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Thread: DnD Head Canons

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    *The Warforged cultists of the Lord of Blades are forbidden from having any sort of gender identity or gender expression. Such things are unbecoming in robot supremacists

    *The Lord of Blades sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator

    *Trolls eat a lot because their regenerative abilities are metabolically taxing. This, combined with their poor mental abilities and lack of discipline leand to them attacking livestock, which leads to altervations with ranchers, which leads to their regeneration being needed, which turns into a vicious cycle
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    *The Warforged cultists of the Lord of Blades are forbidden from having any sort of gender identity or gender expression. Such things are unbecoming in robot supremacists
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    I personally dislike any indication that Graz'zt is not a full-blooded demon. Especially when it is indicated that he is part Baatezu. Because I dislike the overtone of him being too smart, charming, devious, etc. to be a demon. Demons can just as much be charming, intelligent or planning long term as devils.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cliff Sedge View Post
    A minor point: Malakuth Tabruiir and Amryyr (of Skullport) are homosexual lovers.

    If this isn't actual Realms canon, it is implied pretty strongly in the books.
    If Ed Greenwood had anything to say about them, they probably are. He's been queering up the Realms since he started it.
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    Headcanon stuff is always fun. I have a few.

    - Mask is a real wild card in faerunian pantheon politics. In the clashes of good vs. evil, Mask is the evil guy most likely to saddle up with Team Evil, and betray them to Team Good. Or side with Team Good from the get-go. Why? Because the thieving business is always much better when the naive good guys are in charge. Can you imagine Bane in charge? Mask's followers would be losing hands and eyes left and right with that guy running law and punishment.

    - There is truth in both Kurtulmak's and Garl Glittergold's telling of events of what befell Kurtulmak's cavern's collapse when he was mortal. This, however, does not change how Kurtulmak feels, and he slays any emissaries the God of the Gnomes sends to try and explain things.

    - Militant, Lawful Evil deities like Hextor and Bane oftentimes have positive reputations in many places they have influence. They're often keeping their communities safe (even if the security is heavy-handed). This one's fairly common though, as I understand it.

    - The Lawful Good gods don't just leave the Blood War to the Devils. Particularly valorous and orderly gods such as Heironeous from Oerth and Tyr from Toril send mortal and immortal troops to aid the Devils in Avernus as auxiliaries as resources and time allows. They feel the forces of order together have the responsibility to support the war against chaos. Asmodeus may be secretly considering sparing their lives when his plans come to fruition and he overthrows the Good gods. Asmodeus has also allowed marriage between particularly competent mortals and erinyes, as well as offering permanent lodging to them. Publicly it's a reward for service. The public secret is he just hopes to corrupt them.

    - Loviatar is extremely tsundere for Ilmater, given their overlap in portfolios, yet completely different approach and dogma.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Hall View Post
    If Ed Greenwood had anything to say about them, they probably are. He's been queering up the Realms since he started it.
    To be fair, Greenwood's always been pretty randy. Lewd stuff is sprinkled pretty liberally throughout Forgotten Realms. Just read up on the ruler of Silverymoon.
    Last edited by Grey Guard; 2019-04-10 at 03:38 PM.

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    *Societies that have been influenced by baatezu soul collectors tend to have unnecessarily baroque and byzantine legal systems; this is to maximize the number of people who have either contributed or been complicit whenever a person is sentenced to death for somehing trivial

    *Similarly, baatezu influenced societies often use public stoning as a means of execution. This allows an entire crowd to gain significant lawful evil karma at once

    *Devil-influenced societies also tend to have a focus on fertility. People are encouraged to have as many children as possible and forbidden from using birth control. This maximizes the number of potential souls available to corrupt.

    *Devil influenced societies also generate LE karma, shorten lifespans, and stabilize their hold on areas by engineerig periodic revolutions that don't change anything. The people mistrustful of the old regime are pacified and are now complicit in the new regime

    *That's why they call it 'revolution'. Because it takes you back to where you startes

    *The non-lawful alignment requirement for bards represents a tendency toward celebrity style erratic behavior

    *generally divine magic manipulates the world in a top-down fashion and arcane magic manipulates it in a bottom-up fashion

    *Zagyg could mop the floor with Elminster
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    The Lady of Pain actually isn't all that powerful. She only retains her position because the nature of Sigil prevents anyone strong enough to challenge her from entering.
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    That the Mystaran cosmology and the Great Wheel cosmology are alternate-timeline versions of each other, that the conflict between Law and Chaos is metacommentary on the split between BECMI and AD&D, and that the 4e cosmology is another timeline offshoot and metacommentary as the multiverse fractures further.

    This is going to be long, and a little bit crazy, so buckle up, kids. Spoilered for wall o' text.

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    So, as Planescape fans know, the War of Law and Chaos happened roughly a bajillion years ago, between the forces of Chaos who wanted the multiverse to continue to exist in a mutable, formless state and the forces of Law who wanted reality to function according to natural laws, and the Law side eventually won. Also roughly a bajillion years ago, some indeterminate amount of time before the War, the cosmology preceding the Great Wheel was destroyed somehow, with only a few survivors managing to make it to the Great Wheel (notably the leShay and draedens).

    That seems a bit fishy to me--old cosmology dies, everything trundles along for a few thousand years, then a multiverse-shaking conflict breaks out? Why wouldn't the war over reality start as soon as the old order died off? Plus, the official timeline talks about fundamental forces of Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, and Neutrality arising before the War, yet we know from the lore about the War itself that it was purely a Law/Chaos conflict with Neutrality in the middle; Good and Evil as forces hadn't arisen yet. Seems contradictory--probably Yugoloth propaganda.

    Now, shifting over to Mystara, you have a beginning-of-the-multiverse conflict that's eerily similar: where Planescape had deities/planar lords of the Inner Planes of elements and the Outer Planes of order and Law fighting their opposites on the side of formless Chaos, Mystara has Immortals of the material spheres of Energy and Matter and immaterial spheres of Thought and Time fighting their opposites in the form of the Entities of the Void between the Stars and Immortals of the sphere of Entropy. For a supposedly entirely different previous cosmology, the parallels are striking.

    And shifting out of character for a moment, the similarity there is due to the cosmologies of Mystara (in BECMI) and Planescape (in AD&D) both deriving from ideas in earlier D&D, though taken in quite different directions based on the demands on the game that made them split in the first place. The more complex system has a more complex and codified cosmology with a strong focus on the subsystems AD&D has and the other lacks (like two-axis alignment), while the less complex setting has a deep but flexible and largely un-filled-in cosmology focusing on the Immortals rules unique to BECMI.

    Headcanon: BECMI vs. AD&D
    Suppose that the Planescape timeline (which is already mostly extrapolation from possibly-mistaken dates from in-character blurbs in Planescape setting books) gets the timing wrong, and in fact the old cosmology "dies" at the same time the War of Law and Chaos starts. There wasn't a Great Wheel hanging around for a few millennia before the War, nor did existence implode into nothingness with the last cosmology. Rather, suppose that originally there was a proto-cosmology (that of OD&D, of course) in which alignments, elements, planes etc. existed but not in any state that modern beings would recognize. Originally, no concepts or substances were dominant over any others, though the alignments of Law, Neutrality, and Chaos were the strongest after a fashion, and the "supreme beings" (those beings that would later become known as Old Ones or Overpowers) were doing whatever it is that they do for fun, including creating the "powers" (those beings that would later become known as Immortals or deities/planar lords). Any creatures existing "before the multiverse" or "from the last multiverse" from the Great Wheel perspective, like draedens and leShay, would have come into being during this time along with various really-bleeping-old Great Wheel creatures like the Vaati, obyriths, and so forth.

    Eventually Law, Neutrality, and Chaos started to come into conflict, and when the War of Law and Chaos broke out there was a three-way branching into different realities where Law, Neutrality, or Chaos was dominant (possibly intentional on the part of the supreme beings), each becoming a separate cosmology in a separate dimension and timeline.

    AD&D is the timeline where Law was dominant, the War proceeded with the well-known organized forces, defined battles, and so forth of Planescape history, and Law won in the end, eventually shaping the multiverse into the highly-ordered alignment-based Great Wheel cosmology. The proto-cosmology didn't "die" in one cataclysmic event (though beings like the leShay may have been able to perceive the split in reality and interpret it as such, and an inability for chronomancers and such to go back past the point might give them that impression as well), but rather everything distinctly Mystaran either never arose during this version of the War or was destroyed or wiped out at some point on this timeline, and the integral nature of belief and faith in the Great Wheel caused the supreme beings and powers to end up as overpowers and deities/planar lords, respectively, and reinforce the Great Wheel's nature in a positive feedback loop.

    BECMI is the timeline where Neutrality was dominant, the War never saw decisive victories or defeats and Law and Chaos fought until both sides were either worn down into a draw or forced into a truce by nascent powers of Neutrality, so the cosmology evolved in a much more balanced form and eventually became the Mystaran cosmology. In a reverse of the AD&D scenario, everything distinctly Planescape never arose or was destroyed in this timeline, and the greatly diminished prominence of faith and alignment caused the supreme beings and powers to end up as Old Ones and Immortals. Most of the original powers died off during the War because it dragged on so long with so many casualties, meaning that all current Mystaran Immortals are ascended mortals unaware of the proto-cosmology and so the current set think that Immortals have to come from mortals, with the obscure mentions of non-ascended Immortals being dismissed as myth.

    What of the timeline where Chaos was dominant, and quickly won the War (assuming that a "war" as such even happened in the first place)? Well, the inhabitants of the Law timeline know it as the Far Realm and the inhabitants of the Neutrality timeline know it as the Dimension of Nightmares. The Far Realm seems utterly alien and alignment-less rather than Chaotic to Great Wheel inhabitants because the "Chaos" the Great Wheel knows and loves is really lowercase-c chaos, constrained by the rules of (and seen through the lens of) Law, while the Far Realm is Chaos on its own terms, a reality that is but cannot be, always will be and has never been. Meanwhile, the Dimension of Nightmares is somewhat less hostile to Mystara and its inhabitants because Mystara's cosmology isn't quite so fundamentally opposed to it, so that while the Dimension of Nightmares is still intensely alien to Mystara it isn't mind-breakingly incomprehensible to it the way the Far Realm is to the Great Wheel.

    And of course, to continue the metacommentary, if Law is rules-heavy stats-for-everything AD&D and Neutrality is rules-medium lots-of-DM-rulings-required BECMI, Chaos being a no-rules stuff-just-happens blob of freeform RP, random tables, and DM fiat fits in nicely.

    Headcanon: 4e
    But there is a second timeline in which neither Law nor Chaos won the war, for there are two kinds of Neutrality. The Mystaran timeline embodies the kind of Neutrality that avoids extremes of either Law or Chaos because it views itself as a valid third ethical and cosmological option alongside the other two, but this fourth timeline (or fourth edition, one might say) embodies the kind of Neutrality that maximizes Law and Chaos because it views both ends of any extreme as equally valid and necessary. Rather than Law and Chaos coming to an eventual compromise brokered by Neutrality, in this multiverse Law and Chaos fought until Neutrality was eliminated, and Law and Chaos existed alongside each other in pockets such that the multiverse was generally ordered according to Law's design and contains more and stronger Law than even the Great Wheel, but Chaos is strong and widespread as well and its influence left it a cruel and broken mockery of the Great Wheel. (This multiverse actually arose long after the others, its War continuing long after the others' ended, but retrocontinuity allows for it to branch off the proto-cosmology at the same point in time.)

    Where the Wheel has Inner Planes which are a regular geometric arrangement of elemental and energy planes at the poles with an ordered progression of para- and quasi-elemental planes in equal measures between them, the World Axis has a single undifferentiated Inner Plane; where the Wheel's Inner Planes were the domain of the original lords of Law, the Vaati, the heart of the World Axis's elemental plane is a seed of pure Chaos; where the Wheel posits gods and planar lords on both sides of the Law and Chaos war, the World Axis has primordials as essentially the incarnation of Chaotic elementals to further twist the knife in the heart of the Vaati's legacy.

    Where the Wheel's Outer Planes are arranged in a symmetrical circle rotating around the "axle" of the Spire and Sigil, the World Axis has destroyed the axle (ironic, for something named after an Axis), shattered the wheel, and sent the planes floating off at random. Where in the Wheel breaches to the Far Realm are rare and contained and warlocks who draw upon fundamental chaos are rare and weak, in the World Axis warlocks drawing upon the Far Realm are plentiful and totally accepted.

    Where the Wheel has Good and Evil to "anchor" and broaden Law and Chaos, the World Axis collapses Good and Evil into Law and Chaos, leaving them so polarized that there is no room for Neutrality, only a lack of alignment with Law or Chaos; where the Wheel has the Ethereal Plane and Plane of Shadow to actualize possibilities (new demiplanes, alternate Primes, and so forth) and allow travel between them, the World Axis has taken the former "chaotic" planes and smashed the Good ones into the Ethereal to create the Feywild and the Evil one into Shadow to create the Shadowfell.

    Names of creatures, places, and concepts in the World Axis echo those in the Great Wheel--archons, eladrin, devils, demons, tieflings, warlocks, dragonborn...the list goes on--yet they are nothing alike. The Prime did not go unaffected, either, its worlds twisted and reflected into near-unrecognizability. Toril was brought low (its unique history and magic rendered down into chaos by Shar, the embodiment of darkness and entropy whose war with her sister Selûne at Toril's creation mirrors the wider Law/Chaos conflict, and the planet physically and temporally split into two worlds, one of Law and gods and one of Chaos and primortials) while Athas was raised up (magic and life flourishing, harshness dissipating, the desert retreating, and so forth); the Age of Mortals on Krynn marks the abandonment of the world by the gods and on Eberron the Draconic Prophecy is defied at every turn, the natural order of those worlds giving way to chaos.

    In short, the World Axis is what happens if you actively try to invert the Great Wheel wherever possible. It is a mirror universe of sorts, the Great Wheel with a goatee, much like the Terran Empire is to the Federation in Star Trek, born of conflict and sustained in defiance of reason and natural law. Here, the metacommentary is left to the reader to avoid edition warring. But 4e is sufficiently different from what came before that viewing the entire thing as an alternate timeline makes a Hells of a lot more sense to me than, for instance, trying to pretend that the Spellplague had even the slightest shred of logic to it.


    Oh, and what does the 3e MotP have to say about this theory?


    Nothing to the far left, representing formless Chaos; then Mystara, with its Elemental Planes below and Outer Planes above, all connected via wormholes through the Ethereal; then the Great Wheel, in all its glory; then the World Axis, with Astral Sea above, Elemental Chaos below, and the Far Realm encircling it? Sounds about right to me.
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    Quote Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost View Post
    Spoilered for wall o' text.
    This was a very interesting read.

    However, I feel that you forgot an important plot point of the World Axis. As the war between the gods and the primordials went on, the primal spirits came into existence, incorporating both astral and elemental essences. They are the ones who won the Mortal World, mainly by virtue of *being* the Mortal World, and they sent both the gods and the primordials back to their corners. So I wouldn't say that "Law and Chaos fought until Neutrality was eliminated", far from it.

    Of course, this is Nentir Vale lore, a setting where none remembered any other cosmology than the World Axis. Forgotten Realms was a whole nother matter, with an attempt to include a shift in cosmology into the history of Toril.

    Now, rather than ignore the Spellplague, I would imagine that it actually shifted Realmspace from one of your timelines to another. Among various unpleasantries, it caused a superposition with the native Realmspace of the World Axis, including an alternate Abeir-Toril commonly shortened to Abeir instead of Toril. Then, in 5e, the Second Sundering brought Realmspace back to the Great Wheel. Or did it? This Great Wheel is different. It has both four well-separated Elemental Planes and an Elemental Chaos. The Energy Planes are not among the Inner Planes, instead being outer-er than the Outer Planes. The Feywild and the Shadowfell border the Material Plane. Could it be yet another timeline?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dragonexx View Post
    The Lady of Pain actually isn't all that powerful. She only retains her position because the nature of Sigil prevents anyone strong enough to challenge her from entering.
    That sounds about right to me. She doesn't really seem to do anything to justify her reputation other than making the occasional person disappear. Even Fidel Castro could do that.

    Also, it goes a way towards explaining why she never leaves sigil (although my personal headcanon is that she's a local spirit of the city, the city's actual soul as it were, and can't leave it; or that if she did leave it she'd become weak and powerless, her power level flipping from being equal to the importance of Sigil to people who live in Sigil to instead being equal to the importance of Sigil to people who DON'T live in Sigil - even those who have heard of it probably don't care unless either it's the only (non-hellish) planar metropolis they know of or they're transporting something across planes that actually meets the parameters to be convenient to transport via Sigil (there need to be known portals near their start and destination. The things being transported need to be small enough to fit. They need to have the correct portal keys. The Infinite Staircase and River Oceanus must not provide a shorter route. There can't be a direct portal. They can't be or be friends with a high-level spellcaster or powerful outsider who will planeshift everything instantly for free)


    EDIT:
    On a similar note, Lord Ao from Realmspace may be in a similar situation regarding being the spirit of a location
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    I think the Lady is part of Sigil. She couldn't even exist outside of this little demiplane. At least not in a form in any way comparable to her current one.
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    Quote Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost View Post
    Wall of Text
    I love this. Very well thought out and presented.

    I've always thought that the idea that the planes changed from one edition to another made no sense, and that the different cosmologies are just different models for describing relationships between the planes.

    Since the planes are metaphysical it is impossible to actually plot their positions in "space", and there are so many different ways that they relate to one another that they will appear in different places depending on what axes you use to plot their positions. Thus no model is correct, and mortals don't really understand the forces they are trying to describe anyway.

    I think that the Great Wheel makes most sense as a model created by Planar beings. It plots the moral and ethical relationships between the Outer Planes, the Elemental natures of the inner planes and the transitive planes are grouped by which regions of the multiverse they link. I see this as essentially a Political Map of the planes.

    The World Axis has a different function, and I think it was more likely created by Primes. It groups the planes by what they are like to explore, and how they "fit together" for someone trying to traverse them in the same way they would the material world.

    Thus the Outer Planes can be thought of as floating in an Astral Sea. It is a legitimate way to get from one to another, and if you are a hapless prime that's probably how you will initially try to do it. Its only once you get used to Planescape that you learn where the portals are, and which outerplanes are morally and ethically opposed.
    Likewise the Elemental Chaos is probably closer to the actual state of the inner planes, its a jumble of matter and energy all mixed together, and centered on the abyss. However regions of each element are so vast that its only in a few isolated places (the very edges of the Paraelemental regions) that the underlying turbulence is visible. The different regions are also interconnected, so that if you know the trick you can get from one pocket of fire to another without having to pass thorough any of that nasty water. Its only inexperienced planar travellers who get dumped into regions where its all mixed up and chaotic.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Millstone85 View Post
    This was a very interesting read.

    However, I feel that you forgot an important plot point of the World Axis. As the war between the gods and the primordials went on, the primal spirits came into existence, incorporating both astral and elemental essences. They are the ones who won the Mortal World, mainly by virtue of *being* the Mortal World, and they sent both the gods and the primordials back to their corners. So I wouldn't say that "Law and Chaos fought until Neutrality was eliminated", far from it.

    Of course, this is Nentir Vale lore, a setting where none remembered any other cosmology than the World Axis. Forgotten Realms was a whole nother matter, with an attempt to include a shift in cosmology into the history of Toril.
    Firstly, yeah, as far as I'm aware (and granted I haven't delved too deep into 4e lore, because bleh ), the existence and nature of primal spirits differs by Prime world; the ones on Nentir Vale's Prime are active and distinct from the gods, but the ones on Athas are either dead or largely insane while the "primal spirits" on Toril are in fact nature deities that that sphere's druids label differently.

    Secondly, it's not that powerful beings that are allied with neither Law nor Chaos were eliminated in that timeline, but that Neutrality as a cosmic force is gone. There are no Outlands or Planes of Conflict, no exemplar races of Neutrality, no spheres aligned with Neutrality over Law or Chaos, no organizations dedicated to upholding the balance between Law and Chaos, and no magic of Neutrality, and the "Neutral" alignment itself is gone, NG/LN and NE/CN having been collapsed into LG and CE respectively and True Neutral (the more "active" neutrality, which in theory would make more sense for this world if its alignment framework supported it) is gone, leaving only a lack of alignment in its place. The primal spirits of Valespace may have kicked the gods and primordials out of that particular realm, but they did so as a "get off my lawn" sort of thing rather than as a philosophical statement on balance between the gods and primordials.

    Now, rather than ignore the Spellplague, I would imagine that it actually shifted Realmspace from one of your timelines to another. Among various unpleasantries, it caused a superposition with the native Realmspace of the World Axis, including an alternate Abeir-Toril commonly shortened to Abeir instead of Toril. Then, in 5e, the Second Sundering brought Realmspace back to the Great Wheel. Or did it? This Great Wheel is different. It has both four well-separated Elemental Planes and an Elemental Chaos. The Energy Planes are not among the Inner Planes, instead being outer-er than the Outer Planes. The Feywild and the Shadowfell border the Material Plane. Could it be yet another timeline?
    I don't ignore the Spellplague, I just don't try to reconcile it with Great Wheel FR as if it makes any logical sense. In this headcanon, the Spellplague does indeed happen on the World Axis timeline, but the Great Wheel timeline is unaffected; different Realms-Shaking Events most likely continue to happen, but as short-duration localized events along the lines of the Avatar Crisis or very subtle ones along the lines of the Lady's alterations at the end of Die Vecna Die (which didn't actually have a Realms-specific manifestation), because anything as blatant, illogical, overwhelming, and destructive as the Spellplague is clearly impossible in a Law-dominated cosmology like the Wheel.

    The 5e cosmology, meanwhile, I view as being one Prime's interpretation of the actual Great Wheel cosmology. It's entirely possible for sealed spheres like Darkspace (Athas) and Shardspace (Eberron) to have different links to the overarching Wheel cosmology due to local conditions or for normally-linked spheres like Krynn to have infrequent enough interactions with the planes that they have different names or diagrams for the normal planes, after all. The 5e map of the planes looks like what a sage would create if he comes from a Prime with slightly abnormal planar relations: this Prime world probably has a coexistent Plane of Faerie-like demiplane that cuts off Ethereal links in the same way Athas has the Grey, has few enough links to the Energy Planes that the locals think they're "farther" than the Outer Planes, and has enough common enough interactions with both Ravenloft and the Plane of Shadow that it conflates them into a single plane.

    That setup would also, incidentally, explain the utterly stupid "every world uses the Weave" 5e retcon. If the core 5e world has a Weave, and a spellcaster from the main 5e Prime travels to Toril and sees that it has a Weave too, he might extrapolate that everywhere has one, because what are the chances that he just happens to run into the one other Prime with a Weave? (Quite high, actually, as Toril is definitely the Prime world most reachable by and welcoming to travelers from other Primes, but he has no way of knowing that.)

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    On a similar note, Lord Ao from Realmspace may be in a similar situation regarding being the spirit of a location
    Another headcanon of mine is that "overgods" aren't a distinct category of being at all, they're just normal deities pulling a fast one on the rest of the gods.

    So, gods gain power based on the prominence of their portfolio, amount and strength of prayer, number of lay worshipers and clergy, and similar factors, modulo a given Prime's mechanics of godhood, right? Well, if you can have Lathander as the god of the sun, Bane as the god of tyranny, and so forth, there's no reason you couldn't have Ao the god of divinity. And just like Bane can see and hear around subjects of tyranny and acts of tyranny, know the future of tyrannical acts and organizations, use tyranny-related magic and grant or deny power to those who draw on the concept of Tyranny, manipulate the bodies and minds of mortals within his sphere of influence, and so forth, Ao would be able to see and hear around the gods, know what the gods are up to, grant or deny deific powers, control the gods' bodies and minds, and so forth, and just as Lathander could control the sun itself and alter its properties, Ao could grant or strip divinity to and from the gods and change the way worship and goodhood work. This would make him appear to be effectively omnipotent and omniscient to the gods in the same way that Mystra appears effectively omniscient and omnipotent to a mortal wizard.

    Evidence for this:

    1) New gods can come into existence (and existing gods can be changed) when mortal belief in a given concept is strong enough. No one knew about Ao until the Time of Troubles (and the gods didn't appear to know about him for much longer before that), and crediting him as the creator of Realmspace contradicts what sages know of the Selûne/Shar creation myth, so sure, he might have been a hands-off overgod for years until he felt forced to step in in a way he never did before or since...or perhaps growing mortal dissatisfaction with the gods caused Ao to coalesce around the portfolio of regulating divinity (with "worship, godhood, gods, and divine magic" as his portfolio and Cynosure as his divine realm), use his power over the gods to make them believe he'd always been around, use his power over godhood and worship to cause himself to draw power from gods instead of mortals, use his suddenly-massive reserves of divine power to retroactively block the greater gods' future sight of his ascension and actions, and use the Time of Troubles to show off and solidify his control over his portfolio in the same way a new god might appear to his worshipers and do some miracle-working and/or smiting to show them he's in charge.

    2) During the Avatar Crisis, Cyric appeared to gain enough power to be able to challenge Ao when no other god was, and Ao appeared to be concerned or even afraid of this. Completely unreasonable if Ao is actually an overgod who's all-powerful within Toril...but much more reasonable if he's just a god trying to pull one over on the gods exactly like Cyric was doing with his Cyric-is-the-one-true-god maneuver with the Cyrinishad, and Ao's portfolio of "the gods" ran head-first into Cyric's new portfolio of "monotheism" and he couldn't exert nearly as much power over Cyric for that reason.

    The scene where Cyric challenges Ao in Cynosure, Ao is surprised, and he has to actually try to shut Cyric down certainly reads to me like Ao trying and failing to overpower Cyric's divine powers, then realizing that, hey, Cynosure is his divine realm, he has home ground advantage, and cheats to squeak out a win that way, and then as soon as Cyric really believes that Ao actually does have power over him, well, belief begets reality and Ao is in control again.

    3) The High God of Krynn pulls basically the same stunt Ao does. The gods are squabbling and ignoring the mortals, the High God steps in and lays down the law in a way that implies that he can't just wave his hand and change things while claiming to be "as high above the gods as the gods are above mortals," and then once he's made his big debut he steps back and pretends to run things from behind the scenes.
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    Ao is actually a random housecat.
    The gods just pretends ao makes them take unpopular measures such as keeping the wall of the faithless(while it was only the mediocre gods which stopped getting worship which decided to put it back after the really nice gods destroyed it and not an overgod which imposed that to the gods).
    Last edited by noob; 2019-04-12 at 04:26 PM.

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    Dragonborn are really just big kobolds and appreciate non-dragonborn loudly recognising them as thus.

    Humans tend to win races. Because of their bonus feet.

    Asmodeus is actually weakened by mottal Disciples of Asmodeus, and is slightly fearful of what happens if someone loves him so much it actually destroys him if they tap into his power. His overcompensating on the evil is a bid to prevent this.

    Ambrosia (from book of exalted deeds, magical happy juice angels can’t stop drinking down) has the consistency and taste of custard.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Malphegor View Post
    Ambrosia (from book of exalted deeds, magical happy juice angels can’t stop drinking down) has the consistency and taste of custard.
    Conversely, Liquid Pain (its Book of Gile Darkness counterpart) looks like creamed corn
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    - primus is actually just an avatar of mechanus itself which is why he reforms from a modron if he's killed

    - kobolds turn into troglodytes when they're older, also all kobolds are male and trogs are female

    - illithyds will come about as a direct result of githyanki actions

    - halflings are actually dwarf-elf hybrids

    - 6 orks vs 2 hobgoblins is more fair of a fight then 2 orks vs 1 hobgoblin
    Last edited by a_flemish_guy; 2019-04-12 at 10:02 PM.

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    Spoiler: At one point, the Dark Seldarine was also known as a rock band.
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    3e Faiths and Pantheons page 112: illustration by Ben Templesmith.

    Spoiler: Beholders regurgitate their preys as gibbering mouthers. Those later develop levitation and eye rays. Eventually, one voice silences the others, all but ten of the eyes merge together, and the oozing flesh begins to solidify. The creature spends a long time altering the details of its form, until it convinces itself that it achieved perfection. Unimpaired, this process results in a new beholder. However, mature beholders typically maim and poison developing ones so they become lesser beholder-kin.
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    Troglodytes are corrupted lizardfolk. They come from eggs stolen by sahuagin, and the most dangerous and organized troglodytes are the sharkfolk's main weapon in hilly terrain.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Millstone85 View Post
    Spoiler: At one point, the Dark Seldarine was also known as a rock band.
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    3e Faiths and Pantheons page 112: illustration by Ben Templesmith.

    Spoiler: Beholders regurgitate their preys as gibbering mouthers. Those later develop levitation and eye rays. Eventually, one voice silences the others, all but ten of the eyes merge together, and the oozing flesh begins to solidify. The creature spends a long time altering the details of its form, until it convinces itself that it achieved perfection. Unimpaired, this process results in a new beholder. However, mature beholders typically maim and poison developing ones so they become lesser beholder-kin.
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    4e Monster Manual page 126: gibbering mouther, gibbering abomination and gibbering orb.
    5e Monster Manual page 28: beholder.
    so by achieving perceived "perfection" it becomes weaker than in its previous state?
    (gibbering orbs are super powerful)
    Last edited by noob; 2019-04-13 at 02:17 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by noob View Post
    so by achieving perceived "perfection" it becomes weaker than in its previous state?
    (gibbering orbs are super powerful)
    The creature may be more powerful with the voices of all its victims, but the one that silences the others only cares about escaping this hell of cacophony and melting flesh. It does so through unyielding willpower, all-devouring ego, and furious desire for a form of its own, leading to the typical beholder mindset.

    When a gibbering orb does not transform, keeps on collecting voices, grows much larger than a beholder, and starts showing signs of cunning under the apparent madness, that is indeed really bad news. Some scholars consider beholders to be failed gibbering orbs. Oddly, they tend to disappear in mysterious circumstances, especially around Waterdeep.

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    Thanks to a thread in 5e subforum: There are several elf-like creatures referred to as Eladrin (the most notable being a type of celestial, a more fey creature, and the ones that claim to be closest to the first elves). Their actual level of relation to elves varies.
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    All Roads Lead to Gnome.

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    Draconic kind of sounds like Hebrew.
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    Elvish sounds like a mashup of French, Mandarin Chinese, and Ancient Egyptian.
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    - Asmodeus is not nearly as powerful nor influental as most people think he is. There is no Pact Primeval, he never was a god, and he does not even have any sort of meaningful control over hell and the rest of the archdevils.

    What he does have, however, is a vast propaganda machine across the planes that has managed to convince most of the material plane and many mortals elsewhere of these lies.

    - The upper planes and many angles are actually very actively involved in the blood war, though they act mostly only to mitigate collateral damage and to protect innocents that would otherwise get involved in the conflict.

    - The Wall of the Faithless wasn't created by anyone, it is just the natural endpoint for any souls without divine protection in the Realms. Most gods are extremely frustrated that some souls still end up in it, given that they offer free access to afterlives that are in their opinion obvious paradises.

    - Most demons enjoy playing into the mortal stereotype that they are not as subtle or intelligent as devils, as it makes it easier to trick them.

    - The Oard are totally canon and in their original timeline eventually turn into the Illithid. And I don't care how little sense that makes.
    Last edited by Theoboldi; 2019-04-14 at 12:14 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by ezekielraiden View Post
    You don't win people over by beating them with facts until they surrender; at best all you've got is a conversion under duress, and at worst you've actively made an enemy of your position.

    You don't convince by proving someone wrong. You convince by showing them a better way to be right. The difference may seem subtle or semantic, but I assure you it matters a lot.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Theoboldi View Post
    - The Wall of the Faithless wasn't created by anyone, it is just the natural endpoint for any souls without divine protection in the Realms. Most gods are extremely frustrated that some souls still end up in it, given that they offer free access to afterlives that are in their opinion obvious paradises.
    even if it was not created.
    1: It can be destroyed(maybe it reforms later but it can).
    2: You can grab souls from it(demons do so constantly)
    So the gods are still leaving souls naturally come in the wall and rot instead of for example just grabbing the souls in it.
    And no it is not free access if I have to say "I respect that god which is intensely evil and did tons of bad things" even if it was for eternal life it would be quite a consequent cost since all the gods did awful things ranging from killing people to eating other gods(yes including a good god eating another good god and somehow it did not instantly become chaotic evil while any player doing so would no matter the situation be turned chaotic evil by the majority of the gms)
    While if it was "ok I do not respect you but can I still go in your afterlife" there would be way less people in the wall of the faithless.
    Last edited by noob; 2019-04-14 at 01:10 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by noob View Post
    even if it was not created.
    1: It can be destroyed(maybe it reforms later but it can).
    2: You can grab souls from it(demons do so constantly)
    So the gods are still leaving souls naturally come in the wall and rot instead of for example just grabbing the souls in it.
    And no it is not free access if I have to say "I respect that god which is intensely evil and did tons of bad things" even if it was for eternal life it would be quite a consequent cost since all the gods did awful things ranging from killing people to eating other gods(yes including a good god eating another good god and somehow it did not instantly become chaotic evil while any player doing so would no matter the situation be turned chaotic evil by the majority of the gms)
    While if it was "ok I do not respect you but can I still go in your afterlife" there would be way less people in the wall of the faithless.
    Uh, not to be rude, but could you write that up with a couple of paragraph breaks and better punctuation? I have a very hard time reading what you are posting.
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    Quote Originally Posted by ezekielraiden View Post
    You don't win people over by beating them with facts until they surrender; at best all you've got is a conversion under duress, and at worst you've actively made an enemy of your position.

    You don't convince by proving someone wrong. You convince by showing them a better way to be right. The difference may seem subtle or semantic, but I assure you it matters a lot.

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    I always liked the idea of Sigil being a cage for the Lady. Have you noticed how the spire doesn't have any effect on those in the city? That's because its all focused on one person in particular. But despite all that, she can still kill gods. Uh-oh.


    Asmodeus-canon: Yes, he is actually a giant bleeding serpent that sends out avatars to pretend to be him. The FC already says that his exile from heaven wasnt cheery, so that origin story doesn't exclude it from being true.

    He also doesn't move against Mephistopheles, despite his blatant rebellion, because he's afraid of his consort, who's one of the baatorians. This one I adopted from afroakuma.

    Demon-canon that I just made: Demon princes/rulers can't be good. As soon as one falls towards neutral on the alignment scale, the Abyss lashes against it and someone new takes its throne.



    Totally silly: If Ragnorra crashed into Atropus, the surge of positive and negative energy would cancel each other out and everything would be fine.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Theoboldi View Post
    - The Oard are totally canon and in their original timeline eventually turn into the Illithid. And I don't care how little sense that makes.
    Oard are the biggest knockoff nobody ever talks about.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    Oard are the biggest knockoff nobody ever talks about.
    Knock off from what? If you mean Star Trek's The Borg then the module was published in 1985 but Star Trek: The Next Generation aired in 1987 and the first Borg episoed was (I think) "Q Who?" in season 2 - so broadcast in 1989. The Borg would be the knock-off here.
    I doubt if any 2nd season episodes had been written before season 1 did well enough to get the seocnd season confirmed.

    Personal head canons:

    Wrath of the Immortals never happens.
    The big pearl on the Isle of Dread is actually an artifact with the side effect of causing the prehistoric plant growth and dinosaurs in the surrpoinding area.
    The Rakasta and Phanaton on the Ilse of dread get there as part of a trial of manhood from enighbouring islands (trying to retrieve the eye of a statue of their god[immortal]) - the rakasta use big oar-powered outrigger canoes and the phanaton use small kite-powered coracles.
    Last edited by Khedrac; 2019-04-15 at 03:42 AM.

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