The Edge of Forever

[Deviation]

Imagine the Universe as an Onion. The Material Plane is the outerlayer- the one most grounded in reality- and the ones deeper (soulrest, dreamscapes, faewild, elemental plane, god plane) are all deeper within the onion and are further from reality. More abstract. The furthest into abstraction anyone's gone is to the God plane, but, supposedly, there are planes deeper and more abstract than can be comprehended.

Now imagine a war between the Gods and the Material Plane. One that spans millennia. In the end, the mortals win, but in a last final strike against the Material plane the Gods begin The Unraveling- a destruction of the Material plane. This has consequences that span all planes-without a plane grounded in reality, without the outer layer of the onion, the rest is left exposed and rotting.

One race of people, The Dwellers, had the innate ability to survive between planes. During the war, they largely hid, wanting no part in the wars between Gods and Mortals. After the war, they were horrified to discover life decimated and the planes bleeding into one another as they decompose. They take seeds they'd originally brought from the material plane and infused with pure Abstraction and begin planting, hoping that the roots of the trees planted would act like trees holding in top-soil: a way to keep the universe together. But planes are infinite- expanding outward in every direction forever. And the Unraveling affects the entirety of the Material Plane, near as anyone can tell. So the Dwellers are cursed to forever travel, never knowing if their mission is a moot one, if the places they leave behind are saved or Unraveled.

At The Edge, as they've taken to calling it, are largely Dwellers. But some people of other races managed to survive as well, though warped by the constant exposure to Abstraction. It's a waste land of purple skies and endless sand- spewing volcanoes and floating islands. A place where the Planes bleed into one another so easily that a pool of water acts as both a precious resource and a well guarded gate into the other planes. Life is tough, at the Edge.

The Gods are dead and so are we...if we don't do something to save ourselves.

((My first post here so I hope I'm doing this right! I'm mostly looking for feed back and wondering what people think of it. I can put more if people are interested in hearing more ^^)

[arrowed]

This sounds like an incredible concept. A few questions I would have as a player: how does travel between layers work? What is common knowledge about how the mortals killed the gods? What system would you use, and how would you change it to fit the setting?

[the_david]

- I love the idea of layers. It is very easy to imagine and remember, compared to something like the Great Wheel Cosmology.
- I also love that this this doesn't have to be a standard medieval European setting, but that it can be more of a Planescape setting, with a dystopian material plane.
- What's beyond (Inside?) the God Plane? If it were me, I'd stuff it full of Lovecraftian horror. If you'd keep up the onion theme, you'd eventually end up at the seed that can sprout new life. (Positive Energy Plane?) This could mean that the end goal of this campaign is to save the sprout so that a new onion (or onions) can be formed by the full grown plant. The heroes would have to move from one plane to the next to get to the climactic end in the inner plane.
- What's the afterlife like in your world? You mention Soulrest, so that probably means that souls don't travel to the gods they worshipped in life. Honestly, I like the idea of that. Combined with the history of this world, I can see undead trying to find a way to their final resting place or ghosts trying to return to the material plane. I like that it makes sense. I think that Soulrest wasn't a bad place until the unraveling took place, and that undead are an entirely new form of (un)life as a result of that.
- What was the reason behind the war between gods and mortals?
- How do people travel from one plane to another? If the players get access to Plane Shift at some point, would that change the feel of the campaign?

There is so much to love here, can I play in this campaign? If not, can I steal it so I can run this myself?