Okay MAYBE that thing in "Finale of Revelation" can solve one of the plot holes... But was that enormous thing always there? On the meditation realm? Did it inflate recently?
I don't know anything about Mary Sues or any stereotypes of those kind, just want to make 2 points:
1. She escaped her all life from the sin she committed, she was ashamed, she felt responsible, and when you give yourself the mask of the sinner and of the butcher, the easiest way to to suffocate your inner turmoil is becoming your mask. Because she was not brave enough to get back home and battle herself, win her own weaknesses and confront her sin. So she run, she acquired power and when it all went down the Mending, what was of her was a prideful husk that hid fairly well the grudge for herself. Then the chain veil appeared: a possible tool to save it all, to free herself and master Death itself. She hoped to abuse it, to get stronger, and even more, to get brave enough to confront everything she left behind. She freed her brother, but did not felt relieved, for she just killed him two times
2. On Ravnica we have her final step. Black means surviving and winning doing that, what she is doing is the opposite: shine through her self sacrifice. She was the woman of the shortcut, because she always used them: killed the brother, run away; getting old, demonic pact; feeling love, crush her emotions... Everything was a shortcut for her, leading to that bridge on Ravnica, enslaved by a nearly omnipotent dragon, butchering everything, and she knows no one deserves that end, maybe she wore the mask of the killer, but she still knows a sin when she sees one. She had to decide for her survival, the easy shortcut, she would just look everyone get slayed, and then keep on her life suppressing her emotions and serving the big bad guy who in the end wouldn't even need her anymore as a God. It was really an easy choice for Black, survival afterall is the aim, but the pride? She would lose it, but it wouldn't be the first time a black character lose pride. All of the shortcuts she took had the consequences of making her next choice bigger at every step, and on that bridged it's all of her life at the stake: the chain veil, the power and her immortality, all the years she spent searching for it, all the pacts she did, everything she lost and everytime she fell harder for the aim of power. But in the end it doesn't even matter. She looks at the kids dying, she looks at herself, what has become of her, she is a tool to repeat her sins. She knows what's at stake, and she refuses the prize. She decides to confront Bolas, she totally negates herself, her dying could not bring herself peace: she knows souls are eternal, she knows she could be one of those ghost mourning in pain forever, or heaven knows what Bolas could do with her soul... And still she thinks, no more. She is enraged, yes, she might be rushed, but she is not stupid, she knows what she is doing: imagine burning of your own accord, but losing behind decades of searching, decades of plotting to regain power. She throws it all and burns, not thinking of her, because otherwise she would have not chosen that path. She spent her whole life escaping from everything, gaining power, and in the end she finally confronts her sins. She is taking responsibility. I find she really is evolving. In a unexpected way, in even a non-black way, but she is really on fire.
TL/DR: she fine, she good.
P.S.:Probably an overstating, redundant review on a character which really isn't that deep? But I think this is a self sacrifice that has nothing to do with pride or ego, saving other lives does not cancel sins, and dying doing that will not make you feel better, it will just physically destroy you, but this is really subjective to me and might be wrong.
The things in your spoiler tage are the only things left I want to know (since I did see the leaks)
It really is just those 2 things that dont make much sense. The eternal touch and suck seems a little crazy too
Yeah, I exaggerated a bit probably, but the other things from the leaks did not seem surprising at all and I gave most of them for sure (from a storytelling point of view)... Apart from the Lazav shenanigan. All things considered, the story does not appease me particularly.
Oh my, I MAY have found the leaks... But if it's all true, it's all ridiculous.
Seemed pretty sensible to me.
Then maybe I found the wrong leaks... The transfer of that skill to that other character seems strange. Was it even possible to exchange THOSE 2 PECULIAR conditions?
If the eternals work like this, it's strange all these planeswalkers are still "sparkful"...
How did THOSE 2 manage to go THERE if only one of them had a spark? How does even the elder spell works? And if it was SO easy for the eternals to do that, it seems extremely idiotic to not protect yourself in ANY WAY... even a mistakenly falling eternal, an eternal ejected in an explosion or one launched by an enemy could have been the end of the whole plan.
Mind you, I'm not against this all... I just find difficult to wrap my mind around these specific things...
I'm SO sad I missed it all... Everything. Is it illegal to talk about something you read? Or is it because they think it was leaked by a reviewer who signed a non-disclosure agreement?
I mean, presumably Wizards wouldn’t make it be indestructible armor then. You’re trying to talk up Lazotep as though it’s meant to be something impressive, but the lore doesn’t support it as being all that strong. From what I can tell the lore is being perfectly consistent. Given Eternalize caps out at 4/4 and Lazotep Plating only adds one +1 counter it doesn’t seem like it mechanically is all that impressive either.
Not that I dislike EPIC SENTIMENTAL WINS, but even in the case of something like Ulamog and Kozilek it was a situation in which the "power of love"(sort of) made it possible to kill things it would have not been possible to. They would create something incredibly strong and then beat it with something not thought of...
Eternalize still added even +3/+3 on the normal power constitution. Still double the power of a normal zombie, retaining battle and magic abilities. In the case of some cards it basically said "It's as if it was alive, just two times stronger because we put it in a blue armor". It's difficult for me to think eternalizing was just painting gauze of blue if it boosted power and constitution. Without Weakness make it seem like it does confer some protection and yes, lazotep plating gives just 1 amass, but also hexproof for a turn which is technically kind of a protection. Then we have flavour texts like the one on Primordial Wurm, which indicates at least a little more resistance is intrinsic to the lazotep plates.
Language must convey those prejudices, or it would be impoverished in its ability to convey emotion.
There are so many words that already represent different shades of concepts and emotions that I find rather laughable the fact we should change the meaning of ancient words with well established meanings, and to consider this even an improvement...
What? Of course it can be used to coat metal
I just now understood I've been using "metal coat" in an improper way, for this I must excuse. It seems it's not "covering a surface with a layer of metal" in english, but that's what I meant.
Again, their bodies look exactly like a mummy without wrappings covering them, and no armor either. The face of a mummy is defined by the bone structure, which tends to be much more angular than the bones + the facial muscles. The issue is that those facial muscles lose most of their mass when they dry out. [...]their bodies are clearly so thin that if they were covered in metal, it would have the protective value of tinfoil. A sword blow would simply crush their bones even if it couldn't cut through it. And we see that they can, so why argue the point?
It depends on the characteristics of the lazotep alloy after it is cooled. And I can't really consider (in the realistic context I talked about - RavnicaVSDreadhorde) the artwork of cards that are, for plot needs, representing people annihilating armored zombies. But we have cards which imply a certain capacity of lazotep of protecting the eternals.
Nope, like I said metalloids like silicon are also considered "metallic" because of their properties.
They are not considered metallic, they are considered metalloid because they have certain properties that are considered of metals and certain properties of non-metals. They still would not be called metallic minerals if they did not contain metals.
Super-digression on metals
I don't understand the need for this digression on the nature of metals, but deformability is an intrinsic property of metallic elements and most metallic elements generate crystalline structures on their own (there are not that many amorphous metals).
All this applies even if we allow Lazotep to be a completely fictitious material. I'm not saying that its actually Lapis Lazuli, but it does have more in common with it than it does, say, oxidized copper, and nothing WOTC has said contradicts that notion.
Lapislazzuli is not even a mineral and lazurite is not a metallic mineral, I think melting it and making it drip like God-Pharaoh's gift would be a terrible idea for lapislazzuli or lazurite.
Lazotep, on the contrary, is a metallic mineral. I don't see inspiration apart from its color, its name and the use in egyptian culture.
Also, do you think that if eternals had diamond-nano-carbon-tubes-super-duper-technological-graphene armor (exaggeration about invincible armors) artists wouldn't still represent Ravnicans beat eternals' asses with swords and the "power of love" if the plot needed that?
I don't care about connotation. I can't base my language about subjective prejudice about words. I use them in a way most people can understand them, for example in the event they don't know the word: they can quickly grab a dictionary and understand what I meant, not needing them to do an academic research on social evolution of language to understand what I meant. Language is in ongoing evolution, that I admit, but sometimes it seems it's getting corrupted and edulcorated than evolving.
Do you think I am unprepared to source my claims of it being used as a pigment in historic paints? The paint today is called ultramarine. Yes there is a synthetic variant, but its traditionally made with Lazurite, the compound in Lapis Lazuli that gives it its color.
So we agree it can't be used to metal coat (lapislazzuli would not even produce a metallic pigment for what I can see). I know you still think it's just painted gauze, but I really think, in-lore, it's a metal plate, metal coating, with "metal" meaning "of metal", not "of metal appearance".
Metallic doesn't mean metal either. Silicon is a metalloid [...]Besides, the writers on the Mothership screw up the lore all the time [...] My suspicion here is that someone in the story department had this idea about what Lazotep is that wasn't established during Amonkhet block, the artists were told that its like lazurite, the artists know what that is because they have been to art school, so the artists just treated it like a cool paintjob on the Eternals. Then a bunch of people wonder why the artists aren't treating it like armor plating. As far as they knew, it wsan't meant to be. At least, that is my guess.
"Metallic mineral" explictly indicates a mineral metallic in composition. And a metalloid is not a metal. And I don't know why you put it here, because one of my points said "it's a metal because it has a metallic facies"? Well, they used the term "metallic mineral" in the end, so maybe it wasn't a STRONG reason, but they showed other hints for it being metallic and not a simple rock with some metallic characteristics. Also neither lazurite nor lapislazzuli are metallic in facies. In the end lazotep is INSPIRED by lapislazzuli, it's not just lapislazzuli WITH ANOTHER NAME. They evidently decided to make the lazotep a metallic mineral. We saw a foundry of lazotep, it's obvious that art was also directed in that way. We can't assume they made a mistake everytime their ideas are against our preconception: they did not say "lazotep is the name of lapislazzuli on Amonkhet" and then proceeded to destroy the chemical identity of the rock usually named lapislazzuli.
They use or ignore science on the basis of Rule of Cool, and really always have. Some of the races like Vedalkin and Merfolk have had... interesting art histories, to say the least. The excuse for Vedalkin having six fingers on Kaladesh and only five on Ravnica and Esper is really a post-hoc justification for the early weirdness of four armed Mirran Vedalkin, for instance. And they only created the Vedalkin because they were unreasonably self-conscious about the traditional merfolk having tails... you get the idea. The lore can be rather slapdash at times, especially when you pull back the curtain and look at how the company developed everything. Sometimes they did so with loving care, sometimes the right hand didn't even care what the left hand was doing.
It is not even "ignoring science", nor an implementation of the Rule of Cool actually: there are so many of these examples in nature, the entire story of the human species is one of parallel evolution, they just represent things as they naturally occur (expept mirrans again). I don't know if those you wrote were the real reasons behind those characteristics or just guesses, but I find it cohesive and natural that, in a MULTIVERSE, somethings vary. There are bilions of universes in a multiverse, I don't expect humans, vedalken or merfolk to be identical. Now, THAT would be unrealistic.
First of all, pigment is to mix with water or oils to make paint or make up, not metallic coating, Lapis is not even a metal. Uses in history are also as precious stones, jewels, so nothing more than engraved or sculpted or mounted lapis...
"Mineral" does not mean "rock".
And poof! lucky me... Yesterday they posted this https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-preview/bad-news-heroes-2019-04-11 and it says "metallic mineral".
"Alien"
That seems actually a pretty personal prejudice on the word "alien", which I highly doubt 99% of people in the world has. It means foreign, stranger, the same meaning it had in latin, and it's only denoting a characteristic of origin, of provenance. Taking in example Lovecraft: he still used the word correctly for the Old Ones, they are aliens, but he also used "inconceivable", "monstrous", "horrendous", "revolting" for the characteristics you seem to blend in the meaning of "alien". Even in scifi it just means "from another world" and not "green monster from space". About Planeswalkers, you might see at the end of one of my repliy I explicitly wrote "alien planeswalkers": because most of those on Ravnica are aliens right now.
Differences in humans
Having Simics all fanatics about evolution, I don't think they don't want to explain anything that goes into more of a scifi sphere, I think it's just implicit they will not overstate differences between different planes humans, for the reason you said "to keep the characters as relatable as possible". The fact is, artificial or natural evolution, there are differences and sometimes they just implicitly admit it's genetics or evolution, for example the rare presence of mages on Kaladesh, Melira resistance to Phyresis, wings and limbs sprouting randomly, skin colour, etc... So a human race developing on a different plane, realistically, should have differences even bigger in regards to an alien human race.
Okay, before I start, I looked it up and Lazotep is almost certainly not a metal. WOTC based it off of the semi-precious stone Lapis Lazuli, which the Egyptians used in jewelry and apparently makeup. I also searched for information about what Lazotep is supposed to do for the Eternals, and all I can find is two things: protecting them from the Blind Eternities when they step through the planar bridge, and helping them keep their muscle memory unlike normal zombies. The leap from "mineral" to "metal" seems to be pure Vorthos speculation, not canon.
Sure, but while it is certainly inspired by Lapislazzuli, a stone can't be used to create a coating like the one we see on Eternals. We even saw kind of an ancient-magicesque-egyptian foundry in which melted lazotep is dripped. While everything has a fusion temperature, a thing that can be melted, used for coating and is metallic in the final facies seems more metallic to me in its nature than simply rocky. Also Nissa remembers them as blue metallic (giants). Sure it still is speculation, but based on some hints collected in franchise that do point out in a direction about a characteristic of lazotep not explicitly (as I understand is not) noted by the creatives.
Which again, would be true of humans Compleated by Phyrexia or corrupted by Emrakul, but they aren't. You probably won't be surprised to hear this, but we know that humans from different planes are biologically the same because the Phyrexian plane of Rath kidnapped humans from multiple planes, and only the Kor raised eyebrows (because only Zendikari have any experience with them).
"Alien" means what I said and there is nothing to reprimand about the use I made of the word "alien".
About the probability of humans having different biological traits it's a totally different discussion. Thinking Humans are on nearly every plane I assumed they are the product of parallel evolution throughout the multiverse (we know the real reason is a creative one, but in lore I assumed this), so I also assumed there must be different traits, so while they are apparently mostly similar, there should be biological differences; talking realistically even humans on Earth have some substantial biological differences: I'd expect humans in different UNIVERSES to be at least different in some ways. And reading the Humans page on MTG wiki I see there are biological differences, for example in lifespan or even physical evident differences (not talking about Mirrans obviously...). I mean, they could even have organs in different places for all we know.
Its technically true that some races are found on Amonkhet but not Ravnica, but that's why I pointed out that Ravnica is more diverse. Its a moot point.
What I meant was not a confront on biodiversity, but much more of a utilitarian approach to it: Ravnica has steeds, Eternals too; Ravnica has flying troops, Eternals too; Ravnica has amphibian troops, Eternals too; and so on...
The Ravincans have been preparing for war for so long the only surprise about this one is that its lead by a planeswalker (for reasons I will get to later).
Who was listening to the warnings of Niv-Mizzet did prepare themselves, those who didn't did not. There already are, by the way, armies on Ravnica and where you see them as "armed to the teeth", I see a number of elite squadrons that should technically work in unison, when for their entire life they have been enemies (in one way or another), which should be a BIG difficulty for the integrity of formations and strategies, arguably an enormous weakness. When we put in the midst things like civilians armed with borrowed weapons and armors, I see a recipe for defeat, because they are not trained at all, don't know team work on a battlefield at all, they don't know strategies at all, don't know priorities... Basically trained troops should spend most of their time saving unprepared civilians instead of killing eternals (being killed by eternals in the process of saving said armed civilians). But this all is a matter of opinion to me.
And then we see things like "United we stand, divided we fall" and topos along the lines, which are good for a story(like this), or activism, but it's a lot less useful in a real war.
About numbers in the dreadhorde:
Before the reboot of Amonkhet, Hoazoret's trial probably did not kill the worthy... Because the last words Bolas says to Hazoret (while she was trying to protect the children before the reboot) were something like "You will kill with your spear the children you are now trying to protect"
Edit: here it is...
The two gods set the babes in a small alcove within the chamber and stood side by side at the entrance to the sacred mausoleum. Hazoret readied her spear. Oketra drew her bow.
"The children of Naktamun will not die at the hands of a beast!" Hazoret cried.
"The children of Naktamun will die at the end of your spear," replied the dragon.
1. She escaped her all life from the sin she committed, she was ashamed, she felt responsible, and when you give yourself the mask of the sinner and of the butcher, the easiest way to to suffocate your inner turmoil is becoming your mask. Because she was not brave enough to get back home and battle herself, win her own weaknesses and confront her sin. So she run, she acquired power and when it all went down the Mending, what was of her was a prideful husk that hid fairly well the grudge for herself. Then the chain veil appeared: a possible tool to save it all, to free herself and master Death itself. She hoped to abuse it, to get stronger, and even more, to get brave enough to confront everything she left behind. She freed her brother, but did not felt relieved, for she just killed him two times
2. On Ravnica we have her final step. Black means surviving and winning doing that, what she is doing is the opposite: shine through her self sacrifice. She was the woman of the shortcut, because she always used them: killed the brother, run away; getting old, demonic pact; feeling love, crush her emotions... Everything was a shortcut for her, leading to that bridge on Ravnica, enslaved by a nearly omnipotent dragon, butchering everything, and she knows no one deserves that end, maybe she wore the mask of the killer, but she still knows a sin when she sees one. She had to decide for her survival, the easy shortcut, she would just look everyone get slayed, and then keep on her life suppressing her emotions and serving the big bad guy who in the end wouldn't even need her anymore as a God. It was really an easy choice for Black, survival afterall is the aim, but the pride? She would lose it, but it wouldn't be the first time a black character lose pride. All of the shortcuts she took had the consequences of making her next choice bigger at every step, and on that bridged it's all of her life at the stake: the chain veil, the power and her immortality, all the years she spent searching for it, all the pacts she did, everything she lost and everytime she fell harder for the aim of power. But in the end it doesn't even matter. She looks at the kids dying, she looks at herself, what has become of her, she is a tool to repeat her sins. She knows what's at stake, and she refuses the prize. She decides to confront Bolas, she totally negates herself, her dying could not bring herself peace: she knows souls are eternal, she knows she could be one of those ghost mourning in pain forever, or heaven knows what Bolas could do with her soul... And still she thinks, no more. She is enraged, yes, she might be rushed, but she is not stupid, she knows what she is doing: imagine burning of your own accord, but losing behind decades of searching, decades of plotting to regain power. She throws it all and burns, not thinking of her, because otherwise she would have not chosen that path. She spent her whole life escaping from everything, gaining power, and in the end she finally confronts her sins. She is taking responsibility. I find she really is evolving. In a unexpected way, in even a non-black way, but she is really on fire.
TL/DR: she fine, she good.
P.S.:Probably an overstating, redundant review on a character which really isn't that deep? But I think this is a self sacrifice that has nothing to do with pride or ego, saving other lives does not cancel sins, and dying doing that will not make you feel better, it will just physically destroy you, but this is really subjective to me and might be wrong.
And said by MaRo, spark-stealing(by the eternals) kills.
Yeah, I exaggerated a bit probably, but the other things from the leaks did not seem surprising at all and I gave most of them for sure (from a storytelling point of view)... Apart from the Lazav shenanigan. All things considered, the story does not appease me particularly.
If the eternals work like this, it's strange all these planeswalkers are still "sparkful"...
How did THOSE 2 manage to go THERE if only one of them had a spark? How does even the elder spell works? And if it was SO easy for the eternals to do that, it seems extremely idiotic to not protect yourself in ANY WAY... even a mistakenly falling eternal, an eternal ejected in an explosion or one launched by an enemy could have been the end of the whole plan.
Not that I dislike EPIC SENTIMENTAL WINS, but even in the case of something like Ulamog and Kozilek it was a situation in which the "power of love"(sort of) made it possible to kill things it would have not been possible to. They would create something incredibly strong and then beat it with something not thought of...
Eternalize still added even +3/+3 on the normal power constitution. Still double the power of a normal zombie, retaining battle and magic abilities. In the case of some cards it basically said "It's as if it was alive, just two times stronger because we put it in a blue armor". It's difficult for me to think eternalizing was just painting gauze of blue if it boosted power and constitution.
Without Weakness make it seem like it does confer some protection and yes, lazotep plating gives just 1 amass, but also hexproof for a turn which is technically kind of a protection. Then we have flavour texts like the one on Primordial Wurm, which indicates at least a little more resistance is intrinsic to the lazotep plates.
There are so many words that already represent different shades of concepts and emotions that I find rather laughable the fact we should change the meaning of ancient words with well established meanings, and to consider this even an improvement...
I just now understood I've been using "metal coat" in an improper way, for this I must excuse. It seems it's not "covering a surface with a layer of metal" in english, but that's what I meant.
It depends on the characteristics of the lazotep alloy after it is cooled. And I can't really consider (in the realistic context I talked about - RavnicaVSDreadhorde) the artwork of cards that are, for plot needs, representing people annihilating armored zombies. But we have cards which imply a certain capacity of lazotep of protecting the eternals.
They are not considered metallic, they are considered metalloid because they have certain properties that are considered of metals and certain properties of non-metals. They still would not be called metallic minerals if they did not contain metals.
I don't understand the need for this digression on the nature of metals, but deformability is an intrinsic property of metallic elements and most metallic elements generate crystalline structures on their own (there are not that many amorphous metals).
Lapislazzuli is not even a mineral and lazurite is not a metallic mineral, I think melting it and making it drip like God-Pharaoh's gift would be a terrible idea for lapislazzuli or lazurite.
Lazotep, on the contrary, is a metallic mineral. I don't see inspiration apart from its color, its name and the use in egyptian culture.
Also, do you think that if eternals had diamond-nano-carbon-tubes-super-duper-technological-graphene armor (exaggeration about invincible armors) artists wouldn't still represent Ravnicans beat eternals' asses with swords and the "power of love" if the plot needed that?
I don't care about connotation. I can't base my language about subjective prejudice about words. I use them in a way most people can understand them, for example in the event they don't know the word: they can quickly grab a dictionary and understand what I meant, not needing them to do an academic research on social evolution of language to understand what I meant. Language is in ongoing evolution, that I admit, but sometimes it seems it's getting corrupted and edulcorated than evolving.
So we agree it can't be used to metal coat (lapislazzuli would not even produce a metallic pigment for what I can see). I know you still think it's just painted gauze, but I really think, in-lore, it's a metal plate, metal coating, with "metal" meaning "of metal", not "of metal appearance".
"Metallic mineral" explictly indicates a mineral metallic in composition. And a metalloid is not a metal. And I don't know why you put it here, because one of my points said "it's a metal because it has a metallic facies"? Well, they used the term "metallic mineral" in the end, so maybe it wasn't a STRONG reason, but they showed other hints for it being metallic and not a simple rock with some metallic characteristics. Also neither lazurite nor lapislazzuli are metallic in facies. In the end lazotep is INSPIRED by lapislazzuli, it's not just lapislazzuli WITH ANOTHER NAME. They evidently decided to make the lazotep a metallic mineral. We saw a foundry of lazotep, it's obvious that art was also directed in that way. We can't assume they made a mistake everytime their ideas are against our preconception: they did not say "lazotep is the name of lapislazzuli on Amonkhet" and then proceeded to destroy the chemical identity of the rock usually named lapislazzuli.
It is not even "ignoring science", nor an implementation of the Rule of Cool actually: there are so many of these examples in nature, the entire story of the human species is one of parallel evolution, they just represent things as they naturally occur (expept mirrans again). I don't know if those you wrote were the real reasons behind those characteristics or just guesses, but I find it cohesive and natural that, in a MULTIVERSE, somethings vary. There are bilions of universes in a multiverse, I don't expect humans, vedalken or merfolk to be identical. Now, THAT would be unrealistic.
First of all, pigment is to mix with water or oils to make paint or make up, not metallic coating, Lapis is not even a metal. Uses in history are also as precious stones, jewels, so nothing more than engraved or sculpted or mounted lapis...
"Mineral" does not mean "rock".
And poof! lucky me... Yesterday they posted this https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-preview/bad-news-heroes-2019-04-11 and it says "metallic mineral".
That seems actually a pretty personal prejudice on the word "alien", which I highly doubt 99% of people in the world has. It means foreign, stranger, the same meaning it had in latin, and it's only denoting a characteristic of origin, of provenance. Taking in example Lovecraft: he still used the word correctly for the Old Ones, they are aliens, but he also used "inconceivable", "monstrous", "horrendous", "revolting" for the characteristics you seem to blend in the meaning of "alien". Even in scifi it just means "from another world" and not "green monster from space". About Planeswalkers, you might see at the end of one of my repliy I explicitly wrote "alien planeswalkers": because most of those on Ravnica are aliens right now.
Having Simics all fanatics about evolution, I don't think they don't want to explain anything that goes into more of a scifi sphere, I think it's just implicit they will not overstate differences between different planes humans, for the reason you said "to keep the characters as relatable as possible". The fact is, artificial or natural evolution, there are differences and sometimes they just implicitly admit it's genetics or evolution, for example the rare presence of mages on Kaladesh, Melira resistance to Phyresis, wings and limbs sprouting randomly, skin colour, etc... So a human race developing on a different plane, realistically, should have differences even bigger in regards to an alien human race.
Sure, but while it is certainly inspired by Lapislazzuli, a stone can't be used to create a coating like the one we see on Eternals. We even saw kind of an ancient-magicesque-egyptian foundry in which melted lazotep is dripped. While everything has a fusion temperature, a thing that can be melted, used for coating and is metallic in the final facies seems more metallic to me in its nature than simply rocky. Also Nissa remembers them as blue metallic (giants). Sure it still is speculation, but based on some hints collected in franchise that do point out in a direction about a characteristic of lazotep not explicitly (as I understand is not) noted by the creatives.
"Alien" means what I said and there is nothing to reprimand about the use I made of the word "alien".
About the probability of humans having different biological traits it's a totally different discussion. Thinking Humans are on nearly every plane I assumed they are the product of parallel evolution throughout the multiverse (we know the real reason is a creative one, but in lore I assumed this), so I also assumed there must be different traits, so while they are apparently mostly similar, there should be biological differences; talking realistically even humans on Earth have some substantial biological differences: I'd expect humans in different UNIVERSES to be at least different in some ways. And reading the Humans page on MTG wiki I see there are biological differences, for example in lifespan or even physical evident differences (not talking about Mirrans obviously...). I mean, they could even have organs in different places for all we know.
What I meant was not a confront on biodiversity, but much more of a utilitarian approach to it: Ravnica has steeds, Eternals too; Ravnica has flying troops, Eternals too; Ravnica has amphibian troops, Eternals too; and so on...
Who was listening to the warnings of Niv-Mizzet did prepare themselves, those who didn't did not. There already are, by the way, armies on Ravnica and where you see them as "armed to the teeth", I see a number of elite squadrons that should technically work in unison, when for their entire life they have been enemies (in one way or another), which should be a BIG difficulty for the integrity of formations and strategies, arguably an enormous weakness. When we put in the midst things like civilians armed with borrowed weapons and armors, I see a recipe for defeat, because they are not trained at all, don't know team work on a battlefield at all, they don't know strategies at all, don't know priorities... Basically trained troops should spend most of their time saving unprepared civilians instead of killing eternals (being killed by eternals in the process of saving said armed civilians). But this all is a matter of opinion to me.
And then we see things like "United we stand, divided we fall" and topos along the lines, which are good for a story(like this), or activism, but it's a lot less useful in a real war.
Before the reboot of Amonkhet, Hoazoret's trial probably did not kill the worthy... Because the last words Bolas says to Hazoret (while she was trying to protect the children before the reboot) were something like "You will kill with your spear the children you are now trying to protect"
Edit: here it is...