There are three references to Mordenkainen and Bigby in the Planescape line.
Mordenkainen is mentioned in the Abyss poster map in Planes of Chaos. The entry reads "Layer the Seventh, called the "Phantom Plane" and discovered by Mordenkainen the Archmage, though it has long been sealed against intruders.
"Mordenkainen, a prime, spoke to this humble scrivener of his recent travels while commissioning a new traveling spellbook." [It goes on to the describe the layer, which is home to the Abyssal lord Sess'inek.]
...which is fine, except this is the 7th Abyssal layer the Fraternity of Order catalogued, and they've been cataloguing layers for 979 years or so. So assuming the rate of discovery is fairly constant (as it seems to be), this must have happened around 970 years ago!
The Bigby references are twofold. One is in The Factol's Manifesto, page 62: "Foreclosed upon for a debt exactly one week late in payment, Bigby's College of Academic Arts was converted into the Hall of Records, a campus of six buildings, many centuries ago."
The other is In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil, page 39: "Three streets beyond the enormous statue of some prime named Bigby, just a short walk from the Armory, the Golden Bariaur serves a clientele from the Upper Planes, from Arborea to Mount Celestia."
So apparently Bigby was a major player in Sigil, many centuries ago, even founding a university. Maybe the same period Mordenkainen was sighted there.
Now, I'm sure this is all a boneheaded mistake on par with the "Archmage Serten" and the Ring of Five. Someone (or several someones) saw that there were famous wizards whose spells were in the Player's Handbook and known on many game worlds, so they placed them in the distant past, probably not even knowing there was Greyhawk canon setting them in the present.
However, what if it's true? What if Mordenkainen and Bigby discovered, at some point, a portal to the Outer Planes that led not to the present, but almost a millennium in the past? It could be argued that we have semi-canonical evidence (mentioned not once, but three different times in three different books) that this actually happened. They explored the Abyss and established themselves in the City of Doors and eventually found a portal leading back to the present.
If it's a timeslip job, it's possible that they haven't done it yet. (Time travel makes the brain hurty.) :)
I never read any Planescape - but does time on the Planes run at the same rate and contemporaneously with time on the Prime? What I mean is, does time flow faster on the Planes, thus might centuries ago on the Planes be decades ago on Oerth?
If not, then there's a definate timeslip.
Or alternatively, these guys are parallel versions of Mordy and Bigby (that seems lame though).
Mordenkainen is mentioned in the Abyss poster map in Planes of Chaos. The entry reads "Layer the Seventh, called the "Phantom Plane" and discovered by Mordenkainen the Archmage, though it has long been sealed against intruders.
...which is fine, except this is the 7th Abyssal layer the Fraternity of Order catalogued, and they've been cataloguing layers for 979 years or so. So assuming the rate of discovery is fairly constant (as it seems to be), this must have happened around 970 years ago!
Is it possible that "discovered" gives us some wriggle-room here? What does the Fraternity's cataloguing process entail? Perhaps they found out about this interdicted layer almost a millennium ago, but Mordenkainen, in living memory, was the first to penetrate the seal (and so gain "discoverer's rights")?
That does not explain away the Bigby references, of course, even if it works. I must say that I can see the retiring and reticent Bigby having very serious issues with the erection of a big statue in his honour in a public place. Shades of the "Jaynestown" episode of Firefly... .
Time travel would also explain the annoying way in which the Bigby's hand spells keep turning up in contexts that suggest a provenance several hundred years before the Archmage of Scant's own time in published adventures (e.g., in the dungeons below Shatterhorn in the Shackled City Adventure Path; this sort of anachronism is one of my pet peeves, although there are other ways of explaining it away).
Time dilation would be the simplest answer - time runs differently on the planes. Or can appear to.
For the average planeswalker, time on the planes and time on Oerth (insert prime material world of choice) have a 1 to 1 relationship. However, for characters of sufficient skill and capacity, time can run or be made to run differently.
So, for example, Mordy and Bigby, know they want to spend some significant time on the planes. But they also do not want to be away from Oerth for that long or otherwise become out of sinc with the passage of time on Oerth. So, they solve the problem. Slowing time for them while they are on the planes. If they are not personally able to do this (depending on their levels at the time in question), there are certainly those on the planes who can.
Paradoxically, in such case, one could also say that Mordy and Bigy, rather than slowing time for themselves on the planes, actually accelerated it - allowing them to do more in the same time. Again, this is simply done with access to the right powers or places.
In either case, the passage of time was adjusted. That would be my thought. _________________ GVD
If I recall, there are very few (if any) other references to Oerth in the Planescape material. Perhaps the Planescape campaign is a few centuries after the current Greyhawk timeline?
Kelanen brings up an interesting point... wasn't there a line in one of the products that caught some GH'ers attention?
'chant is, Oerth is dying' or something along those lines (don't have it in front of me) If there is timeslip between GH's prime and Sigil that would explain a lot...
A significant chunk of the Planescape adventure Dead Gods took place in the Vault of the Drow, after the events of the classic module but before the events of the Living Greyhawk Journal article that Fred Weining wrote. I think that's the only thing that really anchors it to Oerth's timeline.
Well, that and On Hallowed Ground confirms that Iuz is still around, still trying to conquer the Flanaess. And the recent trevails of Vecna are mentioned, too, in the original boxed set (before he ended up in Ravenloft), in The Inner Planes (during his imprisonment in Ravenloft), and in Die, Vecna, Die! (which chronicles his escape from Ravenloft and into Sigil, shortly after the Faction War there).
There may well be some kind of time dilation between planes, but it probably depends on the position of the stars and exactly what planes you're trying to get to, and which portals you're using (Tovag Baragu is probably a good way to get lost in time). There isn't an absolute relationship.
A significant chunk of the Planescape adventure Dead Gods took place in the Vault of the Drow, after the events of the classic module but before the events of the Living Greyhawk Journal article that Fred Weining wrote. I think that's the only thing that really anchors it to Oerth's timeline.
I will defer to the resident Master of the Planes, Mr. (Rip) Rasgon.
However, if memory serves, there is a note in (of all things) the For Duty and Diety FR module that makes reference to Iuz' actions on Oerth in the GH Wars, setting the module thereafter. We thereby can intuit the approximate date of Grazzt's plotting. While FD&D is not a PS module, it plays on the same mythology.
Even less clear in my mind, I would swear there are PS references to the Greyhawk Wars, specifically in the context of Grazzt and Iuz. Things like "the great/recent upheavals occasioned by Grazzt' wayward son" or similarly ambiguois stuff; but we know what it means.
Or I could be hallucinating. _________________ GVD
Take a look at the description of the town of Oldridge in Ivid the Undying:
Quote:
What sets Oldridge apart... is that the town is the birthplace of Bigby. Indeed, he left his now deserted tower outside the town only some 12 years ago [573 CY, then]. And there are many rumors about what he might have left behind, for black-robed visitors flanked by fiends arrived in hot pursuit of him only days later. The tower has been looted, of course, and some of its dungeons explored, but there are tales of other, interdicted, dungeons which can only be accessed at times of rare lunar and planetary conjunctions and which may yet be unspoiled. Since Bigby has not returned, however, there is likely nothing of a really powerful nature remaining.
Pace that last sentence, the stuff about conjunctions is suggestive. What if Bigby's old dungeons contain experiments in temporal and planar manipulation from an earlier stage in his career? Bigby's interests have changed since then, of course, and if he did end up stuck in the past for an extended period, he might not be sorry to see the back of some of those experiments...
The time differences could also simply be an instance of later author ignorance. It's not like it hasn't happened before. _________________ - Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -
Ignorance is almost certianly the acutal reason, but it's not as fun as trying to think of how you might fit the reference into canon (aside from ignoring it). :)
My personal preference would be to assume they do it at some point in the future. That neatly removes any possible canon conflicts.
That does not explain away the Bigby references, of course, even if it works. I must say that I can see the retiring and reticent Bigby having very serious issues with the erection of a big statue in his honour in a public place. Shades of the "Jaynestown" episode of Firefly... .
"I want to go to the crappy Plane where I'm a hero!"
The worm-hole explanation of things is just such a dead horse though, and ultimately its a cop-out. Junk should be rewritten and not even be slightly validated by explaining it away. _________________ - Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -
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