Hey all,
After reading the "Simple Cosmologies 101" thread by Zard, I started to think about my various homebrew cosmologies over the time, so we should share! Feel free to share your own cosmologies and offer tips/borrow elements/whatever!
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In my homebrew setting, the God(desse)s are merely beings of immense power. Some live in the Mortal World, usually in the heart of planets, stars or moons. The most powerful of these beings make up the center of galaxies, with their spawn making up the constituent celestial bodies. They vary in intelligence (or understandability). Some are considered to live outside of proper space and time, their home being the "Dreamland" where those with the strongest Wills shape the (extremely strange and dangerous) lands beyond. Mortal minds can be brought into the Dream World through various means. Some exist (and don't exist) in both.
Many of these so-called "Gods" thrash and writhe in the darkness of space, no smarter than animals. Others are inscrutable to mortal minds, their motivations being beyond mortal imagining. Very few have the mind and intent to create life of their own. Those that do are often unaware of most of their creations. Only select "Gods" care enough for their creations to care for their well-being.
My current homebrew campaign is set upon the world of Maritae, a fractured world held together by an aborted Goddess (essentially, an old-school Atropal of immense size and power). It is one of these few beings. It creates, and feeds off of, the souls and prayers of its creations forming a symbiotic relationship. Being "broken" or "aborted", it can't create a proper planet. Instead, it holds together various "Plates," flat worlds suspended over it's dark body that are essentially scraped-together space junk. It breathes life into these Plate-worlds in an attempt to create life. The strain of doing so has left it in a dormant, dreaming state. It communicates with a select few through their dreams.
Out of fear, it has blocked itself, and it's Plates, from being seen by the outside and vice versa. Being forever blind, it has no idea what a night sky would look like except for the brighest of objects. Thus, the sky has a single Sun, a single Star and a single Moon in the night sky and nothing else. This has had the effect on (most) of the Plates inhabitants in thinking:
1) The world is flat
2) The entire universe is this flat world
3) That the vast darkness "above the sky" is the most horrifying thing in existence.
4) Life and Death is a recurring cycle, where one comes from Maritae and returns there upon death.
Angels are creatures of living stone, having come into contact with some portion of the Goddess' body. Filled with its dreams, they fulfill its desires if called upon. Dreamland-Angels are those forged directly from the dreaming mind of the Goddess. Seeing one is extraordinairily rare and usually their purpose is unknown.
Devils and Demons are creatures that come from "beyond." Most mortals have come up with legends of "corrupted souls" or some such, but in truth they are creatures that have either managed to pierce the veil cast by the Goddess or have arrived on the plate during its initial creation. They tend to be solitary or in small groups. No "limitless hordes from Hell."
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I'll admit, there is a bit of H.P Lovecraft inspiration going on here.
I've always really wanted to play in a monotheistic setting. Not a "christian v. pagan" crusader setting, per se. Just a fantasy world where there is a primarily monotheistic religion at its center. There can still be pagan faiths or other beliefs around the edges (like non-humans and monsters, etc. having their own gods or dark powers). Stuff like that...
I never seem to get my way. Others at the table invariably like the mix-n-match gods-a-plenty model.
This might be of interest: Tthe 3e Manual of the Planes has a Variant Planes & Cosmologies appendix. Basically, stuff you can build yourself (independent of the Great Wheel or World Axis).
There's a Region of Dreams. Where dreamers create dreamscape (that last only a short time). Time flows a bit more slowly. Lucid dreamers can have a lot of fun altering the dreamscape.
There's a Plane of Mirrors, where your evil twin, 'mirror-self' tries to kill you.
There's a Spirit World, where colors are brighter, sounds are crisper, and everything has a spirit (from a mountain to a flower). It replaces the astral.
There are alternate Elemental Planes of Cold and Wood.
There's a Plane of Faerie. Sorta like the Feywild (from 4e) but with a cruel twist. Eternal twilight, populated by sidhe (a Seelie Court and an Unseelie Court).
= = =
The Far Realm is described. Think Cthulu.
There's a Myriad Planes cosmology. Hard to explain in just a few words. Think multiple Material Planes as a sea of bubbles.
There's a Dopple Cosmology. Basically two Material Planes sandwhiched together with a layer of Shadow in-between.
There's an Orrey Cosmology, where the Inner and Outer Planes orbit around each other (imagine a clockwork model of the Solar System).
= = =
Last but not least, there's the Winding Road cosmology. Instead of a Great Wheel, there's a road, an endless ribbon, with no beginning and no end. Of all the variants, this is my personal favorite (although having a mirror-self chasing after my PC comes close 
--not enough variety after that though).
To wrap it up, there's a list of planar anomalies: Planar bleeds (traits from one plane might *bleed* into another), planar rips (holes in existence --always fun ), time loops, and time wrinkels (Rip Van Winkle).
= = =
Anyway, just wanted to share some ideas to spark conversation.
ChrisCarlson wrote:
I like using a similar model to the 4e model.
- The Plane Above: Astral sea, with 'islands' representing all the great wheel 'good' and some 'neutral' planes (like Mechanus), the positive plane, etc.
- The Plane Below: Elemental Chaos, with 'islands' representing all the great wheel 'evil' planes, some 'neutral' planes, (like Limbo), the negative plane, etc.
- The Material Plane: The real world(s), plus the shadowfell and feywild. This area is unaligned, and fought over endlessly by the beings of the Above and the Below.
- The Far Realm: Somewhere outside all known reality. Full of Lovecraftian alien consciousness, and the reason Aberrations exist. Also the reason Psionics exist. Not everything here is 'evil'. But all of it is 'weird'. There's more than 3 physical dimensions (plus 'time' as a forth) here.
- Demiplanes: Created by powerful beings. Like Sigil, Ravenloft, some forgotten wizard's secret hideout, etc. They exist within the larger planes. ie: Ravenloft is inside the Shadowfell. Sigil is in orbit around a long dead planet in the Material Plane.
On the other hand, though, I'm thinking of making a campaign world where alignment really matters, and then I'll use the great wheel cosmology (a plane for each alignment, with 'true neutral/unaligned being the prime material.)
If I am in a hurry I normally use the Great Wheel. If I ahve had time to flesh it out I normally use somethign very similar to the world of Lone Wolf planar cosmology. THey have.
1 Plane of Darkness
2. Confluence
3. Earth
4. Air
5. Fire
6. Water
7. Aon/material plane
8.Daziarn (alt prime type plane)
9. Plane of Light
Confluence basically being the border region between the plane of light and darkness and the Daziarn.
I originally posted the cosmology for my homebrew setting in the Simple Cosmology thread, but I suppose it fits here as well.
MechaPilot wrote:
Reposting here, as this is a more relevant thread.
My work follows an Axis Mundi / World Tree / World Axis model as well, though it's also well envisioned in a "real world" sense, with the Astral Sea and Far Realm representing "outer space" while the Underdark and Elemental Chaos and Abyss represent an "inner space," a world of churning creative destruction within the heart of every world. To them, worlds are born out of crystalized chaos, contained within the chaos, essentially motes of order floating within the Chaos, with the Astral Sea a lattice of order made up of systems surrounding motes. But to an outside observer, the chaos is something within, like another world piercing through the heart of every star and planet, with every black hole a gateway into the dark Abyss at the heart of the chaos.
The Feywild and the Shadowfell are parallel world, worlds that might have been or perhaps were, with this version fo the world being a might-have. In the Shadowfell setting of the world, the world is torn to pieces, it is the torn world, destroyed by the humanoids greed and wanton desires. The survivors work their way on a darkened, smogged shattered planet, filled with the stench of deaht, just trying to survive. In the Feywild, on the other hand, such terrors never happened, and the world is as it was in the twilit morning of the world. The Feywild and Shadowfell are sort of fused with the plane of dreams; the Shadowfell is also known to cross into people's nightmares, with their spirit forms entering it through nightly terrors, while the feywild inhabits dreams of another world and age as well. Some say that the Feywild is a memory of how the world once was, while the Shadowfell is a foretelling of how the world will be, after the end.
There are giant trees growing from the surface of the world, which if you could climb up them, you could rise to the heavens and enter the Astral Sea. But there are other worlds too; the most fundamental element of my story is that there are two Prime Material Planes, one based off of Earth, the other off of Mars, each with their own Feywild and Shadowfell, and their own body of races and peoples. These worlds are disconnected due to lacking world travel, and yet there are interactions, especially since certain races that have more advanced civilizations do travel between: the Elves for example, who have their capital on the Moon.
Reposting this here:
The cosmology of Erithor (my homebrew setting) takes a lot from The World Axis of 4e, along with elements I've had in my setting since I first wrote about it in high school. The planes are:
The Crystal Sphere -- This is the boundry of Creation. Inside is everything that was created at the dawn of time by The Nameless One. Outside it is The Far Realm, where the Primordial dwells. Normal magic cannot pierce this sphere--you have to physcially travel to one of the places where the sphere has been cracked to pass through. The Crystal Sphere is mindbogglingly huge but it is, in fact, bounded (that is the entire purpose of having a boundry).
The Far Realm -- "outside" the crystal sphere is The Far Realm, an insane, maddening realm of all the possibilites that The Nameless One rejected for one reason or another when he was building Creation. The Primordial, an ancient sentience accidentally created by The Nameless One as he named the first gods, dwells here. The Primordial is generally depicted as a dragon made of red clouds in religious texts, but in truth it has no real form -- it was a mistake. It views the orderly Creation as a painful tumor in the face of infinite possibilities, as Creation includes all the possibilities The Nameless One chose to make "real." The fixed form of reality is an affront to The Primordial, and it would destroy all of creation were it not kept at bay by The Crystal Sphere. It has been trying for eons to break the sphere, and it has created a few cracks where it's influence can be felt: The Abyss, where demons dwell, and The Stars of Ill Omen, corrupted parts of The Astral Sea. Aberrations come from either The Far Realm itself, The Abyss, or The Stars of Ill Omen.
Inside the Crystal Sphere, the empty space is divided into The Astral Sea, The Elemental Tempest. In the center, forming the axis of ths cosmos, are The Three Worlds and The Twin Rivers.
The Astral Sea -- When The Nameless One first began creating, he made a clear, silent space where he could contemplate. The Astral Sea is that space. It is a place for ideas. It contains all the heavenly bodies, The Ten Thousand Wonders that make up the Middle World's night sky.
With the Astral sea is:
Heaven: The meeting place of The Gods, and the throne from which they rule. Heaven is not where they live, just where they gather. It forms the moon of Eirthor. Angels dwell here, serving as messangers and warriors for the Gods.
The Seven Hells: Created as prisons for demons after The First War, the Seven Hells were parts of the Ten Thousand Wonders that The Seven pulled closer to The Three Worlds to work on when they couldn't agree how best to torment the demons they had captured. When The Seven fell to evil, it was here that they and their followers (which became the Devils) were thrown by The Nine Heroes. The Seven Hells represent the planets in Erithor's solar system.
The Ten Thousand Wonders: Before The Nameless One began work on his most perfect creation, he experimented with various combinations of energy and matter. These experiments were left to shine in the night sky. There's probably far, far more than ten thousand of them--that's just the name they've gathered by poets over the centuries. This is where the homes of the gods are, but there's an aweful lot of space for other outsiders and creatures that would appear to be Aberrations according to the physical laws of The Middle World. The Wonders represent the other stars in Erithor's galaxy.
The Stars of Ill Omen: These are Wonders that have been corrupted by the Primordial thanks to cracks in The Crystal Sphere. They are sentient, but their motives are strange and difficult for mortals to comprehend. Some of them birth monsters to plague Creation, some of them work to corrupt and subvert, some seem friendly to mortals (but have a passive-agressive streak), and some are just dangerous the way forest fires and eathquakes are--impersonal dangers. The vast majority of Aberrations hail from these distant stars.
The Region of Dreams: A strange realm of thought and desire made manifest. Techically, it is part of The Astral Sea, but it works by very different rules. Sleeping minds form a connection to The Region of Dreams, pulling substance from the realm to create short-lived worlds. Most demiplane created by magic can be found here, and people can travel physcially to the realm using spells of etherealness. The Region of dreams serves as Creation's Ethereal Plane. The Region of Dreams forms the night sky of The Feywild.
The Elemental Tempest -- a churning mass of entropic breakdown, The Elemental Tempest is where matter and energy are broken down, to be recycled later. Unlike the more regimented Astral Sea, The Elemental Tempest doesn't have many distinct regions. Temporary islands of stability can be formed through sheer mental effort, and some, such as The City of Brass or vrious Githzerai monestaries, can remain stable for thousands of years. The Elemental Tempest is where elementals dwell, as well as the corrupted elementals known as demons.
The Abyss: The Abyss is a series of cracks in the Crystal Sphere, analogous to the Stars of Ill Omen in the Astral Sea. Elementals corrupted by The Pimordial dwell here. Many of the cracks were sealed over after The First War, and the demons were trapped within. Bahamut, The Platinum Dragon, was given the duty of guarding the seals to the Abyss. Still, every so often demons manage to make their way into the wider reality, and the Demon Lords are working to break the seals that keep them trapped.
The Three Worlds And The Twin Rivers: The center of reality is composed of The Three Worlds (Shadowfell, Middle World, and The Feywild) and the Twin Rivers of Time and Life. Once, The Three Worlds were one Perfect World, but a civil war among the gods smashed The Perfect World and it had to be rebuilt. The gods couldn't agree on how best to remake the world, so it was separated into three parts.
The Middle World: The most balanced of the Three Worlds, The Middle World is what would be considered "The Prime Material Plane." It sits equally distant between the Rivers of Time And Life, and so it has the most varied biomes. This is where you will find most of the mortal races. The sky of the Middle World is The Astral Sea, and the relatively fixed points of the Ten Thousand Wonders means that navigation by starlight is possible.
The Shadowfell: The Shadowfell is a dark, twisted world. It lies close to The River Of Time, and thus is where the spirits of the dead travel when they die. The Shadowfell has a bleakness to it, even during the day, and the sky of the Shadowfell is the ever-churning Elemental Tempest (meaning that it can be hard to navigate). There is little life here--it's a harsh land, distant from the River of Life that feeds reality. It's also a highly mutable realm, one that slowly flows and shifts over time.
The Feywild: The Feywild is vibrant and colorful, filled with magic and long-lived fey creatures thanks to being so close to The River of Life. But it is an unstable place--the magic is wild and the inhabitants tend to be somewhat crazed. The sky of the Feywild is a twilight formed by The Region of Dreams, where stars formed by the dreams of men appear and vanish at random (which is why you must never, ever trust the night sky to guide you, and always keep to the paths). Time is known to act strangely, because of the distance between The Feywild and the River of Time.
The Rivers of Time and Life: These rivers flow into each other, and together they keep reality moving. The River of Time is the river of endings, entropy, and breaking things down. Mortal souls are drawn to the River when they die, to be washed clean of their former lives before they travel to the River of Life to be reborn. The River of Life is a vibrant, glowing river where mortal souls are released back into circulation to be born again.
I stick to the core versions of the cosmology. I've always been a fan of the wheel cosmology but 4th's blew me away in it's coolness.
In 5th edition it's the wheel.
In 4th edition it's the cooler version.
Luckily, I haven't switched over to 5th, so for me, it's the cooler cosmology version every day, all day.
ChrisCarlson wrote:
Here were the five metaphysical realms of my homebrew campaign.
The God Plane
Also referred to as the Dreamtime, this is the realm that was first created by Logos and later refined by his first children, the Lord and lady of Creation. It was the original home to the Elder Gods, but with their loss, it is said to be a cold, empty expanse to the unwitting accidental visitor.
Deep within the God Plane lies the Eternal Font, the source of all souls. Here, the Font continually issues forth new spirits and gathers up departed ones to be cleansed and reborn anew. These reforged spirits then drift outwards to the Sommerland, where they await incarnation into one of the two mortal planes.
Impressions of the earliest, most primal aspects of the universe's creation are still occasionally played out here like ghostly memories, and it is here that high initiates and the most powerful priests and magicians can gain a deeper understanding of the cosmos.
It is said that the spirits of those who are most devout and mystically connected with the higher powers are sent directly to the God Plane when they die. There they spend the rest of eternity reliving the most intense and exciting aspects of their patron's mythology.
Like the other four Realms, the Rune of the God Plane has never been embodied as a deity, but is often used in spiritual and metaphysical rites to denote nirvana, perfection, or any number of other principles.
The Surface World
Usually referred to simply as "the world," this is where mankind, plants, animals, civilizations, etc. all exist. It is the "mundane" world in which most people live out their day-to-day lives.
The Underworld
Like the flip side of a coin, the Underworld is all that lives beneath the surface of the cosmos. For eons, neither side was aware of the other's existence, but millennia ago, the divide was breached. As the surface races view the Surface World, so do the Underworld races view their plane.
The Sommerland
Existing as a hazy shadow to both the Surface and Underworlds, the Sommerland is the world of spirits. It is often described as a more 'alive' version of the natural world, where things - both good and bad - are more vibrant and intense.
Spirits here, like all disembodied elements not connected to the Thought rune, are mindless and incapable of learning or growing. That does not make them stupid or dull-witted, however, but rather just that their patterns and knowledge are already set.
When most people die, their spirits return to the Sommerland from whence they came, becoming one of an infinite numbers of eddies and pools in the fabric of the Sommerland.
Eventually these spirits drift outward into the God Plane and back into the Eternal Font, where they are reforged anew, but occasionally these primal essences can be reborn into the world directly from the Sommerland. Such reborn souls often have great potential as they unconsciously recall bits and pieces from their earlier incarnations that help them in their current one.
The Seven Bulwarks
The cosmos was borne out of the Unfathomable Void, the Eternal Nothingness that is the End Of All Things. Such a powerful force is difficult to control even for such a god as Logos, so early on he created the Seven Bulwarks as a sort of metaphysical "wall" that would encircle all of creation and keep the Void safely on the other side.
While the most devout followers of a god can be transported to the God Plane upon the dissolution of his mortal form, it can also be subjected to the eternal torments of the Seven Bulwarks. Spirits finding themselves here suffer through agonizing eons of mindless pain as the Void continually whips at their being, slowly eroding it away into nothingness.
Occasionally, a tortured spirit may be called up from these realms and embodied into a physical form before it is completely erased, but it is almost always an unfortunate event for all involved. Such spirits are invariably twisted, hateful and malevolent to all it encounters.
In my game the true gods are all in a stasis, sleeping and have been since a major war called the Celestial War that blew up the old world Carceres when the gods and their servants warred. Carceres was such a large planet that when it was annhilated, the prevailing dieties gathered the wreckage of the world and formed each piece into new worlds that they placed throughout the cosmos for the mortals to reside within. The reshaping of the old world into new ones has made so that places in the old world may be found in the new world that don't make sense, like a leafless forest in a cavern 200 feet below the surface or even the ocean. The gods sleep and new lesser dieties watch over the worlds and channel the power of the true gods to the mortals. The mortals of the new worlds see the gods as they will, like insects trying make sense of a larger world they only think they understand. As such this give the opportunity for various cultures in my game setting to view the gods through the lense of their own culture. I have focused in on one world that I am building. The current campaign is an Ancient Egyptian themed campaign. The realm of the afterlife is the Night Desert where black dunes with sparkling stars nestled in them preside beneath a shimmering gold sky. The Pharoas and their servants reside here with the gods. The potentially for this campaign will unfold as I base different regions of the world on different cultures. And then it can expand into one that has the PCs traversing across the multiverse to different worlds that were once a piece of the parent world. Perhaps there will be a need for adventurers to travel to each world to obtain different pieces of a fragnented artifact. The intention is to allow for either creations of other worlds, be it my friends worlds, or published campaigns, to fit within the framework of my own games universe.
The world I've been tinkering with is an utter mess
So there's the world. The problem is, the world isn't as "Real" as necessarily it needs to be most of the time, so things intersect with it worryingly a lot, to the point where crossing dimensions into other realms isn't all that hard
You've got:
The Elemental Realm, a mesh of chaos and order ala 4E. No Radiance, incidently, its replaced by Solar/Plasma/Whatever you want to call it, there is an entire plane of sun energy and there might not actually be a sun in this world, instead just a massive breach to that plane
The Shadow, which is self explanitory and a dark reflection of reality.
Realm of the Fey, which is a bright reflection of reality. You might think its a realm of light! Its not. Its where elves originaly came from. I specificy "Originally", because they're generally not nuts enough to live there full time any more
There's the Gunk Inbetween, or the Ether, or the Void, or the End, or whatever you'll call it. Its inbetween reality and not reality, and fragments of both float freely throughout. You really don't want to stay there very long. Illithid go there often. Illithid don't necessarily come back in one piece from there often. Sometimes Other Things come back, and well, you know how that goes
And then there's the Realm of the Dead. See, there's no Abyss or the like, rather the Realm of the Dead is a big ol' place, its various parts are the various afterlives. And the only way between them is to come back to reality and use that to cross over. Most people can't do this, but if you want to say, drag a spirit from one to the other, its possible!
Just have to realise that there's a lot of guardians looking over these entrances, and the Judges of the Dead aren't necessarily going to be happy with you interfeering
There's other things, like the massive living mechanical city threatening to become a god, or the horrific fleshlike corruption that crawls and consumes all it touches, and the fact that most races worship the same gods under different names (A nice touch I took from Elder Scrolls), but that's not necessarily related to the cosmology and more to how the world works
Sands, I love the idea of random, odd 'chunks' of the Old World being found in the New Worlds.
Sparks my imagination. Just wanted to say thanks for sharing.
In one campaign we had there was a war between shadow and the fey on the prime,
Fearing the prime world would be destroyed by this conflict the gods made 2 copies of the world.
amishing the shadow forced to one copy and this became the shadowfell, the fey where banished to the other that became the feywild.
in this scenario the feywild and shadowfell are much more like alternative time line versions of the prime instead of diferent worlds.
Very old of imortal creatures might actualy still have living feywild and shadowfell copies.
For the setting I created, I useda rather minamalistic cosmology:
- The Mid-Realm, the standard material world.
- The Hidden Ream, a "spirit world" that overlaps the material world. It's similar to how the Feywild is desribed in 5e and the Spirit World of 3e's OA, and replaces that and the Border Ethereal plane. It also connects the Mid-realm with the other planes.
- The Shining Realm, a paradisal realm where the gods dwell and the blessed dead go.
- The Deep Realm, an "underworld" where the majority of the dead go, until they are eventually reincarnated. Not a plane of torment, though sinful souls are punished in measure of their sins until they are sent back to the material world.
There's also The Elder (or Blessed) Lands. A bountiful, earthly paradise within the Mid-Realm that is said to exist across the ocean where the Sun rises and sets. There are many different (and usually conflictling) stories about it—it was the first dwelling place of mankind before the divine war between the gods and the Outside Ones, it is a dwelling place of immortal beings, that it has a city that floats in the sky, etc.
I had nifty, made-up names for each of these places and stuff, but that's really unimportant.
From a long standing and never quite finished campaign setting (dating back to the early days of 2e) with the most recent version here. This is a rough overview of the major points of the planes and the gods to help understand it.
In general the creation myth is that the Outside (Far Realm) was here first, then the Mother and Father woke and created the campaign setting cosmology by erecting a Wall then populating it with their ideas and first children (the other gods). Some of the gods decided to explore beyond the Wall and were corrupted by the forces of the Outside which weren't happy about what the Mother and Father had done. This sparked the Godwar, which the corrupted gods lost. They became known as the Fallen Ones and were locked away in a plane on the edge of the cosmology called the Prison. The Wall was strenghtened but cracks remained, some leading to the Outside and others leading to other campaign setting cosmologies. This has allowed other beings (and gods) to gain influence in the campaign setting but none of them are as worshipped, known, or powerful as the original gods.
Worship of a god increases their power and most of the gods (other than the Fallen Ones) are not hostile to the others, though their followers aren't as amicable to each other at times. Mortals can become Champions (like FR Chosen) and even ascend as Immortals (like in BECMI) if they gather enough strength and complete the right tasks. The cosmology is broken up into 4 general groupings of planes: Core Planes, Transitive Planes (2 of them), Divine Planes, and the Border Planes (The Wall and The Outside, and sometimes the Prison is grouped here rather than with the Divine Planes).
Core Planes: Depections of their specific arrangement vary but are always shown as a central cluster amongst the planes.
- Prime - Covering the campaign world and potentially all the other campaign setting worlds, using a variation of crystal spheres/Spelljammer travel. Also the "center" of the cosmology due to it having connections to almost all other planes.
- Shadow (changed to Shadowfell in 4e+) - A shadowy counterpart to the Prime at it's "shallow" end, but travel deep enough and you can transition to another Prime (like the original Plane of Shadow).
- Ethereal - Just as it is in the default cosmology, a surreal/foggy reflection of the Prime, home to ghosts and other incorporeal beings, with very little solid geometry outside magical items and force effects (strong magical wards and other enchantments can create a physical barrier/representation in the Ethereal and strong magical auras can allow an object to be physical within the ethereal as well).
- Faerie (aka Feywild in 4e+) - The home to the fey races and creatures, can be travelled to from the Prime or Shadow at specific points but mostly separate, time flows differently in Faerie than in the Prime on about a 1:10 ratio (so spend an hour in Faerie and 10 hours passes on the Prime).
- Elemental Realms - A mix of the Elemental Planes and Elemental Chaos with a general plane where all elements exist in various states and the areas where they concentrate and become more pure they become a pseudo-plane within the base plane. These individual realms can have properties different than their parent plane but aren't truly separate planes as they have defined, finite borders and can usually be crossed freely (sometimes it can be harder to cross depending on the nature of the specific realm). This plane is most easily reached through 'hot spots' on the Prime where certain elements are charged with magic or in a fairly pure state: deep oceans, volcanoes, deep in the Underdark, very high mountain peaks.
Transitive Planes: Normally shown as being on either side of the core planes but both are equally pervasive throughout the cosmology. Typically it's arranged so the Astral is on the same side with most of the Divine Realms, whie the Dreamscape is only shown with the Prison.
- Dreamscape - A plane of changing states and alterable through willpower alone. Any dreaming being from any plane can be found here in their dream state, though contained within a bubble realm (like those in the Elemental Realms) which they generally have complete control in and is the manifestation of their current dream. The rest of the plane is remnants of previous dreams and swirling mists. Repeated dreams by individuals or groups can spawn semi-permanent terrain, locations, and even spawn creatures that last beyond the end of those dreams. Usually accessed through dreams or psionic projection but there are other ways to enter. Deep in the Dreamscape is a singular portal to the Prison in the representation of a large barred gate with a tent in front of it in which lives the Watcher.
- Astral - A plane of silvery mists and requiring focus and willpower to navigate. Most often accessed through astral projection (spells or psionics) when coming from the core planes though some other methods exist as well. Within the Astral are glowing pools of color, texture, and appearance that are portals to every other plane except the Dreamscape and the Prison. Many planes have more than one such portal and it's the combination of features that can reveal the specific destination within the plane. Portals to the Prime have no color but instead resemble floaing mirrors with ornate silver frames that show the location in the Prime that they open onto and most of them are one-way.
Divine Planes: The homes of the various gods and Outsiders as well as remnants of older planes or created through battles between gods or powerful magics that were strong enough to alter reality. The properties of individua planes vary but when a God controls one (or a realm within one) they have complete control over the properties within their controled area. Portals can exist to any other plane (including other Divine Planes) from these planes, except to the Prison. These planes are often depicted as being on the other side of the Astral from the core planes, expect the Prison which is usually shown as being on the other side of the Dreamscape from the core planes.
- Nether - A sprawlling plane with many realms. This is the home of the more evil-inclined gods as well as all the fiends. Realms within are in control of gods, demon lords, archdevils, and sometimes even powerful mages and liches. The uncontrolled regions of the plane is often a scorched, burning wasteland that's a perpetual battlefield between the demons and devils (the Blood War). The River Styx flows throughout the plane and is the safest travel route between the realms as it crosses every realm and is considered "neutral territory" by all the inhabitants, mostly because the god of Death controls it as if it was a realm he owned.
- Tranquilia- A plane mostly of open fields, groves of trees, and rolling hills. Most of the nature-based gods have realms here and some archdruids and other powerful nature inclined beings have realms as well. The forested areas have many portals to the plane of Faerie and feylords often have their own realms here as well as in Faerie. This plane reflects all aspects of nature though so there's also dismal swamps, tall mountains, vast deserts, and even large oceans. Unicorns and pegasi are native to Tranquilia as are most nature-based outsiders.
- Imperius - This plane is dominated by a sprawling city that is the size of a continent, dotted with lakes, seas, mountains, fields, and most other terrain. Beyond the city is mostly open deserts, vast oceans, and sprawling mountain ranges. Most of the gods make their realms within the city though some dwell outside in other areas. The architecture of the city varies from realm to realm and outside the realms is often a chaotic mix. Most of the souls of dead mortals end up here in the city and live in the city or outside of it in a reflection of the type of residence they lived in during their life. Very few beings have realms in Imperius that aren't gods though sometimes groups of souls will congregate and create an enclave of enough like-minded people to impose enough control over an area to create a shared reality-realm though no one individual has any overt control over the realm. Most celestial type beings are from Imperius though not all are.
- The Prison - As it's name implies this is a sealed off plane where the Fallen Ones were imprisoned after the Godswar thousands of years before the campaign is set. The Fallen Ones are gods, and their champions who were corrupted by the Outside and sought to break the Wall and unmake what the Father and Mother created (basically anything that wasn't the Outside). Once they were defeated they were sealed with the Prison and the Watcher was assigned to guard the door in case they ever found a way to escape or some foolish being tried to release them or enter the Prsion to gain power. As the plane is sealed nobody knows what it looks like.
The Border: This refers to the Wall and the Outside. It is the "edge" of the cosmology and depicts the constraints of What Is as made by the Mother and Father from the Void that came before they awoke.
- The Wall - A barrier of energy that can be seen inside the transitive and divine planes, creating an apparent finite boundary to what is otherwise infinite planes. It also has a representation within the Prime as a crystal sphere on the edge of the solar system which contains the campaign's planet. The deeper areas of Shadow also has a shimmering curtain of darkness to represent the Wall. This barrier has a few 'cracks' along it that allows travel beyond the campaigns cosmology. Cracks within the Shadow, the Prime, the Dreamscape, and the Divine Planes provide access to other cosmologies if the right method is used to cross the Wall. The cracks within the Astral instead lead to the Outside (the Far Realm) and any being crossing to the Outside causes ripples through the Astral and pockets of corruption to appear in various planes, often including the spawning of abberrations. Also each of these ripples causes a slight weakening of the gates of the Prison and enough could cause it to fall and release the Fallen Ones. Within the Dreamscape the Wall is a very literal wall, looking to be a wall of perpetually melting (but never shrinking) metal, rock, or shadow with the gate to the Prison along it.
- The Outside - Essentially what 4e and 5e called the Far Realm. This is the roiling chaos (beyond what would be Limbo) that existed before the Father and Mother woke and created the relatively stable cosmology that is the campaign setting. It's traits pretty much match what 4e and 5e have described for the Far Realm. The Fallen Ones were gods who broke through the Wall in the Astral and travelled to the Outside. They returned changed and tried to unmake what was created. This resulted in the Godwar which is where many of the monstrous races came from. They were defeated and locked away in the Prison. The Wall was repaired but it couldn't be fully sealed and cracks remained, not just in the Astral but in other planes as well. This has allowed travel from the campaign setting to and from other campaign settings when utilizing the cracks that appear in the planes other than the Astral, though theoretically one could reach them through the Outside as well but if even gods are altered by exposure to it mortals would likely not survive intact (phsycially or mentally).
The Gods: The gods are broken up into roughly three groups. These groups represent overall outlooks on reality. There's a fourth group of Gods called the Fallen Ones but they are mostly unknown to most in the campaign setting as worship and knowledge of them was surpressed after the Godwar to try to keep them weakend and imprisioned.
- The Light Ones - The gods that reflect civilization, technology and structured learned magic. They are primarily considered Good gods but not always. The Father, one of the creator gods who made the existence is in this group and considered their leader. Most of them reside in Imperius.
- The Dark Ones - The gods that reflect destruction, decay, death, and the darker side of reality. They include some Evil gods but most are actually neutral. The majority of them reside somewhere in the Nether.
- The Patient Ones - The gods that reflect nature and natural forces. They mostly reside in Tranquilia. The Mother, one fo the two creator gods is part of this group and considered their leader. Most of these gods are of Neutral alignment (both in the Good/Evil axis as well as the Law/Chaos axis).
- The Fallen Ones - Older gods and their champions who travelled past the Wall into the Outside. Corrupted by the chaos there they came back and tried to overthrow the other gods and bring an end to existence. They are all now sealed in the Prison and most do not know their names though some beings still worship them either knowingly or indirectly through another guise.
- The Others - A handful of gods and other powerful beings who aren't aligned with any of the other groups, often outside powers who gained influence within the campaign setting when followers from other Primes moved here after the Godwar. The Watcher is also amongst this group and was a mortal Champion of the Keeper of Secrets who was elevated to immortal status and tasked with watching over the Prison until the day it is breached and the Fallen Ones are free. Many of the more powerful feylords are also grouped under this category as they are powers to rival the gods.
Timborama wrote:
Artifact wrote:
In my setting the mirror plane is almost the spirit realm, and it is mixed with the shadow plane, as if it the second was a "infection". The shadow plane is linked to the dread demiplane. In he spirit realm the characters can breath undersea (because the water is almost incorporeal, and "ether" the "energy-gas" can be breathed by lungs.
I have added elemental demiplanes to can be visited by low lewel characters. For example the demiplane of water is lots of water burbles flotaint in a hollow spaced united with giant columns of water.
I have created the time spheres, something like parallel timelines or thematic parks where time stopped. Let´s say they are like cosmic "backup copies" to avoid temporal paradoxes by chornonauts and chronomancers.
A important demiplane is Io's blood islands (from Councyl of Wyrns), a land where all canon dragons from all editions can live.
Amaniliztecuhtli wrote: