CowardlyPaladin
2013-05-27, 12:05 AM
Inspired by this thread
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=15311022#post15311022
I love many things about D&D editions 1-Pathfinder and one of the things I love the most are the planes. Me and some friends are planning to write our Pathfinder own our 5th edition, and in order to do this we are going to be rewriting the Outer Planes, which are possibly one of my favorite aspects of the game because I love the philosophical aspect of creatures and worlds defined by aspects of morality. However, I thought the existing system was a little simplistic. So here is my new system, I'm looking for suggestions in expansions and criticisms. Warning, this is a very complicated system, side effect of gaming with a Theology, Philosophy, Ethics, and Psychology Major . Also one last thing, I am under the assumption that AL is not a personality system, but instead only a morality system. Also I have Unaligned as a category which describes animals, constructs and creatures too inhuman to have alignments.
The journey of the Soul
In my world, when a soul dies, the journey to the afterlife takes 14 days. Most Resurrection magic ceases to work after the 14th day. First they spend three days clinging to the mortal plane, then is the best time to raise the dead (in my game resurrection magic has been split into about 5 more spells). THen the soul has the "10 days of judgment". First they go to see if the soul has done the proper rituals to be reincarnated, which must be done before death. If they haven't, then they go to the City of the Dead on the Fugue Plane (IE Forgotten Realms) to see if they had a patron deity. If they have a patron, then they go to that god's plane, and are judged by their standards. So if Bob and Sally are both worshipers of Hextor, Bob who has been a loyal tyrant all his life will be rewarded in Hextor's realm, while Sally who worshiped him thinking he was a nice god when he wasn't, is punished for being a good persons. THe Souls have the option of forsaking their gods and going to their AL plane instead. The Final Judgement is in the Boneyard (IE from Pathfinder) where which AL plane they go too is chosen. They are judged accordingly and sent there way. The final journey takes about a day.
Petitioners and souls
When a soul arrives at there new realm they become a Petitioner, a sort of copy of themselves in life (think Roy from OOTS). Depending on what plane they go too depends upon how they are treated, however one universal rule is this. All Petitioners eventually become the "Native Outsiders" of the plane. In the Seven Heavens, after the Petitioner reaches the final level of the mountain, they become an Archon of appropriate strength to their character level and moral fiber. In the Nine Hells, the Petitioners are all turned into Lemures, there evolution goes on from there. In the Abyss, the Petitioners are torn apart, with each one making a random number of demons. As a rule, planes taht do the 1 Petitioner=1 Native tend to have more powerful natives, but far less of them. Good planes universally let the natives choose when they wish to "Evolve" at there own time and place, while evil forces the transformation. Neutral Law and Chaos vary.
Unaligned realms
Once upon a time, the 9 alignment planes were determined not by people's souls, but instead by actions, each good or evil action would instead produce energy to power the planes, that energy could be harnessed to create natives, magic items, or great spells. However, in the Great Contract, mortal souls (Which until that point had all gone to the same realm) instead went to the Outer Planes, and new planes were designed to suit those purposes. However the Old 9 Planes still exist, somewhat obsolute but still powerful and fighting their own war. The natives of these planes are far more alien, and care not about saving people's souls, but instead simply about obtaining more actions. Thus a native from the LG/Unaligned realm doesn't actually want people to be LG, it just wants them to do some LG actions on the way. If people are still evil but will do some good actions, its all ok right? These creatures are almost unknowable, and must be treated with caution.
The Battles of Good Evil, Law Chaos and Neutral
People say that the five great forces are balanced. They are wrong. In reality, one of the forces outnumbers all of the rest. Evil is by FAR the strongest and most powerful of the 5 facitons, because most people are evil. The reasons for this is 1) In my game most of my societies are based upon real life societies, where slavery, genocide, rape, murder, and child abuse are normal 2) The vast majority of D&D mortal races are evil, by virtue of having evil gods and evil cultures. The Drow are not a fantasy counterpart culture (at least I hope not) and yet due to their faith, most of them (If not all) are evil. 3) The world of D&D if you accept all of the information and worlds as true, is terrifying. It is full of MASSIVE amounts of monsters, evil spells, and dangers, and thus is a really bad environment for everybody. Nasty enviroment leads to people doing nasty things, I think the webcomic GOBLINS proves this very well. People will do very bad things when they are scared. 4) There are many evil gods who are preaching really nasty doctrines to promote their world view. In addition to active evil gods, you have the evil outsiders, you have monsters like Hags or Raksashas, you have Ghost and evil spirits. The fact is evil just has more inherent creatures to serve it and try to promote its cause 5) being Good is REALLY hard. The BOED sets a really high standard and it is not easy to keep up to it. Evil isn't a doctirne, you don't have to work hard to be evil, its in fact extremly easy to be evil. Remember, a well intended extremise like RedCloack and a psychopath like Xykon are still both evil, one might be a worst person, but they both produce a single soul for their respective afterlives.
That is the default setting for my game. The thing that keeps evil in check is the fact evil is not one big happy family, and will keep constantly fighting themselves more than any body else. And the PCs of course. After evil, the second largest faction is True Neutral, which I think everybody knows why they are popular. Then comes Law and Chaos, who are equally matched, and finally good, who are by far the weakest power, in part because they insist of having there souls take their sweet time before becoming natives.
On the psychology of Outsiders
There are three essential rules one must bear in mind when dealing with the psychology of outsiders
1) They lack free will. Unlike mortal creatures, Outsiders do not have any ability to NOT be LG, CN ect. They can have individual personalities but they are defined entirely by their AL. Mortals are who are defined by their personality with their AL supporting that, Outsiders are exactly the opposite. There are no fallen Archons, there are no risen demons. There has be a single exception to this rule, the forces of the Abyss once created a succubus Paladin by taking the soul of a Paladin and binding it in the essense of chaos, for the sole purpose of screwing with the forces of good, but other than that there has been no exceptions. The Unaligned/AL outsiders can fall or rise, but they operate under their own bizzaro world logic anyways
2) All outsiders have difficulty with empathy. Being creatures of cosmic morality, they have a very hard time understanding why other people don't think they way they do. For example, when demons come to our world, even if they can take human shape, they get caught almost instantly and killed if they don't have local cultists to help them out (or if they have been here before) becuase they sometimes don't understand things like A) why do people get upset when I murder/rape/torture people in public? B) why do people find these things ok sometimes, but not other times? C) Why do you they seem to care about each other and focus upon protecting these "loved ones" D) What are these "rules" people keep going on about? E) Why does this person who wants to commit murder and secretly desire too need me to rephrase it in a nicer way. The Demon is a being of Pure CE, they have a hard time not getting that. Likewise, low level Devas (CG in my world) will often immediately attack slavers and try to end slavery in say the Fantasy Counterpart Roman Empire at the word go, where they will be promptly killed and accomplish nothing. On the other hand however, more powerful demons are more acquainted with mortals, and some of them can interact with and even take advantage of mortal nature. Since they are immortal, those who do come to the mortal plane will eventually learn to be extremely subtle
3) That they are extremely long lived. The great contract was 1 Billion years ago, and some of them are even older than that.Those who get past the hurtle of point 2 are often running extremely long term plans involving changing the entire mortal plane. Of course, the leaders of all of the planes (and pretty much all of the gods as well) are also running equally complicated long term plans, and so they tend to overlap and often ruin each other, its like a Guy Richie film. So the players might encounter a supply of Lawful weapons being smuggled by an evil band of Devil worshipers to go to the blood war and discover that the Archons are responsible because they want to keep the war going. Or that the ruler of "Totally Not A Fantasy Stand In For The Mongolian Empirestan" is being advised by his consort, who is in fact a servant of Limbo, to try to encourage cultural diversity in order to support the cause of chaos. Or the Fantasy Roman Emperor's son's teddy bear is possesed by a Deva who can communicate only in dreams and is trying to subtly talk the Emperor to be to stop slavery.
The Outer PLanes
The 9 Main Planes: These are the 9 Core AL Planes of them all, and thus are by far the most powerful
The Blessed Field of Elysium
Description: The Key part of this realm is peace, and idyllic goodness. This is very much just a realm of happiness and personal freedom, where people come to enjoy life for its own sake. Everything here seems brighter and more colorful and things seem happier and more lively. The idea of this plane is trying to please everybody, and trying to make everybody around you happy. The idea of “you can’t please everybody” doesn’t exist here, its all about trying to improve ones self and make the world a better place for everybody. Here sensations are increased, food tastes better, the sun is nicer, sex is better, and the landscape is totally idealistic. This is the most paradise focused of all of the realms, people here mostly just live with joy, happyness, and love. Many of the most pleasure focused gods live here, along with the Aasimons, while mortals here often are very happy but often cannot bring themselves to leave. Souls here appear as they did when they were happiest, and simply enjoy the love of the realm. When they get tried of the joy, or become more interesting in helping others find love than themselves, they have one final massive party before joining with the love and becoming an Aasimon.
Petitioners: Petitioners appear as they were when they are the most happy, but are able to easily move between form. When they arrive here, they come to a massive feast where everybody at the plane meets at Noon, to welcome the new comers. In a plane where no time passes, it happens once a day because Planescape=Paradox. The souls then simply mingle, the plane is based upon the idea that events are not as much fun as people, and souls are naturally drawn to those who they would be naturally compatible with. Unlike in LG realm, the PEtitioners still feel hungry, because of the attitude that "too much of a good thing will make you unhappy" and so they rarely do a single tasks obsessively.
Levels: The plane is divided into four levels. All of them are based upon the idea of nice place to visit and make your own fun. Amoria is the top level,and is basically defined by Ghebi hills. Small villages of like minded people are located all over the place, the land is extremely temperate and nice. Eronia is a land of extreme weather, and is designed for those who like to challenge themselves and improve their own lot. Nobody ever gets hurt (Unless there is a foreigner involved) however mountain climbers are constantly defeated by the mountains, in order to motivate the soul to try harder. Belierin is based upon the concept of personal contemplation and solitude, the realm is very much like the Scottish Highlands, a misty realm where one can be along with their thoughts. It is however an extremely dangerous realm if you are not a petitioner, as many evil creatures are kept prisoner here, who constantly attempt to escape. Thus, PCs might encounter a disturbing number of evil races running around trying to kill them, either to free their masters, or are the masters themselves. Thalasia is a massive ocean with many islands spread throughout its shores. Each islands here contains some form of knowledge, from libraries, to laboratories and portrait galleries, and the souls here must swim or travel to get to island or another. For mortals this place can be dangerous, as Daemons often emerge in this realm to try to raid the knowledge catches, and PCs can be useful in bringing them down.
The Natives: The Aasimon are the most human looking of all of the Good Outsiders, and appear as "sterotypical" angels, IE extremely human with wings and all that. Unlike most outsiders they remember their experiences as mortals, and the most relatable of outsiders. Aasimon rarely concern themselves with grand goals of fighting evil or wiping out slavery, instead they focus upon trying the help people on a small level. Aasimon will often provide food for poor areas, they try to make the crops grow, they protect people's homes from the terrors of the night, they help victims of abuse, protect villages from war, and protect people from muggings. Many of them disguise themselves as local fortune tellers to serve as pseudo psychologists, trying to help those who have suffered learn to deal with there pain. The vast majority of them try to focus upon education the poor, serving as traveling teachers trying to encourage learning and keep people from becoming evil. Souls become Aasimon when they tire of the joy and wish to instead to spread it around
Does anybody have any suggestions. Guardinals never seemed very NG to me, I had them be something else, I never got how the whole naturalism imagery serves NG. Any advice in making this more interesting for adventurers to travel in? Suggestions in adventuring hooks would be welcome
The 9 Hells
I think this plane has been thoroughly covered more than any other plane, so I don't have to go into more detail. Just know that Dicefreaks hell is not this plane because I think that is different enough to be its own thing, and the plane dedicated 90% of its efforts to fighting the blood wars. The themes of this world is loss of identity, Kafkaesque government, and of a cold uncaring society that doesn't care about you in the least, as well as a total lack of optimisms. I don't define Asmodues as the endless master schemer in my game, instead he is more of a master of the Xanators speed gambit, he is but one player in a massively complex game of planar politics, what he is good at is turning his enemies against each other. Secretly, he has already given up at emerging victorious, as a being of pure LE, he has long since given up on such concepts as hope, optimism, and luck. He has calculated that according to the odds, he will die, either by his own minions, one of the many other great powers in the world (PLanar creatures, Gods, Pridmortials ect) or be killed by a small band of adventures. He knows secretly that his life has already ended, the question is when. However, he is determined that if he must die, he will die as benefits the lord of the Hells, he will ensure that anybody who wishes to topple him from his throne better be ready to fight for it.
Petitioners: All LE souls appear as sort of clay vaugly humanoid shapes (think the school children in Pink Floyd's "The Wall" who are instantly used as a form of energy. They are divided between the 9 dukes according to who has the proper rights, and command over them. They are then put into hellish factories where they are process and turn into ether new Devils, magic items, or magic as the Dukes requires. None of them remember there former life
Natives: The Devils are the natives, hyper lawful and lovers of corruption. There main focus in the world is to make Faustian bargins, and try to corrupt mortality into following their path of evil and deceit.
Other than that, it is pretty much the same as in the guide to hell book.
Adaddon, The Realm of Neutral Evil
I'm not cutting Gehenna or Yugloths, but i love the Daemons for NE and the pathfinder take of them a great deal. I am posting all of the information I can without going into copyright territory, or is my own information.
This is the realm of the Daemons, who are not interested in war so much as the total destruction of all existence, in a Kefka nihilistic destruction. They are kinda bad people. Those who come here are those who are those who commit evil due to a disbelief in morality or thinking it doesn’t apply to them. Possible the most openly hostile realm on the Outer Planes, Abaddon is a cold realm, with cloying black mist covering much of the terrain while the sky provides only enough illumination to reveal the surrounding lands in darkened silhouette and the poisoned surface of the River Styx. The memory-devouring river originates in Adabbon and meanders its way across the plane and to the realms beyond like a twisted serpent, but it and other environmental hazards teh the least of any traveler’s concerns. The Daemons, Adabbon’s native fiends, embody not the tyranny of devils nor the savage destruction of demons, nor anything in the middle. Instead, they personify the very concept of death, ruin, loss, and oblivion. Feared across the multiverse as soul-devouring horrors, the daemons are ruled by a quartet of godlike archdaemons known as the Four Horsemen. They view the mortal realm as nothing more than a waiting feast, and themselves as the universe’s chosen tools of a coming apocalypse. The Entire realm is in darkness, no matter hoe much light is used, and in fact, light, magic, and reading are constantly being drained while people stay on the realm. The torment of this realm is the fear of the unknown and the oblivion of existence, souls chosen to go here remain in the darkness trying desperately to find something, anything other than the native Daemons, until they finally resign themselves to their fate as the darkness closes in, until they finally join the chorus of damned souls, screaming for something, anything, before they are forcibly made into a Daemon.
There are four levels here, each embodying a different conception of the "aftermath" of ruin, there are no wars here just an empty battlefiedl The first level is the Throne of Flies, under the rule of Apollyon, Horseman of Pestilence, and it streches out to the surface area of several planets, though the vast majority of the archfiend’s domain is a thinly populated, plague-ridden morass of swamps and flooded forest, the largest of which is known as the Plaguemere. Scattered through Apollyon’s domain, ruined cities and citadels rise out of the muck like boils or scabs cresting above raw flesh, many of them built upon the sunken remaints of their predecessors. Everything here is rotting, rot is everything, and unprotected mortals will themselves start to rot, feeling the graveworms take up resisdence in their flesh
The Second Level is that of the Cinder Furnace, the realm of Szuriel, the Horsemen of War. This is the largest layer, a desolate region of dead volcanoes, lifeless baslat plains, fields of razor-sharp obsidian and the fortress citadels of her ever-marching armies. The key to this realm is not actually battle, but instead the aftermath of battle, as one of the key places of the Blood War (It was here the conflict started), the realm is full of half rotten corpses, broken buildings, ruined weapons and lost stragglers. The few mortals who dwell here are mostly scavengers, trying to pick up the leftovers of the wars in order to better themselves. However they have to be careful, for the very air here is a threat, for exposure to the air for more than a hour can cause interal bleeding, resulting in the victims literally drowning in their own body fluids. The entirep lane is nothing more than the remains of a great war, blood soaking into the ground, corpses being picked over, and great machines of war in ruin.
The Third level is the Weeping Tower, home of Trelmarixian, the Horseman of Famine. This is a realm of bizzare organic construction, dotted by lakes and rivers of chemical and bodily fluids. Obsessed with experimentation upon mortal souls, Outsiders, Elementals, and Trelmarixian fills his realm with the resuilts of those trials, buth successful miscegenations and the grotesques failures alike. The Daemons here have an almost ritualistic view towards souls, taking them apart, putting them back together, and finally devouring them for their own personal amusement. Those who dwell here slowly loose feeling in themselves, until they are simply purely numb, almost like from painkillers. The mortals who live here are mostly Wizards hoping to gain the results of the experiments without becoming one themselves. I.....need more ideas with this one
The Final Level the Drowning Court belongs to Charon, lord of death, and this is simply a misty recluse of small “islands” connected by bridges made out of lost dreams and flesh. With the exception of Charon himself (and the occasional scream) this entire realm is silent, human voices cannot make noise and all sound effects are very muted, sometimes going away completely. The River of Styx flows everywhere here, with boats of souls being constantly moved up and down the river. The source of the River is in this realm, where Charon himself lives. The Whirlpool which is the source of the river is the source of all of the lost memories of the River, and those who dwell in this realm too long will slowly lose their memories as well.
Petitioners: Those who arrive here come as ghostly version of themselves, and retain all class and racial levels just with the ghost template. However, they don't last long as the local Daemons hunt them across the level, in order to consume there essence
Daemons: Basically the pathfinder daemons, horrifying creatures of Nether and loss, they resemble more light concepts than actual creatures. They hope to destroy everything in the world, including themselves, but
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before that they wish to encourage evil to grow. Evil is self destructive after all, and if all the world is evil, then the world will will take that much less effort to burn.
The Abyss
is there really anything more to say, its the abyss?
The Maelstrom, pure CN
I never thought giant frog screamed "chaotic neutral" to me, so much as it screamed "random". I like the pathfinder version, much better, but since i'm Lawfuli to the extreme, can somebody find a way to make it more....i don't know, fun? Because random stuff happens doesn't seem very fun to me, maybe something a bit more Blake like?
The realm: This is true chaos, in that it is totally and utterly random and lacking any cohesive form. Their is no rule other than your own understanding of randomness. While limbo is the more typical version of chaos, IE ever changing, this world is even more chaotic than that, because ever changing is a constant in itself. This realm is the realm of individualism, personal fulfillment, you find your own world. This is the plane of unformed and ever-changing potential a plane of chaos that surrounds the other planes like a vast, unplumbed ocean, a swirling sea lapping at tiny islands of stability. The Maelstrom is also perhaps the only plane that can truly be called infinite. while others may encompass massive, virtually unimaginable space, or bend the constraints of geometry and encompass a limited but unbound region, the Maelstrom is beautiful, deadly, and without end, it is an infinate plane large enough to surround and contain multiple infinite planes. Beyond the Unstable and fantastical (But ultimately ration and familiar, remember chaos isn’t irrational) borderlands, the Maelstrom’s depths grow more and more detached from the familiar tropes of reality as most mortals and immortals understand it. As the borderland shallows gradually transition into deeper realms, the environment grows prone to greater and more whimsical changes, and the distant sky takes on a blue sheen until ultimately the region called the Deep Maelstrom reveals itself as a formless cerulean void. Walking transitions to something between flying and swimming, with the air possessing an almost liquid viscosity. As the physical manifestations of creative and destructive potential, the Maelstrom continually generates new and bizarre forms of life. the vast majority of such creatures live transient, mayfly existences before the Cerulean void subsumes them once again, but in a land manifest its own inconsistency, their exist some paradoxical constants. the Maelstrom’s borderlands, adjacent to other, more stable planes, harbor their own bizarre ecologies fill with creatures native to those neighboring planes and their chaos-touched descendants. Additionally, the maelstrom’s shallow harbor transient groups of celestrials, fiends, and even axiomite and inevitable armies crusading against the chaos. The Cerulean Void harbors such beings as chaos beasts and the plane’s most populous (and perhaps original) natives, the serpentine proteans. Enigmatic creatures of chaos, three protean races are creatures of creation and destruction in equal measure. The bestial naunet proteans emerge from the borderlands like a living, seething tide, seeking to break down the infection of more stable realities. The Imentesh proteans seek the same, but through subtlety and persausion, like wandering prophets of chaos infecting minds, philosophies, and even religions. Everything changes, their are no absolutes. This isn’t the realm of randomness as Limbo is, this is the realm of reality. scholars describe the proteans as living embodiments of the Maelstrom, crafting the chaos like artists before tearing it down again in a natural cycle of instability. Others say the creatures behave not unlike the Maelstrom’s immune system, viewing the chaos like a living thing seeking to reabsorb the reality that it spawned or which was carved out of it and stolen by the gods and other powers- and the proteans indeed view their plane as a living thing, worshiping it as a dualistic king. This is just pure chaos in its own form. Have fun.
Petitioners: Um....any ideas? Anybody? Please
Natives: The Proteans are horrifying snake/reptile...things. They are like dragon snakes combined with cell organisms, ever changing, even internally. Their ultimate goal is to destroy the whole structure of the planes, bring an end to the carefully maintained balance between the 5 forces, instead let there be freedom, let the planes merge into a single clamorous whole, a realm of possibilities, or change, and of unstructured emotions unrefined by the foolish mortal "rules" and liminitations upon emotions. They also are teh enemy of reason, down with logic, down with formalism, and lets emotions rise
The Outlands
I thought the RIlmani were never the good "Core N race" I love the Aeons from Pathfinder for that purpose.
The World This is the neutral ground between the planes, where magic doesn’t work and people are leveled fairly equally. Its basically exactly the same as in Planescape I see no reason to change it, unless people have really cool suggestions.
Natives: The Aeons focus upon trying to maintain the balance. At first glance this makes them seem almost like the Rilmani, but while the Rilmani are militaristically trying to keep all of the planes politics in line, the Aeons instead focus upon maintaining the working of the world itself, and are less concerned with the specific details of birth and death. Thus their balance s that of a cosmic nature, not that of a political one, through in the Cosmic Planes they are often the same thing. The Aeons try to ensure three basic goals 1) The protection of Free Will 2) that the Elaborate system of Planes remain intact 3) Magic continues to function properly. They look really cosmic and magical https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C...K5Sl4AO74oDwCQ icnore the cthulu picture of course.
Petitioners: They appear as they did in life, and everybody here simple does the activities that they enjoyed the most. Neutrality is based upon contentment, and so everybody here simply lives life much like they did in real life, just without major disasters happening (unless a fiend gets involved of course) . Normally they travel from gate town to gate town interacting with people and seeing how everybody is before moving on. It is almost impossible to harm an Outlands Petitioner, they have the strongest magical protection of any PEtitioner and can normally overcome anything you have to throw at them.
Ok, now that i've done the core planes, time to do the fun part, the mixed planes, which is always my favorite part.
Avalon, NG/LG
The Triple themes to this world are redemption, personal projects, and ideal living, ergo the overall theme is the feeling of personal love and respect. Basically the theme of this realm is contentment, being happy with yourself and your ideals. People who had always wanted to engage in (Good) pet projects, such as science or reading or enjoying nature. There is no age, misery or sickness in this realm (unless others bring it here) and people are happy doing what they want. The native Planetar are more concerned with working with the souls at the various good actions instead of trying to have them contemplate their nature, and try to protect the souls rather than kill evil. Of all the Upper planes however, Avalon is the most well protected, as its unique feature is that evil beings who enter this realm are overwhelmed by the power of good to the point where they either must flee or actually turn good. Evil Mortals are confronted with their past sins, and while they aren’t forced to repent, the plane makes a very good argument (In fact many of the most evil mortals in the world have redeemed themselves here and hide from the world on this plane). Purely Evil Creatures have an even “worst” fate, confronted with the sheer overwhelming goodness of this plane, they for the first time in their lives (normally) are confronted with the pain of evil, and often are remade as Plantars, actually many of the native Plantars are in fact invaders who stayed too long. If any evil realm wanted to destroy Avalon, they would have to send an elite strike team with power magic that could slow (but not stop) the plane’s influence, and destroy all of the Plantars in a single quick attack, but as that is almost impossible, they settle for raids. Devils and Fallen Angels fear this realm the most, for they know full well the sins that they will be confronted with, most already miserable with their pain. The only two evil outsiders immune to this influence are Demodands, who instead are simply destroyed by the unbridled optimism of the realms, and Daemons, who are in so much pain already by existence that the plane simply enrages them (through this can make them a bit easier to fight). This nature defense makes up for the comparable small number of Planetars (as most souls who go to Avalon choose to remain in mortal shells rather than ascend) and their relative lack of power compared to the greater outer plane races. As of such, many angels and Archons will hide powerful magics in Avalon knowing that the other races won’t interfere. Souls here are like themselves in life, but are allowed as much time as they want to indulge in their own personal past times. If at any point they want to focus on helping other people with their pet projects instead, they will ascend and become Planetars. Unless the Blessed Islands, these souls do not gain in levels, they just enjoy themselves. The Planetars themselves focus most of their energy upon aiding other planes in fighting evil, as their own realms natural defenses mean that they need only a few armies to defend it from attack. The philosophy here is that of Social Morality: The Justice of Unity. Good is the accomplishment of society. This means that the individual only matters insomuch what they can contribute to the overall goodness of the world.
The Natives: PLanetars appear like vaugley humanoid beings with extremely inhuman traits, likes whoels where there faces should be, eyes in the wrong place, and stuff like that.
Nirvanna NG/CG
Nirvanna follows the philosophy of the Flagellant’s morality, the Good in Essentials. The idea that Good is appreciating life, suffering and the denial of what are normally considered rights actually serve the cause you to appreciate things like air and the absence for pain. Empathy for others is important because its lets you appreciate what they have. Taking something away from someone is Good because they can better appreciating something like it. The Azata focus most of their energy upon testing and trying to improve mortals into something greater and more powerful. At first glance this realm doesn’t seem good at all, as it is all about mediation, however in reality it is about harnessing yourself into your greater good. The people here appear as they did during the worst moment of their life, however they slowly perfect themselves until they become an Azata and guide others. As the plane of benevolence untouched by either law or chaos, the paradise of Nirvana exists as a balance between the extremes. Curisously though its natives pursue a more interventionists and active role across the planes than their ideological neighbors while its blessed souls seek to acheive a personal enlightenment free of care and worry. Contrary to the opinion of some, Nirvana is not a plane of the elect, the enlightened, and the virtuous to the exclusion of all others; it is a place of respite, a sanctuary for the weary soul, and a place of redemption for any who would willingly seek it out-even the damned. Pastorals wilds of Nirvana support a myriad of native including petitioners, all manner of celestrial wildlife, mortals, gods, agathions, and angels. while the plane’s agathion celestrials frequently visit their favorite places in the mortal world, the plane itself- or some other force, seems to ensure that Nirvanas once mortal souls let go of their worldly shackles, perhaps worrying that their rest or enlightenment might be hindered by mortal influence. As for the petitioners, most spirits of the mortal dead that arrive on the plane do so with something of a clean slate. While on other planes the dead may retain their mortal memories in various states of completion and gods have full control over the memories various states of completion and gods have full control over their memories, either all at once, or slowly discarding their burden memory by memory. Free of the shackles of mortal concerns and worries they pursue a sheltered, idealistic afterlife, growing ever more attuned to their plane and its spiritual ideals before they vanish, ascending to a higher state of existence hidden deep with Nirvana’s core, or achieving a divine unity with the plane itself, after becoming a native of course.
Natives: The Azata physically resemble creatures out of Buhhidist scripture (or Tibetan pre Buddhist work), strange bizzare creatures with many faces. They constantly are trying to test and encourage mortals, though they sometimes have trouble understanding limitations in doing that, and can often accidently hurt the mortals they are just trying to "improve"
The Beastlands NG/N
I never really got how this plane worked in its Original context, and so i have this as the N plane. BTW, every single plane touches the Outland in some way, so every plane has some cross over with N.
This is sort of idealized nature, where the Guardinals live a life of blessed harmony, everybody enjoying their own personal place in the greater circle of life. The Guardinals are all animal like and try to help people come to harmony with the world around them. The Power of Friendship is very real here, and the bond between friends can make them accede to literal super human levels. Those who work together and find comradely with each other are able to do amazing things. On the other hand however, they are very much into the idea of “the Greater Good” and are fanatically interested in self sacrifice in order to help the group. . They follow the philosophy of Jungle Morality, the Contentment of Survival, The idea that Good is instinctual, that man is born good, its just that society corrupts them, good is part of the natural order and inherently part of our being. Everybody here appears as children, and grow up in the Beastlands, before “dying” and becoming Guardinals
Any advice on how to make it less.....well boring would be much appreciated.
The Blessed Isles, CG/N
This is where the Eladrin dwell, i've always liked them but not as the core CG race.
his is the realm of Happy endings, adventure and emotional jubilation. Basically this is the realm for HEROES (HELL YEAH). Darkness isn’t really counter to eladrinic nature. All emotions are part of the Blessed – love and hate, joy and grief, pride and guilt, boldness and terror, gallantry and cowardice. The Blessed Isles can be as nasty as the Abyss or as serene as Elysium; the difference is that in The Blessed, all emotions and passions, even the most uunpleasant ones, are necessary parts of a benevolent whole. Eladrins might fall by losing sight of that whole, wallowing in one emotion – any emotion, not just the “bad” ones – to the exclusion of others. The Blessed Isles is a plane of stories. Epics, in fact. Eladrins are guardians of those stories; they exist to make sure they are seen through to the end, and their code of subtlety is to make sure that they can interfere with mortal stories without ruining them. That’s why they meet others in disguise; an old wise man or fair lady may make sense in an epic, while a celestial may not. They feed on epics, on extreme experiences; these become part of them, knitting into their bones. Overall, this means that punishments, monsters, curses, midnight hags and dangerous minataurs all roam the good plane. It isn’t a safe place, any more than Aslan is a tame lion. The only rule is that if you yourself are good and true, you’ll get your chance to win out, and if you are wicked you’ll be appropriately punished in a redeeming and ironic manner. In play, this means heroes ahve good, clean monsters to fight, great tragedies to overcome, but they always end like Sinbad, the Sailor- atfer all the boatwrecks, they end up rich, married, successful, all that. This gives players their dream adventures in many ways, without compromising the general idea of the Eladrins.
Tying this in within the context of the above post, the plane as a collective ensures that nothing is ultimately destructive, nothing ultimately annihilated- everything comes full circle to where it is supposed to be without any overarching or enforcing legalistic moores. The souls here are actually more powerful than they where in life, but cannot leave the plane, but this does effectively mean that evil almost never raids the blessed Islands. This world follows the Aethetic Morality, the beauty of Art. The idea here is that good is beautiful. Making things beautiful makes you good. Only through goodness and morality can you create the greatest works of art and powerful inspirations to everybody. Nobody can deny the fact that the greatest works of art and beauty are those made by people who believe in what they truly love, thus this is the realm of perfect art and the greatest adventure. The Eladrin focus their energies upon people enjoying themselves and try to make people enjoy themselves. The Realm has 4 levels, Olympus, Ossa, Pelion which I haven't fleshed out, and the Court of the Stars, where their leaders dwells, which is more like a floating demi plane that moves between the three levels.
Natives: The Eladrin at first glance appear like extremely elaongated out of proportioned elves, but a closer glance reveals that this body is really nothing more than a shell. Underneath the flesh multi colored light shines through, and in there true form they are just a pure orb of light. Many of them are decked out with other qualities, like butterfly wings and unicorn horns. Most importantly, Eladrin don't need to be summoned into the Material plane, they can enter the material plane whenver they wish and work for the cause of good provided that nobody realizes taht they are Eladrin, once somebody discovers their identity they are instantly banished back home. The Eladrin serve as the scouts, sabatours and secret agents for the couse of good and can often be founding spying upon the forces of evil.
The Heroic Domain of Asgard CN/CG
I wanted to expand this place past simply endless battle.
Despite its realm, this is not the realm of eternal battle, but rather the realm of eternal passion/recreation. The battlefields are most noticeable, but all across the plane, people are indulging in their personal passions without regard for the world around them. It’s the realm of artists and warriors, poets and sports, these are more than mere games, these are true everlasting passions that define one’s life. The souls here appear as they imagined themselves to be in life, rather than how they actually looked, and while they are always the same level, they can change their class and design every day so they can experiment with other sensations. This realm use to simply be covered by Divine Servants, but eventually the final Fall came about, when a group of Archons gave up on law and decided to try to fight evil independently. They did not fall unto evil however, and were too focused to join the CG courts, so instead they took up residence in Asgard, where they work diligently to fight evil on their own terms, now called the Asuras. They are reluctantly accepted by the rest of the Forces of Good, through it is with a great deal of reluctance. Despite the fact that they occupy two separate alignments, the vast majority of Asuras are CG, with only a small minority slipping into CN, often for violating their good ideals in order to kill evil. Even these CN beings fight evil and are determined to take no part in allying with evil, they just use less nice methods. The Asuras are the most accepting of the good outsiders, through they are only barely tolerated by the other forces of Good, they tend to work with neutral forces and mortals more than any other. They also hate the Rilmani for constant interference, and actively try to dispose of neutral forces that wish to maintain the balance, as they are only interfering with the cause of goodness. They follow the Famous Morality, the Virtue of Glory, the diea is about people knowing and approving your actions, its about setting a positive example. The More people who want to act like you, the more good you are. Doing thigns that makes people happy is good because they will remember and emulate you for it. Asuras focus upon trying to destroy evil in that most public and in your face manner, hoping that people will follow their glorious example.
The Three Realms here are Gladsheim, Muselheim and NIdavallir. Gladsheim is a floating continent that everybody can see above, and is the realm of artist, singers, poets, and romantics. Muspelheim is the mountains and plains, and here dwell the storytellers, heros, partiers and dancers. Nidavellir is the ground and underground level, and here warriors and hero fight for glory and honor.
Asuras: They resemble creatures of Indian mythos, and are extremely bombastic. They also have done a great job of isolation themselves from every other good faction for their constant belligerence and cowboy cop attitude.
Any luck with fleshing this one out more, I never really "got" it
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=15311022#post15311022
I love many things about D&D editions 1-Pathfinder and one of the things I love the most are the planes. Me and some friends are planning to write our Pathfinder own our 5th edition, and in order to do this we are going to be rewriting the Outer Planes, which are possibly one of my favorite aspects of the game because I love the philosophical aspect of creatures and worlds defined by aspects of morality. However, I thought the existing system was a little simplistic. So here is my new system, I'm looking for suggestions in expansions and criticisms. Warning, this is a very complicated system, side effect of gaming with a Theology, Philosophy, Ethics, and Psychology Major . Also one last thing, I am under the assumption that AL is not a personality system, but instead only a morality system. Also I have Unaligned as a category which describes animals, constructs and creatures too inhuman to have alignments.
The journey of the Soul
In my world, when a soul dies, the journey to the afterlife takes 14 days. Most Resurrection magic ceases to work after the 14th day. First they spend three days clinging to the mortal plane, then is the best time to raise the dead (in my game resurrection magic has been split into about 5 more spells). THen the soul has the "10 days of judgment". First they go to see if the soul has done the proper rituals to be reincarnated, which must be done before death. If they haven't, then they go to the City of the Dead on the Fugue Plane (IE Forgotten Realms) to see if they had a patron deity. If they have a patron, then they go to that god's plane, and are judged by their standards. So if Bob and Sally are both worshipers of Hextor, Bob who has been a loyal tyrant all his life will be rewarded in Hextor's realm, while Sally who worshiped him thinking he was a nice god when he wasn't, is punished for being a good persons. THe Souls have the option of forsaking their gods and going to their AL plane instead. The Final Judgement is in the Boneyard (IE from Pathfinder) where which AL plane they go too is chosen. They are judged accordingly and sent there way. The final journey takes about a day.
Petitioners and souls
When a soul arrives at there new realm they become a Petitioner, a sort of copy of themselves in life (think Roy from OOTS). Depending on what plane they go too depends upon how they are treated, however one universal rule is this. All Petitioners eventually become the "Native Outsiders" of the plane. In the Seven Heavens, after the Petitioner reaches the final level of the mountain, they become an Archon of appropriate strength to their character level and moral fiber. In the Nine Hells, the Petitioners are all turned into Lemures, there evolution goes on from there. In the Abyss, the Petitioners are torn apart, with each one making a random number of demons. As a rule, planes taht do the 1 Petitioner=1 Native tend to have more powerful natives, but far less of them. Good planes universally let the natives choose when they wish to "Evolve" at there own time and place, while evil forces the transformation. Neutral Law and Chaos vary.
Unaligned realms
Once upon a time, the 9 alignment planes were determined not by people's souls, but instead by actions, each good or evil action would instead produce energy to power the planes, that energy could be harnessed to create natives, magic items, or great spells. However, in the Great Contract, mortal souls (Which until that point had all gone to the same realm) instead went to the Outer Planes, and new planes were designed to suit those purposes. However the Old 9 Planes still exist, somewhat obsolute but still powerful and fighting their own war. The natives of these planes are far more alien, and care not about saving people's souls, but instead simply about obtaining more actions. Thus a native from the LG/Unaligned realm doesn't actually want people to be LG, it just wants them to do some LG actions on the way. If people are still evil but will do some good actions, its all ok right? These creatures are almost unknowable, and must be treated with caution.
The Battles of Good Evil, Law Chaos and Neutral
People say that the five great forces are balanced. They are wrong. In reality, one of the forces outnumbers all of the rest. Evil is by FAR the strongest and most powerful of the 5 facitons, because most people are evil. The reasons for this is 1) In my game most of my societies are based upon real life societies, where slavery, genocide, rape, murder, and child abuse are normal 2) The vast majority of D&D mortal races are evil, by virtue of having evil gods and evil cultures. The Drow are not a fantasy counterpart culture (at least I hope not) and yet due to their faith, most of them (If not all) are evil. 3) The world of D&D if you accept all of the information and worlds as true, is terrifying. It is full of MASSIVE amounts of monsters, evil spells, and dangers, and thus is a really bad environment for everybody. Nasty enviroment leads to people doing nasty things, I think the webcomic GOBLINS proves this very well. People will do very bad things when they are scared. 4) There are many evil gods who are preaching really nasty doctrines to promote their world view. In addition to active evil gods, you have the evil outsiders, you have monsters like Hags or Raksashas, you have Ghost and evil spirits. The fact is evil just has more inherent creatures to serve it and try to promote its cause 5) being Good is REALLY hard. The BOED sets a really high standard and it is not easy to keep up to it. Evil isn't a doctirne, you don't have to work hard to be evil, its in fact extremly easy to be evil. Remember, a well intended extremise like RedCloack and a psychopath like Xykon are still both evil, one might be a worst person, but they both produce a single soul for their respective afterlives.
That is the default setting for my game. The thing that keeps evil in check is the fact evil is not one big happy family, and will keep constantly fighting themselves more than any body else. And the PCs of course. After evil, the second largest faction is True Neutral, which I think everybody knows why they are popular. Then comes Law and Chaos, who are equally matched, and finally good, who are by far the weakest power, in part because they insist of having there souls take their sweet time before becoming natives.
On the psychology of Outsiders
There are three essential rules one must bear in mind when dealing with the psychology of outsiders
1) They lack free will. Unlike mortal creatures, Outsiders do not have any ability to NOT be LG, CN ect. They can have individual personalities but they are defined entirely by their AL. Mortals are who are defined by their personality with their AL supporting that, Outsiders are exactly the opposite. There are no fallen Archons, there are no risen demons. There has be a single exception to this rule, the forces of the Abyss once created a succubus Paladin by taking the soul of a Paladin and binding it in the essense of chaos, for the sole purpose of screwing with the forces of good, but other than that there has been no exceptions. The Unaligned/AL outsiders can fall or rise, but they operate under their own bizzaro world logic anyways
2) All outsiders have difficulty with empathy. Being creatures of cosmic morality, they have a very hard time understanding why other people don't think they way they do. For example, when demons come to our world, even if they can take human shape, they get caught almost instantly and killed if they don't have local cultists to help them out (or if they have been here before) becuase they sometimes don't understand things like A) why do people get upset when I murder/rape/torture people in public? B) why do people find these things ok sometimes, but not other times? C) Why do you they seem to care about each other and focus upon protecting these "loved ones" D) What are these "rules" people keep going on about? E) Why does this person who wants to commit murder and secretly desire too need me to rephrase it in a nicer way. The Demon is a being of Pure CE, they have a hard time not getting that. Likewise, low level Devas (CG in my world) will often immediately attack slavers and try to end slavery in say the Fantasy Counterpart Roman Empire at the word go, where they will be promptly killed and accomplish nothing. On the other hand however, more powerful demons are more acquainted with mortals, and some of them can interact with and even take advantage of mortal nature. Since they are immortal, those who do come to the mortal plane will eventually learn to be extremely subtle
3) That they are extremely long lived. The great contract was 1 Billion years ago, and some of them are even older than that.Those who get past the hurtle of point 2 are often running extremely long term plans involving changing the entire mortal plane. Of course, the leaders of all of the planes (and pretty much all of the gods as well) are also running equally complicated long term plans, and so they tend to overlap and often ruin each other, its like a Guy Richie film. So the players might encounter a supply of Lawful weapons being smuggled by an evil band of Devil worshipers to go to the blood war and discover that the Archons are responsible because they want to keep the war going. Or that the ruler of "Totally Not A Fantasy Stand In For The Mongolian Empirestan" is being advised by his consort, who is in fact a servant of Limbo, to try to encourage cultural diversity in order to support the cause of chaos. Or the Fantasy Roman Emperor's son's teddy bear is possesed by a Deva who can communicate only in dreams and is trying to subtly talk the Emperor to be to stop slavery.
The Outer PLanes
The 9 Main Planes: These are the 9 Core AL Planes of them all, and thus are by far the most powerful
The Blessed Field of Elysium
Description: The Key part of this realm is peace, and idyllic goodness. This is very much just a realm of happiness and personal freedom, where people come to enjoy life for its own sake. Everything here seems brighter and more colorful and things seem happier and more lively. The idea of this plane is trying to please everybody, and trying to make everybody around you happy. The idea of “you can’t please everybody” doesn’t exist here, its all about trying to improve ones self and make the world a better place for everybody. Here sensations are increased, food tastes better, the sun is nicer, sex is better, and the landscape is totally idealistic. This is the most paradise focused of all of the realms, people here mostly just live with joy, happyness, and love. Many of the most pleasure focused gods live here, along with the Aasimons, while mortals here often are very happy but often cannot bring themselves to leave. Souls here appear as they did when they were happiest, and simply enjoy the love of the realm. When they get tried of the joy, or become more interesting in helping others find love than themselves, they have one final massive party before joining with the love and becoming an Aasimon.
Petitioners: Petitioners appear as they were when they are the most happy, but are able to easily move between form. When they arrive here, they come to a massive feast where everybody at the plane meets at Noon, to welcome the new comers. In a plane where no time passes, it happens once a day because Planescape=Paradox. The souls then simply mingle, the plane is based upon the idea that events are not as much fun as people, and souls are naturally drawn to those who they would be naturally compatible with. Unlike in LG realm, the PEtitioners still feel hungry, because of the attitude that "too much of a good thing will make you unhappy" and so they rarely do a single tasks obsessively.
Levels: The plane is divided into four levels. All of them are based upon the idea of nice place to visit and make your own fun. Amoria is the top level,and is basically defined by Ghebi hills. Small villages of like minded people are located all over the place, the land is extremely temperate and nice. Eronia is a land of extreme weather, and is designed for those who like to challenge themselves and improve their own lot. Nobody ever gets hurt (Unless there is a foreigner involved) however mountain climbers are constantly defeated by the mountains, in order to motivate the soul to try harder. Belierin is based upon the concept of personal contemplation and solitude, the realm is very much like the Scottish Highlands, a misty realm where one can be along with their thoughts. It is however an extremely dangerous realm if you are not a petitioner, as many evil creatures are kept prisoner here, who constantly attempt to escape. Thus, PCs might encounter a disturbing number of evil races running around trying to kill them, either to free their masters, or are the masters themselves. Thalasia is a massive ocean with many islands spread throughout its shores. Each islands here contains some form of knowledge, from libraries, to laboratories and portrait galleries, and the souls here must swim or travel to get to island or another. For mortals this place can be dangerous, as Daemons often emerge in this realm to try to raid the knowledge catches, and PCs can be useful in bringing them down.
The Natives: The Aasimon are the most human looking of all of the Good Outsiders, and appear as "sterotypical" angels, IE extremely human with wings and all that. Unlike most outsiders they remember their experiences as mortals, and the most relatable of outsiders. Aasimon rarely concern themselves with grand goals of fighting evil or wiping out slavery, instead they focus upon trying the help people on a small level. Aasimon will often provide food for poor areas, they try to make the crops grow, they protect people's homes from the terrors of the night, they help victims of abuse, protect villages from war, and protect people from muggings. Many of them disguise themselves as local fortune tellers to serve as pseudo psychologists, trying to help those who have suffered learn to deal with there pain. The vast majority of them try to focus upon education the poor, serving as traveling teachers trying to encourage learning and keep people from becoming evil. Souls become Aasimon when they tire of the joy and wish to instead to spread it around
Does anybody have any suggestions. Guardinals never seemed very NG to me, I had them be something else, I never got how the whole naturalism imagery serves NG. Any advice in making this more interesting for adventurers to travel in? Suggestions in adventuring hooks would be welcome
The 9 Hells
I think this plane has been thoroughly covered more than any other plane, so I don't have to go into more detail. Just know that Dicefreaks hell is not this plane because I think that is different enough to be its own thing, and the plane dedicated 90% of its efforts to fighting the blood wars. The themes of this world is loss of identity, Kafkaesque government, and of a cold uncaring society that doesn't care about you in the least, as well as a total lack of optimisms. I don't define Asmodues as the endless master schemer in my game, instead he is more of a master of the Xanators speed gambit, he is but one player in a massively complex game of planar politics, what he is good at is turning his enemies against each other. Secretly, he has already given up at emerging victorious, as a being of pure LE, he has long since given up on such concepts as hope, optimism, and luck. He has calculated that according to the odds, he will die, either by his own minions, one of the many other great powers in the world (PLanar creatures, Gods, Pridmortials ect) or be killed by a small band of adventures. He knows secretly that his life has already ended, the question is when. However, he is determined that if he must die, he will die as benefits the lord of the Hells, he will ensure that anybody who wishes to topple him from his throne better be ready to fight for it.
Petitioners: All LE souls appear as sort of clay vaugly humanoid shapes (think the school children in Pink Floyd's "The Wall" who are instantly used as a form of energy. They are divided between the 9 dukes according to who has the proper rights, and command over them. They are then put into hellish factories where they are process and turn into ether new Devils, magic items, or magic as the Dukes requires. None of them remember there former life
Natives: The Devils are the natives, hyper lawful and lovers of corruption. There main focus in the world is to make Faustian bargins, and try to corrupt mortality into following their path of evil and deceit.
Other than that, it is pretty much the same as in the guide to hell book.
Adaddon, The Realm of Neutral Evil
I'm not cutting Gehenna or Yugloths, but i love the Daemons for NE and the pathfinder take of them a great deal. I am posting all of the information I can without going into copyright territory, or is my own information.
This is the realm of the Daemons, who are not interested in war so much as the total destruction of all existence, in a Kefka nihilistic destruction. They are kinda bad people. Those who come here are those who are those who commit evil due to a disbelief in morality or thinking it doesn’t apply to them. Possible the most openly hostile realm on the Outer Planes, Abaddon is a cold realm, with cloying black mist covering much of the terrain while the sky provides only enough illumination to reveal the surrounding lands in darkened silhouette and the poisoned surface of the River Styx. The memory-devouring river originates in Adabbon and meanders its way across the plane and to the realms beyond like a twisted serpent, but it and other environmental hazards teh the least of any traveler’s concerns. The Daemons, Adabbon’s native fiends, embody not the tyranny of devils nor the savage destruction of demons, nor anything in the middle. Instead, they personify the very concept of death, ruin, loss, and oblivion. Feared across the multiverse as soul-devouring horrors, the daemons are ruled by a quartet of godlike archdaemons known as the Four Horsemen. They view the mortal realm as nothing more than a waiting feast, and themselves as the universe’s chosen tools of a coming apocalypse. The Entire realm is in darkness, no matter hoe much light is used, and in fact, light, magic, and reading are constantly being drained while people stay on the realm. The torment of this realm is the fear of the unknown and the oblivion of existence, souls chosen to go here remain in the darkness trying desperately to find something, anything other than the native Daemons, until they finally resign themselves to their fate as the darkness closes in, until they finally join the chorus of damned souls, screaming for something, anything, before they are forcibly made into a Daemon.
There are four levels here, each embodying a different conception of the "aftermath" of ruin, there are no wars here just an empty battlefiedl The first level is the Throne of Flies, under the rule of Apollyon, Horseman of Pestilence, and it streches out to the surface area of several planets, though the vast majority of the archfiend’s domain is a thinly populated, plague-ridden morass of swamps and flooded forest, the largest of which is known as the Plaguemere. Scattered through Apollyon’s domain, ruined cities and citadels rise out of the muck like boils or scabs cresting above raw flesh, many of them built upon the sunken remaints of their predecessors. Everything here is rotting, rot is everything, and unprotected mortals will themselves start to rot, feeling the graveworms take up resisdence in their flesh
The Second Level is that of the Cinder Furnace, the realm of Szuriel, the Horsemen of War. This is the largest layer, a desolate region of dead volcanoes, lifeless baslat plains, fields of razor-sharp obsidian and the fortress citadels of her ever-marching armies. The key to this realm is not actually battle, but instead the aftermath of battle, as one of the key places of the Blood War (It was here the conflict started), the realm is full of half rotten corpses, broken buildings, ruined weapons and lost stragglers. The few mortals who dwell here are mostly scavengers, trying to pick up the leftovers of the wars in order to better themselves. However they have to be careful, for the very air here is a threat, for exposure to the air for more than a hour can cause interal bleeding, resulting in the victims literally drowning in their own body fluids. The entirep lane is nothing more than the remains of a great war, blood soaking into the ground, corpses being picked over, and great machines of war in ruin.
The Third level is the Weeping Tower, home of Trelmarixian, the Horseman of Famine. This is a realm of bizzare organic construction, dotted by lakes and rivers of chemical and bodily fluids. Obsessed with experimentation upon mortal souls, Outsiders, Elementals, and Trelmarixian fills his realm with the resuilts of those trials, buth successful miscegenations and the grotesques failures alike. The Daemons here have an almost ritualistic view towards souls, taking them apart, putting them back together, and finally devouring them for their own personal amusement. Those who dwell here slowly loose feeling in themselves, until they are simply purely numb, almost like from painkillers. The mortals who live here are mostly Wizards hoping to gain the results of the experiments without becoming one themselves. I.....need more ideas with this one
The Final Level the Drowning Court belongs to Charon, lord of death, and this is simply a misty recluse of small “islands” connected by bridges made out of lost dreams and flesh. With the exception of Charon himself (and the occasional scream) this entire realm is silent, human voices cannot make noise and all sound effects are very muted, sometimes going away completely. The River of Styx flows everywhere here, with boats of souls being constantly moved up and down the river. The source of the River is in this realm, where Charon himself lives. The Whirlpool which is the source of the river is the source of all of the lost memories of the River, and those who dwell in this realm too long will slowly lose their memories as well.
Petitioners: Those who arrive here come as ghostly version of themselves, and retain all class and racial levels just with the ghost template. However, they don't last long as the local Daemons hunt them across the level, in order to consume there essence
Daemons: Basically the pathfinder daemons, horrifying creatures of Nether and loss, they resemble more light concepts than actual creatures. They hope to destroy everything in the world, including themselves, but
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before that they wish to encourage evil to grow. Evil is self destructive after all, and if all the world is evil, then the world will will take that much less effort to burn.
The Abyss
is there really anything more to say, its the abyss?
The Maelstrom, pure CN
I never thought giant frog screamed "chaotic neutral" to me, so much as it screamed "random". I like the pathfinder version, much better, but since i'm Lawfuli to the extreme, can somebody find a way to make it more....i don't know, fun? Because random stuff happens doesn't seem very fun to me, maybe something a bit more Blake like?
The realm: This is true chaos, in that it is totally and utterly random and lacking any cohesive form. Their is no rule other than your own understanding of randomness. While limbo is the more typical version of chaos, IE ever changing, this world is even more chaotic than that, because ever changing is a constant in itself. This realm is the realm of individualism, personal fulfillment, you find your own world. This is the plane of unformed and ever-changing potential a plane of chaos that surrounds the other planes like a vast, unplumbed ocean, a swirling sea lapping at tiny islands of stability. The Maelstrom is also perhaps the only plane that can truly be called infinite. while others may encompass massive, virtually unimaginable space, or bend the constraints of geometry and encompass a limited but unbound region, the Maelstrom is beautiful, deadly, and without end, it is an infinate plane large enough to surround and contain multiple infinite planes. Beyond the Unstable and fantastical (But ultimately ration and familiar, remember chaos isn’t irrational) borderlands, the Maelstrom’s depths grow more and more detached from the familiar tropes of reality as most mortals and immortals understand it. As the borderland shallows gradually transition into deeper realms, the environment grows prone to greater and more whimsical changes, and the distant sky takes on a blue sheen until ultimately the region called the Deep Maelstrom reveals itself as a formless cerulean void. Walking transitions to something between flying and swimming, with the air possessing an almost liquid viscosity. As the physical manifestations of creative and destructive potential, the Maelstrom continually generates new and bizarre forms of life. the vast majority of such creatures live transient, mayfly existences before the Cerulean void subsumes them once again, but in a land manifest its own inconsistency, their exist some paradoxical constants. the Maelstrom’s borderlands, adjacent to other, more stable planes, harbor their own bizarre ecologies fill with creatures native to those neighboring planes and their chaos-touched descendants. Additionally, the maelstrom’s shallow harbor transient groups of celestrials, fiends, and even axiomite and inevitable armies crusading against the chaos. The Cerulean Void harbors such beings as chaos beasts and the plane’s most populous (and perhaps original) natives, the serpentine proteans. Enigmatic creatures of chaos, three protean races are creatures of creation and destruction in equal measure. The bestial naunet proteans emerge from the borderlands like a living, seething tide, seeking to break down the infection of more stable realities. The Imentesh proteans seek the same, but through subtlety and persausion, like wandering prophets of chaos infecting minds, philosophies, and even religions. Everything changes, their are no absolutes. This isn’t the realm of randomness as Limbo is, this is the realm of reality. scholars describe the proteans as living embodiments of the Maelstrom, crafting the chaos like artists before tearing it down again in a natural cycle of instability. Others say the creatures behave not unlike the Maelstrom’s immune system, viewing the chaos like a living thing seeking to reabsorb the reality that it spawned or which was carved out of it and stolen by the gods and other powers- and the proteans indeed view their plane as a living thing, worshiping it as a dualistic king. This is just pure chaos in its own form. Have fun.
Petitioners: Um....any ideas? Anybody? Please
Natives: The Proteans are horrifying snake/reptile...things. They are like dragon snakes combined with cell organisms, ever changing, even internally. Their ultimate goal is to destroy the whole structure of the planes, bring an end to the carefully maintained balance between the 5 forces, instead let there be freedom, let the planes merge into a single clamorous whole, a realm of possibilities, or change, and of unstructured emotions unrefined by the foolish mortal "rules" and liminitations upon emotions. They also are teh enemy of reason, down with logic, down with formalism, and lets emotions rise
The Outlands
I thought the RIlmani were never the good "Core N race" I love the Aeons from Pathfinder for that purpose.
The World This is the neutral ground between the planes, where magic doesn’t work and people are leveled fairly equally. Its basically exactly the same as in Planescape I see no reason to change it, unless people have really cool suggestions.
Natives: The Aeons focus upon trying to maintain the balance. At first glance this makes them seem almost like the Rilmani, but while the Rilmani are militaristically trying to keep all of the planes politics in line, the Aeons instead focus upon maintaining the working of the world itself, and are less concerned with the specific details of birth and death. Thus their balance s that of a cosmic nature, not that of a political one, through in the Cosmic Planes they are often the same thing. The Aeons try to ensure three basic goals 1) The protection of Free Will 2) that the Elaborate system of Planes remain intact 3) Magic continues to function properly. They look really cosmic and magical https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C...K5Sl4AO74oDwCQ icnore the cthulu picture of course.
Petitioners: They appear as they did in life, and everybody here simple does the activities that they enjoyed the most. Neutrality is based upon contentment, and so everybody here simply lives life much like they did in real life, just without major disasters happening (unless a fiend gets involved of course) . Normally they travel from gate town to gate town interacting with people and seeing how everybody is before moving on. It is almost impossible to harm an Outlands Petitioner, they have the strongest magical protection of any PEtitioner and can normally overcome anything you have to throw at them.
Ok, now that i've done the core planes, time to do the fun part, the mixed planes, which is always my favorite part.
Avalon, NG/LG
The Triple themes to this world are redemption, personal projects, and ideal living, ergo the overall theme is the feeling of personal love and respect. Basically the theme of this realm is contentment, being happy with yourself and your ideals. People who had always wanted to engage in (Good) pet projects, such as science or reading or enjoying nature. There is no age, misery or sickness in this realm (unless others bring it here) and people are happy doing what they want. The native Planetar are more concerned with working with the souls at the various good actions instead of trying to have them contemplate their nature, and try to protect the souls rather than kill evil. Of all the Upper planes however, Avalon is the most well protected, as its unique feature is that evil beings who enter this realm are overwhelmed by the power of good to the point where they either must flee or actually turn good. Evil Mortals are confronted with their past sins, and while they aren’t forced to repent, the plane makes a very good argument (In fact many of the most evil mortals in the world have redeemed themselves here and hide from the world on this plane). Purely Evil Creatures have an even “worst” fate, confronted with the sheer overwhelming goodness of this plane, they for the first time in their lives (normally) are confronted with the pain of evil, and often are remade as Plantars, actually many of the native Plantars are in fact invaders who stayed too long. If any evil realm wanted to destroy Avalon, they would have to send an elite strike team with power magic that could slow (but not stop) the plane’s influence, and destroy all of the Plantars in a single quick attack, but as that is almost impossible, they settle for raids. Devils and Fallen Angels fear this realm the most, for they know full well the sins that they will be confronted with, most already miserable with their pain. The only two evil outsiders immune to this influence are Demodands, who instead are simply destroyed by the unbridled optimism of the realms, and Daemons, who are in so much pain already by existence that the plane simply enrages them (through this can make them a bit easier to fight). This nature defense makes up for the comparable small number of Planetars (as most souls who go to Avalon choose to remain in mortal shells rather than ascend) and their relative lack of power compared to the greater outer plane races. As of such, many angels and Archons will hide powerful magics in Avalon knowing that the other races won’t interfere. Souls here are like themselves in life, but are allowed as much time as they want to indulge in their own personal past times. If at any point they want to focus on helping other people with their pet projects instead, they will ascend and become Planetars. Unless the Blessed Islands, these souls do not gain in levels, they just enjoy themselves. The Planetars themselves focus most of their energy upon aiding other planes in fighting evil, as their own realms natural defenses mean that they need only a few armies to defend it from attack. The philosophy here is that of Social Morality: The Justice of Unity. Good is the accomplishment of society. This means that the individual only matters insomuch what they can contribute to the overall goodness of the world.
The Natives: PLanetars appear like vaugley humanoid beings with extremely inhuman traits, likes whoels where there faces should be, eyes in the wrong place, and stuff like that.
Nirvanna NG/CG
Nirvanna follows the philosophy of the Flagellant’s morality, the Good in Essentials. The idea that Good is appreciating life, suffering and the denial of what are normally considered rights actually serve the cause you to appreciate things like air and the absence for pain. Empathy for others is important because its lets you appreciate what they have. Taking something away from someone is Good because they can better appreciating something like it. The Azata focus most of their energy upon testing and trying to improve mortals into something greater and more powerful. At first glance this realm doesn’t seem good at all, as it is all about mediation, however in reality it is about harnessing yourself into your greater good. The people here appear as they did during the worst moment of their life, however they slowly perfect themselves until they become an Azata and guide others. As the plane of benevolence untouched by either law or chaos, the paradise of Nirvana exists as a balance between the extremes. Curisously though its natives pursue a more interventionists and active role across the planes than their ideological neighbors while its blessed souls seek to acheive a personal enlightenment free of care and worry. Contrary to the opinion of some, Nirvana is not a plane of the elect, the enlightened, and the virtuous to the exclusion of all others; it is a place of respite, a sanctuary for the weary soul, and a place of redemption for any who would willingly seek it out-even the damned. Pastorals wilds of Nirvana support a myriad of native including petitioners, all manner of celestrial wildlife, mortals, gods, agathions, and angels. while the plane’s agathion celestrials frequently visit their favorite places in the mortal world, the plane itself- or some other force, seems to ensure that Nirvanas once mortal souls let go of their worldly shackles, perhaps worrying that their rest or enlightenment might be hindered by mortal influence. As for the petitioners, most spirits of the mortal dead that arrive on the plane do so with something of a clean slate. While on other planes the dead may retain their mortal memories in various states of completion and gods have full control over the memories various states of completion and gods have full control over their memories, either all at once, or slowly discarding their burden memory by memory. Free of the shackles of mortal concerns and worries they pursue a sheltered, idealistic afterlife, growing ever more attuned to their plane and its spiritual ideals before they vanish, ascending to a higher state of existence hidden deep with Nirvana’s core, or achieving a divine unity with the plane itself, after becoming a native of course.
Natives: The Azata physically resemble creatures out of Buhhidist scripture (or Tibetan pre Buddhist work), strange bizzare creatures with many faces. They constantly are trying to test and encourage mortals, though they sometimes have trouble understanding limitations in doing that, and can often accidently hurt the mortals they are just trying to "improve"
The Beastlands NG/N
I never really got how this plane worked in its Original context, and so i have this as the N plane. BTW, every single plane touches the Outland in some way, so every plane has some cross over with N.
This is sort of idealized nature, where the Guardinals live a life of blessed harmony, everybody enjoying their own personal place in the greater circle of life. The Guardinals are all animal like and try to help people come to harmony with the world around them. The Power of Friendship is very real here, and the bond between friends can make them accede to literal super human levels. Those who work together and find comradely with each other are able to do amazing things. On the other hand however, they are very much into the idea of “the Greater Good” and are fanatically interested in self sacrifice in order to help the group. . They follow the philosophy of Jungle Morality, the Contentment of Survival, The idea that Good is instinctual, that man is born good, its just that society corrupts them, good is part of the natural order and inherently part of our being. Everybody here appears as children, and grow up in the Beastlands, before “dying” and becoming Guardinals
Any advice on how to make it less.....well boring would be much appreciated.
The Blessed Isles, CG/N
This is where the Eladrin dwell, i've always liked them but not as the core CG race.
his is the realm of Happy endings, adventure and emotional jubilation. Basically this is the realm for HEROES (HELL YEAH). Darkness isn’t really counter to eladrinic nature. All emotions are part of the Blessed – love and hate, joy and grief, pride and guilt, boldness and terror, gallantry and cowardice. The Blessed Isles can be as nasty as the Abyss or as serene as Elysium; the difference is that in The Blessed, all emotions and passions, even the most uunpleasant ones, are necessary parts of a benevolent whole. Eladrins might fall by losing sight of that whole, wallowing in one emotion – any emotion, not just the “bad” ones – to the exclusion of others. The Blessed Isles is a plane of stories. Epics, in fact. Eladrins are guardians of those stories; they exist to make sure they are seen through to the end, and their code of subtlety is to make sure that they can interfere with mortal stories without ruining them. That’s why they meet others in disguise; an old wise man or fair lady may make sense in an epic, while a celestial may not. They feed on epics, on extreme experiences; these become part of them, knitting into their bones. Overall, this means that punishments, monsters, curses, midnight hags and dangerous minataurs all roam the good plane. It isn’t a safe place, any more than Aslan is a tame lion. The only rule is that if you yourself are good and true, you’ll get your chance to win out, and if you are wicked you’ll be appropriately punished in a redeeming and ironic manner. In play, this means heroes ahve good, clean monsters to fight, great tragedies to overcome, but they always end like Sinbad, the Sailor- atfer all the boatwrecks, they end up rich, married, successful, all that. This gives players their dream adventures in many ways, without compromising the general idea of the Eladrins.
Tying this in within the context of the above post, the plane as a collective ensures that nothing is ultimately destructive, nothing ultimately annihilated- everything comes full circle to where it is supposed to be without any overarching or enforcing legalistic moores. The souls here are actually more powerful than they where in life, but cannot leave the plane, but this does effectively mean that evil almost never raids the blessed Islands. This world follows the Aethetic Morality, the beauty of Art. The idea here is that good is beautiful. Making things beautiful makes you good. Only through goodness and morality can you create the greatest works of art and powerful inspirations to everybody. Nobody can deny the fact that the greatest works of art and beauty are those made by people who believe in what they truly love, thus this is the realm of perfect art and the greatest adventure. The Eladrin focus their energies upon people enjoying themselves and try to make people enjoy themselves. The Realm has 4 levels, Olympus, Ossa, Pelion which I haven't fleshed out, and the Court of the Stars, where their leaders dwells, which is more like a floating demi plane that moves between the three levels.
Natives: The Eladrin at first glance appear like extremely elaongated out of proportioned elves, but a closer glance reveals that this body is really nothing more than a shell. Underneath the flesh multi colored light shines through, and in there true form they are just a pure orb of light. Many of them are decked out with other qualities, like butterfly wings and unicorn horns. Most importantly, Eladrin don't need to be summoned into the Material plane, they can enter the material plane whenver they wish and work for the cause of good provided that nobody realizes taht they are Eladrin, once somebody discovers their identity they are instantly banished back home. The Eladrin serve as the scouts, sabatours and secret agents for the couse of good and can often be founding spying upon the forces of evil.
The Heroic Domain of Asgard CN/CG
I wanted to expand this place past simply endless battle.
Despite its realm, this is not the realm of eternal battle, but rather the realm of eternal passion/recreation. The battlefields are most noticeable, but all across the plane, people are indulging in their personal passions without regard for the world around them. It’s the realm of artists and warriors, poets and sports, these are more than mere games, these are true everlasting passions that define one’s life. The souls here appear as they imagined themselves to be in life, rather than how they actually looked, and while they are always the same level, they can change their class and design every day so they can experiment with other sensations. This realm use to simply be covered by Divine Servants, but eventually the final Fall came about, when a group of Archons gave up on law and decided to try to fight evil independently. They did not fall unto evil however, and were too focused to join the CG courts, so instead they took up residence in Asgard, where they work diligently to fight evil on their own terms, now called the Asuras. They are reluctantly accepted by the rest of the Forces of Good, through it is with a great deal of reluctance. Despite the fact that they occupy two separate alignments, the vast majority of Asuras are CG, with only a small minority slipping into CN, often for violating their good ideals in order to kill evil. Even these CN beings fight evil and are determined to take no part in allying with evil, they just use less nice methods. The Asuras are the most accepting of the good outsiders, through they are only barely tolerated by the other forces of Good, they tend to work with neutral forces and mortals more than any other. They also hate the Rilmani for constant interference, and actively try to dispose of neutral forces that wish to maintain the balance, as they are only interfering with the cause of goodness. They follow the Famous Morality, the Virtue of Glory, the diea is about people knowing and approving your actions, its about setting a positive example. The More people who want to act like you, the more good you are. Doing thigns that makes people happy is good because they will remember and emulate you for it. Asuras focus upon trying to destroy evil in that most public and in your face manner, hoping that people will follow their glorious example.
The Three Realms here are Gladsheim, Muselheim and NIdavallir. Gladsheim is a floating continent that everybody can see above, and is the realm of artist, singers, poets, and romantics. Muspelheim is the mountains and plains, and here dwell the storytellers, heros, partiers and dancers. Nidavellir is the ground and underground level, and here warriors and hero fight for glory and honor.
Asuras: They resemble creatures of Indian mythos, and are extremely bombastic. They also have done a great job of isolation themselves from every other good faction for their constant belligerence and cowboy cop attitude.
Any luck with fleshing this one out more, I never really "got" it