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    Canonfire :: View topic - Alternate Divine Realms
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    Alternate Divine Realms
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    Apprentice Greytalker

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    Fri Apr 29, 2016 9:39 am  
    Alternate Divine Realms

    Over on rpg.net, there's a Where I Read thread for the 1e Fiend Folio. It's reached the section on the Elemental Princes of Evil, which has resulted in a digression into a discussion of the structure of the planes in D&D.
    Skipping over the discussion of the Elemental Planes, several people expressed a preference for pantheon-specific divine realms, like Asgard or Mount Olympus, instead of the default Great Wheel structure, in which deities are scattered through the planes based on alignment, and deities from real-world mythologies take up space despite them not be likely to be part of a campaign world.

    What would such realms look like for the World of Greyhawk? Presumably, they would be organized by culture, with a Flan realm, Baklunish realm, Suloise realm, etc. Deities with no connection to a specific culture, or who don't get along with the other deities might still have their own realms. Incabulos and Nerull still live in the underworld, because they hate everyone. Boccob still has his library on the Outlands, which becomes more of a planar crossroads instead of the plane of Neutrality. The deities who live on Oerth still live there. Celestian is still on the Astral Plane.

    Thoughts on the Suloise pantheon, assuming that each deity would want the privacy of their own domain, instead of living clustered in a "god city":

    Beltar lives in caverns that stretch deep beneath the realm.
    Bralm's Hive Fortress, Kord's Hall of the Valiant, Norebo's gambling hall, and Wee Jas' Cabal Macabre are scattered across the plains of the realm. The Cabal Macabre can only be reached by traveling into the heart of the elaborately carved Patterned Web that surrounds it. Rumors of a direct link between Norebo's hall and the Cabal Macabre are completely untrue.
    Dalt wanders the realm, having no fixed abode.
    Jascar's fortress sits atop the highest mountain in the realm.
    Lendor lives on the Wheel of Time, a massive wheel that floats high above the realm, slowly turning to track the passage of time in the universe.
    Llerg's Beasthaven is an land of untamed wilderness, barbarians, and savage animals far from the more civilized deities.
    Lydia dwells in a peaceful port community with magical links to other good divine realms and the celestial realms (the realms of solars, devas, etc. being distinct from the divine realms, the good counterpart to the realms of demons and devils).
    Osprem and Xerbo dwell on the ocean floor off the coast of the realm's land, in a vast ocean stretching to an unending horizon.
    Phaulkon's fortress sits on a cloud floating through the realm.
    Phyton lives in the center of a vast stretch of gardens, tended fields, and carefully harvested forests.
    Ranet's realm has crumbled away to ruin, only visited by Wee Jas and Norebo (if I'm remembering her parentage correctly).
    Vatun's fortress of ice sits empty, waiting for his return.

    Fortubo lives in the Dwarven realm, having abandoned the Suloise people after their creation of the Derro.
    Pyremius was exiled to the underworld after his murder of Ranet.
    Syrul lives apart from the rest of the pantheon, neither trusting them or being trusted by them. She has her own isolated fortress in the underworld, but it's linked to the realm to she can spy on her "enemies".
    Journeyman Greytalker

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    Sat Apr 30, 2016 2:29 am  

    Armitage,

    That is a very cool concept. On it's face, I wonder how well it would work for some of Oerth's Gods (I suspect it might be nearly so "tidy"), but for the Suloise, it's excellent, in my view.

    In fact...I think it would made a wonderful topic for expansion as a full-fledged Canonfire! article (hint, hint!)!! very happy


    -- K.
    Adept Greytalker

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    Sat Apr 30, 2016 7:40 pm  

    I think that makes a great deal of sense, Armitage!

    I could even see it slowly changing over time. Before the Twin Cataclysms, each of the (known) human pantheons had their own planes, and the demi-humans and humanoids did as well.

    After the Twin Cataclysms, perhaps the boundaries between realms have become fuzzier, as the worship of some deities is no longer confined to just their original worshipers, but they remain distinctive yet, though traveling between them is easier.

    This raises the question of how/did the gods of the various pantheons interact when their populaces were separate, and how do they interact now? Before the Twin Cataclysms, the god's worshippers were geographically separated, but they still managed to come into cross-pantheon conflict (Suel and Baklunish most particularly). Since then, with a great deal of religious and ethnic mixing, has anything changed?
    GreySage

    Joined: Aug 03, 2001
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    Sun May 01, 2016 3:53 pm  

    I think of the planes as a subjective structure subject to countless interpretations by different peoples and scholars.

    Along those lines, consider giving each faith/pantheon/region not just its own outer plane, but its own complete cosmology, simultaneously overlapping and distinct from others.

    For example, the Suloise (by which I mostly mean the ancient Suloise before they began accepting common/foreign gods):

    In the center of everything is the Wheel of Time, the still hub where Creation first began, surrounded by the turning clockwork of all the planes. There Lendor holds court, attended by modrons, inevitables, and observers. In the beginning of all things, the other gods dwelled with him, but as they matured they constructed halls in a circle radiating from Lendor's central palace, and within these halls they created new realms, and those realms expanded so much that they became planes in their own right. At first, the realms connected to one another like the cogs of a gear, but with time they have become increasingly detached. Some of the old godhalls now lie derelict in Lendor's domain, hollow and abandoned or colonized by new waves of extraplanar migrants.

    Bralm's plane, the Hive Fortress, remains one of the closest to Lendor's but its cogs have corroded until they only come in contact with the Wheel of Time once every century. Its original form has become unrecognizable. It is riddled with wormholes, overbuilt with hives and papery nests and great towering earthen mounds and waxen chambers and deep tunnels and terraced farms, layer after layer of inhabitation periodically razed by the wars between rival inhabitants. The formians, centauroid ant-creatures, have the heart of their empire here and use the plane as a staging ground to assault other planes. The strange gods of the humanoids have colonized cubes of matter that have broken from the Hive's crumbling edges, and they war endlessly with the formians, rogue modrons, and each other.

    Wee Jas's plane, Tintibulus the Patterned Web, is metaphysically close to both Bralm's hive and Lendor's wheel. It retains a wheel shape, and its cogs interlock with both Lendor's realm and the corroded, tenuous connections of Bralm's domain. A burning well of planar energy in the center of the realm was bored through all the planes of the multiverse by Wee Jas, all the way to the Positive and Negative Material Planes, a source of energy that Lendor himself tapped when he began the work of creation. This energy extends in a web of power that binds the whole of the multiverse together, allowing magic to work. Near the well are the roots of the World Ash, Yggdrasil, whose branches bind the celestial planes with the infernal ones. On this plane, too, is the icy palace of Wee Jas, the Cabal Macabre, intricately carved of black ice infused with negative energy and lit by rays of positive energy. Some scholars believe the Land of Black Ice north of the Flanaess is a result of a planar rift that brings the Material Plane too close to the raw energies of Wee Jas's domain. Within her palace, entities from distant planes come to beg favors from the Witch Goddess, from devils to archons to stranger beings with skin like lapis lazuli or precious metal.

    Rumors tell of another god who claims dominion over magic, Boccob the Uncaring. It's not clear if he dwells within Wee Jas's plane or if he has grown powerful enough to establish a realm of his own.

    Another root of the World Ash touches the realm of Phyton, Arvandor, the wild template all wild and tame plants were created to honor. Theologians say that when Arvandor was first created it was a place of perfect geometric harmony, but as Phyton grew older and more willful it blossomed with a riot of new growths beyond anything ancient Lendor had dreamed. Here too are carefully tended farms and gardens upon which Phyton exercises his will: this is the breadbasket of the planes, and planar merchants bring its bounty to every realm touched by the Astral Sea. On this plane, too, dwells the strange gods of the elves, allies of Phyton.

    Metaphysically close to Phyton's realm is the Beasthaven, Llerg's realm where the primal templates of all animals dwell in an endless cycle of predation and breeding. Near Llerg's realm is the realm of Kord, the Hall of the Valiant, which is itself at the edge of the lands of the giants who ruled the cosmos in the early days of the world. Some of these giants, it's said, have accepted trysts with Kord and born him sons. The realm of Vatun, who may be the product of such a tryst, was once near here as well.

    Highest of the planes is Elysium, the home of the angels and guardian spirits, and the adjacent wheels of Heaven and Paradise. Lydia lives near here in her palace of truth and beauty. The angels largely obey laws given to them by Lendor long ago but their realms have become independent planes as the celestials drifted closer to the light. Their ancestors, the inevitables, care for nothing but order and dwell still in the palace of their creator, but angels have learned to interpret the laws in the service of good. Some bend the laws further, even to the point of breaking them, claiming to honor their spirit rather than their letter, and within the society of angels there are continuous debates and battles over the true meaning of good.

    Touching the realms of Wee Jas and Lendor is Centerspire, a mountainous realm named for the towering peak in its center, the home of Jascar's throne. From this plane Jascar receives tribute from the elementals of the Plane of Earth and the strange gods of the dwarves. Fortubo's realm, the Empyrean Delve, was once part of this plane before he defected to the dwarven pantheon.

    Phaulkon is often found in the realms of Jascar and Phyton, but his true domain is the infinite expanse of the Elemental Plane of Air. At one point Phaulkon dwelled with his brothers and sisters with Lendor, but he could not be bound within a hall of stone when he craved the endless freedom of the skies. His old hall is abandoned now, inhabited by the avian chronotyryns. The Elemental Planes were created by Lendor before time began, placing them below his own realm, and it is here that Phaulkon now spends the bulk of his time, attended by uncounted birds and the giant eagles that are his children, brought offerings by the elementals and faithful djinni who have come to worship him.

    Xerbo now dwells in the Plane of Water, ruling over a palace of coral and untarnished adamantine. His onetime consort Osprem rarely visits him here, but for the most part Osprem remains in her old hall in Lendor's wheel, ruling over the primal waters that formed before the Elemental Plane of Water existed, the spring from which all waters flow.

    Ranet once lived in the Plane of Fire, but her castle there is ruined, the hearth she once tended in Lendor's domain now ash. The Quasielemental Plane of Ash is now Ranet's home, a place of darkness and mourning.

    In the center of the Inner Planes is the Material Plane, where all elements mingle. Located metaphysically directly beneath the center of Lendor's wheel, it was the last plane to be created by Lendor himself before he retired to his cosmic wheel to rest. It's said one of the roots of Yggdrasil burrows into its soil now.

    The last of Yggdrasil's roots leads to the netherworld, the dark reflection of creation that formed in the Astral Sea as if in answer to the bright and ordered realm made by Lendor. All aspects of Lendor's wheel have their twisted counterpart here, and just as Lendor's wheel has spawned other planes so too as the central hub of the netherworld grown endless labyrinths and depths. Pyremius rules from a volcanic parody of Ranet's realm. Lydia's palace of truth and beauty is refuted by Syrul's palace of beautiful lies and ugly truths.

    The realm of the devils was originally part of the netherworld, it's said, though it has detached and become a sovereign fief in its own right. Devils regularly send ambassadors to court the favors of Wee Jas or marshal warriors to fight back incursions from the insectoid realms of Bralm.

    Located on the border of the netherworld where no law holds sway, rogues and ne'er do wells from all corners of the multiverse meet in the gambling halls of Norebo to deal and swindle. Angels throw dice with demons; modrons shuffle cards for slaadi. Tieflings plot with githyanki and lizardlike khaasta. Norebo answers to neither the traditions of Lendor nor the dark whisperings of the netherworld hosts: in his realm he is a power to himself, his will absolute. Open violence is forbidden here but in the shadows assassinations and abductions are commonplace. Norebo's one rule is Do As Thou Wilt, but Don't Get Caught.

    Deepest of all is the realm of Beltar, the Pits of Malice, gateway to the realm of the demons and spiritual home of serpents and aberrant life.

    The demons are abortions of the multiverse, the sins of gods and mortals made flesh. Their realms, adjacent to their stepmother Beltar's, are as limitless as the atrocities of men.
    Journeyman Greytalker

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    Sun May 01, 2016 4:54 pm  

    As ever, amazing work, Rasgon. I particularly like that you included Yggdrasil in your Suloise cosmology as an axis upon which things spin. Given that we know (in a historical context) that the characters belonging to the earliest players in Greyhawk's history quite often paid homage to the Norse Gods (for example, Robilar's worship of Odin), I like to ensure that that pantheon is paid due befitting that precedent whenever possible. Strong work!!! Happy

    -- K.
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    Wed May 04, 2016 2:08 pm  

    I kinda like the idea of the planes as being subjective realities shaped by the gods and whatever beings may be beyond them. Geographical characteristics are symbolic rather than literal, though they may seem solid enough when one is dealing with them directly.

    Thus, I imagine the Great Wheel as sort of a system of categorizing celestial realms for basic understanding. To my mind, saying any god's "realm" is on a particular plane is more a statement of philosophical similarities than of geographical contiguity. To put it another way, Sigil doesn't literally exist in the center of the Wheel. Rather, it's philosophically open enough to be easily accessible by most other celestial realms. Going from one plane to another might "seem" like walking from here to there, but that "seeming" is only a subjective movement from one conceptual reality to another.

    P.S. For all those I used to chat with every night: Bubbagump is back.
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