MTG fan lore question, what was Old Capenna like? Do you have any ideas™️?
Hey Faust, my dear friend! I had to think on this one for a while, to be completely honest with ya.
Well, as we know, before the Phyrexians showed up and fucked everything, there was a Kingdom Era in the plane, where the five crime families started in different jobs than we see them in now. The Obscura were mystics, wizards, and advisors of the plane's angels; the Maestros were nobles and art aficionados; the Riveteers were artisans, blacksmiths, edificers, and architects; the Cabaretti were a popular druidic faith; the Brokers were paladins. It's even directly compared to the Bant shard of Alara.
We know that Old Capenna also had very few sphinxes, as they were very territorial and vain - they also had temples that they would draw the masses to, vying for worship through their visions and effectively only say the good stuff to keep the masses coming back. But we know Raffine didn't do this song and dance, instead crafting dark prophecies that were far more true and honest than the other sphinxes she knew - her mother, her rival, and her former lover, though she didn't care much for the first two and can't even remember the third at this point.
Xander is mentioned in canon to have been an ailing artist of an all-but-dead aristocratic house, showing that Capenna during the Kingdom Era was probably very, very similar to the romanticized idea of medieval Europe.
Ziatora is mentioned to be the last of the dragons who was able to survive through the power of her contract with an archdemon, so clearly Old Capenna had enough of them to go around and have a pretty sustainable "knight versus dragon" ecological dynamic. We also know that the rest of the dragons are now extinct, as seen in the lines "But where are the other dragons now? For all their righteousness, their gloating and purity, the great dragons of Old Capenna are dust."
The leonin druids that were the Cabaretti were founded by Jetmir, and they enjoyed the cycle of life, death, rebirth, and life eternal and were greatly connected to nature. They also served as entertainment to keep spirits up among settlers, who in turn would keep the druids fed and warm. This dynamic didn't change much when the druids moved into New Capenna and became a crime family.
But surprisingly, we don't actually know much about Falco Spara's past before becoming head of the Brokers, or even if he founded the order that would become them later. All we really know is that he has some of the clearest memories of the founding of New Capenna.
So that's all canon with a bit of speculation at the end of Xander's section. So let's address the elephant in the room: the angels and archdemons.
Given that the only demons with that creature type are the crime lords (and Ob Nixilis as an interloper), that means there were no minor demons left around the time of the Streets of New Capenna block. So either minor demons were wiped out by the Phyrexian invasion that led to New Capenna's construction, or they never existed and only the archdemons did. Personally, I'm leaning towards "normal demons never existed in the first place", because it's hard to believe they would have all been wiped out without a trace. Perhaps the Capennan devils used to serve in that function instead, given that other planes such as Innistrad have them as the "lesser evil" to a demon's "greater evil". There were archangels above the regular angels during the Phyrexian invasion, so it doesn't make sense that archdemons wouldn't have some kind of servant.
I'm particularly interested in what drove the Obscura broadly to join the archdemons, given their closeness to the angels, but I believe it just comes down to survival. The archdemons had the best deals for New Capenna and could even repurpose the angels into Halo, so it makes sense that even the Obscura would turn against their angelic masters.
Hopefully this gave ya something to think about, Faust!
~Jasper