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Originally posted by Eldacar

If you're using the Great Wheel cosmology, then the Inner Plane was around before Ao created the crystal sphere containing Realmspace (as far as I know off the top of my head).

If you're using the Great Tree cosmology, then Ao created it along with all the other planes.

If you're using 4E, I would have no idea, since I neither play it nor keep up with any changes it makes to the lore.

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Originally posted by Markustay

The Oh-mighty dollar?

And I agree with Entreri 100%, but I don't want any more threads to go down the toilet. I will just add that although change is not a bad thing, changing things just because you can IS a bad thing. The only thing that accomplishes is making folks angry.

The Graet Tree was stupid, not in-and-of itself, but because it served no purpose. They attempted to divorce the multitude of D&D settings from each other at the start of 3e, but then spent the rest of its run back-filling in all the old lore and re-connecting it all. I think Eberron may have been the crux of that problem (because of its setting-specific cosmology), but obviously that is just a shot in the dark.

And in it's defense, if anything, I think 4e tried to bring everything back around, and now they are catching flak for it. You can't sew a multiverse back together without leaving a few scars.

As for the OP, I think the answer in any edition is NO, plain and simple. Even if Ao created the plane of fire for the Forgotten Realms, he did NOT create it for every other world. And as for the Outer Planes, just NO. The Tree contained versions of the Elemental planes, and Divine Domains, and that's it. The Outer Planes existed outside of what Ao created, which was the Sphere of Realmspace.

Obviously, thanks to 3e lore, we now have to assume that each crystal sphere has its own 'local neighborhood' of planes that are part of the sphere, yet existing outside of that sphere's material plane. Complicated, I know - once again I have to blame Eberron.

I look at it like this: the mini-elemental planes that are linked to those spheres that have 'private' ones are really still part of the greater plane, but is closed to folks outside the plane (not really - I just consider these as very isolated pieces of those planes, that are not as central to the greater plane, and therefor ignored by most). These 'mini-planes' are probably like little bubbles that are 'blown-out' of the greater plane by an Over-power when a Crystal Sphere is created, so they are still connected (like a blister), but the passage is narrow. This is why you can - for the most part - find the same types of beings in these planes as you do in the 'parent plane'. Just my take is all.

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Originally posted by Gray Richardson

Limbo was settled by Slaadi who Ed Greenwood said (in one of his posts) came through gates or planar rifts where the Great Wheel plane of Limbo bled through the fabric of space.

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January 27, 2005: ...

... Toril exists within its own physical universe (as covered in Realmspace), its own cosmology (presented in the Players Guide to Faerūn), and has also had thousands of links (some of them permanent, and known as “gates”) with several parallel Prime Material Planes (hence the very name “Forgotten Realms,” which is Toril seen from the viewpoint of a real-world Earth observer).

Real-world Earth (where I live, and Elminster finds me to pass on his tales of this wondrous world we all buy divers products about) is but one of these dozens of Prime Material Planes that Toril is, or has been (and in some cases, will be again, as gates re-open in predetermined cycles or conditions, or are re-opened by the deliberate acts of various beings) directly linked to. (Lest anyone think I’m just concocting this now as a retcon, consider the date on which issue 37 of The Dragon, as it was then, was published.)

The elf realm of Faerie is one such Prime Material Plane, though it’s very different from, say, our real-world Earth (and yes, I’ll very soon answer Melfius as to how and where Faerie and Toril connect).

Most of these Prime Material Planes (from which various of the “creator races” hail) are similar to Toril in that they are vaguely-medieval-level carbon-based and copious-water environments very like Toril, and one can breathe the air and drink the water if one is a resident of one plane, and steps (via gate/portal or spell) from one to the other. Most of them exist both within their own crystal spheres (Spelljammer again, although in the majority of cases the inhabitants of these alternate Prime Material Planes are entirely unaware of the existence of crystal spheres, spelljammers, phlogiston, et al) and in the cosmology described in the ‘core’ D&D rules, where Limbo very much exists.

So as SERPENT KINGDOMS states, some learned thinkers of Toril believe the batrachi fled to Limbo, where they became known as slaadi.

(I know they exist in Limbo, because circa issue 90 or so of DRAGON, a Canadian freelance designer by the name of Stephen Inniss [creator of the lillend “monster”] and I stopped work on a by-then-300-odd-pages manuscript detailing Limbo, when TSR’s Creative Director told us they wouldn’t be publishing any more planar products. As we all know, TSR later changed its mind.)

Not only are the cosmologies connected via the various gates linking the Prime Material Planes, they’re also linked (Elminster tells me, though word of this may well not have reached those wizards who dwell on a certain coast) through their World Trees and River of Blood/River Styx (which are actually the same thing, exhibiting different properties in different places and cosmologies. I note both “places” and cosmologies because the Styx differs from place to place just within the Outer Planes of the “main D&D” or “Greyhawk” cosmology, bearing alternative names such as the River Lethe.)

Obviously, the slaadi colonized the Supreme Throne from Limbo (where, after all, the githzerai are an everpresent force that opposes them). Cyric is only very recently ascended to godhood (from a cosmic viewpoint), so it’s obvious that the Supreme Throne described in the PLAYER’S GUIDE TO FAERUN is greatly changed from the features a visitor would have found on that plane not very long ago - - when the slaadi probably dominated, hunting other creatures at will.

However, let me state again (for the benefit of all Seekers After Truths with whom you’ll undoubtedly be sharing this) that as with matters divine, matters cosmological are rife with speculation and things most mortals can never know or be sure about. What is “fact” when even a careful observer can’t necessarily perceive things as they are, or know he or she is interpreting what they see correctly? (I recall a humorous animated film, popular in schools in my youth, wherein aliens believe that cars are the rulers of Earth, and humans are merely parasites who occasionally issue forth from them or enter them.) So there you have it: clear as mud in utter darkness when one is submerged in it and blindfolded. :}

So saith Ed.

Who in that last sentence has described the art of trying to understand, say, the D&D magic system (or life in general) as well as anyone ever has.

love to all,
THO

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Originally posted by sfdragon

I got a headache from reading this.....

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Originally posted by Dennis


"The Master" which Ao serves ---didn't he/she/it create something more colossal than a Crystal Sphere?

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Dennis

Does Ao follow certain measures to ensure that no god under his turf could ever ascend to Overgod? Isn't that one of his jobs to maintain the delicate Balance in the space that is his area of responsibility? Did it ever happen when one of the greater deities came close to ascending to Overgod status? Other than Cyric's mad atttempt, of course.

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