But I don't buy that. The multiverse is a big place. Too big for the death of one little god to cause such drastic multiversal change.
So what if the Spellplague did not create the new Cosmology?
What if it was the new Cosmology that caused the Spellplague?
I can imagine the planes, and even whole multiverses, drifting about like tectonic plates. And their movement would cause subtle, and sometimes not so subtle changes.
And when a plane shifts position drastically, the effect would send ripples through dimensions, worlds, and even time. History would alter and be rewritten, historical texts would change, andeveryone would only remember the plane's new position as where it had always been.
And when something as drastic as an entire cosmological shift occurs, the ripples would send shockwaves across the multiverse and back through time. Every world in the affected multiverse would then experience a simultaneous Retroactive Continuous Event, a terrible war or disaster of some kind that then allows the new Cosmology to form.
The Death of Mystra and the Spellplague was the Realms' Retroactive Continuous Event (RetCon, for short ;) ). All other D&D worlds should also have had a RetCon. I have yet to play Eberron, so I don't know if they've had one.
But this makes much more metaphysical sense to me.
Much easier to think of it as looking at a slightly different version of reality, among many possibilities, which the current edition, whichever that might be for the viewer, chooses to focus upon.
The only thing that made any sense to me to explain how anything on any other plane was affected was that there were other gods of magic or their equivalents on each plane and they were somehow connected to Mystra. So when she went, it propogated through some sort of Astral link back through them too. I know that's weak but thats all I could think of and still keep their explanation.
The problem is that the 4E team wanted those changes made and didn't bother really thinking things through and having it make sense. They were concerned only, it appears, with the end result being what they wanted and forget the rest.
But Mystra might have been THE most important magic godess in the Multiverse if we ought to believe the Spellplague stories.
3e's features still exist...and 4e's features coexist. You are just in a diff omniverse.
"The Great Wheel or any other cosmology doesn’t bother me, just as avatar stats and the endless “but this god came first, or can beat that god” arguments don’t: mortal PCs can’t know the truth about the gods anyway, because every in-game source (supreme priests, avatars of the gods themselves, holy writings) they could possibly learn all this stuff from is biased. Everything. So it really is all up to the DM."
So in the Realms, the new Cosmology is explained by the Spellplague causing multiversal havoc and moving planes about, much as a devastating earthquake or meteor strike would cause a change in terrain, so did the Spellplague shift the terrain of the planes.
But I don't buy that. The multiverse is a big place. Too big for the death of one little god to cause such drastic multiversal change.
So what if the Spellplague did not create the new Cosmology?
What if it was the new Cosmology that caused the Spellplague?
I can imagine the planes, and even whole multiverses, drifting about like tectonic plates. And their movement would cause subtle, and sometimes not so subtle changes.
And when a plane shifts position drastically, the effect would send ripples through dimensions, worlds, and even time. History would alter and be rewritten, historical texts would change, andeveryone would only remember the plane's new position as where it had always been.
And when something as drastic as an entire cosmological shift occurs, the ripples would send shockwaves across the multiverse and back through time. Every world in the affected multiverse would then experience a simultaneous Retroactive Continuous Event, a terrible war or disaster of some kind that then allows the new Cosmology to form.
The Death of Mystra and the Spellplague was the Realms' Retroactive Continuous Event (RetCon, for short ;) ). All other D&D worlds should also have had a RetCon. I have yet to play Eberron, so I don't know if they've had one.
But this makes much more metaphysical sense to me.
I figured that was what had happened in the first place; Core D&D is going to trump FR any day.
I largely follow Ed's view on the various FR planar frameworks. He prefers to use both 'cosmologies' as fallible mortal maps of the same 'place.' As he once said:-
"The Great Wheel or any other cosmology doesn’t bother me, just as avatar stats and the endless “but this god came first, or can beat that god” arguments don’t: mortal PCs can’t know the truth about the gods anyway, because every in-game source (supreme priests, avatars of the gods themselves, holy writings) they could possibly learn all this stuff from is biased. Everything. So it really is all up to the DM."
And hence the major problem with 3rd person omniscient perspective language in gaming products...
I don't know how many FR fans also follow Dragonlance, but at one point (the Fifth Age or thereabouts) Tiamat steals the world, moving it into a different timestream. As a side effect, the planes and moons are different because she only stole the Prime, and moving the plane itself cause changes in wherever she moved it to.
What if, instead of having the death of Mystra alter the cosmology, her death ripped a hole in the planes and sucked Toril into an alternate-cosmology version of itself? Abeir didn't crash into Toril; Toril invaded Abeir's multiverse. The vast release of the entire Weave at once into this gaping hole in the multiverse blasted the Abeir-verse's planes apart into separate Dominions and the Elemental Chaos, leaving the original Toril-verse unchanged (minus the loss of the Prime).
Better yet, it's an alternate-cosmology past. Abeir is what Toril used to be like, which is why the magic is different--it hasn't been wrapped up into a Weave yet. The original 1e-3e setting is still there, with Mystra and all, because a new Mystra replaces the dead one in the new world...and by the time we get up to the 1e present, we're back with Mystra and no Abeir and everything as it was, since this whole thing happened in the past and has smoothed itself out to resolve a paradox.
Whaddya think? ;)
[/insane theory]
Dweomerhome is destroyed as part of the events that unleashes the Spellplageu.
Azuth is devoured by Asmodeus as a result of Dweomerhome's destruction.
Asmodeus then used his initial burst of divinity to push the Abyss away from the Nine Hells.
The Abyss in it's 'flight' through the cosmology snags the Elemental Planes and drags them 'past' the Prime and causes them to merge.
This puts the Abyss in its current spot and created the Elemental Chaos.
Near the same time as the Spellplague (possibly helped by it) Aebir partially crosses over with Toril.
Sometime after the Spellplague Faerie becomes more accessible again (Feywild).
The Plane of Shadow gets shook up by the Abyss' travels but is mostly unaltered and has the name of Shadowfell as well now.
Most of the rest of the cosmology is unchanged. The Spellplague really only directly affected Dweomerhome. It had indirect effects on other planes due to Azuth being shutned into the Hells and being devoured by Asmodeus.
Faerie was there before, just harder to reach than it is now.
The only plane to vanish really was the Ethereal but much of it can be considered to still be around just not directly accessible or functional enough to worry about. After all previously it was mostly used just as a 'means' for various incorporeal spells.
As for Dweomerhome having such a cosmic impact if you read the War of the Spider Queen books they make references to major upheavals throughout hte Astral and Outer Planes when Lolth seperates the Demonweb Pits from the Abyss. The destruction of a plane, and a diety of magic, would have an even greater impact than the birth of a new plane (since the 66th layer of the Abyss and Lolth's original Demonweb Pits domain was still there).
Think about a unifying force in our world, that all objects have, and remove it. Let's say Gravity, what happens? Not trying to sound snotty, but I completely support what was done in 4E
So both worlds would bave been developing pretty much the same, except that the Gold and Silver Elves migrated to Toril and changed the world (literally, with the Sundering).
So Abeir is the world that would have been, had the Elves not shown up to do all that damage.