afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread 5!

[afroakuma]

I've got one more about genies, Efreet specifically. If they were to secure a foothold on a plane they wer planning to invade (for whatever reason), how would they go about it from there?

Efreet are orderly. They would enslave those they had subjugated, then make their presence known to potential allies and weaker nearby targets, offering alliance or demanding tribute, respectively. They would invest efforts in ensuring that their foothold is credible enough as a threat to pay heed to.

Is there any known Efreeti/Salamander hybrid?

Nope.

[Svata]

Okay, good. That's pretty much how I had planned it and had it running.

[Larkas]

I have a hard time picturing the Inner Planes. How is life supposed to be in them? Are the genies the local "humanoid" races? What passes for flora and fauna? How do elementals fit into it all? Are they supposed to be "living" planes, like the Prime or Outer Planes, or something more static, with just a few pockets of life here and there?

If you want to focus on just one plane for explanation purposes, let's take the Elemental Plane of Air, as that seems to be the easiest to picture anyways.

[Brookshw]

We'd probably appreciate your input on this thread if you have a moment.

Kinda crazy the artifacts that made their way over to Al Qadim, especially the Obsidian Man. How on earth would it have naturally stumbled into the shadow plane (oh yeah, wish hyjinx, maybe.....)

[Asrrin]

Aside from gold and souls, what commodity is most used as a currency in the Planes? Especially for good aligned planes who wouldn't accept soul currency, what do they use?

[123456789blaaa]

I love this series of threads. They're just lower on my priority list due to being much less time-sensitive than other things (or at least it was until you started implying you may have to close it ).

Hm. This is more a general sentiment and I don't really know how to put it into questions, but...

There was a thread about law and chaos in D&D that made me think about "weirdness". I sort of feel that all exemplars should be, to a degree, alien, but how even Planescape often does a bad job of showing them that way. Some come close, but in the end, all their motives feel remarkably human, sometimes, just bigger, grander. Which also makes sense, of course, given that they are born from human beliefs, but is also a bit disappointing sometimes.

So, I think a good starting question is: can you think of anything, preferably an exemplar, that is both good and utterly strange and alien in mindset?

Well on one hand I agree that more weirdness and alien-ness would be great. I also think the Unique exemplars can be written pretty boring when motives beyond broad goals are mentioned.

On the other hand though, it does kind of make sense that the more alien and weird exemplars are much smaller in number than the more human ones. This is the age of Prime-relevance after all. The Law/Chaos war is when things were more primordial and the focus was on the Outer/Inner Planes. It's only nowadays that humanoid souls are migrating en-mass to the Outer Planes and thus shaping them much more.

Responding to a previous post. Quotes included for context:

The Blood Queen doesn't really seem to lend herself well to being used in-game. She doesn't really do anything. Do you have any ideas for incorporating her into the plot of a game?

In what capacity? I could see using her in a game.

Well, any capacity really. I understand that's not helpful though. Preferably it would be something that other beings would be hard-pressed to duplicate. You can plunder any old Evil deities profane temple for loot for example. Basically, if I rip out the Blood Queen from the fluff and replace her with something else (some other uncaring deity maybe), what plot opportunities do I lose? She's taking up fluff space and needs to pay the rent.

You've said previously that the Plane of Shadow-similar to the Para-elemental Planes- is a mixture of the Positive and Negative Energy Planes. Now, before it was previously a demi-plane before becoming a full plane. Does this mean the Para/Quasi/etc Elemental Planes used to be demi-planes?

No.

Tis always a sad day when headcanon is wrong. Ah well.

Is there anything about the cosmology that makes this not make sense as an explanation? Like, if I were to use this in a story or game, would some people look at for example, some Ethereal Plane fluff and go "wait how does this origin for those Inner Planes work with this fluff over here?"

How did the Para/Quasi elemental planes actually form? Did they evolve naturally out of the interactions between the Positive and Negative Energy Planes and the Four main Elemental Planes over time?

Mercurial. Not an exemplar, but definitely an outsider and definitely alien. If we're just going for "good-aligned but alien," silthilar.

But really, I agree with you, I feel like people are too reductivist when it comes to the mindsets of exemplars. Modrons and slaad aren't actually funny at all; devils, demons and yugoloths are all horrific on levels we fail to fathom; archons, guardinals and eladrins are basically putting on a veneer of approachability for the benefit of mortals.

I feel conflicted because I really love the goofiness and weirdness of Modrons. The 2E art was fantastic and cute. Weirdness and whimsy is ingrained in DnD and I enjoy seeing it.

On the other hand, it seems unfair to relegate the iconic LN Exemplar race to that one niche when there's much more variety in the other alignment exemplars.

Now that could be interesting, especially in the case of modrons, the old art was kinda goofy.

I think some of the 1e modron art was quite eerie actually (this one for example). Simple of course and they'd need more detail in a redesign but the skeletons seem sound for some.

[afroakuma]

I have a hard time picturing the Inner Planes.

Fire. It's Fire you have trouble with. Everyone has trouble with Fire.

How is life supposed to be in them?

Oh you're in for it now. I love this spiel.

Are the genies the local "humanoid" races?

\

Snrk. Humanoid.

What passes for flora and fauna? How do elementals fit into it all? Are they supposed to be "living" planes, like the Prime or Outer Planes, or something more static, with just a few pockets of life here and there?

Righto, we're going to get into all of this.

If you want to focus on just one plane for explanation purposes, let's take the Elemental Plane of Air, as that seems to be the easiest to picture anyways.

You're not the boss of me. I'll focus on all the planes I want to.

So, first off, remember that all of the Inner Planes are a little cross-contaminated; pockets of the others appear within each, particularly neighbors. Between that, portals and fades, there will always be something resembling "terrain" somewhere in the plane. Elementals on their native plane are not "human-shaped chunk of rock XYZ" or "vaguely angry gout of flame ABC;" they are pure spirits who can take on form by joining with the elemental matter of their plane to animate it.

Air

Let's do the easy one first, because alphabets. A huge menagerie of beings inhabit Air, from birds similar to those on the Prime to air lions, sislan, sylphs and mephits. Hordes of Prime avians have been brought in from time to time as mounts - pegasi, griffins, rocs, even insects - and their descendants have been touched by Air. It's an incredible plane. Elementals are the approximate "equivalent" of humans on this plane, with djinn being another major race. The gaunt, humanoid ruvoka have tribes here as well.

The ecology of the plane is bizarre, for while many of the creatures are elemental spirits and do not need to feed, and many more are immigrant or carry the traits of their Prime forebearers, there exist creatures like the reptilian saasin, which requires only motion to live. Windblown are large fungal colonies which end up in the shape of leaves or sheets of paper. Adapted to sustain themselves on trace amounts of moisture, a windblown that smacks against a humanoid or hits a gust coming off of a water pocket will acquire enough to survive for quite a time. Gigantic windblown exist that form a suitable food source for numerous creatures, some of whom live in it as though nesting on a kite. Other bizarre indigenous flora and fauna exist as well.

Earth

The plane of Earth, unlike Water, Air and (by definition) Fire, has no all-permeating source of light. It is pitch-black throughout much of the plane, which suits the tunneling creatures just fine. One of the more diversely-populated planes, Earth is home to not just elementals, dao and the ruvoka tribes, but also stone giants, xorn and xaren, the bizarre khargra, feylike pech, stunted shad and the fierce insectlike hordes.

Most of the denizens feed either on some element within the earth of the plane or on one another. Xorn, khargra and the small, wormlike faribma all contribute to a mutualistic ecosystem that sees each of them gaining something from the earth and leaving the rest refined for others. Entities such as delvers and denzelians add to this mixture. Where carrion blocks up the earth, the hardy insects known as the giggag are there to clean up the mess. The armored tosh then eats the giggag.

I'll do the other two when I get back.

Kinda crazy the artifacts that made their way over to Al Qadim

Planescape. The Great Sultan lives on the Elemental Plane of Fire.

Aside from gold and souls, what commodity is most used as a currency in the Planes? Especially for good aligned planes who wouldn't accept soul currency, what do they use?

Here y'go.

[123456789blaaa]

Got some questions right above your post if you haven't seen em Afro.

[Brookshw]

Planescape. The Great Sultan lives on the Elemental Plane of Fire.

Ah, right, forgot the context of the discussion. Still kinda crazy (ish) about the obsidian man.

And questions, things sometimes get imprisoned in pandemonium, what are these prisons really like? I don't imagine you come around a tunnel bend mostly deaf and find some creature in stasis/bars/what have you. What kinda guardians do you envision?

[Larkas]

Thanks for the answers on the Inner Planes so far! Now, for something completely different, I've been flipping through my LGG, and came accross a few interesting subjects.

1) What can you tell us about the Olman "Sky Gods"?

2) Do you know anything about the Rhennee homeland of Rhop?

3) Since we're on the subject of the Rhennee, do they have anything to do with the Ravenloft's Vistani?

[enderlord99]

Is there such thing as 'loth-minted grey ice? If so, how common is it, relative to the other sources? Ditto for night-hag-minted.

[Asrrin]

Here y'go.

That's pretty cool, I'll definitely be using some of that for my campaign. I'm still wondering if there aren't higher worth currency for dealing in expensive magic items and the like. Essentially, I am imagining a sort of cross between tippyverse and Planescape for my campaign, because of the vast amounts of wealth that can be generated via various shenanigans (the various genies mentioned here, Zodars, Solars, etc.) would make anything "worth" <25,000 gp as easy to get and saying three little words. I wanted to incorporate a separate economy above the wish economy where no matter how much gold you have, you can't "buy" the more expensive magic items unless you have some sort of currency that wasn't wished into existence. any ideas?

[Thurbane]

Id anyone up to the challenge of pointing out to me every mention of Dispater and his minions in 3.X?

Off the top of my head I know of BoVD and FC2...

[afroakuma]

I'll be resuming answers on Sunday. Tomorrow is my brother's wedding and, well, that's just awesome.

[Jowgen]

I'll be resuming answers on Sunday. Tomorrow is my brother's wedding and, well, that's just awesome.

All the best to everyone involved


On topic, I loved the little descriptions of the 4 main elemental planes you did in response to Larkas. Once you're back, could you maybe please do on of those for the Plain of Shadow? I understand its supposed to be a kind of a grotesque mirage of the material, but that by itself doesn't give the plane much... 'identity', I suppose is an okay word for what I'm looking for.

[Brookshw]

Id anyone up to the challenge of pointing out to me every mention of Dispater and his minions in 3.X?

Off the top of my head I know of BoVD and FC2...

Manual of the planes is another off the top of my head.

[Jeff the Green]

I know about the Celestial Hebdomad, Talisid and the Five Companions, and the Court of Stars ruling the Good outsiders; the Archdevils, Demon Lords and Yugoloth Generals down below, and the massive hierarchy of the Modrons. What about the Slaadi and Rilmani? I'd think royalty would be antithetical to Slaad personality but Wikipedia (not exactly the most accurate of sources, I know) says there are Lords among them. No real information, though. And I can't find anything on the Rilmani.

[enderlord99]

I know about the Celestial Hebdomad, Talisid and the Five Companions, and the Court of Stars ruling the Good outsiders; the Archdevils, Demon Lords and Yugoloth Generals down below, and the massive hierarchy of the Modrons. What about the Slaadi and Rilmani? I'd think royalty would be antithetical to Slaad personality but Wikipedia (not exactly the most accurate of sources, I know) says there are Lords among them. No real information, though. And I can't find anything on the Rilmani.

Tons of both canon and almost-canon-but-not-quite information about the Slaadi can be found here.

[Brookshw]

Tons of both canon and almost-canon-but-not-quite information about the Slaadi can be found here.

There's one other lord as well but he's a bit of a punter. Don't think there are any rilmani lords (would that be self contradictory?) But there are the rilmani's predecessors, the karmel (possibly misspelled) that took off to hide in mirrors.

Edit: and the wiki is accurate enough regarding the lords, I recall some of that from the old dragons.

[afroakuma]

All the best to everyone involved

It was an excellent celebration.

On topic, I loved the little descriptions of the 4 main elemental planes you did in response to Larkas. Once you're back, could you maybe please do on of those for the Plain of Shadow?

Once I've had a chance to rest up, absolutely.

I know about the Celestial Hebdomad, Talisid and the Five Companions, and the Court of Stars ruling the Good outsiders; the Archdevils, Demon Lords and Yugoloth Generals down below, and the massive hierarchy of the Modrons. What about the Slaadi and Rilmani? I'd think royalty would be antithetical to Slaad personality but Wikipedia (not exactly the most accurate of sources, I know) says there are Lords among them. No real information, though. And I can't find anything on the Rilmani.

Slaad lords aren't "lords" in the rulership sense; they're "lords" in the sense of being elite and functional incarnations of Might Makes Right. Paragons of chaos. The four Slaad Lords are Ssendam, Lord of Insanity; Ygorl, Lord of Entropy; Rennbuu, Lord of Colors; and Chourst, Lord of Randomness.

Rilmani leadership is pretty nebulous, but I created a concept for it that people seemed to enjoy.

[Jeff the Green]

Cool. What about elementals?

[tzar1990]

Is there anything that could get the Elementals to take up arms and join together against some sort of outside threat (outside of some Elder Evil-scale cosmic level issue?) I just remembered an old campaign I designed back in high school or so, which was a high-magic setting in which Elementals of all types were waging war against a major nation in the setting?

Is that at all plausible, or should I rewrite it to be focused on a type of Genie or something?

[unseenmage]

How did Spelljamming first come about?

Which race did it first?

Barring that being a clear question (as its likely some squeamous otherworldly thing was really "first"), what Faerunian race did it first?

[Eldan]

Cool. What about elementals?

They have a hierarchy that vaguely correlates with age and size, all the way up to the Archomentals.

Interestingly, all the elemental races are split into the Elemental Good and Elemental Evil, so we get eight major archomentals:

Imix (Fire, Evil), Ogremoch (Earth, Evil), Olhydra (Water, Evil), Yan-C-Bin (Air, Evil)
Zaaman Rul (Fire, Good), Entemoch and Sunnis (Earth, Good), Ben-Hadar (Water, Good), Chan (Air, Good)

Bit of an imbalance there, as there's a pair of them for good Earth. However, there's also Cryonax, who's the evil archomental of ice.

There's a few other ones mentioned here and there, too: Chlimbia for Magma, Ehkahk for Smoke and Bwimb for Ooze, who's a bit of a joke.

I prefer the theory that there's at least one for each of the pseudo- and paraelements, some of them just aren't well known on the planes.

[Jeff the Green]

Oh, do positive and negative energy have exemplar species?

[Eldan]

They are both pretty empty of native life, as far as I know. There's a few scattered monsters like the Ravid, there's undead on the negative.

There's Energons, but looking it up online, it seems they exist for all the elemental planes, not just positive and negative, like I thought.

[afroakuma]

Cool. What about elementals?

As Eldan said, elementals are "ruled" by the Archomentals, who are classically referred to as the Princes of Elemental Evil/Princes of Elemental Good. Many of them also defer to element-linked gods that reside on the Inner Planes, such as Faerun's Akadi et al. Below the archomentals in power but still titanic and worth noting are elemental monoliths; they are not unique, but if you're looking for something bigger than "elder" but smaller than the vast primal forces deep in the plane, those are your pick.

Is there anything that could get the Elementals to take up arms and join together against some sort of outside threat (outside of some Elder Evil-scale cosmic level issue?)

Well, cosmic things are sort of their wheelhouse; the War of Law and Chaos was in many ways a war for the elements (though some believed in a new existence possible through Chaos and fought on that side).

The problem with using elementals in the capacity you describe is that they don't really have the means to involve themselves in a conflict on the Prime. Genies do, of course. That said, if they had some convenient means of ingress and a well thought-out impetus to go, you could make it work.

How did Spelljamming first come about?

That particular story has never been told, but I would imagine not so very differently than spacefaring on Earth. Someone looked up and said "can I go there?" It's suggested that there were quite a few abortive failures of the early attempts.

Which race did it first?

I've seen people take various stands on this, but the one I'm going to go with is the one that seems most supported by available materials. It was a race called the Juna that first took to the stars in spacecraft.

Oh, do positive and negative energy have exemplar species?

Very much no.

There's Energons, but looking it up online, it seems they exist for all the elemental planes, not just positive and negative, like I thought.

More like for each energy type. They don't actually correlate well to the elements, being as there are five exotic energons.

[Mr Adventurer]

Re: Elementals, above the Monoliths in power but below them in Intelligence there's also the Primal Elementals. They're in the Epic rules.

They are assigned CR 35 but this is likely to be much too high of a number.

Presumably they sit outside the Elemental 'hierarchy', such as it is.

Not sure how they'd compare to the archomentals in terms of raw power but presumably the archomentals have magical or quasi-deific powers that all other elementals lack.

[Eldan]

Someone statted up at least some of the archomentals. Not sure who. Dragon Magazine? Dicefreaks? Planewalker? They are basically giant elementals with some better magic.

[afroakuma]

Yeah, even with the added power they're still all kind of boring.