Planar domination

[Empyreal Dragon]

I'm working on a plot for a campaign, and in that measure I've wanted to put forth the idea of a massive superpower nation, , that maintains its path of conquest and its borders across multiple planes, seeking to rule eventually everything.


Some things I'm looking for the playgrounds help with is designing the necessary means of doing so.


What would be some important concerns for waging a war of conquest across the planes?

What would be some vital things to have on your quest?


What would be the important goals to keep in mind?


I understand that while given planes are infinite, its still possible to conquer them more or less, for instance, while the plane of fire is infinite, the most central features are the archomentals, and the city of brass, defeating these gives you DE FACTO control of the plane, while on somewhere like Union, it is limited in size and scope and thus dominating it allows DE JURE rule.




So to further expand that, what would it take to control each plane?

Where would the centers of power be to conquer?

Upon assuming dominance, what would be necessary to maintain your control?

[Empyreal Dragon]

Reserved for notes and ideas

[Empyreal Dragon]

Also reserved

[Ruethgar]

You would probably need early entry Jaunters for Plane Shift(Martial Monk can get in starting ECL 2 so level 5 for Plane Shift). Nations in D&D are overall quite low level. Enough Jaunters in the same location shifting back and forth can cause planar breaches and iirc also qualify to craft portals to make them essentially permanent.

[Segev]

Is this nation/empire originally from the Prime? Or another plane? Is it from a canon setting, or one of your own design? How does it choose which Plane to conquer next? How many fronts does it maintain at once, and how does it interact with Planes it's not trying to conquer?

If it's Prime, why doesn't it focus on other Prime settings, rather than Inner and Outer Planes? (This goes into how it chooses where to expand to next.) When it seeks to conquer any of the Inner or Outer Planes, this will automatically draw attention from denizens of pretty much every other Prime setting AND most other Planes, because something taking over an entire plane when that plane has metacosmic significance is going to draw attention from anybody aware of Planar events. How does this empire handle that kind of attention?

[Empyreal Dragon]

This empire is originally a prime material plane yes, it's an original setting, the idea being to conquer both inner and outer planes AS WELL as prime material planes, the general cosmology is a mix of spelljammer, landscape, and a note from forgotten realms.

There is a corellon lorathion in greyhawk, and one in faerun, but they arent the SAME correlon lorathion, there is an elemental plane of fire, but it's not always the SAME plane of fire. There is an outlands and while not always the SAME outlands, it is the same sigil


As far as how it chooses targets, I'm thinking it goes from ease of staging grounds, and may not take entire planes at once, but go piecemeal in some cases. Greyhawk and faerun are connected through their planes of shadow, so I imagine if headway is already made on one of them, it would use the plane of shadows as a staging ground to take land somewhere and then move onto other planes. If the prime material is exceptionally strong or has fairly active gods, the inner and outer planes would be taken.


Using Eberron and Athas as contrasting examples, Eberron is a generally unpowerful material plane, with very little activity by the gods, and relatively weak inhabitants. Where most of the power in the cosmology is focused out in the planes, in this case, making it vulnerable to assault, and a very strong staging ground for attack on its inner and outer planes that only connect to others via the world serpent inn.

Athas by contrast has very active and powerful beings on the material plane, and little strength outside in the elemental planes, making it easier to stage an attack against the mighty sorcerer kings with the other planes subdued.


Planes chase and spelljammer give us the idea that divine magic is harder to utilize outside of your own prime material cosmology and your crystal sphere, making it a fairly important goal to take a planar presence, in the case of Athas, in order to secure divine casting from the elemental planes.


In worlds like forgotten realms, greyhawk, and krynn, divinity is mildly up for grabs, and it becomes more important to secure the source of magic in these such worlds. Or find a way to drag your own methods with you.

So I imagine choosing where to conquer depends partly on what your other targets are, as well as what needs you have for the current front.


Which in that note, I imagine this empire trying to fight on multiple weaker fronts, with the main idea being to fuel the war machine for a major conflict elsewhere, for instance, using those some example worlds, I could see an attempt to raid the prime material of Eberron and the elemental planes of athas for a more distant assault on the prime material of greyhawk, with the EVENTUAL goal of moving through the plane of shadows to make an assault on the HEAVILY fortified and powerful world of faerun.


As for planes that it isn't currently at war with, I imagine it TRIES to engage in regular diplomacy, trade and if possible, to get some kind of emissary insinuated into the location, while accepting one from the other plane or prime material nation, for instance, it might exchange knowledge of defiling methods to the red wizards of thay for knowledge of circle magic, and send an emissary while a red wizard is allowed to stay in this empire's court. And having a mutual defense pact with the two of them for thay to move against its neighboring nations.


By that same margin, I imagine it tries to avoid attention either by engaging in diplomacy, it's much harder to start a fight with the guy who stole carceri while he has trade with both union and the city of brass, maintaining an alliance with the yugoloth and ethergaunt, and with proper military pacts with ysgard and the plane of mirrors.

By the same dint, asmodeus would be less inclined to intervene against a force selling billions of doses of liquid pain and the billions of souls needed to fuel blood war, while the higher planes are highly unlikely to face off against an empire that rescues, frees and liberates both innocent souls, and brings a higher standard of living to those under its sway.


An important decision is avoiding the planes that the gods are living on, or at least avoiding their specific domains on those planes, and always treating them like respected and admired guests.


Any other thoughts? Specific planes to be concerned about?

[Zombimode]

So to further expand that, what would it take to control each plane?

Where would the centers of power be to conquer?

Upon assuming dominance, what would be necessary to maintain your control?

That really depends on how much you flanderize the concept of planes. Or to use a different word: do you see planes more like plantes? Or do you see them more as metaphysical entities?

The answer to that question will inform the answers to your other questions.



Using Eberron and Athas as contrasting examples, Eberron is a generally unpowerful material plane, with very little activity by the gods, and relatively weak inhabitants.

Ignoring the rather unifed world-police dragon force, of course :smallamused:

[noob]

That really depends on how much you flanderize the concept of planes. Or to use a different word: do you see planes more like plantes? Or do you see them more as metaphysical entities?

The answer to that question will inform the answers to your other questions.




Ignoring the rather unifed world-police dragon force, of course :smallamused:

A dragon is as powerful as a sorcerer or wizard of its own caster level depending on whenever the dragon gets spontaneous casting or prepared casting.
So unless one of their dragons have a CL of 17 and prepared spellcasting they would all fall to level 17 wizards.
(because after CL 17 there is no meaningful power bumps because at that point any prepared caster can do everything)
Of course if you use enough cheese CL1 casters gets ninth level spells and everyone turns in sarrukhs to get alter shape so we enter the weird land of "Everyone can grab a spellbook or think very strong 'I want to be a god' and become a god"
For planar domination it is easy: just use more cheese than the inhabitants of the plane and replace each and everything in the plane by something under your control.
That rock is not under your control? Put an animated rock loyal to you instead.
That creature is not under your control? Mind rape the creature or replace it by an ice assassin.
This space time is not under your control? Cast the epic spell "Animate space time" to get the space time to obey you.
The magic is not under your control? Destroy it and put your own magic created through wish spam instead.
And so on.
All that can be done in 1 round with infinite celerity spam of course.

[Zombimode]

Sure, but that is apples and oranges.

No published setting (and the vast majority of homebrew settings, I would wager) runs under TO assumptions. So either the setting doesn't matter because they are all equally weak against TO, or you specify the narrative constrains under this plot idea is meant to be played under.

[Empyreal Dragon]

That really depends on how much you flanderize the concept of planes. Or to use a different word: do you see planes more like plantes? Or do you see them more as metaphysical entities?

The answer to that question will inform the answers to your other questions.


I see them as both? The planes exist as and represent metaphysical concepts themselves yes. But the published material, both planescape, and spelljammer, as well as the treatment by published settings show that they also work similarly to true planet type worlds, engaging in trade, warfare, diplomacy, and society. Wherein a race of outsiders has both metaphysical concerns about the nature of the plane itself, as well as more mundane concerns.


To some extent the outer planes create an effect upon the material plane, but also are in turn affected by the material plane, this is the metaphysical part, but on the other side of the coin, interaction with the planes in a more personable sense is also extant, the githyanki wage wars of conquest and raids against all planes not merely material, the sultan of the efreet is concerned not merely with cultivating elemental fire and it's associated concepts, but also the acquisition of wealth and trade.


So I think that while meaningful conquest is viable, that there is metaphysical significance to the act, this is further emphasized by the nature of demon princes and archomentals who can ascend by both metaphysical values, but also by simply taking enough power by force in the same way as a mortal civilization.