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View Full Version : [3.xE] Explanations for the plane of shadow?



Nonanonymous
2008-06-10, 09:46 PM
Just can't quite come up with a good reason for it to look so much like the prime material plane, or any particularly good things to do with it plotwise. Any suggestions?

Chronos
2008-06-10, 10:08 PM
Obviously, the Plane of Shadow looks somewhat like the Material Plane for the same reason that a person's shadow looks somewhat like the person. Your mention of the Prime Material Plane suggests that you might be using a cosmology with multiple material planes, in which case there are also multiple shadow planes (and ethereal planes), one for each.

If I'm remembering my 2nd edition cosmology, the Plane of Shadow is cast by the interaction between the Material Plane and the Positive and Negative Energy Planes. I don't know if that's ever been updated to 3rd, though.

Finally, according to the shadowcasters (second section of Tome of Magic), the shadow plane is actually the original, and it's the material plane that's the distorted imitation of it. But nobody knows if they're right about that.

JGPyre
2008-06-10, 10:15 PM
Yo,
So I faced a very similar quandary with the Plane of Shadow when I was crafting my campaign world about 4 years ago. Though I really ended up changing the feeling of the plane, I've really loved how it ended up, and I'd be happy to share it with you.

I couldn't understand why the Plane of Shadow had to mirror the material plane, the ethereal plane was already there for that and did a better job. The Plane of Shadow was just supposed to be like a 'gone shady' version of the material plane (like i think it's supposed to be in 4e) but it just didn't fit right for me.

So, I knew that I also wanted an underdark-like setting for my campaign, to exist in cave-like form underneath the upper world. I had the idea in mind for starting the Third Age of the world (I used the default plane of shadow before this) that would have emerged out of a long period of Drow domination, during which they were the only arcane magic users. At first I was just going to make the Underdark (later renamed the Shadowverse) have long cave passages, but I later opted to change some of the planar traits, given that it is located at the "base of the world." Travel in the underdark works similarly to the plane of shadow, you can walk for a few hours through a tunnel and be hundreds of miles from where you started by reckoning of your location by what part of the map you are under. This allowed the Drow to keep their empire close, but still allowed for the far flung feeling, and gave me a good reason to not need too many Drow cities to maintain control.

Giving the Shadowverse this very prominent "Strange Cave" feeling has also allowed for a couple cool feelings for the area:
- Psionic manifestations: in my world psionics is a random manifestation of what's called the "divine spark" a bit of godly essence from the progenitor gods passed onto the individual. Their power is more concentrated in the warped reality of the shadowverse, leading to more Psionics among the Drow and Duergar and also resulting in anomalies like the Illithid, who were "created" here and after mastering the details of their own creation spawned most of the other abberations.
- Cave-cities: The Drow Capital Jehoriz is built inside of a giant cylindrical pillar of stone, I thought that having this multi-tiered walled, flying-proof city was cool when I thought of it, but when I added the Shadowverse feeling onto it I started to like the idea so much more.

OK so that's my world's plane of shadow equivalent, but I am actually much more satisfied with my other Plane of Shadow in my world.

Before the Drow started the third age, they planned to take over the Material plane by opening a huge number of gates to warring outer planes that would easily let in tons of outsiders and turn the plane into a battlefield while they had crafted rituals to warp their cities safely to the astral or ethereal plane. It was a combined plan of the Drow goddess and the LN god of vengence, who wanted a ubiquitous and ordered society to replace the chaos replete in the previous age.

The goddess of time had other plans, though, and appearing for the first time as the Drow were warping out, collapsed the material, astral, ethereal, and shadow planes into a single much around the equator of the world (all 4 are coexistent there), creating this somewhat magical, somewhat physical, entirely corrupted reality that is now called the Sea of Shadow. Most of the Drow cities were swallowed within it.

The sea of shadow functions much like the plane of shadow, travel is difficult, though, because there are no land masses (land is soft enough that a boat can actually power slowly through it) and the shadowstuff is now so toxic that anyone who comes into contact with it suffers a terrible disease, and it also eats quickly away at any natural materials, like Rock or Wood that would make up a ship.

The mechanical purpose of this shadowy hell was to create a unique cosmology for my oriental realm within the same world as the rest of the more traditional setting. Over the next 10,000 years after this occurrence, the Shadow, Astral, and Ethereal planes melded together, taking on some characteristics of the material plane, to become the Spirit World. This unique hybrid plane was no longer connected to the rest of the astral plane, the ethereal plane, and is cut off from the rest of the material plane by the sea of shadow. Magic doesn't work from it's old astral source anymore, but the god of knowledge opened up what are called "Elemental Sinks," portals to the elemental planes scattered across the spirit world to make sure that the world remained elementally rejuvenated. From this elemental source as well as a new astral-linked power that was created out of spirits in the new hybrid plane gave rise to the oriental setting. (Where ancestor worship is a legit source of power because ghosts are stuck in the Spirit world now that there are no more outer planes in this hemisphere).

My campaign setting starts 3k years after the fall of the drow empire, and an entrepreneurial Elf has finally built ships that can navigate their way across the sea of shadow using a psionic compass, netting him great rewards back in the northern hemisphere and opening up a whole new realm for adventure, but only in a very limited sense.

The Sea of Shadow serves as this nigh-impenetrable barrier between these two cosmologies, but can still be transversed.


...sorry for going on for so long, it's just one of the anomalies that makes my setting really unique in my opinion, so I had to do it justice.

Citizen Joe
2008-06-10, 10:34 PM
You might want to make it dual natured so that it is both shadow and the other side of the mirror.

You might also want to think about it as the inverse space of the real world. So, if you project energy into a box, but then block part of that energy with an object, what is left is the shadow plane.

You might want to model it like Valve Software's Flipside (http://planethalflife.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Reviews.Detail&id=58)

Bag_of_Holding
2008-06-10, 10:53 PM
I always imagined it as something akin to the world of Silent Hill where everything is a twist mockery/inversion of things natural to the material plane. Dark creature template seems to support the idea also, since it's one of the rare templates that can be applied to any creatures (regardless of its corporeality or living/unliving state of existence).

Nonanonymous
2008-06-10, 10:55 PM
Your mention of the Prime Material Plane suggests that you might be using a cosmology with multiple material planes, in which case there are also multiple shadow planes (and ethereal planes), one for each.
Actually there's only one ethereal plane, the ethereal plane is basically the 'background' layer on which the various material planes are dropped. As for the plane of shadow, my current origin story is that it was a powerful entity that equated to the LG equivalent of an uvuudam that came from a universe of pure light and good, and looked at the prime material plane like most people would look at a bug, and acted accordingly. When the gods finally killed it for its murderous misunderstanding, it faded and became the plane of shadow.


If I'm remembering my 2nd edition cosmology, the Plane of Shadow is cast by the interaction between the Material Plane and the Positive and Negative Energy Planes. I don't know if that's ever been updated to 3rd, though.

Could you maybe expand on this? I'm actually having trouble remembering if I intended to include the positive and negative energy planes in my cosmology, given that I did away with the other inner planes and made Energon native to the ethereal plane, I think that I didn't intend to use those two, instead having those spells rely solely on Xag-ya and Xeg-yi (i.e., undead had a Xeg-yi attached to them feeding negative energy directly into their body and keeping it 'alive' and moving that way.)


I always imagined it as something akin to the world of Silent Hill where everything is a twist mockery/inversion of things natural to the material plane. Dark creature template seems to support the idea also, since it's one of the rare templates that can be applied to any creatures (regardless of its corporeality or living/unliving state of existence).

The issue for me being that everything in Silent Hill tries to kill you and/or make you soil your pants. I want the plane of shadow to be unnerving due to its difference, but having no preset factors regarding alignment or hostility.

Chronos
2008-06-11, 01:30 AM
Actually there's only one ethereal plane, the ethereal plane is basically the 'background' layer on which the various material planes are dropped.In the standard cosmologies, that would be the astral, but sure, you could combine the astral and ethereal planes that way.


Could you maybe expand on this? I'm actually having trouble remembering if I intended to include the positive and negative energy planes in my cosmologyProbably not... I never actually had any of the planar books; I just snuck peeks at friends' copies. But you could probably substitute any planes that you have in your cosmology which are similarly opposed to each other (good and evil, law and chaos, yin and yang, whatever). Basically, the material plane is stressed by being at the interface between the extremes, and it's that stress that produces the distorted copy.

If you can tell me more about what you already have on your cosmology, I could probably figure out some of the details about how the various planes interact. Is there any sort of correspondence between your various material planes, for instance? Like, maybe, they all have the same geography, but populated differently? Are the worlds all the same shape and size, or do you have (say) one plane that resembles ours, and another where the world is flat and encased in a solid bubble of sky? Have you added any planes which aren't standard to D&D (a plane of wood, or a plane of dreams, or the like)?

What about your outer planes: Great Wheel of alignments (and what do you have for true neutral?), or some other arrangement? Do the gods live on the same planes that mortals go to after death? Are some planes for punishment, or just more of the same of what folks were like in life?

Are there any natural connections between the planes? Are some planes easier to travel to than others? Is travel directly between any two planes possible, or do you have to pass through a third plane for some of them (and if so, which planes are the ones you can travel through, and to where)?

bosssmiley
2008-06-11, 07:45 AM
...made Energon native to the ethereal plane, I think that I didn't intend to use those two, instead having those spells rely solely on Xag-ya and Xeg-yi (i.e., undead had a Xeg-yi attached to them feeding negative energy directly into their body and keeping it 'alive' and moving that way.)

Oh, I like that a lot. Really creepy and flavourful stuff. So would you say all living things have a Xag-ya attached to them? Or only the ones channelling positive energy? Or only the Deathless? or...?

Of course, that means that the terrible elemental Energons from the Planar Handbook don't exist and never, ever did (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Discontinuity/Discontinuity). :smallbiggrin:

*Yoinked*

Nonanonymous
2008-06-11, 06:47 PM
If you can tell me more about what you already have on your cosmology, I could probably figure out some of the details about how the various planes interact. Is there any sort of correspondence between your various material planes, for instance? Like, maybe, they all have the same geography, but populated differently? Are the worlds all the same shape and size, or do you have (say) one plane that resembles ours, and another where the world is flat and encased in a solid bubble of sky? Have you added any planes which aren't standard to D&D (a plane of wood, or a plane of dreams, or the like)?

What about your outer planes: Great Wheel of alignments (and what do you have for true neutral?), or some other arrangement? Do the gods live on the same planes that mortals go to after death? Are some planes for punishment, or just more of the same of what folks were like in life?

Are there any natural connections between the planes? Are some planes easier to travel to than others? Is travel directly between any two planes possible, or do you have to pass through a third plane for some of them (and if so, which planes are the ones you can travel through, and to where)?


Osari-Vu (The focal reality)
Were anyone to manage to drift through the ethereal plane for a long enough distance, they would be able to witness what takes the form of a seven headed serpent swimming across the infinite 'seas' of the ether. The astral plane forms the skin of Osari-Vu, Limbo the innards, and all the planets of the material plane are held upon 'his' hoods. The outer planes hover in a halo formation above 'his' center-most head, visible as massive spheres which display heavily distorted views of the outermost 'edges' of the plane contained within the sphere (which is bigger on the inside than the out). Massive stretches of these planes breach the spheres forming tangible bridges between them in a sequence relevant to their alignment (each bridge forms a connection to a plane one step away on the alignment axis.). All things save most aberrations, demons, and other such creatures are a part of, and facets of, Osari-Vu. 'He' is predominantly good, but possesses an evil nature as well, both sides being manifested in the various denizens of the outer planes.

I've basically tried to fit most of the planes of the D&D cosmology into a 'world serpent' archetype. What's not described there is that Mechanus works like a highway across the astral plane, travel through which is normally fairly slow and dangerous due to astral dreadnoughts. It still serves as an afterlife, but like Limbo and the Abyss it's no longer part of the Great Wheel. Other material planes could either just be different planets within the same reality, or places like the Far Realms, depending on how you want to define it (I can't remember what the official position on that was, it's probably somewhere in Lords of Madness though.). Also of note is that the Abyss (which is known by Kekelaruath rather than the Abyss) is also a massive living entity, in this case a Lovecraftian beasty trying to pull in evil souls to create demons with and annihilate Osari-Vu.