Homelands
This content was originally included in Homelands #1. The original article can be accessed via Internet Archive here.
Hello! My name is Scott Hungerford, and I’m one of the designers of the expansion, along with Kyle Namvar (who’s also head of the Customer Service Department at Wizards of the Coast). I started working for Wizards of the Coast as a Customer Service Representative about sixteen months ago, but Kyle and I first got the idea for some nine months before that, on a beautiful sunny afternoon amidst the chaos of Wade Racine’s living room.
We were sitting on the floor sorting out Antiquities™ cards for the Customer Service Reps to use while they answered calls and letters, when the conversation came around to whether we should try to design our own set. In all seriousness, I’m sure that everyone who plays Magic talks about this at some point, but when we started talking about where Baron Sengir came from and whether there was a Hurloon Vale, it all came together in a flash. A name? Homelands—an epic about the concept of home and the cultures of some of the most unique creatures in the universe of Dominia.
Admittedly, there have been a lot of changes since then. The setting for the Homelands expansion has been placed on a separate plane, far removed from the locations of the previous card sets. We focused more on new cultures than old, but still kept enough of the old flavor to answer questions about the origins of the Sengir Vampires, or whether there are other Minotaurs inhabiting Dominia. But the feel and flavor of that first day is still there, even with all the changes and the chaos that have occurred throughout the design process.
Kyle did the lion’s share of the rules for Homelands and I did the bulk of the set’s story work, but we crossed over into each other’s territories many times. We frequently spent hours together theorizing about the philosophy and characters of Homelands; at other times we hashed out rules and card ideas while we sat on his front stoop watching the sun go down on the horizon. Over the course of the last two years, especially in the final editing and production process, well over a hundred people have lent their talent, skill, and expertise to the set—and quite a bit of humor and creativity as well. Homelands, in my mind and heart, is really Wizards of the Coast’s set, and belongs to every last person who has struggled to see it through to completion, even while coping with a company undergoing exponential growth.
Over the course of the year that I worked in Customer Service, I also traveled all over the country to gaming conventions as a rep for Wizards of the Coast. I played a lot of “gunslinger” Magic during my tours, taking on all challengers with the somewhat decent decks I put together. (By the way, while I’m not anywhere near the strongest Magic player out there, I’m not the weakest, either. Still, I must have played about two thousand games of Magic at those cons, and I only won about a quarter of those. This is mainly because I don’t own any really expensive cards, I hate playing against control decks, and I’m not especially good at blocking 128/1 mountainwalking, firebreathing Kobolds.)
Getting to my point, I talked to a lot of you out there over that year, real people in the real world who had concerns about our game, and comments about what they like and don’t like about the cards and rules. Two thousand people may be only a small fraction of those of you who play Magic. but a lot of your comments made a sizable impact in shaping the ideas and flavor of Homelands. Because of that, the set is partly dedicated to everyone who was willing to talk with me while playing a game of Magic—and who was willing to deal with my half-brained antics as I played my Sorceress Queen/Transmutation decks against competitors who wiped the floor with my Cyclopean Mummies!
In the end, I think we’ve got a pretty strong set in Homelands. Its been a long, strange trip to this point, and I’m glad I had the chance to meet so many of you along the way. I hope you enjoy what we’ve done—not just the madness Kyle and I have created, but the set that all of the WotC staff have shaped over the last year.
Homelands: The Story
Homelands is about the human condition. In a world where the warfare of planeswalkers has not been felt in centuries, the stories and legends have slowly turned away from the horrors of destruction and violence of yesteryear to the affairs of real, tangible people. In this world, it is a time of heroes, one where humanity has risen from the coals to reinstate the process of story and tale, and to live lives of true purpose. That boy sweeping out the An-Havva Inn, or the young woman who mourns in the Sengir village for her dead mother—they are the stuff of heroes. Perhaps their ignorance makes them naive by our modern standards, but it is also what makes them strong, and it does not dilute their spirit. They live in a time of peace, a burgeoning age amongst chaos.
Not having knowledge of the world-wandering planeswalkers who live beyond the edge of their existence, the people of Homelands are perhaps the most powerful beings alive, for they have hope, and with that hope comes possibility. They believe that they can do anything, because no one has told them differently. With the time that I’ve spent dreaming of the fierce folk of An-Havva, or talking with an imagined Abbot about matters of Aysen church and state, I’ve learned that the core of this story, and that of the human condition, emerges out of the freedom to think and dream, to create anew and let your mind wander though unexplored places. There is a little of the Baron in each of us, as well as of the crooning of the Minotaurs, and the soft silence that manifests itself when Serra and Feroz look into each other’s eyes. With aspects of faerie tale and psychological archetype, Homelands is about what lies beneath the surface of our consciousness, what drives us to pursue our goals and desires against all odds and possibilities.
What you hold in front of you is one piece of an epic cycle which has been building for hundreds of years and now is at a climax. With it, we give you neither easy salvation nor absolute doom. The scene is set for the process of story, and the small aspects of life and fate will cause the world to shift and change dramatically within the next few seasons. Both this comic and the Homelands expansion set realize that sense of apprehension, and it will be your own dreams and imaginations that define for you the final months leading to Baron Sengir’s success or failure in his conquering of this world. Know well that there may be answers and a conclusion presented someday, but for now, I think I’ll leave you to come to your own conclusions.
The story of Homelands is dedicated to Gordon Beck, Stephanie Coontz, York Wong, Sandra Simon, Janet Ott, and everyone else who pushed me from conformity to uniqueness in my college years, and to all of my friends and family who have allowed me to ruin my health and sanity in pursuit of this vision. My gift to you is an evening of conversation with Feroz and Serra, whose enlightenment and education stem from those long seminars that I used to fear like garlic, silver, and streams of running water.
My thanks also to D. G. Chichester, who was the first person apart from Kyle Namvar to argue the philosophies of Baron Sengir and Homelands with me, and to Pete Venters for his perseverance even in the face of my absolute lack of common sense and habit of missing perfectly obvious facts on a daily basis. My appreciation to Steve Bishop for all the work he did for this set, and for putting up with my “self-unsummoning Narwhals.” My thanks to Rebecca Guay, who has breathed life and paint into people I feared would only live in my mind’s eye, even as she surmounted difficulties with the determination of a champion. Chandler tips his hat to all of you, and slips off into the night to make mischief anew.
Feroz lives!
Carpe Diem (in a grim sort of way),
Scott C. Hungerford