mirrodin is a created plane, so only the parts that were created by the planeswalker who made the plane (Karn) actually exist. Created planes exist in pockets of the blind eternities, and pre-mending it was impossible to planeswalk to one without already knowing where it was, but that seems to no longer be the case. It also used to be the case that a being of great power, usually the planeswalker who made the plane, would have to dwell within the plane in order to maintain it. However, Karn made have figured out how to make Mirrodin self sustaining, as Urza states at one point that it could be done if all the colors of mana were made to be in balance, and he would have to try it at some point when he had time. This is supported by the fact that Karn is, in most respects, Urza's spiritual successor / child.
Mirrodin is also quite small, and is made up of a series of nested hollow spheres with five mana balls for suns (one in each color). The suns are balls of pure mana, are much smaller than an actual star, and are much closer to the surface of the planet. It's worth noting that Karn probably modeled the nested shpere design off of his knowledge of Phyrexia, as Phyrexia was made up of nine nested spheres with designated functions. This makes the fact that it wound up being New Phyrexia even more particularly ironic.
April 4, 2015 6:17 a.m.
Named_Tawyny says... #25
sonnet666 I may be missing the forest for the trees, but do they explain how the physics of an east and west pole work?
April 4, 2015 8:47 a.m.
They don't. They just mention at one point that a certain powers source comes from a resource at one of the East poles or something. I'll find the actual quote...
April 4, 2015 1:28 p.m.
I was a little off, the have a south pole and a north-west pole, an possibly more:
It was not easy to keep away from such thoughts. After eight successful flights aboard the observosphere, never once had fortune failed him. Kaluzax had ridden the eruption of a geothermic dome at the southern pole, escaped the gullet of a titanic bat-bird, and even been shot from a cannontwice.
Kos understood geothermic domes, at least. He and his third wife had honeymooned at the northwest pole, where most of Ravnicas fresh water came from the reaction of fire and ice. It had been an appropriate honeymoon location, as it turned out.
From Guildpact: Ravnica Cycle, Book II by Cory Herndon
andymaul123 says... #2
I don't have any official evidence either way, but the artwork on Crucible of Worlds may help in your search. Crucible was, however, created through the "You Design the Card" program in 2003 which may affect the design canon.
March 16, 2015 11:11 a.m.