Riff on cosmology

[Hecuba]

This comment in another thread got me off on a tangent.

Is it weird that I like the Outlands and Sigil, but hate the Great Wheel Cosmology?

I agree, to an extent. The while certain detailed aspects of the 4e cosmology were problematic, the idea of the "Astral Sea" makes possible a far more unified conceptual model of what the outer planes - and the transitive planes - actually are.

Importantly, it also gives a conceptual model for unifying the Planes and the Crystal spheres into a coherent cosmology. It also gives insight into the mechanics of divine beings.

Ultimately, the defining trait of the Outer Planes is that they are made of belief in the same way that the material plane is made of material. One of the more direct implications of that is that belief will have gravity.

If the Outer Planes are held together by the gravity of similar ideas (gravity-via-belief), then they end up being very different in nature than the Astral Plane itself: under such a model the outer planes would be self-contained regions within the Astral Plane, much as the Crystal Spheres are self-contained regions within the Material plane. That which is regarded as the Astral Plane itself, rather than the Outer Planes, is the equivalent of the Phlogiston.

Deities can then be regarded as a rough analog for planets. Their divine realm is the area for which they have sufficient gravity-via-belief to be dominant: the equivalent of a planet having enough gravity to clear it's orbit. Unlike planets proper, they are sentient and generally individual - but that is a result of the outer planes being a place made of belief and thought rather than material. Demigods, saints, etc. fill a similar conceptual space as moons and asteroids. In FR contexts, this also provides a conceptual framework for why (from a deity's perspective), Chosen are a thing: they are individuals who have an are sufficiently impactful on the conceptual space that makes up a divine realm to have effects on the gravity-via-belief dynamics of that realm during their lifetime on the prime material.

This model, in turn, provides us with a reason why deities with similar portfolios end up in conflict and/or absorbing one another: if they are close enough in their conceptual space, then they will be force to confront one another by simple gravity. The window for both deities to remain both independent and stable in a shared gravity-via-belief space would be quite narrow - it would be far more likely the one would end up subordinated to the other (like a moon), possibly after an explosive impact (like the Terra-Theia impact that formed Luna).

[Unoriginal]

It's important to note that the "Great Wheel Cosmology" isn't an actual representation of something physical.

As in, the planes are not *really* organized with the Material Plane (with the Feywild and the Shadowfell pressed onto it as layers) and the Outlands as the axis, the Inner Planes as the center, the Outer Planes at the circumferences, the Astral Sea and the Ethereal occupying the spaces in-between, and the Elemental Chaos all around.


It's quite explicitly just a way of conceptualize/visualize the planar interactions, and it happens to be the model most people in Sigil, who have a tiny bit more understanding of planar mechanics than the average mortals, tend to agree on using for convenience's sake.


Now what we do know is that the default for 5e is that the Material Plane is filled with the different Crystal Spheres, and that each Crystal Sphere has different effects on the influences the planes and the gods can exercise on the worlds inside those Spheres.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I basically agree on this.

I strongly dislike the Great Wheel, especially the outer planes. They feel too much like "box checking symmetry for the sake of symmetry." Outlands and sigil...meh. Don't have an opinion, really.

And I agree that 4e's basic model (conceptually, not necessarily implementation) is a better framework.


For my personal setting, I took what you've outlined and collapsed it down even further. No infinite planes (it's a pocket setting only the size of the inner solar system). No separate outer planes--there's just the Astral and the Abyss. Floating in the Astral are domains--actual pieces of "land", finite in size. On these domains live all the angels, devils, gods, and other ascendant beings. Domains are based on attitudes more than alignment (since I turned off mechanical/cosmological alignment entirely). Ascended beings compete for resources and space. For example, one of the domains is Mara. It's basically a gigantic suburb with estates. So Nocthis, (former) goddess of mystery, now an ascended being (aka really-powerful former mortal sustained by worship) lives there in a small estate because she doesn't have many followers (having been dead for 2 centuries). Where as Aerielara, goddess of beauty, art, and sex has a gigantic red-light district/festival district of her own. Competition is less martial than philosophical--they're competing for resources (except the gods themselves, who don't have to compete but can't really directly interfere either). Everyone has to "pay rent". Devils are the main inhabitants, being the "general workforce" of the Astral. Connecting these is the framework of the Great Mechanism that keeps everything running. It doesn't have any will, it's just a big machine.

Between the domains is the astral plane itself, unformed, with strange things living there.

The Abyss is still separate, as a wound/abscess in the fabric of reality. Used as a prison, where the prisoners (the demons) are there to keep the infection at the bottom contained by filtering out the worst of the corruption. A leaky patch, but...

My elemental planes are basically what you'd get if you had them (treating quasi-elemental planes as full planes) as pie slices, physically arranged around the central sun. Each of the 12 (4 core + 8 half-quasi-planes, each being X + Y, X dominant where X is the current core plane) produces one month of seasonality. Seasons are the orbit of the planet through the influence of each of the core planes.

There's also Shadow, which is the Ethereal, part of the astral (the transit portion), the shadowfell, and the feywild, plus a bunch of the "hell" planes all bundled into a multi-layer plane that acts as the buffer between the other planes. All traffic between the material and any of the others has to go through shadow first. It's also the "afterlife" destination for any spirit that doesn't ascend into the Astral, descend into the Abyss, or apotheosize into one of the elemental planes (aka 99.999999999% of everyone). It's not a permanent thing--spirits degrade after a while. It's just a rest stop on the way to the unknown. And I mean that last part literally--it's a question I refuse to come up with an answer for, in-universe or not. Lots of theories, but no answers. Not even from the gods.

[Millstone85]

If the Outer Planes are held together by the gravity of similar ideas (gravity-via-belief), then they end up being very different in nature than the Astral Plane itself: under such a model the outer planes would be self-contained regions within the Astral Plane, much as the Crystal Spheres are self-contained regions within the Material plane. That which is regarded as the Astral Plane itself, rather than the Outer Planes, is the equivalent of the Phlogiston.I wrote something to that effect just a few days ago.
To me, the Outer Planes are clusters of astral dominions. These demiplanes continue to be incorporated, released to drift once more through the Astral, or transferred from one outer plane to another. And a dominion adopts the background wallpaper, so to speak, of any outer plane it is currently part of.

For example, if a dominion exemplifies the ideals of Law and Good, then it will appear to be on the side of a mountain of which the heights are shrouded in light, or on a coast where that mountain meets a pristine sea, or maybe on an island a short distance from that coast. Travelling from one dominion to another might involve a mountain hike that is never going to be twice the same, as connections form and disappear like dendrites between neurons.