Seven Cosmic Rumors

Might as well try to write something.

• Illithids once had an empire that spanned worlds. Why have they degenerated and devolved into a handful of enclaves deep within the earth? Because the dead god on which the Githyanki built their astral capital is Ilsensine, their patron. What the Githyanki don't know is that sooner or later Ilsensine is going to stop playing possum.
• It's easier to get to the Astral Plane from the elemental planes of water and air than the planes of fire and earth. Water and Air elementals are known to brag about this in mixed company.
• It's said that there's one location in the world that is a natural gate to each outer plane. Mount Celestia is a particularly tall mountain range on which an order of Lawful Good monks live forever in pursuit of spiritual alignment, the Abyss is a massive gorge shrouded in scalding-hot steam and noxious vapors, Mechanus is an elaborate space station that has sat in orbit since time beyond memory, and so on and so forth. Regardless, all are hopelessly remote and it would be a fool's errand to try to journey to them... unless one were a great hero.
• The best way to get to the Moon is by ethereal travel. Somehow it manages to be the one part of the Ethereal that's really scenic. The moon itself is ethereal stone and exists equally in both planes.
• Ilepho, a gnome philosopher, once wrote that the Feywild and the Shadowfell are not separate planes unto themselves, but that the material plane, like many outer planes, has overlapping layers (if you must know, he compared it to a Spanakopita). His half-sister Argia the Elder disagreed, she wrote that the Feywild is the ancient, mythic past and the Shadowfell is the aftermath of some future catastrophe yet to be seen. Their disagreement culminated into a duel to the death.
• The stars are roughly divided (in increasing order of frequency) between being the distant suns of other worlds, holes in the dome of the sky through which the radiance of distant planes leaks, the eyes of unfathomable entities that coolly and enviously regard the earth, and ordinary rocks with Continual Light spells cast upon them that slipped the surly bonds of earth to float in the sky. Depending on who you ask, this list might be in a different order.
• There used to be other elemental planes. No one has seen them in centuries.

Of Matters Divine and the Three Alignments

Tonight after pain keeping me from sleep, watching Excalibur of all things, somehow shotgunning all three Pathfinder bestiaries in a single night, and revisiting previous discussions with my brother, I think I might have finally cracked some things that have been weighing on my mind.

Gods: Both Law and Chaos have gods. Gods have a physical presence in the world. They are possible though difficult to take down (and it's harder still to bring down a god permanently). They are certainly beings of enormous power, but are neither omnipotent nor omnipresent.

Law: The gods of Law are reasonably consistent in form and power, and not entirely unlike the mortals that are their charges. Some mortals believe the gods of law created the world, others believe they created or bestowed sapience and free will on mortals, others believe they are merely self-appointed guardians of it. Not all lawful gods are nice or good, but many are at least one or the other. The ultimate goals of law are the continued existence of the world and the flourishing of civilization. To be lawful can mean to be cooperative or individualistic, to be rigid or flexible, to be authoritarian or liberated, but ultimately all Lawful beings wish for life as we know it to continue existing in a recognizable form.

Chaos: The gods of Chaos are more protean and singular than their opponents, though generally they have icky tentacles and slimes and things like that and are just nasty all around. Few wander free. It is possible that they are more powerful than the gods of Law, but as they are both rarer and unlikely to present a united front they are dismayed in their efforts to unmake creation. The ultimate goals of chaos are to reduce mortals to savagery or worse and to reduce the world to a blank slate the gods of Chaos may do as they please with. To worship chaos is to be destructively insane and evil on some level.

Neutrality: Neutrality is the alignment of nature. There are no neutral clerics or neutral gods. There is only the land, and The Dragon, and the druids. Unlike the gods, the Dragon cannot be said with certainty to exist (some even believe it to be more of a metaphorical being than a literal one), except inasmuch as the land and sea that its being suffuses is clearly real. Neutrality cares for life, but has no special allegiance towards civilization or to the mortals that make it up, seeing them as things that can (and indeed must) gradually change and adapt like any other thing that wishes to endure. There is a tendency towards belief in natural selection in Neutral philosophy. Neutral people see the Dragon as both creator and creation, the world and its maker are one to them. They teach that the world is defined by the interaction of opposite forces which exist in concordant balance. While they bear Law and civilization no ill, will they also hold that the Dragon maintains itself regardless of the comings and goings of mortals and gods alike (so long as they do not attempt to conquer it outright), and that Law has an overinflated sense of its own cosmic importance. Druids by and large do not show Chaos such tolerance, as the gods of Chaos have proven time and again that they have no regard whatsoever for the Dragon.

Unaligned: Most people are not in fact aligned with anything bigger than themselves or their friends and family. If the gods were to make war, Lawful beings would fight to protect civilization and mortal life, Neutral beings would fight to protect the world and the Dragon, and Chaotic beings would fight to eradicate all other things, but unaligned people would keep their heads down and hope that whoever survives the battle would just let them live their lives. Unaligned people tend to worship whatever gods or spiritual powers hold sway over the place they are in, whether that means singing hymns and passing around a collection plate at a lawful church once a week, or offering Cthulhu space in their dreams before a sea voyage.

Clerics: The very fact that they are not omnipresent is why the gods of Law and Chaos imbue representatives among the mortals, to go where they are not, see what they do not see, and act when they cannot act. The clerical orders of Lawful gods are set up not unlike a sort of feudal system, in which divine authority is delegated down through the ranks, along with the knowledge of magic necessary to fill the needs of a cleric's station. Adventuring clerics, then, are the knights-errant of this system, taking on more power and responsibility as their prove themselves. Many gods of Law emphasize that a cleric's fealty must be as much to the people as it is to their Lord, though others demand absolute, jealous loyalty to themselves. As to the gods of Chaos, they seldom form a hierarchy. Instead each Chaotic cleric is directly the servant of his god, granted power in exchange for the sacrifice of lives to feed their master's horrid appetite or quests undertaken to hasten their awakening. Chaotic clerics are encouraged to take all they can and keep for themselves what the gods do not demand for their own.

Druids: Holy people of Neutrality, known as druids, seek to exist in harmony with the Dragon. Druids are highly individual, though they afford wary respect to more powerful ones than themselves. Most druids are solitary, but not truly hermits, as they periodically enter settlements or tribal communities to attend to whatever matters they feel merit the visit. They view their magic not as a reward for service to the Dragon, nor a tool to do the Dragon's bidding, but merely the natural consequence of existing in harmony with it. Magic is an intuitive thing for druids, they just know it when they do it.

NEXT: Astral beings and those who serve them, Arcane Magic, and maybe Witchery

I had a plan to do a big post about my ideas for a Spirit World as an alternative to the usual cosmologies...

But I ran into a couple snags.

1. I was having an unusually hard time articulating what I was trying to say
2. Almost all my ideas hewed pretty close to the section of the same name in the 3.x Manual of the Planes's "Alternate Cosmologies" chapter. The only new things I had was the idea of the souls of the dead crossing a bridge in the ethereal plane which spanned the Abyss and maybe some vague beginnings of an idea about astral travel, and I only had a handful of mechanical differences in mind.

With that in mind it might just be logical to share the relevant page (because that's all the description takes up) of that book. Surely slightly less than one page is little enough to amount to fair use.

THE REMAINDER OF THIS POST IS NOT OPEN CONTENT, BUT AN EXCERPT FROM MANUAL OF THE PLANES (c) WIZARDS OF THE COAST, PROTECTED UNDER FAIR USE

SPIRIT WORLD
The Spirit World is a realm brought into sharp focus. Colors are brighter, sounds more distinct, and every sense is more keenly aware of its surroundings. Some of its denizens say that the Material Plane is just a pale reflection of the Spirit World’s vibrancy. It is a dimension of ultimates.
The Spirit World is part of a cosmology radically different from the Great Wheel. In this cosmology, there are spirits for everything, from the greatest mountain to the smallest flower, as well as spirits of ancestors and objects long passed into history. The Spirit World is the plane where the spirits of all things, living and unliving, make their homes.
The Spirit World is a Transitive Plane that replaces the Astral Plane of the D&D cosmology. Unlike that plane, the Spirit World is both coexistent with and coterminous to the Material Plane, matching its terrain. A valley in the Spirit World corresponds to a valley on the Material Plane, and where there is a waterfall in one, there is a waterfall in the other. In the case of the Spirit World, however, the waterfall is higher, its water more pure, and its sound more pleasing than that of its equivalent on the Material Plane. The Spirit World’s waterfall would likely be the home of a water elemental that serves as the spirit of the waterfall.
Living creatures and their structures, from beaver dams to palaces, do not necessarily have direct analogs. However, where a citadel stands on the Material Plane, a similar citadel (though greater and stronger) may stand in the Spirit World, occupied by the spirits of revered ancestors of the Material Plane citadel’s ruler.
SPIRIT WORLD TRAITS
The Spirit World has the following traits:
• Normal Gravity.
• Timeless: In the Spirit World, creatures do not hunger, age, or thirst. Days and nights pass within the Spirit World as they do on the Material Plane. However, the nights are ebony black and set with brilliant stars, while great clouds arching across a sky of purest
blue dominate the days.
• Infinite Size: Unless the Material Plane has the finite size trait, in which case the Spirit World does too.
• Alterable Morphic: Changing things in the Spirit World does not directly affect the Material Plane, and changes on the Material Plane aren’t necessarily reflected in the Spirit World right away.
• No Elemental or Energy Traits: However, particular locations within the plane may have those traits. A smith’s forge on the Material Plane, for example may have an equivalent in the Spirit World with the fire-dominant trait.
• Mildly Neutral-Aligned: Specific locations may have other alignments; the Spirit World equivalent of a haunted graveyard might be mildly evil-aligned, for example.
• Enhanced Magic: All divine spells are extended and empowered on the Spirit World. Arcane magic, which comes from knowledge as opposed to proper veneration,
is unaffected.

SPIRIT WORLD LINKSThe Spirit World is coexistent with the Material Plane, and movement on one is equal to movement on the other. A traveler who enters the Spirit World, walks three miles north, and then returns to the Material Plane is three miles north of the walk’s starting point.
Travelers reach the Spirit World through the Ethereal Plane, which forms a border region between the Material Plane and the Spirit World. A character on the Ethereal Plane can see onto both the Material Plane and the Spirit World: the Material Plane clearly and the Spirit
World as a faint echo. By concentrating on the echo, a traveler can move to the far side of the Ethereal Plane and enter the Spirit World.
Because the Spirit World replaces the Astral Plane, spells that allow access to the Astral Plane use the Spirit World instead.
The Plane of Shadow does not connect to the Spirit World, so spells that use the Plane of Shadow do not function in the Spirit World.
The Spirit World leads to other planes, in particular the homes of whatever great powers oversee the operation of the known universe. A traveler through the Spirit World finds portals to the great palaces of these deities, as well as unique heavens and hells. A traveler seeking the Duke of Storms, for example, would find a portal to his palace occupying the same general location as storm-wracked peaks on the Material Plane.
SPIRIT WORLD INHABITANTS
The Spirit World is home to a variety of creatures, including fey, elementals, undead, outsiders, and dragons. Those with access to the plane shift spell visit the Material Plane under their own power, and spellcasters use summoning spells to bring other Spirit World creatures to the Material Plane. Still other Spirit World creatures find natural portals between the planes.
FEATURES OF THE SPIRIT WORLD
Settled areas of the Material Plane are particularly dangerous in the Spirit World, because these places are where the spirits of ancestors dwell. These spirits are extremely protective of their descendants; an assassin who pops into the Spirit World to infiltrate a local duke’s reception hall will be confronted by one or more ghosts of the duke’s predecessors. This is one reason that rulers live in the same palace for generations: They enjoy the protection of their ancestors.