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soldersbushwack
2016-03-02, 10:07 PM
The positive energy plane is a plane (a type of microverse) in the Planescape setting of D&D that is a big white empty expanse of vast creative energies (which explodes you) that is the source of most of the energy powering the universe. It is also kind of boring for adventuring around in. How would you reimagine the positive energy plane to be more exciting?

Here's my reimagining but why don't you come up with your own idea before taking a look?
Ein Sof, The Tree of Life

Ein Sof or The Tree of Life consists of ten subplanes known as Chokmah, Daat, Binah, Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod and Malkuth.

The native inhabitants of Ein Sof are the Nephilim and the Grigori. Legends say that once Ein Sof used to be ruled over by beings known as the Elohim but that due to a catastrophe the Elohim had to go away. And so, the the Nephilim, the half-breed children of the Elohim, and the Grigori, fallen members of the Elohim, were left behind to rule Ein Sof.

Chokmah is a plane of infinite creation and roaring energy. Great whirlwinds and thunderstorms rumble and crackle and all of Chokmah is lit as if inside a firestorm.

Daat is a castle that the Elohim used to inhabit from before they left. There are some sections of Daat that are well maintained (mostly the parts ruled over by Grigori) but much of Daat has fallen into ruin and decay and is inhabited by monsters.

Binah is a placid lake lit by a soft but all pervading light. If one travels far enough up from Binah one will reach Chokmah.

Chesed is a sea of milk and honey (mana) filled with verdant green islands.

Gevurah is an endless expanse of eyes. People only exist here as reflections within those eyes. To travel from eye to eye one needs to attract the attention of another eye by performing an action specific to that eye.

Tiferet is a giant apple seed that floats inside of Gevurah. The Grigori have declared Tiferet barred from entrance.

Netzach is huge and endless in expanse. To navigate to one end of Netzach to the other would require an eternity and so most inhabitants of Netzach live on small floating islands that are connected by a network of portals and interplanar bridges.

Hod is a vast expanse of space that echoes with the sounds of prayers across the planes filled with elemental metal spheres that resonate with the sounds of different prayers. Travel between the different spheres is often accomplished by prayer as specific types of prayers resonate with specific spheres and attract one to specific spheres.

Yesod is the gate and the entrance to Ein Sof. Once the gate used to be a fortified and well defended fortress but due to a series of wars between the Grigori the metal fortress has crumbled to ruin.

Malkuth is a network of endless stone bridges and towers that reach out connecting the planes to Yesod and to Ein Sof.


Edit: Futz I intended to make this thread in world building.

Donnadogsoth
2016-03-02, 10:32 PM
The positive energy plane is a plane (a type of microverse) in the Planescape setting of D&D that is a big white empty expanse of vast creative energies (which explodes you) that is the source of most of the energy powering the universe. It is also kind of boring for adventuring around in. How would you reimagine the positive energy plane to be more exciting?

Here's my reimagining but why don't you come up with your own idea before taking a look?
Ein Sof, The Tree of Life

Ein Sof or The Tree of Life consists of ten subplanes known as Chokmah, Daat, Binah, Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod and Malkuth.

The native inhabitants of Ein Sof are the Nephilim and the Grigori. Legends say that once Ein Sof used to be ruled over by beings known as the Elohim but that due to a catastrophe the Elohim had to go away. And so, the the Nephilim, the half-breed children of the Elohim, and the Grigori, fallen members of the Elohim, were left behind to rule Ein Sof.

Chokmah is a plane of infinite creation and roaring energy. Great whirlwinds and thunderstorms rumble and crackle and all of Chokmah is lit as if inside a firestorm.

Daat is a castle that the Elohim used to inhabit from before they left. There are some sections of Daat that are well maintained (mostly the parts ruled over by Grigori) but much of Daat has fallen into ruin and decay and is inhabited by monsters.

Binah is a placid lake lit by a soft but all pervading light. If one travels far enough up from Binah one will reach Chokmah.

Chesed is a sea of milk and honey (mana) filled with verdant green islands.

Gevurah is an endless expanse of eyes. People only exist here as reflections within those eyes. To travel from eye to eye one needs to attract the attention of another eye by performing an action specific to that eye.

Tiferet is a giant apple seed that floats inside of Gevurah. The Grigori have declared Tiferet barred from entrance.

Netzach is huge and endless in expanse. To navigate to one end of Netzach to the other would require an eternity and so most inhabitants of Netzach live on small floating islands that are connected by a network of portals and interplanar bridges.

Hod is a vast expanse of space that echoes with the sounds of prayers across the planes filled with elemental metal spheres that resonate with the sounds of different prayers. Travel between the different spheres is often accomplished by prayer as specific types of prayers resonate with specific spheres and attract one to specific spheres.

Yesod is the gate and the entrance to Ein Sof. Once the gate used to be a fortified and well defended fortress but due to a series of wars between the Grigori the metal fortress has crumbled to ruin.

Malkuth is a network of endless stone bridges and towers that reach out connecting the planes to Yesod and to Ein Sof.


Edit: Futz I intended to make this thread in world building.

Anyone capable of withstanding the energy transfer, on a basis yet to be determined, becomes a conduit for energy that begins creating everything in the character's subconscious. So there are entire world's worth of objects that come spiralling out of the hands of the characters, willy nilly and sprayed in whatever direction they're waving their hands in. And of course different characters' creations conflict with each other, and pretty soon the whole thing looks like your granny's attic with everything piled atop everything else.

Mastikator
2016-03-03, 03:17 AM
In the Eberron cosmology there's Irian The Eternal Day
"A brilliant white sun hangs in a beautiful blue sky while rivers of liquid glass flow down from mountains of quartz. Deserts made of pure white sand and forests of crystalline growth cover the landscape"
and is home to these weird creatures
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/eberron/images/5/50/83020.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20111112215003

goto124
2016-03-03, 03:51 AM
'Off with his head (http://static.tumblr.com/a23c7157eb80e5c3ff52f822d37a6841/yvmdpwe/lhtmita2r/tumblr_static_tumblr_m8d0kayo3f1rb1baco1_500.gif)! Oh wait, he has no neck..."

Milo v3
2016-03-03, 04:06 AM
In my setting, the plane of positive energy is an infinitely large creature that is constantly growing/healing/changing, where it has organs and tissues instead of continents/landmasses.

Ikitavi
2016-03-03, 05:32 AM
There is a town in my campaign called "Shadow Smote", which has had all the color leached out of it by necromantic energy. It is like being in a room with a very low wattage bulb.

Something illumined by positive material energy, by contrast, will be in extra fine focus, all colors and visual textures are more distinct. Music harmonizes better, and you can understand the words better. Smells are more attractive, and more identifiable.

Someone exposed to positive material planar energies is likely to be blissed out, at a result, or perhaps will have manic-like energy and inspiration.

Among the deletrious effects of long term exposure would be an inability to sleep, because all the sensations are so much more intense and more interesting. Someone who is addicted to something that deadens the senses, or requires the senses be deadened in order to tolerate it, like smoking, would find that all the bad taste repulsion is back too.

That includes emotional senses too. It will batter through emotional blocks, so someone who has suppressed their empathy may feel extreme pain as the channels are reopened again.

PersonMan
2016-03-03, 07:19 AM
The way I like to think of the non-Material Planes are that they're all extremes, in which life from the thoroughly mixed Material cannot survive. The Negative Energy Plane is death, sucking your life force away into a void too large to ever be filled.

The Positive Energy Plane is similarly dangerous. It's brimming with life, constantly growing, never still. A human is like a deep pit with only a few drops of life inside, and is quickly filled up by the plane's ambient life force. This results in a horrible death because, well, having new life burst forth from your body as you instantly heal and regrow any damage is not what people were made for.

So the PEP is filled with ever-growing forests and swarms of insects that are the size of mountains, all feasting on the never-ending supply of life force that the plane is filled by. Massive, bloated towers of flesh are the centuries-old remnants of those who entered without proper protections, turned into something so far from human it's all but impossible to see what they once were.

Keltest
2016-03-03, 07:37 AM
My PEP would be filled with, ironically, undead and constructs. Nothing from the PMP can survive there, but their remains persist and get animated with the vast amount of life energy floating around in the plane. Technically they aren't undead in the normal sense, being animated by positive energy, but they are beings that are alive, or close enough, created from the remains of people, as well as whatever stuff the brought with them. So you have animated suits of armor walking around, and people who look exactly like people except they don't breathe or blink or do any normal living human stuff (they don't decay because there isn't anything to cause decay). Some are possessed by spirits native to the plane, others are just animated and wander around.

goto124
2016-03-03, 07:42 AM
Deathless and golems?

Keltest
2016-03-03, 07:44 AM
Deathless and golems?

If those are the names you want to use, sure.

Coidzor
2016-03-03, 10:25 PM
Sort of like a more stable limbo, with occasional blooms of spontaneously created plant and animal life that may linger for a while or may end up getting shuntesd into the material plane as the energy that went into them pours into making a new world, a new life, a new crystal sphere, etc.

A very vibrant plane, but ephemeral except for certain more stable islands and deliberately constructed things.

Or maybe I'm just misremembering the vanilla PEP.

Reltzik
2016-03-04, 01:36 AM
In one setting I made (Deeping Falls, which I still haven't done anything with), the positive energy plane occupies one side of a multiverse. It spawns new material planes, which tend to drift from the positive energy plane through the Twilight (plane of shadows) towards the negative energy plane and their own destruction. Planes still near the positive energy plane (known as Higher Planes or Light Worlds) are paradisaical with goodly inhabitants, and the worlds nearing the negative energy plane (known as Nether Planes or Dark Worlds) and their denizens are twisted into evil nightmares.

Dead souls -- actually dead, not ghosts or other spiritual undead still tied to their material plane -- drift in a direction determined by their moral alignment. They either rise towards the prime material plane if good, or sink towards the negative energy plane if evil. Usually gods will snatch up the souls of their believers to take them to afterlifes in the Outer Planes. Non-believers (or, at least, non-adherents) not subject to this treatment will often find a home before arriving at one of the extreme planes, being reincarnated in a Light World or Dark World. But once a soul (after avoiding afterlife in the Outer Planes) goes through several reincarnations through successively Higher planes, each time dying more good than the world he or she lived in, that soul will ascend to the positive energy plane.

... where it emerges as the world-animating spirit of an entirely new plane.

The positive energy plane is a place of immense creativity given form. People MAKE things there. The landscape shifts rapidly as these souls-ready-to-become-worlds gleefully create. Single things burst into many things easily, akin to the broom out of the Sorcerer's Apprentice, and the animating souls will, often, say, destroy a tree to create several trees, or cause one person's to explode to create several living things from the bits. Animating spirits will give life and intelligence to everything, be it living or not. Expect pieces of gear to randomly become sentient and plants and animals to randomly be Awakened. Landscapes form and vanish as the creative souls experiment and design their new worlds, while others advise them. Few old rules are clung to... originality, not convention, is the order of the day.

Though highly chaotic (enthralled with the forces of creativity) and often goodly (due to the alignment of the souls reshaping the malleable plane), the plane itself is neither good nor chaotic. It is simply a raw, creative, animating force. Anything the party does will take on a life of its own -- small motions will create slight shifts of air that turn into eddies and then tornadoes as they fly away, sentences written on paper will keep being written after the author stops writing, developing into paragraphs and entire stories. Trees will spontaneously grow dryads and brooks nymphs. Travelers who cut themselves to keep alive will discover their drops of blood scampering away as new beings -- benign but alarming.

There is a sort of elemental spirit, sneaky, conniving, and inventive, that likes to twist the creations of these souls, introducing seeds of evil that will grow in the new worlds and cause it to sink towards the negative energy plane. These things are spontaneously generated by the positive energy plane and are fully expressive of its rules of creativity, origination, animation, and redesign. Though not physically threatening, these malicious spirits like to play mind games, planting seeds of doubt, bad ideas, and fundamental design flaws in the growing worlds around them. These imperfections are what eventually cause the new worlds to be expelled from the positive energy plane. These spirits can never truly be defeated -- and even if they were, there are more being spawned every hour -- but they can be resisted and defended against. They don't destroy anything, but expect them to reshape your gear into something less useful... or animate it with more malicious intent. Everything that is created is created in the positive energy plane... even evil.

There are a few points of stability within the plane, where its raw power has been reined in. While the negative consequences of too much positive energy are still in play, the creative, animating spirit has been suppressed:

Some ascended souls do not choose to immediately create their own world but to reside within the positive energy plane, mentoring and guiding those who pass through. To this end they have set up libraries and academies, places of discourse, study, discussion... and places where simply imagining a thing does not cause it to be. These are popular places for newly arrived souls, as the wild creative ecstasy of the rest of the plane is overwhelming to them. These places of learning are often surrounded by wide swaths of terrain where the creative energies of the plane exist, but at a dampened level, so that students can learn and experiment in a lower-energy environment. The physical expression of these locales are frequently changing, but considerably more stable than the plane at large.

The occasional mortal magic user has had cause to tap into the power of the positive energy plane, and there are conduits to material planes that are anchored (or unanchored) that lead to demiplanes or even material planes. These appear as unnatural, warping inwards towards a single point, drawing everything into them.... including anything that might change them. Denizens of the positive energy plane learn to avoid them, or they stop being denizens of the plane.

There is a deeper portion of the plane, where the purest expression of animating force is generated. Even the minimal order of the plane breaks down as one travels deeper into it. Direction warps so that nearly all paths lead away from this source and gravity pulls away from it -- or perhaps the energy the source emanates pushes things away. Approach is impossible, and for every obstacle encountered SOMETHING invents three more. This something is, needless to say, endlessly creative. It is thought that the overdeity, the creator of the entire multiverse, resides here, but no one, ever, not even the gods, has been able to determine this for sure. If so, it cares little for good and evil, or individuals and nations, concerning itself more with the vast sweep of the cosmos and the beautiful dance and endless variety of creation.

Kami2awa
2016-03-04, 03:22 AM
Desert Bluffs from Welcome to Nightvale might be a starting point if you want it to be a nasty place. The sun is bright, so very bright. So bright you can see inside and through things, and people. Everyone smiles all the time, everyone is happy and PRODUCTIVE, everyone follows the Smiling God, everyone fulfils their full potential. Or else.

Segev
2016-03-04, 02:32 PM
Making this up off the top of my head, but...

The cycle of life is driven by an outpouring of potential from the positive energy plane, processed through the intersection of the elemental planes that makes up the Prime Material, and ultimately draining out the spent possibilities into the negative energy plane.

The positive energy plane appears "white" or "radiant" or "blinding" from a distance, and as one draws nearer, it is a kaleidoscope of painfully jarring images. But this starts to seem an illusion as one draws nearer still. If one focuses only on the immediate surroundings, it seems merely a vibrant, energetic version of the Prime, perhaps limmed in rainbow after-images at the corners, and with shadows which don't seem to quite exist when one looks right at them.

Every possibility of what could be now or could happen to come exists simultaneously here. Looking into the distance, one sees increasing infinities of overlapping possible realities of the future, compressed and colliding in a maddening array. Up close, the variations and possibilities most like the one you're experiencing are most prominent; however, even the corner of your eye betrays that things are in flux or not quite stable, not quite decided.

Living things heal here because there is always greater strength in the possibilities where they are less wounded. Their personal potential is greater the healthier they are, so their bodies are overwritten by the healthiest immediate possibility, and as they get healthier, the healthiest possible alternative is always healthier still. The "explosion" is when they reach a point so divorced from what really could be that they diverge entirely.

The natives of this plane resemble creatures of other planes, but come commingled in great civilizations and empires which ignore any and all racial divides and common stereotypes. They are the unborn, the beings which could be in the future, waiting their turn and vying for probability.

The negative energy plane is the place where all possibilities have fallen through the cracks. The ends of things which never were, could not be, and have no chance to ever have been. The wheels of reality have turned and ground these things out into the vacuum of non-existence, having wrung every ounce of possible vitality from them in running the great engine of Time.

The undead don't so much exist here as they exist by robbing potentiality from the living world to feed it here in their stead. The undead should not be; they are a possibility of survival, a shadow or echo of what life could have been, but usually so faded as to be not even recognizable. The weakest stay in place by magics which thrust potential for life down the slide to oblivion in their place; the strongest feed on life forces directly. All rob, to some degree, reality of a hope for some potential future elements.

Undead in the negative energy plane "heal" by being a natural locus of slightly stronger potential, drawing the scraps and fragments of lost possibility together. Every possibility of their being that never could have been is here, and they can overlap them, becoming less and less probable but being a stronger void, themselves, when they return to the Prime Material to suck down otherwise-viable potential existence. The living, on the other hand, are frayed by the non-being of the place, their least-viable possibilities replacing the viable one they brought with them.

The natives of the Negative Energy Plane are darker reflections of already-terrible beings: undead monsters in silhouette that refract the "light" of positive energy into myriad forms, dozens for every abomination that exists in the Prime but should not. They war for the scraps of existence, but also for the position at the deepest well, to be the greatest void. To say they build is a lie; they choose impossibilities of great majesty and drive out the alternatives that conflict.

mikeejimbo
2016-03-04, 03:17 PM
My Kabbalah knowledge isn't as good as it should be, but I don't understand Gevurah.

Inevitability
2016-03-05, 12:45 PM
A plane of war.

This sounds weird, but hear me out. Amongst the rare few sentient races from the PEP are Glimmerskins (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/mm2_gallery/88268_620_61.jpg). For those unfamiliar with them, imagine 'cloaks' of positive energy able to make short trips to the material plane, where they bond with mortal hosts, greatly empowering them. Sure, some of them can't handle the abundance of positive energy and explode after a short period of bonding, but the Glimmerskins only care for battle, not for the survival of their hosts.

So we have a race of thrill-seeking parasites from a plane of pure brilliance and energy who require no sustenance and sleep, and probably don't reproduce naturally. How would their culture develop?

There would be no social stigma against violence and war. After all, it's the race's entire purpose, and if one of their kind does die, their essence re-merges with the positive energy plane (and can you consider becoming part of a dimension of life and growth 'death'?).

In addition, their ability to Plane Shift at-will would let them quickly explore large parts of the multiverse, even if their ability to exist outside their own plane is limited. A Glimmerskin could shift into a library or armory, grab some books/weapons, and shift out.

Finally, they are very, very capable warriors. While they might need a host to truly benefit from all of their feats, they still enjoy damage reduction, spell resistance, a large HP total (plus healing on their home plane), and an easy way to escape fights. Give them some ghost touch weapons (or even better, the Ghostly Grasp feat) and almost nothing would be able to destroy an army of Glimmerskins.

There is only one logical result of this all. Various groups of Glimmerskins have conquered their home plane long ago, and its other native inhabitants are now either slaves or refuges. Only the different groups of Glimmerskins still fight amongst each other. By plane shifting, supplies are brought in, which are then used to build fortresses and craft arms. Bands of Glimmerskins leave their plane daily to find new warriors to bond with, and so strengthen their martial prowess.

Now, if someone visits, they find a plane filled with majestic cities floating through the white void, where ghostly warriors wage endless wars. Glimmerskins have become some of the most desired mercenaries in the multiverse, and many nations have already accepted their aid in exchange for some gold and goods. Other Glimmerskin make use of their ability to travel the planes and run highly successful trading companies. This provides them with wealth beyond most mortals' imaginations.

While all this is going on, hidden within the fortress-cities Glimmerskin mages search for a formula that will suppress their need for positive energy. And the day they succeed, the multiverse will be overrun.

soldersbushwack
2016-03-05, 09:23 PM
My Kabbalah knowledge isn't as good as it should be, but I don't understand Gevurah.

Gevurah is associated with judgement. I was originally going to have it be a courthouse of the dead but then I thought it would be cooler if it was a plane that literally judged your actions by being composed of eyes that focus on and teleport you into them if you perform the appropriate actions for them.

Millstone85
2016-03-06, 03:41 PM
The Feywild's Phlogiston.

Or rather, the Feywild did not form as a separate plane between the Prime Material and the Positive Energy, but as a collection of crystal spheres within the Positive Energy. And it is possible to sail on radiant currents to travel from one fey world to another.

Gargantuan creatures native to these currents make such travels perilous. They lack any predatory instinct, instead just gorging themselves on positive energy, but their mere presence might redirect a current or cause travellers to contract a regeneration illness.

Ships may also catch the playful interest of seemingly nigh-omnipotent archfey. Adventurers in particular should expect entire illusory (?) worlds to be suddenly presented to them as a joke or challenge.

But the greatest danger lies elsewhere. The plane is one of the outermost layers of the Great Wheel and incursions from the Outside, the Far Realm, are common. The shattered remains of crystal spheres float along the currents as a testament of this threat. They sometimes reawaken in the form of ships and humanoids called the Shardmind, whose only goal in existence is to prevent other crystal spheres to meet their fate.

The Negative Energy Plane would similarly be the Shadowfell's Phlogiston.

mikeejimbo
2016-03-08, 10:56 AM
Gevurah is associated with judgement. I was originally going to have it be a courthouse of the dead but then I thought it would be cooler if it was a plane that literally judged your actions by being composed of eyes that focus on and teleport you into them if you perform the appropriate actions for them.

Ahh that makes sense. Nice.

braveheart
2016-03-09, 07:30 PM
My version of a positive energy plane was the interpretation that it is filled with ever growing life, and has no death. so to start the entire terrain is a growing (and thus moving) Plant life entangles to form sorts of corridors & rooms, scattered throughout this eternal thicket is an immense population of wildlife, none of which need to eat. these are natural animals (wolves, bears, dinosaurs) that never stop growing and never die. however the result of the excess life energy in the plane in my setting is The Overgrowth, a parasitic hive mind fungus that takes over the consciousness of anything that cannot withstand the positive energy, this Hive consciousness is omnipresent throughout the plane, and even inhabits the plant life. The deeper (in my setting each plane is anchored to the physical one at a specific location on each side) into the positive energy plane one goes the larger and older everything is (elephants the size of mountains, and larger).