Ral's song was "Head Full of Shadows" by The Glitch Mob. Ravnica's song was "The Girl" by Hellberg (feat. Cozi Zuehlsdorff).
As you can tell, this was written before Ixalan block introduced us to the actual Azor. For the purposes of this story, he's not a sphinx, and also not as much of a dick.
The Tanish religion and culture draw heavily on Judaism, particularly Ashkenazi Judaism. I'm deeply indebted to my Jewish betas for information and stories about their own experiences growing up Jewish. Any lingering errors are my fault, not theirs.
I've attempted to keep to Ravnica's original Eastern European flavor, though it's a big plane and there's room for analogues of any real-life culture. Both pirozhki and paczki are from that region. Pirozhki are savory or sweet filled pastries similar to danishes. Paczki are fried pastries akin to donuts.
"Tanith" (which I truncated to "Tanit") is the real-life female equivalent of the name Ba'al. "Ba'al" as a name can be applied to any god from that region and time period, but it usually means the Babylonian god of storms. Interestingly, Ba'al is the root of the name Baalshazzar, which translates to something like "Ba'al protect the king." Balshazzar is an old name that has been shortened and translated over the intervening centuries into a number of modern given names, among them..."Zarek." Not even kidding.
I've treated the Izzet League as a combination university and public utility company. There are four levels of association with the League. Going from most pragmatic to most academic, they are: workers like Ral's father who are employed by the League; regular Guild personnel like Yelena who are official Izzet members with all attendant privileges and restrictions; full-time researchers like Oliver and Professor Ducci; and full Guildmasters, who are considered experts in their fields and work on Guild-related activities directed primarily by the Firemind. Only about half of Izzet Guildmasters are Guildmages; the rest are artificers, theoreticians, mathematicians, etc.
Tanit's three faces are vaguely associated with green, white, and blue mana and the ba'al is associated with red mana.
Yes Ral's four vigils are named after DHARMA Initiative stations from Lost, yes Chapter 10 is also named after a quote from Lost, yes I'm a giant Lost nerd, no I will never get over that show, don't judge me, shut up.
Chapter 3, "The Precise Nature of the Catastrophe," is accidentally named after a Culture ship. I forgot where I'd heard that phrase before and thought it was my own, but no, it belongs to the brilliant Iain M. Banks. Chapter 8, "Spontaneous Disassembly," is named after the best euphemism yet for "our rocket may have accidentally blown up."
Chapter 4, "Born Classified," is named after a US legal doctrine covering certain types of information, mostly relating to nuclear weapons. As opposed to regular government secrets, which are classified because of their origin and dangerous because the government doesn't want them widely known, information that's "born classified" is dangerous in and of itself & automatically classified regardless of where it comes from.
Pensai is the Chinese root word for the Japanese bonsai.
Selesnyans are vegan, because of course they are. Silverthorn vernadi is based on a combination of the worst summer camp ever and a particularly weird co-op living group.
Ral's true magical affinity is for electromagnetism, hence his grandmother's calling it an ability that "manipulates basic principles of existence." Emmara is also an elementalist, in her case an animist. I'm working with a five-fundamental-force model for MtG universe physics, both because it matches the color pie and because magic only works if you add a fifth force capable of bridging internal thought and external reality.
The tree of forty fruit is an actual real-life thing, swear to god. It was created by an artist and bears fruit from forty separate species in the stonefruit family, which contains apples, pears, and plums.
Ral's lightning scar is an extreme case of a keraunographic marking, a bizarre injury unique to lightning strikes and other close encounters of the high voltage kind. For some reason the electrical discharge tends to produce fractal burn patterns tracking the path of the current.
Ral first planeswalked to Dominaria. The object he brought back, however, comes from exactly where you think it does. The dark substance he saw there is based on vantablack, the blackest material ever made.
I hate statistics.
Link to story post on tumblr.
