Cycle of Ruins

I wanted to stick in a cycle of sacrifice-for-value uncommon monocolor lands. As with Evolving Wilds, it's a way to get cards into the graveyard for reave kickers that doesn't make you feel like you have to waste or throw away cards. In addition, since this is such a creature-focused set, it's a way to put in some spell-like effects that will be put in the land slot rather than making somebody play fewer creatures in a limited format.

That led me toward the memorial cycle from Dominaria as inspiration, but with my own variations to represent Guthreham:

These were once major communities of Guthreham that Janell convinced the citizenry must be abandoned in order to keep dark forces of artifice, necromancy, and demonology from returning to the plane. Over decades , they've decayed and the overgrowth has taken them over. But there's still things to pick over there for scavengers who are willing to brave the wilds.

I've decided on a rare cycle of allied-color dual lands, but am not sure of the format for them as yet. This set lacks specialized mana-ramping or card-sorting mechanics, so it feels like they need to have conditions to come in untapped.

Reprints for Overgrowth

Thinking of a few bread-and-butter common spells that would fit in Overgrowth and don't really require me to attempt to reinvent or adapt for the set.

With green primary for the mutate mechanic, I want a fight spell to be as simple, given the potential of triggered reactions on both ends. And it might get messy if we try to use fight as an instant. So sorcery speed and no frills seems like the way to go here. If you target a creature you control with mutate, it will get the +1/+1 counter before it fights, just like Hunt the Weak. Looking at the casting cost of Hunt the Weak, that gives Prey Upon some major value if you've got a mutate creature to use it on.

Final reward fits well mechanically and flavorfully in Overgrowth to capture the idea in black of thoroughly obliterating a creature to keep it from becoming zombified by the various plagues going around. Mechanically it takes out a potential graveyard target for various reave kickers.

Given how heavily this set emphasizes creatures with three of its four mechanics, a cheap creature counter is pretty much a no-brainer.

EDITING TO ADD:

I totally forgot about Evolving Wilds, which, was actually the first card I realized I wanted to reprint in the set. Getting a land in your graveyard early is very useful for reave kickers, and this was why I ultimately decided that I should take the "non-land" distinction off the cards reave could exile out of your graveyard. In a limited format--especially in this creature-focused set--it may be a few turns before you end up with cards in your graveyard. Evolving Wilds helps speed up red-black decks.

You Know What Magic Doesn't Have?

A: Skunks!

Seriously, I looked through Scryfall and was surprised to discover not a single skunk. Not even in the unsets. Well, that needs to be fixed!

I thought of several different green ideas for the skunk. First it was 2/2 first and was blockable by only one creature (who is brave enough to stop it?), but that is completely pointless on such a small creature. Then I thought about it destroying an enchantment or artifact when entering the battlefield, but I wanted to put fecund on it, and that seemed too strong, even at uncommon. But flavoring it as a creature that punishes you for blocking it by getting even nastier is a green thing and it definitely fits a skunk.

I seem to be defaulting into putting fecund on every small animal creature I'm making. I'm not sure if that's the right thing to do. If this were a "real" set, there'd be a problem where with the sheer number of token creatures this set is creating. I might take fecund off a few of them, especially if it makes G/W too fast compared to other color combos. Having fecund encourages aggression since you'll get another copy of the creature when it dies.

The Races of Overgrowth: Cephalids

The cephalids of Guthreham are not quite like the ones of Dominaria. They are deep-sea, octopus-like humanoids, but they lack the xenophobia-driven conspiracies and predatory mindset of the Dominarian counterparts.

For Overgrowth I actually took inspiration for cephalids from octopuses themselves. Octopuses are known for being incredibly smart, but unlike pretty much every other intelligent race, they typically are not a communal or collective species. In the animal kingdom, pretty much every race that ranks high in intelligence--whether, humans, monkeys, parrots, dolphins, elephants, etc.--also favors communal living and child-rearing. Octopuses are very rare in that they do not.

So in Guthreham, cephalids are brilliantly smart creatures from birth with a natural adeptness with magic. And they're not raised or schooled in any conventional sense. Each cephalid, even as a young child, is expected to fend for him or herself and make their own way in the seas.

This would sound cruel for any other race, but their high early intelligence means that this is not some absurd death sentence. The young cephalids adapt and grow very quickly.

Culturally, this led to a very self-directed society that doesn't really have any sense of a "community." And while cephalids are not emotionless automatons, they are also not terribly empathetic creatures and don't easily grasp concepts that involve caring about what other people do. Their emotions are deeply personal, both in good and bad ways. They can feel fear when they're in danger and happiness when they succeed. But they don't feel grief over another cephalid's death or outrage over injustices (on the flip side they also don't envy over somebody else's accomplishments or feel greed for their belongings).

All of this very self-directed, inward-focused society matters because they remained out of the war between the humans and elves and the undead and demons entirely decades and decades ago, and they were generally oblivious to the developing overgrowth. Not completely unaware--they are intensely curious consumers of knowledge and history. But they didn't see a threat. And they were completely unprepared when the growth led to the spread of diseases, and the diseases pushed the afflicted to coastal regions, and then the afflictions got passed into the ecology of the sea.

Because cephalids are so self-directed, they have no concept of public health. They are not religious. They have no priests or healers. Since they have no emotional attachment to each other, they typically just accepted that cephalids get sick and die eventually. Even when it's them.

But the the overgrowth brought an alarming escalation of disease into the cephalids' ecology and they are dying now at a much more rapid rate. The diseases are affecting their brilliant minds, causing them to go crazy, which in turn makes them extremely dangerous to themselves and others, particularly the desperate and also sick communities of humans who have taken up refuge on the Blightcoast.

Cephalids are now increasingly realizing that they have to start thinking of themselves as a race and a community or they are going to die off entirely. They still might be too late.

Planeswalker Iterating (and Two New Ones!)

As I'm designing and editing and feeling the mechanics of the color combinations and how the story beats are flowing, I'm getting a better sense of both Xirn and Janell.

Here's the current incarnation of Xirn:

Now that I feel like I've nailed down the "learning from death" theme and scavenging style of gameplay for U/B in this set, I am really enjoying this iteration of Xirn. It is very attached to the concepts of the set, but it's not so parasitic that Xirn can't be a good U/B Johnny build-around planeswalker. His plus is intended to facilitate reave on your black cards. The play pattern here is that you dispose of your creatures this way and gain knowledge from exiling them. Then, when he grows strong enough, you recycle your spells.

I need to put together a "races of Guthreham" post on the cephalids, but I do want to make it clear that they're not black because they are evil or even naturally predatory. They have unfortunately become widely afflicted with diseases and corruption, requiring them to make some very harsh, very black choices to try to survive. Xirn himself is afflicted with disease, and he thought he was at death's door when his planeswalking skills sparked. Why this disease growing inside his body would make him aware that the plane is pregnant is an intriguing and relevant mystery.

Meanwhile, though I had initially planned for Janell to be W/G to reflect the ties between the humans and elves of the Arbor, her borderline obsession with believing she can "manage" Guthreham's growth and her refusal to recognize that the spread of disease and plagues are connected to this growth really pulls her away from green. The more I develop the set, the more she feels monowhite, and this will help make her an antagonist for the set--not necessarily evil, but obsessed with trying to make sure that whatever it is Guthreham is going to give birth to is pure and holy:

Her second skill is intended to "reset" mutate creatures and eliminate artifacts in tune with her concepts of managing beasts and eliminating the corrupting influences of the unnatural. Her emblem is designed so that it doesn't target anything, so it allows white to compete with mutate creatures while not itself triggering mutate abilities.

As I'm worldbuilding more, I'm coming to realize that the storyline is drawing me towards having planeswalker leader types among the elementals in the Deep Tangle and also perhaps among the tribal ogres.

Here's what I imagine to be either a dryad or a treefolk planeswalker

Her first power is intended to be used on mutate creatures. I gave her a mana-producing easy-to-get-to "ultimate" because this set doesn't really have any mana-ramping mechanics. I do worry that red-green might be a little too slow.

I have a red legend among the mage hermits in mind, but as I'm building, the hardy ogres seem more and more like a race that has some secret insight and strength to resist the nature of the overgrowth and survive. That got me thinking about a leader among the ogres with enough power to actually implement those harsh solutions to keep pestilence and overgrowth at bay.

Like Xirn, Skurn isn't evil per se (Oh god, I just realized their names rhymed. I'll have to change Skurn's). But he's a strong believer that the reave concept--disintegrating the dead and taking them completely out of the cycle of life and death--is the only way to keep the overgrowth at bay.

So the big question here is whether Iya and Skurn also realize that Guthreham is pregnant, and what are their attitudes about it?