Worldbuilding - Aquas: Blue

We have our first modifications to the plane today! Shamsiel from the Wizards Community sent me a message with some good points and good ideas, which I'll be incorporating into Aquas now!

The first change has to do with yesterday's topic, White. He suggested I use seagrass meadows for the plains equivalent, instead of kelp. I completely agree, and after looking it up it fits perfectly – it looks exactly like an underwater plains! He suggested anthropomorphic manatee (I didn't get his message until about 8PM last night) but, given their nickname as seacattle, I propose that we use them as exactly that – underwater cattle.

Second is an addition, and I really have to thank Shamsiel for this – brine pools, commonly known as underwater lakes, as the swamp equivalent. Check out their entry on wikipedia. I have some ideas for Black already, but that can wait until tomorrow.

The biggest change he suggested is to have Blue still use Islands for its basic land type – this means that instead of an underwater plane, it's more of a waterworld type thing. I like this change – it opens up flying as an option again, but it still gives us the same flavor. And with the only land being fairly small islands, we can have the knowledge of planeswalkers go back much farther – pre-mending, planeswalkers didn't have to breathe, but one showing up in the middle of a settlement would clue people in just as much as random bodies showing up.

So, with that in mind, we'll focus on the exploration and knowledge aspects of Blue, as opposed to the water portions. So, their settlements are schools and research centers. The merfolk run the ones that are underwater – what about the ones on the islands? What is our small-medium blue race?

With the other colors I'll be looking at the aquatic and amphibious races, but with Blue I think it might be nice to have the Aven living on our islands. This gives a recognizable race that is on a lot of planes, and the fact that they have to live on the small islands by their very nature makes them good candidates for having the first contact with Planeswalkers, along with making them naturally reclusive. Visually they should obviously be based on sea birds – Gannets are an early favorite of mine, but I'm open to suggestions. Illusions and shapeshifters can be in the medium-large slot, with some sphinxes as Large creatures.

When it comes to the schools of magic, the revelation of planeswalkers means that Æther magic is extremely popular. Each university tries to attract the most interesting planeswalkers to teach or learn there – they do this by researching the most advanced kinds of magic they can. This leads to a strange distribution of magic – simple spells like Unsummon or Mana Leak are rare here, while more specialized spells like Essence Scatter or Flashfreeze are common, and there are new, strange applications of mana being discovered every day. Mind magic is relatively standard, though they again try to come up with unique applications. Blue Elemental magic is mostly focused on the air, as all the colors have access to water magic. Most of the air and water breathing spells do fall under blue's Elemental magic, and almost all blue mages know a spell for it, depending on what they naturally breathe.

I think that's everything – I'm running a little late today, but I'm happy with what I got. This culture could only exist on Aquas, and it is clearly influenced by the knowledge of planeswalkers.