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2017-06-20, 07:23 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
There's very little there to place, they kept him quite substantially nebulous. So we're basically making things up. Let's see...
Well, rolling from his granted abilities and the allusion to Cerberus, as well as certain mythological traits ascribed to cranes...
Naberius was a silver-tongued mortal, not merely a flatterer but a sycophant and deceiver of the highest skill. A classic impostor, he faked his way through many a challenge, always making it out that he possessed skills which he did in fact not. He proved so deviously adept at appealing to others' desires that even the gods themselves were taken in, willingly looking the other way. Some binders believe this was at the behest of a trickster god, or that Naberius was assisted by divine intercession of a more malign character, but in any event, each deity who took him in believed Naberius to be their own personal confidant and good friend. His scheming eventually led him to trespass against a crane of the Upper Planes - perhaps it was the sacred cranes of the Celestial Bureaucracy, marking him out to warn the Chinese pantheon of his duplicity, or perhaps he attempted to inveigle the Crane Lord to learn the secrets of the beasts. One myth even suggests that the cranes were taken in, and allowed him to stand vigil as one of their own, a post he immediately betrayed to his own benefit.
Whatever transpired, Naberius was marked out by the crane, and the gods seized him. Seeing him as he truly was, they repaid him in kind, turning him into a base hound and giving him many faces to mark out his duplicity. His silver tongue became rough and guttural. Pursued ever by the cranes, who would warn others of his nature, Naberius resolved to turn the situation to his advantage by slipping into the Underworld, where dwelt Cerberus. Now a meager shadow of that legendary beast, Naberius hid in the darkness as the cranes followed. While the birds mistook the guardian of Hades for their scurrilous charge, Naberius stole his post, lurking at the gates of the Underworld and seizing the souls that came by, eating them in a bid to gain power as his former friends had once described to him. When Hades discovered this, he ejected Naberius from the Underworld for all of time, warning the other gods of death not to take him in. With no god wishing to accept him and having become something liminal through his improper feasting, Naberius in one stroke lost his life and his death, his spark without a place to settle on the Planes. With no god willing to acknowledge him and thus admit that they were taken in, Naberius and his tale vanished from the Planes.
Doesn't have one, hence "the Serpent."
So both sources are equally right and equally wrong? Either the brethren are omnipotent beings, from the dawn of creation, or a race of mortal, albeit powerful spell-casters, from the dawn of creation... ?
Ok... Personally I would give it more credit.
Apparently the lady speaks this language to alter the entire multiverse.Last edited by afroakuma; 2017-06-20 at 07:53 AM.
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2017-06-20, 08:19 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
Yeepee, Afroakuma is back! All hail the mighty Loremaster!
I've missed your thread :)Avatar by Mr_Saturn
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2017-06-20, 10:14 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
Yay! afroakuma's back in business!
So, how about them Ethergaunts? Specifically, what info can you provide about them that isn't in the Fiend Folio? I've spotted a couple references to them having something to do with Joystealers and Spellweavers, but I'm curious what your extensive knowledge has to say about them, their history, and their plans.
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2017-06-20, 10:24 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
Ok... I wonder where the guy in the link, who mentioned that, got it from then. It seemed very plausible that the World Serpent would be the same entity, though, giving the way they are portrayed? Golden Skins of the Word Serpent and all... It would make sense to me... it fits. But notwithstanding your vestige theory and you had to give it a name what would it be. My question is which being would you venture it to be then? Io, Ouroboros... ? I'm curious to know other possibilities there could be...
That's a gross misreading. Let me try again: neither source explicitly describes the "Ancient Brethren" as a group of cosmic beings. Both sources identify them as being an ancient group, and that is all. Die, Vecna, Die! merely proceeds to suggest that the Serpent originates from said group, which does not currently include the Lady of Pain, if it ever did. Also critically, in absolutely neither case are the "Ancient Brethren" from the dawn of creation.
Of course you would, because you want to. Again, I see the other thread, I read your post.
She patches an exploit and stabilizes memory leaks. She doesn't reorder the entire cosmos using it. She in fact specifically does not, as the book notes that despite the work she does on Sigil to get things back in gear, there has been a dramatic shift in the multiverse and vast fractures in the nature of reality that won't mend. It's a language whose words are used for epic-level magic, not the source code of the multiverse. If you want it to be, then whatever. I don't care what you do.
Thanks again!
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2017-06-20, 10:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
Didn't they create the name "Golden Skins of the World Serpent" in Serpent Kingdoms as part of the "clumsy retcon of the concept 'world serpent'" (quote Afro V)? Besides, does the Ouroboros exist in D&D?
10. In this post you described the leaders of the different genie races. Would similar leaders for the Qorrash and the Khayal exist?
11. Last question from the list; disregard the question if you don't like it: Imagine we were building a cosmology based on Chinese mythology with fitting elemental planes, what would an Elemental Plane of Metal be like?Last edited by Tzardok; 2017-06-20 at 12:07 PM.
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2017-06-20, 11:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
I think the World Serpent of Serpent Kingdoms was called Amphisbaena - it wasn't a snake with tail in mouth - it was a snake with a head at each end.
One of Sseth's identities was that, according to the Elder Serpents of Set article in Dragon 313 (November 2003), written a bit before -Serpent Kingdoms was July 2004):
page 85
Sseth the Great Snake was once the Faerunian god of poison and serpents of all sorts, from typical vipers to yuan-ti to nagas. He was known across the Realms by different names, since he changed names and aliases as often as his serpent followers shed their skins. In the western Realms, from the Serpent Hills to the Shining Plains to the Serpent's Holding, Sseth was often known as Varae and venerated by a snake cult. In the south, from the Jungles of Chult to. the Black Jungles to the Forest of Amtar, he was known as Squamata the Black, as Amphisbaena the World Serpent, and also by his true name - Sseth the Sibilant Death.
(then it mentions how Set the Mulhorandi god bound Sseth in sleep, and took his mantle).
I would suggest that Sseth used that name because it was the name of the deity Sseth is a fragment of.
(Sseth originated as an avatar of Merrshaulk, who was a fragment of the World Serpent, but ended up with a different set of domains - probably through absorbing other fragments, and continuing to be worshipped under their names, discarding the domains he didn't want to grant - A deity can only have so many).Last edited by hamishspence; 2017-06-20 at 11:19 AM.
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2017-06-20, 12:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
Nothing that hasn't already been said in an older version of this thread. They were a cool idea that didn't see any use, likely because of their higher-end CR. One of a number of interesting organized badguy races that suffered this fate. I have in the past suggested that they may have been a product of aboleth experimentation on slaves in eons past, but that's not strictly canonical.
Melcar, I'm not going to engage on this any further in this thread. If you want to discuss it further for some reason, feel free to PM me, but I am beyond done on this. You don't seem to want my opinions, so I really don't know why we're still doing this.
I don't see why not, though of course neither was fleshed out and so the material isn't there to discuss.
11. Last question from the list; disregard the question if you don't like it: Imagine we were building a cosmology based on Chinese mythology with fitting elemental planes, what would an Elemental Plane of Metal be like?Last edited by afroakuma; 2017-06-20 at 12:52 PM.
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2017-06-20, 12:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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2017-06-20, 01:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
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2017-06-20, 03:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
I don't know. Whether or not Ouroboros exists, well I thought so, but come to think of it. I have not seen it in any printing... But Ao the lady of Pain isn't mentioned much either and well the serpent, I only discovered last week. Have been playing D&D since Baldur's Gate first came out!
Then that makes me wonder what and who that World Serpent really is... Apparently more than one god/primordial have been called the world serpent...
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2017-06-20, 03:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
That Serpent was supposed to be the progenitor of a great many scalykind deities. It's possible that it was not a "conventional" deity itself - but a primordial or a primal spirit (if you're using 4e cosmological terms).
Ubtao, a deity in 3.0-3.5, was retconned into being a primordial that sided with the gods, for example. The Elder Evil Dendar the Night Serpent was also retconned into being a primordial.Marut-2 Avatar by Serpentine
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2017-06-20, 04:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
I think that goes beyond "conjecture" and into "make stuff up" at that point.
Though that being said, I did forget that the Tome of Magic actually elaborates on the leader of the khayal, at the very least. The King of Shadows rules from the Grand Palace of Endings in the City of Onyx.
I don't know why there's still discussion about the Serpent taking place, but I'd appreciate if it moved on.Last edited by afroakuma; 2017-06-20 at 04:08 PM.
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2017-06-20, 11:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
Whoo, welcome back! I have a question that actually came up last month in another thread: The "Heart of Darkness."
Originally Posted by Ephemeral_Being
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2017-06-21, 12:28 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
A belated welcome back, I enjoy these threads greatly.
Does the greater D&D cosmology support alternate prime material planes via either multiverse theory or more of a butterfly effect alternate timelines situation?
Would there be any way of piercing reality to access multiverse theory prime materials?
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2017-06-21, 12:52 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
IIRC the Heart of Darkness was only mentioned in 2e scources in myths about the baernoloths and how they created the yugoloths. It's background flavor.
Originally Posted by unseenmage
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2017-06-21, 03:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
Neither, particularly - more a facet of lore, a stepstone of mythology, if you will, no more real and no more false in and of itself than any other story running around. A fanciful name, given neither whereabouts nor hard character. What it has done was suggested, what it does do, if in fact it does do anything, is unknown. The object was never statted, that I can tell you.
D&D is riddled with peering into alternate Primes; the chiefest method of transit between is via the Plane of Shadow, which crosses between multiverses, but other methods exist. Chronomancers are warned in particular about playing near sensitive points in sensitive timelines, where there lies a risk of plummeting into an inescapable alternity - a future different from that which you saw, but a past identical to that which led there, no way to move back to an exit point in the new timestream as the point of divergence would require doubling back on your own timeline.
Don't do that.
Powerful magic, as is ever the case, is the method to achieve this goal.Need a place to hang? Like Discord? Don't mind dealing with a capricious demon lord? Then you're welcome to join our LGBTQ+ friendly, often silly, very geeky server to discuss food, music, video games, tabletop, and much more.
Manual of the Planes 5th Edition: for all the things the official 5E Planescape didn't cover. Check it out.
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2017-06-21, 08:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
The demiplane the city of Union is in is weird. It's neither coexistent with nor coterminous with 'any other plane', yet magic works normally there, and portals function without an astral connection. Is there any explanation for this, or any other example of a demiplane that works the same way?
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2017-06-21, 10:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
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2017-06-22, 12:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
I don't think the authors really thought through what that meant - the section on demiplanes in the Manual of the Planes spells out that demiplanes aren't accessible except where they're coterminous. One word strikes me as particularly revealing, however - "natural." My suspicion is that Union is an Astral-originated demiplane which the mercanes somehow severed from natural coterminous status with the Astral Plane via what are probably artifact-level anchors to the broader multiverse whose moorings shift. If you want an interesting plot hook, perhaps unbinding more than one of the portals at a time poses a risk to the stability of Union, and finding a way to unbind all three simultaneously would cause it to become "lost."
...you're going to strand yourself in an alternate parallel timeline from which return is impossible by traveling to a tenuous part of the timeline of Krynnspace?
I mean, I don't see why that's an ambition, I wouldn't want to get stuck in a single alternate Dragonlance continuity, feels kinda narrow.
Now if you meant you just want to mess about in alternate universes differentiated by alterations to the timeline but otherwise similar, that's a different matter.Need a place to hang? Like Discord? Don't mind dealing with a capricious demon lord? Then you're welcome to join our LGBTQ+ friendly, often silly, very geeky server to discuss food, music, video games, tabletop, and much more.
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2017-06-22, 04:35 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
The second thing with threat of the first looming as penalty for mucking about too much.
Overuse of the Teleport Through Time spell specifically comes to mind. Less RAW methods would be employed were this from the GM side of the table of course.
IIRC there is a plane of 'time' that can just be Plane Shift-ed to?
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2017-06-22, 11:23 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
Eh, teleport through time isn't the same as real chronomancy. Among other things, it does permit doubling without inherently catastrophic consequences (I mean, if you meet yourself, you will attempt to murder yourselves with great force, but I meant more broadly) and of course you can't leap into the future with it. I'd say talk to your GM about what they want to do in their campaign and roll from there; time travel is one of the more taxing things to ask a GM to improvise, after all.
IIRC there is a plane of 'time' that can just be Plane Shift-ed to?Need a place to hang? Like Discord? Don't mind dealing with a capricious demon lord? Then you're welcome to join our LGBTQ+ friendly, often silly, very geeky server to discuss food, music, video games, tabletop, and much more.
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2017-06-22, 12:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
Hmmm, I'd never considered Naberius as a former mortal.
My own train of thought was always more along the lines of him being some variety of primordial fiend that got kicked out of the natural order due to one of the relevant cataclysms.
Maybe an Ancient Baatorian Lord who avoided whatever happened to the rest of his kin by becoming a vestige? Or maybe the intelligent portion of Cerberus that was split off when the Heart of Darkness Law-Chaos sundered Fiend-kind? Or, and this was the one I kinda favored, the same kind of missing-link abyssal Fiend as Pazuzu (both bird-related, snake-wolf form kinda echos another certain fiend...), who was vestiged as punishement by the Queen of Chaos or vestiged himself to avoid the Eladrin's genocide?
I could never quite get any of these to fit in my head though, though since he's rather lacking in the Bad-guy department; i.e. smooth-talking scholar doesn't exactly scream ancient manifestation of cosmic Evil... still, do any of thes make a similar ammount of sense to you as the mortal background option?
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2017-06-22, 03:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
Need a place to hang? Like Discord? Don't mind dealing with a capricious demon lord? Then you're welcome to join our LGBTQ+ friendly, often silly, very geeky server to discuss food, music, video games, tabletop, and much more.
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2017-06-23, 01:42 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
Mainly to try and make it fit with the actual version from the Dictionnaire Infernal.
"Valiant Marquis of Hell" just screams Fiend-lord to me.
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2017-06-23, 07:35 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
Hey, Afro... I have a tough one:
Can you give info on something called "The Barbatos device"?
In FC1 there is a passing mention and the web enhancement only elaborates to the point of calling it "[an] infamous plane-spanning engine".
On the great internetz, there is an old forum post that does provide a lot of info, but cites no sources, which inevitably places doubt on its veracity.
Are you able to dispel some of that doubt?
My attempt at non-awful fumble rules
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2017-06-23, 09:01 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
Vestiges don't fit with those, though, that's the point of situating them in D&D canon.
From what I've seen, it was nothing more than an oblique off-the-cuff mention in FCI and its web enhancement. Barbatos is a Duke of Hell who serves as marshal of Maladomini and commands its armies, but why that should tie into a ship on the Prime and its unfortunate stranding in the Abyss is a mystery.Need a place to hang? Like Discord? Don't mind dealing with a capricious demon lord? Then you're welcome to join our LGBTQ+ friendly, often silly, very geeky server to discuss food, music, video games, tabletop, and much more.
Manual of the Planes 5th Edition: for all the things the official 5E Planescape didn't cover. Check it out.
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2017-06-23, 09:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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2017-06-23, 09:15 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
My attempt at non-awful fumble rules
Arcane Archer minimal fix (maybe not so minimal anymore)
Reworking the Complete Adventurer Tempest PrC
Expanding the Pathfinder Called Shots system
Keyboard shortcuts for d20srd.org
Guide to Optimizing To-Hit
Obscure Psionic Power Index
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2017-06-23, 10:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
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2017-06-23, 11:45 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII
Normally I'd agree, but in Naberius' case; tome of magic lifted every piece of fluff (minus the marquis of hell bit) directly from the aforementioned source(s). Each of his names, forms he appears as, the design of the seal, the benefits he bestows, even the theory about some relation to the Greek Cerberus... it's all copy-paste.
I guess it just grates on me that they did nothing to adapt the mythological background to D&D lore. I mean, going by the pictures he even looks like a Tanar'ri, so it should've been easy enough to slot him into that side of things. It just feels... unfinished, hence my desire to come up with a Fiend-based headcanon.
Anycase, thank you very much for your input.