Baduin's Planescape cosmology

[baduin]

After the discussion in the thread about Planescape, I have decided to elaborate my proposed Planescape cosmology. The result can be read below.

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=48936

Baduin's Planescape



Below is described a new planar system, designed specifically for Planescape games. It is based on three fundamental assumptions:

1) planes form a psycho-reactive realm outside of the material multiverse. They are psycho-reactive, that is, they change in the reaction to the morality, ideas, wishes, fears, emotions of the dweller etc - in other word, the plane when the pathetic fallacy is true and the reality is really consensual. This does not mean that the world is the average of people's wishes - it reflects their whole mentality, and it is rather difficult to bring your whole mind in line with your conscious wishes. Generally, only high-level wizards, saints and some philosophers can manage it.

2) the fundamental questions are important, but must remain ultimately unanswered. As long as you remain in the game, there is no way to irrefutably prove that being good is better than being evil (although there certainly are rather pointed hints in that direction).

3) all of the reality is interconnected. If you are adventuring on the far planes, you are influencing your material world - of course indirectly, but perhaps more radically than adventuring in the material universe. Additionately, it is possible to really influence the planes - and that means that except for the Astral, there are no infinite planes. They are immense, incomparably greater than the Material worlds, but finite. There is a finite number of domains in the Astral, finite, although unknown, number of layers in the Abyss etc.


There are three fundamental tiers of reality: Material Multiverse, Astral/Ethereal (which is a single plane, a bit different from the standard D&D) and Ideal tier.

Ideal Realm

Ideal is the realm of absolute and cannot be directly accessed by PCs. It is not a plane and is not directly part of the game-world - it serves rather to make that world conceptually whole.

The beings from Ideal are truly immortal, have no bodies at all (and so cannot be fought with). Both Celestials and Fiends have their home in Ideal. This is also the destination of the souls of the dead. The beings from Ideal cannot directly act in the planes, although they can try to persuade and influence being living there. They can also form avatars to act in the planes. In fact, all of the deities, demon lords, celestials, fiends etc who have stat-blocks are avatars of the beings from Ideal and cannot be ultimately killed, although they can be banished from the planes and rendered powerless there.

The Ideal can be contacted with the various clerical divination spells, but the Good beings refuse any precise anwers what it is like, and Evil make answers which are inconsistent and probably false. In fact, when asked about the fundamental questions (immortality of souls, the eternal destination of evil and good souls, the creation of the world etc), Evil beings can and will lie, even if the spell description in question indicates that they should answer truthfully.

It is commonly thought that beings living in the Ideal, including souls of the dead, can never change their allegiance, but it cannot be proved. There is, in fact, no irrefutable proof that the Ideal exists at all. The clerical divination spells could contact as well some so-called "avatars" living on the planes. This is exactly the position of the Athar - there is no Ideal, and even if it does exists, it is wholly unknown. All of the beings which claim to live there lie.

The majority of the Dustmen and Doomguard, to the contrary, think that the Ideal Realm is the only real existence. According to them, we are prisoners in the planes, and must either die True Death, or destroy all the planes, to free ourselves and reach the true existence.

Astral/Ethereal Plane

The Astral/Ethereal is a single plane divided into the Border Ethereal, the Near Ethereal and the Deep Ethereal, also called the Astral. The Ethereal can be accessed both by beings from the Material Multiverse and from the Ideal Realm; there are also native creatures (planar races). It is psychoreactive - it form itself in response to the thoughts and emotions of beings living there. There is no air in the Ethereal, it is instead filed with ether, pure in the Astral and somewhat contaminated with matter and misty in the Near Ethereal. There is no need to drink and eat in the Ethereal, although those with lesser willpower and less accustomed to it can easily feel hungry. That does not mean there are no predators in the Ethereal. In the Ethereal the matter is shaped by mind and ideas. Whereas the predators of the Material Multiverse are hungry because they need to eat, the predators of the Ethereal need to eat because they are hungry. Their hunger is their defining characteristic -they can never die from it and they can never eat enough to be sated.

Because the Astral/Ethereal Plane is a single plane, the plane shift spell cannot be used to travel within it. The Plane Shift to Ethereal used from the Material always transfers the traveller into the corresponding point of Near Ethereal, without the chance to deviate from that point, and the other way round. It is impossible to select any other destination, and eg to plane shift into Astral or Border Ethereal. Plane Shift to Ethereal used by travellers starting in one of the Astral demiplanes always transfers them to Astral near the border of the demiplane, also without the chance for deviation.

Astral

The Astral, also called the Deep Ethereal, the Silvery Void, the Great Realm, or simply the Sky, is an infinite expanse filled instead of air with pure ether, perfectly transparent and clear. There is no sun and no stars, except for the uncountable shining domains and demiplanes. The silvery light comes from the ether itself, so that there are no shadows. The color of the sky can change - usually it is either dark or lightly silvery, but near domains it can be influenced by them. Near the Nine Hells the sky is black with streaks of blood-red, rust and dark flame.

Within the Astral the superiority of the mind over the matter is so immense that the natural processes which proceed in time simply don't happen without some intelligence to direct them, even unconsciously. People in Astral don't age and nothing decays there. Age, hunger, thirst, poison, natural healing do not function in the Astral. As an interesting side effect, no children can be born or grow in Astral - they are too weak and unshaped to direct their own growth, and only the greatest wizard would be able to direct the growth of another being.

Similarly, the gravity is purely mental and operates only when the characters are on objects which normally should have gravity - ships, islands, buildings etc. There is no falling damage, however. The creatures which can fly, can fly using the normal rules. When on the object with pseudo-gravity, normal modes of movements, such as walking, running, swimming, jumping or climbing function as usually. Additionally, all intelligent creatures can fly as per the fly spell. Activating that ability is a free action, and the fly speed equals 10 per point of intelligence, with perfect maneuvrability. Mindless creatures cannot fly in that way. Mounts can use the intelligence of their riders.

Long-range travel in the Astral is fundamentally different from short ranged movement. Since the Astral is infinite, and there is practically no way to determine directions within it, using normal travel methods is impractical. Therefore, all long range travel is mental. The time needed to travel somewhere is based on three factors: the familiarity of the destination, the similarity between the starting point and the destination, and the similarity between the traveller and the destination. For example, a devil wholly unfamiliar with the heavenly realms which started in the Nine Hells, would need an infinite time to reach Celestia. That same devil, both familiar and similar to the Nine Hells, which started in Celestia, would found his return voyage to the Nine Hells remarkably quick, despite the great unsimilarity of the starting points. The familiarity of the destination can be modified by the intelligence, since the more intelligent characters find it easier to understand unfamiliar realms. In case of the astral ships and the like, the familiarity is decided by the steersman, but the similarity is the average of the whole ship.

Astral Domains and Demiplanes

Within the Astral there are uncountable demiplanes and domains. Beings from the Ideal Realm can create demiplanes corresponding to their ideals, where they are represented by avatars. That way Wotan can have his Valhalla and fighting heroes, which is impossible in Ideal. Those demiplanes are not infinite and are based on the power of the given deity/being in the Material and Astral. If a being from Ideal suffer enough losses, its demiplane contracts and finally disappears, leaving only a great stone figure, usually called "a dead god" . This doesn't mean the deity itself is destroyed - according to prevailing opinion, it remains in the Ideal, but can no longer influence anything else.

Beings from the Ideal have certain difficulties in accessing the Astral, and correspondingly greater difficulties in accessing the Material Multiverse. That is why they want to recruit living people in the Astral, which is the common meeting ground of all planes. Their realms in the Astral influence the Near Ethereal which in turns influences Material. Eg Valhalla lies "near" (as "near" is accounted in the Astral) the Ethereal land corresponding to the lands of the Norse, and can influence it by sending there Valkyries etc.

Fiends create in Astral demonic subwords. Amongst those are the Nine Hells, the Layers of the Abyss etc. They can grow and contract, depending on the infernal/abyssal influence in the world. Most of the damned are souls from Ideal. According to popular opinion, they shouldn't be freed, because they incurably evil. But there can be other prisoners in Astral hells who should be liberated. Living people and their souls can be imprisoned in the Astral. Since killing them would send them to the proper afterlife, fiends tend to keep such prisoners alive until they can get them to damn themselves.

But not only celestials and infernals can create domains. Any creature powerful enough can create a demiplane, and there is no way to unerringly establish what kind of creature it is - you can have only its word that it is what it seems. Any epic wizard could create a Valhalla, although it would be, of course, much smaller. In fact, according to a persistent rumor, that is how Wotan began his deific career - he was a powerful wizard who managed to create a personal demiplanes, and it proved to be very precisely aligned with the of the Norse warriors. Belief in him rose exponentially, and now he is the chief god of the Norse pantheon, having overthrown less popular Tyr.

Those demiplanes and domains are regarded as separate planes, and can have different traits. In particular, they nearly never share the special traits of the Astral - lack of gravity, timelessness etc. They are always psychoreactive and usually share the fundamental trait of the Ethereal - lack of need to eat or drink.

The demiplanes seen from afar in the Astral look like variously colored stars. From a nearer distance, their appearance can differ widely. The Valhalla of Wotan is similar to an immense castle build on all sides of a cube, with pointed towers reaching in all directions, so that it seems like a spiky star. The Nine Hells looks from the Astral, no matter from which way it is approached, like a great dark wood through which flows the river Styx. In the center of wood, on the shore of Styx stand the tremendous Gate of Hell. It is impossible to reach the Nine Hells from "underneath" - in fact they simply do not have an underside, being (conceptually) at the bottom of the Creation. It is impossible to say much about the way the travellers from Astral appear in the demiplanes, since it is different for each one, except one thing: if you don't know your destination, it is better if you can fly, since you can appear high in the air.

Good and Evil on the Planes

The powerful evil beings are wholly persuaded that their actions will give them more happiness than they would gain from being good. This happens, despite the fact that they can visit Astral and all the different heavens present in it. It seemingly cannot be reconciled with the fact that for any objective observer it is clear that the hells are filled with terrible torment and despair, and heaven with real pleasure and happines. The basic reason, of course, is that evil beings are evil not simply because they act in the evil way. They are evil because they are inordinately attached to some thing - whether those are riches, lust, anger, or anything else. This is what causes their behaviour, and to stop being evil they would have to detach themselves from it - and it is exactly the thing they cannot do.

Moreover, the final destiny of any spirit cannot be known. Souls of the dead, as it is commonly presumed, go to the Ideal Realm. Not all appear as avatars in the Astral Domains. Those spirits that appears as lowest demons and devils generally don't remember their live - if they had any life earlier at all. If any dweller of the planes will actually go to the Nine hells in the Astral, and is are powerful enough to speak with devils there without being immediately captured, he will be assured that the successful Evil people are richly rewarded after death. They can be shown very pleasant realms, where they can obtain their desire, whether it is power, lust, revenge or whatever else. They can also see the degraded and tormented spirits of good people - as they are assured by the devils.

Additionately, not only the planes themselves are influenced by the mentality of their dwellers. Even more, the perception of the planes depends on the mentality of the observer. For the fiends Mount Celestia, for example, is filled with unbearable piercing cold, burning acid, and light so bright that it blinds them more than darkness. Even for evil and neutral mortals Celestia is difficult to bear. In addition to that, of course, even mere presence of Evil thought taints the psychoreactive realms of good, and as result any evil creatures there are usually attacked at sight. Conversely, different hells look much more pleasant to fiends and evil mortals than to good people and celestials. This does not mean that the torments there are any lesser; but for the evil characters the various devils etc look noble and even beautiful, not like disfigured and monstrous creatures seen by good-aligned. The hells themselves are similarly filled with grandeur and beauty in the eyes of their dwellers.

According to usual belief, both celestials and fiends have made an irrevocable choice - angels for the good, and demons for evil. Despite that theory, there are many examples of creatures who certainly look like angels engaging in evil acts and debasing themselves into forms of evil. The standard answer to that is that the creatures which can be seen are not true immaterial spirits, but only their planar avatars. And there is no unbreakable barrier stopping someone evil from assuming a good avatar - although it is certainly very difficult for more aligned creatures. The avatars themselves are not so difficult to create. The various summoning spells, which call down the shapes of celestial creatures, don't bring any actual celestial, but simply create empty avatars, without any governing soul. They possess certain mechanical intelligence, which allows them to execute the orders of the mage, but are merely automatons without any volition or initiative.

Additinonately, there exist such spells as polymorph. Some beings are also quite good at disguising themselves, and some other are simply very nearly angels - but not quite. Powerful good creatures can look while in the Astral quite like angels - if they think so of themselves. Even some quite non-angelic personages can think they are virtually angels - and belief is reality in the Astral.

Sigil

Sigil exists in the Astral, as the center of trade between different Material worlds and Astral demiplanes. It differs from other demiplanes and domains by a number of peculiarities. For one thing, all demiplanes and domains are connected by a number of permanent planar gates and pathways, such as the rivers Styx and Oceanus, or the Yggdrassil Tree. Sigil possess not a few, but an uncountable number of portals reaching perhaps to all other planes. Those portals can be used by even very weak (that is, low-level) creatures, as long as they know the key. Sigil is filled with matter more than any other domain in the Astral (and purely etheric realms of the Ethereal plane seem very uncomfortable and exhausting for a mortal). Cnot with ether, but air, and the psychoreactive trait is so weak that it is necessary to eat there. This requires a hermetic sealing of the city, which makes it impossible to travel directly from the Astral to Sigil or the other way round. From the Astral, Sigil looks as a spinning torus with no openings, with the city on the inner surface.

Finally, Sigil is perhaps the most universally secure place in the Planes. Of course, the good domains are wholly secure for their proper dwellers, but for all others they are deadly. All other planes and domains are dangerous for all. In Sigil the Lady stops most powerful intruders, and the cooperation of various factions ensures a certain level of security from common criminals. What is more, that security is extended to all, so that even the creatures who normally would fight at sight can meet and converse there.

All this makes of Sigil the best connected place in the Multiverse - at least for the less powerful (lower-level) beings. Ideas which are common there tend to be propagated far and wide. Whoever can win the war of ideas in Sigil, can shape to a large degree the whole Astral/Ethereal and consequently even Material Multiverse - at least the factions of Sigil like to think so. Certainly, ideas popular in Sigil can spread to mortal realms much easier that those from more powerful beings which lack any direct contact with mortals.

On the other side, compared to the immense power, grandeur, wealth and beauty of other domains, Sigil is dirty, petty, poor and weak. The merchants of Sigil haggle for profits which are certainly big when compared to the Material cities, but seem like nothing when compared to the whole planes made of gold and diamonds. Really powerful being (except the gods, of course) can make business and even dwell there. The typical citizen of Sigil resembles however a street urchin, who is persuaded that he knows all secrets of the state policy when he sees the carriages before the royal palace, and is always ready to deride and mislead rural rednecks. They are also filled with tremendous resentment against people from the Material Plane, which is easy to understand, considering that the most typical visitor is a high level wizard or cleric, who travels by astral projection with his retinue of his cohort, bodyguards, factotums, bound demons and animated undead, and whose interaction with the locals is limited to ordering the shades forward to disperse the rabble.


Near Ethereal


Near Ethereal is also called Dreamland, Faery or Otherword. It shares some common trait of Ethereal: eg lack of need to eat and drink, and lack of sun. It is psychically connected with Material. Each planet in Material has a corresponding piece of Near Ethereal, which is its more or less exact reflection. Usually, the terrain features are reflected quite precisely, but the works of civilisation are either wholly absent or show decayed and desolate. The Dreamland is filled with a dark forest where the Material World has fields, and the often travelled road from the Material is covered with grass and lichens in the Dream. The Dreamland is influenced also by the mental atmosphere prevailing in the corresponding material land. A country ruled by bloody tyranny will have rivers and rains of blood, with black clouds etc in the Near Ethereal. In such a realm, the sunless bright sky, that is the Astral, which illuminates the Dreamland, would be covered by heavy dark clouds.

The Dreamlands have little enough human population, but are filed with dreamers. All those who dream appear somewhere within the Dreamlands. There are whole Dream-cities, some in places corresponding to the real cities, other in strange and impractical locations. The dreamers seldom appear within the cities corresponding to their own, but some even in dream are following their trade. The dream-merchants can offer many rare and valuable items, but it is unadvisable to try to take them by force. The dreamers, similarly to those who travel by astral projection, cannot be killed - if the dream-self is slain, the dreamer simply awakens from his nightmare and goes right again to sleep. And when the dream-merchant disappears, so do all his unsold wares.

Because of that function of the Dreamlands, it is impossible to dream in the Near Ethereal. As the result the elves, who as all fay come from Dreamlands, do not sleep but meditate instead. In addition to dreamers, elves and fay, Dreamlands are filled with monsters. Even the strangest and most impractical animal can exists in a dream, and in the realm when it is impossible to die from hunger and animal can hunt a hundred years for a man.

The psychic connection between the Near Ethereal and the material world goes in both directions. The changes in Ethereal influence the emotions in the Material. Defeating evil presence in the Near Ethereal can lead to improvements in the Material World, causing better weather, more responsible people, even a revolution against a tyrant. This is by no means easy - the analog of the city ruled by a tyrant can be a fortress filled with giants, evil fay or undead, ruled by a demon.

Dreamlands are usually flat, and are greater than the corresponding material worlds, such that at the borders there are lands which have no analog in the material realm. When you reach the border of the world, you see an enormous cliff, and beyond that the silvery void of the Astral. Properly prepared ships can sail beyond the border of the world and travel through the astral to other Dreamlands and even to the Astral realms. Dreamlands of different planets and different alternative realities usually are not linked together, although from time to time a land-bridge or a strand of sea extending through the Astral does happen.

The other way to voyage to the Astral from the Dreamland is to find a high enough mountain. High mountains reach beyond the polluted ether of the Near Ethereal into the cool winds of the Astral. Because of that, they can be visited by the gods. They had once danced on the peak of Hatheg-Kia, and to this day have their palaces on the Olympos.

When returning from the Astral to the Dreamland, it is important to return to the edge of the world or the high mountains. Otherwise, unless the traveller can fly, he will fall burning like a falling star when the gravity of the land will seize him.


Border Ethereal

In Border Ethereal the pure ether is heavily mixed with matter, forming the interminable mist familiar to those using the Etherealness spell.

[JonSetanta]

Ah. That's the stuff.

[Maxus]

It seems like high-Int people have it all their own way when it comes to planar travel. I'd say intelligence doesn't matter as much as willpower, myself.

[JonSetanta]

It seems like high-Int people have it all their own way when it comes to planar travel. I'd say intelligence doesn't matter as much as willpower, myself.

Personally I've witnessed hordes of idiots accomplish much more than a scant few geniuses.
Your theory probably holds true.


Oh, and as a side, y'all should look at Lucifer comic chapter 37. A crew rides the Norse giant ship of Ragnarok through many dimensions to get a single soul (subplot)