Okay, fair warning: this theory is essentially the MTG version of making a theory about why Doctor House's patients are all attractive enough to be actors, or why the Marvel movies' Earth faces exactly 1-2 big crises per year. I know that what I'm about to address is as much a convention of Magic storytelling as short snippets of italicized text. But it's something which has bugged me for years, and I believe the theory makes decent sense, so why not go for it?
There's a remarkable lack of language barriers in the Multiverse. In Agents of Artifice, Jace thinks about how Planeswalkers all seem to have some innate skill at translation magics, but of course that's far underselling things - they would need to be so innately skilled that a teenage Nissa Revane could use them instantly upon enountering new elves after the trauma of her first Planeswalk... and remain unaware that she had done so. Unlikely.
But that's not the only thing which gets auto-translated in Magic. Take the Eldrazi: as far as I can tell, dozens (if not hundreds!) of small bands of hunter-gatherers see the Eldrazi rise, and they all simultaneously happen to assign them the exact same name which Ugin uses... which was already the word Sorin and Nahiri had independently started using some time before meeting Ugin. It's not as though they could hear the Eldrazi themselves use that name - not any more than the Eldrazi could give their own names. And yet, everyone innately knows that the Titans are Ulamog, Kozilek, and Emrakul. And that they're the inspiration behind the gods, for that matter, which is not something I could have pieced together by looking at an evil coral mountain and an angel named "Kamsa" side by side.
But that instant and consistent agreement on names is not a new phenomenon to Magic. I have some friends from a metropolitan area in Indiana called Champaign-Urbana. Or maybe it's Urbana-Champaign. Or, wait, maybe it's Urbana-Savoy? Each of them said it differently - and that's a mid-sized city under a single nationality, with a population under a quarter of a million people! Out in the wider world, people kill each other over whether a region is properly Myanmar or Burma. But across multiple continents, everyone calls Zendikar the same thing. Heck, Dominaria has 2.5 times the land area of Earth, but any two Planeswalkers who go there call it the same thing, even if they visited opposite hemispheres.
My new theory is: this is not all merely a narrative convention, but the nature of the Blind Eternities themselves. Just as they are beyond the senses of a clear understanding of time, they transcend language - things of the Eternities and the symbols which represent them are one and the same. Thus, each Plane and Eldrazi Titan is completely entangled with its name, such that to see it is to know the name, instinctively. Planeswalkers, as beings partially touched by the Eternities, don't get anything that extreme, but they still can understand virtually all languages equally, as the Spark within them doesn't distinguish.
... what? Look, I did warn you how silly this was going to be.
Planeswalkers, as beings partially touched by the Eternities, don't get anything that extreme, but they still can understand virtually all languages equally, as the Spark within them doesn't distinguish.
I already assumed something along these lines, that the Spark itself acts as a kind of intangible Babel Fish that does this sort of thing for them. Only, you know, with the added bonus of not being a gross alien thing that crawls into their ear. Language is actually not the thing that gets me about the Multiverse though. What I'm curious about is the off lack of variety in all these worlds...
With the exception of Lorwyn, they all have humans who are biologically indistinguishable from normal Dominarian humans (I assume even to this day Dominaria is the Multiversal standard). Most of them follow the same natural laws as the others (exception of course given to artificial worlds like Mirrodin, Rath, Serra's Realm, etc), such as reliable day-night cycles, the presence of seasons, climate, etc. Clearly all the ones we see have similar atmospheres and gravity, or it'd mess with the planeswalking visitors. Customs between races on different worlds is always pretty similar too. There's not a group of humans on any plane we've seen that are vastly different culturally from something that exists on Dominaria. With the exception, again, of Lorwyn, the same goes for Elves and Goblins. Most goblins, no matter where you are, are dumb and reckless. Most elves are fair and innately connected to the land.
Going off the rails into mostly entirely baseless speculation (just for a second I promise!), I think its because so many of these worlds were "seeded" by greater forces long before anything in recorded Multiverse history. Why do almost all dragons look like Dominarian dragons? Maybe its because the Elder Dragons are responsible for spreading them all over the multiverse (this, as far as I know, is actually probable given what we know of the Elder Dragons). As to who or what seeded so many planes, and why, is a big but that's my personal theory. Maybe that would even help with the language issue... every language spoken by every human society in the multiverse sounds similar because they all originated from the same core language! Okay I'm done now.
Here's a crazy idea: what if the Multiverse itself has its own Elder Gods? Beings even more powerful and mysterious than the Eldrazi. Kozilek thinks himself Lord of Reality, but even he is subject to their whims. Nicol Bolas thinks himself the master tactician and arch-manipulator, but has no concept at all of the fact that even he is, in fact, a pawn of these Elder Gods. They not only spawned the races across the various planes, but they still interfere in their lives on a daily basis, though none of the planar residents have even the faintest inkling about it. They set their customs in place, gave them speech - hence the universality of language - and even dictated their racial characteristics. From Alara to Zendikar, Dominaria to the remotest planes in the multiverse, they see all and manipulate all. They are not worshipped, openly or by secret cults; they have no names; they have no statues created in their likenesses; and yet they can change the history of a plane and alter its reality in one effortless stroke. They can mould and shape the character of individuals, from the smallest homunculus to the mightiest planeswalker, purely at their whim. Truly, these are the beings the merfolk of Zendikar, the philosophers of Meletis, and the cathars of Innistrad should be worshipping. We call them... Wizards of the Coast!
It's been stated by both creative and in-fiction that language spells come easily to planeswalkers. With oldwalkers, it made a lot of sense, and with neowalkers it's just a fact of life that they can more easily understand the spoken word.
Well we understand that all the dragons are from dominaria because the elder dragons seeded the multiverse with dragons and that's how it started for them so why not for all old walkers that did it humans went across the multiverse except some species like elves and goblins that vary from plane to plane and then plane specific creatures
So goblins can be considered to sort of be created from something but when you look at a Khans goblin and a Ravnica goblin and a Kamigawa Goblin they all very quite a bit same for elves when you look at nissa then you look at say dwynen they are very different creatures but they're both elves but humans Angels and dragons stay fairly constant throughout the multiverse
But i do have to agree that a plane like dominaria might be the progenitor of worlds because humans do indeed all match there and dragons do too so i am not opposed to oldwalkers creating most life on the planes
I think its because so many of these worlds were "seeded" by greater forces long before anything in recorded Multiverse history. Why do almost all dragons look like Dominarian dragons? Maybe its because the Elder Dragons are responsible for spreading them all over the multiverse (this, as far as I know, is actually probable given what we know of the Elder Dragons). As to who or what seeded so many planes, and why, is a big but that's my personal theory.
I like to think that when a new plane is born, its soul automatically populates it with the essence of any random species it finds on nearby/accessible planes. It would explain why so many races are found on various different planes, why the wild-life is often identical save for minor cosmetic issues and why despite all this there still doesn't appear to be a common origin point.
But yeah, that will probably never be adressed in the game, because "rules for fictional settings are for nerds"(TM)
There's a remarkable lack of language barriers in the Multiverse. In Agents of Artifice, Jace thinks about how Planeswalkers all seem to have some innate skill at translation magics, but of course that's far underselling things - they would need to be so innately skilled that a teenage Nissa Revane could use them instantly upon enountering new elves after the trauma of her first Planeswalk... and remain unaware that she had done so. Unlikely.
But that's not the only thing which gets auto-translated in Magic. Take the Eldrazi: as far as I can tell, dozens (if not hundreds!) of small bands of hunter-gatherers see the Eldrazi rise, and they all simultaneously happen to assign them the exact same name which Ugin uses... which was already the word Sorin and Nahiri had independently started using some time before meeting Ugin. It's not as though they could hear the Eldrazi themselves use that name - not any more than the Eldrazi could give their own names. And yet, everyone innately knows that the Titans are Ulamog, Kozilek, and Emrakul. And that they're the inspiration behind the gods, for that matter, which is not something I could have pieced together by looking at an evil coral mountain and an angel named "Kamsa" side by side.
But that instant and consistent agreement on names is not a new phenomenon to Magic. I have some friends from a metropolitan area in Indiana called Champaign-Urbana. Or maybe it's Urbana-Champaign. Or, wait, maybe it's Urbana-Savoy? Each of them said it differently - and that's a mid-sized city under a single nationality, with a population under a quarter of a million people! Out in the wider world, people kill each other over whether a region is properly Myanmar or Burma. But across multiple continents, everyone calls Zendikar the same thing. Heck, Dominaria has 2.5 times the land area of Earth, but any two Planeswalkers who go there call it the same thing, even if they visited opposite hemispheres.
My new theory is: this is not all merely a narrative convention, but the nature of the Blind Eternities themselves. Just as they are beyond the senses of a clear understanding of time, they transcend language - things of the Eternities and the symbols which represent them are one and the same. Thus, each Plane and Eldrazi Titan is completely entangled with its name, such that to see it is to know the name, instinctively. Planeswalkers, as beings partially touched by the Eternities, don't get anything that extreme, but they still can understand virtually all languages equally, as the Spark within them doesn't distinguish.
... what? Look, I did warn you how silly this was going to be.
I already assumed something along these lines, that the Spark itself acts as a kind of intangible Babel Fish that does this sort of thing for them. Only, you know, with the added bonus of not being a gross alien thing that crawls into their ear. Language is actually not the thing that gets me about the Multiverse though. What I'm curious about is the off lack of variety in all these worlds...
With the exception of Lorwyn, they all have humans who are biologically indistinguishable from normal Dominarian humans (I assume even to this day Dominaria is the Multiversal standard). Most of them follow the same natural laws as the others (exception of course given to artificial worlds like Mirrodin, Rath, Serra's Realm, etc), such as reliable day-night cycles, the presence of seasons, climate, etc. Clearly all the ones we see have similar atmospheres and gravity, or it'd mess with the planeswalking visitors. Customs between races on different worlds is always pretty similar too. There's not a group of humans on any plane we've seen that are vastly different culturally from something that exists on Dominaria. With the exception, again, of Lorwyn, the same goes for Elves and Goblins. Most goblins, no matter where you are, are dumb and reckless. Most elves are fair and innately connected to the land.
Going off the rails into mostly entirely baseless speculation (just for a second I promise!), I think its because so many of these worlds were "seeded" by greater forces long before anything in recorded Multiverse history. Why do almost all dragons look like Dominarian dragons? Maybe its because the Elder Dragons are responsible for spreading them all over the multiverse (this, as far as I know, is actually probable given what we know of the Elder Dragons). As to who or what seeded so many planes, and why, is a big but that's my personal theory. Maybe that would even help with the language issue... every language spoken by every human society in the multiverse sounds similar because they all originated from the same core language! Okay I'm done now.
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So goblins can be considered to sort of be created from something but when you look at a Khans goblin and a Ravnica goblin and a Kamigawa Goblin they all very quite a bit same for elves when you look at nissa then you look at say dwynen they are very different creatures but they're both elves but humans Angels and dragons stay fairly constant throughout the multiverse
But i do have to agree that a plane like dominaria might be the progenitor of worlds because humans do indeed all match there and dragons do too so i am not opposed to oldwalkers creating most life on the planes
Not sure if it counts, but the humans on Jund have forked tongues (and might have other minor reptilian features, such as vertical pupils?)
I like to think that when a new plane is born, its soul automatically populates it with the essence of any random species it finds on nearby/accessible planes. It would explain why so many races are found on various different planes, why the wild-life is often identical save for minor cosmetic issues and why despite all this there still doesn't appear to be a common origin point.
But yeah, that will probably never be adressed in the game, because "rules for fictional settings are for nerds"(TM)