How to destroy the Astral plane? Or cut its connection with the Material plane?

[BCDM]

Edit, new question:

Do you know or have any ideas on how to cut, interfere or destroy a plane? The astral plane specifically? I don't mind if you make it up on the spot, get creative :)

I won't bore you with my world and story, but the end goal for the BBEG is to cut the material plane entirely from the other planes, with the intention of:

- Eliminating all forms of magic

- Preventing gods and beings from the other planes ever interacting with the material plane again

- Basically turning the place into our Earth (a villainous goal indeed)

But I'm not too familiar with any D&D planar lore, and am wondering if there is any precedence or potential for this in any lore that you know or have created yourself?

Many thanks, BCDM

[Falcon X]

Bear in mind that I come from a 2e Planescape cosmology mindset, but I think 5e holds to most of the same principles.

I do want to note that Earth Magic (Druids) would still operate. MAYBE if you also cut off the feywild, but that depends on if you think earth magic comes from the planet or the feywild. I believe it is the former. The rarer Shadow Magic is the same deal.
Can anyone cite precidence for those?

The Material Plane is connected to the Outer Planes by the Astral Plane. It is connected to the Inner Planes by the Ethereal Plane.
If you find a way to block the Astral and Ethereal Planes, you will isolate the Material Plane.
How do you do this? I don't have a clue. Maybe a global scale spell that blocks things from jumping planes?

You could also try to put the world into a demiplane that doesn't touch the astral or ethereal. I'm not sure where that would be though...
On that note you could use the pathfinder Create Demiplane version of the spell that lets you make the contents a "Dead Magic" zone.

If you want to get really deep into it: As a Christian, we do believe that magic exists and god(s) interact with the real world. The greatest trick of Satan isn't to tempt people towards evil, it's to block their eyes from seeing the spiritual nature of the world, thus killing belief in the supernatural itself.
This concept could produce the effect you want, but it would take a millenia or more in-game. You would get a world where:
- Nobody of repute studies the arcane. Few believe in it. Those that do have long destroyed most spellbooks and artifacts.
- The gods gain power from the belief of mortals and likewise give it to those who believe. No belief=no divine power.

[Naanomi]

Cutting off the Gods and planar travel is relatively easy, but magic is harder (and cutting off all planar influence is all but impossible, especially the positive and negative energy planes and their role in new life/death). Magic works differently in different worlds, but is pretty intrinsic to the cosmology. Your best bet is probably to reach 'outside' the cosmology for that power... the Far Realm or the Deep Shadow Plane... but in theory there could be beings or artifacts that 'eat up' the magic of a world so no one else has access to it. Technically magic would still 'exist' but it wouldn't be accessible for any practical purposes

[BCDM]

Awesome, thanks for the thought provoking responses, they've really helped. This is going to require more effort than I thought ^-^

Fortunately I am running a homebrew world based off of D&D/Pathfinder mythology, so I can kinder do what I want, but would always prefer to stay as close to their lore as possible because when the players find out about the BBEG's scheme I want them to say "I can see how that would work, and it sounds bad!"

Falcon, your last idea is really great! but I don't have the in-game time needed to make it happen unfortunately. Something for a future campaign though for sure.

You've both made me realise that to make this plot point work I'll have to decide on this lore:

Divine magic is the work of the Gods from the Outer Planes (obviously) and uses the Astral Plane as a medium between them and the user. I believe in some D&Ds Rangers and Druids use Divine magic gifted by Nature Gods, I'll be using that. Cutting the Material plane from the Astral plane will stop all Divine magic/interventions, and demonic invasions etc.

Arcane magic is a manipulation of more fundamental aspects of the world found in the Inner Planes and uses the Ethereal Plane as a medium between them and the user. As Naanomi said, cutting the material plane from the inner planes will throw up all sorts of inconsistencies/problems, so I don't think it should be done.. But blocking, or filtering magic sounds like a good idea.

I've recently learnt that in one of the lores there was something called the "Weave" that mediated magic casting, and an event called the "Spellplague" that ruined magic casting when the Weave was destroyed. So there is precedence for that kind of idea.

I found the above information on the ForgottenRealms.Wikia article on Magic if you are curious (I can't post links because I am a new user)

So perhaps some kind of destruction or implementing some kind of filter could keep the planes in use, but would stop magic from "flowing" between them and the material plane. This could also key into what Falcon said about disbelief, this filter would lead to believers feeling abandoned and cause a decline in faith.

The problem is that creating some kind of magical filter doesn't sound as foreboding as "The bad guys are going to destroy the astral plane!"

Maybe I'll steal the "Weave" idea, and have that be the medium that magic flows through in the Ethereal and Astral planes, and so cutting it from the material plane or destroying it has all the desired effects, similar to the Spellplague, but more extreme.

Now I just have to think of an epic but reasonable-sounding way of cutting or destroying it...

Apologies for the long thinking-out-loud-post, but I need to discuss these ideas with someone, and my only friends that play D&D are my players (I'm sure that is the case for a lot of DMs here) so any ideas or questions posters raise here are super useful, thanks :)

[Naanomi]

The weave is a forgotten realms specific magical 'filter' run by the goddess of magic there. Some scheme to lock up/lock down the local equivalent without killing her may work.

There are other planes with cut access to the Gods... Darksun had a magical accident make a few hostile demiplanes between the world and the Outer Planes (it left the near Astral intact but made a mess of the deeper connections), and made contact with the Inner Planes only happen through specific (though somewhat random) portals. One could imagine doing something similar on purpose, but do note what a mess that same plan had on the actual material Plane of Athas as well

One has to account for spelljammer influence as well, cutting off all the other planes still leaves a way to slide in through the other Primes. The Shadow is also pretty pervasive, but also pretty isolating... drawing the world into the shadow or infecting the crystal sphere with Shadow planar energy would do some far reaching things I imagine

[BCDM]

The weave is a forgotten realms specific magical 'filter' run by the goddess of magic there. Some scheme to lock up/lock down the local equivalent without killing her may work.

There are other planes with cut access to the Gods... Darksun had a magical accident make a few hostile demiplanes between the world and the Outer Planes (it left the near Astral intact but made a mess of the deeper connections), and made contact with the Inner Planes only happen through specific (though somewhat random) portals. One could imagine doing something similar on purpose, but do note what a mess that same plan had on the actual material Plane of Athas as well

One has to account for spelljammer influence as well, cutting off all the other planes still leaves a way to slide in through the other Primes. The Shadow is also pretty pervasive, but also pretty isolating... drawing the world into the shadow or infecting the crystal sphere with Shadow planar energy would do some far reaching things I imagine

This is some great food for thought, thank you Naanomi :) Drawing it into the Shadow plane, sounds awesome and evil, and would surely interrupt all the usual ways of doing things. But I'd imagine it would have all sorts of negative effects upon those living in the material world though...

Thanks for mentioning Darksun, just looked it up and that's a cool setting, and has given me the idea of "pushing" the material plane "deeper" or "away" from the other planes so 99% of magic users can't use it, and those that still can are weaker.

If anyone has any other ideas, or has done something similar themselves I'd love to hear it.

[Vogonjeltz]

I won't bore you with my world and story, but the end goal for the BBEG is to cut the material plane entirely from the other planes, with the intention of:

- Eliminating all forms of magic

- Preventing gods and beings from the other planes ever interacting with the material plane again

- Basically turning the place into our Earth (a villainous goal indeed)

But I'm not too familiar with any D&D planar lore, and am wondering if there is any precedence or potential for this in any lore that you know or have created yourself?

Many thanks, BCDM

Maybe the Piers Anthony Xanth series?

I can't recall a specific instance, but the general goal seems familiarish (perhaps I'm just thinking of a similar plotline from the Dr. Strange movie). Still, it's a clever enough plotline provided the "Villian" has proper justification.

I'm not sure what would anger someone against the planes enough that they'd want to get rid of magic entirely though, since typically magic can be used to fix almost anything.

[Falcon X]

The problem is that creating some kind of magical filter doesn't sound as foreboding as "The bad guys are going to destroy the astral plane!"
I can't tell you how scary this would be. Destroying the Astral plane would cut off all planar travel between all planes. It would be genocide to several species (Okay, so the Githyanki and the Athar are the main ones. Good riddance...). It would also cut off magic to every other world.

How to do it: Simply, you would have to open up a permanent gate between the Astral plane and a space between the plane of negative energy and the plane of vaccuum. (Like this (https://1d4chan.org/wiki/That_Guy_Destroys_Psionics))The gate sucks the entire astral plane into it and destroys it. Voila! You are the most reviled being the multiverse has ever known.

I'm also going to look through here to see if there are any cosmology theories that would jive well with this:
http://mimir.net/mapinfinity/index.html
[edit] While a pretty barmy cosmology theory, the Well of Worlds theory here presents an intriguing one. In brief: all the planes are part of a giant well. Inner at the bottom, material above that, Upper above that. Everything floats upwards. If you put a stopper at the bottom, elemental energy can't reach the material plane, and it will stop spirits from floating up to the gods when they die.

[Naanomi]

Unfortunetlg (fortunately?) no finite size hole will suck up an infinite plane that way

[Regitnui]

You could, in theory, seal off the Material plane as a whole. The githyanki did that when invading Athas, and being turned back embarrassingly fast. They sealed off the Astral Portal to At has, inadvertently blocking off the gods and forcing clerics to align with the elemental planes.

Since Dark Sun is the least interplanar of the settings, it's a good baseline for the minimum number of attached planes; ethereal and the four elemental planes. The feywild and shadowfell are barely linked to the plane (due to it being largely barren desert and nigh-permanently lit by sun or moon(s)). The astral and the outer planes are sealed off from it. The only way off is then through the World-Serpent Inn or other wandering demiplanes, which aren't reliable and never where you want.

Also, Athas' crystal sphere is also blocked off from the spelljammers, for some reason.

[BCDM]

@Vogonjeltz, the reason is that we've been playing for three years now and for this new campaign (set in the same world) I've introduced an industrial revolution, and engineers and alchemists as playable classes. Given all the demonic invasions, world domination plans of wizards and general apathy from the gods people have become a bit disillusioned with magic. Now with technology on the scene, things that could only be achieved before with magic are now becoming cheaper and readily accessible for all, whether you can use magic or not. Hence the natural conclusion for this theme/conflict is for the villain to want to eradicate magic altogether. Of course, like all great villains, they think they are doing the right thing.

"Imagine a world where technology equalises all, where anyone can fly and no one person can overcome armies, where we don't have to grovel at the feet of gods to cure a disease and where we can live without the threat of sudden planar invasions. That is my dream." - The "Villain". Who knows, maybe the PCs will agree and let them go through with it?

@Falcon X, So I've just learnt that in 1st-2nd edition, the Ethereal plane connected the Inner planes, but in 3rd edition onwards it no longer does, the Astral plane connects all the planes, and the Ethereal is a layer of the Material plane. So the new plan is indeed to destroy, block or cut off the Astral plane!

@Regitnui, yes Dark sun has given me a lot of inspiration regarding the fact that the key to doing it is interfering with the Astral plane. Do we know -how- the githyanki did it?

So I've decided in my Lore, messing with the Astral plane will mess with all magic, like how sound requires a medium to propagate, magical effects require the astral plane as a medium, without it, it fails.

This means the new question is, do you know or have any ideas on how to cut, interfere or destroy a plane? The astral plane specifically? I don't mind if you make it up on the spot, get creative. (I'll update my original post)

Falcon X, mentioned messing around with portals :)

I like the idea that to cut the Material from the Astral, you can flood the Astral plane with some kind of anti-magic material at its borders with the Material, and then destroy something natural on the material plane, an ancient tree that's like an anchor for example.

[Regitnui]

I'd make a guess at entropic magic. The githyanki are past masters of the astral plane, not denying the various gods and demiplanes. I actually wouldn't put it past the lich-queen Vlaakith to have an eldritch device designed to close astral portals. Perhaps that's your BBEG's endgame; capturing this device and reverse-engineering it to work from inside the portal rather than outside...

Consider this, though. What your villain is proposing is equivalent to a bacterium (or bacteria) removing their host shark from the ocean. The Astral is infinite in size, with planes and demiplanes orbiting through it. A Material plane (not necessarily the) and its associated elemental planes are just one of many. The Ethereal also technically links planes; it's why etherealness works wherever you go. There's a mile of difference between any particular plane's Border Etheral than another's (metaphorically), but the Deep Ethereal also technically offers links.

[Naanomi]

The Githyanki is a 4th ed version of darksun I'm not familiar with, the old darksun story was that there was an artifact that harnesses the sun's energies they built for... reasons... but when some wizard named Raajat used it to cast some anti-nature magic (called 'defiling') for... reasons... the resulting damage to nature, the sun, the planet (and the astronomical death toll) created a few demi-planes (the grey, the black) which wedged themselves between Athas and the astral (and to a lesser degree ethereal) planes.

Darksun was still accessible via spelljammer, but was 'off the flow' (a world that was hard to get to because it was far from the normal traveling routes) and a hell-hole with no reason to go there. Portals to Sigil and the like still occasionally happened, and one could (in theory) navigate the dangerous elemental vortexes to get to the inner planes if you really needed to

[Regitnui]

The Githyanki is a 4th ed version of darksun I'm not familiar with, the old darksun story was that there was an artifact that harnesses the sun's energies they built for... reasons... but when some wizard named Raajat used it to cast some anti-nature magic (called 'defiling') for... reasons... the resulting damage to nature, the sun, the planet (and the astronomical death toll) created a few demi-planes (the grey, the black) which wedged themselves between Athas and the astral (and to a lesser degree ethereal) planes.

Darksun was still accessible via spelljammer, but was 'off the flow' (a world that was hard to get to because it was far from the normal traveling routes) and a hell-hole with no reason to go there. Portals to Sigil and the like still occasionally happened, and one could (in theory) navigate the dangerous elemental vortexes to get to the inner planes if you really needed to

I caught up on Dark Sun from 3.5's dragon magazine and 4e. I'm sure I've missed something.

[Coffee_Dragon]

Remember all those giths running around cutting people's silver cords? They don't want anyone to know, but they need those cords in order to repair the Abyssal Anchor, the Colossal Cord holding the astral plane itself in place between the spheres of the great wheel, the Argent Attachment which has been terribly frayed by astral gopher depredations of late. If only someone could drive off the floating fortresses encamped around the Whooper Wire and cast Haste, Enlarge and whatnot on the astral gophers, their work could proceed apace and at last, its Monumental Mooring lost, the astral plane would drift off to wherever taking the pesky giths and slaad and Bag of Holding mishaps with it.

[Occasional Sage]

- The gods gain power from the belief of mortals and likewise give it to those who believe. No belief=no divine power.

This is not universal. Some settings belief that belief=power, such as FR; other settings wouldn't work if this were the case, like Dragonlance.


Maybe the Piers Anthony Xanth series?


Pier Xanth Ony. You see this, right?


Remember all those giths running around cutting people's silver cords? They don't want anyone to know, but they need those cords in order to repair the Abyssal Anchor, the Colossal Cord holding the astral plane itself in place between the spheres of the great wheel, the Argent Attachment which has been terribly frayed by astral gopher depredations of late. If only someone could drive off the floating fortresses encamped around the Whooper Wire and cast Haste, Enlarge and whatnot on the astral gophers, their work could proceed apace and at last, its Monumental Mooring lost, the astral plane would drift off to wherever taking the pesky giths and slaad and Bag of Holding mishaps with it.

This is brilliant.

[Hrugner]

Alright, here's an on the spot.

It sounds like you need some sort of blackhole like effect. Assume that there is a set amount of transitive planar impact on each non-transitive plane. Since all gates lead to Sigil, we can assume that Sigil has the highest possible transitive planar density(TPD from here on) of all planes. If someone were to increase the TPD in some other plane higher than the Sigil TPD, then they could get pinched off from the transitive planes leaving it isolated. People can approach this plane, but the distortion caused by the planar well would obliterate them. Sigil's high TPD may be because of the gates, rather than the gates causing the high TPD. If we use that theory, then we can assume that creating enough permanent gates on one plane would increase that plane's TPD. However, since we want a high TPD overall, we need to create more than just astral style portals, we need a solution for each of the planes. Astral, Ethereal and Shadow are the planes we need to manage here, although there are a few other transitive planes mentioned these are the three common ones. We can just open hella planes for Astral. The ethereal plane seems to be were magic comes from, so collecting magic and simply storing it compactly should work, maybe a collection of artifacts or just a giant spell battery. For shadow, I don't really know what shadow is for or what it does, so you may just need a "darkness covers the land" scenario for this one.

[M Placeholder]

I caught up on Dark Sun from 3.5's dragon magazine and 4e. I'm sure I've missed something.

In 2nd edition/DS3 cosmology, The Gray surrounds Athas and cuts it off from the Astral Plane. When sentient beings die under the dark sun, they pass into The Gray and fade into non-existence (if they are lucky). The barrier formed is likely the reason why the world of Athas never had true gods. Conduits from Athas can reach the inner planes (from where Clerics on that world get their power from), but not the outer planes.

The Undead Dragon King Dregoth planned to rectify that in Dregoth Ascending (http://athas.org/products/da) by casting an epic level spell and slaughtering an entire city to power himself to divinity. It was based on an unreleased 2nd edition book from when TSR canned the Dark Sun line.

Maybe the Big Bad can do something similar?

[CursedRhubarb]

An interesting thing that could cut off the material plane from most magic without actually severing the ties to the Eternal or Astral planes would be to cause some sort of corruption. To the Ethereal and Astral planes.

Taking inspiration from the Malazan Empire series by Steven Erikson, you could cause this corruption by introducing something very powerful into the planes. In Erikson's series is was basically pure primal chaos from the void that was essentially poisoning the equivalent of the planes.

For D&D a way this could be accomplished in a fun way would be to have the BBEG unleash the Primordials. Kezef the Chaos Hound into the Astral Plane and Dendar the Night Serpent into the Ethereal Plane.

Those who try and channel their power from the Devine or the Hells would be like a beacon to Kezef, calling the hound to them and it then slays those it can, with their body slain Kezef then devouring their souls.

Those who try and channel through the Ethereal Plane would encounter Dendar's influence and be driven mad as they encounter nightmares every time they rest. Their nightmares feeding Dendar and causing the nightmares to get worse until their mind breaks.

Once those on the Material Plane discover what is happening they will cut themselves off, Magic of almost all types will be banned by kings, queens, and churches.

There would still be some who could call on magic, Druids, Great Old One or Fey Warlocks would be the majority (Locks making great mini BBEGs since Dendar and Kezef could be patrons) and Sorcerers would pop up here and there but many would be devoured or driven mad if their source is via Astral or Ethereal.

This could lead to things like the Templars and the Circles from Dragon Age getting formed too, which could be cool.

[RumoCrytuf]

Edit, new question:

Do you know or have any ideas on how to cut, interfere or destroy a plane? The astral plane specifically? I don't mind if you make it up on the spot, get creative :)

I won't bore you with my world and story, but the end goal for the BBEG is to cut the material plane entirely from the other planes, with the intention of:

- Eliminating all forms of magic

- Preventing gods and beings from the other planes ever interacting with the material plane again

- Basically turning the place into our Earth (a villainous goal indeed)

But I'm not too familiar with any D&D planar lore, and am wondering if there is any precedence or potential for this in any lore that you know or have created yourself?

Many thanks, BCDM

To cut off all magic and isolate a plane of existence, you would probably need magic or a demigod of some kind. BBEG uses this magic/Demigod power to forge a "Sword" or other weapon that can magically cut into a plane of existence, temporarily severing it from the material plane. If the BBEG wins, he refines said "sword" and completely does away with the power, and destroying the "Sword" in the process.