Worldbuilding - Aquas: Black

No additions for today, so we'll dive right into the black cultures, which use the mana found in brine pools.

The choice of Small-Medium race for Black is interesting, as there is already an extremely selfish sea-dwelling culture in Magic: The Cephalids. Traditionally a Blue race, but their outlook and culture fits much closer to Black. They will certainly have a bit of Blue in them, as they are somewhat refined, but they are primarily Black. That gives us a nice intelligent race, but Black also has a lot of smaller creatures being mindless servants. Traditionally this has been the undead, but flesh decomposes much faster underwater, so we should avoid that (some skeletons would work, though) In the end, I'd like to have a very unique take on Vampires. Here they evolved from leechs, and their minds never developed much past the pursuit of blood. There are no cultured vampires on Aquas, and they are little more than cunning animals that hunger for blood.

When it comes to larger creatures, Demons should be visually designed after the “sea devil” angler fish, and those nasty teeth could lead to some nice visual. However, the primary larger creature could be Nightmares and Horrors – there is some messed up stuff in the sea, and using those visuals could make for some nasty monsters.

An interesting thing to point out is that brine pools can only really support bacterial life. Around them there is a field of mussels, and then it transitions to the regular seafloor. This indicates that the creatures don't actually live in them. Instead they would regard them as something like holy sites, though the pragmatic nature of the Cephalids means they wouldn't consider it like that. However, it is still a very pure expression of black mana, and thus is used mostly for magic purposes.

When it comes to the types of magic used, Cephalids would focus on Lethemancy, though their command of the vampires indicates at least a passing proficiency in Sangromancy. As discussed above, Necromancy is extremely rare on Aquas. Shadow magic is renamed Brine magic here, and involves the manipulation of brine (obviously) and bacteria, especially plagues. This could lead to a higher degree of elementals than Black magic normally has.

The Cephalids interact with planeswalkers the same way they do everyone else – they make deals. A mercantile race, they want to get as much advantage out of dealing with a walker as they can. In fact, ripping off a planeswalker successfully is considered one of the most impressive things a Cephalid can do. To prepare for this, they routinely deal with demons, meaning their culture is prone to massive upheaval and great danger.