What is in YOUR Far Realms ?

[Puke]

Hey gals and girls,

I've included pathways to the Far Realms in most of my campaigns. More often than not, the players stay way from it as much as possible. But this plane of pure madness allows some juicy entertainment.

My Far Realms are like so :

- Only completely mad characters feel good inside, any other character has to succeed a will save in order to keep his thought straight and not have a big ass headache.
- If you were sane, you can become insane because you cannot understand what is around you, why time and space is ****ed up, how to move etc...
- This is the pathways to other universes (in the campaign we play, all D&D settings are here, you just need to find a mean to go from one universe to the other)
- The Wonderland (as from Alice in Wonderland) is accessible from the Far Realm, and so is the Jabberwocky

As there is an infinite number of layers in the Far Realms, I use and abuse it in order to make funny scenes (like the PCs being able to see their players discussing around a table and rolling dices, but not being able to interact with them).

To me, the Far Realms is kind of a ball of strings of everything that could have been, or could ever be. Like the discarded blueprints of many universes. It is the only plane that is common to every universe. Some kind of wormhole into the reality.

I know it's stretched from what is written into the books, but I'm guessing I'm not the only one who decided to shape this plane of infinite madness with my imagination.


SO, your turn, how are your Far Realms ?

[unseenmage]

In addition to its MotP description our own Far Realm is almost pure fiat and plot device.

Nearly impossible to defeat or contain it attacks reality on a conceptual level.

Knowledge of it is infectious and intoxicating. You know nothing but you just need to learn more. And that knowledge acts as an anchor for the Far Realm to manifest.

Holes in reality, misplaced monstrosities, mentally corrupting cursed areas, and tomes of forbidden knowledge can spring up wherever the Far Realm is studied.

[Eurus]

For my purposes, the Far Realms are fatally corrosive to reality; not intentionally hostile (well, not always intentionally hostile), but fundamentally incompatible. The reality of the Wheel is like a little bubble in an endless void, a fragile mote of possibility-space where things like causality and substance can exist. The Far Realms are everything outside that bubble, which is infinitely vast; two different Far Realms entities might be as different from each other as they are from us. Some of them are curious about reality, which unfortunately, in the words of a great author, is like "the ocean trying to warm itself around a campfire".

You can't go there, or at least you can't survive the trip, but people occasionally try to make use of this unreality. In theory, if you could bring a little bit of impossibility into the world, you could use it to do anything. In practice, it's like using a flamethrower to cook food while you're on a ship made of dynamite, or some equally tortured metaphor for a bad idea.

That being said, there are some things that might have successfully made the journey from Outside to Inside. They would be horribly, agonizingly diminished and changed from the transition, despising all of existence for its part in their half-remembered loss, but they could survive. They'd still seem alien and eldritch, perhaps having different conceptions of time, space, or minds, and their desire to regain their lost forms would put them at odds with pretty much everyone.

[Tzardok]

The Far Realms aren't just madness, the are toxic anti-reality. They aren't just weird or Lovecraftian; if you were to put Cthulhu there, he would mutate and go insane just like anything else. If the Great Wheel is what is, and alternate cosmologies are what could be, the Far Realms are what never was, never will be and must not be.

Where my version differs from Eurus is that the Great Wheel is just as toxic and hostile in its metaphysical laws to the Far Realm as the other way round. The reason the Far Realm is at least partially comprehensible when you enter it is because the Great Wheel infects it on the other side of the breach, forces concepts like time, causality, alignment and so on on the things and beings there. If something crosses over, it is pressed into a corsett of comprehensibility. And that's why the entities of the Far Realms stay far away from us if they're smart, just like we stay away from the Realms if we are smart. It's the imbeciles on both sides you need to watch out for.

[Troacctid]

Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" swells in volume as for the first time, you see through the Fourth Wall just long enough to comprehend your true nature as a fictional character. Your entire existence is so much pencil on paper. The Dungeon Master looks directly at you. You scream.

[Eladrinblade]

My setting doesn't have a far realms. I barely even want to use other planes at all, honestly.

[Particle_Man]

For me the trick is to distinguish it from the “regular” unstable, unpredictable chaos of the plane of Limbo. I will watch this thread with interest.

[Doctor Despair]

For my purposes, the Far Realms are fatally corrosive to reality; not intentionally hostile (well, not always intentionally hostile), but fundamentally incompatible. The reality of the Wheel is like a little bubble in an endless void, a fragile mote of possibility-space where things like causality and substance can exist. The Far Realms are everything outside that bubble, which is infinitely vast; two different Far Realms entities might be as different from each other as they are from us. Some of them are curious about reality, which unfortunately, in the words of a great author, is like "the ocean trying to warm itself around a campfire".



This sounds a little Pratchett-esque with regard to his eldritch Things that break through when too much magic is concentrated in one area

[emulord]

The difference between Limbo+FR is that in Limbo, you can create your own reality, and pockets of stability are only made from people with strong wills or groups of people with agreed on shared experience. Disagreements result in the landscape itself fighting.

In the Far realms this doesn't happen, what is experienced is all the different variables of existence change constantly, and the only creatures that can survive such a thing are Chaos beasts, lovecraft things, and some types of demons or incorporeal undead. If a creature from the regular planes visits, Id rule that every round they have to make a fortitude save to not become a chaos beast themselves, as well as a willpower save to not gain an insanity. with DC 20, increasing by 1 every round.

Limbo looks like a dream state typically, but FR looks like a kaleidoscope

[Squire Doodad]

Where my version differs from Eurus is that the Great Wheel is just as toxic and hostile in its metaphysical laws to the Far Realm as the other way round. The reason the Far Realm is at least partially comprehensible when you enter it is because the Great Wheel infects it on the other side of the breach, forces concepts like time, causality, alignment and so on on the things and beings there. If something crosses over, it is pressed into a corsett of comprehensibility. And that's why the entities of the Far Realms stay far away from us if they're smart, just like we stay away from the Realms if we are smart. It's the imbeciles on both sides you need to watch out for.

Does that imply that beings from the Far Realms could try to make a small bridge to the Great Wheel to bring in a bit of firm reality, so specific things can be made to occur?

[Tzardok]

Does that imply that beings from the Far Realms could try to make a small bridge to the Great Wheel to bring in a bit of firm reality, so specific things can be made to occur?

I may missunderstand you, but canonically there is Mak Thuum Ngatha the Nine-Tounged Worm, a Far Realms entity that is worshipped as a god by certain abberations and apparantly wants to rip down the barriers between the Wheel and the Realms for... whatever reason. This is the kind of thing I was talking about when I said "imbeciles". Mak is a cosmic moron; and that's why it'll be the death of us.

[Eldan]

I would never even try to describe things in the Far Realms. I think that would cheapen them.

My rules are pretty simple. It's difficult to go there, and if you manage, you're removed from the campaign. No saves, you're gone. Miracle or wish can bring you back in the state before you went. No memories of it, of course.

Interactions with it happen, which is when you get things like Aboleths and Kaorti. It never ends well. Personally, I like to make those events weirder than just mutating some monsters into having more tentacles. THe last time one of my worlds brushed against the far realm, there was something not unlike a matter-antimatter reaction, except it wasn't matter that was destroyed, it was concepts. In one instance, the colour red no longer existed in the setting. People could sort of remember there used to be more colours, but there was suddenly a whole lot of heraldry that had always been blue.

[Misery Esquire]

Objects in the Far Realms are closer than they may appear.

The cheque's in the mail male mail m m ma mai maille mill mi ma mali liam malicewillconsumeyou. The cheque has been post dated.

Exactly 367 unlicked radishes, one for each day of the year. I checked.

The last real salad after the rest of them started being frogs and moved to CN planes. Posers. (I hear it's an emperor.)

33 Steps to Aboleth Mating Dances and Other Interesting Poses, vol. 18 of 10.

Please leave your message after the... ...
...
...
...

The entire Warhammer 40,000 universe, except for that bit there, which we traded for the IP rights to Shadowrun.

Oh, and of course they May Contain Nuts and a number of other things you wouldn't want to touch with a half-brick. Not your, personal, half-brick, anyway.

[Eldan]

I may missunderstand you, but canonically there is Mak Thuum Ngatha the Nine-Tounged Worm, a Far Realms entity that is worshipped as a god by certain abberations and apparantly wants to rip down the barriers between the Wheel and the Realms for... whatever reason. This is the kind of thing I was talking about when I said "imbeciles". Mak is a cosmic miron; and that's why it'll be the death of us.

I mean, the material plane is usually full of inexplicable doomsday cultists. Presumably, the FR just has their own.

[Crake]

So in my setting, they feywild and the far realm are actually the same plane. What turns the far realm into a feywild is the presence of a worldsoul, kinda like the warcraft worldsouls, but not exactly the same. Where a warcraft worldsoul is it's own entity, in my setting, a worldsoul is simply the gestalt collection of all the mortal souls that exist within a planet's gravity well. The mechanics behind it all aren't really relevant to this thread, but basically, the only way to actually visit the far realm is to plane shift to the feywild while away from a populated planet. Denizens of the far realm have been known to invade and attack worlds before though, seeking to either consume or corrupt worlds, but the world soul's presence keeps the primordial other at bay.

[Doctor Despair]

Where a warcraft worldsoul is it's own entity, in my setting, a worldsoul is simply the gestalt collection of all the mortal souls that exist within a planet's gravity well.

And that reminds me of the First Flame in Darksouls

[noob]

The far realms are in fact a world of complete inconsistency called the forgotten realms by its denizens.
Everybody outsides agree it is an horrible place filled with danger and that for keeping your sanity you should stay out.
It is so horrible elder ancients actually tries to keep the far realms as much far away as possible hence the name.

[Silly Name]

The far realms are in fact a world of complete inconsistency called the forgotten realms by its denizens.
Everybody outsides agree it is an horrible place filled with danger and that for keeping your sanity you should stay out.
It is so horrible elder ancients actually tries to keep the far realms as much far away as possible hence the name.

This is now canon in all my settings,

[Eurus]

This sounds a little Pratchett-esque with regard to his eldritch Things that break through when too much magic is concentrated in one area

The Dungeon Dimensions are a pretty great eldritch-horror-realm concept, even if they're generally used in service of humor. :smallbiggrin:

[rel]

Within my default 3.5 cosmology the planes have a 5 dimensional structure (not counting time which is universal and fixed).

If all the standard planes were plotted in 5 dimensional space there would be gaps, areas of the space not occupied by any of them.

The name for these 'unused' areas are the far realms. So called because they are far from all other planes. Even getting to these places is quite a challenge, as is getting back 'onto the map' when you're done playing around.

As for what the far realms are like, the best analogy is like a corrupted level in a video game.
Everything is jumbled and unrecognisable, fundamental aspects of reality may be physical objects or locations or vice versa.

Moving your legs might require picturing the different shades of the colour blue, getting your eyes to work could require being bloodied.
Step in the wrong place or touch the wrong thing and you might find that your race is now 'turnip' or your base intelligence is Pi or your artifact sword is made from mayonnaise.

[ngilop]

My far realm was the reaction of existence when the creator of all decided to come into being.

Since reality only came after than everything in the Far Realm is basically anti-reality. The vast majority of things from there cannot survive in reality and vice-versa.

side-ly related The Abyss is actually a 'planar scar' around the far realm. and The limitless numbers of demons and the uprising of tanar'ii actually save existence.

But being outside of reality they are beholden to any of its laws. Hence why a lot of lost knowledge or knowledge of the future can be gleaned from the far realm. Everything is simultaneously happening and not happening at the same time.

Most of the big major players (when they are in existence, that is) want to obliterate reality because they see it as an affront and are actually pained by it.

[Brookshw]

I would never even try to describe things in the Far Realms. I think that would cheapen them.


That's been my general opinion as well. That said, I've been reconsidering it recently. One thing that I recall from the original Call of Cthuhlu story is that there was a door the protagonist was looking at, and it hurt his head as it was trying to appear in two different places simultaneously (as far as he could perceive it). I could see describing the Far Realm like that in a limited capacity where you don't see what the thing actually is, but you see something which your mind can comprehend, and the parts you can't comprehend/perceive cause additional problems for you (in 5e terms I'd consider regular saves vs. exhaustion, psychic damage, and to avoid acquiring a madness). Not sure I'd actually use the idea, but it might be usable, still thinking about it.

[enderlord99]

Post number 28 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?299450-afroakuma-s-Planar-Questions-Thread-III!)

[Psyren]

One bit of fluff from 4e that I loved was the origin of the Shardmind race - when the Far Realm began encroaching on the Material, the sheer wrongness of that plane and its inhabitants caused essentially an immune system response by our reality, leading to the creation of their race, whose overarching purpose is to combat the various Lovecraftian entities and their cults that threaten sanity itself. This also led to the genesis of psionics in the existing races, in the hopes that they'd help out.

[tiercel]

Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" swells in volume as for the first time, you see through the Fourth Wall just long enough to comprehend your true nature as a fictional character. Your entire existence is so much pencil on paper. The Dungeon Master looks directly at you. You scream.

And you attack! And… and what is this?

—Amazing! My entire life is written here!

My intelligence is FOUR! OUTRAGEOUS!!!

[Segev]

For me, there're a few key points about the Far Realms: they're where Aberrations come from (or at least are largely the cause of them), they have a certain Lovecraftian aesthetic, and they're big on psionics. This sterilized list neatly (and thus probably unsatisfyingly) explains the various horrors that we see extend from the concept.

Because outer planes and the Great Wheel are all about philosophy and the way minds conceive reality, the nature of the Far Realms juxtaposed to the Great Wheel is important to consider. The possibilities include them breaking all the rules of the Great Wheel, or them having a disconnected but relatable place relative to it. The former sounds satisfying at first, but ultimately means you can't really achieve the coherent Lovecraftian aesthetic that typifies aberrations, and you have to wonder why psionics are a thing with them when a Far Realm that breaks all rules would have no themes at all. So, we're left with the latter.

There already is a "plane of thought." It's the Silver Sea, the Astral Plane. But that's a vast foggy expanse with its own rules, punctuated by islands of god-corpses. It's not very like the Far Realms at all...or is it?

It's characterized as a "sea." And while it's often depicted as this sea between the inner planes and the outer wheel, what if the whole of the Great Wheel - inner and outer planes both - are an island within the sea, and the Far Realms are really the distant shores?

The Outer Planes represent cosmic principles of philosophy that give form to or reflect archetypes of comprehensible thought. They are the boundary of what can be rationally conceived within the rules of reality as the Prime Material Plane knows them. Shapes them. Embodies them.

The Far Realms as a scattered concept would be other realms with rules where our thought processes, our means of conceiving reality, don't make sense.

Only imagination - often mad imagination working on rules that aren't rational - can even hope to conceive of, and therefore touch upon, any of the Far Realms. Those realms aren't chaotic Limbo-swirls; they're alien laws and truths that are antithetical to grasping reality as we dwell in it.

The reason psionics are so much a part of the Far Realms and what comes through is that the ability of an aberration - a thing descended from the Far Realms - to even exist in our reality is the ability of it to conceive of itself in a way that, for its origination Realm, is utterly mad. To bridge the gap requires psionic power because thought and conception is the only thing that can bring into being the surreal and unreal.

You aren't driven mad by the Far Realms; to get to them, you must already be mad. Magic that lets you get to an outer plane without matching its philosophy is one thing; you can exist there while being unlike it by seeing it as a material place. You can't even use magic to conceive of a Far Realm as a material place while you visit it; it just doesn't work, conceptually, and what you do see in your imperfect attempts will leave you queasy and uncomfortable unless you're insane enough to actually perceive the way it works. And that way is too alien to just be a list of rational rules that are different from where you came from; the rules aren't rational by any standard our minds can conceive.

Things coming from those Realms are not just thriving on Evil, like a Fiend would; they're unable to process the notion of good or evil. They are mad by their own standards, let alone ours, by the time they can be perceived in the Great Wheel's cosmology.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

A question regarding the Far Realm: are there any critters in any official books that are from the Far Realm that are regarded as neutral, benign, or even friendly? There are plenty of aberrations that aren't inherently bad, such as elan and flumphs, but none that I know of off-hand are from the madness outside of reality; all of those are terrible, by nature and by design.

[Brookshw]

A question regarding the Far Realm: are there any critters in any official books that are from the Far Realm that are regarded as neutral, benign, or even friendly? There are plenty of aberrations that aren't inherently bad, such as elan and flumphs, but none that I know of off-hand are from the madness outside of reality; all of those are terrible, by nature and by design.

Sure. Offhand, The Neh-Thalggu can be C/N, and the Psuedonatural template can be applied to any corporeal creature without changing it's alignment (bit of a cop out), so go right ahead with Psuedonatural Solars if you want..

[Dalmosh]

Generic farspawn (psuedonatural templated beings) are always true neutral. I interpret this as their being too abstract and incomprehensible to be able to codify their actions on rational alignment scales, and that TN is a stand-in for ERROR- DOES NOT COMPUTE.

[Fearan]

{Scrubbed}

[danielxcutter]

For me, there're a few key points about the Far Realms: they're where Aberrations come from (or at least are largely the cause of them), they have a certain Lovecraftian aesthetic, and they're big on psionics. This sterilized list neatly (and thus probably unsatisfyingly) explains the various horrors that we see extend from the concept.

Because outer planes and the Great Wheel are all about philosophy and the way minds conceive reality, the nature of the Far Realms juxtaposed to the Great Wheel is important to consider. The possibilities include them breaking all the rules of the Great Wheel, or them having a disconnected but relatable place relative to it. The former sounds satisfying at first, but ultimately means you can't really achieve the coherent Lovecraftian aesthetic that typifies aberrations, and you have to wonder why psionics are a thing with them when a Far Realm that breaks all rules would have no themes at all. So, we're left with the latter.

There already is a "plane of thought." It's the Silver Sea, the Astral Plane. But that's a vast foggy expanse with its own rules, punctuated by islands of god-corpses. It's not very like the Far Realms at all...or is it?

It's characterized as a "sea." And while it's often depicted as this sea between the inner planes and the outer wheel, what if the whole of the Great Wheel - inner and outer planes both - are an island within the sea, and the Far Realms are really the distant shores?

The Outer Planes represent cosmic principles of philosophy that give form to or reflect archetypes of comprehensible thought. They are the boundary of what can be rationally conceived within the rules of reality as the Prime Material Plane knows them. Shapes them. Embodies them.

The Far Realms as a scattered concept would be other realms with rules where our thought processes, our means of conceiving reality, don't make sense.

Only imagination - often mad imagination working on rules that aren't rational - can even hope to conceive of, and therefore touch upon, any of the Far Realms. Those realms aren't chaotic Limbo-swirls; they're alien laws and truths that are antithetical to grasping reality as we dwell in it.

The reason psionics are so much a part of the Far Realms and what comes through is that the ability of an aberration - a thing descended from the Far Realms - to even exist in our reality is the ability of it to conceive of itself in a way that, for its origination Realm, is utterly mad. To bridge the gap requires psionic power because thought and conception is the only thing that can bring into being the surreal and unreal.

You aren't driven mad by the Far Realms; to get to them, you must already be mad. Magic that lets you get to an outer plane without matching its philosophy is one thing; you can exist there while being unlike it by seeing it as a material place. You can't even use magic to conceive of a Far Realm as a material place while you visit it; it just doesn't work, conceptually, and what you do see in your imperfect attempts will leave you queasy and uncomfortable unless you're insane enough to actually perceive the way it works. And that way is too alien to just be a list of rational rules that are different from where you came from; the rules aren't rational by any standard our minds can conceive.

Things coming from those Realms are not just thriving on Evil, like a Fiend would; they're unable to process the notion of good or evil. They are mad by their own standards, let alone ours, by the time they can be perceived in the Great Wheel's cosmology.

Are Far Realms creatures big on psionics, though?

One of the iconic psionic monsters in D&D is the illithid, the mind flayers... which actually aren't from the Far Realms at all, but from a possible future(according to Lords of Madness, it is implied that said future is not set in stone, and the flayers know this).

There are templates that indicate that the creature is descended or at least touched by the Far Realms, Pseudonatural(both the weak LoM version and the much stronger ELH version) and Half-Farspawn... but those aren't psionic either. Half-Farspawn at least do get mind-affecting spell-like abilities like touch of idiocy orscintillating pattern, and I imagine you could easily flavor stuff like blur or blink to be relevant to their unnatural progenitors... but all of those still duplicating spells and not psionic powers; aside from concealing amorpha and the telekinetic line there aren't even good psionic equivalents. Heck, not only are Half-Farspawn outsiders instead of aberrations, it's explicitly possible for an aberration to have either of those templates.

I'd argue that psionics and aberrations aren't as tightly connected as it initially seems. In Elder Evils, Pandorym and Ragnorra are the representatives of such archetypes, but they couldn't be any more different if they tried. Pandorym fills the "ominous psionic creature from outside our known reality" niche, while Ragnorra embodies the "causes grotesque mutations and warps creatures into aberrations" type. (I'd also argue they missed a golden opportunity to tie Pandorym with the quori and Ragnorra with the daeklyr in the Eberron adaption ideas, but oh well.)

That being said? If you go with the classic "aberrations are from the Far Realm and use psionics a lot"... your explanation would work quite well. It's quite possible that mortal-created aberrations were based off the ones directly descended from the Far Realms... it'd certainly explain why elans are both psionic and aberrations, for example.

[Asmotherion]

I think of them as overlaping realities. Everything is possible there. Among other things, they are populated by multidimensional things, that occupy more than one layer at a time. The more something is translucent the further away from your layer it is. Close layers can be mistaken for your layer.

Moving between layers needs a succesfull will save (the DC depends on the layer). Magic can also happen as an act of will and consumes no spell slot there, but also has a chance to go teribly wrong (10% chance per spell level). The rules for how magic works is different accross diferent layers.

Each Layer is also a gateway to an other Universe, and reflects the Universe's general properties and population. One could (theoretically) cast the Gate spell on a layer of an other Universe and go to that universe.

Literally everything is possible in the Far Realms. The further away you wonder from your realm's Layer, the more Improbable things you'll see. From Advanced civilisations of Tables with pet Chairs, to entirelly allien physiologies of roughly humanoid shaped Dinosaurs that want to conquer the multiverse. Among them, is the Mind Flayer Empire, governed by a Hivemind Network of Elder Brains that is called the Mind of the Elder Horror; Ofcourse, this is only one version of their Empire one may accidentally stumble uppon, with countless counterparts. Some even have communication between them.

Overall, the Far Realms are realms of Possibility. Most things in there either never happened, or haven't happened yet. So, it is not unusual to meet your future Grand-Grand son or a Brother who was never Born in your own homeworld's layer. But beware; The things that hunt there are aware of those things, and may disguise themselves as such in order to find easy pray.

[Malphegor]

I’ve actually considered this a few times and for the most part, the far realms are actually mostly empty. Hostile to life, like outer space is to us, where things are as far away as you can get from magic and wonder. It’s not that chaotic, or lawful in nature. It’s not even evil or good. It’s just other.

The vast majority of the space beyond spaces is just an empty void, maddeningly without anything adventurey for many lightyears of space. No sound, no light, not even pressure or dust. Pretty peaceful, despite the sensory deprivation making you hyperaware of the constant beating of your heartbeat and the burning crackling of whatever magics you have used to survive in this very dead place. Not even undeath is out here.

And then you get to the tourist areas. The Flumphs are benevolent for the most part, and seek to prevent harm. Others aren’t so nice.

Much like the material plane, everyone has their preferences. And how do these preferences come about?

Because the Far Realms touches Dream. The Diaboli know in their daily fending of otherworldly abberations away from the dreamscapes that threaten the dreamheart that the Far Realms was once a meaningless void of non-reality until the sheer potential of the nothing-that-could-become-something became known to the Dreamers. And suddenly, it took on form.

And so entire worlds are forming. With air! And physics! And living creatures, crude facsimiles of the material, from rabbits on stumps surrounded by tall ocular grasses to mimics and beholders to witness it all until they lose interest, reflecting the observation of the dreamers who sparked the change in the once unmaterial realm. And then, after witnessing it in horrifying visions of the sheer potentiality, mages, clerics decided to go there.
Land dwelling ones, who see the sea as a somewhat alien space to that which they live in.

And so the Far Realm, this outer world of imagination bleedout, is incredibly alien but only in a way that those land dwelling people think is alien. It’s not a new kind of alienity like a fractal space where traversal is solely through dying to move forward and being reborn to go back, or you have to constantly change shape to survive in a very solid space or you have to be the literal embodiment of mathematics to get past the tollbooths or… anything weird.

So it’s a sort of world beyond worlds, the blood splatter of Dream’s wounds scattered into the void.

The places where maybe, just maybe, the world, the oyster that it was… Is surrounded by a lot of octopi. With sharp psychic rocks to crack it open.

[Phhase]

For me, the Far Realm is the primordial soup from which what is known as the universe arose. As it is now, imagine my Great Wheel as a mote of dust inside a soap bubble, which itself is part of an infinite bubblebath of what Material creatures call "Madness", actually just raw Concept, in a way similar to the Astral Plane combined with Limbo. Bathing in this bath are uncountable "creatures", knots of condensed awareness that coalesce bodies of distilled probability and concept drawn from the endless ocean around themselves. Obiyrths are among these, one of the few castes of Outer Entity with any awareness or stake in the goings-on of the Material Plane, mostly a grudge against the "gods" and demonkind. They are a demon's demon, and each and every one is associated with a primal phobia. For example, Dagon for fear of the dark depths of the ocean, and Obox-Ob for fear of vile infestation. They are the, in fact, the direct inspiration for such fears - when connecting to the mortal races, the gods saw the obiyriths and were so shaken and repelled that their fear imprinted on their followers.

Merely from speaking to a holographic sending-like effect from one of Obox-ob's lieutenants, one of my players' characters has contracted severe entomophobia.

However, the more I think about it, the more I feel like a sufficiently powerful/clever entity (equivalent to an anarch for limbo, and likely something beyond or at least wholly apart from traditional divinity) could probably use the raw soup of the Far Realm to create...anything. At all. It is raw creation, after all.

[Arcane_Secrets]

SO, your turn, how are your Far Realms ?

A nasty sundae with a horrible cherry on top. For starters, most forms of magic (especially clerical) don't work there but psionics does/can for reasons I'll explain. The rule of threes doesn't exist, nor do conventional elements unless you or more likely a much stronger entity want them to. Instead there is only Mind and Flesh, and both are infinitely mutable in the worst possible ways, so psionics works because its a much smaller expression of a Mind in an existence filled with it.

In terms of its denizens: the Elder Evils in the LoM sense. Sentient psionic swarms of thousands of purple tentacles with a single eye at the end, which spray digestive fluid and absorb liquified prey through their skins. The base creatures of some of the Elder Evils (which are in no way pushovers in their own right). Abominations and protofiends that dropped out of existence willingly because they found time and other forms of order too revolting to tolerate.

[Malphegor]

On psionics it kinda makes sense since most depictions of psionics in d&d run off your internal reserves. Normal magic draws off your local environment, psionics is just you. So if you’re so far outside normal realms that you’re in the fantasy equivalent of truly deep space where even light may struggle to reach it and physics might be weird, psionics is the magic equivalent of running off your own battery energy rather than solar panels and extracting fuel and such.