It Finally Happened...

A while back, I swore off using DriveThruRPG - they'd been hacked, and although I didn't get hit it was a pain having to replace my credit card. At that time, I took the view that I wasn't going back there unless and until they happened to have something I just had to have - which was always unlikely, given that I wasn't even going to look.

But against all the odds, it has actually happened: they're currently offering megabundles of some key D&D books: a 1st Edition set, and a Planescape set. But the best of all is a Known World set, which is truly exceptional. And that's the one that's a must-have.

I wonder if they take PayPal?

The Fastness of the Divine

Last of the "other places"... for now.

After the Great Deluge, when Choriam the Morningstar led the remnants of humanity to Terafa, they found a green and unspoiled world. And all was well, for a time. However, in Terafa's firmament there were other gods, and they were jealous of Choriam and consipired against him. They seduced the men of that age into following their ways, and cast man's rightful god into bondage, denying him his rightful place.

Ages passed, and mankind prospered despite himself. In time, all knowledge of the Morningstar passed out of memory, and the name Choriam was lost. But in the darkness, he endured.

Eventually, Choriam freed himself from his prison, and reclaimed his birthright as the sole god of mankind. He overturned the false gods. In the struggle that ensured, many of these were slain, victims of Cavcari's Last Invocation - a true proof of their weakness.

But in the end, once Choriam had laid his enemies low before him, he chose mercy. Rather than slay the remaining gods outright, he confined them to a great prison: the Fastness of the Divine. Their forms he petrified, and fixed in a great ring in the skies over Terafa, there to watch as a constant reminder of the price of jealousy and ambition.

The Fastness of the Divine is one of the benefits of the "ultimate edition" of the setting that I'm working on - it's actually something I came up with for another setting that happens to fit really well here. I've always liked the image of a planet with a ring system, though I'm reasonably sure it doesn't work outside of fantasy. So the idea of having a fantasy world with a ring system, and that being a fixture in the cosmology of the setting, is one I rather like.

The Fastness of the Divine isn't really a plane, as such - like the moon, it's really just another part of the Prime plane. However, actually getting there probably requires planar transport, so it works.

The rocks that make up the Fastness are, essentially, the petrified remains of the gods, but held in a statis that the 'true' dead gods don't enjoy - thus rendering mining of the essence of the gods impossible. However, the Fastness is not uninhabited; it is a place of pilgrimage for powerful worshippers of those gods, and also a gathering point for many of their agents, demonic and otherwise.

(Incidentally, it's also worth noting that the Fastness is the prison for the gods of man only. The elves and dwarves have their own patron deities, while the goblin races have gods that they don't so much worship as attempt to intimidate.)

One last thing: this ties in, in large part, to the nature of the divine in Terafa. Here, the dominant religion is monotheistic, though flavoured by the use of various saints to intercede with Choriam himself. The secondary faith is much more naturalistic, and mostly noted for being the source of primal (druidic) magic. However, there's also more than a little of the conflict between "the old gods and the new" going on - although imprisoned, the other gods are not entirely without power...

The Law of the Preincarnate

Having outlined the cosmology and outlined every single thing that makes it up, I'm now immediately going to discuss one of the other places that is to be found. This one, like the Dreamlands, isn't a Transitive Plane, but neither is it really an Inner Plane, an Outer Plane, or whatever else. It just is, floating somewhere out there in the Astral Sea. (Whether it connects to the Great Web is much less clear. Since the latter is the work of mortals, and since almost no mortals are even aware it exists, that suggests perhaps not...)

The Hall of the Preincarnate

This is the realm of the Maybes and Not-Yets, the souls of the Unborn. It is a great hall, vast in size and filled with warmth and light, where the Preincarnate rest until such time as they are called into being. The Hall of the Preincarnate is not a place for mortals, or even the divine - it is guarded by the Neverwere, planar beings whose sole purpose is to protect the Unborn from being corrupted by the echoes of life. They seek any who venture into the Hall and eject them, and then sorrowfully cull any of the Unborn who might have been influenced by exposure.

Incidentally, the Hall of the Preincarnate also has an annex for those souls whose destiny is to be reincarnated across the ages - a place to retire from one life and rest while awaiting the next. But the Neverwere make sure to keep these souls strictly apart from the Unborn, in order to prevent corruption.

The Law of the Preincarnate

One of the great edicts of reality, on a par with Cavcari's Last Invocation, is the great Law of the Preincarnate, which states that all mortal souls must have free will.

The major consequence of this is that a god or demon lord can seek to influence mortals, and can even lay traps for them that ensnare them into acting in certain ways, but they cannot both have a soul and be denied free will. All compulsion effects must have a finite duration or a condition by which they end. And it also means that if a god or demon lord requires a servitor race that does not have free will, that race cannot be granted souls, or must have at least the potential for rebellion.

But there is another consequence of the Law of the Preincarnate, which concerns the use of magic around the birth of a mortal. Specifically, in the two days and nights immediately prior and immediately after the birth of a child, the use of magic to affect that child is strictly forbidden. In fact, magic of a divine, demonic, or primal origin simply will not affect a mother in labour or her newborn child.

Other forms of magic, notably the arcane and pact magic, will continue to function, but they run a terrible risk - the fusing of the Unborn soul with the child may be prevented or may be corrupted to terrible effect. Of course, this may be the intention of the caster, though they often live to regret their hubris.

It's worth noting that I don't expect this detail ever to come up in 'live' gameplay - I've written elsewhere about my general dislike of pregnancy as a plotline in storytelling (because it's always exactly the same story beats in exactly the same order), and so I'm hardly likely to include it in a game except as an incidental factor.

However, the Law of the Preincarnate is mostly about world-building. Specifically, I was involved in a discussion some years ago in which it was noted that the widespread use of divine magic would inevitably have a major effect on society and demographics - one of the obvious uses would be to eliminate infant mortality, amongst other things rendering the wicked stepmother an endangered species.

In amongst thinking about that, it also occurred to me that there were various possibilities that could be opened if that particular door was closed - in particular, since so much of gothic horror is about man meddling with forces beyond his comprehension, there's an easy story there about what happens if a desperate would-be father, denied help from a divine source, turns instead to a necromancer (vivomancer?) to save his wife and unborn child. Naturally, such a thing would work... sort of.

And, finally, there are the Neverborn, the key villains in another campaign I never quite got going. These were Unborn souls that Should Have Been but, for whatever reason, were denied. I haven't locked down exactly what these are as yet, and may never do so, but there's the core of an idea there.

(Lastly, a quick reminder: it's just a game. Nothing here should be taken as my opinion about anything outside of that context!)

Outer Planes

The Outer Planes of the cosmology of Terafa are also relatively simple, since there are only two. Or maybe three. Okay, it's not quite as simple as all that...

The Celestial Realms: Or "The Heavens", or just "Heaven", this is the alleged resting place for all goodly mortal souls when they pass. It's a realm of light and peace, where pain cannot be felt, and where everything is just better. However, it is also strangely deserted - instead of the expected hosts, the Celestial Realms are home to a few angelic beings of a distinctly elemental, and distinctly unapproachable, manner.

The Broken Gates: Deep within the Celestial Realms is a great set of gates, behind which can be glimpsed a staircase rising into still greater light. But the gates are broken and the way beyond is shut.

The Dark: Also "The Outer Dark", "The Hells", "The Abyss", "The Pit", or just "Hell", this is a teeming realm of destruction and pain. This is the alleged destination of all mortal souls who do not enter the Celestial Realms. But, again, those souls seem to be largely absent. Which is not to say that the Dark is empty - it is home to a multitude of demons and devils, who struggle against one another for supremacy and who plot ever for their access to the mortal realm.

And that's about it. The truth is that I've never been a huge fan of planar adventures, and especially of the Outer Planes, so while the setting needs some sort of a cosmology, I haven't given it a whole lot of thought. Of course, it's always worth bearing in mind that all of this might be the accepted wisdom of mortal theologians and philosophers, and may not be entirely accurate. And as for those wizards and others who are capable of visiting the Outer Planes, well, who's to say that their perceptions are truly accurate, and not molded by what they expect to see?

Inner Planes

The penultimate building block in my cosmology are the so-called "Inner Planes". In the default cosmology, these are the building blocks of the multiverse - the elemental planes and the energy planes.

In my cosmology these planes are rather simpler: they simply don't exist. Instead, positive energy comes from the suns, negative energy from the void between the stars, and the elements are all around. Elementalists don't conjure elementals and other servants from a separate plane - they draw them from the Prime plane itself.

As such, the only Inner Planes, as such, are alternate Prime planes. Of course, since other Primes may tie into their own cosmologies (it's complex...), the absence of Inner Planes around Terafa in no way suggests they don't exist somewhere...

The Dreamlands

Some scholars contend that the planes that now exist were first brought into existence through the slumbering dreams of the gods - whether the gods that exist now, those that have since passed beyond recall, or some other source is a bone of further contention. As evidence for this claim, they point to the Dreamlands, micro-planes brought into being as mortals slumber. Weak and transient as they are, they remain real and accessible to those with the means, so what might the dreams of a god become?

The Dreamlands are not transient planes (as detailed previously) as such , as they do not provide a means of travelling between or within other planes. Indeed, they are accessible only through the Prime plane and the Astral Sea - even the Great Web does not reach the Dreamlands.

The Dreamlands are micro-planes that are finite in size and temporary in nature - when the sleeper wakes, any travellers within the Dream are ejected into the Astral Sea. Within the Dreamlands, time is subjective as are all manner of physical laws. Further, each Dream is unique - the dreams of a child might be flying unicorns on rainbows, while the troubled sleep of a dragon would be a realm of terror, might, and gold to a mortal visitor.

The great threat in the Dreamlands, both the travellers but also to te Dream itself, is of course Nightmare. Whether this is a philsophical force in the multiverse, whether it is a race intent on corrupting the Dream, or indeed whether it is the vestige of a dead god is unknown. But, just as the Dream takes a different form for all who experience it, so too does Nightmare form itself to the shape of the Dream, reflecting the terrors and insecurities of the individual Dreamer.

Campaign Theme: Lost Honour

Suddenly, I find myself building a new campaign (or, just perhaps, a one-shot). This all came about due to a Google search for strong themes, and on perusing the resulting list one leapt out at me: lost honour.

The idea, of course, is that the various campaign elements would be defined by their honour - either they're in the process of losing their honour, or they've deliberately thrown aside their honour, or they've defined honour badly, or they're persecuting the PCs for their own lost honour.

In terms of the PCs, the key would be that each player would be built with two requirements: the player needs to define how that character defines honour and how the character has lost that honour, and the character is required to care about that loss.

As noted, the character's definition of 'honour' can vary: one character may be, essentially, a Samurai who finds himself without a master (i.e. Ronin), and who bitterly feels that disgrace. Another might be a former soldier who, in a moment of weakness, turned tail and ran, leaving her unit to their deaths. A third might have been brought up with the notion that his purpose was to make a good marriage and sire an heir to the family name, only to discover that the wife his parents chose for him was a monster - he fled, but feels the loss of wealth and station that that decision results in. And so on, and so forth.

There are, of course, several ways the story can then resolve itself - the character could find a way to redeem their lost honour, the character could come to peace with the loss, the character could conclude that their definition of 'honour' was faulty, or whatever. Or, of course, the character's story could end without a proper resolution - either due to the collapse of the campaign, a plot that doesn't quite work out, or of course a premature death.

And now, I need a game to use, a setting, and some players...

Transitive Planes

"Transitive Planes" was a term used by the old D&D cosmology to describe the collection of planes that joined other planes. Originally, this consisted of the Ethereal and Astral planes only, with the Plane of Shadow/Shadowfell and Feywild being added to the list later.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the term, but there's nothing wrong with the concept - after all, something needs to join one plane to another. However, I'm also not absolutely sold on the set of transitive planes used by D&D - some of them are fine, some need a little tweak, and there's one I would like to add.

That being the case, here are the five transitive planes that I have in mind to use:

• Astral Sea: The biggest of the transitive planes, this is a timeless, airless void that links all the planes. Travel is reasonably easy, but almost nobody lives here. The major landmark in the Astral Sea, other than the permanent gates to the individual planes themselves, are the Dead Gods - the petrified remains of deities that once were and now are not.
• The Shadowfell: Yeah, that's a better name that "the plane of shadows". This is a darkened mirror of the world, full of entropy and decay. Not a nice place to visit, and even less nice to live, it is a haunt of necromancers and the undead.
• Wonderland: As in "Alice in...". This is the replacement for the Feywild, and is a wild and nonsensical place, albeit one with its own twisted logic (and a logic that cannot be denied - the rules may not make sense, but those are the rules and you must respect their authoritah). Wonderland is the home of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts of the Fey, led by the White Queen and the Red Queen.
• The Land Beyond the Mirror: Beloved of seers and diviners, this is the realm that can be seen by those who stare too deeply into mirrors. Travel in the Lane Beyond the Mirror is dangerous, because it is a reflection of all those who venture there.
• The Great Web: Unique amongst the planes for being a creation of mortals, the Great Web is exactly what the name implies - a giant web of strands leading up, down, and sideways to any plane you choose to investigate. The main problem is that the Web is unmapped, and indeed defies all attempts to map it. The wise therefore venture there only after first plotting their journey. Though perhaps that is not the greatest problem - after all, does a web not imply spiders...?

It's worth noting that this structure does not allow any room for an Ethereal Plane. Instead, I'm going to take the view that being 'ethereal' is a condition that some creatures may possess, but that does not denote movement to any other plane.