afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII

[Naanomi]

In Torment, if you get Mazed by her you find evidence of being in that Maze before (you forgot, amnesia and all that)... sort of indicates that at least sometimes mazes are reused (perhaps just for the same person?)

[Mr Adventurer]

No.

Where's that hostility coming from?

[Dalmosh]

Hello, Book of Vile Darkness lists Warp Touch as "one of the worst effects of raw chaos..."
How common/easy to contract is this condition in Limbo?

Would it be common to see Githzerai afflicted with Warp Touch in their cities?

[gkathellar]

That'd mean there's a sort of inherent justice to the multiverse, that reality itself ensures bad people go to bad places and good people go to good places. This feels entirely off for some reason.

Trying to get to heaven could, or should, be different than just winding up there after a long hard day of dying.

That's because you assume that the Upper Planes are a reward, or the Lower Planes are a punishment, or that the realm of any given God is either. The moralistic spin doesn't work here - this is simply a case of like being drawn to like, and for those who learn to appreciate it and what it implies about the cosmos, even the Abyss can be a paradise. No matter how you slice the onion, the onion's death will be an ascension of a sort.

[afroakuma]

I know that if you worship a God that lives somewhere other than the Outer Planes your soul can find it’s way there in the afterlife... is it possible for an ardent worshiper of a concept (like... an Athasian-style fire worshiper, if the Grey were not in the way) to find themselves on the Elemental Planes after death, or is the pull of the Outer Planes too strong without a God exerting influence to redirect things?

I swear I did this exact question already. Actually I think it might even have been in this thread.

So I've seen people make reference to various specific offerings that can be made to outsiders during Planar Binding rituals for bonuses on certain checks. (Pornography for a Lemure, or six severed hands from still-living generals for a Marilith, for example) But aside from an off-hand reference here or there, I'm having a frustratingly difficult time finding any lore on such offerings.

Does anyone happen to know a good source material to find these? Are they from older Wizards books? I'm playing a wizard in an Eberron campaign, if that makes a difference.

That sounds like a thing from Pathfinder. It definitely sounds like the sort of thing they would list out, especially with "pornography" in there. I cannot fathom any logical reason why lemures would come for such a thing - or, frankly, why one would planar bind a lemure.

Almost every prominent exemplar race has ‘replaced’ a more ancient precursor either explicitly or in rumors and myth... are there any such rumored ‘precursors’ to Archons? Or are they pretty much confirmed originals (perhaps overdue for a new model)?

Rumored, canonically, I do not believe so. I have my own ideas about that, of course, but not sufficiently developed to be worth sharing.

That'd mean there's a sort of inherent justice to the multiverse, that reality itself ensures bad people go to bad places and good people go to good places. This feels entirely off for some reason.

Bad people go to places, and their nature makes those places bad. Good people go to places, and their nature makes those places good. It has nothing to do with "justice."

Hmm, if simply being a Cleric counts as 'sufficiently' for the above then what of townsfolk who routinely celebrate festivals in a given deity's honor?

Depends. Small villages occasionally celebrate festivals of the hunt, sacred to Malar, whose clerics in cold and harsh frontiers may supply those villages with a winter store of meat. It's doubtful that the vast majority of these people would actually hold to the ideals of Malar. Similarly, a traditional feast to welcome spring or summer or autumn doesn't make one a devotee of the corresponding gods.

What of PCs and heroic NPCs who actually get to speak to a deity?

What of them? Doesn't mean you believe in the ideals of said deity. You might even converse with a deity you actively despise - though one rather hopes you're plotting to shank them shortly thereafter.

It seems that we haven’t talked about the Lady for a while…

What a pity.

I always assumed that everybody whom she mazes gets their own maze. Then I read in Dragon magazine that she has one maze for everybody. Then I searched the Internets, and her Wikipedia article (which I didn’t even know existed) claims that she has a number of mazes that she reuses.

Is the truth of this matter known? Does she create a new maze every time, similar to how the Maze spell works? Or are there one or more mazes just hanging around, waiting to be stocked by her?

And, if the latter, are there known instances of beings meeting in a maze?

There's no indication that the Lady is not capable of creating as many mazes as she pleases, but for her own inscrutable reasons it's possible to end up in the same maze as others, should she so desire. The novelization of Planescape: Torment describes a meeting in the mazes between the protagonist and the night hag Ravel Puzzlewell; I feel there's likely at least one other that I've come across, but it's late and I'm disinclined to search through the book boxes right now.

Hello, Book of Vile Darkness lists Warp Touch as "one of the worst effects of raw chaos..."
How common/easy to contract is this condition in Limbo?

I would expect it to be fairly rare, since contact with raw chaos isn't at all common in Limbo. Generally you're either in contact with chaos you or someone else has shaped into something, or in contact with chaos that has shaped itself (temporarily) into something. Rarely something pleasant, given how often one's choices are being on fire, drowning, or getting crushed and suffocated... but you take my larger point: on Limbo, you're more than likely either protected from raw chaos entirely, or already dead or dying from something else that the chaos has roiled up before you're ever at risk of experiencing warp touch.

Would it be common to see Githzerai afflicted with Warp Touch in their cities?

I wouldn't imagine so.

[BelligerentGnu]

That sounds like a thing from Pathfinder. It definitely sounds like the sort of thing they would list out, especially with "pornography" in there. I cannot fathom any logical reason why lemures would come for such a thing - or, frankly, why one would planar bind a lemure.

Yep, Pathfinder. Finally managed to find better info in a paper copy of Ultimate Magic. The Lemure thing was accurate. If you liked that one, it also states that the best way to curry favour with a Dretch is to promise to allow it to spend at least one third of its bargained servitude resting.

[LordofBones]

1. Why do Mathonwy, Mellifleur and Velsharoon live in Gehenna? What about the plane appeals to these three, who are generally more cerebral and magically-inclined than their other deific neighbours?

2. Is there any particular significance to a deity having realms in multiple Outer Planes, like Hecate's realms in Minauros and Pluton?

3. What do the yugoloths generally think about altraloths?

4. This is probably out of the scope of this thread, but is there Afrocanon about Shiva's realm in the Negative Energy Plane?

5. Other than Ravana, are there other rakshasa powers? Do Vibishana and Kumbhakarna exist in D&D?

[Tzardok]

3. What do the yugoloths generally think about altraloths?

In general, yugoloth don't like altraloth. Altraloth are considered corruptions of the pure evil, which the yugoloth think they are. Besides that an altraloth is bound in debt for some time to the night hag that transformed them, which means that they are beholden to something else besides the cause of the yugoloth.

[Naanomi]

Do we know anything about (or have any examples of) the written form of the Chaos/Slaadi language?

[Tryxx]

Just came across the Nathri (which apparently aren't a 3.X thing), and I'm curious how serious a threat they pose to all those wizard created demiplanes in the Ethereal Plane.

And related: How much threat do the Githyanki pirates pose to those demiplanes on the Astral?

Also, if one day we found that the "Outside" where vestiges reside was in fact the Ordial Plane - what would that imply (if anything) about Ahazu the Seizure?

[RFLS]

I was reading Manual of the Planes, and it says a cleric who enters an alternate material plane (For example, Eberron Cleric entering Forgotten Realms) can receive power from his domains as long as the two material planes are connected. And since the two are always connected via the Shadow Plane, one could argue that as long as the cleric in question gets in touch with the domains in Eberron or Greyhawk, he can receive his divine spells from Eberron or Greyhawk instead of a Deity even though he's in Faerun.

Anyone else know of other ways to circumvent the deity requirement in Forgotten Realms?

[afroakuma]

1. Why do Mathonwy, Mellifleur and Velsharoon live in Gehenna?

Low rent.

What about the plane appeals to these three, who are generally more cerebral and magically-inclined than their other deific neighbours?

I would imagine that Mellifleur feels a strong resonance with a plane whose very essence involves the selfish climb over others to struggle against a current that pulls everyone down. Hopelorn is also quite remote and isolated on Krangath, and thus a pretty decent place not to get pestered or bossed around.

Velsharoon would probably find a similar appeal to the plane, especially on the still-volcanic but outwardly cold layer of Mungoth, where power is concealed beneath a veil of death.

As for Math Mathonwy, given the god's character, it's likely that he takes a rather smug delight at hosting his elegant and fair realm behind the lava veils of Khalas, a personal and insular respite totally detached from the relentlessly inhospitable plane without.

2. Is there any particular significance to a deity having realms in multiple Outer Planes, like Hecate's realms in Minauros and Pluton?

Could be indicative of a number of things; divided loyalties, divided purposes, a desire to be part of a pantheon or subpantheon but still retain some personal privacy...

3. What do the yugoloths generally think about altraloths?

Yugoloths hate altraloths. More than a few probably envy the power of the altraloths, but... yeah. Hatred first and foremost.

4. This is probably out of the scope of this thread, but is there Afrocanon about Shiva's realm in the Negative Energy Plane?

I've never really given it thought. Check back with me sometime.

5. Other than Ravana, are there other rakshasa powers? Do Vibishana and Kumbhakarna exist in D&D?

There aren't canonically, but no reason you can't add them in.

Do we know anything about (or have any examples of) the written form of the Chaos/Slaadi language?

Check the Spawning Stone, perhaps. Beyond that, nothing springs to mind.

Just came across the Nathri (which apparently aren't a 3.X thing), and I'm curious how serious a threat they pose to all those wizard created demiplanes in the Ethereal Plane.

If they're secured against conventional Ethereal entry, then essentially nil. Of course, it's entirely possible that there exist advanced nathri that can penetrate demiplanes they aren't supposed to. If one doesn't bound their demiplane against Ethereal entry, then the nathri will eventually get in, in significant numbers, at which point they pose about as much threat as any other swarm of Small aggressive humanoids largely bereft of class levels would.

And related: How much threat do the Githyanki pirates pose to those demiplanes on the Astral?

Once again, wizards should simply be blocking off conventional Astral entry. If not... githyanki are much less likely to storm a random demiplane than nathri are, but they're also more advanced, more resourceful, and more cunning. That said, a wizard capable of casting genesis should be powerful enough to take on your average raiding party.

Also, if one day we found that the "Outside" where vestiges reside was in fact the Ordial Plane - what would that imply (if anything) about Ahazu the Seizure?

Given the extremely unusual nature of Ahazu's self-imposed exile, it would suggest that unlike other vestiges, Ahazu exists "between" the Abyss and the Ordial Plane, and has been attempting to exploit his "imprisonment" as a means of getting from one to the other - becoming a god as part of the process, and vesting his existence entirely on the Ordial.

Anyone else know of other ways to circumvent the deity requirement in Forgotten Realms?

Don't be from the Realms. That's the one.

If you belong to some other postmortem regime, you don't go to Kelemvor to get sorted out.

[Rogthnor]

How do you handle alignments on dnd? In general I play law and chaos as basically, want the planes to continue to exist in roughly the same state (laws of physics style) and chaos wants to remake everything. Though remake into what varies.

But I know this is not exactly the standard model, so I was wondering how you run it.

EDIT:What is The Shadow Lie?

[Tzardok]

The Shadow Lie? Have you perchance been browsing old threads?
It's a concept I once stumbled over on some website. I can't find the site anymore, but the concept is as follows:

You can't understand the planes as they are, so you try to find some kind of order in them. The Shadow hides what doesn't fit, supresses it, while giving away what fits.

For example, if you are from a world where the Nordish gods reign and you believe that all people go after death to Ysgard or to Niflheim, then you will end there. And when you try to travel the planes you will find only these two planes. All others you won't be able to find.

Now the website also had a few rules what could happen if you are presented with evidence for the existence of planes that don't fit your world view, but I don't remember them.

But in short: Every kind of order in the cosmology is an illusion you create. If you believe in a plane or a connection between planes, you will be able to find it. Everything else will be hidden by the Shadow. The Shadow is the collective subconcious of the universe and at the same time your subconcious, which hides what you don't want to face, what you don't want to believe in. It is everywhere and forms what you experience.

But hey, this is also just an explanation for the unexplainable, and maybe The Shadow Lie is just a figment of my imagination.

[Rogthnor]

I had been browsing old threads actually. I saw someone mention it offhand (it might have been you) and got interested.

Also while I'm here, @afroakuma, who's belief shapes the planes? Is it just creatures from the prime material that provide worship to gods and shape the planes based on their beliefs? If Examplars could do it then surely the literally infinite demons would have turned all the planes into the Abyss right?

[Caelestion]

The obvious counterpoint to your second sentence is that there are also infinite baatezu, yugoloths, gehreleths, modrons, slaadi etc.

[Dalmosh]

What generally happens to people who fall off the bottom of one of the mountains of Gehenna?

What is on the underside of these mountains, and would the volcano's directional gravity attract or repel you from such a surface?
If you looked ("up?") at the middle of these surfaces, would you be able to see the molten centre of the active volcanoes?

If you could withstand the temperatures and pressures, would contacting such a crater (if such a thing exists) pull you up into the interior of the mountain?

Why is Gehenna called the Bleak Eternity? Does it have something to do with the void around the volcanoes?

[Tzardok]

First, Gehenna doesn't have situationally directive gravity. There's only one direction: down. What sense would there be in the horribly steep descent, if gravity wouldn't drag you into the abyss?
Second, the volcanoes are infinitly high. You can't ever reach the bottom or the peak. You may be able to see them, but reaching them? Impossible. This can lead to the result that someone stumbles down and down and down and down the slope, until every single bone is broken and every single bit of flesh has been srapped of. Gehenna is such a friendly, funny place, isn't it?

[Dalmosh]

With all due respect, that's not the case. Gehenna's volcanoes are explicitly finite in size though "far larger than the largest known land mass on the Material Plane" (MotP, 111). Which means that they do have physical tops and bottoms that you could potentially reach.
Moreover, the volcanoes and the void they float in are defined here as having "normal gravity" similar to the Material Plane. So "down" is only a factor on the slopes themselves, and beyond this the inference is that the gravity is directional based on mass.

And its void and what happens to people who fall into it are very poorly defined, hence my question. The inherent nature of the plane would suggest "very bad stuff that you want to avoid", but I'm looking for specifics. Bad for who exactly and in what way?

How about flying natives like Phiuuls or Hellwasps that travelled into this space? Or sentient constructs? Or very powerful undead?

This infinite void doesn't seem to have any particularly negative properties, and is apparently commonly traversed, as there are many inhabited earthbergs and moonlets around the volcanoes.

[Caelestion]

If each of Gehenna's peaks is "far larger than the largest known land mass on the Material Plane", that means that each and everyone is much larger than Olympus Mons on Mars, let alone construing that clause to mean that each peak is larger than, say, continental Russia or the United States. They might be technically finite, but even the fiends could probably teleport for hours on end and still never reach the top (or the bottom).

[Uncle Pine]

afroakuma, afroakuma, afroakuma!

Questions: are the various elemental planes (water, earth, fire, air) required for the corresponding element to exist? As in, can fire exist because the elemental plane of Fire does? If so, does destroying any of the four planes effectively robs the universe of that particular element?

[enderlord99]

afroakuma, afroakuma, afroakuma!

Questions: are the various elemental planes (water, earth, fire, air) required for the corresponding element to exist? As in, can fire exist because the elemental plane of Fire does? If so, does destroying any of the four planes effectively robs the universe of that particular element?

The answer basically boils down to "you can't destroy planes."

I'm sure you'll get more details eventually.

[Dragolord]

The obvious counterpoint to your second sentence is that there are also infinite baatezu, yugoloths, gehreleths, modrons, slaadi etc.

Ah, but are those infinities necessarily the same?

[Caelestion]

Well, there can't be any meaningful difference, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about infinity.

[Svata]

Eh, infinity is weird. There are larger and smaller infinities. There are infinite rational numbers between 0 and 1, but a larger infinity of rational numbers between negative one million and one million.

[Tryxx]

Does the Quasielemental Plane of Mineral hold any special interests to psionically inclined characters/powers? I'm wondering if it's one of the few places in the wheel actually pre-disposed to psionics due to a relative abundance of Crystal Node's (and Emergent Caldera's where the plane meets Magma).

[Khedrac]

Eh, infinity is weird. There are larger and smaller infinities. There are infinite rational numbers between 0 and 1, but a larger infinity of rational numbers between negative one million and one million.

Not quite. The infinity that is all integers and the infinity that is all rational numbers (numbers expressable as a fraction) are the same size - so 0 to 1 and -1M to 1M are the same size.
However if take the infinity of irrational numbers (i.e. not just those expressable as a fraction) between 0 and 1 it is a bigger infinity.

(The basic premise is that the irraitonal numbers cannot be counted while the rationals can therefore it must be a bigger infinity.)

I think for the infinitte hordes of the outer planes, for everything except the chaotic plans the infinity would have to be a countable one (because it is counting creatures) so the same size. With Limbo and the Abyss I don't think that that is an assumption safe to make...

[BluesEclipse]

Two unrelated questions for you, Afro.

1) Some Vestiges were once gods, and a vestige briefly manifests (if only partly) in reality when bound (or, at least, that is my understanding of how it works). Given this, would the Lady of Pain have any specific rules regarding binding Vestiges in Sigil?

2) Would the Spawning Stone in Limbo be considers an artifact of Law, given that its purpose is to force order into Chaos?

[Melcar]

Hey Afro...

I have a question, that you might very well have answered before, but here goes.

You have mentioned using the Great Wheel over the Great Tree cosmology... in Forgotten Realm 3.X.

My question is about the Feywild (which I think is 4th thing, but my question is simply... does it exist in 3.X in forgotten realms or more precisely in the great wheel at 1374 DR?

[Malimar]

Feywild

aaaaaaaaaah everybody panic he said the thing run for your lives the black lightning cometh