Spirit-Cosmology without outer planes [Archive] - Wizards Community

Spirit-Cosmology without outer planes [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Naderion
04-18-08, 03:34 PM I think I could use some advice and thought on this:

For the setting I'm creating, I decided to make a cosmology similar to gealic and east-asian folklore:
There are four infinite elemental planes (air, earth, fire, water) which are all coterminous with each other. They are seperated by soft borders, so you can travel through a region of mist between the plane of air and the plane of water. The region where all four elemental planes touch at the same time is the material plane (which is also infinite).
The material plane is devided into three layers. The Mortal World, The Fairy World, and the Shadow World. The Material World is as usual. The Fairy World is very similar, but all aspects of nature (like temperature, hights, wind speed, ...) are more extreme. The Shadow World is also similar to the Mortal World, but colorless, dark, and earily silent. The Fairy World and Shadow World are coexistent with the Mortal World, but not with each other.

If you're not on any of these planes, you're on the asatral plane, which is mostly as usual but with many far realm traits.

Borders between these seven planes are fluid. A tunnel in the mortal world might gradually lead to the Plane of Earth, or a shadowy path through the forest might become darker until one finds himself in the Shadow World. Elementals can pass freely between the Mortal World and elemental planes, in almost any location with a sufficent amount of rather pure elemental matter present. Fey can travel between the Mortal, Fairy, and Shadow Worlds by the myriads of small portals which spring up in any locations at every time and close after some minutes without any mortals taking notice of them. Fey on the other hand can sense them and have no problem finding one in some ten meters distance. But it's always possible to accidently step into a portal and end up in one of the other two worlds, though this very rarely happens except in places known for their extremely high freqency of portals.

There are many, many spirits in the world, but most reside in the Fairy and Shadow World. But fey like nymphs or sprite frequently spend a great deal of their time in the Mortal World also. Location-bound fey usually reside in locations that are both in the Mortal and Fairy World (or Shadow) at the same time. Deities are the greatest spirits and the spirits of important and encompassing concepts and ideas. They are immortal, incorporeal, formless, invisible and don't occupy a single location but simply exist everywhere at the same time (so anything from DaDG doesn't apply). There are no outsiders, but the range of fey creatures is very large.

So, the problem I now face is how to handle the souls of the dead, afterlife, and resurrection. I don't want them to vanish completely, but I also don't want them to remain "persons" like petitioners. Anyone ideas how to handle this?
Mercurius
04-18-08, 03:58 PM Well, there's always reincarnation instead. Once a person passes on, his soul goes back into the well of souls that is spread throughout the universe, and then moves on to infuse a new birth after a certain amount of time. Perhaps not all of the soul is used at once - it becomes raw materials, like disassembling lego blocks and only using a few pieces with new ones to build a new thing. The remaining pieces continue to float until they're reborn. This would help explain why Raise Dead spells lead to level loss - the lost level is due to a portion of the soul being used in a new creation. And with the cycle of death and rebirth at a reasonable length, even powerful magics could be used. This raises the question of what happens when dead are brought back after a particularly lengthy stay in the pool of soul energy, but you could always just make the turn-over particularly long.

The potential problem with this is that "bad" people aren't really punished upon death, though you could just go the whole Karma/Dharma route and declare that people with negative karma are reborn in lowlier forms, and have to work their way back up, if you wanted. I mean, much of the spirit realm setting is very asian/totemic, so using other conceits from it doesn't hurt, does it?
gravenhurst
04-22-08, 04:38 PM Where is the Well of Lost Souls again? In the 3.5E Manual of the Planes or a 2ndE Planescape book?

And what D&D Edition are you using? 3.5 E?

Are you thinking of Transmigration in a Gaelic themed world?

And not Indian asian (eg. India, Pakistan) but oriental asian (eg. China, Japan)?

It would help in figuring out your ideas on spirits.

And your campaign world has its souls /spirits travel mainly to the shadow and fairy worlds? Where do the other souls go?

DaDG = Dungeons and Dragons Game (i.e. D&D)? So no referral to Deities & Demigods, or Manual of the Planes here?
gravenhurst
05-01-08, 05:35 PM Well, there's always reincarnation instead. Once a person passes on, his soul goes back into the well of souls that is spread throughout the universe, and then moves on to infuse a new birth after a certain amount of time.

I happen to have been reading Ghostwalk and stumbled on your reference to Well of Souls, the portal to the True Afterlife. I asked around and no one had a clue to it. but now I do.
gravenhurst
05-01-08, 05:38 PM Maybe check out my thread titled, "How Are Lemures and Larva Created." Some interesting responses to something simliar to what you are looking for. Understanding the basics first may allow you how to handle your spirit world. :)
Eldritch_Lord
05-01-08, 06:57 PM DaDG = Dungeons and Dragons Game (i.e. D&D)? So no referral to Deities & Demigods, or Manual of the Planes here?

I don't know about your other questions, but DaDG or D&DG usually means Deities and Demigods, so he's specifically disallowing that.
gravenhurst
07-13-08, 09:35 AM Since deities (no Deities & Demigods com-parable's) are everywhere, as spirits - maybe use the idea from 4th E, where the Fey world/Spirit plane co-exists with the Prime Material. Like the shadow and ethereal planes the world is the same but reflects it differently. So on the Fey plane, it is an exact duplicate of the world but is all nature oriented with no man made structures (eg. a castle would on the prime would be a hilltop on the Fey) and all creatures are nature related? This is an easy transfer for spirits to "cross over" and for adventurers to "get them back." Again, I will refer you to the Ghostwalk campaign as a good source of an afterlife/spirit world example.
Thane26425
07-20-08, 03:10 AM You could bring canon cosmology down a step. If you read the description of the 7 levels of Celestia, at the topmost level is a portal that leads to somewhere else. Once you go through you can't come back.

Spirits could stay on the material, fey and shadow planes for as many reasons as there are spirits. Perhaps there is something they need to do, it isn't their time,or they just want to stay. The description of the Etheric plane mentions a ghost city in the deep ether. Maybe there is a fabled ghost city in the shadow world, very well hidden of course and the living almost certainly would receive a very bad reception.

It could be that the out planes still exist, but you can't get to them, unless it is your time of course and they you won't be coming back. In that case, as long as the spirit remains in one of the accessible parts of the universe, they could be brought back, summoned to be talked to, etc.

That does bring up the question of why the out planes can't be accessed. Simple answer there is that the powers of good and evil have agreed to make it so because they exist in a state of war. If the forces of good and evil were allowed easy entry to the core universe, the whole place would become a battlefield and soon be wiped out. With everything dead, there would be no more souls to either corrupt or redeem, so everyone loses.

Of course, the PCs need not know that. They just need to know that the outer planes are unreachable. Of course, if they do try to breech the boundary, they could be informed that they risk destroying all of creation. Then again, maybe they will find themselves across and trapped on the other side, probably being hunted by fiendish or celestial hosts without end.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Naderion 04-18-08, 03:34 PM	I think I could use some advice and thought on this: For the setting I'm creating, I decided to make a cosmology similar to gealic and east-asian folklore: There are four infinite elemental planes (air, earth, fire, water) which are all coterminous with each other. They are seperated by soft borders, so you can travel through a region of mist between the plane of air and the plane of water. The region where all four elemental planes touch at the same time is the material plane (which is also infinite). The material plane is devided into three layers. The Mortal World, The Fairy World, and the Shadow World. The Material World is as usual. The Fairy World is very similar, but all aspects of nature (like temperature, hights, wind speed, ...) are more extreme. The Shadow World is also similar to the Mortal World, but colorless, dark, and earily silent. The Fairy World and Shadow World are coexistent with the Mortal World, but not with each other. If you're not on any of these planes, you're on the asatral plane, which is mostly as usual but with many far realm traits. Borders between these seven planes are fluid. A tunnel in the mortal world might gradually lead to the Plane of Earth, or a shadowy path through the forest might become darker until one finds himself in the Shadow World. Elementals can pass freely between the Mortal World and elemental planes, in almost any location with a sufficent amount of rather pure elemental matter present. Fey can travel between the Mortal, Fairy, and Shadow Worlds by the myriads of small portals which spring up in any locations at every time and close after some minutes without any mortals taking notice of them. Fey on the other hand can sense them and have no problem finding one in some ten meters distance. But it's always possible to accidently step into a portal and end up in one of the other two worlds, though this very rarely happens except in places known for their extremely high freqency of portals. There are many, many spirits in the world, but most reside in the Fairy and Shadow World. But fey like nymphs or sprite frequently spend a great deal of their time in the Mortal World also. Location-bound fey usually reside in locations that are both in the Mortal and Fairy World (or Shadow) at the same time. Deities are the greatest spirits and the spirits of important and encompassing concepts and ideas. They are immortal, incorporeal, formless, invisible and don't occupy a single location but simply exist everywhere at the same time (so anything from DaDG doesn't apply). There are no outsiders, but the range of fey creatures is very large. So, the problem I now face is how to handle the souls of the dead, afterlife, and resurrection. I don't want them to vanish completely, but I also don't want them to remain "persons" like petitioners. Anyone ideas how to handle this?
Mercurius 04-18-08, 03:58 PM	Well, there's always reincarnation instead. Once a person passes on, his soul goes back into the well of souls that is spread throughout the universe, and then moves on to infuse a new birth after a certain amount of time. Perhaps not all of the soul is used at once - it becomes raw materials, like disassembling lego blocks and only using a few pieces with new ones to build a new thing. The remaining pieces continue to float until they're reborn. This would help explain why Raise Dead spells lead to level loss - the lost level is due to a portion of the soul being used in a new creation. And with the cycle of death and rebirth at a reasonable length, even powerful magics could be used. This raises the question of what happens when dead are brought back after a particularly lengthy stay in the pool of soul energy, but you could always just make the turn-over particularly long. The potential problem with this is that "bad" people aren't really punished upon death, though you could just go the whole Karma/Dharma route and declare that people with negative karma are reborn in lowlier forms, and have to work their way back up, if you wanted. I mean, much of the spirit realm setting is very asian/totemic, so using other conceits from it doesn't hurt, does it?
gravenhurst 04-22-08, 04:38 PM	Where is the Well of Lost Souls again? In the 3.5E Manual of the Planes or a 2ndE Planescape book? And what D&D Edition are you using? 3.5 E? Are you thinking of Transmigration in a Gaelic themed world? And not Indian asian (eg. India, Pakistan) but oriental asian (eg. China, Japan)? It would help in figuring out your ideas on spirits. And your campaign world has its souls /spirits travel mainly to the shadow and fairy worlds? Where do the other souls go? DaDG = Dungeons and Dragons Game (i.e. D&D)? So no referral to Deities & Demigods, or Manual of the Planes here?
gravenhurst 05-01-08, 05:35 PM	Well, there's always reincarnation instead. Once a person passes on, his soul goes back into the well of souls that is spread throughout the universe, and then moves on to infuse a new birth after a certain amount of time. I happen to have been reading Ghostwalk and stumbled on your reference to Well of Souls, the portal to the True Afterlife. I asked around and no one had a clue to it. but now I do.
gravenhurst 05-01-08, 05:38 PM	Maybe check out my thread titled, "How Are Lemures and Larva Created." Some interesting responses to something simliar to what you are looking for. Understanding the basics first may allow you how to handle your spirit world. :)
Eldritch_Lord 05-01-08, 06:57 PM	DaDG = Dungeons and Dragons Game (i.e. D&D)? So no referral to Deities & Demigods, or Manual of the Planes here? I don't know about your other questions, but DaDG or D&DG usually means Deities and Demigods, so he's specifically disallowing that.
gravenhurst 07-13-08, 09:35 AM	Since deities (no Deities & Demigods com-parable's) are everywhere, as spirits - maybe use the idea from 4th E, where the Fey world/Spirit plane co-exists with the Prime Material. Like the shadow and ethereal planes the world is the same but reflects it differently. So on the Fey plane, it is an exact duplicate of the world but is all nature oriented with no man made structures (eg. a castle would on the prime would be a hilltop on the Fey) and all creatures are nature related? This is an easy transfer for spirits to "cross over" and for adventurers to "get them back." Again, I will refer you to the Ghostwalk campaign as a good source of an afterlife/spirit world example.
Thane26425 07-20-08, 03:10 AM	You could bring canon cosmology down a step. If you read the description of the 7 levels of Celestia, at the topmost level is a portal that leads to somewhere else. Once you go through you can't come back. Spirits could stay on the material, fey and shadow planes for as many reasons as there are spirits. Perhaps there is something they need to do, it isn't their time,or they just want to stay. The description of the Etheric plane mentions a ghost city in the deep ether. Maybe there is a fabled ghost city in the shadow world, very well hidden of course and the living almost certainly would receive a very bad reception. It could be that the out planes still exist, but you can't get to them, unless it is your time of course and they you won't be coming back. In that case, as long as the spirit remains in one of the accessible parts of the universe, they could be brought back, summoned to be talked to, etc. That does bring up the question of why the out planes can't be accessed. Simple answer there is that the powers of good and evil have agreed to make it so because they exist in a state of war. If the forces of good and evil were allowed easy entry to the core universe, the whole place would become a battlefield and soon be wiped out. With everything dead, there would be no more souls to either corrupt or redeem, so everyone loses. Of course, the PCs need not know that. They just need to know that the outer planes are unreachable. Of course, if they do try to breech the boundary, they could be informed that they risk destroying all of creation. Then again, maybe they will find themselves across and trapped on the other side, probably being hunted by fiendish or celestial hosts without end.