What is matter made of in Eberron? [Archive] - Wizards Community

What is matter made of in Eberron? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
ahiman
04-28-07, 03:15 AM This question, while not relevant to the in-game fighting dynamics, is relevant to what is going on in the world and may help to add some layer of depth to the game for more scholarly characters.

There are several real world beliefs I want to examine here and give an opinion on which is the most likely to be true and which is the most likely to be commonly held. This is by no means an exhaustive list so feel free to add or discuss at will.

This is in part a synthesis of many philosophers’ views and also some of my own preferences so don't kill me if I in some way misrepresent some philosopher or philosophy.

Monadism
Atomism
Elementalism
Forms

Here are some simplified examples of these beliefs and how I think they might be adapted into Eberron.

Monadism: All things are made up of infinitely small points called monads. These points have varying traits and varying levels of consciousness and pass these traits to the space near them. All any piece of matter is is a collection of monads with similar traits near each other. Thus a fire is a group of monads that have heat as their main trait that are near each other. When the fire dies that is just the monads moving apart. In Eberron this belief would not be too common because it does not explain the relationships of the plains and why other plains seem to want to be with Eberron.

Atomism: All things are made of extremely small objects that can not be divided and are the basis of all other things. In this view even things like fire are made of atoms. Do not think of the modern view of atoms, rather think of incredibly small chunks of varying size that have properties such as, heat, cold, thought, non-thought esc. Humans would have a high degree of thought atoms and things like angels would have a high degree of spiritual atoms. This view would be healed by a minority of scholars in Eberron as it seems rather far fetched and based off of little. This however explains why other plains want to be with Eberron, they have lots of a few types of atoms and almost none of other types, Eberron has a high amount of all atoms.

Elementalism: Everything is made of 5 elements in varying degrees. The 5 are Air, Water, Earth, Fire and Ether. All things are just a mixture of them with the proportions changing to change what something is or how it acts. This is a common view among the Zil and others who deal with elementals (for obvious reasons) though it losses popularity with other people due to its lack of relation to plains other then the elemental ones.

Forms: All things are just trying to be like their true forms in "Heaven" (where the god live). Thus when a fire burns it is trying to be like the form of fire in heaven. This belief is common among the religious as it explains the gods and how they work in our world but is less common among the less believing.

Thanks and have fun.
ekomega
04-28-07, 03:55 AM Everything in Eberron is made of:

1) magic.
2) The Prophecy.
3) tiny bits of the three progenitor dragons, in various ratios.
Cifer
04-28-07, 07:23 AM I'd generally say most things in Eberron are made of, well, Eberron. Excluding things that came from Khyber and Syberis of course. And possibly from the other planes - AFAIK, it's still unknown how they tie into the creation legend.
Yadot
04-28-07, 02:55 PM It is not exactly Eberron but I always liked this (http://www.mimir.net/essays/planarphysics.html) explanation for what things are made up of in DND.
Alex_
04-28-07, 06:14 PM My thoughts...

I think the material plane is the product of all the other planes interacting with it. Fernia is dominated by fire, Mabar is dominated by darkness, Irian is dripping with positive energy. They contain very little, if any, of other properties.

The Material Plane of Khyber/Eberron/Syberis is composed of all these planes in balance. That's why, when a particular plane becomes remote to the Material Plane, you'll see a corresponding change on the material plane (fire burning less intensely when Fernia is further away and has less influence). When it's coterminous, aspects of the plane of strengthened (fire burns hotter when Fernia is closer).

Which I suppose is elementalism, only I don't limit it to just air, wind, earth, fire, and aether. Cold, Electricity, Acid, Darkness, Light, Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, and several other "elements" or themes that are found in the outer planes are part of the mix.
Evilmonster
04-30-07, 03:18 AM I prefer the Elemental approach myself. It's what makes alchemy go, it's what is evoked when an evocation spell is cast, and it's what actual elementals are made of. A water elemental isn't just made of water, it's made of Water (with a big W). Plus, it's a lot easer to ignore science when the world works sooo differently.

But now let me brain storm a bit. On the material plane there are levels of elements.

The most basic are (of course) Earth, Air, Water and Fire.

When they react correctly with positive energy you get four humors - black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. Treating someone with the use of the healing skill often means balancing these out in a person.

On a higher level (or more basic depending on how you look at it) there are- Force (which binds elements together), and Thought (which gives something a meaning), as well as Positive and Negative energies which maintain order and allow entropy respectively.

Higher than that are Devine and Infernal energies, which the various churches completely believe in and teach but which are also losing ground with the current scholastic community since as far as the leading researchers have been able to tell, angels and demons are all made of the same stuff as everything else.

That's just one possibility anyway and I'm sure some of the more thoughtful people who wander these boards will come up with something even better.
Edymnion
04-30-07, 09:07 PM You know you left out the current main theory. All matter is energy. String theory, basically. You get down to a small enough scale, and you have pure energy, that everything we know of as "matter" is simply how that energy interacts with other energy.

After all, matter and energy are interchangeable.
But, that said, I subscribe to planar elements in game. Rocks are hard because of the influence of the elemental plane of earth, fire is hot because of the influence of the elemental plane of fire, etc. The purer the concentration of the planar element, the more likely you are to find a portal to the realm itself (hence the deepest ocean ravines would have portals to the elemental plane of water at their bottoms, while an erupting volcano could have a portal to the elemental plane of fire in it's heart).

Adjust to Eberron's cosmology as needed.
ArcTan
05-01-07, 03:33 AM You know you left out the current main theory. All matter is energy. String theory, basically. You get down to a small enough scale, and you have pure energy, that everything we know of as "matter" is simply how that energy interacts with other energy.

Well... sure, but this doesn't have anything to do with string theory. This was part of the Special Theory of Relativity, decades before string theory.

Different variations on string theory try to explain the difference between "matter" and "energy" -- or, more properly, between fermions and bosons -- by incorporating supersymmetry (the idea that fermions and bosons are interchangeable) into the theory. None of these models has much empirical backing, and string theory doesn't actually have that much respect among theoretical physicists. It's more speculation than science.

Of course, there are good reasons to "leave out" theoretical physics when talking about fantasy cosmologies -- most of the things theoretical physics says don't even make sense when applied to fantasy universes, except insofar as you can take vague wordings of what they say ("All matter is energy") and call them true. That doesn't mean that any of real-life string theory's explanations for where mass comes from (like what the Higgs boson is like and how it gives photons mass so they can become W and Z bosons) even means anything in a fantasy world where alchemy is true and the four elements really do make up the world.

After all, matter and energy are interchangeable.
But, that said, I subscribe to planar elements in game. Rocks are hard because of the influence of the elemental plane of earth, fire is hot because of the influence of the elemental plane of fire, etc. The purer the concentration of the planar element, the more likely you are to find a portal to the realm itself (hence the deepest ocean ravines would have portals to the elemental plane of water at their bottoms, while an erupting volcano could have a portal to the elemental plane of fire in it's heart).

Adjust to Eberron's cosmology as needed.

More specifically, the four elements and two kinds of energy are both real things in Eberron as proved by the existence of elementals and such.

So real things really are made up of atoms of the four elements. We can probably take a broader view of what the elements mean than a purely literalist view would, and say that "earth" atoms make up all hard, rigid stuff, "water" atoms make up all liquid, flowing stuff, and "air" atoms make up all gaseous, expansive stuff. "Fire" atoms would represent heat and dynamism and motion -- i.e. what *we* call energy, or at least energy in the form of heat, only in this view energy is treated as a kind of matter, "fire matter". Moreover, in Eberron it's a fact that not only is heat a kind of substance made of fire, but that its opposite -- lack of energy, or cold -- is actually a corresponding and opposing element, "ice atoms" linked to Risia. The fact that fire atoms and ice atoms are fundamentally opposed and are fundamentally *separate* from the atoms that make up matter -- earth, air and water, all linked to Lamannia rather than Risia or Fernia -- thus makes a lot of alchemical sense.

What D&D calls "energy" isn't the same as what we call energy -- energy is more clearly represented by fire. Positive and negative "energy" are instead measures of the ordering of a system -- positive energy is pretty clearly ectropy and negative energy entropy.

When I "add positive energy" to a place, I don't make the place hotter or make things in the place move faster, per se -- I just make the place more *alive* -- I heal living structures and cause life to spread, for the most part. Whereas negative energy does the opposite and makes things deader, or even un-dead, which in D&D is really being so dead that you're the inverse and opposite of being alive, i.e. you walk and talk. Yeah, it's confusing from a real life perspective, but makes sense in itself.

So yes, ectropy and entropy -- order and disorder, structure and decay -- are their own substances in D&D and in Eberron, presumably also made up of atoms or particles.

Notice that even though I said "order" and "disorder" this has nothing to do with Law and Chaos, which don't really have the meaning an information scientist or physicist would put on those terms. Law and Chaos are terms to do with ethics and conscious beings, not the simple idea of order or disorder -- killing a Slaad by zapping it with negative energy means increasing the overall entropy (and disorder) of the universe, but the universe is *ethically* more Lawful as a result. Basically Law and Chaos more have to do with living systems matching each other or being disparate from each other (living in peaceful unity or free to make individual choices), which has little to do with ectropy or entropy (creating more difference between two systems often means decreasing the two systems' combined entropy). In any case, the idea of Kantian unity and Nietzschean individualism are themselves "forces" in D&D with a physical reality, and even "substances" (since Outsiders can be made of it) -- just as the basic ideas of destructive selfishness and empathic selflessness (Evil and Good) are real in D&D, although in Eberron Evil and Good are more pervasive and mixed than Law and Chaos. (Law and Chaos get their own pair of very obviously opposed planes devoted to those ideals alone, while Good and Evil seem to exist in admixture everywhere except Syrania -- it almost seems like the nature of the universe is Evil and Syrania is this one exception, a Good monopole that radiates Good into the rest of the universe. Perhaps with Thelanis as a secondary stronghold.)

I'm just rambling at this point, but you see where I'm going with this, right? D&D is all about things having a physical, substantial reality that are much more abstract measures in real life.
Splendide
05-01-07, 10:33 AM Isn't it made of minute chunks of dragon?
ahiman
05-03-07, 01:49 PM At this point there are a 4 main theories. Here they are and I will try to summarize them (so don't kill me).

Elemental Draconism: Everything is made from the progenitor dragons and they compose and dominate several forms of matter (Khyber is and controls darkness, madness...).

Energy power theory (just giving a more generic name to all of those energy is matter theories): Everything is made of energy when you break it down small enough. Perhaps there are two forms of energy, good (positive) and bad (negative).

Elemental control: All things are the 4 elements, but there are additional elements (positive, negative, though...) in those that influence the way they work and even where they are. Not all elements have all of these additional elements.

Planer Elementalism: All of the planes are dominated by a handful (or even just one) element. Each one has its own and they add their matter to Eberron (more when close, less when far).

Now in an idea world (I.E. ours, the best of all possible worlds) you guys would debate this for the rest of your lives. But I can see that this is unfeasible so we can just say that these are the main theories and people can add more if they want. Thanks for all of the contributions.
androkguz
05-03-07, 10:37 PM In favor of the Eberronian style I would suggest that all four of these are actually serious theories proposed by schoolars who can't get decided what is true. The real truth is a mystery.

By the way, I loved the atomist explanation but for Eberron I would have cold be part of the mix or I could have 12 elements/energies, plus one long lost.
Logos7
05-05-07, 04:52 PM its atomism in my game

The progenitor dragon myths are just that myth's

they are varied and don't agree and are of dubious historical originn or religious valadity.

People can see all kinds of stuff and know most stuff can be broken into smaller peaces. Either it breaks all the way down ( which more or less all rationalists have issues with) or it stops somewhere. That which doesn't break doesn't break because it's unbreakable thus all things are made up of unbreakable atoms.

That said i'm sure water is considered an atom and maybe fire ( or Phlogistan or something like it) but if they have alchemy they probably have various kinds of airs and various kinds of earths.

Logos
androkguz
05-05-07, 08:13 PM That said i'm sure water is considered an atom and maybe fire ( or Phlogistan or something like it) but if they have alchemy they probably have various kinds of airs and various kinds of earths.

Logos

I totally agree with that, and I would even add cold to the mix perhaps as another type of fire.

Perhaps...

1) Fire
2) Cold

3) Water

4) Air
5) Lightning

6) Earth
7) Metal (an element that creates different metals when mixed with other elements)
8) Crystal (same thing)
9) Stone (same thing)
10) Dust (same thing, could create talc)

11) Positive Energy
12) Light

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
ahiman 04-28-07, 03:15 AM	This question, while not relevant to the in-game fighting dynamics, is relevant to what is going on in the world and may help to add some layer of depth to the game for more scholarly characters. There are several real world beliefs I want to examine here and give an opinion on which is the most likely to be true and which is the most likely to be commonly held. This is by no means an exhaustive list so feel free to add or discuss at will. This is in part a synthesis of many philosophers’ views and also some of my own preferences so don't kill me if I in some way misrepresent some philosopher or philosophy. Monadism Atomism Elementalism Forms Here are some simplified examples of these beliefs and how I think they might be adapted into Eberron. Monadism: All things are made up of infinitely small points called monads. These points have varying traits and varying levels of consciousness and pass these traits to the space near them. All any piece of matter is is a collection of monads with similar traits near each other. Thus a fire is a group of monads that have heat as their main trait that are near each other. When the fire dies that is just the monads moving apart. In Eberron this belief would not be too common because it does not explain the relationships of the plains and why other plains seem to want to be with Eberron. Atomism: All things are made of extremely small objects that can not be divided and are the basis of all other things. In this view even things like fire are made of atoms. Do not think of the modern view of atoms, rather think of incredibly small chunks of varying size that have properties such as, heat, cold, thought, non-thought esc. Humans would have a high degree of thought atoms and things like angels would have a high degree of spiritual atoms. This view would be healed by a minority of scholars in Eberron as it seems rather far fetched and based off of little. This however explains why other plains want to be with Eberron, they have lots of a few types of atoms and almost none of other types, Eberron has a high amount of all atoms. Elementalism: Everything is made of 5 elements in varying degrees. The 5 are Air, Water, Earth, Fire and Ether. All things are just a mixture of them with the proportions changing to change what something is or how it acts. This is a common view among the Zil and others who deal with elementals (for obvious reasons) though it losses popularity with other people due to its lack of relation to plains other then the elemental ones. Forms: All things are just trying to be like their true forms in "Heaven" (where the god live). Thus when a fire burns it is trying to be like the form of fire in heaven. This belief is common among the religious as it explains the gods and how they work in our world but is less common among the less believing. Thanks and have fun.
ekomega 04-28-07, 03:55 AM	Everything in Eberron is made of: 1) magic. 2) The Prophecy. 3) tiny bits of the three progenitor dragons, in various ratios.
Cifer 04-28-07, 07:23 AM	I'd generally say most things in Eberron are made of, well, Eberron. Excluding things that came from Khyber and Syberis of course. And possibly from the other planes - AFAIK, it's still unknown how they tie into the creation legend.
Yadot 04-28-07, 02:55 PM	It is not exactly Eberron but I always liked this (http://www.mimir.net/essays/planarphysics.html) explanation for what things are made up of in DND.
Alex_ 04-28-07, 06:14 PM	My thoughts... I think the material plane is the product of all the other planes interacting with it. Fernia is dominated by fire, Mabar is dominated by darkness, Irian is dripping with positive energy. They contain very little, if any, of other properties. The Material Plane of Khyber/Eberron/Syberis is composed of all these planes in balance. That's why, when a particular plane becomes remote to the Material Plane, you'll see a corresponding change on the material plane (fire burning less intensely when Fernia is further away and has less influence). When it's coterminous, aspects of the plane of strengthened (fire burns hotter when Fernia is closer). Which I suppose is elementalism, only I don't limit it to just air, wind, earth, fire, and aether. Cold, Electricity, Acid, Darkness, Light, Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, and several other "elements" or themes that are found in the outer planes are part of the mix.
Evilmonster 04-30-07, 03:18 AM	I prefer the Elemental approach myself. It's what makes alchemy go, it's what is evoked when an evocation spell is cast, and it's what actual elementals are made of. A water elemental isn't just made of water, it's made of Water (with a big W). Plus, it's a lot easer to ignore science when the world works sooo differently. But now let me brain storm a bit. On the material plane there are levels of elements. The most basic are (of course) Earth, Air, Water and Fire. When they react correctly with positive energy you get four humors - black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. Treating someone with the use of the healing skill often means balancing these out in a person. On a higher level (or more basic depending on how you look at it) there are- Force (which binds elements together), and Thought (which gives something a meaning), as well as Positive and Negative energies which maintain order and allow entropy respectively. Higher than that are Devine and Infernal energies, which the various churches completely believe in and teach but which are also losing ground with the current scholastic community since as far as the leading researchers have been able to tell, angels and demons are all made of the same stuff as everything else. That's just one possibility anyway and I'm sure some of the more thoughtful people who wander these boards will come up with something even better.
Edymnion 04-30-07, 09:07 PM	You know you left out the current main theory. All matter is energy. String theory, basically. You get down to a small enough scale, and you have pure energy, that everything we know of as "matter" is simply how that energy interacts with other energy. After all, matter and energy are interchangeable. But, that said, I subscribe to planar elements in game. Rocks are hard because of the influence of the elemental plane of earth, fire is hot because of the influence of the elemental plane of fire, etc. The purer the concentration of the planar element, the more likely you are to find a portal to the realm itself (hence the deepest ocean ravines would have portals to the elemental plane of water at their bottoms, while an erupting volcano could have a portal to the elemental plane of fire in it's heart). Adjust to Eberron's cosmology as needed.
ArcTan 05-01-07, 03:33 AM	You know you left out the current main theory. All matter is energy. String theory, basically. You get down to a small enough scale, and you have pure energy, that everything we know of as "matter" is simply how that energy interacts with other energy. Well... sure, but this doesn't have anything to do with string theory. This was part of the Special Theory of Relativity, decades before string theory. Different variations on string theory try to explain the difference between "matter" and "energy" -- or, more properly, between fermions and bosons -- by incorporating supersymmetry (the idea that fermions and bosons are interchangeable) into the theory. None of these models has much empirical backing, and string theory doesn't actually have that much respect among theoretical physicists. It's more speculation than science. Of course, there are good reasons to "leave out" theoretical physics when talking about fantasy cosmologies -- most of the things theoretical physics says don't even make sense when applied to fantasy universes, except insofar as you can take vague wordings of what they say ("All matter is energy") and call them true. That doesn't mean that any of real-life string theory's explanations for where mass comes from (like what the Higgs boson is like and how it gives photons mass so they can become W and Z bosons) even means anything in a fantasy world where alchemy is true and the four elements really do make up the world. After all, matter and energy are interchangeable. But, that said, I subscribe to planar elements in game. Rocks are hard because of the influence of the elemental plane of earth, fire is hot because of the influence of the elemental plane of fire, etc. The purer the concentration of the planar element, the more likely you are to find a portal to the realm itself (hence the deepest ocean ravines would have portals to the elemental plane of water at their bottoms, while an erupting volcano could have a portal to the elemental plane of fire in it's heart). Adjust to Eberron's cosmology as needed. More specifically, the four elements and two kinds of energy are both real things in Eberron as proved by the existence of elementals and such. So real things really are made up of atoms of the four elements. We can probably take a broader view of what the elements mean than a purely literalist view would, and say that "earth" atoms make up all hard, rigid stuff, "water" atoms make up all liquid, flowing stuff, and "air" atoms make up all gaseous, expansive stuff. "Fire" atoms would represent heat and dynamism and motion -- i.e. what we call energy, or at least energy in the form of heat, only in this view energy is treated as a kind of matter, "fire matter". Moreover, in Eberron it's a fact that not only is heat a kind of substance made of fire, but that its opposite -- lack of energy, or cold -- is actually a corresponding and opposing element, "ice atoms" linked to Risia. The fact that fire atoms and ice atoms are fundamentally opposed and are fundamentally separate from the atoms that make up matter -- earth, air and water, all linked to Lamannia rather than Risia or Fernia -- thus makes a lot of alchemical sense. What D&D calls "energy" isn't the same as what we call energy -- energy is more clearly represented by fire. Positive and negative "energy" are instead measures of the ordering of a system -- positive energy is pretty clearly ectropy and negative energy entropy. When I "add positive energy" to a place, I don't make the place hotter or make things in the place move faster, per se -- I just make the place more alive -- I heal living structures and cause life to spread, for the most part. Whereas negative energy does the opposite and makes things deader, or even un-dead, which in D&D is really being so dead that you're the inverse and opposite of being alive, i.e. you walk and talk. Yeah, it's confusing from a real life perspective, but makes sense in itself. So yes, ectropy and entropy -- order and disorder, structure and decay -- are their own substances in D&D and in Eberron, presumably also made up of atoms or particles. Notice that even though I said "order" and "disorder" this has nothing to do with Law and Chaos, which don't really have the meaning an information scientist or physicist would put on those terms. Law and Chaos are terms to do with ethics and conscious beings, not the simple idea of order or disorder -- killing a Slaad by zapping it with negative energy means increasing the overall entropy (and disorder) of the universe, but the universe is ethically more Lawful as a result. Basically Law and Chaos more have to do with living systems matching each other or being disparate from each other (living in peaceful unity or free to make individual choices), which has little to do with ectropy or entropy (creating more difference between two systems often means decreasing the two systems' combined entropy). In any case, the idea of Kantian unity and Nietzschean individualism are themselves "forces" in D&D with a physical reality, and even "substances" (since Outsiders can be made of it) -- just as the basic ideas of destructive selfishness and empathic selflessness (Evil and Good) are real in D&D, although in Eberron Evil and Good are more pervasive and mixed than Law and Chaos. (Law and Chaos get their own pair of very obviously opposed planes devoted to those ideals alone, while Good and Evil seem to exist in admixture everywhere except Syrania -- it almost seems like the nature of the universe is Evil and Syrania is this one exception, a Good monopole that radiates Good into the rest of the universe. Perhaps with Thelanis as a secondary stronghold.) I'm just rambling at this point, but you see where I'm going with this, right? D&D is all about things having a physical, substantial reality that are much more abstract measures in real life.
Splendide 05-01-07, 10:33 AM	Isn't it made of minute chunks of dragon?
ahiman 05-03-07, 01:49 PM	At this point there are a 4 main theories. Here they are and I will try to summarize them (so don't kill me). Elemental Draconism: Everything is made from the progenitor dragons and they compose and dominate several forms of matter (Khyber is and controls darkness, madness...). Energy power theory (just giving a more generic name to all of those energy is matter theories): Everything is made of energy when you break it down small enough. Perhaps there are two forms of energy, good (positive) and bad (negative). Elemental control: All things are the 4 elements, but there are additional elements (positive, negative, though...) in those that influence the way they work and even where they are. Not all elements have all of these additional elements. Planer Elementalism: All of the planes are dominated by a handful (or even just one) element. Each one has its own and they add their matter to Eberron (more when close, less when far). Now in an idea world (I.E. ours, the best of all possible worlds) you guys would debate this for the rest of your lives. But I can see that this is unfeasible so we can just say that these are the main theories and people can add more if they want. Thanks for all of the contributions.
androkguz 05-03-07, 10:37 PM	In favor of the Eberronian style I would suggest that all four of these are actually serious theories proposed by schoolars who can't get decided what is true. The real truth is a mystery. By the way, I loved the atomist explanation but for Eberron I would have cold be part of the mix or I could have 12 elements/energies, plus one long lost.
Logos7 05-05-07, 04:52 PM	its atomism in my game The progenitor dragon myths are just that myth's they are varied and don't agree and are of dubious historical originn or religious valadity. People can see all kinds of stuff and know most stuff can be broken into smaller peaces. Either it breaks all the way down ( which more or less all rationalists have issues with) or it stops somewhere. That which doesn't break doesn't break because it's unbreakable thus all things are made up of unbreakable atoms. That said i'm sure water is considered an atom and maybe fire ( or Phlogistan or something like it) but if they have alchemy they probably have various kinds of airs and various kinds of earths. Logos
androkguz 05-05-07, 08:13 PM	That said i'm sure water is considered an atom and maybe fire ( or Phlogistan or something like it) but if they have alchemy they probably have various kinds of airs and various kinds of earths. Logos I totally agree with that, and I would even add cold to the mix perhaps as another type of fire. Perhaps... 1) Fire 2) Cold 3) Water 4) Air 5) Lightning 6) Earth 7) Metal (an element that creates different metals when mixed with other elements) 8) Crystal (same thing) 9) Stone (same thing) 10) Dust (same thing, could create talc) 11) Positive Energy 12) Light