quote:

---

Originally posted by Storyteller Hero

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ayrik

More than one Astral plane?

What is the source of this?

---

3e Player's Guide to Faerun -- Other Planes section

QUOTE: "Toril actually connects to several different Astral Planes, each one linking Toril’s Material Plane to the outer-planar homes of a different group of deities. These Astral Planes are based on the geographical areas of control held by the different pantheons." p.164

There's an "Astral Plane of Zakhara".

There's an "Astral Plane of Maztica".

The Spirit World takes the place of the Astral Plane for the realms of Kara-Tur.

---

quote:

---

3e Player's Guide to Faerun -- Other Planes section

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ayrik

More than one Astral plane?

What is the source of this?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ayrik

More than one Astral plane?

What is the source of this?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gary Dallison

To another sphere i imagined the time varying depending upon how different the worlds are.

Well the distances for the known worlds in spelljammer i would of course keep. I imagine the distance being dependant upon the similarity of the world in question. Toril, Dragonlance, and Greyhawk are all fairly similar in rules of reality so probably form a core group of planets near the centre (never read spelljammer so i've no idea how far apart they actually are). While Darksun is very different and so is on the outskirts.

The further out you travel the smaller the spheres get and the further apart they get until you travel on and on into nothingness until you actually reach the outer planes.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gary Dallison

This is starting to sound an awful lot like how i organised the D&D cosmos.

I got the idea from the Immortals Handbook and a smattering of other sourcebooks that basically hinted that there was an older material plane before ours that was destroyed by the raging vortex of chaos which you spend the Immortal handbook campaigns trying to fight against. Aboleth origins hint that they came from this other prime material plane.

Then we have the Multiverse which is a mess of different spheres with different rules that are connected by a seeming nothingness, and i thought "which idiot would design something like that".

So what if the Multiverse was an accident. What if the Universe is what Chaos destroyed, and in the aftermath two smaller versions arose in it place. What if one or more was destroyed or almost destroyed (see the Tearfall for what happens if its almost destroyed) and two more arise, and two more, and two more. Lets face it there are no shortages of world ending catastrophes in D&D.

Thus we have the multiverse, a series of disconnected "spheres" of varying size, with different laws of reality.

The bit between them, the phlogiston sounded an awful lot like the Ethereal Plane to me, which has been described as the gap between the planes in at least one sourcebook, so why not have the ethereal plane and the phlogiston as the same thing, but the phlogiston is the very edge of the ethereal where some matter bleeds through and the rest of the ethereal is where it connects to the outer planes and where belief can manifest anything.

In theory you could travel from the material to the outer planes through the phlogiston but it would be a bloody long way (the universe is massive in reality so why can't the phlogiston be equally massive).





Thats how i dealt with it anyway, the layers thing works equally well but i went with a continually rebooting universe where each time it evolves along slightly different lines and so has the potential for different laws of reality.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ayrik

"Layers" on other planes are defined by boundaries which separate shifts in philosophy, natural (or supernatural) laws, physical properties, and metaphorical terrain.

---

Layers within other planes don't necessarily have different philosophies -- sometimes, just different expressions of the same philosophy.

I would say the overall philosophy of the Prime is a neutral plane where all the other planes mix.

The sections of the Prime do have boundaries -- the spheres.

Different spheres do have different physical properties and natural and supernatural laws. High-tech stuff works on Greyhawk but not in the Realms, for example, and smoke powder doesn't always function the same from sphere to sphere.

And Spelljammer canon is very explicit: you cannot teleport between spheres. You can teleport within a sphere, but not between them.

So: boundaries; different properties/laws; and some form of planar transit, either spelljamming or moving through other planes required to move between them.

Layers.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ayrik

"Layers" on other planes are defined by boundaries which separate shifts in philosophy, natural (or supernatural) laws, physical properties, and metaphorical terrain.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ayrik

"Layers" on other planes are defined by boundaries which separate shifts in philosophy, natural (or supernatural) laws, physical properties, and metaphorical terrain.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ayrik

Giths can only planeshift in Wildspace, not Phlog? That suggests Phlog roughly resembles Asttal but is otherwise unrelated.
(Yes, elven-organic ships and other conditions. But if it's possible then it's not impossible.)

The Astral is described as a plane which shouldn't really exist. Something like a "backstage" or "backdoor" or "under the hood" place which was needed to support the rest of the great planar construct but was never itself meant to be seen. Essentially the substrate of the D&D cosmos, an ad hoc scaffolding which was embedded in (under, above, around) reality, never removed, improperly sealed and improperly hidden.

Various planar conduits and shortcuts - like the Infinite Staircase, branches of the Ygdrasil Tree, parts of Mount Olympus - seemingly pass through or overlap with parts of the Astral.

If the Astral is an "unfinished" part of the cosmos then perhaps the Phlogiston is something similar. Raw, stark, naked, needed to join things together but never meant to actually be visited.

The Phlogiston has heen compared a great river in which crystal spheres float and drift. Spelljammers usually navigate "The Flow" which connects the Triad (Realmspace, Greyspace, Krynnspace) but countless "currents" and "eddies" can sometimes lead to other spheres. Spelljammer lore actually asserts (in a circumlocutive way) that the sphere which contains Athas (the world of Darksun and the apparent origin of all kreen species in Spelljammer and elsewhere) was accessible in past ages but has drifted away into lost isolation.

Maybe worth noting that Darksun seems to lack any deities or overdeities. It has some powerful entities but they are a lesser order than the proper deities of other D&D settings. It has only the most tenuous connections with the rest of the planes. Giths arrived on Athas long ago, but have been stranded so long that they've devolved into a degenerate race. A few individuals from Athas were captured by the malign drifting demiplane(s) of Ravenloft. There is an artifact on Athas which can access the planes, but it is unknown to most and strictly controlled by an epic adversary. I can't recall any references to Athas in planeslore, no Darksun natives who've somehow found their way to Sigil or beyond.

All the creation myths of D&D have a few things in common:
- There's the world (or worlds) populated by mortals and there's all the higher/lower "worlds"/planes/places meant to be inhabited by the higher/lower beings (deities and powers) these mortals worship.
- Mortals were invariably ignorant and unable to use magic until somebody they worshipped (illegally) taught them the first secrets of how it works.
So perhaps mortals were never meant to have enough access to the cosmos to learn about things like Astral and Phlogiston? The whole thing could have been "designed" in such a way that mortals would only see the "finished" areas, but instead the mortals were given hacks and cheat codes which they exploited to break the normal sequence of things in the game universe.

Kinda worrisome when all of creation admits to being a sloppy or unfinished thing full of unintended holes. No wonder overgods hardly bother to interact with it.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

So... As I see it, the Prime Material Plane, like many other planes, has multiple layers. Each layer is its own crystal sphere.

This, to me, is the easiest way to explain how things can function differently from one campaign world to another, even though they're both on the Prime.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ayrik

The Phlogiston shares some properties with the Astral. Spelljammer's Gith Pirates are able to "planeshift" their entite vessels into and through the Astral. So I think they're linked, or maybe Phlog "surrounds" the interface between Prime and Astral much like Ethereal surrounds each Prime.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ayrik

Spelljammer put much effort into distinguishing itself as something separate from planar travels, while Planescape (and all subsequent D&D) basically pretended Spelljammer didn't exist. So precise canon about the finer mechanisms was never given (and likely never will be), all we have is fanon (many fanons) with varying balances of consistency vs creativity.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ayrik

The Phlogiston shares some properties with the Astral. Spelljammer's Gith Pirates are able to "planeshift" their entite vessels into and through the Astral. So I think they're linked, or maybe Phlog "surrounds" the interface between Prime and Astral much like Ethereal surrounds each Prime.

Spelljammer put much effort into distinguishing itself as something separate from planar travels, while Planescape (and all subsequent D&D) basically pretended Spelljammer didn't exist. So precise canon about the finer mechanisms was never given (and likely never will be), all we have is fanon (many fanons) with varying balances of consistency vs creativity.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

So... As I see it, the Prime Material Plane, like many other planes, has multiple layers. Each layer is its own crystal sphere.

This, to me, is the easiest way to explain how things can function differently from one campaign world to another, even though they're both on the Prime.

All the other planes don't just touch one layer of this multi-layer Prime, they touch all of them. Thus, each Prime has the same planar structure.

Ao rules the layer of the Prime that is Realmspace. He has total control over it. Any deity wants access to Realmspace, they have to go through him. And part of that access is what allows him to have some control over them in their planar realms.

Nothing limits Ao to being able to reach out further... But as an overdeity, he's something beyond regular deities. He doesn't see a need to be active beyond Realmspace, because he's omnipotent, there. It may even be a required aspect of overgodhood: supreme influence over their section of the Prime and none elsewhere.

In fact, I think that overdeities are former regular deities that got promoted. Maybe each overdeity was once limited to just being part of a pantheon, one among many, and over time, became much more powerful than their peers. At that point, they're tapped by whoever is over the overdeities (omnideities? uberdeities?) and given a new, proto-layer of the Prime as their own. They then shape it as they will, and either create their own powers, or allow some outside powers in, or both.

As for the phlogiston, it's like hyperspace: it's that null area that exists between layers of the Prime. It may even be between all layers of all planes, but it's only the Primes that can be perceived from there -- or the magic to reach the other layers is unknown.

Keep in mind that none of this is canon. It's just the best way I see to explain everything. The fact that different settings have different rules is really problematic, unless you go with the different layers, thinks I. Otherwise, you've got to explain how smoke powder (for example) follows one set of rules on one section of the Prime but a different set of rules on another...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by bloodtide_the_red


The two Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk and Dragonlance cross over lines of novles: The Cloakmaster Cycle(Spelljammer) and the Lost Gods(Planescape).

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Shawn DanielsSweet mother of Oghma, THANK YOU! Would you be willing to expound upon that list, or provide a link to any relevant resource?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ayrik

We don't know much about Ao.

In 2E we only saw Ao act in the Avatar trilogy. Everything else was speculation (conjecture by mortals in the Realms, vague and generic suggestions for DMs in the game) based on those actions, Ao never bothered to communicate or demonstrate anything to confirm/deny these speculations.

The gods of the Realms could not contact or summon (or univite) Ao. Ao simply appeared before them when Ao desired, Ao simply vanished from their presence when Ao desired, Ao already knew about all their activities (and hidden-activities) during his absence. So evidently wherever Ao came and went was a place beyond the reach or knowledge of gods/goddesses in his Realms.

Some passages in the novels described Ao's communications with his "peer" or "peers" or "boss". The context seemed to imply a group (perhaps even a very large group), and the terse "reports" given by Ao (along with the "instructions" or "orders" given to him) seemed to imply that Ao was subordinate to some higher entity/entities.
The text was deliberately nondescriptive, but it seems like these meetings occurred somewhere "beyond" the established worlds and planes of D&D. (Spelljammer products and crystal spheres weren't around yet.)

If overgods can come and go as they please, can interact in some "common" place (here, there, wherever, all beyond the scope of mere gods and goddesses), they surely aren't impeded by a little phlog on their boots.

---