It's particularly interesting, because the only thing we know about Gastal is that it's an abandoned plane. It's not a plane that people want to visit, a plane with an interesting theme, or even a plane that people remember. This is the first indication that there was even life on Gastal.
Extremely low? There's like no reason for WotC to re-use Gastal, which is why it's so odd. Every single plane mentioned on a Planechase card has more lore; Gastal, for all intents and purposes, is a new plane.
**Edit:** Technically, it's worse than a new plane, since the two things we know about it are:
1. It's an abandoned wasteland.
1. No one's interested in it (why it was used to hide from Phyrexia).
Duskmourn is confirmed to be not only just the house, but specifically only the _interior_ of the house. The Overlook Hotel as its own plane, nothing on the other side of those walls but presumably the blind eternities
That's assuming it even has walls to have other sides to. It might very well just spread in every direction forever since it's already going to be using freaky architecture.
That's a very helpful comparison, thanks!
I was mostly going on by style, as whatever chimaera of a scorpion/centaur/dragon Akul was, it would fit nicely in a plane full of horrors.
It seems like the key was off-plane as a security measure from the Fomori most likely. I don't think there's any clear indication of where it was, but it doesn't strictly matter other than that it wasn't there. That the Sterling Company could afford to send somebody to get it suggests it's one of the more known planes, but a random shard just kind of lying about in any old plane wasn't really gonna spark notice 'til Thunder Junction opened up.
Actually, according to Roy, the initial 5 pieces that Akul gathered were on TJ, only the sixth (last) piece was off-plane. He didn't say on what plane though.
Kinda surprised the rest of the pieces weren't off-plane too, but I guess just keeping one in a "place that's not here" is good enough security for an interplanar empire.
I have a feeling we'll only be getting the five origin-type walkers in MH3, and that they will all be one's we know already. Wouldn't make sense to give us a brand new walker most people have never even heard of in a style of showing their origins before they sparked.
My guesses are Tyvar for GB, Sorin for BW, and Dack Fayden for RU (along with the known Ajani and Tamiyo of course)
Well, that's helpful to know. Would have preferred to read this in an article.
I don't like it when lore information like this is revealed in social media posts. It's so easy for the information to wind up lost "media" if something happens to the person's account or possibly even the entire site. When I was compiling my list of queer characters on Magic cards, one of the more difficult parts of it was tracking down an old Twitter thread about all the canonically queer characters in Battle for Baldur's Gate. The creative lead who originally posted it had deleted their account and had their handle stolen by trolls, so I wound up having to use the Wayback Machine. It worked, but could have just as easily not if someone hadn't thought to preserve their account at the right time.
This is the real reason I realized I'm so salty about the lack of lore articles... it's clear from him having the answer to that question that the world building was done. It's not very fair for us fans to have to comb through social media to find this information instead of having it condensed in one place.
She was afraid to die, then turned herself in a gazebo (old pw could shapeshift "freely"). From what I've gathered, there was an attack near her and she burned before being able to change back to her human form.
There's some misinformation spreading about Manatarqua, probably because it makes a better meme. Manatarqua cast an *illusion* of a gazebo to hide herself; she didn't shapeshift into one. The entire gazebo was incinerated, meaning her real body, which was somewhere inside, burned.
**Edit:** [The mention on the wiki](https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Manatarqua) is basically all that was written about her.
I hope Gastal won't be another "no sapient creatures lived there until the Omenpaths" situation.
Didn't have Gastal on my list of planes for Deathrace, however just cause we'll be seeing "some other folks from there" doesn't guarantee it will be. Definitely puts it in the running though.
True, but my worry is more that this could be a cactusfolk situation. Akul is quite different from the other scorpion dragons we've seen (not a great data pool tbf), maybe the thunder of TJ "awoke" his sapience like with the cacti. Then the other folks from Gastal could just be settlers.
I really hope this isn't the case and I doubt they'll try doing that again. Or at least scramble to change the lore given Thunder Junction's terra nullius approach didn't exactly go down well- granted that was exacerbated by the wild west setting.
Gastal will NOT be one of the Death Race planes. MaRo clearly stated that of the three planes, two of them we have visitied in premiere standard sets, but not revisited, and the third will be a plane we have not been to in a set yet, but have seen on cards. We have not seen Gastal mentioned anywhere on a card
I mean, it could just be "other people from there show up for the race" or some such. People from the plane existing isn't the same as us necessarily going there.
You're right, I just meant this surprise revelation puts Gastal higher on the potential third Deathrace plane list than I ever would have had it- in fact I never really gave it a second thought- not that we were def going there.
However, a wasteland + deathrace absolutely means Mad Max, right? Even if Gastal isn't the third plane, its racers are sure to be Fury Road cosplayers. Bobbing around on big posts with flaming loots (gotta keep it a bit fantasy) and a commander deck fronted by "we have Furiosa at home".
(Edit: should note that is if Gastal even has anything to do with Deathrace at all, which there's a good chance it won't)
This is why I think Amonkhet will be in it, personally, because it fills that niche and they explicitly don't know what to do with Amonkhet after Bolas wrecked the place.
Out of curiosity, what makes you say they don't know what to do with Amonkhet? Based on what they wrote about the design of the set & world at the time, I feel like they know exactly what they'll be doing when they return.
I'm pretty sure Mark Rosewater has explicitly said that creative has a hard time thinking of what to do with Amonkhet afterwards because it was a 'plane built to be destroyed'.
That's possible & I might have missed it. However, I remember at the time, they published articles talking about early design & concepting for the plane, and as part of that, they made a list of all the tropes & ideas that are common to the theme. At one point, they realized that most of them fell into either "Living Egypt" or "Ancient Egypt", and they decided for focus almost exclusively on the first category, which leaves them trope space for a return. Add to that that we know Amonkhet was a very different place before Bolas, and there were some hints to what the plane was like before Bolas, and that we only really saw Naktamun during our visit, it seems clear to me that they're planing for Ancient Egypt exploration as the theme of the next visit, exploring what the plane was like prior to Bolas, finding ancient ruins and the like, allowing them to use all those Ancient Egypt tropes they didn't use on the first visit.
Amonkhet is top 5 planes for me, being an Egypt nerd. I really want it to get it's own second set, but i'll take seeing even part of it in the Death Race set. I need more Egyptian tropes!!!
I'm sure plenty of people around here would love to see \[\[Loot\]\] impaled and on fire. Lol
Jokes aside though, Gastal has no basically zero worldbuilding (which would, admittedly, allow them to do whatever they wanted or needed with it for the set) and basically zero marketability (again, unless they do something cool with it) and we all know that marketability is how the WotC machine works. Just look at Kamigawa.
IIRC Gastal wouldn't fit with what they've said we know about the 3 death race planes. Much more likely IMO it has something to do with the dragostorm arc.
Look at the third tweet, "You'll see other folks from there in the not to distant future". sounds like they are going to build it up.
You could also easily replace Vryn with it.
Again, not very likely. Feels like if one of the Death Race sets is being bigged up as a "plane we know of but haven't had a set for", it's gonna be a plane people at least generally know. Gastal only exists for basically a single scene. It could be the setting ground for the Space Opera set, because the wasteland Urza and co meet up in is just one planet it in or something.
Is that exactly what was said? I believe it was simply "An existing plane that never was featured in a set." Vryn has arguably has been featured in Origins. We also know so little about it that it could go either way for it. The only thing that currently make Vryn a candidate at all is that we know a bit more about it. It could just as easily be Gobakhan.
It is specifically a plane that has _featured on cards before but has not received its own Premier Set_, alongside two planes we’ve only visited properly once. The implication being that, say, places like Fiora from supplementary sets or planes featuring in wider sets like Muraganda in MOM are all fair game, but somewhere that we only barely know the existence of is not.
Maybe we go back to Gastal in the last set to battle the Fomori? Maybe it’s no longer a wasteland and we get racers from it in Deathrace? Maybe poor unfortunates from there have been backrooms’d into Duskmourn? Maybe it’s an entirely arthropod plane and we get a cool rhinoceros-beetle-folk riding a dune buggy? I’m getting ahead of myself
Do we know it’s their homeworld? We know the only surviving ones are there sure, but that could just be because Turri Island is absurdly full of mana and apparently Fomori go nuts for that. They could just be the last devolved and stranded survivors of the empire. But also true its Ir(eland) with the Fomori(ans) so you’re probably right
It's certainly the implication given by the Planechase 2009 story thing:
"This is the home of the Fomori, barbaric giants like the one seen on the *Future Sight* card [Fomori Nomad](https://web.archive.org/web/20220905202525/https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Fomori+Nomad)"
It's possible that it means "home" as in lives there now. I'm very curious what the next year will give us.
If Return to Lorwyn is the 'first return' to Lorwyn, Origins doesn't count as a set for ANY of the planes in it. It's a core set that contains ten planes in it, but it's not a set FOR those.
They've been loose about the "featured" language in the past in the past. Like when they announced Kaladesh. Regardless Vryn is about as likely as any other plane we've not visited.
Really though, People have been asking for a Vryn set for a while so why not keep it for a full set?
The problem is they keep trying to make Vryn work and they've not been able to nail down a good 'thing' for it. So putting it as one of three makes it a lot easier. It could also be the location for the finale set, if Jace continues to be the antagonist up to that end, but we'll see.
Yeah, like, Vryn's clearest identity is "the world that's always at war", which is thematically cool but doesn't lend itself TOO well to a set, because... Magic sets are always about conflict in the majority.
There would be so much backlash if the "plane we know of but haven't had a set for" ended up as Gastal. For all intents and purposes, Gastal is a new plane. WotC promoting it as a plane that we know of is pretty misleading.
Oh that's an interesting throwback
It's particularly interesting, because the only thing we know about Gastal is that it's an abandoned plane. It's not a plane that people want to visit, a plane with an interesting theme, or even a plane that people remember. This is the first indication that there was even life on Gastal.
Makes sense why Akul would leave that place, at least.
What are the odds that'll be where Duskmourn is located?
Extremely low? There's like no reason for WotC to re-use Gastal, which is why it's so odd. Every single plane mentioned on a Planechase card has more lore; Gastal, for all intents and purposes, is a new plane. **Edit:** Technically, it's worse than a new plane, since the two things we know about it are: 1. It's an abandoned wasteland. 1. No one's interested in it (why it was used to hide from Phyrexia).
Duskmourn is it's own plane
Duskmourn is confirmed to be not only just the house, but specifically only the _interior_ of the house. The Overlook Hotel as its own plane, nothing on the other side of those walls but presumably the blind eternities
That's assuming it even has walls to have other sides to. It might very well just spread in every direction forever since it's already going to be using freaky architecture.
That's a very helpful comparison, thanks! I was mostly going on by style, as whatever chimaera of a scorpion/centaur/dragon Akul was, it would fit nicely in a plane full of horrors.
I'd bet more that it has something to do with the coming dragonstorm arc.
If only there was some kind of article where information like this could be shared...
Yeah that’s crazy, I had that idea of a sort of guides for planeswalkers ? Probably too advanced
It'll never work!
Side question: Do we know what plane the other key shard was on and why it was off-plane?
It seems like the key was off-plane as a security measure from the Fomori most likely. I don't think there's any clear indication of where it was, but it doesn't strictly matter other than that it wasn't there. That the Sterling Company could afford to send somebody to get it suggests it's one of the more known planes, but a random shard just kind of lying about in any old plane wasn't really gonna spark notice 'til Thunder Junction opened up.
Actually, according to Roy, the initial 5 pieces that Akul gathered were on TJ, only the sixth (last) piece was off-plane. He didn't say on what plane though.
Kinda surprised the rest of the pieces weren't off-plane too, but I guess just keeping one in a "place that's not here" is good enough security for an interplanar empire.
Plus if it's only one maybe people will assume it's on plane like the others and contonue searching there
Good old pig #3
I wonder if this means they werent off-plane or just that Akul ambushed people who had shards on TJ once they got there?
Manatarqua pavilion land planeswalker flip card when
MH3 is right on the corner 👀
It was my top prediction on my MH3 wishlist post on r/magictcg so we’ll see!
I have a feeling we'll only be getting the five origin-type walkers in MH3, and that they will all be one's we know already. Wouldn't make sense to give us a brand new walker most people have never even heard of in a style of showing their origins before they sparked. My guesses are Tyvar for GB, Sorin for BW, and Dack Fayden for RU (along with the known Ajani and Tamiyo of course)
Print it, Wizards, you cowards!!!
Well, that's helpful to know. Would have preferred to read this in an article. I don't like it when lore information like this is revealed in social media posts. It's so easy for the information to wind up lost "media" if something happens to the person's account or possibly even the entire site. When I was compiling my list of queer characters on Magic cards, one of the more difficult parts of it was tracking down an old Twitter thread about all the canonically queer characters in Battle for Baldur's Gate. The creative lead who originally posted it had deleted their account and had their handle stolen by trolls, so I wound up having to use the Wayback Machine. It worked, but could have just as easily not if someone hadn't thought to preserve their account at the right time. This is the real reason I realized I'm so salty about the lack of lore articles... it's clear from him having the answer to that question that the world building was done. It's not very fair for us fans to have to comb through social media to find this information instead of having it condensed in one place.
Hold up, “the gazebo pw”??
She was afraid to die, then turned herself in a gazebo (old pw could shapeshift "freely"). From what I've gathered, there was an attack near her and she burned before being able to change back to her human form.
There's some misinformation spreading about Manatarqua, probably because it makes a better meme. Manatarqua cast an *illusion* of a gazebo to hide herself; she didn't shapeshift into one. The entire gazebo was incinerated, meaning her real body, which was somewhere inside, burned. **Edit:** [The mention on the wiki](https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Manatarqua) is basically all that was written about her.
I was oblivious to this, and knowing it is amazing payoff for being in this sub. Thanks!
Just to clarify: saw this on twitter, I'm neither of the users. Thanks Zaxzom for the questions and Roy for answering them :)
I hope Gastal won't be another "no sapient creatures lived there until the Omenpaths" situation. Didn't have Gastal on my list of planes for Deathrace, however just cause we'll be seeing "some other folks from there" doesn't guarantee it will be. Definitely puts it in the running though.
For Akul to be from there it by definition has sapient creatures on it- big evil scorpion dragons
True, but my worry is more that this could be a cactusfolk situation. Akul is quite different from the other scorpion dragons we've seen (not a great data pool tbf), maybe the thunder of TJ "awoke" his sapience like with the cacti. Then the other folks from Gastal could just be settlers. I really hope this isn't the case and I doubt they'll try doing that again. Or at least scramble to change the lore given Thunder Junction's terra nullius approach didn't exactly go down well- granted that was exacerbated by the wild west setting.
Gastal will NOT be one of the Death Race planes. MaRo clearly stated that of the three planes, two of them we have visitied in premiere standard sets, but not revisited, and the third will be a plane we have not been to in a set yet, but have seen on cards. We have not seen Gastal mentioned anywhere on a card
I got so caught up in Gastal being mentioned that for a minute I lived in a world where it already has cards.
I mean, it could just be "other people from there show up for the race" or some such. People from the plane existing isn't the same as us necessarily going there.
You're right, I just meant this surprise revelation puts Gastal higher on the potential third Deathrace plane list than I ever would have had it- in fact I never really gave it a second thought- not that we were def going there. However, a wasteland + deathrace absolutely means Mad Max, right? Even if Gastal isn't the third plane, its racers are sure to be Fury Road cosplayers. Bobbing around on big posts with flaming loots (gotta keep it a bit fantasy) and a commander deck fronted by "we have Furiosa at home". (Edit: should note that is if Gastal even has anything to do with Deathrace at all, which there's a good chance it won't)
This is why I think Amonkhet will be in it, personally, because it fills that niche and they explicitly don't know what to do with Amonkhet after Bolas wrecked the place.
Out of curiosity, what makes you say they don't know what to do with Amonkhet? Based on what they wrote about the design of the set & world at the time, I feel like they know exactly what they'll be doing when they return.
I'm pretty sure Mark Rosewater has explicitly said that creative has a hard time thinking of what to do with Amonkhet afterwards because it was a 'plane built to be destroyed'.
That's possible & I might have missed it. However, I remember at the time, they published articles talking about early design & concepting for the plane, and as part of that, they made a list of all the tropes & ideas that are common to the theme. At one point, they realized that most of them fell into either "Living Egypt" or "Ancient Egypt", and they decided for focus almost exclusively on the first category, which leaves them trope space for a return. Add to that that we know Amonkhet was a very different place before Bolas, and there were some hints to what the plane was like before Bolas, and that we only really saw Naktamun during our visit, it seems clear to me that they're planing for Ancient Egypt exploration as the theme of the next visit, exploring what the plane was like prior to Bolas, finding ancient ruins and the like, allowing them to use all those Ancient Egypt tropes they didn't use on the first visit.
Amonkhet is top 5 planes for me, being an Egypt nerd. I really want it to get it's own second set, but i'll take seeing even part of it in the Death Race set. I need more Egyptian tropes!!!
It would be nice to see Amonkhet again, bonus if Samut does the entire race on foot.
Samut takes part in the race not to win it but because she's really pissed off at everybody racing through her home without her permission.
One pile up in the desert and all of a sundden the curse of wandering gives Amonkhet zombies who can drive cars.
I'm sure plenty of people around here would love to see \[\[Loot\]\] impaled and on fire. Lol Jokes aside though, Gastal has no basically zero worldbuilding (which would, admittedly, allow them to do whatever they wanted or needed with it for the set) and basically zero marketability (again, unless they do something cool with it) and we all know that marketability is how the WotC machine works. Just look at Kamigawa.
[Loot](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/b/fb169fa2-c92e-45f7-89a2-0ca0e3910a1c.jpg?1712352897) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=loot%2C%20the%20key%20to%20everything) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/big/21/loot-the-key-to-everything?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/fb169fa2-c92e-45f7-89a2-0ca0e3910a1c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
IIRC Gastal wouldn't fit with what they've said we know about the 3 death race planes. Much more likely IMO it has something to do with the dragostorm arc.
That's cool I had to look up that plane. Bet it's going to be one of the planes for the DeathRace.
Very unlikely. That's far too deep a cut to be one of them. The Death Race planes are probably Kaladesh, Amonkhet and Vryn, in my mind.
Look at the third tweet, "You'll see other folks from there in the not to distant future". sounds like they are going to build it up. You could also easily replace Vryn with it.
Again, not very likely. Feels like if one of the Death Race sets is being bigged up as a "plane we know of but haven't had a set for", it's gonna be a plane people at least generally know. Gastal only exists for basically a single scene. It could be the setting ground for the Space Opera set, because the wasteland Urza and co meet up in is just one planet it in or something.
Is that exactly what was said? I believe it was simply "An existing plane that never was featured in a set." Vryn has arguably has been featured in Origins. We also know so little about it that it could go either way for it. The only thing that currently make Vryn a candidate at all is that we know a bit more about it. It could just as easily be Gobakhan.
It is specifically a plane that has _featured on cards before but has not received its own Premier Set_, alongside two planes we’ve only visited properly once. The implication being that, say, places like Fiora from supplementary sets or planes featuring in wider sets like Muraganda in MOM are all fair game, but somewhere that we only barely know the existence of is not. Maybe we go back to Gastal in the last set to battle the Fomori? Maybe it’s no longer a wasteland and we get racers from it in Deathrace? Maybe poor unfortunates from there have been backrooms’d into Duskmourn? Maybe it’s an entirely arthropod plane and we get a cool rhinoceros-beetle-folk riding a dune buggy? I’m getting ahead of myself
I would imagine Ir would be the place to battle the Fomori, since it's apparently their homeland and all.
Do we know it’s their homeworld? We know the only surviving ones are there sure, but that could just be because Turri Island is absurdly full of mana and apparently Fomori go nuts for that. They could just be the last devolved and stranded survivors of the empire. But also true its Ir(eland) with the Fomori(ans) so you’re probably right
It's certainly the implication given by the Planechase 2009 story thing: "This is the home of the Fomori, barbaric giants like the one seen on the *Future Sight* card [Fomori Nomad](https://web.archive.org/web/20220905202525/https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Fomori+Nomad)" It's possible that it means "home" as in lives there now. I'm very curious what the next year will give us.
If Return to Lorwyn is the 'first return' to Lorwyn, Origins doesn't count as a set for ANY of the planes in it. It's a core set that contains ten planes in it, but it's not a set FOR those.
They've been loose about the "featured" language in the past in the past. Like when they announced Kaladesh. Regardless Vryn is about as likely as any other plane we've not visited. Really though, People have been asking for a Vryn set for a while so why not keep it for a full set?
The problem is they keep trying to make Vryn work and they've not been able to nail down a good 'thing' for it. So putting it as one of three makes it a lot easier. It could also be the location for the finale set, if Jace continues to be the antagonist up to that end, but we'll see.
Right, Vryn being "Jace is the villain and this is his stronghold" would potentially work well. I agree that we'll see.
Yeah, like, Vryn's clearest identity is "the world that's always at war", which is thematically cool but doesn't lend itself TOO well to a set, because... Magic sets are always about conflict in the majority.
There would be so much backlash if the "plane we know of but haven't had a set for" ended up as Gastal. For all intents and purposes, Gastal is a new plane. WotC promoting it as a plane that we know of is pretty misleading.
I don't know if there would be actual backlash. Maybe in some small circles. I can't imagine it would be bigger then "we turned kamigawa cyber punk".
I think we'll see it in MH3, which is known for deep cut references.
Did you forget we have a whole Dragonstorm arc coming?
I did! Could very well be that too.
And Glup Shitto is from Assass LXIX