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Author Topic: The Planes  (Read 1072 times)

EdTheKet

The Planes
« on: August 16, 2005, 12:39:00 pm »
Information below is current.
 

EdTheKet

Re: The Planes
« Reply #1 on: August 05, 2007, 10:31:51 am »
 The All and Nothing
The All and Nothing is both nothing and everything. This is where everything that was sucked up by The Thread (see below) resides, waiting for any entity occupying the Sovereign to realize their potential and move them to the mortal planes again (or for the first time). The Mother is the only being that can see within the borders of this plane realizing its potential rather than mistaking it for empty space rife for expansion.

The Sovereign
The exact border of this plane with the All or Nothing is unclear, and is probably only clear to the Sovereign’s sole occupant at this time: a creature called The Mother. What this creature exactly is, a goddess or something else is something even she is not clear on. Suffice it to say that she just is. At the moment, the Mother is biding her time here, slowing gaining understanding and adding to her power until she will emerge in her full glory finally remembering the memories lost to time and circumstance. She has full access to the All and Nothing, and can manipulate everything within and move things from there across the any of the planes or location within the planes. As for the Sovereign itself, it is hard to differentiate between the plane and its occupant; for all intents and purposes, they are the same at this point in time.

The Mists
Separating the Sovereign from the next plane, that of the Heavens is a kind of misty, foggy cloud-like substance, called The Mists. It has no exact dimensions, and it can be traversed through, but no matter how long one travels from the Heavens towards the Sovereign, one will never get there. The distance from the Heavens to the Sovereign is, in effect, infinite.
 
The Heavens
This cylindrical part of the cosmos is divided into as many sections as there are deities of all the worlds in the Mortal Coil; each section displays the traits of the deity it represents and is indeed created and modified by them.

Each section is surrounded by a similar cloud-like substance that separates the Heavens from the Sovereign, but in this case, the distance between the sections is not infinite. One can travel into the next section provided the patron deity puts up no resistance to the traveler’s presence. The sections are dynamicly expanding and contracting with the actions, or lack there of, of each deity’s faithful on the world the deity is worshipped on. The size of a section is a representation of the deity’s power.

Deities “belonging” to a particular world would 'crowd’ in the area of the Heavens that’s on the other side of the Sheet of where the world they 'belong’ to is located in the Coil. (Else their constellations wouldn’t be very visible in the sky of that particular world, and the farther away they’d be from that world, the less power they’d get).

The Sheet
Separating the Heavens from the Mortal Coil is a barrier, a barrier of utter darkness, known as the Sheet. To the ones in the Mortal Coil, the sheet is seen as the darkness that is the night sky. Most of the stars that are seen in the night sky are representations of the sections of the various deities in the Heavens and are moving constellations on the firmament. Other, stars are the suns of distant worlds further up or down the Coil. These other stars do not move like the deity constellations do, because they are not part of a constellation of a god that is followed on the world viewing the Sheet.

The Mortal Coil
The Coil is where the mortal worlds are found. The various worlds are arranged along an endless spiraling string, which is why it is called the Coil. Here you find not only Layonara but any world where mortals live. As with any string, it can resonate on many different frequencies, and every frequency is another alternate reality. The higher the frequency of resonation (so the faster the string vibrates) the more energy a reality has. At very high frequencies, the energy is so high that beings of nearly pure energy exist compared to the more near normal frequencies like the one Layonara is on. At very low frequencies, the energy is very low, so the beings existing here have a lot less energy and are mere husks or shadows compared to beings of the more normal frequency worlds.

The Binding
The spiraling string of the Mortal Coil wraps itself along an endless cable of five intertwined cylinders. Four of these are the building blocks of the planes, being the four elements of air, earth, fire, and water, and the innermost 'cable’ is the Pits of Endless Strife. They are kept, or somehow bound, together by what seems to be nothingness, which yet seems to enforce that there is enough space in between the four elements to ensure they do not touch each other. The strangeness is that it seems to consist of nothing, yet it enforces the structure, because of this it is called the Binding Void.

The four elemental planes

The Desolate Rock- One of the four building blocks of the planes, the cylinder shaped plane called Desolate Rock is dominated by the element of earth. Barren wastelands of all types of earth, soil and rock dominate this plane; the presence of the other three elements is scarce at best. The second most common elements being fire and water and then air, which can mostly be found near the border with the Pits of Endless Strife. There is air to breathe in some places, mostly in pockets of air made by large caverns. There’s the occasional patch of water, but that’s hardly ever larger than a small puddle, or a drip. Fire hardly manifests itself, unless it is like molten rock near the borders of the Desolate Rock with the Pits of Endless Strife. Life here consists mostly of creatures made of living rock or earth.

The Flowing Waters- One of the four building blocks of the planes, the cylinder shaped plane called the Flowing Waters is dominated by the element of water in all of its forms; from water vapor, to vast oceans, to frozen wastes of ice. The second most common element being earth, then air, and then fire, which can mostly be found near the border of the plane with the Pits of Endless Strife. Life here consists mostly of creatures made of living water.

The Whirling Tempest- One of the four building blocks of the planes, the cylinder shaped plane called the Whirling Tempest is dominated by the element of air. It can be seen as a vast air bubble, home of torrential winds, soft breezes, as well as stills. The presence of the other three elements is scarce at best. The second most common element being water, then fire, then earth , which can mostly be found near the border of the plane with the Pits of Endless Strife. Life here consists mostly of creatures made of living air.

The Raging Flame- One of the four building blocks of the planes, the cylinder shaped plane called the Whirling Flame is dominated by the element of flame. It is a plane of raging fires and molten rock. The presence of other elements is scarce at best. The second most common element being earth, then air, and then water, which can mostly be found near the border of the plane with the Pits of Endless Strife.

The Pits of Endless Strife
Also known as the Pits or as the Strife, it is the central cylinder around which the four elemental ones wrap themselves. It borders and touches the four elemental planes. The Pits of Endless Strife are the home of countless, mostly nefarious, creatures as well as any conceivable type of hellish place. Much like the Heavens, the Pits of Endless Strife is divided into numerous areas, or Pits (although not every one of them looks like a pit).
These vary from areas with burning infernos, to glacial wasteland, to rosy sweet realms filled with flowers (yes this is hellish for some), borrowing building blocks from the near Elemental planes.

Often it is very difficult to tell where an elemental plane ends and the Strife has begun, as the Binding Void does not enforce separation between the Pits of Endless Strife and an element. That is also why the Pits are a lot rougher than what you’d normally find in the Mortal Coil.

The Thread and the Desolate Frontier
At the very center of the Pits of Endless Strife sits the Thread, a narrow string of void, or whatever, with a diameter no wider than a man’s wrist.
One should be weary not to go to close to the Thread, as it will pull everything in, spitting it out again into the All and Nothing, to be forever lost, until it is deemed usable again by the occupant(s) of the Sovereign and reinserted into the cosmos.
Those who die on the Mortal Coil will be drawn downwards towards the Thread, so towards the All and Nothing. They are drawn there so that they can eventually be taken from the All and Nothing again by the Mother.
Of all parts of the cosmos, this feature is the least understood and the least studied, for obvious reasons.

Before these souls get to the Thread however, they will need to cross the strange area where the Sheet and the Binding meet. It is here that the souls will be weighed by an entity known as the Harvester of Souls, or as many call him: the Harvester. Some think the Harvester is really a god of death but others do not think he should be classified as such since he just passes souls on to their next destination.
If a soul worships a deity, or if they are claimed by a deity during the weighing, the soul will be cast into the Heavens, at the point where the three planes meet. If they do not worship a deity or are not claimed by a deity, the soul will be cast into the Binding Void, and be pulled towards the Thread.
To reach the Thread however, they will need to go through the Pits of Endless Strife. The nefarious creatures of the Pits however, will always want to capture souls to populate their Pit. The more souls one has, the larger the Pit, the more powerful the creature dominating the Pit in question.
A master of a Pit always has competition from the others in that same pit so any soul passing through the Pits of Endless Strife is highly likely to be devoured. The master of a Pit must have more power than any others otherwise it too will be devoured and its souls will pass on to the devourer and the devourer will gain power and size.
There are also other, non evil, creatures in the Pits, as well as Pit Lords who do not collect souls.

Once past the Pits of Endless Strife, a soul then arrives in an odd stretch of landscape known as the Desolate Frontier (other names: Threadhome, Plains of Despair, Lost Hope). This area of the Pits is very unusual in its geography and boundaries. First, the geography is largely barren, rocky and mostly devoid of life, save a few hearty and unusually adapted specimens. No plant life exists here; the inhabitants here feed on those things which pass through the Pit before they reach the Thread, and they are specifically adapted to existence in this place and in this manner to a point where they find difficulty existing elsewhere.
The influence and pull of the Thread is felt strongly here. The Thread's proximity and the occasional "Threadquake", a terrible and unpredictable phenomenon, have caused many seismic upheavals over the passing eons, though the passage of time itself is fairly irrelevant here, as there are no environmental cues to mark its passage.
The shape of this Pit is a direct result of the closeness to the Thread. It is essentially a rocky cylinder that averages approximately 314 meters in diameter along its outer boundary that completely encompasses the Thread along its infinite entirety. As such, the Desolate Frontier is also infinite, though it is liberally dotted with paths and passages that lead to all the neighboring Pits that fit along its length. As such, if one cares to brave the Desolate Frontier and risk becoming lost permanently, one may travel more rapidly between Pits along the outer boundaries of the Frontier. This does not mean that it touches all other Pits, just those closest to the center. As can be imagined, travel on this Pit takes place on the inner surfaces of the cylinder while transiting to another pit involves moving perpendicular to the boundaries of the Pit, which often causes disorientation as the perspective of which way is down can change abruptly.
What passes for atmosphere here is thin and gives all sounds a rather distant and hollow sound. There is a constant wind, thought to be the result of the Thread's influence. There is no other weather or environmental effects here, and the temperatures remain easily tolerable, though the wind makes things feel cooler. The only light in the Desolate Frontier comes from the Thread itself, or rather from the flares of light produced by all things that fall into the Thread just before they are consumed.
The Thread itself is visible from all points and is always directly overhead as a formless black line that shows no reflectivity or surface features whatsoever. The Thread's pull here also makes all objects feel lighter than they would normally be, though that is a result of an upward and downward pull being in contest, not a reduction in mass.
Because of its unusual physics and the nearly constant outer diameter measurement (within tolerances of what can be measured accurately), Pit scholars spent much time speculating and theorizing about the Desolate Frontier, some even thinking that its unusual but consistent outer diameter holds some cosmic significance.

Time
There’s no difference in the rate of the passing of time in the various planes (i.e. a month in the Pits is a month in the Heavens and a month in the Mortal Coil). However, time will pass faster/slower if the frequency is different. So on lower frequencies time slows down, and on higher frequencies time speeds up.


//All events that took place on "D&D planes" actually took place in Pits.
 

 

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