The Call of the Wild

The Beastlands is the plane of idealized nature. The prevailing theory is that it was formed by the will of the Titans, the proto-gods born of chaos, blamed for the creation of material world, as a conceptual model of the Material Plane, though this is perhaps an anthropomorphic misapprehension, attributing as it does rational, fathomable motives to alien their minds.

It's location (if a conceptual realm can truly be said to have location) between Arborea and Elysium has been ascribed to mere sympathetic aggregation (owing to all three evoking the natural world), though some have argued equally persuasively that it partakes of both the harmony of Elysium and the carnal nature of Arborea. 

The Beastlands is primeval wilderness, unspoiled by the action of thinking creatures. Its inhabitants are are animals--or rather the iconic spirits of all wildlife, fierce and beautiful. These animals may speak if they wish to do so, but it is wrong to imbue them with human characteristics beyond this or processes of thought. At all times they are wild beasts, and are not given to acting outside their natural roles.

Travelers who spend time in the Beastlands will feel the call of the beast within. Lycanthropes are empowered by the realm, and other humans may be susceptible to being transformed into animalistic forms the longer they stay. The partaking of certain foodstuffs within the Beastlands hastens this transformation, and varieties of Bestland fungi are sought for ritual use on the Material Plane for their potent connection to this realm.

Elysian Fields Forever

The existence of Elysium is seen by many a planar theoretician as proof of a mulitversal law of equipose. The existence of Hades by this way of thinking requires an Elysium--or vice versa--for the sake of balance. While Hades leeches everything of meaning and embodies a sense of hopeless, Elysium is pervaded by a sense of contentment and quiet joy, absent from considerations of the past or future of the cosmos. It is the middle ground between the transcendence of self of the Holy Mountain and the pursuit of absolute freedom and sensate pleasure of Arborea.

The theriocephalic guardinals may appear fierce on other planes but in Elysium they are more gentle of mein. They are mostly content to observe, only occasionally engaging visitors in conversation. In general, there is less conversation in Elysium than elsewhere; people are content merely to be. 

To the sages and seekers of the Holy Mountain, the tranquil meadows and forests of Elysium are actually another trial. If one can forsake personal contentment in the name of restoring the Godhead and Unity, then one may be worthy to see the summit of the Mountain, though of course, this may take life times.

The waters of the streams and limpid pools of Elysium are veritable liquid balms to the soul. Small vials go for high prices on material worlds where they are employed as nostrums and curatives. In the lower planes, such liquid is even more potent, though its mere possession may cause something akin to an immune response from reality itself and bring unwanted attention upon the possessor.

Acquiring waters for resale isn't as easy as it might appear. Elysium resists. Not in any violent way, but its nature contrives to lull visitors into its calm and contentment. Previous goals may come to seem less worthwhile or completely useless.

The Gray Wasteland

While the existence of some planes are comprehensible based on the desires or allegiances of the beings living there, Hades, the Gray Wastes, presents a problem for planar philosophers. There are many theories, but most are some variant of the idea that the suffering of souls within the cosmos seeped into a reservoir or found its level. The existence of despair, in other words, created Hades. It is perhaps no accident that it exists in some metaphysical sense equidistance between the oppression of Hell and the malignant egotism of the Abyss.

The beings that willfully reside in the Gloom, both exploit and partake of despair. The devils hold the yugoloth were once a cadre of Hell, but deployment on the frontlines of the war with Chaos led to trauma. Their methods became first unsound and then alien. Devils will work with them to achieve goals, but hold them in disdain. 

Their primary value to Hell's high command is the process they have developed for extracting the essence of despair from souls of beings consigned to Hades. Over time, souls cease to fight against the pull of despair and are cover in gray dust or ash, like the victims of a volcanic disruption. Eventually their substance is wholly petrified to that of Hades, but before that point, there is a time where their souls are still somewhat fluid, yet tainted. The yugoloths tap the corpse and remove the fluid. It can be used to form the basis of an elixir that robs souls of their free will. The prospect of absolutely obedient masses greatly excites diabolic strategists, and they wish to study the substance to see if it can be produced elsewhere.

The Arborean Experience

One of the paradoxes of Chaos is that, whatever the pronouncements of it's Powers and Lords, it is defined by ideas they were only possible when a lack of Unity was manifest in the multiverse. Philosophers have noted that as with Mechanus, the Plane of Law Absolute, there are core paradigms or truths without which the planes of Chaos could not exist. It is the centrality of those truths that separates the border regions of Chaos from the more encompassing Chaos of Limbo.

Arborea is a plane built upon the ideal of sensate experience. Its inhabitants reject any notion that formlessness or nonbeing is equivalent with being, and they reject the shackles on experiences and individual freedom regarding them that Law would forge.

Arborea typically appears as a vast, archetypal forest. Within there are glades or small manors where in the revels take place. These are sometimes open to the view of passersby, sometimes not, and they may be larger internally than they appear; effectively they are subrealms of the plane. Dramas of love, intrigue, daring, and violence, play out within these alcoves, but only among the likeminded who have chosen those experiences. The games are impermanent; diversions lead to no lasting harm, and may be replayed again and again, or abandoned and others taken up instead.

The only crime in Arborea is coercion or the abrogation of choice (unless a participant's choice was to have limited abridgement of choice). Violators of this rule who don't heed a warning are given over to the caprice of the eldarin, who devise a lesson of some sort--which like all the pleasures of Arborea, is not permanent. Habitual violators are barred from the plane.

The Devils are angered by the very existence of Arborea. Its uncoupling of actions from consequences, and the general frivolity and indolence of its inhabitants, make it an frequently cited example of what the cosmos would be like if Chaos got it's way.

Every Devil is a Cop

"So sooner or later, everybody's working for the Man."

- Go (1998)

Hell was born when border Archons of the Machine became convinced that It's algorithms would never conquer Chaos. Stronger measures were needed. These warriors cut a path into Chaos and fixed it with iron, stone and fire, and created Hell.

Though Hell's propaganda won't admit it (devil's have been rendered back to Lermure-hood for saying it), the War on Chaos has not gone well over the aeons. The Infernal Marches once safely reached to the Black Iron Prison of Carceri. Chaos not only has refused to be subdued, but it has been able to turn formerly loyal soldiers. Does anyone in Hell's hierarchy trust the Yugoloths or Gehreleths? No, they've both been compromised and will be the next targets as soon as the demon threat is ended.

If there's one bright spot it's the Material Plane. Diabolic agents have been able to turn an unexpected action by Chaos into a key recruiting tool. The soul-stuff of material beings may be relatively modest in absolute magnitude, but every transgressor that can be brought over and gotten under contract is added to the Infernal warchest.

Minor devils and trusted agents work to uncover (one might even say tempt) wayward, souls all in the name of recruiting--coercing--them as assets. Let the priggish supplicants of the Mountain fret about "right." There is no right in a fallen cosmos, outside the Law. And right now, the Law needs strength more than mercy.

And the fires of Hell are not eternal for those see their error. With toil and penance the most Chaos-ridden soul can become a devil, a stalwart soldier in the armies of a new order for the all things. Is that not mercy? 

Not all beings turned by infernal influence are small. Big fish are particularly prized, those with influence over other souls. Even Gods and their cults have been suborned to the diabolic agenda. Of course, there are also devils posing as gods to the unsuspecting people of material worlds.

Everyone Comes to Sigil

I've said before that Sigil is perhaps the most interesting thing about Planescape, and it doesn't really rely on the Great Wheel for the things about it that are interesting. For most people, who seem the dislike the Great Wheel, that may be a design feature. I happen to like the Great Wheel (As a concept. I can't say I'm particularly excited by a lot of the execution. On the other hand, I also feel like a lot of the "what do you do with this?" response to it shows a willful lack of creativity. That's perhaps a topic for another post.) so I think a setting meant to make the classic planes of D&D a setting, but instead makes a setting that can mostly ignore them, has some flaws in execution.

We are told gods can't enter Sigil. This is very convenient, because it provides a base of operations very much like the Prime Material Plane (where gods can go, but don't much) for the PCs to run around in. It also raises a lot of metaphysical questions, which sure, might have interesting answers, but I feel like it would be just as interesting--maybe more--not to keep the gods out. Sigil is the center of a plane surrounded by all these hostile forces. It's a Neutral Zone, a DMZ, a Free City with no allegiance to any of those eternally warring philosophies. 

It would be a good place for the gods to come together to make treaties and talk, but also maybe a good place for them to vacation and let their hair down. What happens in Sigil, stays in Sigil. I'm thinking it should be a bit like the bathhouse in Spirited Away, a bit like Cold War Berlin, Throne from Kill Six Billion Demons, and Yu-Shan from Exalted. (Yu-Shan being the capital of Heaven has more bureaucracy than Sigil would have, certainly, but I mean in terms of a place crawling with spiritual powes minor and major.)

I think this would make Sigil more colorful perhaps, as part of the thing the PCs must navigate is avoiding offending visiting dignitaries. Of course, they have more room to be daring and burn the gods in some scheme or confidence game in Sigil, as the gods are constrained in what they can do within the city. Even still, it would be a risky play, but perhaps a tempting one. It would also supply a ready supply of quest-givers or dubious patrons.

Weird Revisited: Alternate Prime Material Planes

The original version of this post appeared in 2015...

 

One of the complaints against the standard D&D Planes is that, while conceptually interesting perhaps, its hard to know what to do with them as adventuring sites. One solution would be to borrow a page from science fiction and comic books and replace them with a mutliverse of alternate worlds. These would be easy to use for adventuring purposes and could put an additional genre spin on the proceedings. Here are a few examples:

Anti-World: An alignment reversed version of the campaign setting. Perhaps humanoids are in ascendance and human and demihumans are marauding killers living underground.

Dark Sun World: In this world, the setting underwent a magical cataclysm in the past and is now a desert  beneath a dying sun.

Dinosauria: Mammalian humanoids are replaced by dinosaurian humanoids.

Lycanthropia: The world is cloaked in eternal night and lycanthrope has spread to most of the population.

Modern World: This version has a technology level equal to our own (or at least the 1970s) and the PCs have counterparts who play adventurers in some sort of game.

Spelljammer World: A crashed spacecraft led to a magictech revolution and space colonization.

Western World: Try a little sixguns and sorcery and replace standard setting trappings with something more like the Old West.

Weird Revisited: The Galactic Great Wheel

So here's the pitch: Sometime in the future, an early spacefaring humanity encounters a gate and gains access to a system of FTL via hyperspace (or the astralspace) and gets its introduction to an ancient, galactic civilization with arcane rules and customs a bit like Brin's Uplift universe. At the "center" of the gates is Hub, a place with a gigantic neutral territory station--like Babylon 5 on a grander scale. Hub connects to all the various worlds. Here's a short sampling:

Archeron: A war world, possibly one where a decadent civilization has kidnapped warriors form different times and worlds to battles for their entertainment.

Baator: The world of beings who (like the Overlords in Childhood's End) look suspiciously like devils from Earth belief, and indeed act very much like them, destabilizing worlds with Faustian bargains somewhat like in Swanwick's Jack Faust.

Beastworld: A planet where many animal species share a group intelligence.

Carceri: An environmentally hostile ancient prison planet.

Limbo: A world in an area of reality warping "broken space" where hyperspace spills in leading to a graveyard of ships.

Mechanus: Robotic beings out to bring order to the galaxy via assimilation. A somewhat (maybe) more reasonable Borg.

Pandemonium: A world only inhabitable in subterranean caverns, but even those are swept by winds that generate infrasound that can drive humanoids insane like the titular Winds of Gath.

New Gods for Old

Art by Jack Kirby

While I have always been more enthusiastic about the standard (A)D&D Cosmology compared to a lot of people, one thing has always bothered me about it: the shoehorning in of the various mythological figures from Deities & Demigods into the canonical version of a planes. Perhaps they were meant to merely placeholders for something you created, but I don't think they are ever discussed as such. The every god and the kitchen sink approach loses the flavor of the various mythologies, and undermines the unique (at least weirdly syncretic) flavor of the Great Wheel. I think they can for something new and much weirder.

But there's something else wrong. Geoffrey Grabowski (lead designer of Exalted 1e among other things) hits on it:

There are infinite infinite prime material planes. Well wow. Against that, even greater gods look tiny. Even if you give them plenty o' powers like Grubb's cosmogony does, or like the immortals rules that appear in some versions of the game do, they're still essentially the pantheon from Lord of Light. They might have a lot of superpowers from tapping into whatever god-power comes from -- possibly belief-energy? -- but they don't command their context. They're finite beings pretending to universal domain against a backdrop that makes their charade a joke if you have any distance on the tableau.

Nowhere in the canon planar materials do we get the feeling that these gods created the planes. Maybe they created one of an infinite number of Primes, but they are not the creators of the Outer Multiverse. They are its inhabitants. At best inheritors, at worst squatters.

It seems to me that what the D&D Planes need is either (a) new gods that are vast and strange, so that they seem reasonable creators of the vast, baroque, orrery in which they reside, (b) more Kirby New Gods/Thor-esque super-powered adventurers (i.e. the next level of the game. Immortals done right.), or (c) both.

The Planes of Exalted [Exalted/D&D Mashup]

Some thoughts on social media by Jack Shear reminded me of this old post, with Jack suggesting replacing elements of the Exalted setting with rough analogs from D&Ds implied setting. As most things D&Dish do, this inevitably got my thinking about the planes and how one could break the Great Wheel in Exaltedish pieces. 5e's cosmology even starts doing some of the work.

Yu-Shan: Exalted's Heaven, a continent-sized city. Much of it would resemble part's of D&D's Mount Celestia, but some of it's nation-sized parks would be like The Beastlands. The Celestial Bureaucracy would have elements of Mechanus (including Modrons and Inevitables).

The Wyld: The Chaos outside and encrouching on Creation. Pure Chaos is probably not something worth getting into (maybe it's like the D&D Far Realm?), but the middlemarches are like D&D's Limbo and home to Slaadi. Maybe there is an area of Pandemonium, too. We might as well call the bordermarches the Feywild, but they also include elements of Arborea the "deeper" you get.

The Underworld: This occupies the position in relation to the Prime Material Plane/Creation as the Shadowfell, but they term should be applied to the areas Exalted calls Shadowlands, where the Underworld and the Prime overlap. The Underworld proper should get a lot of Hades/Grey Wastes stuff, and beneath it is Oblivion, the Negative Energy Plane.

Malfeas: The prison of the Yozi's (the Primordials betrayed by the gods) would by the repository of much of the Lower Planes stuff: the Abyss, Carceri, and the Nine Hells. The Law and Chaos division of these worlds in D&D terms would be a hindrance to making them more like Exalted, so maybe that's dropped, or maybe demons and devils are different factions of Yozi.

Autochthonia: The world within the body of the Primordial Autochthon. Mechanus is a better name for this god and this place anyway, so whatever Mechanus stuff wasn't shunted to Yu-Shan should be here. Also, some of the old quasi- and para-elemental planes would be the elemental "reserviors" of this world (Smoke, Radiance, Lightning, Mineral, etc.)

Black Iron Prisoners' Dilemma

Not even the solipsist monsters of the Abyss can continue forever under conditions of ever-changing insanity; some ideas produce too great a gravity for even the the most fluid minds to escape. And so, like a body faced with cells that might mutate beyond restraint, the Abyss walled off the offending ideas in a cyst. The cyst endures in the astral nothingness, holding its dark enlightenment within. This is the Black Iron Prison.

The pull of the Black Iron Prison attracts others. Monsters of the Abyss convinced that something besides Self was real and that something was Punishment. But by whom? The Godhead who had appeared to have forsaken them or some new Godhead yet to come?

Fearful and paranoid, the monsters elaborated prisons around the original one like nested labyrinths. There they hid, and interrogated and punished themselves and any other souls that fell into their grasp.

Some might consider the multiverse's largest prison a place of Law, but there is little Law here. Rules are arbitrary and changeable. As are punishments. All the jailers operating under vague authority are just more prisoners. Those jailers, the prisoners with the longest sentences, are the fiends called deodands, this name being an an ancient term for an object which has caused a death and so is forfeit to God. If anyone knows why the fiends have this name it is the Baatezu, and like most secrets, they have classified the information.

The most common deodands are tall, emaciated, scabrous creatures with frog-like mouths. Their bare skins weep a tarry ichor from numerous injection sites. They're junkies and dealers; they mix the astral excreta of despair, callousness, and fear that oozes from the souls that fall into their hands with the bile of arthropods that make their homes in the prison’s substructure and inject it beneath their skin. The tarry substance--and a brief respite from their paranoia in a cold, sneering high--are the result. The tar is packaged and sold (to the prisoners to be smoked or injected) in exchange for pleasant memories or dreams or hopes--anything that defines the former self-hood of the soul. When not engaged in commerce, these tar deodands are the menials of the prison.

The the second most common variety are the color of a fresh bruise.  Their limbs are swollen like blood sausages, and their tick-like bellies appear filled to near bursting, sloshing loathsomely as they waddle or fly drunkenly on ridiculously small wings. Their bloated faces are unpleasantly human-like and wear expressions of voluptuous satiety, complete with drool running from the corners of their mouths and down their double (or triple) chins. Always their skins appear to glisten as if oiled. They sweat even more when they eat, and they eat almost constantly. The eat when they are worried, and they are always worried. About informers or conspiracies. About a time when the tortures they apply to others might be applied to them.

The rarest of deodands have assumed the most authority. They often pass themselves off as wardens and are just as often found in solitary confinement. They sometimes watch and titter at the interrogations as they undergo torture themselves. They’re androgynous humanoids with bald heads and unfeminine faces, but pendulous breasts and high-pitched voices. Their pale, wrinkled skin seems ill-fitted to their bodies. They have a penchant for dressing in uniforms, the more elaborate the better. Sagging deodands, they are called.

A Premise for Opposing Planes

I'm planning on expanding on the version of the Outer Planes posited by these two posts.  In brief, the planes are reframed in a sort of gnostic background wherein Law and Chaos relate to competing ideas about how best to restore unity with the Godhead. I like this idea because it gives a structure to hang both Law and Chaos on and the other various flavors radiating out from these "poles."

Good and Evil don't carry quite the same weight. Instead, they are shorthand for approaches for dealing with the opposing side. Lawful Good seeks accommodation with Chaos and peaceful conversion where possible; Lawful Evil feels there is no compromise with Chaos and force is always an option. This is not an idea new to me. It's hinted at the the Planescape material, and I've seen if discussed on forums. Adding the layer of competing visions of the Godhead adds something extra.

Anyway, more to come.

From Pole to Pole

While doing some research of the origins of the Ethereal Plane as a concept, I came across what I believe to be the origins of the Positive and Negative Energy Planes. The writings of "Christian Rosicrucian" Max Haindel describe the etheric regions composed of four different ethers. Each of these has a positive and negative pole. Though these bear little resemblance to the positive and negative planes (beyond the positive being associated with generativity and vitality) the planes are positioned over the Prime (and the Ethereal) in a manner than would suggest poles.

Of course, it's entirely possible that these were independent creations, but given that Theosophic publications seem to be the primary source of the Ethereal Plane, it doesn't seem like a stretch that that other esoteric writings of the same era might have provided some inspiration.

Printing the Prime Material Plane in the Ether

This was an idea I posted on Google Plus (may it rest in piece) and mentioned it again earlier this week on Discord, so I might as well preserve it here, too.

The idea of Elemental Planes existing outside the Prime Material Plane seems strange, when the elements are presumably fundamental building blocks of matter. That is why they are called elements, after all.

I think a better analogy for the relationship of the Elemental Planes to the Prime would be CYMK printing. The Prime is "printed" on the ethereal medium by overlay of patterns of Air, Water, Earth, and Fire. The elemental planes (branes is probably more appropriate) maybe not be center over the prime, perhaps they have poles or sources they emanate from, but they could be.

The arrangement could be represented diagrammatically like this:

Between Planar Stations

It doesn't have a name. Not really. This is intentional; names are power, after all, and power that can be used against you. When whoever instantiated the original version of the city did so, they fixed and compressed its noumenal building blocks into a potent glyph, a sigil. And that is what its inhabitants and its visitors from myriad plane-aware worlds have called it every since.

Only rubes get duped by maps hawked in Sigil markets or the orreries venerated by mundy cargo cults, the city is not at the center of anything physical or even metaphysical. It's just that it embodies the concept of nexus, and so it's the most stable router or gateway for astral bodies shooting through the howling conceptual metric.  From Sigil, you can get to anywhere, whether you should or not.

A lot of travelers get to Sigil and never leave. Some, the trafficked, press-ganged, fearful, or injured, have no choice. Others stay out of business interest, boredom, inertia or laziness. Why endure the vicissitudes of travel when all the worlds will come to you, eventually?

The Planes of Chaos

Discussing cosmogony with an being of chaos, much less a Chaos Lord, is likely to lead only to more confusion. Linear logic, causality, even truth, are concepts beings of Chaos find unnecessarily limiting. Turning to their sacred writ (such as there is) will be of little help, either. The Hymn to Perplexity is composed entirely of questions and no answers.

Still, when they choose to, the ancient monsters and angels of Chaos remember the Godhead, the One that encompassed all. It was no more Order than Disorder, no more Constant than Mutable. If there was a Fall, it was Chaos that was indistinguishable in any meaningful way from what came before; It is Law that is the aberration. And even that aberration was born of Chaos.

Limbo is akin to what the multiverse was before Mechanus, before time existed. It is primordial soup from which any concept or being might be instantiate.  Chaos did not remain untainted by Law, however. Form, causality and other concepts gave shape to the previously formless. The border regions coalesced into something different.

Arborea is the home of beings who revel in the the gratification of the senses. They seek to woo other souls to throw off the shackles of Law and experience the pleasures of greater freedom. They never coerce beings into accepting their gifts (such would be a violation of freedom), but mortal souls may not be prepared for the experiences they offer.

The sad, dangerous monsters of the Abyss cling only to the concept of Self. The entirety of cosmos is merely an insufferable dream they can never wake up from. They torment or toy with other beings, even other demons, in attempts to exorcise their irritation. They are seldom successful.

The Planes of Pure Law

The Analects, concerned primarily with the philosophies and doctrines of the forces of called variously Law, Order, Persistence, or Certitude, are silent on emanation of the first Aeon--The Fall-- where a lesser infinity of the Godhead was broken in some sort of hypercosmic trauma. The first concept to differentiate or separate from formlessness was Order, and everything that was not was Chaos. Thus, the first Syzygy was born.

As Order was elaborated, mind was born. The Prime Mover sought to make the multiverse as precise and orderly as its thought process. It constructed more of itself, a vast planar machine, and called it Mechanus.  If the whole universe were a vast computational engine, it could model the Godhead with such fidelity that it would be the Godhead--or at least the Godhead to the maximum resolution of the fallen universe.

But Unity no longer existed. On the expanding boundaries of Mechanus, interaction with Chaos created doubt, and doubt led to schism. The Boundary Archons became convinced that intellect and logic alone could not describe the Godhead or form Unity. Nor could the necessary transcendence occur by coercion. These seven Archons created the Heavenly Mountain, and at its peak was Abolition of Self, which would transform the souls born of chaos into what the Archons in their certainty knew the cosmos needed.

Other Border Archons believed that the cosmos could only be changed by force. They even dared consider that the former oneness might never be restored--but perhaps a new unity could be constructed. Mechanus's measures were too passive. They had seen the worst of Chaos, and the equations of the Machine were not adequate to the task of subduing it. Chaos could only be expunged, and those too weak to resist it would need correction or destruction themselves. Only the strong would have a place in Unity. They burrowed into Chaos and fixed it with chains called Oppression and founded Hell.

Weird Revisited: Bug Powder

This first first appeared. Way back in 2010...

Bill: What do you mean, "it's a literary high"?

Joan: It's a Kafka high. You feel like a bug.

- Naked Lunch (1991)

Bug Powder is a strange magical substance found in the City, and its world, and possibly elsewhere. It generally appears as pale yellowish powder, and its official use is as a professional-grade insecticide. It can be found in containers from several different and mysterious suppliers--"Benway Chymical", and "Voke & Veech", are prominent examples. Bug powder will indeed serve as an insecticide, but if nasally insufflated (snorted), or injected intravenously in small doses it has euphoric and mild hallucinogenic properties.

Long-term use generally leads to dependence, but also, like use of a large single dose, seems to open a doorway to another plane. Users report travel to an exotic, desert world under two reddish moons, were lies a sprawling pennisular city called Interzone, on the quivering banks of a gelatinous sea. The swarthy inhabitants of Interzone appear human in all respects, but have undefinable and unsettling air of strangeness about them. In addition to the natives, humans from many time periods and worlds, as well as alien beings, can be found sweating in Interzone, perusing their own agendas. There is a great deal of political intrigue in the city-state, and several different political factions--but the goals of these groups and the reasons for their conflicts often seem contradictory, if not outright nonsensical.

Mystics and planar scholars believe Interzone to be an interstitial realm acting as a gate or "customs station" between the material world and the inner planes. Supporting this view is the presence of soldiers the Hell Syndicates, as well as miracleworking street-preachers and holy hermits professing the varied and conflicting "ultimate truths" of the Seven Heavens. A slight variation on this view, is that Interzone is not so much a part of the astral plane, but more an extension of Slumberland, the Dream-World, located in some seedy Delirium ghetto. Further exploration will be needed to determine this for certain.

This exploration isn't without dangers. While physical dependence comes from the bug powder's use, the thinning of the psychic barriers between the material world and Interzone serve to cause a person to involuntarily shift between the two. This tends to generate feelings of paranoia--and perhaps rightly so, as the more time one spends in Interzone, the more likely one is to become an agent (perhaps unwittingly) of one of its factions, and fall prey to its byzantine intrigues.

One final interesting bit of Interzone lower is that the natives hold that their city-state, was actually once six cities of very different mystic character, physically indistinct and loosely co-spatial, but still spiritually differentiated. The names of theses putative cities when uttered with the proper ritual, are said to be a powerful spell, though sources disagree as to what purpose.

Heroes of the Outer Planes---FIGHT!

I think the Gygaxian Great Wheel, if properly interpreted, could serve as a high-powered fantasy campaign. The planes could be expansive arenas in which martial artists with ever-increasing powers contend for some ultimate prize--like Highlander meets Dragonball Z. Or maybe the planes are just the exotic lands that serve as locales for the high-powered adventures of super-folks, more like the gang in Dreadstar or the Guardians of the Galaxy that a typical D&D adventuring party.

The more I think about it, most cosmic stuff Starlin has written would be good inspiration here.

Exalted and Kill 6 Billion Demons would be good, too, if you've gotta have something besides Starlin.

On the Nature of Planes

Discussion around my last couple of posts got me to thinking about planes and how one might present them. I don't think there is a right or wrong way to do it, but I think certain approaches imply certain things more than others.

There  may well be interpretations other than the three I've presented below, but hopefully this will delineate where the key differences lie.

First, here are the traits I'll use to describe them:

• Physical worlds are composed of matter and energy, physics and biology,  and function similarly to our own, though may in some ways be alien. Physical worlds in are generally finite, though they may reside in an infinite substrate (like the astral plane or space of some sort).
• Metaphysical worlds mimic physical worlds in some ways, but aren't really fully natural or "functional." Examples would include pop conceptions of Heaven (a bunch of solids clouds, with some angels and a set of golden gates) and Hell (a cavernous realm of fire). In literary fantasy settings (be they trad fantasy, pulp science fiction, or superheroes), the difference between physical worlds and metaphysical ones may only be discernible by context. Metaphysical worlds may be finite or infinite, but if they are infinite they are likely only notionally so--characters are always tend to show up "where the action is."
• A fixed reality is one where things appear to obey mundane physical laws, with exceptions for magic or special powers. The local laws might differ from the primary world's, but they are still rules that govern most everyone.
• A mutable reality is more dream-like or the power of one or more beings to manipulate its nature is so significant that things can't be taken for granted.

Planets/Worlds/"Alien Sphere": Physical spaces, whatever their actually shape/structure that exist either in the same universe as the primary world of the setting or accessible universes. In fact, they may be the other universe, made up of a number of sub-worlds. The world or universe may be reached or traversed by strictly physical means, but often can only be accessed by some sort of special device or power.
Traits: Generally physical and fixed.
Examples: Marvel's Microverse and Negative Zone; the Marvel Cinematic Universe's version of the Nine Realms; perhaps Yag ("Tower of the Elephant") and other mystically described planets in pulp fiction.

Conceptual Realms: Generally supernatural places of supernatural beings, often arranged in levels or perhaps energy states. They are typically reached by magical or esoteric means, but the magical means may be as simple as walking through a seemingly mundane door or gate. Some can't be visited by physical bodies, but only by spirits, astral forms, or the like.
Traits: Metaphysical and (mostly) fixed.
Examples: various after-lifes, places where demons and gods dwell; The Realm of Dream from Sandman; The Matrix and other virtually reality realms are non-supernatural examples.

Gygaxian Esoteric Planes: Places that often bear the names and some of the characteristics of various historical conceptual realms but are more defined in their characteristics. They are inhabited by supernatural beings that tend to behave like mundane beings, the only difference being "power." Geography tends to be more important than in conceptual realms; planes can be mapped to a degree, and travel along associated terrain may be necessary.
Traits: Physical or Metaphysical, mostly fixed but can be mutable.
Examples: The Great Wheel as presented in AD&D or the 4e Cosmology; Marvel Comic's version of the Nine Realms in Thor.

At first blush, one might suggest the Gygaxian Esoteric Planes are just conceptual realms adapted to the requirements of a game, but I don't think this is the case. In the same way old school games are able to support a more mutable, fantastic, mythical underworld, they could also support conceptual realms (indeed, some rpgs already have them as background elements), but for whatever reason, Gygax and his successors chose not to portray most of the Great Wheel that way. Similarly, weird or magical planets were hardly unknown in the source literature D&D was drawn from (and would eventually show up in Planescape and Pathfinder's Golarion Solar System), but this wasn't the path chosen for D&D either.

Whether the rejection of these options was a misstep or an innovation, depends on your point of view.