User:Ontos/ARN flavor
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Researching how to approach the Arabian Nights (ARN for short) set's flavor.
- 1. ARN's flavor was originally based on several translations, adaptations and critiques of One Thousand and One Nights (OTaON for short) - a collection of folktales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age, but originating from a number of cultures.
- 2. At some point it was decided to canonize the set into Magic's Multiverse. The effort was made to also create new lore (including the Thousandfold Refraction of Rabiah, explaining why the set's unique characters did not have the legendary type (a mechanic introduced later)) as well as new stories:
- Encyclopedia Dominia entries and stories
- Arabian Nights (comic)
- The OTaON stories have many real-world references and by extension, so do the ARN cards.
- The problem is then, how to understand the Arabian Nights cards in the context of Magic's lore.
- 3. The official set pages are insufficient to solve the issue, as they don't clearly point to the lore integration, only referring to the original OTaON inspiration:
- Nov 1999: The flavor of the 92 cards was based on the characters, stories, and objects in the classic Middle Eastern tales, 1001 Arabian Nights.
- FEB 2011: The flavor of the cards was based on the characters, stories, and objects in the classic Middle Eastern tales, 1001 Arabian Nights.
- OCT 2025: Relieve the tales of Sindbad and Aladdin, battle powerful djinns and efreets, and journey to strange exotic lands.
- 4. However, the more story-focused lists (matching sets to their planes) acknowledge the ARN set as representing Rabiah without any stipulations:
- 5. Therefore all real-world proper nouns used in the card names of the Arabian Nights expansion should be understood as being part of the lore of Rabiah.
- 6. It may be a matter of opinion how to interpret such names (or if it should be attempted at all), but my view is that the referent of the name should at least retain its basic characteristics within the context of the lore (in other words, at least the core intention behind the design of the card's flavor should be retained).
- For instance 'Serendib' (today's Sri Lanka) should still refer to an island.
We'll see how far this logic can go...
- table
- 7. The issue of flavor texts adds another layer of uncertainty. Over the history of the game, a number of cards from different sets used real-life quotes without implying that their authors or what they were referring to (or Earth itself for that matter) are part of the Magic's lore. Arguably then, the flavor texts in the ARN set quoting the real-life works shouldn't be accepted as part of the lore either. The issue may arise if a quote from the real-life source refers specifically to a character or place accepted as part of the lore (see 5.). Judgment on case by case basis may be required. We'll see how it goes...
- table
in the design, Garfield made the connection between the cards' color (blue) and the Island which produces that mana ("The blue pair were both named, appropriately, after an island, which I believe is Ceylon (better known as Serendib)"). And Serendib Sorcerer was printed since then, practically confirming that the noun type didn't change (from a place to a name of a tribe for instance) in WotC's understanding which seals the deal for me. Serendib Sorcerer is a shifted card from Planar Chaos, representing alternate realities, suggesting human presence instead that of djinns' and efreets' on the alternate Serendib.
- check the comics and their articles