I posted this on EN World but wanted to get some input on it over on these forums too.
COSMOLOGY CHARACTERISTICS
My cosmology retains all of the traditional outer planes from D&D 3.5 (The sixteen outer planes including the “in between” planes of the outer sphere which were eliminated in Pathfinder), except they are not rigidly organized into a “great wheel” arrangement. The good-aligned planes remain “upper” while the evil-aligned ones remain “lower”, but there are a thousand more upper planes besides these well-known ones, and a multitude of other lower planes.
Whereas in D&D 3.5 the layers of a plane were conjoined, in my cosmology the layers of each outer plane exist as their own independent planes, and are not “stacked” as in standard D&D. These “related” planes remain closely interlinked with one another like “clusters” or “archipelagoes” via dimensional portals (thus it is much easier to find a portal on Avernus that leads to Nessus or Dis than one which goes to Pandesmos). The lawful good planes of Lunia, Mercuria, Venya, Solania, Mertion, Jovar, and Chronias each exist as their own upper plane, but the seven planes together form the Seven Heavens, the home planes of all Celestials. Chronias is still the greatest of the Celestian planes and its spiritual center, but it can be reached without having to travel sequentially through the other six. Similarly, what mortals call "The Abyss" is not a singular plane of innumerable layers, but a conglomeration of hundreds (if not thousands) individual lower planes skewed toward chaotic evil and strung together like fiendish prayer beads or the segments of an incomprehensibly vast and vile worm, with the oldest of the Abyssal planes stretching incomprehensibly into the deep.
At any given time, there are exactly 144,000 prime material planes. Every prime is created in a pristine form, like a "garden of eden" without death or defect. A typical prime consists of a single galaxy of stars and associated nebulae within a finite space (For purposes of my cosmology I am going by the obsolete definition of an observable universe in which our galaxy and associated nebulae comprise the entirety of natural existence). Based on eons of observations by Celestian sages, several guidelines of material planar creation can be inferred: a prime may be created with billions or trillions of stars, but only one star system out of millions is seeded with life (and thereby invested with immortal lifeforce).
As for other planes (what are called transitive and inner planes in D&D 3.5), they are not all-pervasive. My cosmology does not deal in “inner planes” and “transitive planes” as such, except for its version of the Astral Plane (the Firmament) as described elsewhere. But each prime has a separate set of “component planes” which are coexistent with it. They serve as the source of the raw materials for that prime material plane’s original creation, as power sources of magic cast within the prime, and as a hyperdimensional “shell” that holds the prime material plane together.
Every prime material plane includes the following twenty-six component planes besides the actual Material Plane that is the actual core of the prime.
Elemental Plane of Air
Elemental Plane of Earth
Elemental Plane of Fire
Elemental Plane of Water
Ethereal Plane
First World (spirit world+plane of dreams)
Negative Energy Plane
Para-Elemental Plane of Dust (air+earth)
Para-Elemental Plane of Magma (earth+fire)
Para-Elemental Plane of Mist (air+water)
Para-Elemental Plane of Ooze (earth+water)
Para-Elemental Plane of Smoke (air+fire)
Para-Elemental Plane of Steam (fire+water)
Plane of Dreams
Plane of Gravity
Plane of Shadows (positive energy+negative energy)
Positive Energy Plane
Quasi-Elemental Plane of Ash (fire+negative energy)
Quasi-Elemental Plane of Grime (earth+negative energy)
Quasi-Elemental Plane of Ice (water+negative energy)
Quasi-Elemental Plane of Lightning (air+positive energy)
Quasi-Elemental Plane of Minerals (earth+positive energy)
Quasi-Elemental Plane of Radiance (fire+positive energy)
Quasi-Elemental Plane of Rainbows (water+positive energy)
Quasi-Elemental Plane of Vacuum (air+negative energy)
Spirit World
A component plane of a particular prime is coterminous with any component plane of like substance of a nearby prime within the multiverse. Thus, one may travel from one prime to another through (for example) their corresponding ethereal planes, or from one prime’s para-elemental plane of mist (air/water) to a nearby prime’s quasi-elemental plane of rainbows (water/positive energy).
ASCENSION OF IMMORTALS
In my cosmology, maximum character level tops out at 60th, where levels 21-40 are considered “epic” while levels 41-60 are called “immortal”, immortality being necessary to advance past 40th (of which there are a variety of methods). When created, a prime is infused with enough "immortal lifeforce" to support the ascension of only a limited number of immortals. Among these, it is permitted to exist:
a single 60th-level immortal;
three 59th-level immortals;
five 58th-level immortals;
seven 57th-level immortals;
nine 56th-level immortals;
eleven 55th-level immortals;
thirteen 54th-level immortals;
fifteen 53rd-level immortals;
seventeen 52nd-level immortals;
nineteen 51st-level immortals;
twenty-one 50th-level immortals;
twenty-three 49th-level immortals;
twenty-five 48th-level immortals;
twenty-seven 47th-level immortals;
twenty-nine 46th-level immortals;
thirty-one 45th-level immortals;
thirty-three 44th-level immortals;
thirty-five 43rd-level immortals;
thirty-seven 42nd-level immortals; and
thirty-nine 41st-level immortals
making 400 immortals in all. Additionally, even if one of a plane's immortals is killed, taken in captivity to another plane, suffers permanent negative levels, or otherwise permanently leaves their home plane behind, that immortal's lifeforce does not return to the home plane to be absorbed by another.
In theory, a creature can earn his 60 class levels anywhere in the multiverse, although a prime's immortal lifeforce cannot migrate from one being to another. Thus, if a given prime’s singular 60th-level slot has already been 'taken', no creature, native or extraplanar, can ever advance to 60th level while visiting that specific plane, effectively lowering the level maximum to 59th (or whatever highest-level slot remains available). While creatures are at liberty to travel among the primes seeking their fortune, those who abuse this privilege by hopping around the planes looking for a young world to (in metagame terms) steal their single 60-level slot and then return to their home plane may find their fate intertwined with that young world when it is judged in the distant future—in a metaphysical sense, when one gains a level on a plane, one’s soul also cleaves to the collective spirit of that plane as well. Or worse, he may be paid a visit by the Aeons and either asked to leave or else destroyed or removed by force.
CREATION AND EVOLUTION OF PRIME MATERIAL PLANES
After a prime’s creation follows a short “orientation period” of a few generations of guided development by appointed caretakers, and then its inhabitants are left to exercise their free will and conscience, and to advance in knowledge and power. Outsiders from older worlds (representatives from both upper and lower planes) are permitted to influence and even intervene in their affairs, but there are limits and counters in place (and their enforcers) which prevent evil outsiders from invading and conquering every new prime that appears, and to restrain good outsiders from playing the role of coddling babysitters.
Not all primes are created the same size. Size categories of planes and demiplanes for my cosmology are as follows:
“Tera”: A galactic cluster with multiple galaxies and satellites;
“Giga”: A supergalaxy having trillions of stars and having satellite dwarf galaxies (e.g. Greater and Lesser Magellanic Clouds);
“Mega”: A giant galaxy having greater than 1 trillion stars;
Colossal: A regular galaxy having 1 billion to 1 trillion stars;
Gargantuan: A dwarf galaxy having 1 million to 1 billion stars;
Huge: A globular star cluster having 1,000 to 1 million stars;
Large: An open star cluster having 10 to 1,000 stars;
Medium: A mini-universe containing a complete solar system with outer disc and cometary cloud, possibly with stellar companions (maximum diameter of several billion or trillion miles);
Small: A mini-universe just big enough to contain a single star or brown dwarf with a few inner-system planets and their moons (maximum diameter of about 100 million miles);
Tiny: A mini-universe just big enough to contain a terrestrial planet with its moons. (maximum diameter of about 1 million miles);
Diminutive: A mini-universe just big enough to contain a dwarf planet, a flat-earth continent, or a “hollow world” (maximum diameter of about 10,000 miles);
Fine: A pocket-dimension just big enough to contain a single city, flat or spherical (maximum diameter of about one hundred miles);
“Micro”: A pocket-dimension the size of a country estate (maximum diameter of about ten miles);
“Nano”: A pocket-dimension the size of a small keep and surrounding grounds (maximum diameter of about one mile); and
“Pico”: The smallest of pocket-dimensions, no greater than five hundred feet in diameter, but can be as small as a few feet across or even smaller.
Prime material planes less than Tiny size are virtually unheard of, and it is rather rare to find a prime larger than Colossal.
The Judgment of Planes
Once all the immortal lifeforce of a prime has been “taken up”, the wheels are set in motion for that plane's Judgment (a.k.a. Apocalypse or End Times) which takes place over several years (often as few as three but never more than seven). The plane and its inhabitants are judged according to all the good and evil which was perpetrated—in this sense, a prime acquires a "personality" or "alignment" over its lifetime that coalesces from the collective moral and ethical atittudes of its sentient inhabitants.
Once a plane's final judgment is accomplished and all of the grand "loose ends" are tied up, the plane is given over to the cosmic powers that rule that particular alignment, which in the vast majority of cases is either some variation of good (lawful, neutral, or chaotic) or some variation of evil, and “graduate" to the status of an outerplane, either upper or lower. The plane is remade practically from scratch, condensed to its bare essentials and reshaped into a new realm unique in planar traits from gravity and time to elemental and alignment dispositions. This process is a culmination of the sphere’s evolved personality which in turn may drastically alter its geography, climate, native flora and fauna, and the various balances among its opposing component planes. Thereafter it serves as the afterlife for those natives whose alignments coincide with its own (both moral and ethical), while those of other alignments are either raptured (or banished) to another less hostile outer plane, or (rarely) granted sanctuary on one of the extremely rare "middle ground" planes.
For both upper or lower planes, the greatest immortals whose alignment matches the plane's own are granted the roles of eternal stewardship or tyranny over that plane and its mortal petitioners. All the other immortals of the plane will have already been delivered or purged as described obove.
TOPOLOGY OF THE MULTIVERSE
The cosmology consists of five major components: The Firmament, the Stream, the Mountain, the Vault, and the Pit. These are mortal analogs only and should not be taken in a literal sense more than what is necessary for comprehension of how the multiverse’s components fit together.
The Firmament
The Firmament is simply the empty space that separate the other four components; most mortals call it the Astral Plane although it is not a “plane” as such, but a “space between spaces”. The Firmament also contains countless demiplanes of various sizes, the vast majority of which ranging between Diminutive and Nano.
Most demiplanes in the Firmament were spontaneously formed from the driftmatter left over from newly-formed outer planes from several millennia or even eons in the past; a few may still contain unspeakably ancient artifacts from those far-off times when the primordial ancestors of the Celestian planes first ascended to their eternal glory.
The Stream
The Stream is a great torus within which the 144,000 prime material planes exist in perpetual revolution around the Mountain like an enormous cloud. Twelve spokes diverge from the Stream like tributaries, each one a procession of primes being drawn to the Mountain in anticipation of their final judgments.
The Stream also carries along with it a multitude of demiplanes, many of them created by mortals for their own purposes. Generally speaking, a demiplane begins existence strongly bound to the prime on which its creator was located at creation (which becomes its parent plane). This bond, like any other mortal magic, fades over time and in the course of several centuries a demiplane may begin to drift away from its parent plane. It may be a few thousand years before it is even possible for the portal to the demiplane to malfunction, but given enough time, the distance between demiplane and parent plane and the weakness of the bond becomes significant enough that travel between them becomes unreliable. Magic can be used to bolster and strengthen the portal, but once the portal is left to itself, eventually the binding magic will fail completely , causing the demiplane to cease being coterminous with its parent plane, and permanently sealing any portal between them. Even so, alternative magics can still be employed to recover the position of the demiplane and teleport to it, so long as it remains within the Stream. Beyond this, once a demiplane wanders off into the Firmament, no magic can reach the demiplane from anywhere in the Stream—a creature must venture out into the Firmament itself to locate (let alone visit) the lost demiplane.
The Mountain
Residing at the peak of the Mountain is the Seat of Judgment, where primes are judged and then transformed into outer spheres. It should not be said that the Mountain is infinitely tall, because this suggests that the center of the multiverse lies at an infinite distance from the rest of the multiverse. Rather, it is more correct to say that the base of the Mountain, if it can be said to have one, lies an infinite distance from the peak. Near the peak, orbit a slim handful of planes which have been judged to exist in near-perfect balance between good and evil, and could neither be elevated to the upper planes nor cast down among the lower planes, but were given a place midway between them as a kind of “common ground” between those who abide Above and those who rule Below. Collectively these are known as the Outlands, and their denizens Outlanders. Among these Outland planes are the gear-plane Mechanus and the city-plane of Axis, both primes of supreme law; Limbo, a plane utterly overwhelmed by anarchy; Sigil, a thoroughly urbanized cosmopolitan plane reshaped into a halo or ringworld in imitation of the Stream.
The Vault
The Vault stretches over the Mountain like a canopy and contains all the upper planes of the multiverse. The planes closest to the zenith or center tend most toward lawful good, whereas the further one travels toward the Vault’s horizon, one finds planes which are more strongly aligned to chaotic good. Situated directly above the peak at the zenith of the Vault is the Throne Room, also called The First Plane, thought to be the home plane of The Source which is the supreme being of the multiverse and the creator of every prime. It is a widely accepted theory that the Throne Room fulfills the function of a Plane of Time for the entire multiverse due to the perfectly precise timing of its chief activity (that is, the spontaneous emergence of new prime material planes from the whirlpool of protomatter continuously regenerating itself in orbit around it, and their injections into the Stream). No known magic or portal permits entry into the Throne Room or knowledge of its interior. It is known that certain chosen creatures are granted special dispensations to enter and leave the Throne Room at will, but by what means they are able to travel there is anyone’s guess. Many sages believe the Throne Room is also the home plane of the Aeons and that the Aeons take orders directly from the Source, though no Aeon can be persuaded or threatened into confirming or denying these theories.
The Pit
The Pit is infinite in depth and breadth yet filled with all kinds of depravity and destructive impulse. It is the dustbin of the multiverse, the destination of every lower plane and every lost soul. Once a prime is judged to be damned and then cast down the Mountain as a lower plane, it joins the rest in a steady and irrevocable descent deeper and deeper in the Pit. The Pit can be viewed as consisting of three regions which can be roughly defined according to depth and age (as reckoned from their respective days of judgment).
1. The Dark Planes: These are the planes nearest the edge of the pit, and the least tainted by evil. Most planes in this uppermost region are as pleasant to visit as any prime, though the only native sentients that can be found there are condemned petitioners, the dark gods they worship, and evil beings from further down who have moved in and taken over. Most dark planes are less than a thousand years old.
2. The Tainted Planes: These planes are older than the dark planes and have had time to descend further down into the pit, and most have fallen under the absolute control of one fiendish race or another, or even a particular archfiend. The tainted planes are where the vast majority of demons, devils, and other fiends organize and go to war with one another. Most dark planes are between a thousand and a million years old.
3. The Deep Planes: These are the oldest planes, some millions of years old, others billions or even trillions. The deep planes have descended so far into the pit and been so tainted by corruption as to have been abandoned even by archdevils and demon lords as worthless and uninhabitable. Nevertheless, there are beings who keep to the deepest reaches of the Pit (such as the qlippoth) whose reach extends even to the dark planes and whose threats cannot go unanswered by those who live above them.
The Mountain not only rises out of the Pit but rises above it, standing as a pillar representing the rule of cosmic law and as a testament that good will always triumph over evil. The Mountain also completely dominates the geography of the Pit, denying it a center from which some deific tyrant can set up a capital plane or create an axis of control. Throughout the ages, planar empires have risen and fallen among the uppermost planes of the Pit, where the domination of elder evils is at their weakest extent. This or that quadrant of the Pit may enjoy dominance over the others for a millennium or two, but no single fiendish race or dark lord has ever been able to establish a lasting dominion, let alone pacify or dominate those beings of greater malevolence that exist in the deeper reaches of the Pit.
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES
This multiverse is meant to exist without a beginning or end, but endlessly recapitulating the struggle between good and evil. In my games, it matters a lot more whether a creature is good or evil than if they are lawful or chaotic; therefore the cosmology is built with good vs. evil as its chief concern, although ethical matters of law vs. chaos are not completely ignored. I also like the idea that celestian or fiendish beings that might be thought of as near demigod-like used to be simple mortals like us, but also remember that most mortals on the 144,000 spheres will lack sufficient ranks in knowledge (planes) to have an accurate conception of how the multiverse operates, and will in the presence of an advanced celestian or fiendish outsider will likely cower in abject awe or fear.
-the end-
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I have a few questions about the nature of Divinity in this game. Would it be safe to assume that the Immortals are gods, or are the ascended immortals from other Judged planes gods? please I would like to know as this is bothering me. Also I enjoyed much the concept of some worlds just being flat earths and it remids me much of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, also the Highlander references weren't lost on me.
Also where would some of the Lovecraftian Evlder Gods belong? I know that they would probably belong to the Deep Planes, however they seem morelikly to belong to the Firmament since beings like Azathoth or the ones that drove Zon-Kuthon to madness are described as existing in the deep inky blackness beyond the stars and between space.
One of the most detailed cosmologies I have seen in along time.
I have a few questions about the nature of Divinity in this game. Would it be safe to assume that the Immortals are gods, or are the ascended immortals from other Judged planes gods? please I would like to know as this is bothering me. Also I enjoyed much the concept of some worlds just being flat earths and it remids me much of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, also the Highlander references weren't lost on me.
I didn't explore the idea but I pictured primes as being predominantly "round-earth" planes while outer planes shift to a "flat-earth" design during 'promotion'.
I intentionally avoided identification of immortal beings as 'gods'. Immortal-class beings can and often will self-identify as gods and can certainly represent themelves as such to lesser sentients, and there's no specific prohibition he practice. But a given prime need not have deities as a philosophical necessity. And I expect many Immortals to begin acquiring divine ranks and related powers a la Epic Level Handbook.
Also where would some of the Lovecraftian Evlder Gods belong? I know that they would prtobably belong to the Deep Planes, however they seem morelikly to belong to the Firmament since beings like Azathoth or the ones that drove Zon-Kuthon to madness are described as existing in the deep inky blackness beyond the stars and between space.
The "outer gods" I would imagine having a rogue-like existence not atttached to any one prime or outer plane...so maybe they would wander the Firmament or the spaces between primes in the Stream, but there is no reason they could not live "inside" a prime in its interstellar vacuum.