Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Kakita_Duelist 01-18-07, 09:08 PM	I finally got MoTP... excellent book in my honest opinions... but something struck my mind as being extremely intresting... The Far Realm. I was wondering, are there any notable inhabitants there? Could it be the birthplace of Illithids (my own personal theory)? I just find the whole topic incredibly intresting, and if anyone could post some information, theories, and other such topics of intrest on the Far Realm.
supernerd222 01-18-07, 09:55 PM	The thing with the far realm is that it's a really screwed up place. If you go there you go crazy after a while. It takes weirdness to a level that cannot be understood by humans, then turns it inside out and inverts the colours. It is utterly beyond the comprehension of humans. Humans can't even begin to comprehend it. The farther in you go, the crazier it gets. I like to use an analogy of artists to symbolize the progression of insanity. In increasing order of distance from the "normal side": (though sides cannot be defined in a normal sense here) Level one: Rene Magritte Level two: Paul Delvaux Level three: Salvador Dali Level four: Pablo Picasso Level five: Piet Mondrian Level six: Jackson Pollock Of course, these are just ways of imagining it. The far realm cannot really be imagined, especially in the farther sections. There you start getting nasty stuff like Higher-Dimensional existance and Non Euclidian geometries, and even weirder stuff. Sometimes you get things that seem completely random, much like the Tales of Mister Carbon Buisiness. Other times a layer emulates a particular type of insanity. There are infinite layers. None of them are normal. There's a thread around here someplace where people make up layers. As one would expect, some are pretty stupid, but there's so much good stuff there it would be a bad idea not to check it out. As for monsters, There are three in the Fiend Folio: The Kaorti, the remains of some wizards foolish enough to go there; One that is a mix between a tree and a scorpion, and a living flying blob with tentacles. The most important thing with the far realm is to keep it original. If your players have a clue of what is going on, you aren't trying hard enough.
ripvanwormer 01-18-07, 11:26 PM	I finally got MoTP... excellent book in my honest opinions... but something struck my mind as being extremely intresting... The Far Realm. I was wondering, are there any notable inhabitants there? Could it be the birthplace of Illithids (my own personal theory)? I just find the whole topic incredibly intresting, and if anyone could post some information, theories, and other such topics of intrest on the Far Realm. The FAQ (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=413985) has a lot of Far Realm-related links. Compillation of Far Realm Materials (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=448354) is a very good one, but there are many others. It's worth it to browse the FAQ and see, though.
sciborg2 01-18-07, 11:55 PM	Level one: Rene Magritte Level two: Paul Delvaux Level three: Salvador Dali Level four: Pablo Picasso Level five: Piet Mondrian Level six: Jackson Pollock This I like. I hate the Cthullu-ness of the Far Realms, I can see that as part of it but it serves me better as you describe it, an abstraction from our very notions of reality. RMGCLF has made many, many excellent contributions to the subject, I think a lot of his work is linked in our somewhat defunct fact...
Taeldrin Laesrash 01-19-07, 09:41 AM	This I like. I hate the Cthullu-ness of the Far Realms, I can see that as part of it but it serves me better as you describe it, an abstraction from our very notions of reality. The Cthulhu-ness of the Far Realms is supposed to be that it's beyond human comprehension, one of its basic truths. All the tentacles are the result of misreading (Although I do like the idea that the mind flayers came from the place). Even the table of abstraction is based on the premise that we don't get it, though it is a nice table.
supernerd222 01-19-07, 08:19 PM	This I like. I hate the Cthullu-ness of the Far Realms, I can see that as part of it but it serves me better as you describe it, an abstraction from our very notions of reality. Mind if I Ego Pad that?
sciborg2 01-20-07, 12:48 AM	Sir, I'd be honored. :)
sciborg2 01-20-07, 01:15 AM	(Although I do like the idea that the mind flayers came from the place). I like that too, though its a toss between that and coming from the future... "the future's a threat, not a promise" -- runaways
Return of the Flumph 01-20-07, 02:24 AM	The Far Realm. I was wondering, are there any notable inhabitants there? Could it be the birthplace of Illithids (my own personal theory)? It very likely is the birthplace of the illithids, at least indirectly. Some time ago, there was a big discussion on the boards about whether or not the illithids evolved from the aboleths. They are both psionic, they both control the minds of other creatures, they both have four tentacles surrounding their mouths, and they both spend at least part of their life cycle underwater. This was an idea I and many other people all came up with independently, so there is probably something there. It is a well known fact (see Lords of Madness) that the aboleths came from the Far Realms, having been sired by a godlike entity that lives there. If the illithids came from the aboleth, and the aboleth came from the Realms, well...there's your answer.
Bob the Efreet 01-21-07, 04:57 AM	Here's my take on the Outside, from one character's point of view: In an infinite multiverse, you can’t see everything. Everybody understands that. What most people don’t realise is that there are places between the spaces that we know. These are dangerous, wicked places, worse than the Lower Planes. They seep, innocuously and vilely, through our experience and perception. Creatures, alien and malign, horrible in form and function, lying just below sight. They get here somehow. They must. Fortunately, I have been granted the sight to see them and the blades to fight them. And my first job is to find the hole in reality that lets them in.
hazhar 01-21-07, 12:04 PM	does anyone else think The Far Realm(s) is a much better fit for a chaotic neutral plane than Limbo is? When I think of ultimate chaos, on a cosmological/metaphysical scale, it looks far more like the madness of the Far Realms than Limbo. The Far Realms is so much more interesting, too; there's just far more material for stories and adventures there than with Limbo. I know I'm going to get a really long paragraph from ripvanwormer or someone explaining why I'm wrong, but PEACH.
Return of the Flumph 01-21-07, 12:33 PM	does anyone else think The Far Realm(s) is a much better fit for a chaotic neutral plane than Limbo is? Yes. Someone is bound to make the argument that Limbo is the manifestation of Chaos, while the Far Realms represent a set of ideas (or lack thereof) that are beyond even Law and Chaos. However, Randomly shifting maddening layers...check. Nonesensical creatures that make no sense...check. Fundamentally entropic and defying order...check. The Far Realms are chaotic. Pure and simple. In fact, almost all real world mythologies support the idea of the far realms being chaotic.
sciborg2 01-21-07, 02:41 PM	The Far Realms is so much more interesting, too; there's just far more material for stories and adventures there than with Limbo Slaad Number 1: Let's get that guy! Insulting our homeplane. This is going to keep happening, people saying we're not "real chaos". If we don't want to be downtrodden we gotta get organized... Slaad Number 2 eats Slaad Number 1. Slaad Number 2: BURP.....what? He was a traitor....
hazhar 01-21-07, 04:04 PM	Slaad Number 1: Let's get that guy! Insulting our homeplane. This is going to keep happening, people saying we're not "real chaos". If we don't want to be downtrodden we gotta get organized... Slaad Number 2 eats Slaad Number 1. Slaad Number 2: BURP.....what? He was a traitor.... the slaadi can move to the new plane of Chaos too if they want :P Although they would seem almost ordered and modron-like compared to their new neighbours.
supernerd222 01-21-07, 07:42 PM	Someone is bound to make the argument that Limbo is the manifestation of Chaos, while the Far Realms represent a set of ideas (or lack thereof) that are beyond even Law and Chaos. And here he comes. In order for a noun, that is a person, place, thing, idea, or feeling to be defined within an established category, the noun must first be defined. Because the far realm cannot be defined, it cannot be put into a category. The far realm is not simply a plane. It is the opposite. Planes are infinite in three dimensions, but the far realm has a sort of higher order infinity on all eleven. The great wheel is the great wheel, but the far realm is everywhere else in both time and space. Trying to define the far realm as chaotic or lawful is like trying to define the universe outside your house as a recreational area or a functional area. Any conclusion you come to on either of these matters is arbitrary, untrue, and totally irrelevant. But as for your specific arguments: Randomly shifting maddening layers...check. Randomly shifting, or moving in a pattern too complex to be understood by any living being? How do we even know they are shifting? if you look at this tesseract, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tesseract.gif) it looks as though it is shifting. It isn't. It's only rotating. That's one more dimension than you're used to. Think of how much seven more would screw you over. Nonesensical creatures that make no sense...check. Redundant redundancies that are really redundant? ;) You probably don't make much sense to them either. But how are nonsensical creatures chaotic? Slaad make a lot of sense to me. They don't wake me up in the middle of the night wondering how they can even exist. They don't really look even that different than humans. Demons are chaotic. So are orcs and many gnomes. On the other hand, we have Kaorti. The Kaorti are sorcerers that deuced themselves over big time when they went on a most excellent adventure to the far realms. They got eaten, reborn as creatures of the far realm, and took a bogus journey back. They're usually neutral evil. Fundamentally entropic and defying order...check. Entropic like this? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy) Then wouldn't it be becoming less energetic over time? I'm no alignment master, but I think something with no energy left is pretty lawful. Doesn't do anything too unpredictable. That's newton's first law, you know. It isn't entropic. It doesn't follow any laws at all. Not even the second law of thermodynamics, or Newton's first law. As for the second part, (and note that your argument is a little contradictory :P ) It defies chaos too. No matter how chaotic you are, it's still going to drive you crazy. Not because it's the ultimate chaos, but because it's a crazy place. Not all crazy things are chaotic. Look at the xerfilstyx from the Fiend Folio. Utterly insane, yet lawful. The far realm is utterly insane, yet beyond law and chaos, which is represented as neutral. So in conclusion, Limbo is the manifestation of Chaos, while the Far Realms represent a set of ideas (or lack thereof) that are beyond even Law and Chaos. It should be noted that I am not flaming you. Just debating.
hazhar 01-21-07, 08:15 PM	I feel I should kinda clarify what I meant when I suggested replacing Limbo with the Far Realm... I didn't mean using it as it presented in the rules now, as it is clearly beyond alignment and definition and established D&D physics and metaphysics and so on and so forth. Obviously for it to fit into the great wheel cosmology in the place of Limbo it would have to be ever so slightly more defined in it's nature than it is now - still a plane of many, possibly infinite, random/shifting layers of madness, but one that is specifically stated to be chaotic in nature rather than "beyond" the alignment system. The Far Realm meets Limbo. I call it Farmbo :D
tryco 01-22-07, 05:04 PM	I think the far-realm surrounds all the planes in the great wheel. They’re connected to all the planes instead of a large area of vacuum (astral plane) between the great wheel and the far-realm. Something like the outlands are connected to the outer planes, instead the far-realm is like a large jelly-pudding sitting on top, and slipping through. This is just my opinion. The far-realm can be connected to the material plane, that's a fact. But what happens if the far-realm connects the some outer planes. Like the abyss, the nine hells or celestia. What would happen then?
ripvanwormer 01-22-07, 05:44 PM	The Far Realm does not surround the Great Wheel in the sense that the Astral Plane surrounds the Great Wheel, or in the sense that the Ethereal surrounds the Material Plane, or in the sense that the 16 outer planes of the Great Ring surround the Outlands. The Astral Plane extends forever in all directions. There is nothing beyond it. Nothing at all. The Far Realm exists not outside the planes, but outside time itself. It is what lies before time began, and what will remain after time ends. It is thus not possible to reach the Far Realm with mere planar travel. Time travel is necessary in most cases, although rarely portals may open to the Time Beyond Time during certain conjunctions of the stars, and there may be other leaks and cysts elsewhere.
Tarascon 01-22-07, 06:09 PM	It is thus not possible to reach the Far Realm with mere planar travel. Time travel is necessary in most cases, although rarely portals may open to the Time Beyond Time during certain conjunctions of the stars, and there may be other leaks and cysts elsewhere. Don't forget Xoriat in Eberron. Xoriat and the Far Realm are essentially the same thing. But like rip said, Xoriat was only open to Eberron for a limited amount of time way, way back there towards the beginning. So the statement remains true. But back to the point. Yeah, the Far Realm would be cooler than Limbo to an extent, but, its beyond Chaos, and one could easily imagine it beyond Law and all else. It is its own alignment (which I just just simply call Lovecraftian; the entire point of the Far Realm was to get the Mythos and Lovecraftian feeling into D&D, although I have to say that Cthulhu and the other gods strike me more as Obyriths than anything, but I digress). This topic came up a while back. Yanagita explained things to me. The slaad represent Chaos because the frog as a symbol represents chaos in mythology. The creatures that dwelled in the sea of chaos before time in Egyptian myth had frog heads, it was frog who brough death to the people of Africa, and so on and so on. This carried over into today's culture with the slaad (and those frog things in Hellboy, but once again I digress). Back in 1st. and 2nd. edition days they looked less conformist; just frog-like beings with random features. They were identified as 'red' or 'blue' by the color of the magic symbols on their head. Personally I'm keeping that mechanic and using the random mutations/features as well as technology from Chaositech.
sicsemperjohn 01-23-07, 02:03 AM	There was one metaphor, and I can't remember whether it was Shemmy or Sciborg or Rip or whoever -- it doesn't particularly matter. It suggested that the Great Wheel is like a big party, and any kind of planar forces at war just want to fiddle with what's on the stereo: say, Evil wants to crank up the harsh stuff with all the minor chords, Law wants to put on stuff with precise beat patterns, whatever. Everyone is still sticking around the party. If the Far Realms were to overcome the Great Wheel cosmology, they'd smash the stereo and make everybody go outside to do something else.
Raymond_Luxury_Yacht 01-23-07, 02:45 AM	In 2e, I believe, the 'thids accidentally went through the Far Realm when they went back in time, and were changed somehow. It's not canon in 3e, though.
Shemeska the Marauder 01-23-07, 02:56 AM	This topic came up a while back. Yanagita explained things to me. The slaad represent Chaos because the frog as a symbol represents chaos in mythology. The creatures that dwelled in the sea of chaos before time in Egyptian myth had frog heads, it was frog who brough death to the people of Africa, and so on and so on. The Ogdoad myth cycle had a group of primal male and female beings, serpents and frogs, that drew the cosmos out of primal chaos. I've had fun with the combination of the Egyptian pantheon's links to Pelion, and curious little frog motifs on some of the eldest architecture there that if you look at it the right way the frogs kinda look like Slaad... ;) And as for the serpents, or serpent-like figures, mythological evolution and syncretism between myth cycles can certainly put an interesting spin upon the nugget of history they're founded upon (ie my own interpretation of the primal denizens of Elysium). But I'm diverging from the topic of the Far Realms. Whoops.
Neverwrong 01-23-07, 07:57 AM	The Far Realm is as defineable as it is a copper handring with pineapple. If all lies in the eye of the beholder, and if sanity is defined by the majority, then what does that make a place that is made of nothing and everything? You can see it, yet you can´t. If your brain goes there, it doesn't go out. Madness, madness, tastes like pinecones. Time before Time, and Time after Time. I like it. That way, we can't really define it, as it's not following the same "Laws" as the rest of the universe. It could, can and will somewhere, but as it is infinite, you can't really say, can you?
ArcTan 01-23-07, 08:45 AM	I feel I should kinda clarify what I meant when I suggested replacing Limbo with the Far Realm... I didn't mean using it as it presented in the rules now, as it is clearly beyond alignment and definition and established D&D physics and metaphysics and so on and so forth. Obviously for it to fit into the great wheel cosmology in the place of Limbo it would have to be ever so slightly more defined in it's nature than it is now - still a plane of many, possibly infinite, random/shifting layers of madness, but one that is specifically stated to be chaotic in nature rather than "beyond" the alignment system. The Far Realm meets Limbo. I call it Farmbo :D The reason the Far Realm hurts you is that it's got some Law to it. It has an established order that it tries to force you into, and since you don't match it, you start to get damaged and insane from the way it's trying to fit you into its environment. Pure Chaos is not like this. Chaos has no overarching order -- just individual entities vying for control with one another. That's why Limbo's chaos-stuff *can be controlled* -- a strong will is all you need to force Limbo into a certain order. This is the whole point of the githzerai. Pure Chaos means no sentience and an absolute willingness to be conformed, for the moment, to another's whim before you break off and find a new whim to follow, another's or your own, no matter. (Just as pure Law means no sentience and an absolute determination to stick to a set, unchanging order, whether this order originates from you or elsewhere.)
hazhar 01-23-07, 08:58 AM	The reason the Far Realm hurts you is that it's got some Law to it. It has an established order that it tries to force you into, and since you don't match it, you start to get damaged and insane from the way it's trying to fit you into its environment. Pure Chaos is not like this. Chaos has no overarching order -- just individual entities vying for control with one another. That's why Limbo's chaos-stuff *can be controlled* -- a strong will is all you need to force Limbo into a certain order. This is the whole point of the githzerai. Pure Chaos means no sentience and an absolute willingness to be conformed, for the moment, to another's whim before you break off and find a new whim to follow, another's or your own, no matter. (Just as pure Law means no sentience and an absolute determination to stick to a set, unchanging order, whether this order originates from you or elsewhere.) ok, fair enough. Then let's just say the plane of Farmbo has the mutable chaos property borrowed from Limbo. Like I said I'm not disputing the nature of the Far Realm as it exists now. I just that i think that that the lovecraftian inspired flavor and feel means it'd make for a more fun/interesting plane of neutral chaos than Limbo currently does.
IceGod 01-23-07, 09:21 AM	I've always thought Teratomorphs (MM II, pg 194) had a very Far Realms feel. Slap an Extraplanar subtype on them and set it loose -- you've got a living chunk of Far Realms matter oozing around mutating people and flinging they off to random planes all willy-nilly. Its immunity to acid, lightning and spells with the chaotic descripter fits right in, well, as much as anything fits in the Far Realms.
Melpomene 01-23-07, 12:56 PM	The layers of Biopia are infinate, yet made of two parts. The concepts of infiinity become skewed in the outer reaches, as does then the concept of getting, "beyond" them. However, I am inclined to agree with tryco in that the Far Realms connect the realms of the multiverse. Ebberon and Faerun are connected to Greyhawk through the mists of infinite possibility in the Far Realm. In the end, that's all the Realm is: possibility. It is the raw and unformed stuff of reality, the building blocks upon which all other concepts are based. Out in the depths of the infinate, the most powerful gods dwell. These beings control the creation, not of planes, but of entire cosmos. Terrible, primal gods associated with concepts so basic and universal that all other creatures, and even reality itself, must bow to them.
Millennium 01-23-07, 01:06 PM	The reason the Far Realm hurts you is that it's got some Law to it. It has an established order that it tries to force you into, and since you don't match it, you start to get damaged and insane from the way it's trying to fit you into its environment. Exactly. It's not that there's no Law: it's just that the Law is carved in eldritch runes on the sunken city of R'lyeh and will drive you mad should you even attempt to understand the slightest part of it.
ArcTan 01-23-07, 03:29 PM	ok, fair enough. Then let's just say the plane of Farmbo has the mutable chaos property borrowed from Limbo. Like I said I'm not disputing the nature of the Far Realm as it exists now. I just that i think that that the lovecraftian inspired flavor and feel means it'd make for a more fun/interesting plane of neutral chaos than Limbo currently does. *shrug* Make "Farmbo" Limbo-like enough, and it *is* Limbo. I don't see the point of this. Isn't Limbo already dreamlike, surreal and, in its own way, Lovecraftian enough? The slaadi are pretty reminiscent of Lovecraft's Deep Ones (horribly mutated fish-frog-man things).
supernerd222 01-23-07, 03:30 PM	Ebberon and Faerun are connected to Greyhawk through the mists of infinite possibility in the Far Realm. Ebberon is debatable. Perhaps Once you get to the far realms, the material plane and the outer planes have somehow turned into Ebberon. Perhaps Ebberon is the Far Realm's own little party in the house next door. Perhaps Ebberon is in a different reality altogether. Perhaps Ebberon is the true multiverse and the great wheel, through connection to the Far Realm exists within Xoriat. FR, no way. Everything published before the 3.0 FRCS said that Toril exists within the great wheel, just like Oerth, Athas, and the rest of them.
ripvanwormer 01-23-07, 03:58 PM	Ebberon and Faerun are connected to Greyhawk through the mists of infinite possibility in the Far Realm. In the end, that's all the Realm is: possibility. It is the raw and unformed stuff of reality, the building blocks upon which all other concepts are based. In fact, you've just described the Ethereal Plane exactly. This is how the Ethereal Plane was described in A Guide to the Ethereal Plane. It's the mists of infinite possibility, the raw and unformed stuff of reality, the building blocks upon which the rest of the planes are based. You can even use it to travel between Faerun and Greyhawk. You've got it precisely right, except you've misapplied the definition to a plane - the Far Realm - that has nothing to do with any of those concepts. The Far Realm is not the building blocks for the known planes - it is entirely alien, and the things you can build with it would likewise be completely unrecognizable to mortals. It does not have mists in any meaningful sense (that haze you see is your vision deteriorating as tentacles grow from your eye sockets). It is neither raw nor unformed. You cannot use it to travel between cosmologies. It is not a transitive plane. It is neither coterminous nor coexistent with anything but itself.
Rickiel 01-23-07, 04:12 PM	You MIGHT, however, dip into the Far Plane and (albeit through nothing short of a miracle if you make it out with your sanity intact) end up in a different time.
hazhar 01-23-07, 06:50 PM	Isn't Limbo already dreamlike, surreal and, in its own way, Lovecraftian enough? no :P not to me, anyway.
Tarascon 01-23-07, 06:59 PM	no :P not to me, anyway. Amen, brother. Amen.
ripvanwormer 01-23-07, 07:22 PM	no :P not to me, anyway. Maybe you're not looking at it correctly. Hovering inverted mountains made of water slowly transforming into forest of eyeballs melting into oceans of sparking blue electricity being broken up by the letter M standing proud defiant with tongues of flame... all of that can be found in Limbo, and more. The Far Realm, by contrast, is a n+1-dimensional matrix of incomprehensibility with no alliance with or even understanding of the alignments and elemental forces of the D&D multiverse. With squids. Everything people think would make the Far Realm a good exemplar of Chaos is actually already owned by Limbo, and only mistakenly attributed to the Far Realm, which cares nothing for those things.
DeeL 01-23-07, 10:23 PM	Musings for my own campaign setting. Apply as you will, 'your mileage may vary.' After the tumult of the fall of creation had settled, the Wyrm began to contemplate how it would go about consuming the Great Wheel, the Fundamental Planes and the Material Plane for its own, and thus unseat the Creator from the Throne. The Wyrm knew that the planes, however infinite they might be, were all ultimately in the hands of the creator; though the maw of the Wyrm itself had become the Gray Waste, even the Waste derived its endless choking fog from the lament of the Creator. The Wyrm required weapons that came not from the Creator, and thus against which even Creator would have no defences. And so the Wyrm exerted its spirit in making a plane unto itself, and succeeded in a way. But the Wyrm had spent its spirit in the creation of the Baernoloths; the new plane was infinite but empty, without life or will or energy or matter. The Wyrm considered the patterns imparted by will and perception, and considered also the vast remove of the mortal races from the Creator, for so far had the Wyrm fallen that he had forgotten how deeply the spirit of the creator underlay all of creation. In his thoughts, the Wyrm concluded that the mortal races possessed the thoughts and concepts that could fill his nascent plane with new powers. He required an armory and a laboratory for malediction; accordingly, he altered his plane such that it would respond to the will of whoever entered it such that what they found most hateful and fearsome would be made real. Because each mortal mind found different things to be atrocious, the Wyrm imparted not a mind, but veritably an intention to the plane - that it would raise up a new kind of divinity. One that would make the nightmares of mortals real, and give them new and primal strength. The Wyrm sent forth the tribe of Baern to capture mortals, the small and meek of creation as long as they had minds and fears. These were then cast into the Wyrmforged Plane, and its time set apart from other times. After uncounted eons, the Wyrm opened portals to his new plane to see what had been made. The mortal beings had become part of the plane itself, remaking itself into riotous perversions of its own worst nightmares, accumulating divine power in the process. But in so doing it had made the plane a fit home for itself and others like it. The new gods were part of the plane, and would not venture therefrom. In a rage, the Wyrm set the plane in a deep orbit into the furthest reaches of creation. But the Far Realms returned, and the Wyrm observed that there dwelt therein a new and more complex manner of horror. The Wyrm permitted the cycle to continue, and each time he observed it anew the results were ever more searing to the mind and more crippling to the spirit, the more so because with each revolution tiny portals opened into the mortal planes, and new 'material' entered in, enriching the awefulness of the Far Realms with new terrors and new monstrosity. The Wyrm commanded the Baernoloths to make of the Far Realms their workshops; it was there that the tribe of Baern forged the Obyriths and the ancient Baatorians, before the larvae were used in the cycle of evil souls. Before the fall of the Baernoloths, they caused to be calved from the Far Realms a subtler plane, small in its way but more intimate in its corruption. This would come to be known in later ages as the Demiplane of Ravenloft. The Far Realms themselves continue their cycle, gathering mortals with their active minds and remaking them in fashion abhorent to the remainder of cosmic reality. The Neh-Thalgu venture forth to gather naked minds themselves, to distill pure horror therefrom. And the Wyrm awaits the day when the powers of the Far Realm are sufficient to the utter and final shattering of the Great Wheel and the overturning of the Throne. The effort is doomed, for even the Far Realms derive their potency from the Throne of hte Creator, though by great remove, but certainly the ruination and distress of many lands and kingdoms is thus ensured.
scienceman47 01-23-07, 10:59 PM	Imagine if DnD was an old platforming game, like mario or megaman. Okay, so every plane is its own level, fully capable of going on forever, depending on the game. Chaotic realms are still supposed to be there. They are still part of the universe, just with a lot of stuff that does not seem to belong. The far realms are what happens when you enter a random game genie code or jump through a wall your not supposed to go through or cast paint on an invisible creature or use a potion on a creature made of glitched pixels. Everything ****s up seriously bad, your a blob walking on pixels, and the more you play around in level -1 or such the more you run the risk of sending your game into flashing lights or deleting your save game. Just like that is the wizard who casts a reality altering spell in the wrong way or the fighter jumping into a portal that appeared in the floor or you use a magic item on a being from the far realms. You end up there, where nothing makes any sense and every second your risking doing the thing that'll send your brain and atomic make up into flashing lights or a mess of jumbled nonsense. Even if that wrong thing you do is existing. Thats the best metaphor I can come up with.
AntiDjinn 01-23-07, 11:29 PM	I agree that the Far Realms have an order, but it is an order rooted in an alien reality and beyond the comprehension of a being from a more structured reality. Imagine an ant standing on the turbine of a jet engine, trying to comprehend the workings of the engine, much less the whole aircraft; As the turbine starts to turn, the situation will seem pretty chaotic to the ant, yet it is part of a larger order. And an ant is from the same reality and has evolved under the same physical laws as the jet. Imagine that same ant on the handle of a gas chromatograph that is being remembered by a fictional character in story written in an alien language that is being read by a being who progresses retrograde through time; imagine the ant trying to comprehend this reader and you get an idea of what a material character trying to make sense of the Far Realms faces. If material being who is trying to traffic with the Far Realms should realize one thing: That he has more in common with algae or Asmodeus than he does with the natives of the Far Realm.
Rogue Shadows 01-24-07, 01:54 PM	Ah, the Far Realm. Actually there's a great vacation spot there. Lovey, normal-looking trees, pleasant air, everything's normal, 'cept for one thing. This song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK25G8fjB8U) never stops playing. Never. And it adjusts. Oh yes, it adjusts. Sent an elf there who didn't understand a word of English. He understood the song. Made perfect sense to him. Rhymed, even. Just over and over. And over and over. And over and over and over and over...
blackknightatbay 01-24-07, 03:55 PM	Ah, the Far Realm. Actually there's a great vacation spot there. Lovey, normal-looking trees, pleasant air, everything's normal, 'cept for one thing. This song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK25G8fjB8U) never stops playing. Never. And it adjusts. Oh yes, it adjusts. Sent an elf there who didn't understand a word of English. He understood the song. Made perfect sense to him. Rhymed, even. Just over and over. And over and over. And over and over and over and over... I'd rather look at a five dimensional square circle which exists as it has and will be at the same time. Also, it's painted that white-yellow color you get with slimy things that never see the light of day. You know the one I'm talking about. It has a similar effect on the eyes as a white background with yellow text on it.
Rogue Shadows 01-24-07, 04:44 PM	I'd rather look at a five dimensional square circle which exists as it has and will be at the same time. Also, it's painted that white-yellow color you get with slimy things that never see the light of day. You know the one I'm talking about. It has a similar effect on the eyes as a white background with yellow text on it. Ready for the truly horrific part? I actually love that song. Yet more proof that I am not of this Earth...
supernerd222 01-24-07, 08:06 PM	In fact, you've just described the Ethereal Plane exactly. Not exactly. You can't get to Ebberon through the ethereal. Maybe you're not looking at it correctly. Hovering inverted mountains made of water slowly transforming into forest of eyeballs melting into oceans of sparking blue electricity being broken up by the letter M standing proud defiant with tongues of flame... all of that can be found in Limbo, and more. The only way you'd get an M or some eyeballs in limbo is by random chance. That's the essence of chaos of limbo. There is no intelligence behind the workings of Limbo as there is in Mechanus. Perhaps if one was, random letters and words and body parts would pop up, but none do because limbo shifts with unpredictability alike to that of a d20. It is debatable whether the laws of physics that are assumed to exist on the prime material (though the RAW suggest otherwise ;) ) are in effect on limbo. Highly unlikley, as laws are, well, lawful. The probabability of a single eyeball popping up are so low ith is comparable to monkeys typing away and hopefully coming up with Shakspeare. This is especially true as the eye is an extrordinarily complex organ. The letter M would be relativly easy. The randomness would just have to make a reasonably homogenous, opaque clump of matter shaped like a zigzag with three nodes. That'd look like an M, unless you happened to be upside down at the time relative to it, in which case you'd call it a W.
Tarascon 01-24-07, 08:30 PM	Maybe you're not looking at it correctly. Hovering inverted mountains made of water slowly transforming into forest of eyeballs melting into oceans of sparking blue electricity being broken up by the letter M standing proud defiant with tongues of flame... all of that can be found in Limbo, and more. The problem is that everybody's concept is based off the one in the MotP which just make it sound like all the elemental and energy planes got thrown together. In short, most people don't see how anything can survive there long enough to form anything interesting. One minute you have a castle or whatnot, the next minute a fireball the size of a mountain has blown it to smithereens (is that spelled right?). Personally I like Mongoose Publishing's (those SoBs) version, that the Plane of Chaos looks pretty much like a Salvadore Dali painting. Now that is interesting, but the entire primordial soup thing just strikes me as too hostile to be very interesting.
ripvanwormer 01-24-07, 08:47 PM	One minute you have a castle or whatnot, the next minute a fireball the size of a mountain has blown it to smithereens Well, yeah - it's Chaos. Interesting formations might only last a few minutes. They might also last much longer, particularly if individuals shape the Chaos with their wills and imaginations. If you've read the Manual of the Planes, you know that Limbo - as officially presented - lends itself perfectly toward surreal, Daliesque landscapes, because the shapes the Soup takes is limited only by the minds of those who dwell there.
Rogue Shadows 01-24-07, 08:49 PM	Which sort of implies that in order for anything to actually form there, law and order is necessary, otherwise, it would just remain a soup. Mmm...new Planes of Chaos and Limbo soup...
supernerd222 01-24-07, 08:50 PM	But Dali isn't chaos. He was certainly a chaotic person. But his paintings, especially the early ones were of a school known as Paranoac-Critical. They essentially emulated paranoia in the form of paranoid schizophrenia, which of course is a form of insanity. That's why I keep my Dali in the Far Realms of Insanity.
Taeldrin Laesrash 01-24-07, 09:27 PM	Dali wasn't just influenced through simulated schizophrenia. He also sought to capture the subconcious, which certainly lacks a discernable order. He would fall asleep holding a spoon over a tin pan (So when he did sleep, he'd wake up from the clatter and scribble down his sleep-induced images). Also, to further disprove that the Far Realm is for setting transition, remember that all the worlds are connected through Wildspace.
ripvanwormer 01-24-07, 09:32 PM	Which sort of implies that in order for anything to actually form there, law and order is necessary, otherwise, it would just remain a soup. When the raw chaos of Limbo is shaped by a sentient mind, this has nothing to do with law or order. It remains chaotic, still constantly changing and moving, subject to the chaos inherent in the mind of the shaper but also independent of it, taking forms that the shaper can't entirely predict (this is known as miniflux - the unpredictable changes and transformations that occur in even the most stable of Limbo's settlements). What's more, I would argue that chaos is essential for the shaping to even work - a purely lawful creature, such as a modron or an inevitable, is incapable of shaping the stuff of Limbo because it is incapable of comprehending the stuff of Limbo. It simply goes mad and is consumed by the fury and turmoil. Only a mind that's at least somewhat chaotic itself can shape the substance of Chaos, and it shapes things chaotically, individually, uniquely. They essentially emulated paranoia in the form of paranoid schizophrenia, which of course is a form of insanity. That's why I keep my Dali in the Far Realms of Insanity. The Far Realm is not the elemental plane of insanity, and "insanity" isn't part of its name. It is simply the Far Realm. It's not the place where all forms of mental illness are personified. It's a place so far removed from mortal comprehension that it destroys the mental health of those exposed to it. But this is fundamentally different in cause and symptoms from ordinary, human mental illness of the kinds that occur naturally in the known planes. I would agree that schizophrenia isn't tied to Law or Chaos, and I would agree that Dali's paintings aren't inherently chaotic. Some of the things they depict - landscapes and objects melting or blending with one another - are things that happen in Limbo, however (though this is perhaps more a phenomenon of dreamscapes fading in the Ethereal Plane - in Limbo, things might more often abruptly transform rather than slowly fade away). More important is the principle that literally anything can appear in Limbo, and Dali's art represents an extreme example of this. There are plenty of others, though - Pollack, Picasso, Magritte, Jeff Koons, Wasily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Edvard Munch, Kurt Schwitters - art that might not be chaotic in itself, but the combination of all these clashing styles, continually being generated by the primal Chaos, being hurled against one another, transforming and mingling - that is Chaos. In the Far Realm, though? Absolutely not. These kinds of art are, perhaps more than anything else, human. As such, it may well generate spontaneously in the Outer Planes, which is very much about human ideals and ideas. The Far Realm is alien, beyond human experience and comprehension. It is nothing so mundane and everyday as schizophrenia, and nothing so exquisitely human as Salvador Dali.
ripvanwormer 01-24-07, 09:56 PM	Not exactly. You can't get to Ebberon through the ethereal. You can't get to Eberron from the Far Realm, either. Or from Xoriat, for that matter. The plane's cut off. The only official way to get from Oerth to Eberron is the Plane of Shadow (though Sigil's portals, and even Union's, might also work). There is no intelligence behind the workings of Limbo as there is in Mechanus. Mechanus is mindless clockwork - it continues to click on independently of intellect, which is unneeded there. People do as they're told, and they don't need to think for themselves. That's not to say the inhabitants of Mechanus are unintelligent - many of them are in fact brilliant seekers of truth - just that intelligence isn't strictly necessary. Limbo is incredibly responsive to intelligence, which is essential to survival. That's not to say that every inhabitant of Limbo is brilliant, just that some amount of cunning is necessary to succeed in such a harsh and unpredictable environment. A chaos shaper of sufficient skill and power can indeed create a forest of eyeballs. Random chance need have nothing to do with it. Furthermore, the Outer Planes in general are responsive to the beliefs of mortals and deities (and other outsiders), being personifications of belief. Both Mechanus and Limbo are shaped by the beliefs of those across the planes who believe in Chaos or Law, and exotic formations that represent the archetypes within the minds of those people wouldn't be out of place on either plane.
supernerd222 01-25-07, 12:27 PM	The Far Realm is not the elemental plane of insanity, Of course not. Insanity isn't a classic element. and "insanity" isn't part of its name. Though it is often added on. It is simply the Far Realm. It's not the place where all forms of mental illness are personified. In some parts it isn't, but at least in my campaign, many parts are very similar to hallucinations. It can't of course emulate all kinds of insanity. There's no way a place of any sort could emulate the mindof a bipolar person, for example. It's a place so far removed from mortal comprehension that it destroys the mental health of those exposed to it. But this is fundamentally different in cause and symptoms from ordinary, human mental illness of the kinds that occur naturally in the known planes. I'm with you here. I would agree that schizophrenia isn't tied to Law or Chaos, and I would agree that Dali's paintings aren't inherently chaotic. Some of the things they depict - landscapes and objects melting or blending with one another - are things that happen in Limbo, however (snip). Also agreed, though without the help of an intelligence these things would not be as recognisable as clocks or fried eggs. More important is the principle that literally anything can appear in Limbo, and Dali's art represents an extreme example of this. Anything can appear, but again without intelligence helping it out, it's monkeys making Shakspeare. Furthermore, if something of Dali's art came up, it'd only last a few seconds. There are plenty of others, though - Pollack, Picasso, Magritte, Jeff Koons, Wasily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Edvard Munch, Kurt Schwitters - art that might not be chaotic in itself, but the combination of all these clashing styles, continually being generated by the primal Chaos, being hurled against one another, transforming and mingling - that is Chaos. Yes, and any of these artist's works might come up in Limbo, but only by extreme chance. In the Far Realm, though? Absolutely not. And this is where we disagree. These kinds of art are, perhaps more than anything else, human. Not particularly. Some depict humans, but these humans are depicted in the most grotesque, disturbing, inhuman way possible. I know what you mean though. They were concieved by humans, therefore they're human. The thing is, they were, at least in most cases, designed to be the most removed from general human experience as possible. Neither me or you can think of anything more outside the human psyche than these paintings, (not just Dali's, but the rest of the aforementioned artists) and so they serve as representations of the far realm. Dali's were from dreamlike states, but perhaps there is nothing more beyond the human imaginings than dreams. As such, it may well generate spontaneously in the Outer Planes, which is very much about human ideals and ideas. Sure, but only those with physical states, and only in planes that can spontaneously generate. The Far Realm is alien, beyond human experience and comprehension. It is nothing so mundane and everyday as schizophrenia, and nothing so exquisitely human as Salvador Dali. Dali, Pollock, and Picasso are also beyond human experience and comprehension, along with all the rest of them. That is why they are great art. And you've failed to say really why Dali is so human. The far realm is beyond comprehension, which is why Dali would be found admittedly close to the "outside." Dali can be described. The deep far realms cannot. Daliesque scenes cannot be found in the deep, but closer to the outside, you'd probably find something close. Consider the other Far Realms thread. The one where people come up with different places in the Far Realms. The very first one, the one described by the guy who started the thread is decidedly Daliesque. Very decidedly Daliesque, in fact. Consider the monster from the Fiend Folio. The one that is like a cross between a scorpion and a tree. It's pretty Daliesque. It is made by the Kaorti, who are from the Far realm. So in conclusion, Dali and all the other artists mentioned have areas of the Far Realm similar to their work. The deep Far Realm has no such thing because it is utterly indescribable, but towards the outside you'll find Daliesque scenes. They can come up in Limbo too, but not for long, and them coming up is very unlikley without the help of intelligence.
ripvanwormer 01-25-07, 03:12 PM	Of course not. Insanity isn't a classic element. It's not the para-elemental or pseudo-elemental plane of insanity either. What I was getting at is that the Far Realm isn't made of insanity in the same way the Plane of Time is made of time, or in the way the Region of Dreams is made of dreams. Though it is often added on. Not anywhere but these boards. Also agreed, though without the help of an intelligence these things would not be as recognisable as clocks or fried eggs. But intelligence is active throughout the Plane of Limbo, as it is throughout the Outer Planes. These planes are made from the beliefs and archetypes in the minds of people throughout the multiverse. There is no part of the plane that intelligence doesn't influence. Those regions that seem utterly wild and featureless are wild and featureless in the same way the mind can be, because people everywhere believe Chaos should be that way. If they believed Chaos should be nothing but melting clocks, it would be nothing but melting clocks. Furthermore, if something of Dali's art came up, it'd only last a few seconds. No, because the mind of either a specific chaos-shaper or the collective unconscious of minds throughout the planes could support it. Yes, and any of these artist's works might come up in Limbo, but only by extreme chance. By chance or deliberately. Meanwhile, none of those artists' works could appear on the Far Realm under any circumstances. Those artists are humans, and the minds of the Far Realm are utterly alien to human thought. The thing is, they were, at least in most cases, designed to be the most removed from general human experience as possible. And by doing so, they revealed more about humanity than a more representational painting ever could. What resulted was something very much part of the human experience. Even Pollack, who used random chance to compose his paintings. Neither me or you can think of anything more outside the human psyche than these paintings We can't think of anything outside the human psyche, period, seeing as the human psyche is the tool we use to think. Sure, but only those with physical states, and only in planes that can spontaneously generate. All outer planes can spontaneously generate form. Why do you think Mechanus seems to be made out of gears? Did you think they were individually crafted? No, they appeared spontaneously in order to mirror the way mortals apprehended Law. Before clockwork was invented, the plane probably looked entirely different. Dali, Pollock, and Picasso are also beyond human experience and comprehension, along with all the rest of them. I think your view of what constitutes humanity is too narrow. These things are great art because they show us sides of humanity that we failed to concretely apprehend. But now that they're manifest, we can experience them and - yes - comprehend them. They don't go beyond humanity - they expand humanity. And you've failed to say really why Dali is so human. He's got a mustache, doesn't he? You've failed to say why he's so inhuman. His primary concerns - women, sex, death, religious faith - are classically human, as old as our conception of time itself. Consider the monster from the Fiend Folio. The one that is like a cross between a scorpion and a tree. It's pretty Daliesque. It is made by the Kaorti, who are from the Far realm. Yes, but they made it from the materials available to them on the Material Plane. If they brought it back to the Far Realm, it would become completely unrecognizable. The deep Far Realm has no such thing because it is utterly indescribable, but towards the outside you'll find Daliesque scenes. There's no distinction between "inside" and "outside" in the Far Realm because the plane doesn't touch or even approach any other planes. You can't get nearer or further from the Great Wheel because it doesn't exist in the same frame of planar reference.
DeeL 01-25-07, 09:01 PM	The use of the term 'inimical' in frequent conjunction with the Far Realms is kind of interesting, considering the fact that those mortal beings from our planes who go there and come back are invariably more potent and more dangerous than they were before. Hence my impression of the Far Realms as the workshop of horrors. Also, does anyone remember that old horror movie Hellraiser II: Hellbound? Despite the name 'Hell', that's one of the cinematic images that comes to my mind when I think of the Far Realms. A city, but not one made for the habitation of human life...
Metamagick 01-25-07, 10:56 PM	I would just like an offical piece on playing in the far realm!!! A map, how to play it in. I really like the Far Realm but there is nothing............
sciborg2 01-26-07, 01:59 AM	I am not convinced the Far Realm doesn't border our plane or come near it. I kinda see that region as the place where cartoon reality comes in with all the Animaniacs and Tiny Toon hilarity. The more I delete the Cthullu-esque aspects of the Far Realm from my mind, the more I like the plane...though part of me can't help but wonder if the Far Realm is a place of origin a la Grant Morrison blathering ingeniously in the Invisibles about the Meta-Reality being a place of language that is transcendent, where "words are not names for things but are things". We, the preverbal children, cannot then comprehend the Far Realm because it transcends our dualitistic notions of opposition. The illithid/daelkyr spawning Far Realm is the same as the reality we can only glimpse in the Forest of Thought in Celestia... "They always come as fairies or gods or some sh****. For once I want to see them in the nude. Know what I'm saying?" "And what do you think they would look like, those others?" "I think they'd look like us. So much so you couldn't tell the difference. But that's just what I think." The Dustmen, Godsmen, Athar, and perhaps even the Signers have some clue about these truths, but are too couched in the lesser language of the planes -- planar lords, gods, and other such foolishness. The Lady of Pain is the manifestation of the lock, the Lady of Sorrow who bears the burden of being the gatekeeper of ourselves from ourselves. Sigil is the Cage because it leads everywhere in the lesser reality which is a prison for those unable to see/hear/speak the metalanguage. Two classes of beings understand perfectly and each seeks to free us in its own manner. The priminals hope that we might extend ourselves to such intense love for all things we become like "angels rising from rusted suits of iron"....whereas the baern believe that only by exposing the ultimate horror and suffering of this reality will we awake from the dream become nightmare ("We are trying to help them but they don't understand".) Personally I recommend licking the backs of slaad to "rise above the noise and confusion to get a glimpse beyond this illusion": Today young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one conciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves --Tool. Third eye. ps. Actually, having almost been killed by someone on LSD, maybe skip that part...
supernerd222 01-26-07, 02:55 PM	It's not the para-elemental or pseudo-elemental plane of insanity either. What I was getting at is that the Far Realm isn't made of insanity in the same way the Plane of Time is made of time, or in the way the Region of Dreams is made of dreams. And yet it emulates insanity. Insanity is not a physical material, so there cannot be a plane, or anything else, made of it. The Far Realm causes insanity because the conditions there are so inhospitable to human minds that they shrivel and dysfunction. Not anywhere but these boards. Boards? Oh yeah, that's the place where I called them the Far Realms of Insanity. But intelligence is active throughout the Plane of Limbo, as it is throughout the Outer Planes. These planes are made from the beliefs and archetypes in the minds of people throughout the multiverse. And the Dieties have nothing to do with it? Does that mean that if you raised a society of people who believed that all demons were kittens, the devils would win the blood war? What about the vast majority of commoners who know a little about Baator and Celestia, but little else? They don't cause the Beastlands, Aborea, or Arcadia to case to exist. There is no part of the plane that intelligence doesn't influence. Those regions that seem utterly wild and featureless are wild and featureless in the same way the mind can be, because people everywhere believe Chaos should be that way. If they believed Chaos should be nothing but melting clocks, it would be nothing but melting clocks. Okay, let's assume that the mind can indeed shift Limbo without the intention of the owner. Limbo isn't daliesque, because very few believe chaos to be random soft and hard objects romping round Port Lligat. Limbo has no seas of eyeballs or big flaming 'M's, because few believe that to be a true embodiment of chaos. By chance or deliberately. Meanwhile, none of those artists' works could appear on the Far Realm under any circumstances. Those artists are humans, and the minds of the Far Realm are utterly alien to human thought. Pehaps you are misinterpreting what I mean by the artists' work coming up. The exact paintings don't come up, simply landscapes mildly similar or reminiscant to the artist's work. And by doing so, they revealed more about humanity than a more representational painting ever could. What resulted was something very much part of the human experience. Even Pollack, who used random chance to compose his paintings. They revealed how humanity reacts to inhuman and alien imagery. We can't think of anything outside the human psyche, period, seeing as the human psyche is the tool we use to think. Yep. And Dali didn't think of his work. He took inspiration from his subconcious. All outer planes can spontaneously generate form. Why do you think Mechanus seems to be made out of gears? Did you think they were individually crafted? No, they appeared spontaneously in order to mirror the way mortals apprehended Law. Before clockwork was invented, the plane probably looked entirely different. I like to think that who or whatever created the multiverse knew how to use wheels. I think your view of what constitutes humanity is too narrow. These things are great art because they show us sides of humanity that we failed to concretely apprehend. But now that they're manifest, we can experience them and - yes - comprehend them. They don't go beyond humanity - they expand humanity. And I think your view of humanity is too wide. Salvador Dali's work can be comprehended in the most narrow sense of the word, and in fact the title is often that comprehension. A simple description of that picturwe with no clue to its meaning. The truth is that Dali himself said that his work had no meaning. They may well have expanded his own humanity, but they do not expand that of the population. His work is still as disturbing to today's people as it was to those of the last generation or the next. He's got a mustache, doesn't he? When he was alive, yes he did for most of his life. You've failed to say why he's so inhuman. His primary concerns - women, sex, death, religious faith - are classically human, as old as our conception of time itself. I never said he himself was inhuman, just his art. And his most famous one, The Persistance of Memory, had no women, no sex, no death, no religious materials, icons, or suggestions, and only the suggestion of a grotesque and distorted face. A completely inhuman one. Yes, but they made it from the materials available to them on the Material Plane. If they brought it back to the Far Realm, it would become completely unrecognizable. So the closest they can get to Far Realming it up on the material plane was Daliesque creatures? Why is it so unbeleivable that there is a part of the far realm similar to Dali's work. There's no distinction between "inside" and "outside" in the Far Realm because the plane doesn't touch or even approach any other planes. You can't get nearer or further from the Great Wheel because it doesn't exist in the same frame of planar reference. And yet R.M.G.C.L.F., a most prominent and respected authority on this plane seems to think so. Or at least that different areas are of different intensities: These traits are best used for patches of layers in the far realms with a cushion of mild ones surrounding the native multiverse as the insanity and surreality increases spreading outwards.
Shemeska the Marauder 01-26-07, 04:52 PM	And yet R.M.G.C.L.F., a most prominent and respected authority on this plane seems to think so. Or at least that different areas are of different intensities: Which is all fine and dandy, (and all due respect to RMGCLF because he's a cool guy) but it isn't something that's necessarily reflected in anything published regarding the Far Realms. Someone might considering the Far Realm to surround the normal multiverse, and they might think the boundary layers are less intense in some unknown property than more distant areas, but someone who believes that the Far Realm is just a demiplane created by the dreams of a dying god, or that it's another multiverse (one of many within a larger, unknown, unknowable, metacosmology) has ideas that are just as relevant and valid. And technically the idea of the Far Realm as being 'outside' or 'surrounding' the normal multiverse of the Great Wheel is contradictory to a number of things in planar lore. But since the multiverse you might call the Far Realm has so little firm information on it, as frankly it should be, there's wiggle room for all involved. Give me a little under a month and I might be able to add something to the discussion possibly.
supernerd222 01-26-07, 05:59 PM	Okay, let's look at it his way: If the Far realm is nowhere in relation to the great wheel, then what's up with the name? Far from what?
Shemeska the Marauder 01-26-07, 06:47 PM	Okay, let's look at it his way: If the Far realm is nowhere in relation to the great wheel, then what's up with the name? Far from what? From our conception of reality. Whatever laws and fundamental concepts it revolves around, they're utterly alien and bizarre to beings from our multiverse, to the point of mutual danger when the two realities touch. Far doesn't imply physical distance, and when we're talking about seperate sets of infinities, distance sort of fades away and location becomes conceptual rather than a defined sort of property in a mundane, 3d space.
ripvanwormer 01-26-07, 09:15 PM	Okay, let's look at it his way: If the Far realm is nowhere in relation to the great wheel, then what's up with the name? Far from what? From the present. The Far Realm exists before Time began and after the end of everything. It is distant from the Great Wheel temporally - as distant in the future and the past as it is possible to be. It has no relationship to the Wheel in a planar sense, only a temporal sense. And there is no part of it that is "nearer" to the Great Wheel than any other part of it. It all exists in the same timeless "moment," every layer equally distant from the present day.
IceGod 01-26-07, 09:51 PM	Perhaps the Far Realm applies laws chaotically. Or applies chaos in a very rigid, complex and lawful manner. Doesn't make sense? I don't think it's supposed to. If it wasn't foreign to our way of thinking, it wouldn't be the Far Realm. Defining the Far Realm is like explaining color to a blind man, or describing the taste of salt.
ripvanwormer 01-26-07, 09:52 PM	And yet it emulates insanity. No, it only creates it. It does not emulate human insanity, or anything remotely human. And the Deities have nothing to do with it? The deities have as much to do with it as anyone else. Does that mean that if you raised a society of people who believed that all demons were kittens, the devils would win the blood war? No, but that's a very complex subject that I've gone into detail on elsewhere. In brief, the Outer Planes are made of belief, and empowered by belief. If people believe in the power of Chaotic Evil, demons get stronger. If they believe in the power of Lawful Evil, the devils are empowered. In most situations, these outsiders manage their own affairs, evolving or creating one another as they wish. However, the fears and desires of mortals are also an influence - archetypes from the deepest part of their minds. So if a hypothetical society thought that demons were kittens, certain demons might indeed become more kittenish. If these mortals also feared Chaos, worshipped Evil, or otherwise respected the alignment of the Abyss, then these kittens would still be marauding horrors capable of killing with a glance. So, like I said, the relationship is very complex. It goes the other way, too - if the tanar'ri do very well in the Blood War, Chaos and Evil gain power across the planes. It's circular. What about the vast majority of commoners who know a little about Baator and Celestia, but little else? They don't cause the Beastlands, Aborea, or Arcadia to case to exist. They do, but indirectly. The Beastlands don't look like a wilderness because people believe the Beastlands should look like a wilderness. But the Beastlands are created and empowered by peoples' belief in such concepts as Good, Freedom, and appreciation for the cycle of Nature. That such concepts exist in that particular plane has as much to do with the inhabitants of those planes as they do with mortal belief - but the inhabitants of those planes are also created and sustained by mortal belief, if only indirectly. Okay, let's assume that the mind can indeed shift Limbo without the intention of the owner. Limbo isn't daliesque, because very few believe chaos to be random soft and hard objects romping round Port Lligat. People believe in eyeballs and flaming 'M's - they believe in any number of things, patterns and images that lurk in their subconscious. These things manifest on every outer plane in one way or another, but do so differently depending on the nature of the plane. On the Beastlands, the eyeballs will mostly be attached to living animals. On Mechanus, they might be built into wires and clockwork. On Limbo, things get much stranger and more surreal because the chaos of the plane causes them to disassociate and bleed together, like in a fevered dream. Limbo is like everything you've ever imagined, all twisted and metamorphosed by the seething, drunken nature of Chaos. This makes this plane in particular more surreal than most, though the Planes of Chaos in general lend themselves to this sort of imagery. Limbo does not look like it does because most people believe there is a physical plane that personifies Chaos, and they've heard this is what it should look like. It looks the way it does because people believe in chaos, disorder, and anarchy, because they believe in everything they've ever seen or dreamt or hallucinated, and all of these things influence one another in the place where Chaos is manifest. The Outer Planes exist because people believe in alignments even if they don't believe (or know about) the planes. But they believe in a lot of stuff other than alignments, and so the planes of belief contain all that other stuff too, even if people don't consciously link them together. They revealed how humanity reacts to inhuman and alien imagery. There's far more to humanity than you're willing to admit. And Dali didn't think of his work. Yes, his subconscious inspired him, but his conscious intellect was a vital component - else his works wouldn't have the careful composition and clever visual puns that they have. His paintings (and preliminary sketches) show careful deliberation as well as moments of wild fancy. I like to think that who or whatever created the multiverse knew how to use wheels. The planes evolved from simpler forms. The planes as they exist are the spoils of war between multiple, incompatible creators - a Darwinian struggle that produced the complexity we see today, with mutations generated by the power of belief. Limbo, because of its chaos, has more mutations than most planes do. The truth is that Dali himself said that his work had no meaning. Dali was a mischief-maker and a prankster who felt, as many humans do, annoyed by the repetitive cries for explanation from the ignorant masses. Nothing he said should be taken as "truth." His work speaks for itself. His work is still as disturbing to today's people Of course it's disturbing. The human mind is tremendously disturbing. That doesn't make it alien. And his most famous one, The Persistance of Memory, had no women, no sex, no death, no religious materials, icons, or suggestions, and only the suggestion of a grotesque and distorted face. A completely inhuman one. And yet it's all about quintessentially human concerns - time, memory, entropy. As for the face, it's distorted but obviously human. That particular painting would probably fit best in the Outlands or Hades. So the closest they can get to Far Realming it up on the material plane was Daliesque creatures? Yes. Their approximations are imperfect at best. The kaorti themselves aren't true natives of the Far Realm - they're humans, distorted by the alien forces there. Their ability to engineer life is impressive, but limited. Why is it so unbeleivable that there is a part of the far realm similar to Dali's work. I've devoted many paragraphs to explaining that already. And yet R.M.G.C.L.F., a most prominent and respected authority on this plane seems to think so. The Glowing, Clawlike Finger has its own eccentric take on the plane, but it doesn't pretend to jibe with official depictions. The Finger is an authority on its own version of the plane, which it names the Far Realms of Insanity, not of the official version, which is simply called the Far Realm. The two should not be confused.
Rogue Shadows 01-27-07, 09:18 AM	Hmm. Limbo, to me, meant a world where stuff like Excel Saga or Puni Puni Poemi happens all the time. As well as this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5e-BY8IGas) Whereas the Far Realm was basically made up of a bunch of stuff from Chiaki Nonoka or Director Anno: Evangelion, Lain, and so on. But then, I think in anime.
sicsemperjohn 01-27-07, 01:38 PM	I like where Sciborg was going with things. The Lady of Pain as the lock of the cage which is our entire multiverse -- I see it so far as that sentience, as we know it, was something that had to be kept from the rest of reality in some way.
tryco 01-27-07, 02:45 PM	what would happen if a time-space portal was opened in the abyss? connecting the abyss with the far-realm. would madness slowly leak into one of the planes, then via the layer of doors start to infect the whole abyss?
Shemeska the Marauder 01-27-07, 03:06 PM	what would happen if a time-space portal was opened in the abyss? connecting the abyss with the far-realm. would madness slowly leak into one of the planes, then via the layer of doors start to infect the whole abyss? I'd put my money on the Abyss trying to invade the Far Realm, and eventually something in the Far Realm would seek to seal up the portal. Look into the Abyss, and not only does it look back, but it's hungry.
DeeL 01-27-07, 03:30 PM	You have undoubtedly read the Fiendish Codex I, right? For my money, the Obyriths have a tremendously 'Far Realms' look to them right off the bat.
Taeldrin Laesrash 01-27-07, 04:54 PM	The borders between reality and unreality were thinner. Thankfully, anything Realmish went to a plane that would be universally despised.
supernerd222 01-27-07, 11:28 PM	No, it only creates it. It does not emulate human insanity, or anything remotely human. Insanity is the same, be you man, elf, dwarf, gnome, mind flayer, aboleth, death slaad, or kaorti. If you have hallucinations, you're going to hallucinate different things; but insanity, just like love, fear, hate, hope, joy, devastation, and lust, is universal.. The deities have as much to do with it as anyone else. Only "as much?" All those years of portfolio building and rising in the divine ranks and still only "as much" power to change the planes as Bob? I've got it. Let's raise a society of people who believe that there's a 20,000 decimeter spike of fire and brimstone full of angry fire elementals. Let's have them believe that this spike is directly up Tiamat's ---! No, but that's a very complex subject that I've gone into detail on elsewhere. In brief, the Outer Planes are made of belief, and empowered by belief. If people believe in the power of Chaotic Evil, demons get stronger. If they believe in the power of Lawful Evil, the devils are empowered. In most situations, these outsiders manage their own affairs, evolving or creating one another as they wish. However, the fears and desires of mortals are also an influence - archetypes from the deepest part of their minds. Then how did those gears get there? If people can change the outer planes to such an extreme that the little add on to the name (in this case "The Clockwork Nirvana of...") is based upon this change, how can outsiders possibly manage their own affairs? Modron 1: Oh, look, Modron 2! The entire plane of Mechanus has changed! Modron 2: Bloody hell. Those materials on that there material plane must have invented clockwork. 1: Yeah. I'd heard this was happening in a few other places for a few years now, but I never thought it'd come to this... 2: Come to think of it, what material plane are we talking here. There's umpteen different crystal spheres, each with a distinct campai... uh, world. Each is at a different technology level. For example, those Earth guys have already got iPhones, but on Athas... 1: You have a point there. How is it that these thousands of societies on so many planets all have the same idea of Law? 2: They did'nt yesterday. 1: True, but you spelt didn't wrong. 2: What was this part of Mechanus like yesterday? I've forgotten already. 1: Hmm. That's a good one. It was lawful, that's for sure. 2: No gears, though. 1: Not here anyway. 2: Now that I think about it, why the hell did we call it Mechanus? That's clearly derived from the word "Mechanical." 1: An interesting point, Modron 2. It probably has roots in the mythology of Earth. In fact all the outer planes seem to take their names from Earth mythology... 2: Well, it's an interesting topic. How do you like your eggs? 1: Not at all. I'm trying to lose weight. Say, how do we manage our own affairs? People believe in eyeballs and flaming 'M's - they believe in any number of things, patterns and images that lurk in their subconscious. These things manifest on every outer plane in one way or another, but do so differently depending on the nature of the plane. On the Beastlands, the eyeballs will mostly be attached to living animals. On Mechanus, they might be built into wires and clockwork. On Limbo, things get much stranger and more surreal because the chaos of the plane causes them to disassociate and bleed together, like in a fevered dream. What about the "M"s? You can bet there's not going to be many letters in the Beastlands, and fewer still of the latin alphabet, and almost definitley no "M"s Limbo is like everything you've ever imagined, all twisted and metamorphosed by the seething, drunken nature of Chaos. This makes this plane in particular more surreal than most, though the Planes of Chaos in general lend themselves to this sort of imagery. The thing is, the cliffs, sands, sky, and ocean in Dali's work is pretty normal. There's far more to humanity than you're willing to admit. No there isn't! ;) Yes, his subconscious inspired him, but his conscious intellect was a vital component - else his works wouldn't have the careful composition and clever visual puns that they have. His paintings (and preliminary sketches) show careful deliberation as well as moments of wild fancy. Have you never had a dream with a clever visual pun or careful composition? Personally many of my dreams have a most excellent colour scheme and certain "frames" of them have a great visual balance. Furthermore, I often have dreams that seem perfectly normal (for a dream) when they are swirling around my head in the morning, but when I try to put them into words, I realize that what I saw was a sort of insider joke on my subconcious' behalf. Other times, within my dream, an object will shift back and forth between two unrelated things without changing. The planes evolved from simpler forms. The planes as they exist are the spoils of war between multiple, incompatible creators - a Darwinian struggle that produced the complexity we see today, with mutations generated by the power of belief. Limbo, because of its chaos, has more mutations than most planes do. Fair enough. I still like to think that these incompatible creators knew about wheels. Dali was a mischief-maker and a prankster who felt, as many humans do, annoyed by the repetitive cries for explanation from the ignorant masses. Nothing he said should be taken as "truth." His work speaks for itself. I'll give you the direct quotes. Maybe they'll change your mind. Maybe you'll say he was lying or making a joke. We'll never know for sure. I don't think he meant his work to mean anything. I think he was using his subconcious to create art for one purpose only: To simulate insanity. His artistic endeavours don't make sense. Surrealisim isn't about making sense. Anyhow: One day I hollowed out entirely an end of a loaf of bread, and what do you think I put inside it? I put a bronze Buddha, whose metallic surface I completely covered in dead fleas {...} After putting the Buddha inside the bread I closed the opening with a little peice of wood, and I cemented the whole, including the bread, sealing it hermetically in such a way as to form a homogenous whole which looked like a little urn, on which I wrote 'Horse Jam.' What does that mean, eh? One day I recieved a present from my very good friend Jean-Michael Frank, the decorator: two chairs in the purest 1900 style. I immediatley transformed one of them in the following fashion. I changed its leather seat for one made of chocolate; then I had a golden Louis XV door-knob screwed under one of the feet {...} One of the legs of the chair was to repose continuously in a glass of beer {...} I called this dreadfully uncomfortable chair, which produced a profound uneasiness in all who saw it, the 'atmospheric chair.' And what does that mean, eh? And yet it's all about quintessentially human concerns - time, memory, entropy. As for the face, it's distorted but obviously human. It has no mouth. It has no cranium. Its eye is almost as big as the face itself. It has no neck. That particular painting would probably fit best in the Outlands or Hades. What painting would fit best in Limbo, then? Yes. Their approximations are imperfect at best. The kaorti themselves aren't true natives of the Far Realm - they're humans, distorted by the alien forces there. Their ability to engineer life is impressive, but limited. The explorers were transformed into terrible natives of the Far Realms, becoming the first kaortis. The Glowing, Clawlike Finger has its own eccentric take on the plane, but it doesn't pretend to jibe with official depictions. What official depictions? Wizards has given us next to nothing on the Far Realm. If you go only by what wizards has said, you have yourself a pretty dull romp in the Far Realms. The Finger is an authority on its own version of the plane, which it names the Far Realms of Insanity, not of the official version, which is simply called the Far Realm. The two should not be confused. Read My Glowing Claw Like Finger (forgot to do the full thing on a previous post, sorry) doesn't seem to think so. (haven't I already said that?) I'm kind of dissapointed with the far realms as presented in the Manual of the Planes, so I'm putting the traits into a less vague form with more usability, and in 4 varying degrees. These traits are best used for patches of layers in the far realms, with a cushion of mild ones surrounding the native multiverse as the insanity and surreality increases spreading outwards. Firstly, a few new spells: That quote is from a thread entitled "Far Realms Planar Traits." It goes on to describe Mild, Moderate, High, and True Far Realms.
ripvanwormer 01-28-07, 12:11 AM	Insanity is the same, be you man, elf, dwarf, gnome, mind flayer, aboleth, death slaad, or kaorti. If you have hallucinations, you're going to hallucinate different things; but insanity, just like love, fear, hate, hope, joy, devastation, and lust, is universal. But the environment of the Far Realm is sane from the perspective of those who dwell there, so apparently their definition of insanity is not the same as ours or the Far Realm has nothing to do with insanity in a "universal" sense. While the Far Realm causes insanity in creatures from the Great Wheel, it is not the plane of insanity. It is damaging to humanoid minds, but not to the minds of its natives. The Lord of Insanity is the slaad lord Ssendam, and Pandemonium is the Outer Plane with the greatest connection to madness. If anywhere is the Plane of Insanity, it's Pandemonium and to a lesser extent Limbo. Only "as much?" Yes. I'd say the influence of gods and mortals on the Outer Planes is roughly equal. Keep in mind there are a lot more mortals than there are gods, so I'm not saying that any single mortal is as influential as a single god. All those years of portfolio building and rising in the divine ranks and still only "as much" power to change the planes as Bob? No, as much power to change the planes as they have worshippers. So Bob and maybe 10,000 of his friends. I've got it. Let's raise a society of people who believe that there's a 20,000 decimeter spike of fire and brimstone full of angry fire elementals. Let's have them believe that this spike is directly up Tiamat's ---! That sort of extremely targeted belief-engineering is risky. What might end up happening is the society of people produce a doppleganger of Tiamat, more than 80,000 decimeters tall and extremely ****** off due to the uncomfortable spike in her titanic orifice. But similar things have been done by those who actually know what they're doing. The Sign of One faction engineered Bel's ascension to the rulership of Avernus through their focused belief. Then how did those gears get there? I think it should be obvious that an infinite amount of gears weren't created by anyone. They formed because they're metaphors for the nature of Law. If people can change the outer planes to such an extreme that the little add on to the name (in this case "The Clockwork Nirvana of...") is based upon this change, how can outsiders possibly manage their own affairs? Because as belief changes outsiders, so outsiders change belief. It's circular, as I said. 2: Come to think of it, what material plane are we talking here. The planes might actually look different depending on who looks at them. That was suggested in the 1e Manual of the Planes, and it's an idea I've always liked. Someone from a primitive society might see Mechanus as a desert made of carven flint, the highest technical achievement they can imagine. Or, if not, the planes might evolve as ideas do. They don't have to be universal beliefs - the ideas simply have to exist to form somewhere on the Outer Planes. I alluded to the notion of Darwinian struggle in my previous post. More powerful ideas flourish while weaker ones die. The meme of clockwork was a stronger one than the meme of an infinite flint knife, so it took over the plane. It also remains stronger than the meme of a circuit board or something more advanced than that, perhaps because clockwork is a much clearer demonstration of Order than an unpredictable computer OS. What about the "M"s? That was just an example, of course. A landscape made of letters of the alphabet struck me as a powerful image. In the Beastlands, they'd probably end up as primitive cave paintings spontaneously manifesting on cliff-faces and the like. In Ysgard, they'd appear as runes of fire hovering in the sky. The thing is, the cliffs, sands, sky, and ocean in Dali's work is pretty normal. The cliffs, sands, skies and oceans in Limbo are pretty normal, too - it's just that they're mixed with Abstract Expressionist landscapes, German Expressionism. Soviet Realism, Impressionism, Dada, and everything else swirled together in a chaotic soup. So the totality is not so normal. I suggested in my previous post that The Persistence of Memory fits best in the Gray Waste. Have you never had a dream with a clever visual pun or careful composition. I have indeed, and I'm always very impressed with myself. It's still thinking, even if it's not conscious (the word "careful" implies that). I'm certain Dali's work was composed mostly while he was awake - that's the nature of painting, in my experience. You don't really know if it works until you see it on the canvas. Fair enough. I still like to think that these incompatible creators knew about wheels. Perhaps nothing. As I suggested earlier, the wheels might have been a later development, a response to technological innovations on the Material Plane. I think he was using his subconcious to create art for one purpose only: To simulate insanity. His paintings are very varied in subject and mood, and you can't pigeonhole his entire career in such a simplistic way. It has no mouth. It has no cranium. Its eye is almost as big as the face itself. It has no neck. And yet its eye is very much a human eye. Nothing else has an eye like that. It's a fragment of a human being, but it's as human as you or me. What painting would fit best in Limbo, then? All of them mixed together. What official depictions? Wizards has given us next to nothing on the Far Realm. The depiction in the Manual of the Planes. Read My Glowing Claw Like Finger (forgot to do the full thing on a previous post, sorry) doesn't seem to think so. (haven't I already said that?) Yes, you have. Read My Finger is respected for its imagination, not for his fidelity to official publications. The Claw Like Finger takes the position that the "Far Realms of Insanity" are connected to the Wheel by a transitive plane, which is not the case. Some regions of the Far Realm may be more "mild" than others, but none are any "nearer." The Far Realm is separated from other planes temporally - they're in the infinitely far future and past, in a single timeless moment outside of Creation (before time began and after it ended - both are one and the same point). They don't relate to the Great Wheel in the same sense of "distance" that the Astral Plane relates to the Material Plane (for example). Since the distance is temporal, the only way part of it could be "nearer" to the Wheel than other parts is if it were "sooner" or "later" - and the plane has the Timeless trait, so therefore those terms don't apply. Every layer of the Far Realm is equally distant from the present day. It has no history in the way we understand the word. And, of course, even in the Astral Plane no part is any "nearer" to the Material Plane than any other part.
sciborg2 01-28-07, 11:09 PM	The Lady of Pain as the lock of the cage which is our entire multiverse -- I see it so far as that sentience, as we know it, was something that had to be kept from the rest of reality in some way. I was thinking she represented the collective denial of truth and willigness to exist in the Illusion, but I can see her as the guardian for the rest of existence keeping the Multiverse with its infectious alignments from spreading.... The Far Realms really deserves more separation from the Cthullu ideas that originally spawned it...
supernerd222 01-29-07, 12:20 AM	But the environment of the Far Realm is sane from the perspective of those who dwell there, so apparently their definition of insanity is not the same as ours or the Far Realm has nothing to do with insanity in a "universal" sense. Sure the far realm is sane to the pseudonatural who live within. Sane as the caves are sane to a dwarf and negativity is sane to a nightshade. The pseudonaturals take the craziness of their home as normal and are immune to the ill effects it would have on anyone else, just as the fire elementals don't care much if they go for a swim in lava. But when a pseudonatural does go insane, it suffers the same symptoms as an insane human would. Insanity is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, like any emotion. A paranoid pseudonatural would still hate and fear its companions, be unable to show affection, and have auditory hallucinations without verbal component. A schizophrenic pseudonatural would still have varied and unpredictable hallucinations. Perhaps it would hallucinate pseudonaturals, become friends with them, and never know that they are unreal. Perhaps it would hallucinate a most terrible and incomprehensible creature from the opposite side of reality - a human. While the Far Realm causes insanity in creatures from the Great Wheel, it is not the plane of insanity. It is damaging to humanoid minds, but not to the minds of its natives. I agree with you on this point, except for one clause. The far realm can be damaging to the minds of its natives, in the same way that day to day life on earth can drive people into depression. Pseudonaturals can be depressed by their own plane, but not by its habit of driving materials insane, just because they are getting chemical imbalances in their brain. The Lord of Insanity is the slaad lord Ssendam, and Pandemonium is the Outer Plane with the greatest connection to madness. If anywhere is the Plane of Insanity, it's Pandemonium and to a lesser extent Limbo. Again, agreed. The far realm is the plane with the easiest job driving people insane, though. Yes. I'd say the influence of gods and mortals on the Outer Planes is roughly equal. Keep in mind there are a lot more mortals than there are gods, so I'm not saying that any single mortal is as influential as a single god. Glad we cleared that up. No, as much power to change the planes as they have worshippers. So Bob and maybe 10,000 of his friends. Well, Bob is a pretty popular guy. I suggested in my previous post that The Persistence of Memory fits best in the Gray Waste. Almost every single Salvador Dali painting has a normal underlying landscape. This is actually based on Port Lligat, the area where he lived. If the reason it would fit best in Hades is because of the underlying beach scene, you'd be hard pressed to find one that would fit somewhere else. I have indeed, and I'm always very impressed with myself. It's still thinking, even if it's not conscious (the word "careful" implies that). It is thought, I will not argue with that. It is subconcious thought, a bit of your mind based upon your deepest fears, desires, needs, and memories. Often ones you don't even know about. The lasft sentence implies that the subconcious is not part of the self, almost as if it were to be a seperate entity. In some ways it is. It is responsible for your worst nightmares. It cannot be controlled by you. The trilogy of books (soon to be movies) His Dark Materials took this one step further by describing an alternate universe where people's subconcious has a physical form as a Dæmon (of no relation to the yugoloths). The Dæmon is part of the human, though inhuman itself. The human can control its actions no more than that of another human, though generally the human and the dæmon don't disagree. Sometimes though, they do. This idea, that the subconcious is not a part of the human, though they are linked, is the basis for my argument of the inhumanity of Dali's work. Dali's subconcious, as much as physically possible, did the painting for him. In His Dark Materials, his dæmon would justy have taken the form of a monkey and painted for him, while he kicked back and had a few beers. It would have been a lot easier for both of them that way. I'm certain Dali's work was composed mostly while he was awake - that's the nature of painting, in my experience. You don't really know if it works until you see it on the canvas. Like any artist, many of his works ended their existance in the circular file, or were just painted over. It is possible to turn your mind off and let your subconcious paint. That's what he did. He didn't wake up one morning and say, "I know how I can really freak those people out: I'm going to paint me and my wife in a well lit room, talking. Outside that, I'm going to paint a dim hallway with Millet's Angelus and a creepy guy with a lobster on his head looking in at us!" Nor did he come up with these ideas one at a time. Now look at this painting and tell me it doesn't look like a disturbing dream. Gala and the Angelus of Millet Immediatly Preceding the Arrival of the Conic Anamorphosis (http://www.artres.com/LowRes2/TR3/S/A/O/D/ART79960.jpg) His paintings are very varied in subject and mood, and you can't pigeonhole his entire career in such a simplistic way. I suppose you're right on that one. However, for at least several years, and arguably after, he did paint in paranoiac-critical, which has the stated purpose of simulating paranoia. And yet its eye is very much a human eye. Nothing else has an eye like that. It's a fragment of a human being, but it's as human as you or me. How do we even know it's an eye? It's shut and doesn't look much like an eye. It just is where an eye would be on a normal face, but look at it a different way and it could be a mouth with odd mustache, or closable ear. All of them mixed together. That'd be one hell of a painting. The depiction in the Manual of the Planes. As I said: Use only what Wizards has provided you with, and you have a boring romp in the Far Realms. Yes, you have. Read My Finger is respected for its imagination, not for his fidelity to official publications. The Claw Like Finger takes the position that the "Far Realms of Insanity" are connected to the Wheel by a transitive plane, which is not the case. Perhaps you missed my point when I reiterated myself. Throughout the thread, he uses "Far Realms" and "Far Realms of Insanity" interchangably. His first post claimed that the things within it applied to the Far Realm (not in an official sense, of course). He then said he would like to publish a book on the Far Realms of Insanity. Putting out unofficial stuff for the official one, then hoping to make official stuff for the unofficial one that he apparently made up and is completely seperate from the real deal? Either Read My Glowing Claw Like Finger is one messed up dude, or your hypothesis in the previous post that they are seperate planes not to be confused is wrong. I understand that none of what he says is official. None of what any of us say is official. What he does say, though, is intended to be added to the Far Realm. Not the Far Realm of Insanity, as they are one in the same.
ripvanwormer 01-29-07, 01:02 AM	But when a pseudonatural does go insane, it suffers the same symptoms as an insane human would. I think you've contradicted yourself. If the Far Realm is a plane that mimics insanity, but its natives find it sane, then their definition of insanity can't be the same as ours. If you were claiming that insanity to them resembles what we would term sanity, you'd be at least consistent. Insanity is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain What makes you think that'd be the same for denizens of the Far Realm? Why would they have the same chemicals or neurological structures? Again, agreed. The far realm is the plane with the easiest job driving people insane, though. I think it's a tie with Pandemonium. The lasft sentence implies that the subconcious is not part of the self, almost as if it were to be a seperate entity. In some ways it is. It is responsible for your worst nightmares. It cannot be controlled by you. It's still human. It's not an alien, Lovecraftian enigma. The trilogy of books (soon to be movies) His Dark Materials I've read those books. You aren't trying to claim that the daemons of His Dark Materials are a good inspiration for Far Realm creatures, are you? This idea, that the subconcious is not a part of the human, though they are linked, is the basis for my argument of the inhumanity of Dali's work. Your argument is that your subconscious isn't you. That's arguable (although I would disagree with it), but it's a long non sequitur away from not being human. I think your argument is built on a foundation of sand. Your subconscious is a fundamental part of who you are. How can you be human without dreams? Dreams, nightmares, voices in your head - these are all part of the human experience. To one degree or another, they define human life. You spend much of your life asleep. Alan Moore compared humans to amphibians, capable of living in either the land or the sea. We travel between the world of dreams and the waking world, and both are our homes. The planar home of the subconscious mind would be the Region of Dreams and - for the collective, Jungian subconscious - the Outer Planes. The Far Realm is other. Not the Other in a Jungian sense, but something completely apart, something fundamentally different. The subconscious mind, even a diseased one, is only one part of the spectrum of the human identity. How do we even know it's an eye? It's shut and doesn't look much like an eye. It looks precisely like an eye. I think you're being disingenuous. As for Dali's paintings coming entirely from his subconscious, that's a very romantic idea, but I think it's unlikely. Inspiration is one thing, but creating a painting is a lengthy process that the raw inspiration of its birth doesn't survive. As I said: Use only what Wizards has provided you with, and you have a boring romp in the Far Realms. I'm not a purist when it comes to the Far Realm. If you read the Far Realm layers thread (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=224880), you'll see that I designed a large number of them myself. However, certain ideas work better with the Great Wheel than they do with the Far Realm because the Far Realm has certain themes that aren't compatible with them. What he does say, though, is intended to be added to the Far Realm. Not the Far Realm of Insanity, as they are one in the same. I'm not claiming to know or care what Read My Glowing, Clawlike Finger intended. What I'm saying is that the Finger's "Far Realms of Insanity" aren't very much like WotC's "Far Realm," so in a practical sense it's best to treat them as separate things. I can't imagine why you thought quoting from some fan's post on a message board would give your argument any kind of authority.
sciborg2 01-29-07, 01:21 AM	I decided to interview some people to see how they might answer the question, "WHAT IS THE FAR REALMS!!??" DUN DUN DUN: Vanna White: It's like this place where the letters turn themselves, and I don't even matter...:weep: Homer Simpson: They have a magical animal where bacon, ham, and sausage all come from. :) HP Lovecraft: Your descriptions sound awfully familiar...wait a minute...WTH?!!!! Are you serious!?! I am SO gonna sue Wizards's a$$!!! Slaad: Nothing us on place that got has! True Xaos are we...are you going to eat that? Me: That's my %@%$ cat! Slaad: So that's a no, right? Illithid: Our home of origin is...wait. You know you've got something in your ear. Me: Really? Is it wax? I use Q-tips but maybe -- AHHHHHH!!! What the %#%!@?? Get your tentacles away from me!!! Illithid: Whatever. That was just a pity brain snatch. You're way too dumb for us. Daelkyr: Sorry. I come from Xoriat. TOTALLY different. Pshah... Me: You're kidding right? Look here, the description is straight from the MoTP -- tentacle whip rips the book out of my hands. Daelkyr: Totally. Different. Me: Now that you mention it, I'm seeing a distinct lack of similarities... Shemeska the Marauder: Do you wish for knowledge forbidden to most of your kind? The Tower of Arcanoloths holds the secrets you seek...simply sacrifice someone you love and we can grant you understanding...why not that pretty over there.... Me: That's my %@%$ cat! Shemeska: I did not hear you refuse mortal... So as you can see, my research will have to press onward to acheive results...
supernerd222 01-29-07, 02:39 PM	I think you've contradicted yourself. If the Far Realm is a plane that mimics insanity, but its natives find it sane, then their definition of insanity can't be the same as ours. If you were claiming that insanity to them resembles what we would term sanity, you'd be at least consistent. Its natives find it sane because that's where they live. Somebody born blind would have no other conception of the world, Just as pseudonaturals have no other conception of insanity. To a human, the place would simulate insanity. To a pseudonatural it would be normal. The material plane, to a human is normal, to a pseudonatural, it would simulate insanity. Neither of them truly simulates insanity. It all depends on your perspective. Insanity to a pseudonatural does have the same symptoms as human insanity. The two hallucinate things in different contexts, but the symptoms are the same. The Far realm simulates insanity to humans, because to them, it appears a place beyond their experience. So much so that it irreparably damages their psyche. Pseudonaturals are the same. The material plane is beyond them, and it damages their psyche. What makes you think that'd be the same for denizens of the Far Realm? Why would they have the same chemicals or neurological structures? Why not? It works well for us. It's still human. It's not an alien, Lovecraftian enigma. If it's an enigma, it's debatable. I'm on the other side of the debate, and I doubt i'm going to change your opinion. I've read those books. You aren't trying to claim that the daemons of His Dark Materials are a good inspiration for Far Realm creatures, are you? Of course not! They were brought up for the argument of the human subconcious being like a seperate entity, and the mechanisim used for Dali to paint. Your argument is that your subconscious isn't you. That's arguable (although I would disagree with it), but it's a long non sequitur away from not being human. I think your argument is built on a foundation of sand. Sand is a main ingredient in concrete. What do you think it is? (I know, you think it's human, but I mean if it is not you) Your subconscious is a fundamental part of who you are. How can you be human without dreams? Dreams, nightmares, voices in your head - these are all part of the human experience. To one degree or another, they define human life. You spend much of your life asleep. Alan Moore compared humans to amphibians, capable of living in either the land or the sea. We travel between the world of dreams and the waking world, and both are our homes. But some people don't dream, or have trained themselves to dream with their concious mind (lucid dreams). By your definition, they are inhuman. What about elves. In D&D, they don't sleep. Just sit quietly for a few hours. Yet their minds are very similar to those of humans. It looks precisely like an eye. I think you're being disingenuous. For all we know, it's a golf ball in an eye socket. And I don't know how long your eyelashes are, but if you think that's normal... As for Dali's paintings coming entirely from his subconscious, that's a very romantic idea, but I think it's unlikely. Inspiration is one thing, but creating a painting is a lengthy process that the raw inspiration of its birth doesn't survive. That's why he would just paint landscapes of Port Lligat until he had a dream or vision (Presistance of Memory was concieved by a semi-hallucination in the pain of a nasty headache). When he did, he would take the elements from this dream and paint them into Port Lligat. The exceptions are the ones that don't take place in Port Lligat, such as the one I just linked you to. These ones he either just remembered, or possibly recorded in some way, such as a dream journal. I'm not a purist when it comes to the Far Realm. If you read the Far Realm layers thread (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=224880), you'll see that I designed a large number of them myself. Oh, but I thought those were for the Far Realms of Insanity. In that case, I'd just like to compliment you on your work. These layers show great creativity. Particularly your first, That Non-Euclidean market. It reminds me of This Salvador Dali painting (http://dali.urvas.lt//forviewing/pic14.jpg) I'm not claiming to know or care what Read My Glowing, Clawlike Finger intended. What I'm saying is that the Finger's "Far Realms of Insanity" aren't very much like WotC's "Far Realm," so in a practical sense it's best to treat them as separate things. I can't imagine why you thought quoting from some fan's post on a message board would give your argument any kind of authority. They are very similar. Similar enough to share a name. If he'd wanted to write about a strange, alien place full of Daliesque imagery, one that was nowhere near the Far Realm, Why didn't he call it "The Dark Unknown," or "The Other Place?" I think that there's no argument that his work refers to the Far Realm. However, yes. His work is not official. And yet he knows all there is to officially know about the Far Realm, and he has decided to extend it to what you see on these boards. This is how he has gained respect and notation, by providing interesting material that facilitates adventure in the Far Realms. And he has suceeded. He is an authority on the Far Realm, and it is his opinion that the Far Realm is Daliesque in some areas, while Wizards has yet to mention the Far Realms in 3.5. That's enough for me.
Bob the Efreet 01-29-07, 03:48 PM	Well, Bob is a pretty popular guy. Oh, thank you. Why not? It works well for us. Because they're other. They are nothing like us. Wizards has yet to mention the Far Realms in 3.5. You might want to check Lords of Madness.
supernerd222 01-29-07, 09:56 PM	Oh, thank you. No problem. Because they're other. They are nothing like us. Beholders have eyes that are of the exact same composition as our own, and they are supposed to be from the Far Realms. Kaorti have the same shape of body, and they are. You might want to check Lords of Madness. Point taken. How much stuff, exactly, does it have on the Far Realms?
Shemeska the Marauder 01-29-07, 11:08 PM	Beholders have eyes that are of the exact same composition as our own, and they are supposed to be from the Far Realms. Beholders aren't from the Far Realms. They were the creations of the Great Mother, a deity of the Abyss, who herself has no known association with the Far Realms either. [Edit: Though if there is a suggestion of such for her, point me to it. But the Beholders themselves are purely from this multiverse.] Kaorti have the same shape of body, and they are. Kaorti didn't start as natives of the Far Realm. Rather, they're mortals from our multiverse who were exposed to and warped by contact with the Far Realms, eventually becoming natives as their essence was twisted, mutated, and transformed. Their general bodyshape is an artifact of their original nature as mortal humanoids.
ripvanwormer 01-29-07, 11:42 PM	Beholders have eyes that are of the exact same composition as our own, and they are supposed to be from the Far Realms. Beholders are actually from the Great Wheel, although their creator, the Great Mother, may be from the Far Realm (because the Mother is also credited with spawning gibbering mouthers, who are said to be Far Realm creatures). Beholders aren't true Far Realm creatures, though, and I'm dubious that their eyes are exactly the same as ours in any event. Kaorti are mutant humans, so they aren't true Far Realm creatures either. Its natives find it sane because that's where they live... Insanity to a pseudonatural does have the same symptoms as human insanity. Both of those statements cannot be true. If pseudonaturals find the symptoms of human insanity sane then they wouldn't call those symptoms, where they appear in themselves, insanity. The Far realm simulates insanity to humans, because to them, it appears a place beyond their experience. So much so that it irreparably damages their psyche. Pseudonaturals are the same. The material plane is beyond them, and it damages their psyche. Damages their psyche by giving them symptoms that they consider normal? How is that damage? No. It has to be one or the other. Either the symptoms of their insanity are the same as those of humans (in which case they wouldn't find the symptoms of human insanity to be an ordinary, sane experience) or their mental illnesses take completely unrecognizable forms (because the recognizable ones are normal to them). Really, there's no reason to think that Far Realm denizens experience mental illness at all, or even that they have consciousness in the way that we do. My own take on the Far Realm is that it has nothing to do with human insanity. That is, it does not simulate it or mimic it, because it neither knows nor cares how human minds work. It stimulates insanity, yes, but it doesn't simulate it. Within this context, a schizophrenic neh-thalggu might conceivably become paranoid in the same way a human would, because it wouldn't consider human paranoia to be its natural environment. Why not? It works well for us. Because that would be an extraordinary coincidence. What are the chances that a lifeform that evolved in another galaxy would have a nervous system identical to our own? Now what are the chances that a lifeform from an entirely different reality, that evolved in an environment without time where shifting between dimensions and realities is as easy as thinking would have anything in common with us? It wouldn't. The environment is so different there that life would also be different. There are a few leakages between realities, yes - kaorti share something in common with the inhabitants of the Wheel, because that's where they originated. Likewise, Far Realm creatures like neh'thalggu and gibbering mouthers share structure with other Far Realm creatures even if they emigrate to the Great Wheel. If it's an enigma, it's debatable. I said it wasn't an enigma. Far Realm creatures aren't that enigmatic either - we know quite a bit about their home. We know what its planar traits are, and from that we can deduce other things. I'm on the other side of the debate, and I doubt i'm going to change your opinion. I change my opinions often, but your argument is, I'm afraid, self-contradictory, and you're ascribing qualities to the Far Realm that would better be placed in places like the Region of Dreams, Pandemonium, and Limbo, given what we know about these planes. What do you think it is? (I know, you think it's human, but I mean if it is not you) I was making an analogy. I've met many people who weren't myself, but I wouldn't deduce from this that they weren't human. Your syllogism seems to work this way: 1. You are human. 2. Your subconscious mind is not "you." 3. Therefore, your subconscious mind is not human. I actually disagree that your subconscious mind is not you, both in real life and in His Dark Materials. But even if I agreed with you that my subconscious wasn't "me," it wouldn't follow that my subconscious was also not human. The human subconscious is a fundamental part of humanity. Perhaps the most fundamental part. It's no more nonhuman than a disembodied human eye. In fact, it's more human than an eye, since an eye can exist apart from a complete human being, and a subconscious cannot. But some people don't dream That's not true. Some people don't remember their dreams, but everybody dreams. Scientists did experiments with mice, waking them up whenever they started dreaming, and it killed them. We literally can't survive without dreams. or have trained themselves to dream with their concious mind (lucid dreams). Lucid dreaming doesn't mean you're dreaming with your conscious mind. You're still quite obviously unconscious. It just means you're exercising control over your subconscious. There's more to the subconscious than dreams, in any event. The subconscious mind is constantly active, whether you're dreaming or not. What about elves. In D&D, they don't sleep. Just sit quietly for a few hours. Yet their minds are very similar to those of humans. Absolutely not, in a campaign where nonhumans are more than humans wearing funny makeup. The elven mindset should be, properly played, as nonhuman and alien as possible. However, the elven reverie is only a part of that. Elves do dream on occasion (they even have a goddess of dreams, Sehanine Moonbow). They're not just "sitting quietly" - they're in an open-eyed trance where they re-experience events from centuries past and see dreams and visions. For all we know, it's a golf ball in an eye socket. It's a painting, pigment on a canvas. There isn't really an eye, golf ball, or anything else underneath the "lid." It's an image that evokes a very human eye, and there's nothing to it beyond that. We can pretend the Mona Lisa is really a portrait of a squid wearing a mask, but it isn't. It's an image intended to evoke a human face. Images are symbols, signs that evoke meanings in our minds. The image that Dali painting evokes a human eye. It doesn't evoke an inhuman eye - it evokes the very familiar image of a closed human eye that we're all very familiar with. And I don't know how long your eyelashes are Long compared to what? To a pocket watch? Scale is distorted in the painting, obviously. That doesn't strip the humanity from an image, any more than those anime girls with gigantic eyes are interpreted as nonhumans by those accustomed to the convention, or any more than a caricature of a politician is interpreted as a nonhuman. In fact, caricature can evoke humanity in its emotion and fallibles more effectively than straight portraiture. All paintings are nonhuman in the sense that they aren't real people. But strange proportions or omissions in them don't make them less human. For example, this Magritte painting (http://www.cord.edu/faculty/andersod/magritte_false_mirror.jpg) would be read by just about anyone as a human eye. Obviously, it doesn't look like a real human eye, but that doesn't mean we interpret it as an alien, inhuman horror. We interpret it as a surrealistic but definitely human eye. Or, for another example, The Scream (http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/munch/munch.scream.jpg) doesn't look like a picture of a human being, but that's still exactly what it is. It's a picture of a human being from the inside out - human emotions rather than human flesh. Or look at this figure: Betty Boop (http://www.tombraider4u.com/pictures/betty-boop-pictures-02.jpg). Is she human? Of course she isn't (she's a cartoon), but when we watch her we suspend our disbelief and interpret her as human. In an unillustrated text we do the same thing. The character of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment is a caricature of a human, just as Betty Boop is. He's text on paper, not a real person. But he symbolizes a human, he's the product of a human mind, and he reveals something about humanity, even though he's an exaggeration. Oh, but I thought those were for the Far Realms of Insanity. That was Read My Finger's intention, but I subverted it. You can see, on page 2 or 3 of the thread, where the thread's starter asked me to fit my layers into the "Far Realms of Insanity" and I declined. It reminds me of This Salvador Dali painting (http://dali.urvas.lt//forviewing/pic14.jpg) It does, a bit, though M.C. Escher would be a better model. If he'd wanted to write about a strange, alien place full of Daliesque imagery Like I said, I'm not pretending to know or care what Read My Glowing, Claw Like Finger wanted to write about. I'm just saying that what actually resulted is different enough from the Far Realm that it's useful to make a distinction.
sciborg2 01-30-07, 01:45 AM	I just want you all to know I slaved over a hot stove for that humorous bit above. :(
Shemeska the Marauder 01-30-07, 03:19 AM	I just want you all to know I slaved over a hot stove for that humorous bit above. :( *munches on the pretty* And I appreciate the little morsel! Not as gamey as bytopia petitioner. Even in the grip of soul rending oblivion, true to form, they make you work for it. *sigh* That was very well done, and I'll have you know that I had a very inappropriate giggle at that while I was at work, much to the chagrin of several bewildered coworkers. Ignore the fact that I was reading the boards during this afternoon's downtime of course. ;)
Bob the Efreet 01-30-07, 04:13 PM	Beholders have eyes that are of the exact same composition as our own, and they are supposed to be from the Far Realms. Lords of Madness, which I infer you haven't read, tells us otherwise. A beholder's eyes have some similarity to our own, but are composed rather differently. As should be evidenced by none of us being able to fire spell energy out of our eyeballs. And, as has been mentioned, beholder's aren't native to the Far Realms. Point taken. How much stuff, exactly, does it have on the Far Realms? Not very much, unfortunately. I read through it the other day hoping to find more information on just that topic. It's mostly in reference to the origins of some aberrations, and some far realm entities are described. It doesn't give us planar traits, or much more than a passing description of what the plane is like.
ripvanwormer 01-30-07, 05:50 PM	You might want to check Lords of Madness. The Far Realm is also mentioned in Complete Arcane, page 21. There's not much significant detail, and some of what detail there is I'm inclined to ignore (the Far Realm is not "evil").
supernerd222 01-30-07, 08:21 PM	Beholders are actually from the Great Wheel, although their creator, the Great Mother, may be from the Far Realm (because the Mother is also credited with spawning gibbering mouthers, who are said to be Far Realm creatures). Beholders aren't true Far Realm creatures, though, and I'm dubious that their eyes are exactly the same as ours in any event. For all we know they are. They have a pupil, an iris, and a white. They're round. They're lidded. If beholders were real, biologists who knew only this much would marvel over the similarities. And yes, they're magical, but magic has nothing to do with the function of the eye: to see. Now yes, I have not read Lords of Madness, so I have no clue what it says in there about how a beholder eye works, but from the outside it looks definitively human. I got the idea that beholders are from the Far Realm from this thread (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=448354). Both of those statements cannot be true. If pseudonaturals find the symptoms of human insanity sane then they wouldn't call those symptoms, where they appear in themselves, insanity. Consider this: A human has a vivid nightmare of being on fire. He feels fear because fire is damaging to him and because it hurts to be burnt. An azer has a vivid nightmare of not being on fire. He feels fear because not being on fire is damaging and because it hurts not to be on fire. Both of these people had a completely different dream, because what is normal for them is very different. They caused the same symptom, though: fear. The Far Realm works much like this. The Far Realms is Human insanity. People in parts that mimic paranoia have paranoid delusions. The delusions that they have aren't really delusions, because they actually are being watched and there actually are lies and conspiracies going on all around them. The delusions continue after they leave, however. The symptoms are not part of the Far Realms, though. The inability to have a good relationship with someone is not emulated in the Far Realms. The Far Realms does not generate something that looks like a human, then make the fake human and the guy in the Far Realms have a bad relationship. The symptoms of the menatal illness are caused by the brain. The delusions are provided by the Far Realms, evoking the emotions that are common to the people with the illness, but the symptoms are provided by the brain. With pseudonaturals, it's the same, yet opposite. They live every day in places with what humans would consider a hallucination or nightmare. Or something they could not even comprehend f they live in a deeper section of the Far Realms. They do not suffer any symptoms of insanity. The fact that there are any suggests that they can have a good relationship. When they go to the material plane, they are driven mad because nobody is waching them (if they are from a paranoid plane.) They have delusions, which aren't really delusions, because nobody is watching them, and there aren't lies and conspiracies left and right. Of course there are lies and conspiracies, and someone might get curious and stare for a minute. But likewise in the far realms, in the layer I was talking about in the last paragraph, there were truths and just general, harmless meetings and even those who didn't care much who the human was. The pseudonatural will then suffer the symptoms of paranoia, including an inability to have a good relationship. Of course, the Pseudonatural already had a strange mindset, but it did not have any of the symptoms of insanity. Damages their psyche by giving them symptoms that they consider normal? How is that damage? They don't already have the symptoms. I just explained that. But I can think of many scenarios where giving someone something they consider normal is damage. Consider junkies. Just because they shoot up on heroin as often as possible doesn't make it any less damaging. Really, there's no reason to think that Far Realm denizens experience mental illness at all, or even that they have consciousness in the way that we do. There's not really much of a rason to think that they don't, either. I don't know which abberations came from the Far Realm, but I'm sure at least one of them is sentinent. Which actually gives me another argument. If abberations are the Lords of Madness, why do they come from a plane that has nothing (according to you) to do with insanity? Because that would be an extraordinary coincidence. What are the chances that a lifeform that evolved in another galaxy would have a nervous system identical to our own? Now what are the chances that a lifeform from an entirely different reality, that evolved in an environment without time where shifting between dimensions and realities is as easy as thinking would have anything in common with us? The squid has an eye that is very, very similar to our own. The two animals have not shared a common ancestor since long before the development of vision. The squid and the human developed an eye that is almost the same completely independant of each other, and within the confines of earth, it would be hard for us to live in more different enviroments. We know that the Illithids and the Grells have brains similar to our own. And furthermore, Evolution is not about chance, it's about what works. You'll never get a species of animal tha has a sharp peice of bone in its stomach that rips a hole every time it moves and eventally kills it. You may get a single animal like that, but it will die before it reproduces. Since there are only a limeted number of things that can work within the confines of a earthlike landscape, the chances of getting two species with brains similar to each other, even over such a great distance (infinite) is not a low as you make it out to be. But in the deep far realms, I don't think a brain similar to ours would pan out too well, so, no you're not likely to find familiar brains in the deep Far Realm. It wouldn't. The environment is so different there that life would also be different. There are a few leakages between realities, yes - kaorti share something in common with the inhabitants of the Wheel, because that's where they originated. Likewise, Far Realm creatures like neh'thalggu and gibbering mouthers share structure with other Far Realm creatures even if they emigrate to the Great Wheel. Genies, Azers, Elementals, Nightwalkers, these creatures are all roughly humanoid, Yet they come from an extremely different enviroment. I said it wasn't an enigma. Far Realm creatures aren't that enigmatic either - we know quite a bit about their home. We know what its planar traits are, and from that we can deduce other things. Oh snap. I misinterpreted you. You said "It's not an alien, Lovecraftian enigma." So I interpreted that as meaning: It's not an alien, and that's the Lovecraftian enigma. So i assumed there was an enigma called the Lovecraftian Enigma that I had somehow never heard of that related to what we are arguing about right now. Oops. Anyway. The subconcious isn't an alien, Lovecraftian enigma, It's part of us, yet operates seperately. Like the Supreme Court (of Canada, I have no clue how you run your courts in the pig filled netherworld.) The court is part of the government, yet it makes its own decisions and cannot be controlled or manipulated by the rest of the government. This is so that if a politcian steals money, they can't just govern that the supreme court find him innocent. The government can figure out how the court works, what makes it tick, but they can't change it through sheer will. The only way they can change it is by stealing something, because then the court will find him guilty and punish him. I change my opinions often, but your argument is, I'm afraid, self-contradictory, and you're ascribing qualities to the Far Realm that would better be placed in places like the Region of Dreams, Pandemonium, and Limbo, given what we know about these planes. We know nearly nothing about the Far Realm. Wizards has given us a few pages in MotP, a few monsters here and there, what sounds like little more than a reference in LoM, a presige class in (I think) Tome and Blood, and that's about all I can think of. What little we do know has been extended, unoficially but educatedly by Read My Glowing Claw Like Finger, and a few others. This is where my case comes from. You won't find many layers on that thread that aren't in some way similar to one of the artists I mentioned in my first post on this thread. The only parts of my argument, furthermore, that could be interpreted as contradictory are a) The insanity of Pseudonaturals, where the confusion is mainly on your behalf, and b) Whether the Subconcious is human, which is a question that has been asked by philosophers in multitude, and still not answered definitivley. I was making an analogy. I've met many people who weren't myself, but I wouldn't deduce from this that they weren't human. Your syllogism seems to work this way: 1. You are human. 2. Your subconscious mind is not "you." 3. Therefore, your subconscious mind is not human. It actually goes more like this: Anyone with a human body and a beating heart is human. Anyone without the latter was human. Anyone without the former is a different story. "One" in this context is defined as either a moving object or an intelligence, or a human body. "Intelligence" in this context is defined as anything capable of solving a problem or interacting with anyone, with either no assistance, or only triggers. Intelligence is used for lack of a better word, as under this definition, computers are intelligences. To have a human body, the intelligence must be in full control of it. The wind is a moving object, but it has no human body therefore it is not human. My computer is an intelligence without a human body, therefore it is inhuman. My subconcious is an intelligence without a human body, therefore it is inhuman. That's not true. Some people don't remember their dreams, but everybody dreams. Scientists did experiments with mice, waking them up whenever they started dreaming, and it killed them. We literally can't survive without dreams. People who have had lobotomies do not dream, nor do people who practice polyphasic sleep. We can't survive without sleep, and dreams are pretty important, but not neccesary. Lucid dreaming doesn't mean you're dreaming with your conscious mind. You're still quite obviously unconscious. It just means you're exercising control over your subconscious. With your concious mind. There's more to the subconscious than dreams, in any event. The subconscious mind is constantly active, whether you're dreaming or not. Of course. I have no argument with this. Absolutely not, in a campaign where nonhumans are more than humans wearing funny makeup. The elven mindset should be, properly played, as nonhuman and alien as possible. Then why aren't they abberations? The elves have a different mindset, but it is still one recognisable as humanoid. However, the elven reverie is only a part of that. Elves do dream on occasion (they even have a goddess of dreams, Sehanine Moonbow). They're not just "sitting quietly" - they're in an open-eyed trance where they re-experience events from centuries past and see dreams and visions. But only on occasion. It's a painting, pigment on a canvas. There isn't really an eye, golf ball, or anything else underneath the "lid." It's an image that evokes a very human eye, and there's nothing to it beyond that. We can pretend the Mona Lisa is really a portrait of a squid wearing a mask, but it isn't. It's an image intended to evoke a human face. But then to make the veiwer say, "Why the hell does that make me think of a face?" In fact, it is very easy to evoke a human face. Ever stared at a cliff? Garunteed, you'll find a good few human faces on any rock formation you choose. That was Read My Finger's intention, but I subverted it. You can see, on page 2 or 3 of the thread, where the thread's starter asked me to fit my layers into the "Far Realms of Insanity" and I declined. Then this Daliesque scene, in your own opinion, belongs in the Far realm? It does, a bit, though M.C. Escher would be a better model. Indeed, if he painted markets.
ripvanwormer 01-30-07, 11:36 PM	And yes, they're magical, but magic has nothing to do with the function of the eye: to see. Beholder eyes actually have two functions: to see and to emit magical rays. Lords of Madness goes into great detail on the anatomy of a beholder eye, and it's nothing like ours. It's as hard as stone, with a dozen lenses in each eye and an iris made of crystalline rather than organic matter. I got the idea that beholders are from the Far Realm from this thread (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=448354). Slayer of Heroes included beholders in that list because the Eberron setting makes beholders creations of the daelkyr, who are natives of that campaign's equivalent of the Far Realm, Xoriat. Slayer of Heroes conflates Xoriat with the Far Realm, which isn't entirely accurate. In non-Eberron campaigns, beholders have nothing to do with the Far Realm. People in parts that mimic paranoia have paranoid delusions. The delusions that they have aren't really delusions, because they actually are being watched and there actually are lies and conspiracies going on all around them. The delusions continue after they leave, however. The symptoms are not part of the Far Realms, though. The inability to have a good relationship with someone is not emulated in the Far Realms. The Far Realms does not generate something that looks like a human, then make the fake human and the guy in the Far Realms have a bad relationship. The symptoms of the mental illness are caused by the brain. The delusions are provided by the Far Realms, evoking the emotions that are common to the people with the illness, but the symptoms are provided by the brain. I think what you're trying to say is that there is a layer filled with lies and conspiracies, and living in an environment filled with lies and conspiracies for very long would cause ordinary people to become paranoid. The main problem I have with this is that such a layer would be functionally identical to the plane of Carceri. So why shoehorn a theme that already has a place in the Great Wheel cosmology into the Far Realm? The reason I argue so strongly for my view of the Far Realm is that I want it to be a place that's substantially different from any part of the Great Wheel cosmology. If this isn't the case, there's no point in using it at all (except, of course, in a campaign that doesn't use the Great Wheel). This upsets me because I like the Far Realm and I like the Great Wheel, and so when people water down one or the other it lessens both settings. Obviously, what you do in your campaign doesn't affect me, but it seems useful for the community as a whole to champion the clear distinctions that exist. That's why I'm insistent that the Far Realm is not the plane of human insanity, or anything remotely human. That's why I'm careful to say what artist fits which plane best. When they go to the material plane, they are driven mad because nobody is waching them (if they are from a paranoid plane.) But here's where you run smack into your core contradiction again. What are the symptoms for this sort of madness? In your analogy with the azer, the azer and human have the same symptoms - fear. Shortness of breath, sweat (or what passes for sweat in azers), the "fight or flight" reflex. This is all very clear, and the stimulus doesn't matter. But if an entity is going to be "driven mad because nobody is watching them," how can it have the same symptoms that a paranoid human has? The human's symptom is that she feels like someone is watching her. Obviously, that's not going to be considered "madness" in the Far Realm entity. They have delusions, which aren't really delusions, because nobody is watching them, and there aren't lies and conspiracies left and right. What you've described are symptoms that are precisely the opposite of the symptoms the human experiences, which contradicts your earlier claim that their insanities would be the same regardless of their origin. Yes, they're both delusional, but they're delusional in antithetical ways. You seem to have essentially conceded the argument and agreed with me. More importantly, you haven't described the Far Realm, either in its official depiction or even in Read My Glowing Finger's. You've described Carceri. That's no plane of madness, human or otherwise. It's a plane with a lot of dishonest people in it. Consider junkies. Just because they shoot up on heroin as often as possible doesn't make it any less damaging. If these junkies have evolved, since the beginning of their race, to subsist on heroin then your analogy would hold. However, they probably wouldn't find heroin to be damaging. There's not really much of a rason to think that they don't, either. There's actually a very good reason: these beings are supposed to be entirely alien to us. If we decide their brains work the same way ours do, then we've lost a valuable way to demonstrate that. I don't know which abberations came from the Far Realm, but I'm sure at least one of them is sentinent. Naturally they're sentient, but how do we define sentience in lifeforms entirely alien to us? They might - and should - think in ways we wouldn't recognize as thought. Which actually gives me another argument. If abberations are the Lords of Madness, why do they come from a plane that has nothing (according to you) to do with insanity? Primarily, this is because they drive mortals insane, in the same sense that stabbing someone in the brain with an icepick might drive them insane. The icepick in itself has nothing to do with insanity, but it can cause it in others. Illithids, with their psionic abilities, are capable of causing mental illnesses in others. This doesn't mean they themselves have anything to do with mental illness. Secondarily, it's because they're sometimes followed or even worshiped by human madmen. Only the insane are likely to pick a god like Ghaunadaur or Tharizdun as their patron, or join a cult worshipping mind flayers or beholders. Thus, these entities become lords of madness. The squid has an eye that is very, very similar to our own. There's actually a fundamental difference often cited - our own retinas are "inside out," while those of mollusks aren't. Squids have no blind spots. We know that the Illithids and the Grells have brains similar to our own. Not really. An illithid's brain fills its entire body - it's a parasite that operates its body like a puppet. The brainlike shape of a grell is actually just a coincidence - it isn't a flying brain, as it might seem to be. Its real brain is inside it, and it's described as looking "like a crumpled sheet or piece of paper," which suggests its components are much more two-dimensional than ours. And furthermore, Evolution is not about chance, it's about what works. It's actually about both. Chance generates the changes, and "what works" determines which changes are kept. As the example of squid eyes and human eyes shows, chance can result in significant differences. In addition, "what works" will be very different between the Great Wheel and the Far Realm. The difference between dry land and beneath the ocean are insignificant when it comes to the design of eyes. But the difference between a universe where the laws of causality hold sway and a universe where they don't? The difference between a universe with four dimensions and a universe where hundreds of "layers" are experiences simultaneously? I agree with your larger point that convergent evolution happens. Genies, Azers, Elementals, Nightwalkers, these creatures are all roughly humanoid, Yet they come from an extremely different enviroment. They all come from the Great Wheel, where the humanoid form is the norm among sapient species. What's more, all of these creatures may be created by the same gods. The Far Realm is supposed to be an alien place, entirely divorced from the norms of the Great Wheel. That's what's interesting about it. If you abandon that, you might as well just use the infinite variety of planes and demiplanes the Great Wheel cosmology already has. Anyway. The subconcious isn't an alien, Lovecraftian enigma, It's part of us, yet operates seperately. Thank you for supporting our President. The unconscious mind is human, a part of each human and a fundamental part of what it means to be human. The Far Realm, on the other hand, is not part of the Great Wheel. If the Outer Planes are the unconscious mind of the Material Plane, then the Far Realm is the mind of a nearby tree. Like the Supreme Court (of Canada, I have no clue how you run your courts in the pig filled netherworld.) A pig handles all court proceedings. You have to do things like beat it at video games in order to get it to lift its pork-flavored curse. There are probably bees. There are always bees. We know nearly nothing about the Far Realm. Wizards has given us a few pages in MotP, a few monsters here and there, what sounds like little more than a reference in LoM, a presige class in (I think) Tome and Blood, and that's about all I can think of. The prestige class is also in Complete Arcane. But that's quite a lot. Everything I've written on the Far Realm is extrapolated from that, and I still haven't exhausted all of its possibilities. Read My Glowing, on the other hand, chose not to extrapolate its material from the official sources, but instead to create something different. What little we do know has been extended, unoficially but educatedly by Read My Glowing Claw Like Finger, and a few others. This is where my case comes from. That's your mistake. Read My Claw Like's stuff isn't educated. I'm not sure if it actually misread the official material or deliberately decided to disregard it, but in either case it's not always a good example of what the Far Realm is (it's pretty good, except when it introduced layers without the Flowing Time trait, which damages the basic themes of both the Far Realm and the Wheel. Its choice of names is also apparently misleading). When I talk about what the Far Realm actually is, I'm not talking about Claw Like's exemplary material. I'm talking about the Far Realm, which is more than vast and interesting enough on its own. The wind is a moving object, but it has no human body therefore it is not human. My computer is an intelligence without a human body, therefore it is inhuman. My subconcious is an intelligence without a human body, therefore it is inhuman. Your subconscious does have a human body - it shares the same body your conscious mind dwells in. An argument that claims your subconscious mind does not have a human body would have to claim your conscious mind also does not have one. Your syllogism therefore fails. Your computer is not an intelligence. "Moving" is not a meaningful definition of human. People who have had lobotomies do not dream Ah, yes. Apparently you're right. (http://psych.ucsc.edu/dreams/Library/domhoff_2001a.html) However, it's not an exaggeration to say that those who've had lobotomies have lost much of their humanity. If dreams are responsible for mapping out the emotional mind, perhaps there's a connection there - when you lose your dreams, you lose your human emotions. With your concious mind. No. Lucid dreams are controlled with your unconscious mind. Of course. I have no argument with this. Then you're admitting your primary argument is irrelevant, I guess. I claimed the subconscious was a fundamental part of being human. We agree that everyone has an active subconscious. So the stuff about dreams must have been just a red herring. Then why aren't they abberations? The elves have a different mindset, but it is still one recognisable as humanoid. They're not aberrations because their anatomies are very close to the humanoid norm. An alien mindset, taken alone, isn't usually enough to change one's creature type. It's also important that the elven mind, while not like that of humans, is also nothing like that of illithids, grell, cloakers, or other aberrations. It's probably more like that of fey, but they lack any other qualities associated with the fey type. But only on occasion. I fail to see how that matters. But then to make the veiwer say, "Why the hell does that make me think of a face?" Are we still talking about the Mona Lisa? Then this Daliesque scene, in your own opinion, belongs in the Far realm? Which one? The Salvador Dali painting you linked to? Quite possibly, at least if you interpret it as partially a hallucination on the part of a lost human. I was thinking of Escher when I designed the UrVeel market, though.
sciborg2 01-31-07, 03:28 PM	when you lose your dreams, you lose your human emotions. "He took my dreams." "Who did?" "Edward. Don't you know? He's the Devil"
ripvanwormer 01-31-07, 03:32 PM	This seems uncalled for. :weep: Oops, I meant to edit that bit out. Edit: There. Is that better?
Shemeska the Marauder 01-31-07, 03:49 PM	"He took my dreams." "Who did?" "Edward. Don't you know? He's the Devil" Best television series ever. Period. "You think you can stop it? You can't... stop it..."
Raymond_Luxury_Yacht 01-31-07, 04:09 PM	People who have had lobotomies do not dream They also have a very, very short life expectancy.
Tarascon 01-31-07, 05:37 PM	The Far Realms really deserves more separation from the Cthullu ideas that originally spawned it... Amen. If anything Cthulhu and whatnot strike me more as Obyriths than anything else. Plus it adds something to it. Not only are they forces beyond human comprehension that could kill us all if we so much as look at them too much, they want us dead to! Now that's cosmic horror!
supernerd222 01-31-07, 10:22 PM	Beholder eyes actually have two functions: to see and to emit magical rays. Lords of Madness goes into great detail on the anatomy of a beholder eye, and it's nothing like ours. It's as hard as stone, with a dozen lenses in each eye and an iris made of crystalline rather than organic matter. I know little about the workings of a beholder eye, so I'm just going to point out that mammal eyes are very hard as well. Not rock hard, but hard enough that it's hard to cut one in half. I shall now change my argument to refer to Uvuudaum. It has four fingered hands with opposable thumbs. Very human indeed. Slayer of Heroes included beholders in that list because the Eberron setting makes beholders creations of the daelkyr, who are natives of that campaign's equivalent of the Far Realm, Xoriat. Slayer of Heroes conflates Xoriat with the Far Realm, which isn't entirely accurate. Has wizards ever said "lol u guyz r stupid Xoriat isnt with teh far realmzorz" or something similar? If so, I've missed it. In non-Eberron campaigns, beholders have nothing to do with the Far Realm. In Ebberon campaigns, beholders have nothing to do with the far realms. I think what you're trying to say is that there is a layer filled with lies and conspiracies, Yes. and living in an environment filled with lies and conspiracies for very long would cause ordinary people to become paranoid. No. Living in a far realms layer for any length of time, if it is one that mimics paranoia, will cause people to become paranoid. The main problem I have with this is that such a layer would be functionally identical to the plane of Carceri. So why shoehorn a theme that already has a place in the Great Wheel cosmology into the Far Realm? There are other layers, too. There are layers that mimic depression where everything is dark and sucky and no matter how hard you try nothing changes. There's layers that mimic obsessive compulsive disorder that are really filthy and things are sort of unpredictable, so only repetitive actions provide a desired result. There are layers that mimic every concievable mental illness, as well as an infinite number more. Paranoia was just an example. The reason I argue so strongly for my view of the Far Realm is that I want it to be a place that's substantially different from any part of the Great Wheel cosmology. If this isn't the case, there's no point in using it at all (except, of course, in a campaign that doesn't use the Great Wheel). It still is. No part of the great wheel makes you insane as effectively as the far realms does. The stuff you like, with ten dimensions and non euclidean space and even weirder stuff than that, stuff that humans cannot possibly understand, is still there. You just have to go deeper in. By the way, I found this (www.tenthdimension.com/flash2.php) the other day. (for the part I am referring to, click "imagining the ten dimensions") Personally, I think it's crap, because it is my belief that all of the dimensions are of space except for the one that is time. It is interesting nonetheless, though. Supposing it is true, did the far realm just get a helluva lot smaller because now any Joe Average can understand the ten dimensions? Because in your theory, the far realm can't be understood by humans at all. This upsets me because I like the Far Realm and I like the Great Wheel, and so when people water down one or the other it lessens both settings.[/quote I really do not consider it to be "watering it down" In fact, I think it is... The opposite of watering it down. I'd say concentrating, but that makes it smaller. I know. In fact I think it is increasing the volume while maintaining the molarity of the solution. As I said, all of your incomprehensible to humans stuff is still there, and it's just as big (infinite, or even "tenth dimensional" :rolleyes: ). It's just that now there's a buffer. A place that people can't really comprehend, and is still utterly alien, but a place you can for the most part draw a map of, or a painting. It still causes insanity. It's still alien and hostile and scary. It's just that now there's parts where I can have some boxed text. And listen, old chum. (cue music) Just . . . is it really worth it? You know? I mean, what's this bit doing to the world? Brightening up the table with its craziness, that's what it's doing. Cheering up the little kiddies and the mental patients and our native grass pancakes. And at what price? Some . . . some odd comprehension going on every now and again, and possibly coercing the odd gamer to pay a visit to everyones favourite local bookstore for a quick purchase of a surrealist art book? Is that so bad? Well? [quote]Obviously, what you do in your campaign doesn't affect me, but it seems useful for the community as a whole to champion the clear distinctions that exist. Good luck convincing eveyone who has contributed a layer of the Far Realms. But here's where you run smack into your core contradiction again. What are the symptoms for this sort of madness? In your analogy with the azer, the azer and human have the same symptoms - fear. Shortness of breath, sweat (or what passes for sweat in azers), the "fight or flight" reflex. This is all very clear, and the stimulus doesn't matter. But if an entity is going to be "driven mad because nobody is watching them," how can it have the same symptoms that a paranoid human has? The human's symptom is that she feels like someone is watching her. Obviously, that's not going to be considered "madness" in the Far Realm entity. I don't know why you aren't getting this. Paranoia has more than one symptom. Like if you get the flu, you have a sore throat, a stuffy nose, a fever, and maybe the squirts. If you get paranoia, you feel like you are being watched, you grow distant and sullen, you can't have a good relationship, you may start doing weird things like wearing tinfoil hats, and you eventually seal yourself off from the outside world. These symptoms are all caused by the delusions, just as the flu symptoms are all caused by your body reacting to a bacterial infection. If a pseudonatural from a paranoid bit of the far realms comes to the prime material, he's going to have delusions that nobody is watching him. If a human went to a paranoid bit of the far realms, he'd have delusions that people are watching him. Again, neither of these beings is having actual delusions when they are on the other place. Those start when they go home. The pseudonatural feels unwatched. This is because nobody is watching him. When he goes home, even though he will be under surveillance again, he will still feel unwatched. The human will feel watched, because he is being watched. When he goes home, even though he is not being watched, he will feel watched. The rest of the symptoms are the exact same. The Pseudonatural will go through the same symptoms as the human, except for the nature of the delusion. The human will wear tinfoil hats (they do that a lot in D&D) and lose friends and cut himself off from a society he feels is set against him. The pseudonatural will tape video cameras to his head and lose friends and cut himself off from a society he feels is is with him. They do the same thing, they just do it for different reasons. More importantly, you haven't described the Far Realm, either in its official depiction or even in Read My Glowing Finger's. You've described Carceri. That's no plane of madness, human or otherwise. It's a plane with a lot of dishonest people in it. As I said, there are other layers. Saying that the whole far realm is like I described would be like diminutive aliens landing on our planet on a diamond ring, and concluding the entire planet was covered with diamond. If these junkies have evolved, since the beginning of their race, to subsist on heroin then your analogy would hold. However, they probably wouldn't find heroin to be damaging. I was simply pointing out that giving someone more of what they consider normal is not always good or neutral for them. It has nothing to do with any other argument I have made. There's actually a very good reason: these beings are supposed to be entirely alien to us. If we decide their brains work the same way ours do, then we've lost a valuable way to demonstrate that. Even if the Pseudonaturals have brains shaped like simplexes, we can assume they are made of chemicals, because everything physical is made of chemicals. We can then assume that these chemicals can become imbalanced. Naturally they're sentient, but how do we define sentience in lifeforms entirely alien to us? They might - and should - think in ways we wouldn't recognize as thought. That's a good point, but I'd remind you that D&D has magic, and so sentience can be defined as anything that magic finds to be sentient. Primarily, this is because they drive mortals insane, in the same sense that stabbing someone in the brain with an icepick might drive them insane. Or, more likely kill them. There's actually a fundamental difference often cited - our own retinas are "inside out," while those of mollusks aren't. Squids have no blind spots. That isn't a fundamental difference. A fundamental difference would be having two lenses or something equally as dramatic. The blindspot does not interfere with human vision. Anyway, despite this one difference, the suid and human eyes are very similar. Not really. An illithid's brain fills its entire body - it's a parasite that operates its body like a puppet. The brainlike shape of a grell is actually just a coincidence - it isn't a flying brain, as it might seem to be. Its real brain is inside it, and it's described as looking "like a crumpled sheet or piece of paper," which suggests its components are much more two-dimensional than ours. The illithid brain still functions thae same, and is still ugly pinkish grey and wrinkly. It's actually about both. Chance generates the changes, and "what works" determines which changes are kept. As the example of squid eyes and human eyes shows, chance can result in significant differences. What exactly do you mean by the last sentence? In addition, "what works" will be very different between the Great Wheel and the Far Realm. The difference between dry land and beneath the ocean are insignificant when it comes to the design of eyes. But the difference between a universe where the laws of causality hold sway and a universe where they don't? The difference between a universe with four dimensions and a universe where hundreds of "layers" are experiences simultaneously? If we are going with my idea that parts of the realms are similar to the material plane, but gone mad, I can see convergant evolution taking place. Not in the deep far realms, though as I said previously. They all come from the Great Wheel, where the humanoid form is the norm among sapient species. What's more, all of these creatures may be created by the same gods. If humanoid form is the norm in the great wheel, what about Ebberon? Or that weird other universe, I've forgotten its name already. The place where the Keepers come from. That place sounds pretty alien. The Far Realm is supposed to be an alien place, entirely divorced from the norms of the Great Wheel. That's what's interesting about it. If you abandon that, you might as well just use the infinite variety of planes and demiplanes the Great Wheel cosmology already has. Its still alien. It just has things of humanoid form on it. Limbo is no less chaotic with Slaadi and Githzerai. The abyss isn't less evil with Balors and Mariliths. The elemental plane of fire isn't any less hot with Azer and Djinn. The Far Realm isn't any less alien with Humanoid pseudonaturals. Thank you for supporting our President. Not my president. I'm Canadian. The unconscious mind is human, a part of each human and a fundamental part of what it means to be human. The Far Realm, on the other hand, is not part of the Great Wheel. If the Outer Planes are the unconscious mind of the Material Plane, then the Far Realm is the mind of a nearby tree. The Far Realm may well be the mind of something or the mind of nothing. The point is, it mocks insanity, and the subconcious mind is not one of regular human behavior. All humans have subconciouses, and they are part of being human, but in themselves they are not human. Picture this: A being (it doesn't really matter of what description) with only a subconcious mind that was in control the way our concious mind is in control. It would be bewildering an disturbingbecause it would do seemingly random things that were actually fragments of its past experiences put int the form of an action. It would act based as much on chance as on what was going on around it. It would be inhuman. And that being is inside all of our heads. A pig handles all court proceedings. You have to do things like beat it at video games in order to get it to lift its pork-flavored curse. There are probably bees. There are always bees. I feel for you man. Just stay out of trouble. Keep cleaning those toilets, and maybe you'll find a way out someday. Remember: If you can't see th fnords, they can't eat you. The prestige class is also in Complete Arcane. But that's quite a lot. Pick a random outer plane. It's been covered in countless Planescape books, MotP, Planar Handbook, Dungeon Master's guide. It's likely been given monsters in the monster manuals and fiend folio. If it's the abyss or baator, it's in a fiendish codex and the BoVD, if it's a higher plane it's in BoED. There's been more coverage of it in Dungeon or Dragon magizine than you'd care to know. It has dieties in Dieties and Demigods. It has third party coverage. That is a lot. That's your mistake. Read My Claw Like's stuff isn't educated. I'm not sure if it actually misread the official material or deliberately decided to disregard it, but in either case it's not always a good example of what the Far Realm is (it's pretty good, except when it introduced layers without the Flowing Time trait, which damages the basic themes of both the Far Realm and the Wheel. Its choice of names is also apparently misleading). When I talk about what the Far Realm actually is, I'm not talking about Claw Like's exemplary material. I'm talking about the Far Realm, which is more than vast and interesting enough on its own. He was dissatisfied with how the far realms were potrayed in MotP, and so decided to write about them in less vague terms. Not different. Less vague. These were his words. But I did have an idea. Insofar, part of our debate has been on the seperation of the far realms from the great wheel. Officially, they are seperated in time. But when you get to relativistic speeds, as you must be travelling at when you go from plane to plane, Space travel is time travel. Just thought I'd put that concept out there. Your subconscious does have a human body - it shares the same body your conscious mind dwells in. The duality of your minds is like two old ladies driving a car. They can't both be in control, so one sits at the wheel. No matter what the one in the passenger seat says, the one behind the wheel has final say of where the car goes. The concious mind is behind the wheel. No matter how much the subconcious wants to drive, it can't. The concious may steer that way if it chooses to listen, but it isn't the subconciouses car. It's just along for the ride. An argument that claims your subconscious mind does not have a human body would have to claim your conscious mind also does not have one. Your syllogism therefore fails. Mine doesn't. Mine says that the concious is driving. Your computer is not an intelligence. "Moving" is not a meaningful definition of human. I know. I even said that the definitions are a bit off. But if you let the connotations go and just follow the definitions I gave, I'm pretty sure it covers everything. Also, I never said it was the definition of human to be moving. I was defining the word "one" so that it caught all things that could possibly be human. However, it's not an exaggeration to say that those who've had lobotomies have lost much of their humanity. If dreams are responsible for mapping out the emotional mind, perhaps there's a connection there - when you lose your dreams, you lose your human emotions. They'd already lost much of their humanity. That's why they got lobotomies. Anyway, after you get a lobotomy, you can still play poker. I can't think of anything in the real world other than a human that can play poker. (computers don't count because they can't bet with intelligence, bluff, or have a poker face.) No. Lucid dreams are controlled with your unconscious mind. You can't control your subconcious. You can control lucid dreams. With lucid dreams you exert concious thought on the visions provided by your subconcious. Whenever I have a lucid dream, it is because I realize I am asleep. Then you're admitting your primary argument is irrelevant, I guess. I claimed the subconscious was a fundamental part of being human. We agree that everyone has an active subconscious. So the stuff about dreams must have been just a red herring. I said That there is more to the subconcious than dreaming and that the subconcious is always active. I'm not sure how this makes my primary argument irrelevant. They're not aberrations because their anatomies are very close to the humanoid norm. An alien mindset, taken alone, isn't usually enough to change one's creature type. It's also important that the elven mind, while not like that of humans, is also nothing like that of illithids, grell, cloakers, or other aberrations. It's probably more like that of fey, but they lack any other qualities associated with the fey type. Elves have a different mindset; but relative to kaorti, for example, they're positively human. I fail to see how that matters. They don't do it every day, or even every week, and yet they are still reasonably human. Are we still talking about the Mona Lisa? No. This is the "face" in Persistance of Memory. Which one? The Salvador Dali painting you linked to? Quite possibly, at least if you interpret it as partially a hallucination on the part of a lost human. I was thinking of Escher when I designed the UrVeel market, though. Okay. This is a breakthrough. What I meant by my post was that I thought your layer was very Daliesque and youimplied that it belonged in the far realms. But if you believe that the painting itself belongs in the far realms, we have something that you said was very human, that even contains a human in the Far Realms. This is what I've been arguing for this whole time.
sciborg2 02-01-07, 12:38 AM	They don't do it every day, or even every week, and yet they are still reasonably human. Woah, let's not have this thread be exiled to the mature forums...oh wait...never mind. :embarrass Rip -- on editing out...hah! I won't go into details for CoC's sake but I once wrote to an organization I was part of in college. I typed out the email and then went back and deleted the parts of my angry flow that would get me into trouble...save the part where I wished death on someone. (not seriously of course) Needless to say, they kicked me out. :(
ripvanwormer 02-01-07, 01:16 AM	I shall now change my argument to refer to Uvuudaum. It has four fingered hands with opposable thumbs. Very human indeed. Oh, indeed (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/MotP/Far_Realm_Entity.jpg), it's like looking in a mirror. The uvuudaum are actually alien enough to satisfy me, however. Has wizards ever said "lol u guyz r stupid Xoriat isnt with teh far realmzorz" or something similar? If so, I've missed it. Yes. All of Wizards' press releases are in l33tspeak. Or, if we can talk in boring, unhip English for a minute, I explained the differences between Xoriat and the Far Realm here (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=448354&page=2). There are layers that mimic depression where everything is dark and sucky and no matter how hard you try nothing changes. There's layers that mimic obsessive compulsive disorder that are really filthy and things are sort of unpredictable, so only repetitive actions provide a desired result. There are layers that mimic every concievable mental illness, as well as an infinite number more. Paranoia was just an example. That's the Outer Planes you're thinking of. Those would all be terrific places in the Gray Waste (depression) and Acheron (obsessive compulsive disorder). But putting them in the Far Realm would be pointless. It takes away from the uniqueness of the Great Wheel cosmology and takes away from the uniqueness of the Far Realm. It's destructive to both. It still is. No part of the great wheel makes you insane as effectively as the far realms does. I disagree. Madness is cheap on the Outer Planes, particularly in Pandemonium, with its maddening winds. Of the many reasons the Far Realm is interesting, is maddening trait is the least of them. Supposing it is true, did the far realm just get a helluva lot smaller because now any Joe Average can understand the ten dimensions? You misunderstand me. The cool thing about ten-dimensional space isn't its incomprehensibility, and I feel like I comprehend the Far Realm pretty well. If I didn't, I wouldn't be writing page after page defining it and describing it. Some . . . some odd comprehension going on every now and again, I think the layers I've designed, as well as those many others have designed, are adequately comprehensible. What I object to isn't comprehensibility, but putting things in the Far Realm that fit perfectly well elsewhere. What I want is for the Great Wheel to get its due as the terrifying psychological realm its meant to be, and not get its thunder stolen by a plane that has its own separate niche. I reject your "if we don't cram Salvador Dali into an H.P. Lovecraft-shaped hole then it's all useless and incomprehensible" argument. There are places to put reified mental illness. The Far Realm is not one of them. Good luck convincing eveyone who has contributed a layer of the Far Realms. I like most of the layers created on these boards, actually, except the silly ones like "you hear an annoying song over and over again." Most of them, including RMGCLF's when he remembers the Flowing Time trait, fit fine into the paradigm I champion. I don't know why you aren't getting this. Like if you get the flu, I understand what you're trying to say, but you don't seem to understand what I'm saying. If you and your ancestors (if Far Realm creatures have ancestors) live in a universe where everyone has the flu all of the time, and you go to our world and get the flu virus, you're not going to recognize it as an illness. If a pseudonatural from a paranoid bit of the far realms comes to the prime material, he's going to have delusions that nobody is watching him. Then you agree with me that their definition of mental illness would be different. In fact, in your example their experience of paranoia would be the opposite of our experience with paranoia. Your claim is that "the other symptoms are the same," but that's a dodge. The most salient symptom - the one that defines their entire native habitat - is going to be the antithesis of its human equivalent. Even if the Pseudonaturals have brains shaped like simplexes, we can assume they are made of chemicals, because everything physical is made of chemicals. We can then assume that these chemicals can become imbalanced. How many Far Realm creatures are "physical?" Neh-thalggu are incorporeal and uvuudaums, everything with the pseudonatural template, and kaorti are outsiders (who by definition are made of spiritual rather than physical matter), so none of those creatures are made of chemicals. Those Far Realm creatures who are corporeal aberrations, oozes, or some other type may have some sort of chemical makeup (though not anything like the chemistry or even atoms of the Great Wheel), but I can think of several scenarios in which they wouldn't become unbalanced. Perhaps even those with physical bodies have minds that depend on some spiritual gestalt rather than chemistry, or perhaps their body chemistry is entirely external, so that their minds are only unbalanced if their environment is unbalanced and there's some vast godlike entity that keeps their environment balanced at all times. I will admit freely that many Far Realm entities may well have chemistry of some kind and it may become unbalanced from time to time, however - it's easy for me to try to take the extreme opposite position the person I'm arguing with takes, but that's not necessary or smart on my part. However, even in those cases there's no reason to assume that Far Realm entities would manifest mental illness in the same ways that humans do. That's a non sequitur. Delusions, compulsions, seizures, hypochondria, OCD - all the mental disorders listed in the Pandemonium chapter of Planes of Chaos - those are all the result of human neurology and human culture. That's a good point, but I'd remind you that D&D has magic, and so sentience can be defined as anything that magic finds to be sentient. Yup. And I'd remind you that human magic may not give accurate readings when it comes to entities that are sufficiently alien. Magic isn't objective or omniscient. That isn't a fundamental difference. Yes, it is, and it's an excellent example of organs without an evolutionary common root developing in different ways. Now imagine how different an organ might be that developed in an entirely different universe where the laws of nature are utterly at odds with those we know. The illithid brain still functions thae same No, it functions differently, as I've already described, similarity in color and wrinkliness aside. If humanoid form is the norm in the great wheel, what about Ebberon? It seems to be the norm in Eberron as well. Or that weird other universe, I've forgotten its name already. The place where the Keepers come from. The keeper universe wasn't given a name. You'll have to ask Shemeska. He seems to have placed them somewhere specific (possibly the Far Realm) in next month's Dragon Magazine. Its still alien. It just has things of humanoid form on it. Limbo is no less chaotic with Slaadi and Githzerai. The abyss isn't less evil with Balors and Mariliths. The elemental plane of fire isn't any less hot with Azer and Djinn. The Far Realm isn't any less alien with Humanoid pseudonaturals. That seems a poor analogy. I don't think anyone would argue that balors make the Abyss less evil, but it seems self-evident that humanoids are less alien than non-humanoids. Not my president. I'm Canadian. I meant the President of Canada. The secret one you don't let outsiders know about. The telepathic baby that manipulates your Prime Minister like a puppeteer. Don't act like you don't know; I've seen the proof. It's all encoded in the Red Green Show and the Toronto Sun. All humans have subconciouses, and they are part of being human, but in themselves they are not human. They're as human as any other part of the human brain. We probably shouldn't be speaking of the conscious and unconscious minds as discrete entities as if neuroscience hadn't progressed since the days of Sigmund Freud, anyway. Dreams, for example, use a variety of parts of the brain, parts we use when we're conscious as well. The brain processes dream-information and information that comes from external senses in the exact same way. It's really a false dichotomy. Picture this: A being (it doesn't really matter of what description) with only a subconcious mind that was in control the way our concious mind is in control. That has nothing to do with what we're talking about. I'm talking about the human subconscious as it is, not as it might be in some hypothetical alien being. Picture a being with only a conscious mind - that being would be equally alien. That is a lot. Just because the outer planes have more detail doesn't mean the Far Realm doesn't have a lot of detail. He was dissatisfied with how the far realms were potrayed in MotP, and so decided to write about them in less vague terms. Not different. Less vague. These were his words. He was wrong. I disagree with RMGCLF on many things, and that's one of them (we disagree more vehemently on the issue of slaadi). His version of the Far Realm is not the same as the official one, for reasons I've explained. Officially, they are separated in time. But when you get to relativistic speeds, as you must be traveling at when you go from plane to plane, Space travel is time travel. Just thought I'd put that concept out there. Did you read the part where it was explained that the Far Realm exists after the end and before the beginning of the universe? The Far Realm isn't merely in any time, it's after time and space both end. Also, what makes you think that planar travel takes place at relativistic speeds? That doesn't seem to follow at all. Or that special relativity is even a valid concept in the D&D multiverse, which is based on medieval concepts like Aristotlean elements and crystal spheres? The duality of your minds is like two old ladies driving a car. They can't both be in control, so one sits at the wheel. No matter what the one in the passenger seat says, the one behind the wheel has final say of where the car goes. The concious mind is behind the wheel. But which is the passenger and which is the driver? Perhaps it's the id that's the driver, and the ego only watches, and the superego only exists to rationalize the id's decisions. That's at least an equally valid interpretation. I think it's nonsense to claim the subconscious (if there is such a thing, separate from the rest of the brain in the radical way you propose) doesn't drive the car. If anything, the subconscious is the car, or at least the car's engine. It's also a poor definition of human that limits humanity to "someone in control of their subconscious drives." Also, I never said it was the definition of human to be moving. What did that bit about the wind mean, then? They'd already lost much of their humanity. That's why they got lobotomies. They could feel before. They could dream. Anyway, after you get a lobotomy, you can still play poker. So can a computer. And they have excellent poker faces. Still, I'm not claiming that lobotomites have no humanity, only that they've lost some of it. You can't control your subconcious. You certainly can. That's what lucid dreaming is. With lucid dreams you exert concious thought on the visions provided by your subconcious. Whenever I have a lucid dream, it is because I realize I am asleep. Right. Except you're exerting unconscious thought. You're asleep. That makes you unconscious. This is a tautology. I said That there is more to the subconcious than dreaming and that the subconcious is always active. I'm not sure how this makes my primary argument irrelevant. It makes your argument about dreams irrelevant. I'm not sure what your primary argument is. Elves have a different mindset; but relative to kaorti, for example, they're positively human. Apples and oranges. Elves are profoundly inhuman - whether they're more human than a kaorti or a jellyfish or a tree or a black hole doesn't seem like a useful comparison. They don't do it every day, or even every week, and yet they are still reasonably human. I said the subconscious mind was part of the definition of humanity, not the ability to dream. That's why the dream part is irrelevant. But no, I disagree that elves should be portrayed as "reasonably" human. And elves have the ability to dream - the frequency isn't an issue. At least, I never made frequency an issue - that's something you introduced, so you're only arguing with yourself here. No. This is the "face" in Persistance of Memory. As Dali painted it, it's supposed to have [the representation of] a human eye on it, just as much as the Mona Lisa's face is supposed to have human eyes. You can pretend it's a mustache or whatever, but that's obviously not the intent. But if you believe that the painting itself belongs in the far realms we have something that you said was very human, that even contains a human in the Far Realms. That's a pretty strange thing to say, considering I explicitly placed the condition that the human had to be a hallucination on the part of a human visitor.
ripvanwormer 02-01-07, 04:06 AM	If the Far Realm is alien, Rip, how do you see its place in the scheme of a planar game? I've thought of it as the true Other, the foreign that isn't a reflection of the Self like the Outer Planes are. But does it then have metaphorical value? Is it just a place for wacky monsters to come out of? The Far Realm is an invader, a cancer, something inimical to the well-being of the Great Wheel. It's also Lovecraft's notion of a completely uncaring, oblivious, hostile atheistic universe. The Great Wheel is a tiny bubble beneath its contempt which it might casually destroy as one would accidently pop a bubble of soap while putting a bar away after a shower. The madness it inspires is directly related to the madness of the Bleak Cabal, which sees the multiverse as a pointless and meaningless void. No, it's not just about weird monsters, but the monsters are a major part of its appeal, and it's the monsters I design layers around. The monsters associated with the Far Realm are not actively, deliberately evil like fiends, but they still may be evil by D&D standards. As such, they're a different kind of evil and a different kind of antagonist. The fun part is, many inhabitants of the Far Realm aren't evil at all. Some may even be good, but in as strange and impersonal a way as the evil ones are "evil." They are not actively good, just accidently and uncaringly helpful in the exact same way that others are accidently and uncaringly evil.
Shemeska the Marauder 02-01-07, 10:36 AM	The keeper universe wasn't given a name. You'll have to ask Shemeska. He seems to have placed them somewhere specific (possibly the Far Realm) in next month's Dragon Magazine. I haven't seen what survived the editors, but AFAIK it didn't see too many changes from my submitted draft. Understandably I can't say much before the issue is out, but outside of the article itself and just my own personal feelings in general, the Keepers should not have any connection to the Far Realm. I'll say more once the issue is out.
supernerd222 02-03-07, 11:15 PM	First off, sorry it took me two days to do this. I had a final exam. Oh, indeed (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/MotP/Far_Realm_Entity.jpg), it's like looking in a mirror. The uvuudaum are actually alien enough to satisfy me, however. But they have arms and hands with opposable thumbs, and their bodies are clearly designed to operate under gravity, and their skin is a nice shade of caucasian. They're very human. Yes. All of Wizards' press releases are in l33tspeak. You didn't know this? TSR always did them in pirate, but when WOTC bought them out they started doing them in gangsta. Some african american guy thought it was offensive and sued, so now its all in 1337. Or, if we can talk in boring, unhip English for a minute, d00d u got 1 minnit s0 start I explained the differences between Xoriat and the Far Realm here (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=448354&page=2). The thing is, you refuted my arguments based on the writings of Read My Glowing Claw Like Finger based upon the fact that he is not wizards staff. With all due respect, neither are you. Nor am I, but I'm not saying they are the same. I'm pointing out that wizards has never said anything to the contrary. That's the Outer Planes you're thinking of. Those would all be terrific places in the Gray Waste (depression) and Acheron (obsessive compulsive disorder). Hades causes depression because it is a depressing place, not because it is a place that mimics depression. People get depressed on earth because they have depressing lives, not because earth mimics depression. The same goes for Acheron and OCD, though I'm not sure how you linked that disease and plane together. But putting them in the Far Realm would be pointless. It takes away from the uniqueness of the Great Wheel cosmology and takes away from the uniqueness of the Far Realm. It's destructive to both. The material plane has foggy areas and dark areas, so the plane of shadow and the ethereal plane are destructive to it. If the PCs want fire, we can have them adventure in a volcano. If they want water, put 'em in the sea. Air? Fly spells. Earth? The underdark. Get rid of the elemental planes. The outlands is just like the material plane in many ways. Get rid of it. Sigil has nothing to sit on and it's just a big city anyway. Do away with it. Keep mechanus, but do away with the beastlands (the material has wild areas), Acheron (earth has wars), Bytopia (the material has peaceful places), and celestia (earth has mountains). Keep Limbo, but do away with Baator (the material has any terrain that can be found here), The abyss (same as baator), Elysium (see above), Arcadia (ditto), Pandemonium (it's just the elemental plane of earth anyway) Ysgard (just earth but with the volume turned up), Carceri (the material has prisons and liars enough already), Gehenna (mountains are cheap), and arborea (rips off earthly places and puts them back together all blended up.). These planes share stuff with the material and take away from its uniqueness. While you're about it, get rid of the demiplanes. They aren't full fledged planes for nothing. They all take something away from the material plane. Keep the plane of mirrors and the region of dreams. Get rid of the far realm. It has too much in common with earth, no matter who you listen to. Ditch the para- and quasielemental planes, minus radiance and vacuum as you can certainly find all the rest on the material plane. Keep the ordial. Keep the temporal. Now ditch all of the worlds of the material except for Oerth. The rest are to some degree redundant when greyhawk is the only world. The planes are now: Oerth, Positive energy, Negative Energy, Temporal, Ordial, Astral, Radiance, Vacuum, Mechanus, and Limbo. It's not much, but at least the players will never see the same thing twice. Take a look at the paragraph above. Youll notice that many of the planes removed were done so for very arbitrary reasons. Just as it would be arbitrary to say that Gehenna is a bunch of mountains, it is arbitrary to say that my vision of the far realm is in the outer planes so much as to take away from the uniqueness. I disagree. I had a feeling you would. Madness is cheap on the Outer Planes, particularly in Pandemonium, with its maddening winds. Madness is free on the Far realms, but not even free like OMG Free Screensavers Click Here! free. More like the kind of free you get with tax forms. Of the many reasons the Far Realm is interesting, is maddening trait is the least of them. If you took away the maddening trait, and anything that is a reason for it to have a maddening trait, what do you have left? You misunderstand me. The cool thing about ten-dimensional space isn't its incomprehensibility, and I feel like I comprehend the Far Realm pretty well. If I didn't, I wouldn't be writing page after page defining it and describing it. May I ask you a personal question? Are you human? Because if you are, how can you comprehend the far realms when you said yourself that it was beyond human comprehension? I think the layers I've designed, as well as those many others have designed, are adequately comprehensible. What I object to isn't comprehensibility, but putting things in the Far Realm that fit perfectly well elsewhere. You can get non-euclidean space in other places than the far realm. Consider the layer of Baator that is pretty small on the surface, but has infinite tunnels and passages underground. You're ruining Baator for everyone! What I want is for the Great Wheel to get its due as the terrifying psychological realm its meant to be, and not get its thunder stolen by a plane that has its own separate niche. Yeah. That great wheel. I keep all my books about it hidden, guarded with lock and key under my bed. I only bring them out once a year for my halloween campaign that takes place in (thunder clap) Sigil. One of my players quit the group when I brought out my new fire elemental miniature, you know. He went home and watched The Ring a couple of times, because compared to the terrors of (thunder clap) Sigil, that may as well be Seinfeld. I reject your "if we don't cram Salvador Dali into an H.P. Lovecraft-shaped hole then it's all useless and incomprehensible" argument. There are places to put reified mental illness. The Far Realm is not one of them. Sure, but what's left in the far realm? Randomly shifting layers with eighty seven dimensional solids and time flowing in fourteen point seven five directions at once? That's not what Wizards intended. The uvuudaum, for example, are not higher dimensional, and actually a bit Daliesque. I like most of the layers created on these boards, actually, except the silly ones like "you hear an annoying song over and over again." I agree. There's a spell in complete adventurer for that. Most of them, including RMGCLF's when he remembers the Flowing Time trait, fit fine into the paradigm I champion. Most fall into the paradigm I champion, too. Maybe we champion the same paradigm. In that case, who's the real champion, and what are we arguing about? I understand what you're trying to say, but you don't seem to understand what I'm saying. If you and your ancestors (if Far Realm creatures have ancestors) live in a universe where everyone has the flu all of the time, and you go to our world and get the flu virus, you're not going to recognize it as an illness. The pseudonaturals aren't mentally ill all the time. They think people are watching them, yet they live full, active, healthy lives. Lives that someone with a mental illness would not be able to live without treatment of some sort. My definition of being mentally ill is not that you think someone's watching you (in the case of paranoia), but more that because you have a chemical imbalance with your brain, you can't live a normal life. Then you agree with me that their definition of mental illness would be different. In fact, in your example their experience of paranoia would be the opposite of our experience with paranoia. Your claim is that "the other symptoms are the same," but that's a dodge. The most salient symptom - the one that defines their entire native habitat - is going to be the antithesis of its human equivalent. Not the most salient symptom. The most famous symptom. That's like saying the Mona Lisa is the most important painting in the world. Lots of people think that someone is watching them. Far fewer people are actually paranoid. The symptoms that have an actual effect on you are the ones caused by the delusion. The ones shared by humans and pseudonaturals. I will admit freely that many Far Realm entities may well have chemistry of some kind and it may become unbalanced from time to time, however - it's easy for me to try to take the extreme opposite position the person I'm arguing with takes, He does have a name. but that's not necessary or smart on my part. However, even in those cases there's no reason to assume that Far Realm entities would manifest mental illness in the same ways that humans do. That's a non sequitur. Delusions, compulsions, seizures, hypochondria, OCD - all the mental disorders listed in the Pandemonium chapter of Planes of Chaos - those are all the result of human neurology and human culture. So a Kaorti, or any other native of the far realms with the ability to hear would suffer no ill effects in pandemonium? Very unlikely. Unless they came from the layer that repeats that song over and over again, the winds would drive them mad within a few days. Yes, it is, and it's an excellent example of organs without an evolutionary common root developing in different ways. Now imagine how different an organ might be that developed in an entirely different universe where the laws of nature are utterly at odds with those we know.[quote] An organ like a barbed tail or human arm or spider leg? [quote]No, it functions differently, as I've already described, similarity in color and wrinkliness aside. It has neurons that fire. This action then sends messages to the rest of the body. If it didn't work this way, a brain golem would not be able to work. It seems to be the norm in Eberron as well. Well there's some convergent evolution for you. Two worlds acessable to each other only through the plane of shadow, and yet they end up with virtually the same creatures. I meant the President of Canada. The secret one you don't let outsiders know about. The telepathic baby that manipulates your Prime Minister like a puppeteer. Don't act like you don't know; I've seen the proof. It's all encoded in the Red Green Show and the Toronto Sun. Now if you ever need an example of a person with paranoia... They're as human as any other part of the human brain. We probably shouldn't be speaking of the conscious and unconscious minds as discrete entities as if neuroscience hadn't progressed since the days of Sigmund Freud, anyway. Dreams, for example, use a variety of parts of the brain, parts we use when we're conscious as well. The brain processes dream-information and information that comes from external senses in the exact same way. It's really a false dichotomy.[quote] We use all parts of our brain when we dream. The neurons randomly fire, creating random images which are turned into the semicoherent chain of events we call a dream. [quote]That has nothing to do with what we're talking about. I'm talking about the human subconscious as it is, not as it might be in some hypothetical alien being. Picture a being with only a conscious mind - that being would be equally alien. Hardly. It would operate on the surface in an identical fashion to humans (assuming the concious is a human subconcious.) The difference would be entirely internal. Just because the outer planes have more detail doesn't mean the Far Realm doesn't have a lot of detail. No, it doesn't mean that. You're entirely right. The outer planes having a lot of detail doesn't neccisarily mean the far realms doesn't have a lot of detail. But it doesn't anyway. Did you read the part where it was explained that the Far Realm exists after the end and before the beginning of the universe? The Far Realm isn't merely in any time, it's after time and space both end. Well, let's go at it step by step. The far realm is after time ends. Therefore Time ends. Therefore There is a point in time that is the last point in time, just like there is a point on the road that is the last point on the road. Therefore If you pass the last point in time you enter the Far Realm Therefore It is possible, through time travel to reach the far realms. Therefore Given that time travel is possible through space travel, it is possible to reach the far realms through space travel. Also, what makes you think that planar travel takes place at relativistic speeds? That doesn't seem to follow at all. We know that planar travel takes you through the astral plane. This says that rather than just winking out of existance on the Prime Material and suddenly appearing in Arborea, you are following a path through space. We also know that planar travel is instantaneous. This says that you are travelling very fast indeed. And space travel does not have to be at the speed of light to be relativistic. Or that special relativity is even a valid concept in the D&D multiverse, which is based on medieval concepts like Aristotlean elements and crystal spheres? I like to keep science alive in my campaigns. But which is the passenger and which is the driver? Perhaps it's the id that's the driver, and the ego only watches, and the superego only exists to rationalize the id's decisions. That's at least an equally valid interpretation. Not by our current understanding of the self. I think it's nonsense to claim the subconscious (if there is such a thing, separate from the rest of the brain in the radical way you propose) Not really that radical. Not human in its workings, but utilizing multiple parts of the brain. The old lady in the passenger seat gets to use the cup holders and the stereo. She just can't make the car do anything. doesn't drive the car. It is your concious that makes you move. Decide you want to hang a sharp left and you do it. If anything, the subconscious is the car, In my analogy, the car is the body. or at least the car's engine. I suppose that would be the heart. It's also a poor definition of human that limits humanity to "someone in control of their subconscious drives." Well humans are in control of their subconcious. The second old lady can nag and yell at the one behind the wheel to make her turn left. The old lady behind the wheel will only turn left for two reasons: She actually wants to go left, or she wants the other lady to shut up. I suppose the real world example of the latter would be having a huge thing for some girl and finally just going and asking her out. What did that bit about the wind mean, then? The wind is a nonhuman thing that moves. It is a result of air heating up, rising, and more air going into the place it left. It has no human mind. Therefore it is not human. The part about moving was to define the word "One" The purpose of this was to get a wide range of things to test my definition on. Anything that could possibly be human. They could feel before. They could dream. So can cats. So can a computer. And they have excellent poker faces. Still, I'm not claiming that lobotomites have no humanity, only that they've lost some of it. But you were claiming that dreaming was such an integral part of being human that people who could not dream would die. You certainly can. That's what lucid dreaming is. Lucid dreaming is applying your concious to your subconcious. Right. Except you're exerting unconscious thought. You're asleep. That makes you unconscious. This is a tautology.[quote] Words can have more than one meaning. [quote]It makes your argument about dreams irrelevant. I'm not sure what your primary argument is. How does it make my argument about dreams irrelevant? Apples and oranges. Elves are profoundly inhuman - whether they're more human than a kaorti or a jellyfish or a tree or a black hole doesn't seem like a useful comparison. Well if you see things in black and white it isn't. I said the subconscious mind was part of the definition of humanity, not the ability to dream. That's why the dream part is irrelevant. But no, I disagree that elves should be portrayed as "reasonably" human. Let's go back a bit. There was a list of things that Dali was concerned with that made his pictures somehow human. Women- Elves aren't as gay as some play them. Sex- They aren't extinct, are they? Death- They have a different idea of it, but the still die. They are certainly concerned with death. Religious faith- They have gods. As Dali painted it, it's supposed to have [the representation of] a human eye on it, just as much as the Mona Lisa's face is supposed to have human eyes. You can pretend it's a mustache or whatever, but that's obviously not the intent. But the human face is twisted and distorted so it makes the person who looks at it wonder why they think it's a face. That's a pretty strange thing to say, considering I explicitly placed the condition that the human had to be a hallucination on the part of a human visitor. You don't have hallucinations on the far realm. They're included in the price of admission.
ripvanwormer 02-04-07, 03:28 AM	They're very human. You make me giggle, and I don't blame you for not taking this silly argument seriously but, at the very least, to be "human" you can't have a giant clawed tentacle instead of a head. Opposable thumbs alone do not cut it (if those things even are thumbs, and not digestive organs or genitals). "Operates under gravity" and "a nice tan color" are not definitive criteria for humanity, or a pine tree would also be human (underneath its bark). I'm pointing out that wizards has never said anything to the contrary. Look. The Far Realm, as officially presented, is a dimension outside of time, separated from the Great Wheel by aeons of history and the creation/destruction of all space and time. RMCCLF offers us "The Far Realms of Madness," a dimension that includes layers that aren't outside of time, that slowly progresses from the Outer Planes through a Lovecraftian transitive plane, growing incrementally more peculiar as it progresses outward. Your argument, as far as I can tell, is that what WotC says about the Far Realm isn't "true" because RMCCLF has a different take, because WotC hasn't taken the time to release an official disclaimer (in l33t) that says that RMCCLF doesn't trump the Manual of the Planes. Now, I love fan-created stuff as a rule, and I'm often happy to ignore official stuff in favor of it. I don't remember why I started arguing with you in the first place, and I don't feel like checking, but it probably had something to do with my desire to defend the surreality of the Great Wheel and keep the Far Realm as a separate thing, interesting in its own right but with its own themes. But when you, eager to defend your vision of the Far Ream(s) from my possibly unprovoked assault, said "Oh yeah? You're wrong because RMCCLF posted something," well - it's just funny to me. Hades causes depression because it is a depressing place, not because it is a place that mimics depression. It is not just a depressing place. It is, in fact, made of depression. Whenever anyone, anywhere, is sad, or gloomy, or wracked with heaving sobs, wishing pitifully for death - that feeling drifts into the Astral Plane, and the lion's share of these energies ultimately collect in the Gray Waste. Just a depressing place? If that's all you think it is, I'm not surprised you'd rather think about the Far Realm. But the Outer Planes can be a cool place, too. The Outer Planes are not just the reflections of the mind in all its ups and downs, but the apotheosis of the it. The Far Realm, not so much. Not at all. The Far Realm has other purposes. The material plane has foggy areas and dark areas, so the plane of shadow and the ethereal plane are destructive to it. In your campaign, that might be completely true. If you play the Plane of Shadow or the Ethereal Plane as just a dark place and just a foggy place (and I don't actually think you do), the fact that those things exist on the Material Plane as well makes those planes redundant. But those planes have much more interesting themes than that, and they have their own, very distinct roles. The same goes for your other examples. The same goes for the Far Realm. It isn't just a plane of madness - it has very distinct and interesting reasons why it drives you mad, which are different from the reasons Pandemonium drives you mad. But you're attributing Pandemonium's reasons for causing madness to the Far Realm instead, and that is destructive. A good parallel would be if you had decided that the Material Plane was foggy for the same reason that the Ethereal Plane was foggy - that it was filled with protomatter, the stuff of pure potential. Or that the Material Plane was shadowy for the same reason that the Plane of Shadows was shadowy - that it's where all the shadows cast throughout history collect and breed. Those are interesting themes given to other planes, and attributing them to the Material Plane as well would be a shame. If you took away the maddening trait, and anything that is a reason for it to have a maddening trait, what do you have left? Without the maddening trait, you'd still have an exotic, alien environment with infinite varied layers through which travelers can cross by mere force of will, a place completely removed from time, where the titanic, inchoate rulers exist on many layers at once. You'd have cool-looking monsters with tentacles for heads. You'd have all the themes of Lovecraft - the cold, impersonal universe and cosmic horror. You'd have icky parasites and oceans of sentient slime. You'd have mad, blind, creator-nebulae surrounded by courts of eldritch pipers. It might well, in fact, be much more interesting without the maddening trait, since the PCs would be better equipped to explore it. Madness belongs to Pandemonium. That's the main "hook" for that plane, and it's quite rude for the Far Realm to try to usurp it. As long as they "do" madness differently, though, it's okay. Are you human? Because if you are, how can you comprehend the far realms when you said yourself that it was beyond human comprehension? Did I say that? I meant beyond the comprehension of the players and non-player characters. Omniscient narrators get more slack. I comprehend it quite well. You can get non-euclidean space in other places than the far realm. Consider the layer of Baator that is pretty small on the surface, but has infinite tunnels and passages underground. True enough. Sigil's non-Euclidean, too. Yet the treatment is quite distinct. That great wheel. I like it. Sure, but what's left in the far realm? Did you read RMCLFFF's Far Realm layers thread? Just about everything in that. Your claim that "if I can't make the Far Realm a mirror of the human mind there's nothing left" is quite obviously not the case. what are we arguing about? The Pandemoniums of Insanity are the true plane of madness, not the Far Realm. Look, they even have "insanity" in their name, and I'm a well-respected poster. WotC hasn't specifically said the Pandemoniums of Insanity aren't the same as their "Pandemonium." My definition of being mentally ill is not that you think someone's watching you (in the case of paranoia), but more that because you have a chemical imbalance with your brain, you can't live a normal life. My point is twofold: 1. Many Far Realm denizens don't have chemicals in their brains (being outsiders, incorporeal, or based on some gestalt psionic hivemind), and therefore cannot become mentally ill according to your definition. 2. If they do become mentally ill, it would manifest in a way that wasn't identical to their normal environment. Although the idea of a chemical imbalance that results in someone acting in a way that they and all their peers consider to be completely normal is amusing. Not the most salient symptom. I'm sorry, I should have said the only symptom that was relevant in this argument. We were talking about a realm where everyone had that symptom, so it's that symptom we need to consider. If we're discussing other symptoms, then the realm in question gets those symptoms, too. He does have a name. You misread what I wrote. I was writing in a general sense, and therefore could not refer to anyone in specific. In general, it's easy for me to take an extreme position that's completely antithetical to that of the person I'm arguing with. In this particular case, while I'm arguing with you, Supernerd, I'm trying not to do that. But in general, it's easy to do. So a Kaorti, or any other native of the far realms with the ability to hear would suffer no ill effects in pandemonium? I'm not sure what you're getting at. Do you think I was arguing that Far Realm creatures are immune to madness? That wasn't what I was trying to do at all. I'm just saying that their madness would manifest in a way that wasn't the dominant condition of their native environment. We don't actually disagree on this. An organ like a barbed tail or human arm or spider leg? Yes, exactly. Imagine how different those things must be in the Far Realm (particularly since it apparently uses its "tail" for a head). For all their superficial similarities to familiar things, they might be entirely different internally, or have completely unfamiliar purposes that aren't analogous to anything we know. It has neurons that fire. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's entirely based on psionic energy, which can interlink with anything. This is a fantasy world, remember. Well there's some convergent evolution for you. Two worlds acessable to each other only through the plane of shadow, and yet they end up with virtually the same creatures. You're seriously proposing that's just coincidental? Please. If Eberron and Greyhawk exist in the same campaign, then the fact that both worlds have humans isn't just a remarkable convergence. More likely, one world or both were "seeded" by the same set of gods or other ancient entities, or they're actually the same world on greatly divergent timestreams. Now if you ever need an example of a person with paranoia... Don't try to deny it. It's right on your flag. Maple leaf starts with "M," and so does "mental," as in "the mental domination of a telepathic baby." And yes, I'm giving you that straight line for free. We use all parts of our brain when we dream. The neurons randomly fire, creating random images which are turned into the semicoherent chain of events we call a dream. Yes, I know. How do you square that with your idea that dreams come from some nonhuman source, but your conscious thoughts evidently don't? Hardly. I don't think you've thought this through. A person with "just a subconscious" would be functionally the same as anyone in a delirious state. A person with "just a consciousness" would lack any associative memory, just for starters, since that's what dreaming is. Given that time travel is possible through space travel, it is possible to reach the far realms through space travel. I was with you until this last step, when your argument took one giant leap for non sequiturkind. Traveling very fast makes time subjectively shorter, but even if you could travel fast enough so that you could reach the end of the universe within your lifetime, the universe still ends. That means you end with it. Whether the universe ends because of a Big Crunch of a slow entropic heat death, it kills you too, regardless of how fast you're going. You need a time machine that let's you skip the messy extinction of all that is. Traveling at close to light speed doesn't allow that, because you're still in the universe, just traveling very quickly. If light, which is traveling as fast as anything can go, isn't going to survive the death of the universe then neither are you. We know that planar travel takes you through the astral plane. This says that rather than just winking out of existance on the Prime Material and suddenly appearing in Arborea, you are following a path through space. No, the Astral Plane doesn't contain any space. It's a non-dimensional plane. The appearance of "space" there is entirely a mental construct, but there's not actually any distance between any two points there. There aren't even any points - not even one. That's why travel through it is instantaneous. See A Guide to the Astral Plane. Even if that weren't the case, it doesn't follow that just because a planar travel enters the Astral between the Material and Outer Planes that they do so for any distance. In fact, that's not how it works - the traveler winks out of existence on the Material Plane, shifts into the Astral Plane, winks out of existence there, and finally appears very suddenly on Arborea. It is, in fact, exactly as you sarcastically described, but with a single extra step. Picture the planes like two-dimensional grids stacked on top of one another. The "up" and "down" dimension is equivalent to the magical dimension that planes are separated in. A planar traveler moves "upward" from a point on the Material Plane to the equivalent point on the Astral (even though there are no points, and no space, in the Astral), and then to the equivalent point in the Arborea (ditto in the Outer Planes). No horizonal motion is necessary - just continuous upward movement. I like to keep science alive in my campaigns. Just don't expect that I, or anyone, will be on the same page with you on this. The D&D cosmos is an Aristotlean one, with matter based on four elements instead of 118, and where on the Astral and Outer Planes matter is based on ideas and concepts rather than any elements at all. Not really that radical. Not human in its workings, but utilizing multiple parts of the brain. This is such a silly argument, and such an arbitrary and useless definition of "human." "The human part of the body is the part that makes things go!" Well, unless you're Dick Cheney. The part about moving was to define the word "One" Sorry, maybe I'm a bit dense, but I still don't see the connection. How is "moving" part of the definition of the word "one?" So can cats. Humans and cats have many things in common. Both give live birth, nurse their young, and oxidize glucose. And they both dream. Now, a human that didn't oxidize glucose would be a very strange creature, and I would indeed question its taxonomy. That isn't the same as saying "all creatures who oxidize glucose are human," and I think you know that. Likewise, saying "all humans dream" isn't the same thing as saying "only humans dream." So why the mendacious attempt at reversing my argument? But you were claiming that dreaming was such an integral part of being human that people who could not dream would die. Yes, I was. It's a romantic notion, isn't it? I'm bitterly disappointed to find out this isn't the case. Lucid dreaming is applying your concious to your subconcious No, because the conscious and unconscious minds don't exhibit the Manichean duality you're pretending they do. It's possible to be conscious of being unconscious, and it's possible to be in a dreamlike state when you're awake. Words can have more than one meaning. Indeed, and we may be defining the various words differently. You seem to be using the word "subconscious" to mean "unaware" - in that sense, yes - a lucid dreamer is conscious, insofar as they're aware of their state. However, the word also refers to a state of mind in which the dreamer is unaware of his or her surroundings, conscious only of the dream. In that sense, a lucid dreamer is not conscious. Your deeper point, that a lucid dreamer is not exercising their subconscious mind, is nonsense no matter what your definition of the words. While I might be "steering" my subconscious when I'm lucid, my subconscious is still creating vivid sights, sounds, textures, tastes, and smells. If I had said "dreaming is a fundamental part of being human" then your point about lucid dreaming is meaningless, because lucid dreaming is still dreaming. If I had said, "the subconscious mind is a fundamental part of being human" then your point about lucid dreaming is meaningless, because even if you're lucid you still have a subconscious mind, whether it's involved in the dream or not (and, in my experience, it always is). Let's go back a bit. There was a list of things that Dali was concerned with that made his pictures somehow human. I was talking about Salvador Dali, who was a real person living in a world where humans are the only species we can have real conversations with about matters like sex, death, and religious faith. Obviously, in a fantasy world with multiple sapient species, those particular concerns are more universal. As with your point about cats, the fact that being concerned with death is a very human trait doesn't mean that only humans experience it. However, beings in the Far Realm, who may not have any sense of self or time, may not. My point was that Salvador Dali's concerns are very familiar to every human being and not alien at all. If an elf painted the same themes, a human would find much it was able to sympathize with. This does not mean that there isn't much else about elven psychology that would be very unfamiliar to humans - and, indeed, their experience of sex and dreams and death and even religion is very different from that of humans, very alien what with communion and reverie, their vastly longer lifespan and Sehanine's Calling. But the human face is twisted and distorted so it makes the person who looks at it wonder why they think it's a face. No, it's not. I told you why I thought it was a face - because it has a very clear image of a human eye on it. If it had some nonhuman feature in addition to the eye, I would agree that it was an inhuman face. But the eye is the only feature of note. You can complain about the length of the eyelashes or pretend it could be a mustache, but the fact of the matter is that in our human world, that's what human eyes look like, and human eyes are the only things that look like that. You don't have hallucinations on the far realm. They're included in the price of admission. If "you" aren't having the hallucinations, then you're not the one who's gone mad - the plane itself is. But that's clearly not the case - the plane drives you mad. That's what the maddening trait means. One possible symptom of madness is hallucinations. If any plane is mad, it's Limbo. The Far Realm is not mad - it is perfectly normal according to its own sense of logic. The logic that it functions by works perfectly well for it. The things you see there are either real (in which case they're not hallucinations) or they're delusions conjured up by your own fragmenting brain. Another possibility is that they're delusions conjured up by someone else's fragmenting brain, and some vast entity is digesting that person's thoughts and pooping the remains into your mind. But that doesn't mean you can't also have hallucinations of your own.
supernerd222 02-06-07, 09:58 PM	You make me giggle, and I don't blame you for not taking this silly argument seriously but, at the very least, to be "human" you can't have a giant clawed tentacle instead of a head. Opposable thumbs alone do not cut it (if those things even are thumbs, and not digestive organs or genitals). I don't care what plane he evolved on. Genitals that far outside the body do not happen. In fact, it is theorized that if we stopped evolving later than we did, our genitalia would be inside our body with air intake holes to keep them cool. It's also definitley not optimal to have a digestive organ that far from the body. It would take a lot of energy to move the food from that organ back into the torso for it to be further digested. And if its entire digestive system is in its arm, why would it develop a torso at all? Furthermore, elbows are clearly visible in the picture, meaning that it has bones. Digestive organs that thin and that far from the body would do poorly to have bones beside them. "Operates under gravity" and "a nice tan color" are not definitive criteria for humanity, or a pine tree would also be human (underneath its bark). I'm not saying that the guy is human. He has human features, though. He's essentially a cross bwetween a scorpion and a human. Since people have been crossing humans and animals since the invention of mythology, I'd say this monster is well within the human psyche, and therefore not under your definition of the far realms. Look. The Far Realm, as officially presented, is a dimension outside of time, separated from the Great Wheel by aeons of history and the creation/destruction of all space and time. RMCCLF offers us "The Far Realms of Madness," a dimension that includes layers that aren't outside of time, that slowly progresses from the Outer Planes through a Lovecraftian transitive plane, growing incrementally more peculiar as it progresses outward. Though as I have pointed out, Read My Glowing Claw Like Finger (as he prefers to be called) does not discern between his far realm and that of Wizards. Your argument, as far as I can tell, is that what WotC says about the Far Realm isn't "true" because RMCCLF has a different take, No. What WOTC has said about the far realm is true. If you want to use Read My Glowing Claw Like Finger (as he prefers to be called) You either have to a) Place the WOTC stuff in the circular file or b) find a way to mesh them together. because WotC hasn't taken the time to release an official disclaimer (in l33t) d00d ok 1st the press relese wuz 4 far reams + xoriat being unrelated 2nd its 1337 u n00b lol that says that RMCCLF doesn't trump the Manual of the Planes. If fans by default trumped published work we'd have a pretty messed up D&D world. I don't remember why I started arguing with you in the first place, I actually remember why I started arguing with you. It had to do with the ethereal plane. I put in some stuff on the far realm while I was about it, and pretty soon... and I don't feel like checking, but it probably had something to do with my desire to defend the surreality of the Great Wheel and keep the Far Realm as a separate thing, interesting in its own right but with its own themes. But when you, eager to defend your vision of the Far Ream(s) from my possibly unprovoked assault, said "Oh yeah? You're wrong because RMCCLF posted something," well - it's just funny to me. I didn't bring up Read My Glowing Claw Like Finger's (as he prefers to be called) work as an attempt to prove you wrong. Just to show you, in case you were previously unaware that I am not the only person who believes that the Far Realm is the outside of the Great Wheel. It is not just a depressing place. It is, in fact, made of depression. Whenever anyone, anywhere, is sad, or gloomy, or wracked with heaving sobs, wishing pitifully for death - that feeling drifts into the Astral Plane, and the lion's share of these energies ultimately collect in the Gray Waste. Your view of the outer planes is too hypothetical. If the grey waste is made of depression, what was it like before there was anybody to feel depressed? Hades was always there. Though it's true that melancholy feelings are drawn to it, it is not made of depression in itself. The depression that builds up here makes it increasingly more depressing. Just a depressing place? The most depressing place in the great wheel, one where much of the depressive thoughts go, but not one that is composed of depression in itself. So yeah, just a depressing place. If that's all you think it is, I'm not surprised you'd rather think about the Far Realm. But the Outer Planes can be a cool place, too. The Outer Planes are not just the reflections of the mind in all its ups and downs, but the apotheosis of the it. The outer planes are a cool place. That's why people like planescape. The outer planes show us the darkest and lightest corners of our mind made physical. The Far realms shows us what is outside our mind. Stuff that you wouldn't normally conciously think of. Stuff like soft watches or an evil creepy guy with a lobster on his head. The Far Realm, not so much. Not at all. The Far Realm has other purposes. The far realm does not exist for the sole purpose of driving people crazy. It's just what it does when people go there unprepared. The elemental plane of fire doesn't exist for the sole purpose of burning people to a crisp. It's just what it does when people go there. The far realm isn't the elemental plane of insanity, but it is a place that mocks insanity in certain areas. Most of it has nothing to do with insanity, but it still drives people insane. In your campaign, that might be completely true. It isn't. That was all sarcasm If you play the Plane of Shadow or the Ethereal Plane as just a dark place and just a foggy place (and I don't actually think you do), the fact that those things exist on the Material Plane as well makes those planes redundant. But those planes have much more interesting themes than that, and they have their own, very distinct roles. The same goes for your other examples. And even if you have the far realm as I argue for it, the roles of the great wheel and the far realm are no less distinct. If the great wheel was just a bunch of planes with a little bit of surreal stuff here and there, Planescape would be remembered as the bomb (in a bad way) of 2e. If I thought the far realm was nothing more than that, I wouldn't be here arguing it out with you, because I'd just be like: "Well, this sucks." and never use the Far realm again. The same goes for the Far Realm. It isn't just a plane of madness - it has very distinct and interesting reasons why it drives you mad, which are different from the reasons Pandemonium drives you mad. But you're attributing Pandemonium's reasons for causing madness to the Far Realm instead, and that is destructive. And I'm not. Pandemonium drives you mad because the wind won't shut up. You can't sleep. You're bloody cold. You can't get a fire going and if you can, it just brings monsters. You can't get any hot food. It's really dark. The wind can knock you off your feet and blow you back a diistance it took you half an hour to gain. And you can walk on whatever part of the tunnel you feel like. The far realm is way more open than pandemonium. It has no wind on most layers. The two cause insanity in completely different ways. And while the far realm can cause all a manner of types of insanity, Pandemonium steers more towards breakdowns. A good parallel would be if you had decided that the Material Plane was foggy for the same reason that the Ethereal Plane was foggy - that it was filled with protomatter, the stuff of pure potential. Or that the Material Plane was shadowy for the same reason that the Plane of Shadows was shadowy - that it's where all the shadows cast throughout history collect and breed. Those are interesting themes given to other planes, and attributing them to the Material Plane as well would be a shame. Indeed. If the plane of shadow and a shadowy material plane exist in the same campaign, there's no point of having the plane of shadow. That's what the planes are for. A bizzare change of scenery to something strange and unusual. Like in the Gord the Rogue book where Gord goes to the plane of shadow. For the entire book he had been skulking around the Free City of Greyhawk getting drunk and stealing stuff and fighting some kind of undead that was like a roper. Then he got stuck on the plane of shadow, and everything was completely different. Or in The Halfling's Gem where they go to the Demonweb. If the entire world of Faerun looked like the Demonweb, there'd be no point of Drizzt going to there. In fact, if the reader zoned out for a chapeter, he probably wouldn't notice that they were even on another plane. I believe that my interpretation of the far realm is alien enough to disturb even a planewalker. Without the maddening trait, you'd still have an exotic, alien environment with infinite varied layers Abyss. through which travelers can cross by mere force of will, Limbo. a place completely removed from time, Astral. where the titanic, inchoate rulers Baator. exist on many layers at once. Hmm. Okay. That's unique. You'd have cool-looking monsters with tentacles for heads. Pretty much anywhere in D&D. You'd have all the themes of Lovecraft Ravenloft. - the cold, impersonal universe Mechanus. and cosmic horror. Fighting outsiders on the material plane. You'd have icky parasites and oceans of sentient slime. Pretty much anywhere in D&D. You'd have mad, blind, creator-nebulae surrounded by courts of eldritch pipers. Again. This stuff happens every day in D&D. It might well, in fact, be much more interesting without the maddening trait, since the PCs would be better equipped to explore it. Give me a break. Would the Negative energy plane be better without the negative-dominant trait, so that people could go there without curling up and dying? Madness belongs to Pandemonium. That's the main "hook" for that plane, and it's quite rude for the Far Realm to try to usurp it. As long as they "do" madness differently, though, it's okay. Very differently, as I explained before. True enough. Sigil's non-Euclidean, too. Yet the treatment is quite distinct. Same goes for the demonweb. I like it. You must like being afraid, for the true meaning of fear lies in (thunder clap) Sigil. Did you read RMCLFFF's What the deuce? Far Realm layers thread? Just about everything in that. But much of this stuff is Daliesque, or similar to the works of the rest of the artists we were talking about earlier. Your claim that "if I can't make the Far Realm a mirror of the human mind there's nothing left" is quite obviously not the case. How is surreal a mirror of the human mind, but the stuff on that thread not? The Pandemoniums of Insanity are the true plane of madness, not the Far Realm. Look, they even have "insanity" in their name, and I'm a well-respected poster. WotC hasn't specifically said the Pandemoniums of Insanity aren't the same as their "Pandemonium." Well done, sir. If you don't mind, though, I'm going to go with Read My Glowing Claw Like Finger's theory. 1. Many Far Realm denizens don't have chemicals in their brains (being outsiders, incorporeal, or based on some gestalt psionic hivemind), and therefore cannot become mentally ill according to your definition. Outsiders are made of chemicals. And anything with a hivemind still has a brain. Otherwise it would be incapable of activating the nerves that control its muscles. 2. If they do become mentally ill, it would manifest in a way that wasn't identical to their normal environment. Although the idea of a chemical imbalance that results in someone acting in a way that they and all their peers consider to be completely normal is amusing. Not really. All emotions are caused by chemical imbalances in your brain, too. I'm assuming you and your peers think it normal for you to have emotion. As for your main argument, we go back to the pseudonatural who thinks nobody is watching him. This is not identical to his normal enviroment. I'm sorry, I should have said the only symptom that was relevant in this argument. We are talking about mental illness, right? Because if so, all symptoms are relevant. We were talking about a realm where everyone had that symptom, so it's that symptom we need to consider. No, and here's why: Nobody on said realm has any other symptoms, therefore they are not insane. They live normal (for them) lives. They do not isolate themselves, become sullen, or display irrational behavior. When they become paranoid, they get a delusion that nobody is watching them. Alone, this delusion does nothing. We all (except for conspiracy theorists) have this "delusion" (though it is hopefully true for where we live.) and we lead normal lives. The symptoms brought about by the delusion because it is so alien and damaging to the pseudonatural are what defines the pseudonatural as insane, because without treatment, he is unable to live a normal life. If we're discussing other symptoms, then the realm in question gets those symptoms, too. No, because the realm is sane to those who live there. Though the idea of a place where nobody can have a good relationship is amusing, it would not last as the population would reach 0 after a single generation. Yes, exactly. Imagine how different those things must be in the Far Realm (particularly since it apparently uses its "tail" for a head). For all their superficial similarities to familiar things, they might be entirely different internally, or have completely unfamiliar purposes that aren't analogous to anything we know. Those similarities are more than superficial. If we found an Uvuudaum carved into a sarcophagus in a pyramid, all the archaeologists would say it was a human with a scorpion tail for a head and spider legs for legs. Nobody would argue that the arms were its genetalia. Parts of it are similar to parts of a human. The skin is for keeping the inside in and the outside out. the "tail" is for hitting things with (I'm pretty sure that's one of its attacks, but as MoTP is a Great wheel book for the most part, It would take me a good fifteen minutes to undo all the locks I have on it.). The hands are for grabbing stuff with. The legs are for walking. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's entirely based on psionic energy, which can interlink with anything. This is a fantasy world, remember. Then why would they bother putting it on the brain golem? Don't try to deny it. It's right on your flag. Maple leaf starts with "M," and so does "mental," as in "the mental domination of a telepathic baby." And yes, I'm giving you that straight line for free. You :censored:! You think I'm stupid? You're the stupid one for giving me that much of a clue! [sblock=I have you now, fool!]We were talking about 1337, right? M in 1337 is |V| So now I have the absolute value of V, which is V. V is for vendetta. V for Vendetta is a graphic novel. In V for Vendetta, There's a guy called V who reads a book by Thomas Pynchon called V, and listens to Beethoven's Fifth symphony (the first five notes of which are morse code for V, and were referred to by Beethoven as "Fate Knocking on the door." Fate is the name of the supercomputer in V for Vendetta.) So far so good? V also introduces himself with the phrase "You may call me V," which has 5 words and 5 syllables. A large amount of V's speech is in Iambic Pentamater, which has 5 Iambs. The story stars on Nov 5th. V hangs with a girl called Evey. Her name is, phonetically, E (letter 5 of the alphabet) and V, (25th letter 25=5^2). V came from room 5 at the Larkhill camp. 5 in binary is 101, and George Orwell wrote a book called 1984 where a guy goes to room 101 at another torture camp. V's hideout is at Victoria park station. V always says Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici, which has 5 words, each beginning with V (in latin U is written V). "V for Vendetta" has 5 syllables. V wanted a Viking funeral. Vikings believed they'd be sent to Valhalla by Valkyries. Oh, and V is the roman numeral for 5. So we have a lot of 5s going down here. Well, the number 5 is the number of the Illuminati, but that's a red herring. The real thing lies a bit below the surface. V has three points and two lines and 2+3 is 5. Now we have 2 and 3, or 23. Now we know that the movie The number 23 is coming out shortly. In fact, 5 days ago (at the time of writing this) it was 23 days until its release, which happens on February 23. The date for that is 23/2/07. Now I'm beginning to get the picture. not only does that date have 7 in it, but it also had a 2 in it. So if we add the first three digits of the title, we get 7. Furthermore, 2+5=7. Then when I realized I had said something about The Ring, and we're arguing about a topic related to Planescape, which all takes place on a ring, I realized your true message: "You Will Die In Seven Days!" Yes, I know. How do you square that with your idea that dreams come from some nonhuman source, but your conscious thoughts evidently don't? The subconcious is what links the images together. I don't think you've thought this through. A person with "just a subconscious" would be functionally the same as anyone in a delirious state. A person with "just a consciousness" would lack any associative memory, just for starters, since that's what dreaming is. Not really. In my dreams, I often have access to a memories created in the dream, false memories, and even sometimes my real world memory. I was with you until this last step, when your argument took one giant leap for non sequiturkind. Traveling very fast makes time subjectively shorter, but even if you could travel fast enough so that you could reach the end of the universe within your lifetime, the universe still ends. That means you end with it. Whether the universe ends because of a Big Crunch of a slow entropic heat death, it kills you too, regardless of how fast you're going. You need a time machine that let's you skip the messy extinction of all that is. Traveling at close to light speed doesn't allow that, because you're still in the universe, just traveling very quickly. If light, which is traveling as fast as anything can go, isn't going to survive the death of the universe then neither are you. In our universe, this is true. However, the D&D cosmology has this little thing called the planes. No, the Astral Plane doesn't contain any space. It's a non-dimensional plane. The appearance of "space" there is entirely a mental construct, but there's not actually any distance between any two points there. There aren't even any points - not even one. That's why travel through it is instantaneous. See A Guide to the Astral Plane. I don't have the book. But if this is true, how can you possibly exist there? If your head and your feet are at different points... And what about official depictions? There are chunks of matter there, and githyanki pirates. Even if that weren't the case, it doesn't follow that just because a planar travel enters the Astral between the Material and Outer Planes that they do so for any distance. In fact, that's not how it works - the traveler winks out of existence on the Material Plane, shifts into the Astral Plane, winks out of existence there, and finally appears very suddenly on Arborea. It is, in fact, exactly as you sarcastically described, but with a single extra step. Picture the planes like two-dimensional grids stacked on top of one another. The "up" and "down" dimension is equivalent to the magical dimension that planes are separated in. A planar traveler moves "upward" from a point on the Material Plane to the equivalent point on the Astral (even though there are no points, and no space, in the Astral), and then to the equivalent point in the Arborea (ditto in the Outer Planes). No horizonal motion is necessary - just continuous upward movement. But upward movement is required, and it makes no difference what dimension you are travelling in, spatial movement is neccesary to travel in it. There are no instant warps, you have to go at the speed of light or slower. Just don't expect that I, or anyone, will be on the same page with you on this. The D&D cosmos is an Aristotlean one, with matter based on four elements instead of 118, and where on the Astral and Outer Planes matter is based on ideas and concepts rather than any elements at all. The thing is, Earth is a part of the D&D cosmology. "The human part of the body is the part that makes things go!" Well, unless you're Dick Cheney. No. That's the muscular system. Sorry, maybe I'm a bit dense, but I still don't see the connection. How is "moving" part of the definition of the word "one?" It isn’t. Not normally anyway. Here, if I’m confusing you, let me put it in different words: Any freeb with a human body and a beating heart is human. Any freeb without the latter was human. Any freeb without the former is a different story. "Freeb" in this context is defined as either a moving object or an omozu, or a human body. "Omozu" in this context is defined as anything capable of solving a problem or interacting with anyone, with either no assistance, or only triggers. Omozu is used for lack of a better word, as under this definition, computers are omozus. To "have" a human body, the omozu must be in full control of it. The wind is a moving object (and therefore a freeb), but it has no human body therefore it is not human. My computer is an omozu without a human body, therefore it is inhuman. My subconcious is an omozu without a human body, therefore it is inhuman. Humans and cats have many things in common. Both give live birth, nurse their young, and oxidize glucose. And they both dream. Now, a human that didn't oxidize glucose would be a very strange creature, It wouldn't be human, as human bodies oxidise glucose. Therefore, whatever was in charge of the body would not have a human body, and would therefore not be human. and I would indeed question its taxonomy. That isn't the same as saying "all creatures who oxidize glucose are human," and I think you know that. I do. Likewise, saying "all humans dream" isn't the same thing as saying "only humans dream." Still true. So why the mendacious attempt at reversing my argument? Cause we're arguing.;) Seriously, though. You said "Well, they lost much of their humanity when they got lobotomies" Then I said that they had already lost much of their humanity. Then you said: They could feel before. They could dream. Which says to me that you are saying feeling and dreaming are enough to classify someone as human. And this is certainly not the case. It's possible to be conscious of being unconscious, and it's possible to be in a dreamlike state when you're awake. This is all true. You can be concious of being subconcious. That's how lucid dreams work. Remember those random neurons being shaped into a semicoherent "story" that is a dream? When you apply your concious mind to these neurons, you are able to control the events of your dream. The subconcious still is in effect. You are just going through events you choose rather than random ones. And this does not mean that they have no duality. You can have water and oil in the same container and they will still have a duality. Indeed, and we may be defining the various words differently. You seem to be using the word "subconscious" to mean "unaware" - in that sense, yes - a lucid dreamer is conscious, insofar as they're aware of their state. I define conscious as several things. Among them: To be awake, and the other mind. The one that isn't subconscious. A lucid dream has to do only with the latter. The lucid dreamer uses their concious mind, but is in no way conscious in the sense of the former. However, the word also refers to a state of mind in which the dreamer is unaware of his or her surroundings, conscious only of the dream. In that sense, a lucid dreamer is not conscious. Seems to me that you are confusing subconscious and unconscious on this one. We don't say: Hey, where's Bill? Oh, he was up late last night so now he's subconscious. Your deeper point, that a lucid dreamer is not exercising their subconscious mind, This is not my argument. My argument is that lucid dreamers are applying their conscious to their subconscious. The subconscious is the dominant one here. The conscious is just altering it. I realize now that what I said when I first brought up lucid dreaming could be easily misinterpreted. What I meant was they are dreaming with their concious mind in effect. Not dreaming with only their conscious mind. If I had said "dreaming is a fundamental part of being human" then your point about lucid dreaming is meaningless, because lucid dreaming is still dreaming. I brought it up not because I do not believe that it is indeed dreaming. I do believe it is dreaming. Just instead of your subconscious interpreting the raw randomness of neurons firing, it has the conscious mind to contend with. I was talking about Salvador Dali, who was a real person living in a world where humans are the only species we can have real conversations with about matters like sex, death, and religious faith. Well I once heard of a gorilla that could speak ASL... But I won't bring that up. This debate is complicated enough already. However, beings in the Far Realm, who may not have any sense of self or time, may not. If they were truly intelligent, and were able to see that when someone else dies that they never come back, they would have a concern with death. My point was that Salvador Dali's concerns are very familiar to every human being and not alien at all. If an elf painted the same themes, a human would find much it was able to sympathize with. Why not? If the elf painted a straightforward painting, not a surreal one, the themes would be obvious. Even in a surreal painting, with proper interpretation, the themes would become apparent. This does not mean that there isn't much else about elven psychology that would be very unfamiliar to humans - and, indeed, their experience of sex and dreams and death and even religion is very different from that of humans, very alien what with communion and reverie, their vastly longer lifespan and Sehanine's Calling. But it would be more familiar to humans than that of an illithid. No, it's not. I told you why I thought it was a face - because it has a very clear image of a human eye on it. If it had some nonhuman feature in addition to the eye, I would agree that it was an inhuman face. Like a lack of mouth? If I was playing D&D as a PC, and the DM described a guy with no mouth, my first thought would not be that he was human. But the eye is the only feature of note. You can complain about the length of the eyelashes or pretend it could be a mustache, but the fact of the matter is that in our human world, that's what human eyes look like, and human eyes are the only things that look like that.[quote] A lot of mammals actually have eyes very similar to human eyes. [quote]If "you" aren't having the hallucinations, then you're not the one who's gone mad - the plane itself is. But that's clearly not the case - the plane drives you mad. That's what the maddening trait means. One possible symptom of madness is hallucinations. The far realm, on layers that mock insanity, shows you the hallucinations or delusions. They are as real as anything on the far realm can be. But they drive you mad, and they don't stop when you go home. We talked about this with the layer where everyone was watching you. If any plane is mad, it's Limbo. The Far Realm is not mad - it is perfectly normal according to its own sense of logic. The logic that it functions by works perfectly well for it. The things you see there are either real (in which case they're not hallucinations) or they're delusions conjured up by your own fragmenting brain. Another possibility is that they're delusions conjured up by someone else's fragmenting brain, and some vast entity is digesting that person's thoughts and pooping the remains into your mind. But that doesn't mean you can't also have hallucinations of your own. Limbo isn't mad either. It does whatever the deuce it wants and gets away with it. That is, unless you're one of the people who thinks chaos=insanity. The far realm is not mad, but it sure looks like it to us.
ripvanwormer 02-06-07, 11:42 PM	I don't care what plane he evolved on, Genitals that far outside the body do not happen. In fact, it is theorized that if we stopped evolving later than we did, our genitalia would be inside our body with air intake holes to keep them cool. Your assumption is based on human genital organs, which are boneless and not particularly useful outside of procreation. But a genital organ that's shaped like a hand, with sturdy bone-like substance inside, is no less optimal than a hand would be - humans are proof that organs like that work perfectly well. Perhaps the creature can procreate with every part of its body, or perhaps only the "hands" work that way - perhaps it fertilizes its young by "shaking hands" with others of its kind. An uvuudaum is not a mammal. It might well procreate using spores or viruses that do not need to be kept "cool." And if its entire digestive system is in its arm, why would it develop a torso at all? Maybe the torso is a parasite, and the arm is the creature. Maybe the torso and arm exist in symbiosis. Creativity is a wonderful thing. Why are you trying to apply sci-fi rigor to a plane you interpret as a surreal plane of madness, anyway? That's a blatant contradiction. He's essentially a cross bwetween a scorpion and a human. It doesn't have a head. I'd say this monster is well within the human psyche, and therefore not under your definition of the far realms. No, that's not my definition of the Far Realm. I said the Far Realm was not a reified version of the human psyche, but I didn't say it wasn't something the human mind could conceive of. Obviously, Bruce Cordell is human, and he conceived of it very well. Though as I have pointed out, Read My Glowing Claw Like Finger (as he prefers to be called) does not discern between his far realm and that of Wizards. Why on earth would you possibly think that was a relevant point? If the grey waste is made of depression, what was it like before there was anybody to feel depressed? It may not have existed, then. I'm not, however, saying the Gray Waste is made exclusively out of depression, any more than saying humans are made of carbon means that carbon is the only element in our cells. Hades was always there. This is false - it evolved from the earlier, primal plane of evil. The outer planes are a cool place. That's why people like planescape. The outer planes show us the darkest and lightest corners of our mind made physical. The Far realms shows us what is outside our mind. Stuff that you wouldn't normally conciously think of. I agree with this, but strike the word "consciously" (as the word prefers to be spelled). The far realm does not exist for the sole purpose of driving people crazy. It's just what it does when people go there unprepared. The elemental plane of fire doesn't exist for the sole purpose of burning people to a crisp. It's just what it does when people go there. I agree with this. The far realm isn't the elemental plane of insanity, but it is a place that mocks insanity in certain areas. The Far Realm neither knows nor cares about insanity. Pandemonium drives you mad because the wind won't shut up. No, the wind is only the physical manifestation of the raw madness that makes up the very substance of the plane (again, as carbon makes up the substance of humanity). Though the maddening aspect of the plane takes the form of wind, it is not wind, and if there was no howling wind the plane would still drive you mad. Pandemonium isn't just a place that wears on your psyche, as the Far Realm is - it's madness itself. Abyss. If all the layers exist in the same overlapping space, are filled with alien intelligences beyond good and evil, and you can cross through them at will, the result is something very little like the Abyss. Limbo Please. Shaping the plane with your will is completely different from crossing the layers of a plane with your will. Try harder. Astral. Flowing Time trait versus the Timeless trait. The Astral Plane, with its Timeless trait, exists within history and is bounded by Creation on all sides. It is a temporary refuge from the adverse effects of the winds of Time, but Time's winds continue to blow forward the vessel in which you ride. The Far Realm, with its Flowing Time trait, is removed from Time and History entirely. It is outside the walls of creation. It is not tethered to or related to Time at all. Baator. You think Baator's rulers are "inchoate?" Really? Have you looked up what the word means? Pretty much anywhere in D&D. Sure, but most of them are connected in some way to the Far Realm. Ravenloft. No, Ravenloft is gothic horror, based on the tragic, human flaws of its lords. The Far Realm is a completely different genre. Ravenloft does have one domain, Bluphoril, with mind flayers, but it's an exception and widely disliked by Ravenloft fans (and its dark lord is still human). Mechanus. The modrons are many things, but they're hardly Lovecraftian. Fighting outsiders on the material plane. Nope. That's demonic horror. It has a completely different taste to the discerning palette. Demonic horror hates you and wants to corrupt you. Cosmic horror couldn't care less about, or even notice you. Pretty much anywhere in D&D. Again. This stuff happens every day in D&D. Hyperbole. Would the Negative energy plane be better without the negative-dominant trait, so that people could go there without curling up and dying? Maybe. Why not give it a try? It might be a plane of chill void and strange creatures made of black energy, with necrotic ecosystems forming in the darkness. Could be interesting. But that's a poor analogy, as the Negative Energy Plane has little else to recommend it apart from its association with death, while the Far Realm has so much more than madness. Same goes for the demonweb. Yes, it does. You must like being afraid, for the true meaning of fear lies in (thunder clap) Sigil. Sigil is something you brought up, not me. I'm talking about the Great Wheel. You're aware that they're different? Did you read RMCLFFF's What the deuce? I'm sorry, do you not know of RLMCFCLMF? He is a well-respected poster. He prefers to be called Read My Like-Minded Claw Finger Like My Finger. But much of this stuff is Daliesque You think everything is Daliesque. How is surreal a mirror of the human mind, but the stuff on that thread not? Because they're mirrors of the mind human not? Outsiders are made of chemicals. No, they're made out of spirit. The same stuff as souls. Or, in the case of energons, they're made out of energy. And anything with a hivemind still has a brain. Not if it just has a mind. Otherwise it would be incapable of activating the nerves that control its muscles. Have you ever seen the lists of psionic powers or magical spells D&D has? There are any number of ways to control muscles without nerves. All emotions are caused by chemical imbalances in your brain, too. Not if you're an outsider. As for your main argument, we go back to the pseudonatural who thinks nobody is watching him. This is not identical to his normal enviroment. Right, and it's not like human paranoia, either. We are talking about mental illness, right? Because if so, all symptoms are relevant. If that's the case, you have to use a Far Realm environment which manifests all symptoms as your example. Be fair. Though the idea of a place where nobody can have a good relationship is amusing, it would not last as the population would reach 0 after a single generation. Guh? Do you see what you've done? I'm reduced to incoherent grunting, that's how astonished I am by your lack of imagination! Why would you assume that Far Realm creatures rely on voluntary sexual reproduction? If we found an Uvuudaum carved into a sarcophagus in a pyramid, all the archaeologists would say it was a human with a scorpion tail for a head and spider legs for legs. Heh, yeah. And then when they accidently awaken the uvuudaum's curse, they find out to their terror and disgust how very wrong they were. Typical archaeologists, always assuming the wrong things when it comes to ancient horrors. The skin is for keeping the inside in and the outside out. That most likely doesn't matter to any Far Realm creature. the "tail" is for hitting things with Yup. The hands are for grabbing stuff with. It doesn't have any hand-based attack, so that's not borne out by its statistics. The legs are for walking. Those are its arms, but yes. Then why would they bother putting it on the brain golem? Psionic energy? In my dreams, I often have access to a memories created in the dream, false memories, and even sometimes my real world memory. Me too. That's what memory is. It's all the same, as far as your mind is concerned. In our universe, this is true. However, the D&D cosmology has this little thing called the planes. That isn't relevant, because the Far Realm is after the destruction of all the planes of the Great Wheel. My analogy is therefore exact. Using sub-light speed to escape the death of the multiverse in a multi-plane cosmology is just as silly as using sub-light speed to escape the death of the universe in a single-plane cosmology. I don't have the book. But if this is true, how can you possibly exist there? You, and all things within the Astral Plane, exist as pure mind. You're apparently solid, and you can be killed, but this is just a function of your imagination. But upward movement is required, and it makes no difference what dimension you are travelling in, spatial movement is neccesary to travel in it. There are no instant warps, you have to go at the speed of light or slower. Yes, but your argument relies on this distance being very great. If it's a short distance, there's no reason to assume you're traveling at relativistic speeds. The thing is, Earth is a part of the D&D cosmology. A version of Earth is, yes. Or possibly several versions. Most of them work by d20 Modern rules, though, not by the rules of D&D. Things may, or may not, be different there, depending on how fantastic a version of Earth it is. That's the muscular system. It was your automotive analogy, not mine. Any freeb with a human body and a beating heart is human. Any freeb without the latter was human. Any freeb without the former is a different story. Oh, a freeb. I've got you, now. Carry on. Your computer is not an omozu, though. It works according to entirely different principles, and it cannot truly zort. It wouldn't be human, as human bodies oxidise glucose. I know. That was my point. Which says to me that you are saying feeling and dreaming are enough to classify someone as human. No more than being a freeb is enough to classify someone as human, and we've established that that isn't the case. Let me put this into words you can understand: All humans can zort and flemish. "Zort" means "feeling," and to "flem" is to dream. Lobotomy patients sometimes lose the ability to flemish or zort. This does not mean there aren't other beings who are neither humans nor humans with lobotomies who can also both flemish and zort. Such as the wind. And this does not mean that they have no duality. No, not inherently, but your oil and water analogy is nonsense. I define conscious as several things. I know you do, but it's all dreadfully 19th century Sigmund Freud. A lucid dream has to do only with the latter. Lucid dreams are all about the subconscious, in any sense of the word. To be lucid only means you're conscious of your subconscious mind - but you're still using the exact same parts of the brain you use during nonlucid dreams. Lucid dreams prove your subconscious mind is you in every sense, as human as any other state of awareness. Seems to me that you are confusing subconscious and unconscious on this one. We don't say: Hey, where's Bill? Oh, he was up late last night so now he's subconscious. That's true, but the word "unconscious" can be used in every situation you use the word "subconscious." My argument is that lucid dreamers are applying their conscious to their subconscious. The subconscious is the dominant one here. Didn't you just claim that lucid dreams were only about the conscious mind? Which is it? What I meant was they are dreaming with their concious mind in effect. Not dreaming with only their conscious mind. Really? That's what you meant? Then how was it supposed to prove that someone could still be human without a subconscious, or human without dreaming, or whatever it was you were trying to show? What was the point of this? The subconcious is what links the images together. Dreams are random neurons firing. That's the "subconscious mind" if anything is. They're connected by the mind, which may be either lucid or not lucid. It is not a different mind, or another self. It is simply the mind, which can also be not lucid when you're awake (for example, if you're severely intoxicated). You don't become another person or inhuman when you're severely intoxicated; you're just impaired. So it is with dreams. If they were truly intelligent, and were able to see that when someone else dies that they never come back, they would have a concern with death. Who says they never come back? If they're outsiders, they may respawn. Or perhaps they're all clones of one another. Or perhaps they simply have no sense of ego, just egoless intellect and a drive for self preservation. Why not? If the elf painted a straightforward painting, not a surreal one, the themes would be obvious. Even in a surreal painting, with proper interpretation, the themes would become apparent. If an elf painted a picture of a dead elf, the themes would be very obvious. If it tried to paint the sensation of being Called by Sehanine Moonbow, it may be very difficult for a non-elf to interpret on its own. The same is true with reverie But it would be more familiar to humans than that of an illithid. Yes. Probably more familiar than a sea anemone or a shoebox, too. Doesn't matter. Like a lack of mouth? If I was playing D&D as a PC, and the DM described a guy with no mouth, my first thought would not be that he was human. Depends on the context. If the DM said "You see a scrap of skin attached to a closed, long-lashed eye," or simply draws what Salvador drew, I'd certainly think of humans first. If you say "You see a manlike figure with no mouth," that's another matter, and has nothing to do with the painting we're talking about. A lot of mammals actually have eyes very similar to human eyes. They don't look like that. The far realm, on layers that mock insanity, shows you the hallucinations or delusions. They are as real as anything on the far realm can be. Then they're neither hallucinations nor delusions, or everything on the Far Realm is a hallucination or a delusion. Which do you mean? Limbo isn't mad either. Yes, it is. The chemicals in its brain are unbalanced.;)
DeeL 02-07-07, 07:08 PM	Ripvanwormer... Supernerd222... YOUR DEBATE IS EATING MY EYES!!!!!!! Jolly good show! Keep it up!
supernerd222 02-12-07, 09:08 PM	ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED? (throws sword at DeeL) Your assumption is based on human genital organs, which are boneless and not particularly useful outside of procreation. (insert immature self-service joke here) But a genital organ that's shaped like a hand, with sturdy bone-like substance inside, is no less optimal than a hand would be - humans are proof that organs like that work perfectly well. Perhaps the creature can procreate with every part of its body, or perhaps only the "hands" work that way - perhaps it fertilizes its young by "shaking hands" with others of its kind. If it shakes hands with others of its kind, then it's able to use the organ as a hand. And it would. An organ of that shape would not evolve without the express purpose of grabbing stuff. The only reason that human gonads are external is that the sperm has to stay within its temperature range. Because without these organs being functional reproduction is out of the question, they are kept quite close to the body, are made very very sensitive, and are located in the relatively protected area twixt the legs. Contrast that with the so called genetalia of this Uvuudaum. If anything hit it from the side, it would be in pain, with the possiblity of having damaged sexual organs. If the organs were not as sensitive as human sexual organs are, not only would it have little incentive to protect them from harm, but it would not get pleasure during procreation. The good feeling we get from sex is the only reason we have it. You can find this pleasure in anything from dogs to ants. An uvuudaum is not a mammal. It might well procreate using spores or viruses that do not need to be kept "cool." An uvuudaum can be assumed to be a mammal, as they have a shape of body that would support mammaries, or vestigal ones thereof for males. Maybe the torso is a parasite, and the arm is the creature. Maybe the torso and arm exist in symbiosis. Creativity is a wonderful thing. Now that we're into the lands of wild speculation for the sole purpose of contradicting or disagreeing with the guy you're arguing with (I say this because both the practical implications of what you have suggested, and the way you suggested it suggest that you do not actually believe this to be the case or make use of it in your game.) let me say this: If this was indeed the case, Wizards would not publish this being as one creature. They would stat out the arm, then stat out the body with the symbiont subtype, as they have done with every other parasite-host team. Why are you trying to apply sci-fi rigor to a plane you interpret as a surreal plane of madness, anyway? That's a blatant contradiction. No it isn't. No matter where you go, no matter ho mad things have gone, creatures have still evolved from a common ancestor. It doesn't have a head. Neither does the headless horseman, but he even has "man" in his name. Everything on it is either taken from a human body or taken from a scorpion body. No, that's not my definition of the Far Realm. I said the Far Realm was not a reified version of the human psyche, but I didn't say it wasn't something the human mind could conceive of. Obviously, Bruce Cordell is human, and he conceived of it very well. The Far Realm, by contrast, is a n+1-dimensional matrix of incomprehensibility It's a place so far removed from mortal comprehension that it destroys the mental health of those exposed to it. The Far Realm is alien, beyond human experience and comprehension. Meanwhile, none of those artists' works could appear on the Far Realm under any circumstances. Those artists are humans, and the minds of the Far Realm are utterly alien to human thought. Why on earth would you possibly think that was a relevant point? This bit of our little debate is going around in circles. I posted that because he believes that a reasonable extension of what little we have on the Far Realms was the material he posted. It may not have existed, then. I'm not, however, saying the Gray Waste is made exclusively out of depression, any more than saying humans are made of carbon means that carbon is the only element in our cells. Then it has no monopoly on depression, and the Far Realms can have depression there, too. There’s more to Hades than depression, just as there’s more to humans than carbon. This is false - it evolved from the earlier, primal plane of evil. As Hades is the most evil plane in the multiverse, we can assume that it is the present manifestation of the common ancestor. I agree with this, but strike the word "consciously" (as the word prefers to be spelled). The word Consciously has no preference. It’s a word. You say that the Far Realm is made up of stuff we would not normally think of at all. Someone had to think of it. No machine made the Uvuudaum. No ink blot composed the Kaorti. And no matter what the Far Realm looks like, we can still subconsciously think of it. Our subconscious can think of anything. I agree with this. Me too. The Far Realm neither knows nor cares about insanity. Indeed. But it still does mock insanity. It is imperfect. For example, there’s a lot more delusions that can result from paranoia other than “they’re watching me.” The far realm generates, and who knows if it is on behalf of some higher intelligence, or randomly. Whatever the case is, these layers are always one of two things: Deeply disturbing, or incomprehensible. The deeply disturbing ones sometimes, but not always manifest themselves in a fashion that is very similar to the delusions, hallucinations, or altered mindsets that occur from madness. No, the wind is only the physical manifestation of the raw madness that makes up the very substance of the plane (again, as carbon makes up the substance of humanity). Though the maddening aspect of the plane takes the form of wind, it is not wind, and if there was no howling wind the plane would still drive you mad. Pandemonium isn't just a place that wears on your psyche, as the Far Realm is - it's madness itself. Neither plane is madness itself. Pandemonium is composed in such a way that it makes your mind deteriorate. Pandemonium drives you crazy for very physical reasons that eventually cause a breakdown. Nor is it the plane with the closest link to madness. You yourself have as good as stated that all of the lower planes are partially composed of madness or mental disease of some description. If all the layers exist in the same overlapping space, are filled with alien intelligences beyond good and evil, and you can cross through them at will, the result is something very little like the Abyss. But all the layers existing in the same over blah blah blah would bring back the maddening trait. Please. Shaping the plane with your will is completely different from crossing the layers of a plane with your will. Try harder. If you have control of your body you can move between layers of some of the outer planes with your will. Gehenna comes to mind. Flowing Time trait versus the Timeless trait. The Astral Plane, with its Timeless trait, exists within history and is bounded by Creation on all sides. It is a temporary refuge from the adverse effects of the winds of Time, but Time's winds continue to blow forward the vessel in which you ride. How poetic. Too bad no player will ever know the difference. They’re the ones who really count, after all. The Far Realm, with its Flowing Time trait, is removed from Time and History entirely. It is outside the walls of creation. It is not tethered to or related to Time at all. Then how do you get there? If it is impossible to get to it through the temporal (as I assumed you had it), how does it even exist? You think Baator's rulers are "inchoate?" Really? Have you looked up what the word means? No, no I have not. I like how you just assume how someone who calls himself “supernerd222” has no clue what inchoate means. Baator’s rulers are inchoate because they are in a Blood War. They are hugely powerful, but they are petty and young compared to many of the other forces in the multiverse. They can’t beat the demons, and they don’t even realize that they may well be being manipulated by the Yugoloths. They are naive and greedy. They have a long way to go before they fully realize their potential. They are inochate. Sure, but most of them are connected in some way to the Far Realm. Aboleth. Generally accepted as being from the Far realm. Ankheg. No. Assassain Vine. No. Beholder. Apparently not. Carrion crawler. Doubt it. Chaos beast. No. Limbo. Chuul. Doubt it. Darkmantle. No chance. Digester. No. Gold Dragon. You must be joking with me. Dwarf. Just kidding. Ethereal Filcher. Doubt it. Formians. No chance. Violet Fungus. No. Grick. Don’t think so. Kraken. No way. Medusa. No. Mindflayer. Generally accepted as yes. Mohrg. No. Otyguth. Doubt it. Phantom Fungus. Doubt it. Remorhaz. No. Roper. No. Shambling mound (arguable if its tentacles are on its head.). No. Spider eater. No. Tendriculos. No. Umber hulk. I should hope not. Vargouille. No way. Octopus. I laugh at the thought. Squid. See above. Giant ant, bee, bombardier beetle, fire beetle, stag beetle, praying mantis, wasp. No Monstorous centipede. No. Note that I don’t have LoM, and therefore may not know about some references to some of the aberrations coming from the Far Realm. No, Ravenloft is gothic horror, based on the tragic, human flaws of its lords. The Far Realm is a completely different genre. Ravenloft does have one domain, Bluphoril, with mind flayers, but it's an exception and widely disliked by Ravenloft fans (and its dark lord is still human). If you cannot incorporate Lovecraftian horror into a Ravenloft campaign, you have the imagination of a Keeper. Lovecraftian horror compliments Ravenloft like barbecue sauce compliments barbecued food. In fact, without Lovecraftian horror, Ravenloft is quite bland. Lovecraftian horror has been incorporated into all the Ravenloft books I have read. The modrons are many things, but they're hardly Lovecraftian. But they are cold and impersonal. Nope. That's demonic horror. It has a completely different taste to the discerning palette. Demonic horror hates you and wants to corrupt you. Cosmic horror couldn't care less about, or even notice you. I doubt very much that William Johnson, a perfectly normal balor, woke up one morning, shaved, prepared himself some poached eggs with hollandaise sauce and an English muffin, looked in the mirror, and said “Today, I’m going to go to the material plane and kill Mialee, Lidda, Jozan, and Tordek.” People fight demons on the material plane for two reasons: 1) The demon was summoned by an evil guy. In this case the demon could care less who these people are, it just wants to go home. Or 2) The demons are staging some kind of assault on the material plane. In this case, the demons have no interest who these people are, they just want the land or the resources or the magic item or something. I base a lot of my behavior for demons on the material plane off of The Bartemius Trilogy. Even though the demons in these books need serious evilifying , they show the uncaring “let’s get this over with” attitude that demons on the material plane should show. Hyperbole. Irrelevant. It doesn’t matter how often you find it in the normal D&D world. If you can still find it, my point still stands. Come to think of it, I don’t think there are many eldritch pipers in the Far realms either. Sigil is something you brought up, not me. I'm talking about the Great Wheel. You're aware that they're different? Sigil is one of the, if not the most prominent places in Planescape. I'm sorry, do you not know of RLMCFCLMF? He is a well-respected poster. He prefers to be called Read My Like-Minded Claw Finger Like My Finger. I have a well respected poster. It has a picture of a cat holding onto a clothesline. The caption says “Hang in there!” Great stuff. You think everything is Daliesque. Only stuff that is actually Daliesque. Anyway, let me prove it. I’m going to pick a completely random layer on that thread and find something from Dali that it is like. I can’t prove that I actually generated random numbers for this, so you’ll have to take my word for it. (Rolls D8) It’s going to be on page 6. There’s 3 layers on page 6. (Generates random number on TI-83+) Its going to be layer #3. That‘s The Idar Flamme. For convenience, it is in this sblock. The Idar Flamme Mild Far Realms, Entrapping (as Gray Wastes of Hades) Normal Gravity, Slowed time (forget the term; time proceeds at 1/3 normal rate), All Magic is Impeded The Idar Flamme is not so much a "layer" of the Far Realms as a construct within it. It is build of quasi-living metal suffused with the energies of the Far Realms, and inhabitted by strange beasts. It is thought by some that the Idar Flamme was once a Modron probe into the Far Realms, others thought that it was an Abyssal machine, powered by the souls of the damned. The truth is simple, however--the Idar Flamme has existed forever, and it prowls the liquidly flowing Far Realms like a shark. It devours whatever resources it contacts, and changes all things within it into its "children". The Idar Flamme is almost infinite in size, and its architecture is something like a gothic cathedral with a definite "trilobite" or "centipede" motif. It appears to be composed almost completely of a sort of black metal that moves like muscle. The structure seems to breathe in the toxins that its "children" produce, exhaling a breathable, if uncomfortable, atmosphere. The Children of the Idar Flamme are the Far Realms creatures that are caught within it and altered by it into machine-like pseudo-creatures. The creatures appear to feed off of electricity (contained in blue orbs set throughout the Idar Flamme) and petroleums of all types (oils, coal, etc.) Encounters: Pseudonatural golems (all types) Pseudonatural Warforged Pseudonatural Shield Guardians Pseudonatural Homunculi (all types) Pseudonatural Nimblewrights Pseudonatural Runic Guardians Half-Iron Golem Illithids Half-Iron Golem Kaorti Half-Iron Golem Daelkyr Half-Iron Golem Tsochar Half-Iron Golem Amphibious Aboleths The Idar Flamme does have a nucleus, resembling a sort of throne room. The "Captain" of the Idar Flamme normally appears to be a simple human spellcaster (and indeed, occasionally poses as a low-level sorceror that was sucked into the Idar Flamme through some strange means.) The Captain, in his true form is a unique creature (stat out as a Axiomatic Half-Iron Golem Pseudonatural Balor, to simulate the effects). “The Fountain” (http://dali.uffs.net/galerie/pictures/1930_the_fountain_01.jpg) is pretty close to the description of the layer itself. There’s no robots, but there are machines. Because they're mirrors of the mind human not? What? No, they're made out of spirit. The same stuff as souls. Or, in the case of energons, they're made out of energy. Sadly, in order to be physical (as outsiders are, seeing as they can be hurt) one must be made of the elements. I agree that they have a lot of spirit in them, more than any human. The thing is, spirit is intangible, invisible, odourless, tasteless, and otherwise completely non-physical. Not if it just has a mind. In order for it to have a mind, any sort of mind, hive or otherwise, it must have a brain for it to be housed in. In order to move its body, it must have a brain to send signals through nerves. Have you ever seen the lists of psionic powers or magical spells D&D has? There are any number of ways to control muscles without nerves. It requires a brain to master any of these powers or spells. Not if you're an outsider. Since they do have brains, it’s safe to say that this is how their emotions happen. How do we know they have brains? 1) Cephalisation 2) The assumption that there is no “Big Brother” who controls every single outsider with picnics or spells. 3) This tasty morsel directly from pg. 187 of the MM3.5: Extract (Ex): A mind flayer that begins its turn with all four tentacles attached and that makes a successful grapple check automatically extracts that opponent’s brain, instantly killing that creature. This ability is useless against constructs, elementals, oozes, plants and undead. Oddly enough, outsiders are not on that list. Right, and it's not like human paranoia, either. Unless you could understand the language he was talking, and thus could understand that his state of mental disarray was caused by the idea that nobody was watching him, you would think him paranoid. If that's the case, you have to use a Far Realm environment which manifests all symptoms as your example. Be fair. I think your logic just made children in Australia cry. When you’re diagnosing the mental disease, in other words: figuring out if it is human paranoia, all symptoms are relevant. When you’re talking about the far realm, only one symptom is relevant, as only one is present: the delusion or hallucination. In our case, however, the subject goes back to his place of origin totally insane. They have (as I have said before) Different delusions leading to the same symptoms. It may surprise you to know that not all paranoid people believe that they are being watched. Some believe that they are the reincarnation of Jesus or some similar individual. Some believe that they have a parasite or robot or the like passing through their body. Some believe that they have some physical disease that is not diagnosable because they are the first person to have it. These people suffer the same symptoms as the people who think that they are being watched. They still have paranoid schizophrenia. The only difference is the very cosmetic symptom of the delusion or hallucination. Guh? Do you see what you've done? I'm reduced to incoherent grunting, that's how astonished I am by your lack of imagination! Why would you assume that Far Realm creatures rely on voluntary sexual reproduction? They are vertebrates, at least the ones I‘m talking about are. Uvuudaums are clearly vertebrates, therefore there must be more vertebrates in the Far Realms. Vetebrates generally don’t do well with asexual reproduction. Heh, yeah. And then when they accidently awaken the uvuudaum's curse, they find out to their terror and disgust how very wrong they were. Typical archaeologists, always assuming the wrong things when it comes to ancient horrors. Yep. But from a purely empirical, unbiased standpoint, the Uvuudaum is just a mishmash of parts from a human and a scorpion. That most likely doesn't matter to any Far Realm creature. Doesn’t matter if you have huge gravity or no gravity. If you have nothing holding you together, every muscle in your body would quickly dislocate, as would joints. Then you’d be unable to move. Your bodily fluids would escape reasonably quickly. Not to mention what would happen in a place with dirt or dust. It doesn't have any hand-based attack, so that's not borne out by its statistics. Neither do dwarves. Or halflings, orcs, elves, gnomes, angels, archons, athaches, azers, bugbears, centaurs, balors, and so on and so forth. Psionic energy? Then why didn’t they just leave the bud somewhere else to control the golem from afar? Why risk a precious bit of the elder brain? That isn't relevant, because the Far Realm is after the destruction of all the planes of the Great Wheel. My analogy is therefore exact. Using sub-light speed to escape the death of the multiverse in a multi-plane cosmology is just as silly as using sub-light speed to escape the death of the universe in a single-plane cosmology. However, the destruction of the planes would all occur at different times. It would admittedly be difficult but it would go thusly: You’d do space travel (and therefore time travel) until a point in time reasonably close to the destruction of the material plane. Anywhere from one year to five minutes. You’d wait until the material plane was destroyed, which would be apparent because the plane you were on at the time would begin fading. Running on fumes. Existing on it’s own momentum for the last few minutes ever. At the last moment, you’d plane shift to the material plane, which would now be absolutely nothing. You’d wait about thirty seconds for the outer planes to finally stop existing, and then, provided the sages all those billions of years of absolute time ago were right, the far realm would just pop out of nowhere. Getting back would be a different story, however. You, and all things within the Astral Plane, exist as pure mind. You're apparently solid, and you can be killed, but this is just a function of your imagination. Then if a githyanki born on the astral came to the material, would he just vanish because he was only a figment of his parents’ imagination? Yes, but your argument relies on this distance being very great. If it's a short distance, there's no reason to assume you're traveling at relativistic speeds. The spire is infinitely tall. So if a door from anywhere in the outer planes to Sigil could be found, we’d be set. A version of Earth is, yes. Or possibly several versions. Most of them work by d20 Modern rules, though, not by the rules of D&D. Things may, or may not, be different there, depending on how fantastic a version of Earth it is. So therefore at least within some crystal spheres, science lives. This is not a contradiction in itself, so why is it when you’re wondering if science exists in the Forgotten Realms? And if science does not exist in the D&D worlds, why do they have scientific concepts like the wheel? Oh, a freeb. I've got you, now. Carry on. Excellent. Your computer is not an omozu, though. It works according to entirely different principles, and it cannot truly zort. It is capable of solving a problem or interacting with someone with either no assistance or only triggers. That is the definition of omozu. It is not human, because it has no human body. No more than being a freeb is enough to classify someone as human, and we've established that that isn't the case. Nope. If you’re a freeb, you still need a human body and a beating heart. Let me put this into words you can understand: All humans can zort and flemish. "Zort" means "feeling," and to "flem" is to dream. Lobotomy patients sometimes lose the ability to flemish or zort. This does not mean there aren't other beings who are neither humans nor humans with lobotomies who can also both flemish and zort. Such as the wind. Soooo…. All humans can feeling and dreamish. Some errors with the tense, but understandable. Lobotomy patients sometimes lose the ability to dreamish or feeling. This would mean that lobotomy patients are not human, because they can’t feel or dream and your last sentence said that all humans can do that. This does not mean there aren't other beings who are neither humans nor humans with lobotomies who can also both dreamish and feeling. Such as the wind. The wind can’t feel or dream, and you’ve contradicted yourself in calling lobotomy patients (who you just established as nonhuman) “humans with lobotomies.” So, in conclusion, that paragraph you wrote impresses the gods with its lack of sense. I know you do, but it's all dreadfully 19th century Sigmund Freud. While we’re bashing the founding fathers of various branches of human knowledge, let me just say that your concept of gravity is very 17th century Issac Newton, your concept of the elements is very 19th century Dmitri Mendeleev, and your concept of planetary motion is very 17th century Johannes Kepler. Lucid dreams are all about the subconscious, in any sense of the word. To be lucid only means you're conscious of your subconscious mind - but you're still using the exact same parts of the brain you use during nonlucid dreams. Lucid dreams prove your subconscious mind is you in every sense, as human as any other state of awareness. They prove the opposite, as we need to train ourselves to be in control of our dreams. That's true, but the word "unconscious" can be used in every situation you use the word "subconscious." Our unconscious mind? Sounds strange to me, but whatever floats your boat. Didn't you just claim that lucid dreams were only about the conscious mind? Which is it? It’s neither. The subconscious is putting the images together, while the conscious makes an attempt to activate neurons that will make the images that the subconscious receives, and therefore the dream as a whole, better. Really? That's what you meant? Yes. Then how was it supposed to prove that someone could still be human without a subconscious, or human without dreaming, or whatever it was you were trying to show? They dream without the raw randomness formed into really strange semi coherent chains of events that you somehow think make us human. Dreams are random neurons firing. That's the "subconscious mind" if anything is. They're connected by the mind, which may be either lucid or not lucid. So you say that there’s some sort of light switch in your head with a lucid setting and a non-lucid setting. I say that there’s a conscious and a subconscious. We both agree that there’s some sort of duality. It is not a different mind, or another self. It is simply the mind, which can also be not lucid when you're awake (for example, if you're severely intoxicated). You don't become another person or inhuman when you're severely intoxicated; you're just impaired. So it is with dreams. Well, if we’re going to go down this road, I should point out that you actually are using a different mind when you are intoxicated to the point where you are no longer lucid. This is the inner parts of your brain: the cerebellum, the medulla oblongata and the brain stem. When you are intoxicated to this degree, you are essentially an animal in terms of your brain function. Without the cerebrum’s higher-order functions, you act on instinct alone. Who says they never come back? If they're outsiders, they may respawn. Or perhaps they're all clones of one another. Or perhaps they simply have no sense of ego, just egoless intellect and a drive for self preservation. Even if they are clones or respawn, each would develop a unique personality, just like identical twins. And if they have no ego, they are unintelligent to the extreme and can be given a break. We know that there are intelligent beings in the far realm, though. If an elf painted a picture of a dead elf, the themes would be very obvious. If it tried to paint the sensation of being Called by Sehanine Moonbow, it may be very difficult for a non-elf to interpret on its own. The same is true with reverie Perhaps the painting would show, from the point of view of a third party, the elf being called kneeling on the ground, old and weak, and the deity beckoning from a ghostly glimpse into arborea floating in front of the elf. I could interpret this easily enough. Yes. Probably more familiar than a sea anemone or a shoebox, too. Doesn't matter. Yes it does matter. The British do some things different than us. They eat different stuff and speak differently. They’re more familiar to us than, say, the ancient Egyptians, or the bushmen of Africa. Depends on the context. If the DM said "You see a scrap of skin attached to a closed, long-lashed eye," or simply draws what Salvador drew, I'd certainly think of humans first. I’d think of a Bodak’s eye, from Libris Mortis. I’m not sure how you can justify thinking a scrap of skin with an eye is a human. If you say "You see a manlike figure with no mouth," that's another matter, and has nothing to do with the painting we're talking about. The thing in the painting has no mouth, yet it is a human face to you. If you add on a body, suddenly it is inhuman. I have trouble seeing things from your perspective here. They don't look like that. Take off the hair and there’s no real difference. Then they're neither hallucinations nor delusions, or everything on the Far Realm is a hallucination or a delusion. Which do you mean? I heard of this new invention called the “Colour TV” It lets you see things in a way other than in black and white. They are real. They are physical. They look like hallucinations and delusions. Not everything on the far realm looks like this. Yes, it is. The chemicals in its brain are unbalanced.;) What are you doing playing D&D? You should be a stand-up comedian.
Raymond_Luxury_Yacht 02-12-07, 10:36 PM	An uvuudaum can be assumed to be a mammal, as they have a shape of body that would support mammaries, or vestigal ones thereof for males. You know, despite them obviously not having mammaries. Or any other traits associated with mammals. Or tetrapods, for that matter. http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/2889/uvuudaumve2.jpg Screw tetrapods. That thing isn't even a freaking vertebrate.
ripvanwormer 02-13-07, 07:10 AM	If it shakes hands with others of its kind, then it's able to use the organ as a hand. And it would. Not if it didn't have anything to manipulate or grab, because it has spent all of its existence in a formless void. An organ of that shape would not evolve without the express purpose of grabbing stuff. Who says they evolved? Perhaps they simply always existed (plane outside of time, remember), or perhaps they were engineered (for example, by the daelkyr). Evolutionary pressures may be irrelevant. If the organs were not as sensitive as human sexual organs are, not only would it have little incentive to protect them from harm, but it would not get pleasure during procreation. Again, you're making unwarranted assumptions based on false analogies with mammals. If they reproduce via viruses communicable through casual hand-grasping, they don't require pleasure as an incentive. Or maybe they use their hands to implant young in their fellows via painful surgical procedures, and that's the only way they can reproduce. The idea is perfectly reasonable in the Far Realm. The good feeling we get from sex is the only reason we have it. With intelligent beings, that's not true. Perhaps you don't know anyone who has chosen to procreate for reasons other than ephemeral pleasure, or who has even procreated in a fashion that involves no pleasure at all (for example, in vitro fertilization), but I assure you that they exist. There are many reasons that intelligent beings may decide to produce offspring, and "sex feels good" is not the most compelling. Uvuudaums are intelligent, and their ancestors may have been intelligent for all eternity (assuming a steady-state universe, which seems the only appropriate model for the Far Realm). An uvuudaum can be assumed to be a mammal No, it can't. Raymond Luxury explained why, graphically, but as a general rule, nothing from the Far Realm has any parallel in Linnaean taxonomy. Now that we're into the lands of wild speculation for the sole purpose of contradicting or disagreeing with the guy you're arguing with No, I'm using my imagination for the pleasure of it. I'm also making a larger point about how I view the Far Realm - how truly alien it really is, and how this doesn't mean it's simply garbled nonsense, random ASCII characters and ink blots. It's a usable place, but it's not a universe of mammals or chordates. To do it right, you need to let your imagination go wild in this way. Yes, the process of responding to your arguments is helping me generate interesting ideas, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't use them by any means. If this was indeed the case, Wizards would not publish this being as one creature. They would stat out the arm, then stat out the body with the symbiont subtype, as they have done with every other parasite-host team. That implies the arm is detachable, that it's possible to interact with it as a separate being. If that isn't the case - and I never meant to imply it wasn't - then statting it as separate creature would be useless. The arm wouldn't need its own stats any more than the tapeworms in a orc's gut need their own stats. While biologically it's a separate being, it fights as if it's the same creature. A really good official example is the swarm subtype, where many creatures are statted as if they were one creature. That's not to say that an uvuudaum is really a swarm, or that it has that subtype; I'm merely pointing out an example of more than one entity getting a single set of stats. No it isn't. No matter where you go, no matter ho mad things have gone, creatures have still evolved from a common ancestor. That's not even necessarily true on our world, let alone in an infinite universe that operates on unknown principles. Yes, I hasten to add, it's true that as far as we know, all life on Earth has a common origin, but if primitive amino acids can evolve into self-replicating life once, they can do it twice, and scientists have speculated we might eventually find examples of that on our own planet, perhaps deep underground, in the Arctic ice, or in other exotic locales. It doesn't have a head!Neither did the headless horseman It did once. The uvuudaum never did. It's a crazy-looking worm with hand-like structures sticking out of it. Saying that's "very human" is... unconvincing. No, that's not my definition of the Far Realm. I said the Far Realm was not a reified version of the human psyche, but I didn't say it wasn't something the human mind could conceive of. Obviously, Bruce Cordell is human, and he conceived of it very well. Okay, I did say it was "beyond human comprehension." And yet, it clearly isn't, since, as I said, Bruce Cordell and I comprehend it perfectly (as much as we need to). I resolved this seeming paradox already in an earlier post, where I clarified that I meant it was beyond the ability of characters in the game to comprehend without their minds breaking, not beyond the ability of omniscient narrators (that is, DMs) to effectively use. In this vein, an uvuudaum is not just a big worm with hand-like bits. The illustration we see is just a simplification of a far more complex, polydimensional entity that really would shatter the mind of anyone who attempted to make its many parts intellectually cohere. That is, it's maddening for a reason. The hard-sf creature you're trying to make of it, with an evolutionary lineage and rational parts, is antithetical to that and the idea of a maddening plane. Then it has no monopoly on depression, There’s more to Hades than depression True enough. and the Far Realms can have depression there, too. I suppose it could, but I would be careful about assuming such things. Depression is, of course, a human emotion, or at least a mammalian one. Your "pseudonaturals are just like us, they're prey to the exact same mental conditions that we are" idea is... contrary to the themes of the plane. The idea of a sad, mopey, Emo uvuudaum is a bit too cute. As Hades is the most evil plane in the multiverse, we can assume that it is the present manifestation of the common ancestor. That's the general assumption, yes. The word Consciously has no preference. It’s a word. Have you asked it what its feelings are on the matter? You must make friends with your vocabulary. And no matter what the Far Realm looks like, we can still subconsciously think of it. Our subconscious can think of anything. Not without breaking, is the whole point of the plane. Thus the maddening trait. But it still does mock insanity. No, it doesn't. That would be contrary to the Lovecraftian themes that Cordell was trying to emulate when he created the plane, and contrary to what I think makes the plane interesting. Neither plane is madness itself. Pandemonium is composed in such a way that it makes your mind deteriorate. Pandemonium drives you crazy for very physical reasons that eventually cause a breakdown. No, there is nothing truly physical on Pandemonium, or any other outer plane. They're ideas made solid, but it is the ideas that get you, not the solidity. Your interpretation puts the cart before the horse. Pandemonium has certain physical conditions because it is maddening; it is not maddening because of these conditions. But all the layers existing in the same over blah blah blah would bring back the maddening trait. But the Abyss isn't constructed that way, so your point is moot. If you have control of your body you can move between layers of some of the outer planes with your will. Gehenna comes to mind. (Wrinkles forehead) What? No, you can't do that in Gehenna. Travel between layers is accomplished only through portals. How poetic. Too bad no player will ever know the difference. Wouldn't notice the difference between a timeless plane and a flowing time plane? But they're completely different. On the former, you spend six months on another plane and return six months later, suddenly aging six months all at once. On the latter, you spend six months on another plane and return three billion years later, not aging at all. How disengaged would a player have to be not to notice the difference between those two things? Then how do you get there? If it is impossible to get to it through the temporal (as I assumed you had it), how does it even exist? There are many paths to the Far Realm - cysts, rifts, ether gaps, portals that only open via certain conjunctions of the stars. There's supposed to be a gate in the Region of Dreams. The Temporal Energy Plane doesn't usually work because it's impossible to control where you end up without rare magic, but it's theoretically possible to get there that way as well. Or something like the Device of Time Journeying from the Dragonlance campaign, or the temporal portals of the Forgotten Realms, might also work. Traveling at sub-light speed and relying on relativistic time dilation wouldn't work for reasons that should have been obvious to you. But the Far Realm isn't necessarily inaccessible from the Great Wheel. No, no I have not. I like how you just assume how someone who calls himself “supernerd222” has no clue what inchoate means. I assumed that you did know, until it became it became clear that you didn't. They have a long way to go before they fully realize their potential. They are inochate. Brownie points for trying, but that's not what the word means. "Having a long way to go to fully realize their potential" is not "inchoate." The Lords of the Nine are in fact the apotheosis of baatezu potential, the high point in their evolution. Lemures are inchoate. If they were vague beings of mist and possibility, they would be inchoate. If they had indistinct personalities (compared to humans) they would have inchoate personalities. In fact, they're solid creatures with very well-defined personalities and goals. Merely having room to improve does not fit the definition of "inchoate." Everything has room to improve. monsters from MM3.5 that have tentacles for heads or as a major part of their heads You've identified antennae, the tendrils of plants, and a number of other things that aren't tentacles as tentacles. For a dude who calls himself "supernerd," you've got some serious nerding up to do to make par. Yeah, there are tentacles, too, but I'm surprised you've left yourself open like that. If you cannot incorporate Lovecraftian horror into a Ravenloft campaign, you have the imagination of a Keeper. You certainly can, but the official products do not do so. I doubt very much that William Johnson, a perfectly normal balor, woke up one morning, shaved, prepared himself some poached eggs with hollandaise sauce and an English muffin, looked in the mirror, and said “Today, I’m going to go to the material plane and kill Mialee, Lidda, Jozan, and Tordek.” That doesn't stop him from hating them in a very personal way, once our friend William has met them. That's what it means to be a fiend. I haven't read the Bartimaeus Trilogy (though I found a description of it on Wikipedia today by sheer coincidence, while I was reading about genies). It doesn't seem to be a very good example of demonic horror, but I'll withhold judgment until I've seen the books. Irrelevant. It doesn’t matter how often you find it in the normal D&D world. If you can still find it, my point still stands. No, it really doesn't. My description of what I like about the Far Realm doesn't mean that none of those things can't possibly appear individually in other settings. It just means that, taken together, they form a distinctive flavor that isn't replicated in other situations. Sigil is one of the, if not the most prominent places in Planescape. That's nice, but I wasn't talking about Sigil. Or Planescape, for that matter. I was talking about the Outer Planes. Certainly, Sigil thought to exist on the Outer Planes, and Planescape informs my conception of the Outer Planes, but it's still incorrect to think I was talking about Sigil. Just because you can link one thing to another via a tenuous train of free association doesn't make it meaningful to bring it up. “The Fountain” (http://dali.uffs.net/galerie/pictures/1930_the_fountain_01.jpg) is pretty close to the description of the layer itself. There’s no robots, but there are machines. Well, there's a blue orb. That's really the only point in common. I don't see any machines. I see a box, a cabinet, and a vessel of some sort filled with water. The painting doesn't look anything like the picture the article put in my head. I believe the problem is one of selective perception. Possibly on both our sides, but I'm trying to look at the painting objectively and see a correlation, and I just don't. What? Really long arguments like this can get boring, don't you agree? Sometimes it helps to mix up the syntax a little. Sadly, in order to be physical (as outsiders are, seeing as they can be hurt) one must be made of the elements. No, that's not the case. Outsiders are not made of elements. They're made of spirit. Yes, they're solid. Yes, they can get hurt. But they're not made of elements. They're made of the same stuff as souls, which is why raise dead doesn't work on them - because they are souls, and destroying their substance destroys their spirit. The idea that angels and demons are made of mere clay (using the word in the mythic sense) is grotesque. It's contrary to every myth. According to the Koran, humans are made of clay, genies are made of smokeless flame, and angels are made of light. This doesn't mean they can't hurt you, and it doesn't even mean that you can't hurt them. The thing is, spirit is intangible, invisible, odourless, tasteless, and otherwise completely non-physical. No, spirit can be touched, it can be seen, it can be smelled, and it can even be eaten. The Outer Planes are made entirely of spirit, not the gross substance of the Inner Planes. In order for it to have a mind, any sort of mind, hive or otherwise, it must have a brain for it to be housed in. Explain ghosts, then. Or living spells, or Awakened or intelligent oozes, or treants, or any sort of incorporeal or bodiless creature. I honestly don't understand your determination to try and reduce fantasy concepts to real-world physics. You seem not to understand the point of fantasy at all. Since they do have brains, it’s safe to say that this is how their emotions happen. No, that's not a safe assumption. They're creatures of spirit. It's not even safe to say that's where human emotions come from in a fantasy world. Yes, many outsiders have internal organs. They have hearts and brains and lungs and bones. These organs are metaphors, which they have for symbolic reasons. That doesn't mean they don't die when they're removed - they do - but neither does it mean that their brains work in the same way that ours do. Unless you could understand the language he was talking, and thus could understand that his state of mental disarray was caused by the idea that nobody was watching him, you would think him paranoid. And I would also see how different that was from human paranoia. Yes, symptoms matter. Symptoms are what I was talking about. You claimed that madness resulted in the same symptoms regardless of species and universe of origin. This has been amply disproven. I think your logic just made children in Australia cry. My argument is that a being who originated in a universe where everyone manifests a certain symptom wouldn't consider that symptom to be "madness." You argued that they would, because mental illness is universal and is exactly the same for everyone. As proof, you postulated a universe where everyone thought someone was watching them, and argued that a being from such a universe could be "paranoid" in the same way that humans could be paranoid. But this example wasn't logically sound, because that's not an apt parallel. A sound example would have been a universe where everyone is paranoid. A being from such a universe wouldn't consider paranoia of any kind to be abnormal. Another sound example would be a universe where everyone thinks someone is watching them - a being from such a universe wouldn't consider thinking you were being watched to be abnormal or a symptom of mental illness. Doesn’t matter if you have huge gravity or no gravity. If you have nothing holding you together, every muscle in your body would quickly dislocate, as would joints. Reread the traits associated with the Far Realm. "The only type of movement is passage between layers, which requires only thought." If all movement is based on thought, muscles are irrelevant, and creatures that evolved there wouldn't have any. They "move" by shifting between the million layers in which they each simultaneously exist. It seems like our idea of motion, and it works in a similar way statistically speaking, but it isn't the same at all. You don't seem to understand how truly unlike our universe the Far Realm is. Neither do dwarves. Or halflings, orcs, elves, gnomes, angels, archons, athaches, azers, bugbears, centaurs, balors, and so on and so forth. True, but these are familiar creatures that we can make assumptions about. The point I'm trying to bore home is that we can't make any assumptions about the completely alien denizens of the Far Realm at all. They're unlike us. Utterly so. Then why didn’t they just leave the bud somewhere else to control the golem from afar? Why risk a precious bit of the elder brain? It's perfectly possible to control something from afar using psionics (for example, using the control object psychokinetic power, or using psionic suggestion on creatures with minds), but a direct connection is more efficient, because the brain-like creature that is the illithid can worm its way through the nervous system of an organism that it inhabits, taking complete control over it without needing to expend psionic energy. But to claim that a nerves is the only way a mind can interface with a body is obvious nonsense, as the most cursory examination of the psionics rules proves. I haven't even mentioned magic or fiendish possession yet, either. Your arguments are just bizarre. It's like you've never encountered the conventions of the fantasy genre before, let alone D&D. Yet you know what an uvuudaum is. You’d do space travel (and therefore time travel) until a point in time reasonably close to the destruction of the material plane. Anywhere from one year to five minutes. You’d wait until the material plane was destroyed, which would be apparent because the plane you were on at the time would begin fading. Running on fumes. Existing on it’s own momentum for the last few minutes ever. At the last moment, you’d plane shift to the material plane, which would now be absolutely nothing. You’d wait about thirty seconds for the outer planes to finally stop existing, and then, provided the sages all those billions of years of absolute time ago were right, the far realm would just pop out of nowhere. That's a vast improvement over your previous arguments, which I can only guess you let your subconscious write, and I appreciate the effort you put into it this time around. Much of this depends on exactly what the conditions are in such a scenario. If we're talking about the Big Crunch, where a few minutes before the end of the universe everything is compressed in a gravity well with intolerable pressures and all natural forces have become one, where matter can't exist - well, no, you're not going to be able to travel to that point via temporal dilation. You're going to be destroyed long before that point. You'll die long before then, no matter how fast you're traveling. This is the scenario I favor in my view of the Great Wheel - that the planes don't "fade" from existence one at a time, but merge together until there is only one plane, and that plane compresses to a single point before finally exploding again, resulting in the birth of a new multiverse. The Great Wheel is, therefore, a wheel both temporally and in a planar sense, and there is no temporal outlet to this cycle. The Far Realm is that which is outside this Wheel. I admit, however, that this is merely my personal interpretation. In the universe merely "fades" for undefined reasons as you describe, that's another matter. I suppose it could simply wink out one day, revealing the Far Realm behind it, and everything that was formally inside the multiverse could be rudely dumped into the alien madness of the Realm That Was Far Away, But Now Isn't. Another option is that the the Great Wheel is destroyed by the Far Realm itself. One day all the horrors burst in and devour the substance of the planes, leaving everything in it bare to the Outside. In this scenario, gaping rifts to the Far Realm would appear very quickly and grow bigger and bigger. Maybe the multiverse would unravel all at once, or maybe it would take millions of years, but it would be trivially easy to travel to and from the Far Realm during this period. A major problem with this strategy is that a person traveling at relativistic velocities is still traveling for billions of years from the perspective of anyone traveling at non-relativistic speeds. As a result, the relativistic traveler is vulnerable to all the hazards the eons have to offer, and has effectively no time to react to them. The major problem with the argument is the fundamental sophistry of it: "space travel is time travel, therefore the Far Realm is really separated from the Wheel by space, not time." Children all over the world are bleeding from the eyeballs because of that attempt at "logic." A rift to the Far Realm may yet be opened, and the universe destroyed, based on that abominable syllogism alone. Then if a githyanki born on the astral came to the material, would he just vanish because he was only a figment of his parents’ imagination? No, travelers to the Astral Plane are transformed into pure thought when they enter it, and transformed back into matter when they leave. And vice versa, except in the case of incorporeal creatures (which stay incorporeal regardless of whether they're on the Astral or not). Githyanki are almost all born on the Material Plane, incidently. The spire is infinitely tall. So if a door from anywhere in the outer planes to Sigil could be found, we’d be set. You were almost lucid, but now you've let your subconscious start writing again. Portals connect locations directly. They do not cause a traveler to move through space for billions of years, experiencing the time as a subjective instant, which is what relativistic time dilation would mean in this case. If portals worked the way you evidently think they do, someone who traveled from Sigil to the Outlands, or vice versa, would vanish from the multiverse for billions of years (to the end of the multiverse, according to you, being dumped into the Far Realm every time the portal is used) and never return to their own time. Sigil (thunderclap) would be a pretty useless place. Clearly, you can't believe this is how portals work. So therefore at least within some crystal spheres, science lives.This is not a contradiction in itself, so why is it when you’re wondering if science exists in the Forgotten Realms? Are you asleep right now? Of course "science" exists in the Forgotten Realms; I'm only pointing out that it is not based on the same scientific laws as our universe. The fact that you used the phrase "crystal spheres" suggests you have at least some inkling of how very different the physics of the Forgotten Realms really are. Let's start with that: the big, indestructable crystal sphere built around the solar system upon which the stars are imprinted, and the ocean of flammable matter that does not correspond with any terrestial element flowing outside that sphere. Let's move on to the gravity of Realmspace. It seems pretty normal on most of the worlds, and I'll only briefly mention the quirk of Spelljammer gravity where objects as small as ordinary sailing ships can generate a gravity well as powerful as that of Toril itself. All planets on the D&D Material Plane generate the same level of gravity, regardless of their mass - it's part of the "normal gravity" planar trait. Realmspace has a flat planet called H'Catha - it's a disk of water floating in space, but gravity is always oriented toward the planet's face, and it's surrounded by a perfectly ordinary atmosphere. Someone standing on it would think they were somewhere on Toril, except the "horizon" is actually the edge of the planet. Then there's the composition of matter, which is based on four Aristotlean elements instead of the Periodic Table I was forced to memorize in high school Chemistry. Does the Realms have "science?" Yes, of course it does. Simple tools work there, too - levers, pulleys, gears, wheels, and so on. If gunpowder is set on fire there, it will explode (this isn't true on Oerth, though, where gunpowder is chemically inert and complicated mechanisms are useless unless supported by magic). But the science of the Realms is not the science we're familiar with. It is capable of solving a problem or interacting with someone with either no assistance or only triggers. That is the definition of omozu. I don't think that's a very useful definition of omozu, but it's your word, so okay. Some errors with the tense, but understandable. It's my word; I can invent whatever tense for it I want. This would mean that lobotomy patients are not human A controversial opinion, but okay. While we’re bashing the founding fathers of various branches of human knowledge Neuroscience has come a long way since Freud. He revolutionized the way we look at the human mind, and for that we owe the poor cocaine-addled codger a debt, but he was wrong about virtually all the details. It comes from the tiny sample groups he studied, and the fact that he mostly made everything up rather than testing it rigorously. They prove the opposite, as we need to train ourselves to be in control of our dreams. I've never had to (lucid dreams happen sporadically without any effort on my part), but I'll take your word for it. Even so, I don't understand how this proves your subconscious isn't "you." Our unconscious mind? Sounds strange to me, but whatever floats your boat. That's the word my psychology textbooks used. I don't have a degree in the subject, mind you. They dream without the raw randomness formed into really strange semi coherent chains of events that you somehow think make us human. I never said that. I said the subconscious makes us human and all humans dream. I never said only random dreams make us human, and you must know that. So you say that there’s some sort of light switch in your head with a lucid setting and a non-lucid setting. No, that's not what I said. Well, if we’re going to go down this road, I should point out that you actually are using a different mind when you are intoxicated to the point where you are no longer lucid. This is the inner parts of your brain: the cerebellum, the medulla oblongata and the brain stem. Those are all parts of the same brain, and there is a continuity of consciousness between them. Drunk people can still be conscious, and they experience a continuity of events, disproving your mendacious attempt to claim they somehow have different minds in the same sense you were claiming that the unconscious is a different, nonhuman person. Even if they are clones or respawn, each would develop a unique personality, just like identical twins. No, they wouldn't. When a demon slain outside the Abyss respawns, it doesn't develop a unique personality. The clone spell doesn't create a being with a unique personality. And if they have no ego, they are unintelligent to the extreme and can be given a break. Who cares if they're unintelligent, as long as they're omozu? Yes it does matter. I don't agree with you, but that statement seems coherent enough. The British do some things different than us. They eat different stuff and speak differently. They’re more familiar to us than, say, the ancient Egyptians, or the bushmen of Africa. This seems to be an attempt at analogy. Let me try and figure out what you're attempting to convey by it. I said that elves should properly be played as extremely alien in comparison to the human norm. You said that aberrations are more alien than elves are. I agreed with this, but said it doesn't matter. Elves are still alien, regardless of the fact that there are things that are more alien, just as adult pine trees are still tall regardless of the fact that there are taller things. I didn't use that analogy, but I think it's pretty good. You used a different analogy, comparing elves to Englishmen and aberrations to ancient Egyptians. Based on your preceding statement, you seem to think this analogy should show me... no, I'm still not getting it. That elves aren't alien after all? I’d think of a Bodak’s eye, from Libris Mortis. I’m not sure how you can justify thinking a scrap of skin with an eye is a human. You're confusing reality and fantasy, which is odd because I don't think you know what fantasy is, but easily explained because I strongly suspect you're currently either in a deep sleep or drunk. Salvador Dali was a real person, who painted pictures in our world, which does not contain bodaks. We can use this information to determine that his painting probably doesn't contain any representations of bodaks. The eye in it is probably intended to be exactly what it looks like - a human eye. If it's not supposed to be a human eye, then Salvador Dali is an inept painter in the sense that he conveys his intention very poorly. Since I don't believe Salvador Dali to be an inept painter, I choose to believe that it's intended to represent a human eye. If it was meant to be the eye of a monkey or an elephant or something, I think Salvador would have found a way to convey this detail. That's how much faith I have in his abilities. I think you have faith in his abilities, too. I think that when you first saw that misshapen scrap of skin, you thought it was something human. Perhaps this is at least partially the result of our natural human tendency to see human faces in things, but I really tend to think that Salvador knew what he was doing as well. The thing in the painting has no mouth, yet it is a human face to you. If you add on a body, suddenly it is inhuman. If you add on a nonhuman body (for example, a horse's body), suddenly it's inhuman, yes. I heard of this new invention called the “Colour TV” It lets you see things in a way other than in black and white. Intriguing. I must investigate this. They are real. They are physical. They look like hallucinations and delusions. But they're not, apparently? Your snide remarks aside, you seem to be confirming what I said. You said, "They are as real as anything on the far realm can be." That statement sets up an absolute level of reality that cannot be exceeded. If this level is less than the level than the reality of the Material Plane, then it can be accurately said that "nothing in the Far Realm is real." However, your follow-up statement says they are real, which means that although they "look like" hallucinations and delusions, they are nothing of the sort, which is what I claimed. This isn't a matter of me refusing to see shades of gray. When you establish an absolute level to measure something by, that something is either on that level or it is not. There is no gray. Some things can be closer to that level than others, but they still fall into the set of "not at that level" unless they are actually on it. It's a binary proposition. Because this is the Far Realm we're talking about, I'll accept that something can be simultaneously on a set level and not on it. But it's still on that level.
Bob the Efreet 02-13-07, 06:05 PM	Aboleth. Generally accepted as being from the Far realm. Ankheg. No. Assassain Vine. No. Beholder. Apparently not. Carrion crawler. Doubt it. Chaos beast. No. Limbo. Chuul. Doubt it. Darkmantle. No chance. Digester. No. Gold Dragon. You must be joking with me. Dwarf. Just kidding. Ethereal Filcher. Doubt it. Formians. No chance. Violet Fungus. No. Grick. Don’t think so. Kraken. No way. Medusa. No. Mindflayer. Generally accepted as yes. Mohrg. No. Otyguth. Doubt it. Phantom Fungus. Doubt it. Remorhaz. No. Roper. No. Shambling mound (arguable if its tentacles are on its head.). No. Spider eater. No. Tendriculos. No. Umber hulk. I should hope not. Vargouille. No way. Octopus. I laugh at the thought. Squid. See above. Giant ant, bee, bombardier beetle, fire beetle, stag beetle, praying mantis, wasp. No Monstorous centipede. No. That's ridiculous. While most of those monsters do have at least one tentacle, they are very rarely as prominent as you claim. Take out everything that's not an aberration, and you get a more accurate representation. Interestingly, most aberrations aren't even from the Far Realm. If you cannot incorporate Lovecraftian horror into a Ravenloft campaign, you have the imagination of a Keeper. Lovecraftian horror compliments Ravenloft like barbecue sauce compliments barbecued food. In fact, without Lovecraftian horror, Ravenloft is quite bland. Lovecraftian horror has been incorporated into all the Ravenloft books I have read. No, it's really not. The people who wrote Ravenloft books even said that, with the exception of Bluetspur, Lovecraftian cosmic horror was not a part of the Ravenloft milieu. Gothic horror is, in fact, quite a different theme. I doubt very much that William Johnson, a perfectly normal balor, woke up one morning, shaved, prepared himself some poached eggs with hollandaise sauce and an English muffin, looked in the mirror, and said “Today, I’m going to go to the material plane and kill Mialee, Lidda, Jozan, and Tordek.” If a demon doesn't hate something, it's because he doesn't know that thing exists. Sadly, in order to be physical (as outsiders are, seeing as they can be hurt) one must be made of the elements. I agree that they have a lot of spirit in them, more than any human. The thing is, spirit is intangible, invisible, odourless, tasteless, and otherwise completely non-physical. Clearly you've never been to the Outer Planes. In order for it to have a mind, any sort of mind, hive or otherwise, it must have a brain for it to be housed in. In order to move its body, it must have a brain to send signals through nerves. I find your basic premise to be most inherently flawed. Since they do have brains, it’s safe to say that this is how their emotions happen. How do we know they have brains? 1) Cephalisation 2) The assumption that there is no “Big Brother” who controls every single outsider with picnics or spells. 3) This tasty morsel directly from pg. 187 of the MM3.5: An outsider has the concept of a brain. They are vertebrates, at least the ones I‘m talking about are. Uvuudaums are clearly vertebrates, therefore there must be more vertebrates in the Far Realms. How can you possibly think that everything in the multiverse (and especially anything outside of it, like a creature native to the Far Realms) follows the exact same rules as things on Earth do? Doesn’t matter if you have huge gravity or no gravity. If you have nothing holding you together, every muscle in your body would quickly dislocate, as would joints. Then you’d be unable to move. Your bodily fluids would escape reasonably quickly. Not to mention what would happen in a place with dirt or dust. Maybe you've heard of the electroweak force. Interestingly, we haven't figured out how it's related to gravity at all. Then if a githyanki born on the astral came to the material, would he just vanish because he was only a figment of his parents’ imagination? No more so than a balor on the Material Plane. While we’re bashing the founding fathers of various branches of human knowledge, let me just say that your concept of gravity is very 17th century Issac Newton, your concept of the elements is very 19th century Dmitri Mendeleev, and your concept of planetary motion is very 17th century Johannes Kepler. Gravity has changed a lot in three hundred years. Perhaps the painting would show, from the point of view of a third party, the elf being called kneeling on the ground, old and weak, and the deity beckoning from a ghostly glimpse into Arborea floating in front of the elf. I could interpret this easily enough. Perhaps it would show that. That would be good support that elves are very similar to humans. But if it showed something different? If it showed a scene that you had trouble interpreting? What would that say about elven psychology? Take off the hair and there’s no real difference. Black holes don't have any hair, either.
supernerd222 02-27-07, 08:14 PM	Note: The following pair of posts are 9062 characters too long (not counting this paragraph) to be posted as one, so I have been forced to double-post. The first post regards arguments made by Raymond_Luxury_Yacht and Bob the Efreet. The second regards arguments made by ripvanwormer. You know, despite them obviously not having mammaries. Or any other traits associated with mammals. Or tetrapods, for that matter. http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/2889/uvuudaumve2.jpg Screw tetrapods. That thing isn't even a freaking vertebrate. http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t135/supernerd222/heshallbeapowerfulally.jpg As my self-explanatory picture shows, He clearly has bones, hair, and a navel. The nipples are not shown because of the angle of the picture. The clothes and the human body parts are for other arguments. Any biologist would say that this guy has a backbone. In fact, anyone who knows the first thing about biology would say that this guy has a backbone. Except you, it seems. He has no exoskeleton, yet can support himself. This means he has an endoskeleton. Thus he is (a fantasy equivalent of) either a coleoid (like a squid), an echinoderm (like a starfish), a poriferon (like a coral), or a chordate (like a person). Of course you're going to fall back on your "but supernerd222, things don't always work in fantasy like they do in real life" argument. I will argue in advance by pointing out that only one of these biological organizations has joints: the chordates. He has joints. Now unless he, or some Big Brother/hivemind/parasite uses a psionic ability/spell every time he moves (as ripvanwormer would have it) he needs a way to connect his brain (or concept thereof ;)) To the tendons that activate his muscles. Oh, yes he has muscles and tendons. I hope I don't have to point those out on our picture (Hint: Look at the hand of the one with the red robe). Anyhow, the connection between nerves and brain is commonly called a spinal cord. And it's not hard to imagine how a spinal cord would fit in that body. Meanwhile, he has a navel (I predict that you'll pretend not to be able to see it), and the other one has hair. Now since hair is one of the major features of a mammal, I think that your claim that he has no features of a mammal is completely untrue. That's ridiculous. While most of those monsters do have at least one tentacle, they are very rarely as prominent as you claim. Take out everything that's not an aberration, and you get a more accurate representation. So the tentacles are not good enough on the squid and octopus. And the kraken for that matter. I can see you saying that the formians don’t have good enough tentacles, but there are tons of non-aberrations with fine tentacles. I included all monsters whose tentacles are major enough on their head to be considered a prominent feature. You may have noticed that Death Slaadi do not appear on the list, amongst a few others I don't have the heart to look up. Interestingly, most aberrations aren't even from the Far Realm. The point of me posting that list was to show that you could get creatures with tentacles making up a major part of their heads without venturing into the Far Realm. Looks like I succeeded. No, it's really not. The people who wrote Ravenloft books even said that, with the exception of Bluetspur, Lovecraftian cosmic horror was not a part of the Ravenloft milieu. Gothic horror is, in fact, quite a different theme. I could hammer out a good paragraph on how what I have said is true, but why bother when I can just post this: While Dungeons and Dragons is chiefly a heroic fantasy game, linked to Lovecraft more by its creatures than its themes, the Ravenloft setting draws heavily on Lovecraft as well as other horror authors. That's from the article "Lovecraftian Horror." If a demon doesn't hate something, it's because he doesn't know that thing exists. This is completely true. The thing is that there is a Major difference between hating something and going way out of your way to kill it, in doing so wasting much resources and time. Clearly you've never been to the Outer Planes. Neither have you. I think your argument is based upon the assumption that the outer planes are made of spirit. Now since there is nothing 3.0/3.5 that says the outer planes are made of spirit, and possibly nothing of second edition either (I don’t own enough Planescape books to say), the issue becomes a matter of opinion. Stating your opinion with no supporting facts is generally considered a poor argument. I find your basic premise to be most inherently flawed. ...And? Generally this would be where most people say why so that their argument consists of more than a dressed-up version of "No, you're wrong." An outsider has the concept of a brain. Wow, I wish I could eat concepts, too. That's the strangest argument I have ever heard. If mind flayers can eat concepts, I suppose they only gain conceptual energy from them. Really. You can not think that that makes sense. How can you possibly think that everything in the multiverse (and especially anything outside of it, like a creature native to the Far Realms) follows the exact same rules as things on Earth do? Because Earth and the universe beyond follows these rules. Because everything we see from the D&D books works either 1) on magic/psionics/incarnum/other talents that we on earth have no access to, or in a way that meshes with these forces (such as outer planes) 2) The same as on Earth, or 3) in a way similar to how it would work on Earth, simplified for ease of play. Maybe you've heard of the electroweak force. Interestingly, we haven't figured out how it's related to gravity at all. Oh yes, the electroweak force. How could I have overlooked this? It's all so clear now. They have skin, but they don't really need it because they use the electroweak force. No more so than a balor on the Material Plane. You know, I'm not 100% sure on this, but I don't think Balors have parents. Wait. Now I am 100% sure. They are created from petitioners that become manes. Gravity has changed a lot in three hundred years. Yes, but what Newton said is still true. The periodic table has changed, but Mendeleev still was right. Perhaps it would show that. That would be good support that elves are very similar to humans. But if it showed something different? If it showed a scene that you had trouble interpreting? What would that say about elven psychology? Hard to say, seeing as many human artists create art with definite meaning that is hard to interpret. Black holes don't have any hair, either. They don’t look like eyes, though.
supernerd222 02-27-07, 08:19 PM	Note: This post is still too long, so I have been forced to triple-post. And now for ripvanwormer. Look, I signed up for a debate, not a flame war. If you’re going to call me drunk or whatever, let me know so I can leave now. Not if it didn't have anything to manipulate or grab, because it has spent all of its existence in a formless void. Dude, It has a shirt Who says they evolved? Perhaps they simply always existed (plane outside of time, remember), or perhaps they were engineered (for example, by the daelkyr). Evolutionary pressures may be irrelevant. Well they wouldn’t be engineered to have gonads in pretty much the worst possible spot, either. Again, you're making unwarranted assumptions based on false analogies with mammals. If they reproduce via viruses communicable through casual hand-grasping, they don't require pleasure as an incentive. Or maybe they use their hands to implant young in their fellows via painful surgical procedures, and that's the only way they can reproduce. The idea is perfectly reasonable in the Far Realm. Yes, both are reasonable solutions. However, the picture shows that these analogies may not be as false as you thought. With intelligent beings, that's not true. Perhaps you don't know anyone who has chosen to procreate for reasons other than ephemeral pleasure, or who has even procreated in a fashion that involves no pleasure at all (for example, in vitro fertilization), but I assure you that they exist. There are many reasons that intelligent beings may decide to produce offspring, and "sex feels good" is not the most compelling. Okay, that came out sounding wrong, and I apologise. In an evolutionary context, pleasure was introduced as a sort of “reward” for reproducing. Though animals who received no pleasure from sex would perhaps reproduce at some time based on simple instinct, those who had an orgasm every time would do it much more. Therefore, they would bear more children, thus spreading animals with a gene that gave them pleasure from sex. Eventually, all animals bore this gene. It was passed on to humans. Before humans had higher order thought, there truly was no reason to have children other than the nice feeling. In fact, they probably didn’t know that the act would result in children. Uvuudaums are intelligent, and their ancestors may have been intelligent for all eternity (assuming a steady-state universe, which seems the only appropriate model for the Far Realm). But if sex was as pleasurable as cutting your toenails, why would any intelligent being even bother? It’s a good while doing nothing, spent in a prone position. Any one of the high order Far Realm entities could eat it at this time. No, it can't. Raymond Luxury explained why, graphically, but as a general rule, nothing from the Far Realm has any parallel in Linnaean taxonomy. There are several similarities, as I have explained graphically. It may even not be a mammal, but it is certainly of a very similar classification. No, I'm using my imagination for the pleasure of it. I'm also making a larger point about how I view the Far Realm - how truly alien it really is, and how this doesn't mean it's simply garbled nonsense, random ASCII characters and ink blots. It's a usable place, but it's not a universe of mammals or chordates. To do it right, you need to let your imagination go wild in this way. Yes, the process of responding to your arguments is helping me generate interesting ideas, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't use them by any means. It’s not a place with mammals and chordates. Yet the things that live there have hands and skin and five fingers and similar joints and tendons and veins and shirts and human body parts and scorpion body parts and belly buttons and hair. It’s a place so alien to humans that human faces show up in the background. That implies the arm is detachable, that it's possible to interact with it as a separate being. If that isn't the case - and I never meant to imply it wasn't - then statting it as separate creature would be useless. The arm wouldn't need its own stats any more than the tapeworms in a orc's gut need their own stats. While biologically it's a separate being, it fights as if it's the same creature. That’s what symbionts are about. Consider the gutworm. Oh snap, that’s almost like a tapeworm. In fact, they explicitly said that it’s an abyssal relative of Mr. Tapeworm. There you have it. A really good official example is the swarm subtype, where many creatures are statted as if they were one creature. That's not to say that an uvuudaum is really a swarm, or that it has that subtype; I'm merely pointing out an example of more than one entity getting a single set of stats. They get stats as one so that a DM doesn’t have to keep track of a billion diminutive spiders. You could run the swarm as a bunch of separate creatures, but that would be stupid. With host-parasite teams, there are two things. Not hundreds. Two. The parasite adds stuff to the host. Stuff like poison resistance or psionics. The host is the one you fight. If the symbiotic isn’t in a host, you can fight it alone. That’s why it has stats as a monster, not a feat or item or something. There’s really not too much swarms and symbionts have in common. Yes, I hasten to add, it's true that as far as we know, all life on Earth has a common origin, but if primitive amino acids can evolve into self-replicating life once, they can do it twice, and scientists have speculated we might eventually find examples of that on our own planet, perhaps deep underground, in the Arctic ice, or in other exotic locales.[quote] This is true. If this is how it happened, then the amino acids in the far realms would become pseudonatural Archaeobacteria, which would go into eubacteria, which would become simple protists which would then go into the fungus, complex protists, plants and animals. And then, eventually, the uvuudaum. The uvuudaum doesn’t have to come from the material plane. They share characteristics. But we know that convergent evolution can happen. [quote]It did once. The uvuudaum never did. It's a crazy-looking worm with hand-like structures sticking out of it. Saying that's "very human" is... unconvincing. Saying that it is nothing at all like a human is equally unconvincing. Okay, I did say it was "beyond human comprehension." And yet, it clearly isn't, since, as I said, Bruce Cordell and I comprehend it perfectly (as much as we need to). I resolved this seeming paradox already in an earlier post, where I clarified that I meant it was beyond the ability of characters in the game to comprehend without their minds breaking, not beyond the ability of omniscient narrators (that is, DMs) to effectively use. It’s still a paradox. Imagine yourself, hypothetically, as a character in a D&D/D20 Modern game. It isn’t too hard, as earth is part of the great wheel. You can’t understand the far realm as a character, yet you can as a DM. We’re all human, be we Elminster or supernerd222 or Human War2 M Humanoid (Human). There is no reason that the Far Realm is fine for some people but completely mind blowing for others. In this vein, an uvuudaum is not just a big worm with hand-like bits. The illustration we see is just a simplification of a far more complex, polydimensional entity that really would shatter the mind of anyone who attempted to make its many parts intellectually cohere. That is, it's maddening for a reason. The hard-sf creature you're trying to make of it, with an evolutionary lineage and rational parts, is antithetical to that and the idea of a maddening plane. So because something has a past, it’s science fiction? I guess the gutworm is science fiction, because it is a relative of the tapeworm. And not in a second cousin twice removed way. There are two different species that are related through a common ancestry. Yet it’s far from science fiction. The idea of a sad, mopey, Emo uvuudaum is a bit too cute. Let’s get R.A. Salvatore on to it. That's the general assumption, yes. Therefore Hades was always there. Have you asked it what its feelings are on the matter? Yes. Me: Hey, Conciously. Do you mind if I spell you that way? Consciously: No me give flying f***. Me have no preference. Me word. Me: …I kind of expected you to be more articulate. Consciously: <Farts> You must make friends with your vocabulary. It’s harder than that. I tried making small talk, but he fingered me and started humming One Winged Angel really loud. Not without breaking, is the whole point of the plane. Thus the maddening trait. In a dream or hallucination we can see or sense things that would normally cause insanity. No, there is nothing truly physical on Pandemonium, or any other outer plane. They're ideas made solid, but it is the ideas that get you, not the solidity. You know, I’ve read my MoTP through a couple of times looking for some suggestion that the outer planes are as hypothetical and unreal as you suggest. I cannot find anything. But the Abyss isn't constructed that way, so your point is moot. Yes, but this bit of our argument is over whether the far realms would be completely unique without being maddening. So we took out anything that would cause or mock insanity and looked at what we had left over. There would be infinite layers, but they would not overlap, as that would cause insanity. (Wrinkles forehead) What? No, you can't do that in Gehenna. Travel between layers is accomplished only through portals. Yes you can. You can walk from mountain to mountain, thus putting yourself on another layer. Other outer planes you can do this on include Ysgard (jump off Ysgard and you’re in Muspelheim.), Acheron (get off a cube and head towards the ground), Celestia (climb the mountain), and Bytopia (fly). Wouldn't notice the difference between a timeless plane and a flowing time plane? But they're completely different. Doesn’t mean they’d notice. On the former, you spend six months on another plane and return six months later, suddenly aging six months all at once. On the latter, you spend six months on another plane and return three billion years later, not aging at all. The Far realms has a flowing time trait set to zero. Therefore no time would pass if you went there for any length of time. The only difference, then would be that time spent on a timeless plane would catch up with you, by aging you instantly. How disengaged would a player have to be not to notice the difference between those two things? How engaged would a player have to be to notice that they aged six months? Like you’d spend six months on either plane anyway. There are many paths to the Far Realm - cysts, rifts, ether gaps, portals that only open via certain conjunctions of the stars. There's supposed to be a gate in the Region of Dreams. Is it just me or does this strongly support a point I was making? The Temporal Energy Plane doesn't usually work because it's impossible to control where you end up without rare magic, but it's theoretically possible to get there that way as well. More than theoretical. The description of the plane in MoTP even gave a description of a gate in the temporal energy plane to the Far Realms. Brownie points for trying, but that's not what the word means. Okay, now I have looked it up, and yes. It means what I thought it did. "Having a long way to go to fully realize their potential" is not "inchoate." Recently started but not fully formed yet; just begun; only elementary or immature. This suggests that something that has a long way to go to realize its full potential is inchoate. 1889 — Robert Louis Stevenson, The Wrong Box, ch VI The private conception of any breach of law is apt to be inspiriting, for the scheme (while yet inchoate) wears dashing and attractive colours. This proves it. The Lords of the Nine are in fact the apotheosis of baatezu potential, the high point in their evolution. Lemures are inchoate. If they were vague beings of mist and possibility, they would be inchoate. If they had indistinct personalities (compared to humans) they would have inchoate personalities. In fact, they're solid creatures with very well-defined personalities and goals. Merely having room to improve does not fit the definition of "inchoate." Everything has room to improve. True, but the amount of room that the lords of the nine have to improve does make them inchoate. None of them, with the possible exception of Asmodeus, are even deities. So, yeah. To anyone below CR15, they’re pertty well off, but on the big picture of the multiverse as a whole they are elementary and immature. You've identified antennae, the tendrils of plants, and a number of other things that aren't tentacles as tentacles. For a dude who calls himself "supernerd," you've got some serious nerding up to do to make par. Yeah, there are tentacles, too, but I'm surprised you've left yourself open like that. There is one difference between tentacles and antennae: antennae are sensory organs. Tentacles only sometimes serve as sensory organs. The distinction is artificial at best, arbitrary at worst. I have included creatures with antennae because they may indeed be tentacles, as there is no distinction that can be applied to all cases. You may ignore them if you wish, however there are plenty of creatures in there with tentacles. As for tendrils, they are the equivalent of tentacles for a plant. Again, ignore them if you want. However, you did just make my day by first arguing that the thing on the uvuudaum is not an arm, but the thing on the formian is an antenna. Nice sci-fi rigor. You certainly can, but the official products do not do so. Please refer to my earlier quote on the topic. That doesn't stop him from hating them in a very personal way, once our friend William has met them. That's what it means to be a fiend. I haven't read the Bartimaeus Trilogy (though I found a description of it on Wikipedia today by sheer coincidence, while I was reading about genies). It doesn't seem to be a very good example of demonic horror, but I'll withhold judgment until I've seen the books. The Bartimaeus Trilogy is probably the worst source of demonic horror you could find. The demons in it are actually genies. However it is a good example of one element of cosmic horror as applied in the context of demons, being the demon’s complete indifference for you personally. They will kill you if the opportunity presents itself, but they will never go out of their way to do so. No, it really doesn't. My description of what I like about the Far Realm doesn't mean that none of those things can't possibly appear individually in other settings. It just means that, taken together, they form a distinctive flavor that isn't replicated in other situations. Well then the Daliesque scenes that seem to compose your outer planes would form their own distinct flavour (as the word prefers to be spelled, this one does have a strong preference). Be consistent. That's nice, but I wasn't talking about Sigil. Or Planescape, for that matter. I was talking about the Outer Planes. Then say outer planes. You said “Great Wheel Certainly, Sigil thought to exist on the Outer Planes, and Planescape informs my conception of the Outer Planes, but it's still incorrect to think I was talking about Sigil. Just because you can link one thing to another via a tenuous train of free association doesn't make it meaningful to bring it up. This is a weird argument. You can’t talk about the outer planes as a whole without Sigil being counted in there. Not to mention that any psychological horror in any plane north of Arcadia and Ysgard would suck.
supernerd222 02-27-07, 08:20 PM	Well, there's a blue orb. That's really the only point in common. I don't see any machines. I see a box, a cabinet, and a vessel of some sort filled with water. The painting doesn't look anything like the picture the article put in my head. K. Let’s go through it step by step. //, as it does in java, signifies a comment on my behalf. The Idar Flamme Mild Far Realms, Entrapping (as Gray Wastes of Hades) //Suggests it’s a dark mopey place. Check. Normal Gravity, //Check Slowed time (forget the term; time proceeds at 1/3 normal rate), //There’s a broken pocket watch atop one of the pillars. Symbol? All Magic is Impeded The Idar Flamme is not so much a "layer" of the Far Realms as a construct within it. It is build of quasi-living metal suffused with the energies of the Far Realms, and inhabitted by strange beasts. //Check. It is thought by some that the Idar Flamme was once a Modron probe into the Far Realms, others thought that it was an Abyssal machine, powered by the souls of the damned. The truth is simple, however--the Idar Flamme has existed forever, and it prowls the liquidly flowing Far Realms like a shark. It devours whatever resources it contacts, and changes all things within it into its "children". The Idar Flamme is almost infinite in size, //Check, from what we can see. and its architecture is something like a gothic cathedral //Check. with a definite "trilobite" or "centipede" motif. It appears to be composed almost completely of a sort of black metal //Check. We don’t know whether it moves, as it is a painting. that moves like muscle. The structure seems to breathe in the toxins that its "children" produce, exhaling a breathable, if uncomfortable, atmosphere. The Children of the Idar Flamme are the Far Realms creatures that are caught within it and altered by it into machine-like pseudo-creatures. The creatures appear to feed off of electricity (contained in blue orbs set throughout the Idar Flamme) //Check. and petroleums of all types (oils, coal, etc.) Encounters: Pseudonatural golems (all types) Pseudonatural Warforged Pseudonatural Shield Guardians Pseudonatural Homunculi (all types) Pseudonatural Nimblewrights Pseudonatural Runic Guardians Half-Iron Golem Illithids Half-Iron Golem Kaorti Half-Iron Golem Daelkyr Half-Iron Golem Tsochar Half-Iron Golem Amphibious Aboleths The Idar Flamme does have a nucleus, resembling a sort of throne room. The "Captain" of the Idar Flamme normally appears to be a simple human spellcaster (and indeed, occasionally poses as a low-level sorceror that was sucked into the Idar Flamme through some strange means.) The Captain, in his true form is a unique creature (stat out as a Axiomatic Half-Iron Golem Pseudonatural Balor, to simulate the effects). I believe the problem is one of selective perception. Possibly on both our sides, but I'm trying to look at the painting objectively and see a correlation, and I just don't. Try it now. Really long arguments like this can get boring, don't you agree? Yes. Sometimes it helps to mix up the syntax a little. Future please do again’nt the in do it. Understand youer easy make to its. No, that's not the case. Outsiders are not made of elements. They're made of spirit. Yes, they're solid. Yes, they can get hurt. But they're not made of elements. They're made of the same stuff as souls, which is why raise dead doesn't work on them - because they are souls, and destroying their substance destroys their spirit. Outsider Type An outsider is at least partially composed of the essence, but not necessarily the material of some plane other than the material plane. This says that some (and by the way it is worded, most) outsiders have modern elements in them. It says nothing about spirit, speaking of essence and material. The way you’ve been talking, this “material” is spirit. The idea that angels and demons are made of mere clay (using the word in the mythic sense) is grotesque. It's contrary to every myth. According to the Koran, humans are made of clay, genies are made of smokeless flame, and angels are made of light. This doesn't mean they can't hurt you, and it doesn't even mean that you can't hurt them. D&D has strong roots in mythology of all cultures. However, it also has a lot made up. Just because a religious text or Greek myth says one thing does not mean that D&D must follow. For example, most religions claim there to be two or three planes beyond earth: a heaven of some description and a hell or underworld of some description. D&D has upper planes and lower planes and everything in between. Plus a plethora of other planes of every description. No, spirit can be touched, it can be seen, it can be smelled, and it can even be eaten. The Outer Planes are made entirely of spirit, not the gross substance of the Inner Planes. Again, I don’t know where this is coming from. Explain ghosts, then. Ghosts are incorporeal manifestations of a thing that was once a physical being. It contains the intelligence of the being. Though that intelligence is no longer in a physical brain, it exists as part of the soul. Or living spells, Granted intelligence, and able to have it because it is magic itself. or Awakened or intelligent oozes, Intelligent oozes have cerebral ganglions throughout their mass. Awakened oozes have been given intelligence through a spell. Perhaps it is the residual magic that allows the ooze to have intelligence, or perhaps the spell gives the ooze cerebral ganglia. or treants, They have either brains in their heads or some sort of brain like tissue throughout their bodies. or any sort of incorporeal or bodiless creature. Well, we could call it as magic, or a quite interesting solution I thought up: incorporeal elements. Why not? This is fantasy after all. I honestly don't understand your determination to try and reduce fantasy concepts to real-world physics. You seem not to understand the point of fantasy at all. Is the pint of fantasy to make up a universe where everything is “just because?” Or to imagine a place where anything can happen, and does for that reason? D&D has a vast and interesting multiverse, one that has certain laws of physics in it. The rest go unmentioned, so the assumption is that they exist too. No, that's not a safe assumption. They're creatures of spirit. It's not even safe to say that's where human emotions come from in a fantasy world. Yes, many outsiders have internal organs. They have hearts and brains and lungs and bones. These organs are metaphors, which they have for symbolic reasons. That doesn't mean they don't die when they're removed - they do - but neither does it mean that their brains work in the same way that ours do. Because under previously published material, and as I have mentioned before, Earth is part of the great wheel. On earth emotions happen for this reason. Therefore, it is a safe assumption that this is how emotions work in D&D. Now we have agreed that in the outer planes, the human form is default. We know that outsiders are made at leas partially of the essence and not necessarily the material (whether it is spirit, we do not know) of the plane that they are from. So we can assume that outsiders are not “made of spirit.” Therefore they are made of elements. You just said that they have brains so we have no argument there. Their brains are made of chemicals, and just like the humans whose form they take, an imbalance of chemicals will have a result in the creature’s mood. And I would also see how different that was from human paranoia. How? If it resulted in the same symptoms, except with a different delusion, how would you be able to tell? Yes, symptoms matter. Symptoms are what I was talking about. You claimed that madness resulted in the same symptoms regardless of species and universe of origin. This has been amply disproven. Disproven by your ludicrous argument that because the being has a different delusion, he is no longer paranoid? I think not. Paranoia, like many if not most mental illnesses is defined by the symptoms, the nature (auditory with words, auditory without words, auditory non-human) of the hallucination (if any), and the effect of the delusion on the person.. Not the details of the delusion. Paranoid people who believe that they are being watched have the same disease as paranoid people who believe an object to be passing through their digestive tract. I’m glad you’re not a psychologist, though. If you were, you’d discover a new form of mental disease every time you talked to a patient with delusions. My argument is that a being who originated in a universe where everyone manifests a certain symptom wouldn't consider that symptom to be "madness." This is also a major part of my argument. They consider themselves fine when they are there, they live normal lives (for them). They have no symptoms of insanity. When they go to the material, they become paranoid because they think nobody is watching them. This is when they develop symptoms of insanity and become unable to lead normal lives. You argued that they would, because mental illness is universal and is exactly the same for everyone. Yes, though in this case the insanity comes about for a different reason. The delusion that you are not being watched is not a particularly damaging one for a human, unless you’re Anderson Cooper or something. But they are damaged by being in an environment that embodies such a delusion. They get the same symptoms and the same disease, but for a different reason. As proof, you postulated a universe where everyone thought someone was watching them, and argued that a being from such a universe could be "paranoid" in the same way that humans could be paranoid. Which they could, but not because of delusions of someone watching them. But this example wasn't logically sound, because that's not an apt parallel. A sound example would have been a universe where everyone is paranoid. A being from such a universe wouldn't consider paranoia of any kind to be abnormal. An entertaining thought, though people from here would die out, because they would not be able to have a lasting relationship. Another sound example would be a universe where everyone thinks someone is watching them - a being from such a universe wouldn't consider thinking you were being watched to be abnormal or a symptom of mental illness. Now I must question your state of mind. This is the universe I was talking about Word for word. Reread the traits associated with the Far Realm. "The only type of movement is passage between layers, which requires only thought." I’m pretty sure this is a misinterpretation on your behalf. A number of clues suggest so. Let’s take a look, shall we? Clew Ye First: On page 211 “But in the Far Realm, titanic creatures swim through nothingness.” Clew Ye Second: On page 212 “Certainly, countless types crawl through infinite layers.” Clew Ye Third (A big one): On page 212 “Movement And Combat Movement in the Far Realms is like swimming. There is no gravity, but the air is syrupy thick, and strong strokes are needed to move through it. Moving between layers is as easy as willing oneself to do so. Nonnatives exist on only one layer at a time, but large Far Realm entities often exist on several at a time.” If all movement is based on thought, Which it clearly isn’t. muscles are irrelevant, and creatures that evolved there wouldn't have any. However, because movement is required, muscles are actually needed. They "move" by shifting between the million layers in which they each simultaneously exist. It seems like our idea of motion, and it works in a similar way statistically speaking, but it isn't the same at all. You don't seem to understand how truly unlike our universe the Far Realm is. Well, since clew ye third explicitly says that people who go to the far realm swim through the air, I would say that normal movement is possible. It also says that not all Far Realms natives exist on millions of layers at a time, suggesting that it is possible for them to move normally, too. True, but these are familiar creatures that we can make assumptions about. The point I'm trying to bore home is that we can't make any assumptions about the completely alien denizens of the Far Realm at all. They're unlike us. Utterly so. The rules of D&D rely on something called “common sense” for a DM determining what creatures can wield weapons (and therefore use hands in a similar way to us). Common sense tells me that a creature that so clearly and blatantly has hands and arms does. It's perfectly possible to control something from afar using psionics (for example, using the control object psychokinetic power, or using psionic suggestion on creatures with minds), but a direct connection is more efficient, And a non psionic connection is most efficient of all, because then the controlling thing needs not use up psionic powers. because the brain-like creature that is the illithid can worm its way through the nervous system of an organism that it inhabits, taking complete control over it without needing to expend psionic energy. Are we talking about the same thing here? I’m talking about how illithids put a bud from their elder brain on every brain golem, but you seem to be thinking of creating a half-illithid in some non-official context. But to claim that a nerves is the only way a mind can interface with a body is obvious nonsense, as the most cursory examination of the psionics rules proves. I haven't even mentioned magic or fiendish possession yet, either. Magic and Fiendish possesion (which you have actually mentioned now) both take over the brain of the creature in question. Unless the body is an object, in which case different magic is needed. Your arguments are just bizarre. It's like you've never encountered the conventions of the fantasy genre before, let alone D&D. Yet you know what an uvuudaum is. Is the convention of the fantasy genre to “Not worry about it and call it magic if anyone asks?” If so, I have encountered this convention before. It’s called bad fantasy. That's a vast improvement over your previous arguments, which I can only guess you let your subconscious write, and I appreciate the effort you put into it this time around. Thanks…? Much of this depends on exactly what the conditions are in such a scenario. If we're talking about the Big Crunch, where a few minutes before the end of the universe everything is compressed in a gravity well with intolerable pressures and all natural forces have become one, where matter can't exist - well, no, you're not going to be able to travel to that point via temporal dilation. You're going to be destroyed long before that point. You'll die long before then, no matter how fast you're traveling. It wouldn’t matter if the material plane was experiencing a big crunch if you were in Ysgard at the time. The astral plane acts as a buffer, ensuring that the outer planes go undamaged. However, without the people on the material plane to uphold the ideals embodied by each of the outer planes, they would slowly cease to exist. This is the scenario I favor in my view of the Great Wheel - that the planes don't "fade" from existence one at a time, but merge together until there is only one plane, and that plane compresses to a single point before finally exploding again, resulting in the birth of a new multiverse. The Great Wheel is, therefore, a wheel both temporally and in a planar sense, and there is no temporal outlet to this cycle. The Far Realm is that which is outside this Wheel. An interesting thought. I admit, however, that this is merely my personal interpretation. I admit that my way is my own interpretation. However, I strongly believe that the end of the material will come before the end of the outer planes. In the universe merely "fades" for undefined reasons as you describe, that's another matter. I suppose it could simply wink out one day, revealing the Far Realm behind it, and everything that was formally inside the multiverse could be rudely dumped into the alien madness of the Realm That Was Far Away, But Now Isn't. That would be interesting, too. Another option is that the the Great Wheel is destroyed by the Far Realm itself. One day all the horrors burst in and devour the substance of the planes, leaving everything in it bare to the Outside. In this scenario, gaping rifts to the Far Realm would appear very quickly and grow bigger and bigger. Maybe the multiverse would unravel all at once, or maybe it would take millions of years, but it would be trivially easy to travel to and from the Far Realm during this period. Or how about the other way around? How about an ancient elven codex is found in a jungle and when the wizards do what it says, a huge portal opens up into the far realm. So the king is like oo! New land! And makes this huge army with all these alienists and stuff and starts taking over the Far realm. Maybe the PCs could be part of the army, or maybe they’d be like diplomats, going round all the outer planes, getting the help of the outsiders. A major problem with this strategy is that a person traveling at relativistic velocities is still traveling for billions of years from the perspective of anyone traveling at non-relativistic speeds. As a result, the relativistic traveler is vulnerable to all the hazards the eons have to offer, and has effectively no time to react to them. It would be difficult, but there are spells. The major problem with the argument is the fundamental sophistry of it: "space travel is time travel, therefore the Far Realm is really separated from the Wheel by space, not time." Children all over the world are bleeding from the eyeballs because of that attempt at "logic." A rift to the Far Realm may yet be opened, and the universe destroyed, based on that abominable syllogism alone. I still don’t agree that the Far Realms are only separate in time. There’s in fact a quote from MotP (Damn I’m quoting the books a lot today.) The Far Realms is a plane-or perhaps a space beyond the planes- The Far Realms is outside time, existing both before and after time’s reign, So the first one is pretty definitive that the Far Realms are not separated by time alone. The second one says that the Far Realms is not within time the way the rest of the planes are. This could mean a number of things. It could mean that, as you say, the Far Realms is separate in time only, but another is that the far realms exist beyond the reach of the Temporal Energy Plane. No, travelers to the Astral Plane are transformed into pure thought when they enter it, and transformed back into matter when they leave. And vice versa, except in the case of incorporeal creatures (which stay incorporeal regardless of whether they're on the Astral or not). Githyanki are almost all born on the Material Plane, incidently. #1, That doesn’t answer my question, and #2, This is only true if the travellers are astrally projecting. You were almost lucid, but now you've let your subconscious start writing again. Hm. Last time, that was a good thing. Portals connect locations directly. No. They connect locations through the astral plane. Unless they’re vortexes, but there’s not going to be a vortex from the outlands to sigil. They do not cause a traveler to move through space for billions of years, experiencing the time as a subjective instant, which is what relativistic time dilation would mean in this case. They do, however cause the traveller to move through space at a certain speed less than the speed of light for an amount of time necessary to move through the astral plane to the desired location, which is experienced as a subjective instant. If portals worked the way you evidently think they do, someone who traveled from Sigil to the Outlands, or vice versa, would vanish from the multiverse for billions of years (to the end of the multiverse, according to you, being dumped into the Far Realm every time the portal is used) and never return to their own time. Sigil (thunderclap) would be a pretty useless place. Such is the terror of Sigil. It doesn’t quite work like that, needless to say. I picked Sigil and the Outlands because those are two distinctive places infinitely far apart. Therefore, you could not argue that they were quite close together in a magical dimension. However, you forgot that when you get to Sigil from the outlands, you are routed through the astral. It would not take all of eternity to get there, but it would take some time spent at high speed. Clearly, you can't believe this is how portals work. If by “this” you mean the direct, no astral plane way you just described, no. That’s not how I think portals work. I think portals work as they are described in D&D rulebooks. Are you asleep right now? When I wrote it, or when you wrote “right now?” Of course "science" exists in the Forgotten Realms; I'm only pointing out that it is not based on the same scientific laws as our universe. The fact that you used the phrase "crystal spheres" suggests you have at least some inkling of how very different the physics of the Forgotten Realms really are. Let's start with that: the big, indestructable crystal sphere built around the solar system upon which the stars are imprinted, and the ocean of flammable matter that does not correspond with any terrestial element flowing outside that sphere. I’m not sure how a very large crystal sphere contradicts physics, nor am I sure how a new element contradicts, well, you said physics, but I’ll assume you meant chemistry. Let's move on to the gravity of Realmspace. It seems pretty normal on most of the worlds, and I'll only briefly mention the quirk of Spelljammer gravity where objects as small as ordinary sailing ships can generate a gravity well as powerful as that of Toril itself. In a world where magic is part of reality, and spells affecting gravity are part of magic, this does not contradict physics. All planets on the D&D Material Plane generate the same level of gravity, regardless of their mass - it's part of the "normal gravity" planar trait. Is there a Big Book o’ Masses o’ the Planets of the D&D Material Plane? If so, I missed it. In any case, I’m pretty sure most, if not all of the campaign settings I’ve read say that the world is about earth-size. Realmspace has a flat planet called H'Catha - it's a disk of water floating in space, but gravity is always oriented toward the planet's face, and it's surrounded by a perfectly ordinary atmosphere. Someone standing on it would think they were somewhere on Toril, except the "horizon" is actually the edge of the planet. Again, gravity spells can have interesting effects. Then there's the composition of matter, which is based on four Aristotlean elements instead of the Periodic Table I was forced to memorize in high school Chemistry. Yeah, but there were only seventeen elements back then, right? The fact that there are four elemental planes does not imply that all matter is made of those elements. These planes could represent the forces of the universe or nature. Alternately, the elemental planes of earth and air could contain all the solid, liquid, and gaseous elements. Does the Realms have "science?" Yes, of course it does. Simple tools work there, too - levers, pulleys, gears, wheels, and so on. If gunpowder is set on fire there, it will explode (this isn't true on Oerth, though, where gunpowder is chemically inert and complicated mechanisms are useless unless supported by magic). But the science of the Realms is not the science we're familiar with.[quote] I’m not convinced. [quote]I don't think that's a very useful definition of omozu, but it's your word, so okay. How does that even work? In case you haven’t noticed, omozu is an imaginary concept used as part of the definition of “human” I brought up. There is no meaningful definition of it. It is simply a test, a passing of which will allow the subject to move on to the next step. It's my word; I can invent whatever tense for it I want. Chill out. You’re way too tense. A controversial opinion, but okay. You said it, not me. Neuroscience has come a long way since Freud. He revolutionized the way we look at the human mind, and for that we owe the poor cocaine-addled codger a debt, but he was wrong about virtually all the details. It comes from the tiny sample groups he studied, and the fact that he mostly made everything up rather than testing it rigorously. Then why do we still use such Freudian arguments as “Your mom” and “Cause you touch yourself at night?” Freud revolutionized neuroscience, and though he was wrong about many things, he was right about much else. I've never had to (lucid dreams happen sporadically without any effort on my part), Most people have a lucid dream here and there without effort on their part. To have them regularly, though, you need to train yourself. See the “lucid dreaming” skill. but I'll take your word for it. Even so, I don't understand how this proves your subconscious isn't "you." To control it, you need to train yourself. All dreams use the same parts of the brain: random ones. The subconscious mind shapes them into a dream. If you apply conscious thought to it, however, you can make it go in a particular direction or do a particular thing. This proves that your subconscious is not “you” in the relevant sense of the word because the only way you can change what it is showing you is by changing what information it is receiving. In other words, the randomish images formed from random memories and sensations and whatever else cannot be changed, however, through conscious thought making desirable areas of the brain active, the memories and sensations and what have you become ones that you choose. And even this imperfect control takes practice. That's the word my psychology textbooks used. I don't have a degree in the subject, mind you. Maybe it’s a cultural gap thing. I’ve never heard it called that. I never said that. I said the subconscious makes us human and all humans dream. I never said only random dreams make us human, and you must know that. But by default, all dreams are random. No, that's not what I said. You seem to be suggesting some sort of duality. Those are all parts of the same brain, and there is a continuity of consciousness between them. Drunk people can still be conscious, and they experience a continuity of events, disproving your mendacious attempt to claim they somehow have different minds in the same sense you were claiming that the unconscious is a different, nonhuman person. Though they are parts of the same brain, and do function interconnectedly, they are essentially different. They all evolved at different points in our history, and all have a different function. And when you’re scared out of your mind, or in a rage, you’re not going to be able to think about what’s wrong with that program you were writing or what would go nicely with the ham you were cooking. If you’re in basic instinct mode, you can’t use the rest of your brain. No, they wouldn't. When a demon slain outside the Abyss respawns, it doesn't develop a unique personality. The clone spell doesn't create a being with a unique personality. I was talking about “clone” in the scientific sense, as I assumed you were. Reproducing through clone spells would be quite… stupid, as they would still reach the end of their life span eventually, would lose constitution/levels through generations, and while living would have an inert body that would decompose quite quickly as their only lifeline. If the body was destroyed, or the constitution reaches 0 or the creature reached the end of their natural lifespan the population would drop by 1 permanently, as each creature could only create 1 more creature. As for respawning, I’m pretty sure a respawn would create a being with a new personality. Even if it didn’t, the outsider would certainly be changed by the experience enough to make a new personality. And even if it didn’t it would have a concept of death, just a very different one. Who cares if they're unintelligent, as long as they're omozu? My congratulations, you have just made the best non-argument I have ever seen. This seems to be an attempt at analogy. Let me try and figure out what you're attempting to convey by it. I said that elves should properly be played as extremely alien in comparison to the human norm. You said elves should be played as alien as possible. I save this spot for some outsiders and aberrations. That’s why I’m even arguing about this. You're confusing reality and fantasy, which is odd because I don't think you know what fantasy is, but easily explained because I strongly suspect you're currently either in a deep sleep or drunk. Salvador Dali was a real person, who painted pictures in our world, which does not contain bodaks. We aren’t talking about what Salvador meant by the painting anymore… Well we are, but in a tangential sort of way. Let me catch you up: I told you why I thought it was a face - because it has a very clear image of a human eye on it. If it had some nonhuman feature in addition to the eye, I would agree that it was an inhuman face. Like a lack of mouth? If I was playing D&D as a PC, and the DM described a guy with no mouth, my first thought would not be that he was human. Depends on the context. If the DM said "You see a scrap of skin attached to a closed, long-lashed eye," or simply draws what Salvador drew, I'd certainly think of humans first. I’d think of a Bodak’s eye, from Libris Mortis. I’m not sure how you can justify thinking a scrap of skin with an eye is a human. And then you called me drunk and reminded me that Salvador Dali had no association with bodaks. Odd, to say the least, since we were still talking in the context of D&D. [quote]We can use this information to determine that his painting probably doesn't contain any representations of bodaks. The eye in it is probably intended to be exactly what it looks like - a human eye. If it's not supposed to be a human eye, then Salvador Dali is an inept painter in the sense that he conveys his intention very poorly. Since I don't believe Salvador Dali to be an inept painter, I choose to believe that it's intended to represent a human eye. If it was meant to be the eye of a monkey or an elephant or something, I think Salvador would have found a way to convey this detail. That's how much faith I have in his abilities. But it still isn’t a human face. It has a human eye, but not everything with a human eye is a human face. For the purpose of example, let‘s look at some recent movies. In the movie Pan’s Labyrinth, there’s at one point a plate with two eyes on it. This doesn’t make the plate a human face. Then there’s the part of A Scanner Darkly where the demon is reading out the guy’s sins. His head is entirely covered in eyes, but that doesn’t give him a human face. Off the topic of movies, there’s the beholder. It has an eye that looks human, (which is enough for you, it seems) yet its face is far from human. From our own world, there’s the Great Seal of the United States. Not to mention all the other artists who somehow managed to draw a human eye without a human face to be found. I think you have faith in his abilities, too. I think that when you first saw that misshapen scrap of skin, you thought it was something human. Perhaps this is at least partially the result of our natural human tendency to see human faces in things, but I really tend to think that Salvador knew what he was doing as well. No. And that isn’t just blatant denial to further my argument. “Human” was not among the things I thought of when I first saw it. You see, My first experience with Salvador Dali was with a few of his paintings in the book Dreams and Dreaming, a sort of reference book. I was stricken by his style and wanted to see more. This was in the days before I had internet, so I went to Chapters and bought a book about him. I read this book as I read any other book: cover to cover. The book was arranged in chronological order, so by the time I got to the persistence of memory, I had already been exposed to this recurring element. The first time I saw the element was back in Dreams and Dreaming, in the painting Sleep This was actually an unusual one where he made the face look like nothing at first, then had it suddenly reveal itself as a face. When I was looking at some of his earlier works that contained the element, my first thought was actually how inhuman they looked compared to the head in Sleep. If you add on a nonhuman body (for example, a horse's body), suddenly it's inhuman, yes. I’d agree with this. However, you said “a manlike figure with no mouth.” Intriguing. I must investigate this. It’s the bee’s knees. You can get this hip thing called satellite, which lets you see all the talkies on the movie channels, plus watch your stories on the rest. But they're not, apparently? Your snide remarks aside, you seem to be confirming what I said. You said, "They are as real as anything on the far realm can be." That statement sets up an absolute level of reality that cannot be exceeded. If this level is less than the level than the reality of the Material Plane, then it can be accurately said that "nothing in the Far Realm is real." However, your follow-up statement says they are real, which means that although they "look like" hallucinations and delusions, they are nothing of the sort, which is what I claimed. If you claimed this, then you’re right. They are not hallucinations or delusions in that they are physical and do exist. However they look like hallucinations and delusions in that they mock insanity. So no hallucinations or delusions are needed in the Far Realm in that some layers show scenes similar to what someone experiencing hallucinations or delusions would see.
Raymond_Luxury_Yacht 02-27-07, 10:33 PM	Any biologist would say that this guy has a backbone. In fact, anyone who knows the first thing about biology would say that this guy has a backbone. Except you, it seems. It doesn't bend the way it would if it had a spine. Anyone with any knowledge of biology could tell you that. He has no exoskeleton, yet can support himself. This means he has an endoskeleton. Thus he is (a fantasy equivalent of) either a coleoid (like a squid), an echinoderm (like a starfish), a poriferon (like a coral), or a chordate (like a person). Of course you're going to fall back on your "but supernerd222, things don't always work in fantasy like they do in real life" argument. I will argue in advance by pointing out that only one of these biological organizations has joints: the chordates. He has joints. Now unless he, or some Big Brother/hivemind/parasite uses a psionic ability/spell every time he moves (as ripvanwormer would have it) he needs a way to connect his brain (or concept thereof ;)) To the tendons that activate his muscles. Dude, the picture clearly shows that the uvuudam is solid muscle. It doesn't need an endoskeleton. Oh, and on an aside, that sure as hell isn't a bloody navel. And the second picture is irrelevant, since it isn't an uvuudam. It's a pseudonatural human.
ripvanwormer 02-28-07, 01:31 AM	In order to expedite matters, I'll try to simply respond to Supe's main points rather than subject this thread to more agonizing fisking. Yes, of course there are similarities in appearance between some aspects of uvuudaum anatomy and some aspects of mammalian anatomy. This, as I said earlier, is fine, and contradicts none of my points. Pointing out superficial similarities in anatomy does not constitute a good argument that a given creature is human or mammalian, however. Aesthetically, I think my fanciful explanations of uvuudaum anatomy are more appropriate to the Far Realm than supernerd's mundane ones. I think my ideas withstand rigor in a fantastic context, but supernerd's ideas rely on assumptions that do not exist in the official description of the Far Realm, a plane lacking in gravity or physical movement. His argument that a symbiont is necessarily statted is without merit. Things are statted when they have meaningful game effects. If they do not (and an uvuudaum's arms don't), then they don't need to be statted, any more than an actual tape worm would need to be. He seems to miss the distinction between something a game master can understand for the purposes of the game and something that would break the mind of a creature submitted to it in real life. If the Far Realm was real, and I was in it, my mind would, according to the conventions of the plane, be shattered by the alien complexity of it. At the same time, its basic principles are understandable, whether by me, by Bruce Cordell, by Supernerd, by a character in d20 Modern, or by a wizard from Oerth or Toril. This is not a paradox. Talking about or even describing an environment in a game is very different from being subjected to it in real life. I could role-play battle without getting post-traumatic stress disorder, but I probably wouldn't be so lucky in an actual war. Hades was not "always there" in the D&D cosmology. The planes, and the Great Wheel, had a beginning. Even the primal proto-planes that preceded the Great Wheel had a beginning. The primordial plane of Evil that the Gray Waste evolved from was not always there. Its exact origins aren't clear - perhaps it slowly congealed from thoughts floating in the Astral Plane. The idea that the Outer Planes are composed of spirit rather than elemental matter is found in Planescape, but the basic premise under contention is implicit in the current definition of the outsider type, who have no dichotomy between body and soul. This certainly doesn't mean they're made entirely of matter, with no spirit at all. In fact, many of them (archons, tanar'ri, baatezu, angels) are created from mortal spirits. The idea that outsiders are made of the same matter as creatures from the Material Plane is incompatible with the rules, but more importantly it violates a basic axiom of fantasy. It turns them into mere extradimensional aliens, not the spiritual beings their flavor, both in the game and in the myths and literature that inspired it, demands. Fortunately, Supernerd seems to concede my point in his second missive, admitting to the possibility of "incorporeal elements," and getting the concept of ghosts right. Outsiders are made of the same substance ghosts are, except they're not incorporeal. Just as there can be incorporeal elements, there can be purely spiritual elements, made of the same substance as ghosts and souls. These need not be incorporeal. Supernerd is arguing that if the Far Realm was not maddening, the other traits that make it distinctive would therefore not exist either. I don't think this follows at all; the Far Realm could certainly contain infinite overlapping layers, no gravity, thought-powered movement, and so on without necessarily breaking the minds of those non-natives who explore it. It's a conceit of the genre, inspired by Lovecraft, that profoundly alien experiences shatter the minds of mere humans. However, it's only a fictional conceit, and certainly not required. We could equally decide that the mind is more resilient and adaptable than that. For this reason, I can't accept his premise that the maddening trait is essential if the Far Realm is to be a unique and distinctive plane. The maddening trait itself, after all, isn't unique to the Far Realm. His attempt to dissect my list of distinctive features of the Far Realm would have been meaningless even if the individual dissections had been intellectually honest. After all, we can equally easily dissect just about anything into its component parts. This doesn't mean the combination of these individual parts isn't distinctive. One major problem I have with the way supernerd debates is the contortions he applies to words in the English language. A good example is his insistence that because a being could conceivably improve in some way the word "inchoate" is therefore an appropriate word for it. The word "inchoate," standing alone, has strong connotations that the lords of Baator do not fit. The word, as supernerd uses it, fits literally everyone except for Thomas Aquinas' concept of the Divine, and would therefore be useless if used in that way. I don't believe it's the case that supernerd doesn't understand the concept of connotations - I think he simply decided to ignore them in an attempt to extricate himself from an embarrassing show of ignorance. His contention that he can use the words "tentacle" and "antennae" interchangeably seems to be similar. It's not that he doesn't know that, though the distinction may be in some sense arbitrary, the words are applied to very different kinds of creatures with very different anatomies. He is simply arguing dishonestly in order to artificially expand the list he was so proud of. I'm a bit puzzled that he's suggesting that I'm being somehow inconsistent in identifying a formian's antennae as antennae. Formians are explicitly identified as ant-people. Uvuudaum are nowhere identified as humanoids or mammals. You cannot "walk from mountain to mountain" in Gehenna. The volcanic layers are separated by regions of void, cosmic in scale. Even if it was possible to travel between the layers of the plane by means other than portals, this is not the same as being able to travel from plane to plane through will alone, as is possible in the Far Realm. The same argument applies to Ysgard, Acheron, and Celestia. Supernerd is unfortunately taking the diagrams of the planes more literally than they're meant to be taken; the relationship between the layers is not a spatial one. The sole exception is Bytopia, where it is possible to climb to the next layer through a connecting mountain such as Centerspire. However, it is not possible to do so simply by willing it, which is the distinction I intended to make. I'm afraid that the difference between a timeless plane and a plane with flowing time is extreme enough that no one could help but notice the difference. The difference between a timeless plane, where time proceeds at the same rate as the rest of the multiverse but no one ages while there, and a flowing time plane, where time proceeds at a different rate compared to other planes, is breathtakingly obvious to even the densest minds. Scenario one: Timeless. Walter goes to another plane for a hundred years. He does not age when he's there, nor does he have to eat, drink, or breathe. When he returns to his original plane, a hundred years have passed from the perspective of the locals. Scenario two: Flowing Time. Walter goes to another plane for a hundred years. During that time, he grows a hundred years older at the rate of one day per day. When he returns to his original plane, only a few minutes have passed from the perspective of the locals. Claiming that these two traits are in any way similar is just insulting. I don't think the presence of a rumored portal to the Far Realm in the Dreamheart supports the point Supernerd was making. The portal is simply temporal, rather than planar, in nature. I'm not sure how I'm being inconsistent in permitting the Outer Planes a distinctive flavor. The words I use generally prefer to do without the letter "u" if they can manage it; however, there are exceptions, and occasionally I'll find one that wants to be decked out in frills. I'm usually rather stern about submitting my words to the same standards regardless of their preferences, unfortunately, arbitrary as they may be. I can be a cruel master, but I think it ultimately works out better that way. The consensus on the Ravenloft message board is that Lovecraftian horror is an awkward fit for the setting at best. I don't want to appeal to a message board consensus as if it were proof (certainly, I wouldn't single out any individual as an "expert" and expect you to be impressed - that would be ridiculous), but this is the basis for my understanding. I tend to agree; keep Lovecraftian horror in the Far Realm, and let Ravenloft keep its own flavor, which I think is hardly vanilla. I'm certainly not talking about the Outer Planes without including Sigil as part of it. However, singling out Sigil for mockery made the joke fall flat. For it to have worked, I would have had to single out Sigil myself first. As it was, it was simply puzzling.
ripvanwormer 02-28-07, 04:00 AM	Supernerd, I'm not going to dissect your dissection of the Idar Flamme in much detail, but I find it unconvincing. The text simply does not suggest to me the image you've shown. Ultimately, I have the impression that you're trying to convince me that black is white. For example, you claim the architecture is "something like a gothic cathedral" when Dali's painting actually shows a very Classical building. My degree in art history tells me the difference between Gothic and Classical architecture is significant. There's no trilobite motif, only the floor is black, there is no throne room, and none of the creatures on the list appear in the painting. Note that a realm with the slowed time trait is not part of the Far Realm in any case. Your argument that things should work on Oerth and Toril the way they do in d20 Modern Earth is simply wrong, for the reasons I've gone into previously. The fundamental laws of nature vary from sphere to sphere and from plane to plane. Your argument that creatures like angels and demons are made of the same substance as humans and elves remains both inaccurate and grotesque. While the SRD tried to leave room for the definition of "outsider" to include creatures like half-fiends and tieflings who are not entirely made of spirit, the official origins of beings like baatezu and archons - made from human souls - necessitates that they're entirely spiritual in nature. The difference is the difference between outsiders and native outsiders. Native outsiders do have a body-soul dichotomy, while outsiders do not. Outsiders do not have a body-soul dichotomy because they are entirely souls, just as ghosts are. I would, of course, be able to distinguish between forms of paranoia with entirely different delusions based on the fact that (drum roll please) the delusions are different. We are, of course, by this time not really disagreeing with one another; we're just arguing entirely different things. I'm talking about symptoms, while you're talking about brain chemistry. However, my point that the natives of the Far Realm don't necessarily have any brain chemistry still holds. Your thoughts about completely alien beings requiring lasting relationships to survive remains a logical leap too far to be considered reasonable. We've discussed alternate reproductive possibilities before. You question my state of mind because I used your example of a universe where everyone believes they're being watched. The crucial difference, however, is I mentioned only that symptom; I didn't assign any clinical diagnosis like paranoia. Your argument is that even if the symptoms are different, paranoia is the same everywhere. Perhaps so, but I'm not, in this particular example, necessarily talking about paranoia at all. Beings who think based on entirely different principles, with radically different neural anatomies or no neurons at all, may not have anything like our particular mental disorders. Your assumption that mental illness would be the same in every intelligent species is not a good one, or a reasonable one. It is simply something you've repeatedly insisted without presenting any evidence. Your "clews" on the nature of Far Realm movement, however, are worthwhile, but I must ultimately disagree with your interpretation. Words like "swimming" and "crawling" suggest the use of limbs (they do have that connotation), but ultimately the phrase "The only type of movement is passage between layers, which requires only thought" lacks any ambiguity. If there is only one type of movement, that's the only type of movement there is. While this is "like swimming," and involves strokes, these are mental strokes, not physical ones - they may actually be the neurological injury of that name, given the nature of the Far Realm. The rules of D&D do indeed rely on common sense, but the Far Realm does not. It is, in fact, the perfect opportunity to subvert common sense at every opportunity. While there are opportunities to subvert common sense in the Outer Planes as well (including things like infinite spaces that can nonetheless be seen across, such as in my interpretation of Gehenna's voids), and the whole point of this discussion is my defense of surrealism in the Outer Planes, the Far Realm has an entirely different wealth of sense-defying spectacles. One of these is the idea of a creature that seems to be humanoid but which is actually a mass of symbiotic or parasitic organisms that only resembles a humanoid superficially. Uvuudaums, of course, aren't humanoid anyway, so it might be better to use the concept elsewhere. However, I think it's a concept with considerable merit. The nature of psi-like abilities is that they can be used at will, and are never used up. Therefore, a psionic connection need not be less efficient than a neural one. I was speaking earlier about the nature of an illithid brain, and how it is fundamentally different from a human one. The way it behaves as part of a brain golem is identical to the way it behaves in the ceremorphosis of humanoids. The concept of ceremorphosis is official, detailed in Lords of Madness and the 2nd edition Ilithiad. Magic and fiendish possession are additional examples of the control of living creatures without a direct neural connection. With fiends, the issue is more complex; the process is described in detail in the Fiendish Codex I, and I won't get into it further here. In fantasy, a certain amount of rigor is indeed normally expected. Without this rigor, it doesn't necessarily become "bad fantasy" - Alice in Wonderland is proof that less rigorous fantasy can be brilliant. For that matter, so is a Surrealist painting. However, my criticism of you wasn't that you were applying rigor to the fantasy genre, but that you seemed unfamiliar with many basic fantastic conventions, like the idea that demons are creatures made entirely of spirit, yet are still solid, or the idea that a mind can exist independently of a brain. It's confusing - I would think you were just some regular person who accidently stumbled on to this forum and started randomly arguing with the first topic you saw, except you know what an uvuudaum is and you can quote from the Manual of the Planes. I guess you just entered the genre from a different background than me. The Far Realm is not outside the Material Plane specifically; it's outside time, which exists as a common factor across the Great Wheel. Therefore, the destruction of the Material Plane alone would not necessarily open a rift to the Far Realm. Time and history would still continue, and thus we have not yet reached the end of time. Only when all the planes of the Wheel are gone can time truly be considered to have ended. Your quote from the Manual of the Planes is not as clear as you're making it out to be - saying something is a "space beyond the planes" does not say anything specific about the sense in which it is "beyond." If it is beyond only in a temporal sense, the quote is still perfectly valid. I agree, however, that there could be an extra "step" - or more than one - through which a traveler would have to travel after going beyond the beginning or ending of time. I was assuming there wasn't for simplicity's sake, but it could be there are other dimensions separating the Far Realm from the Wheel as well. My point is that at the very least, a journey to the Far Realm is a journey through time. Ordinary portals will not suffice to get there, but temporal portals may. It is not true that Astral travelers are only transformed into thought if they are astrally projecting. In fact, there is very little difference between an astrally projecting traveler and one who arrives on the Astral through a portal or plane shift. They both appear equally solid to one another, and they both create new solid bodies when they arrive on other planes. The difference is an astrally projecting character leaves a body behind (connected by a silver cord), while other astral travelers don't. No, githyanki don't "just vanish" when they enter the Material Plane. They are not "just figments of their parents' imaginations." For one thing, githyanki begin their lives on the Material Plane, and githyanki reproduce in much the same way as terrestrial reptiles. There are virtually no creatures who are actually born on the Astral - astral dreadnoughts and conduit spirits are pretty much the only ones. Some githyanki may be born on the corpses of dead gods of time, where time passes enough for them to naturally mature. These githyanki, if they enter the Material Plane, their body becomes as material as those of natives. I suppose powerful enough magic may indeed protect a character traveling at relativistic velocities until the end of time. I don't think writing as if you weren't lucid is good or bad; it's just confusing. You're right that portals connect places through the Astral Plane. However, they do not cause a traveler to move through space for billions of years, experiencing the time as a subjective instant. You know this perfectly well, unless you're actually asleep or drunk, as I intimated earlier. You seem to have gotten very offended at the latter suggestion; I don't personally think being drunk is good or bad, so I didn't intend it as a flame. It was just the only way I could describe your puzzling arguments. It seems that some of your posts contain what I would characterize as logical arguments, and then there's suddenly this, where you seem to be attempting to persuade me that because portals are capable of transporting a character an infinite distance, relativistic physics must be applied to this, meaning that the journey actually takes until the end of time, with the travel only appearing instantaneous from the perspective of the traveler. There is, in fact, no real space in the Astral Plane, so using that plane as a connection is as close to "direct" as it is possible to be. There is literally no distance between one side of a portal and another. When I asked you if you were asleep "right now," I meant when you wrote it. One way in which a very large crystal sphere contradicts physics is that it has no gravity, despite its mass. New elements contradict neither physics nor chemistry - however, the Phlogiston is sufficiently weird that it bears mentioning. You can breathe it, you can set it on fire, it preserves people lost in it in a sort of hibernation indefinitely, and - oh yes - it flows at faster than the speed of light with no relativistic effects. Spelljamming ships generate gravity not because of magic, but because all objects of sufficient mass in the Spelljammer universe generate an identical gravity field. All worlds, regardless of size, generate the same level of gravity. There are two exceptions to this: crystal spheres and starbeasts, neither of which generate gravity despite their mass. Starbeasts are creatures like giant humans, elephants, and turtles who hold stars and planets on their backs or in their hands. There are actually several books that give the sizes of planets of the D&D Material Plane - Practical Planetology and the Spelljammer boxed set are two of them. While one could argue that size is not mass, it's impossible to honestly argue that an asteroid, a gas giant, a star the size of Earth's sun, a great wyrm dragon, and a ship the size and shape of a galleon are all of identical mass. Yet a person standing on any of these things weighs exactly the same. This is not the result of special magic. It's an axiom that's true even in an anti-magic field, regardless of whether or not something's been enchanted. Yes, I'm incredibly old. You can see that from the picture of me at the top of each of my posts. It wasn't until recently that I found out they had raised the number of elements above 17. While the fact that there are four elemental planes does not necessarily mean that all matter is made of those elements, this is indeed the assumption in D&D. The fact that something needs to be trained doesn't have anything to do with the question of identity, so that part of your argument doesn't advance it at all. I would have to train myself to run a marathon; it doesn't mean that I'm not "me" when I'm not running a marathon. While dreams are random by default, we agree that they need not be so. You may have assumed I was talking only about random dreams, but you assumed incorrectly. I only said "dreams," and by this I meant to include lucid dreams. Probably our biggest difference in this debate is that you consistently make assumptions that I don't think are valid. While I used the clone spell as an example of clones in D&D who don't develop unique personalities, they need not be the only case in the game in which this is so. Such an ability might be part of the natural reproductive cycle of a Far Realm creature, and require no magic. Respawning does not create a being with a new personality. Whether the experience could be conceptualized as "death" is open to argument. My statement "who cares if they're intelligent, as long as they're omozu" actually made a crucial distinction, if you were paying attention. Because you invented the word, I assumed you'd know what I meant. You defined omozu as "anything capable of solving a problem or interacting with anyone, with either no assistance, or only triggers." By this definition, a computer is omozu. However, a computer has no ego. I suggested that creatures of the Far Realm might be intelligent, but have no sense of self: "just egoless intellect and a drive for self preservation." You suggested that an egoless being would be unintelligent. I pointed out that they could still be omozu. They could solve problems and interact with others much as intelligent creatures do. The PCs wouldn't notice the difference, except that these alien beings have no fear of or concept of death. This was my argument, which I assumed you'd pick up on. My apologies. However, my thanks for inventing such a useful word. It describes what I meant perfectly in a way that no other word that I know can. An example of a source that uses the phrase "unconscious mind" where you say "subconscious mind" is Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_mind). My psychology textbooks did the same. While Sigmund Freud revolutionized neuroscience, his emphasis on a rigid dichotomy between the conscious and unconscious is not to my understanding supported by current research. The fact that different parts of the brain evolved at different parts of our evolutionary history does not mean that they are different people. I think elves should be played as very alien creatures, yes. I don't think they should be as alien as outsiders and aberrations. How alien it's possible to play elves as may vary depending on the player. We were, in fact, talking about what Salvador Dali intended by his painting, which you probably would have realized if you hadn't been stinking drunk, you liquor-sodden hobo. While the conversation had wandered to include D&D by way of example, we were still trying to answer the question asked at the beginning: is this face human? A plate with eyes is nonhuman, because a plate is an nonhuman object; a demon with many eyes is nonhuman, because a demon is not human. A scrap of skin with a human eye is entirely human. We could speculate that maybe it had nonhuman features which are now gone, but this is only speculation - we can assume that Dali would give us the clues we needed. Certainly, there's not enough evidence to state categorically that the face is "inhuman." If we were no longer talking about what Dali intended, the conversation no longer had any meaning. Yes, in a fantasy world a random eyeball could belong to any number of creatures, but such speculation has no tether and thus no satisfactory conclusion. The question was not could this face possibly be nonhuman in a fantastic universe, but whether or not you were correct in saying that it was, in this particular painting by Salvador Dali, a "very inhuman face." The burden of proof was on you, for all that you've attempted to change the frame of the argument. While the face in "The Persistence of Memory" may be comparatively inhuman, it is still obviously intended to represent part of a human being. And no, I believe it was you that first brought up the manlike figure with no mouth.
Bob the Efreet 03-01-07, 08:20 PM	So the tentacles are not good enough on the squid and octopus. And the kraken for that matter. No, squid and octopuses are perfect examples of non-aberration, non-far realm, perfectly native to Earth creatures that have tentacles. Assuming we ignore the subjective truth that cephalopods are terrible and awful monstrosities. That's from the article "Lovecraftian Horror." I'm inclined to believe that the people who wrote the Ravenloft Campaign Setting know more about it that somebody on Wikipedia. Especially considering that, in my experience, Ravenloft is one of the most misunderstood D&D settings out there. I think your argument is based upon the assumption that the outer planes are made of spirit. They are. Now since there is nothing 3.0/3.5 that says the outer planes are made of spirit, and possibly nothing of second edition either (I don’t own enough Planescape books to say), the issue becomes a matter of opinion. That's entirely possible. Sometimes opinion gets popular enough among certain groups of fan base that we forget it's not entirely official. And I'm not invested in this argument enough to look for a quote in one of the Planescape books to prove it, but I'm reasonably sure the concept originated there. Wow, I wish I could eat concepts, too. That's the strangest argument I have ever heard. Anybody on the Outer Planes is most likely eating the concept of food, unless it was brought from a Material or Inner plane. Oh yes, the electroweak force. How could I have overlooked this? It's pretty hard to pin down. I figure Heisenburg has something to do with it.
Magicianguy131 03-04-07, 02:08 PM	I just want WotC to post something..SOMETHING about the Far Realm. I would really want to travel their in my group. :::Magicianguy131:::
Bob the Efreet 03-05-07, 03:40 AM	I would really want to travel their in my group. No you wouldn't. Nobody wants to go there. There is nothing but horror and (if you're lucky) death waiting Outside.
Magon 05-26-07, 01:03 PM	okay i've just read the whole thered so i might have messed something up. sorry if a have. also this post is an agument against superneard, so "you" refers to superneard. okay? 1...2....3... GO! spiret, soul, essense is pretty mixed up. but spiret=soul, exept that spiret often if used about creatuers that have no physical body. also essece, while pretty hard to desripe is the purest form of something, to an extent. okay.... let's see devils are the souls of humanoids, powerd by devine power taken fron other souls, right? oh so now we also know that soul = devine power. anyway let's go on. devils are also composed by the essence of there plane, wich is law and evil. does anyone object? so let's see: they are souls infuced with law and evil, and powered by the divine power of other souls. yet there's nothing physical here. so now this daemon goes to the material plane to corrup some more souls to get more power. OH NOES IT DONT HAVE A PHYSICAL BODY. maybe it's a possere fiend. no problem then. but what if it want a physical body? well as you seamingly love sience i'll let you in on a secret: matter is energy. so all that devine powe, the get to use. they turn it to matter. thus when we hack them to pices, we smach there power to pices. eventualy they have only a emty shell (there soul, wich now dont have any of the power they got earlyer, from alther souls) it also has the essnce of it's plane. thus it returs, much less power full as something much more lowly. it is the same thing that keeps there plane together. devine power, derived by souls, infused by the idea of law and evil. sorry about any nonsese and bad spelling, i'm a tierd 14 year old boy from denmark
Cynewulf 05-26-07, 01:39 PM	I'm not the only one who's brain was fried by this thread. Supernerd, you do indeed seem to be approaching this from a completely different perspective to how many people view not just The Far Realm, but fantasy. Not everything has to be codified!:) Relax, have a cigar! The more I think about it, this whole thread seems to be an attempt to bring the Far Realm into our world!
sciborg2 05-26-07, 02:57 PM	What desserts are crazy enough that they might originate in the Far Realm...me, I've been wary of sponge-cake...
Cynewulf 05-26-07, 03:14 PM	Baked Alaska of course. And chili chocolate.
Bob the Efreet 05-27-07, 08:24 PM	Baked Alaska of course. Indeed. Fire and ice cream? How bizarre.
Kassil 05-31-07, 12:33 AM	The Far Realms are chaotic. Pure and simple. In fact, almost all real world mythologies support the idea of the far realms being chaotic. The Far Realms are largely based off of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos; he and his contemporaries devised mutually as they went. Lovecraft was playing with the idea that galaxies might be island universes; that different galaxies might, in fact, have different laws of physics governing them and the things born of them, and that those things might wander into our universe over the passage of eons. The Far Realm is not chaotic; the Far Realm is discordant, as we perceive it. Chaos can have remarkably stable patterns born of it (slaadi, as a race, could be one such example) despite the apparent seething randomness of it all. The Far Realm has no such understandable patterns born from it; it is madness incarnate, alien dimensions rotating and shifting around one another, slipping and sliding through the 3+1 space that we are creatures of.
GuesssWho 07-05-07, 10:36 AM	Both of you are forgetting that the Far Realm is inexplicable. Paranoia is not it's main problem: schizophrenia is. Or maybe not. The people who came up with the idea do not understand it either. The laws of biology and indeed physics are irrelevant in the Far Realm. Stop trying to make sense of them.
sciborg2 07-05-07, 01:42 PM	I've never really found the Far Realms all that incomprehensible...but then I think that as described by Wizards you can just have it be a layer of the Abyss.
Lobsopdoy 07-09-07, 02:55 PM	I think supernerd222 needs to stop trying to argue with ripvanwormer. Rip's arguments are far more rational and lend themselves better to the entire point of the Far Realm then nerd's, which seem to be "How do you know that whatever isn't a golf ball/insane/chemicals/what have you" The Far Realm isn't something that's supposed to be defined or anything. You CAN'T map out the Far Realm, it doesn't WORK. It's basically filled with titan monstrosities that could kill you by blinking if it actually noticed you and you weren't so insignificant that it can't even really be bothered. Some of them may be "good", some of them may be "evil" but that's just us applying morality to something that cares about neither. A better term would be "benign" or "malignant". Maybe it likes the Great Wheel, maybe it doesn't, but it doesn't care about good or evil.
trolloc 07-09-07, 03:07 PM	i think i got a glimpse of higher spatial geometry insanity by scrolling down the 4th page of this thread quickly. It took me either 20 seconds or 20 decades. I don't know.
supernerd222 07-09-07, 11:55 PM	I think supernerd222 needs to stop trying to argue with ripvanwormer. Perhaps if you had taken the time to sneak a peek at the date on my last post to this thread, you might have noticed that it was made upon February effing 27th. This, of course leaves two possible solutions: a) I stopped arguing in this debate a helluva long time ago, realising that I was not going to convince Rip of my viewpoint (which I retain), and the amount of energy I was putting into it was not equal to the amount of matter that it mattered. =OR= b) I am writing a 300 page treatise on the Far Realms, proving that my worthy opponent, Mr. vanwormer is wrong in a biblical way, and may as well scoop his eyes out with a spoon and replace them with Cadbury cream eggs right now, because at least then the person who finds his bleeding body on his couch, trying to watch Will and Grace reruns (but finding it difficult with candy for eyes) will remember him forever, and that's the only way anyone will remember him, because his complete and utter wrongness is such that he shall slip from everyone's memory instantly after reading my book, because the reader will realise how WRONG he is and will not want to even have his memory in their mind because some of the residual WRONGNESS might seep into their psyche and even that tiny fraction of his WRONGNESS, and only in their mind will cauuse them to be WRONG to a level only surpassed by ripvanwormer. HINT: I'm not writing a book about the far realms. But now that I'm posting here again, I may as well point a few things out. Firstly, to say that the outer planes have no matter, which is what I believe the argument to have been, is to say that the inner planes have no ideas. The Inner planes are the wellsprings of elements and energies for the rest of the multiverse, just as the outer planes are the wellsprings of ideas, thoughts, attitudes, alignments, and worldviews, to say nothing of them being the home of the gods. The elemental plane of fire is a place of fire just as Hades is a place of hoplessness and lethargy. But the Elemental plane of fire has hoplessness and lethargy, as well as chaos and evil and law and good and kindness, perfection, cruelty, regimentation, hate and love and hope and anarchy and moderate conservatisim, greed and lust and regret and reverance. Either that, or the genies, azers, half-elementals, and all the other intelligent inhabitants of the elemental plane of fire are the most boring creatures ever and I hope your players never have to go there because a place without all those things would be simply torturous to play in. So if the elemental plane of fire has hopelessness and lethargy, it follows that Hades has fire. If ideas from the outer planes can exist on an inner plane, energies and elements from an inner plane can - and do - exist on an outer plane. As for the Far Realms, which is supposed to be the subject in question, there are a number of flaws in the general argument. Firstly, if we are to believe that this plane comes from the writings of H.P. Lovecraft (which, I might add, I believe they do, at least in part), which has been argued in a number of recent posts, i.e: The Far Realms are largely based off of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos; Then it must be understood that the Far Realms secure a place, and the place I was arguing that they occupy, beyond the outer planes of the great wheel. Why? Simply because that is where the equivalent of the Far Realms in Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos lie. Not beyond the outer planes, of course, but in "strangely organized abysses wholly beyond the reaches of any human imagination." or "the black cosmos outside time and space where they came from originally" (H.P.L, "The Whisperer in Darkness") It is clear from the fiction of Lovecraft that the "Outside" was just that, a place outside the universe, and all the other universes arranged in arcs and angles. Accessable with space travel of a high degree, not exclusively time travel. But moving back to the thing that started this whole sprawling debate, the possibility of parts of the far realms being Daliesque. In fact, not just like the work of Dali, but a list of other painters, with whose work I represented a gradual degredation of reality to the utter... otherness of the far realms. It was argued that no way could such a pantheon of artists represent the far realm, because they are, of all things, human. I will say nothing of Lovecraft's ease of depicting a similar place, but rather bring to light the following: One of the few ways into the Far realm is a portal at the very heart of the Plane of Dreams. Salvador Dali based his paintings on dreams. If one of the ways into the far realm is through a portal in the dreamheart, does this not speak volumes about the content one might find there? Dreamlike, perhaps?
Lobsopdoy 07-11-07, 04:56 PM	:( Looks like I touched a nerve
Potato_Dragon 07-12-07, 04:19 AM	Just because I felt like it, here's my view on where the Far Realms actually are. Note that this uses assumptions which are neither supported nor contradicted by any material which I have seen, so this is all opinion only. The inner and outer planes are removed from the Prime (and each other) via metaphysical "layers" of reality. If you magically travel from the Prime to a nonspecific location in Gehenna (for example), you don't actually go anywhere in the normal sense, merely alter your metaphysical "level" of existence. You're still in the same spot, space/time wise (or very close to it if the spot you were on is within solid matter on Gehenna), and will return to the same place on the prime if you shift back without moving anywhere. Likewise, if you go to the Elemental Plane of Earth, you simply alter your metapysical reality so that everything around you is defined by the elemental properties of earth. More or less. The Far Realms, on the other hand... are removed from all of the planes both physically and temporally. If you could simultaneously travel several billion years in time (either to the past or future) and across several billion light-years of space, you will eventually reach a point where objective reality starts to break down, time and space have no real meaning, and all of the planes exist together simultaneously because there's no longer any "levels" to separate them. The Far Realm is both before the beginning of time and past the end, outside the normal confines of space, and it exists as the Prime and Gehenna and Elemental Water and the Astral and Ysgard and Positive Energy and Mechanus and everything all at once. Since mortals aren't designed to deal with all levels of reality simultaneously, it tends to break them, both physically and mentally.
Asra 07-18-07, 03:48 PM	Actually, according to the MoTP the way to the far realm is by going to the center of the Temporal Energy Plane. It is beyond space and time, at the end of the universe and the beginning, having nothing to do with humanity at all. The plane of dreams however, doesn't really lead anywhere, unless you use magic to get to another plane via another creature's dreams. But going to the exact center of the Plane, according to Core and the MoTP, doesn't take you anywhere. You just go in, and come out with an understanding of what exists in the Eye of the Dreamheart Tempest, which varies widely from what the next person meets there. Though it doesn't really take you to the Far Realm, like the Citadel of Eternity in the Temporal Energy Plane does. EDIT: But other than that, I sorta agree with you on most of the other stuff.
GuesssWho 07-27-07, 07:03 PM	The Far Realm is outside everything. It is what you would find if you just kept going in any direction-spacial or temporal-for billions of years.;) There is nothing more to say, just because you're all trying to understand the Inexplicable.:D
Lyinginbedmon 07-27-07, 07:19 PM	In the D&D Future cosmology, the Far Realm is "blank space", which the universe is expanding into (Which may explain why they are inherently hostile whenever someone manages to get there). To get to the Far Realm, you either have to seriously foul up transportation magic, or go superluminal at the edge of the universe and punch through.
Asra 07-28-07, 11:17 AM	The Future D&D Cosmology? Where is that from?
Shemeska the Marauder 07-28-07, 12:00 PM	The Future D&D Cosmology? Where is that from? Home campaign or speculation I assume, because none of that was from a published source.