afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VII

[Bronk]

In the Baldur's Gate 3 trailer, at 1:13, there's a lightning strike/flash in the clouds and we can see an Illithid spelljammer fleet. I'm looking at the biggest ship up there and trying to figure out what it is. Seems sort of like a dreadnaught but appears too big. Did the Illithid's have anything bigger? Care to hazard a guess at what we're seeing in the video?

An illithid spelljammer would be awesome! To me it looked like it could also have been a series of Lovecraftian planar breaches with some kind of elder evils pushing through, mostly because what happened to the guy there wouldn't have been covered by any illithid or spelljammer lore I've heard of... it happened so fast.

[aj77]

Zilch.

Could you explain why this is? I don't know what is actually known about Ahriman. Per you, the story of him being Asmodeus is a LIE, and for all I know even the part about Jazirian gravely wounding him may be part of that lie.

Given that Good "undead" (which is what I take Deathless to be) exist, why aren't they in use by... well, everybody, but mostly good aligned clerics?
Are Archliches a type of Deathless? If not, how does one become a good lich without a ceaseless thirst for the souls of the living or some such?

[Fable Wright]

An illithid spelljammer would be awesome! To me it looked like it could also have been a series of Lovecraftian planar breaches with some kind of elder evils pushing through, mostly because what happened to the guy there wouldn't have been covered by any illithid or spelljammer lore I've heard of... it happened so fast.

According to Swen Vincke, head of Larian studios, “the big tentacle thing is called a Nautiloid – it’s how the Mind Flayers traverse the astral plane. It was made popular in a [D&D] sub-universe called Spelljammer, but we just thought it was incredibly awesome. This is going to be biggest Nautiloid you’ve ever seen.”

...So it's an astral Spelljammer.

[afroakuma]

After reading a little bit in Hellbound The Dark of War, it does mention that some lawful and chaotic gods did try and aid one side or the other in the Blood War, but that one of the gods just, withered and shriveled up one day. And when the other gods noticed their powers withering too, got the heck out of dodge. Has that event ever been explained or elaborated on anywhere else? Seems like a fantastic reason Gods or Powers in general would want to stay away from the conflict.

It's not spelled out in great detail, but it's not unreasonable to connect a few basic dots - gods investing themselves directly in the Blood War are diverting their attention away from their actual worshipers, and putting targets on themselves to boot. If the fiends know they can undermine the opposition's newest bestest ally by sending agents to the Prime with murder on their minds, they will absolutely do so.

The Material Plane is and must be the chiefest concern of deities.

Ah well. I guess I had a romantic notion in my head that lawful's tendency towards organization might see them working together at times. In Hellbound it does mention that they sometimes form temporary coalitions to work together for some mutual goal, but they fall apart the moment said goal is reached. Makes sense.

Chaotic side did the same thing - the eladrin and tanar'ri cooperated during the War of Law and Chaos and it's not impossible to think that they might be provoked into it once again, if on a limited scale. A big thing about it now is that Good and Evil are more prominent concerns than they were way back when.

Very true. Chaos has a lot of redeeming qualities, too. I just wish I saw more of them from my fellow players.

Inexperienced players are known for using "chaos" as an excuse for "silliness."

Could you explain why this is? I don't know what is actually known about Ahriman. Per you, the story of him being Asmodeus is a LIE, and for all I know even the part about Jazirian gravely wounding him may be part of that lie.

Ahriman doesn't exist separate from being a theory about the nature of Asmodeus, and in that theory the nature of the beast is wholly unrelated to the ancient Baatorians. Conceptually, Ahriman belongs to a binary to which the Baatorians don't fit, being members of a more plural multiverse.

Given that Good "undead" (which is what I take Deathless to be) exist, why aren't they in use by... well, everybody, but mostly good aligned clerics?

The state of a Deathless being is that of prolonging existence in the Material Plane while disincarnate for the sake of some purpose or cause. It is no more in accord with the natural order to create Deathless intended to provide immortality than it would be to create an undead for the same purpose. As ephemeral souls anchored to a deceased body and prevented from moving to the next stage of their existence, Deathless need to maintain rich connections to the world to contend with the ennui that is their existence, and some make use of strange magical powers to abandon their bodies for long stretches and see the multiverse. Culture receives input from and is invariably at least partially guided by the whims of deceased elders, creating a crunch where younger living generations find their power and influence reduced.

Why don't clerics make a whole whack of 'em? Because at the end of the day it's undesirable, and rarely seen outside elven cultures on worlds like Eberron and Faerun.

Are Archliches a type of Deathless?

Nope, they're powered by negative energy, as usual.

If not, how does one become a good lich without a ceaseless thirst for the souls of the living or some such?

I mean, ideally one doesn't - archliches don't hunger, but they're burdened by an unceasing memory and eventually become frustrated with their state of continuance. Baelnorns, their elven equivalent, are surpassingly rare and explicitly noted to be "enduring" undeath for the sake of a higher calling. "Death got you - but not really" just isn't a very productive thing for the forces of Good.

If y'wanna go the other way on it, though, you do you.

[gkathellar]

...So it's an astral Spelljammer.

Bear in mind that BG3 is going to be a 5e-based product, which afaik doesn’t do Spelljammer stuff.

[ShurikVch]

slaadi must do things "because they want to"

It's not from 3.X, but check the table:

[PhoenixPhyre]

Bear in mind that BG3 is going to be a 5e-based product, which afaik doesn’t do Spelljammer stuff.

Less "doesn't do" and more "hasn't done". It's been teased several times, but never implemented so far. Until now?!?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Now a question for the wise afroakuma and company:

Is there a resource (preferably freely available) detailing the types of creatures other than the classic <X> Elemental that might be associated with/live in each of the elemental, para-elemental, and demi-elemental planes? Things like the Azer, salamanders, sprites, etc?

I'm looking at populating my elemental planes, and want inspiration and things to adapt/steal/repurpose. I'd like a mix of "fleshy" (not really, but more material-plane-like than, say, an Air Elemental) and "pure" elemental types.

[afroakuma]

Is there a resource (preferably freely available) detailing the types of creatures other than the classic <X> Elemental that might be associated with/live in each of the elemental, para-elemental, and demi-elemental planes? Things like the Azer, salamanders, sprites, etc?

I'm looking at populating my elemental planes, and want inspiration and things to adapt/steal/repurpose. I'd like a mix of "fleshy" (not really, but more material-plane-like than, say, an Air Elemental) and "pure" elemental types.

I was actually up to that at one point. The best resource would be the Planescape Monstrous Compendium III, which was devoted to the Inner Planes. Here's a few ideas to get the ball rolling:

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.

Fire

Fire is surprisingly populous, considering the nature of the plane. The thick omnipresent flames wouldn't seem capable of permitting life, but then, the Inner Planes are strange and wondrous indeed. Fire is considered the most pure of the four Elemental Planes since fewer non-natives and non-native elements are present. It is home to ruvoka, tshala, firenewts, azers, efreet, fire giants, salamanders, mephits and a great many unusual fire-type entities.

Denizens are quite bizarre in their diverse natures; fire bats, for instance, feed on the blood of both natives and visitors and are nearly immortal unless hunted down and destroyed properly. The scape is a bald rodent that teleports, lightning-fast, to scavenge bites off of dead matter before it burns up completely in the flames of the plane. There are bizarre insect creatures native to the plane, whose natural predator is the waiveras, a jet-black lizard with many legs that's also fond of snacking on fire snake eggs.

Water

If you want to see life in all its diverse forms, come to the plane of Water. Tritons, marids, elementals and numerous aquatic races all have their own territories carved out in the endless depths of Water. Natural sea flora and fauna are here in abundance - fish of all kinds, cephalopods (but no whales or dolphins), plankton flows and kelp. Sea animals tend to grow larger than on the Prime, and entities as diverse as eyes of the deep and even the mythical zaratan have been encountered on Water. Ruvoka, tojanida, hydrax, mermen, reef giants etc. all help fill out the plane's diverse ecosystem.

Many natives of Water are hard to see while on the plane, for their bodies are transparent and fluid or nearly so. There are some incredibly bizarre creatures in the depths, such as the bzastra and the ungulosin. The suisseen actually survives entirely on the water it resembles. The soft natural glow of the plane encourages photosynthetic organisms and microorganisms to grow and thrive, creating a useful foundation for an ecosystem that is alllllmost relatable. Almost.

[Edreyn]

Thank you for answering my previous questions.

Now, I want to ask about a few specific places.

Why some planes are considered much worse then the others? For example, why Athas and Ravenloft are considered that bad? Why are they considered more dangerous then the "generic" Underdark?

Athas
What dangers one might find on Athas, that he can't find in usual worlds, like Faerun?
Hostile climate and lack of resources? There are many places like this on Faerun, like Icewind Dale, or Anauroch desert.
Slavery and the rule of magic wielders? That also fits for Wizards of Thay.
Extremely dangerous monsters? There are plenty of dangerous areas in Faerun.
And if you want a place where all of the above is present, then there is Underdark: hostile creatures, very evil races, slavery, lack of resources - even water is hard to find in Underdark.
The lack of metals? From what I read, it doesn't really have a large impact on anything.

Ravenloft
Again, I don't really understand why this world is much worse then some areas on Faerun. Undead are always present in many areas, and same is with evil rulers. The inability to leave? People still can travel rather far distances inside Ravenloft, at least enough to make global trading possible. People from Prime also leave their world quite rarely, and if you take a real medieval settlements, I am sure that the absolute majority of their populace never went further then nearby forest. Why inability to leave is so bad?

Carceri
Carceri is an Outer Plane and supposed to be a literal Hell. But again, from what I read in Planes of Conflict, Carceri seems to be the most "soft" among the five Lower Planes.
Carceri doesn't have a soul breaking hierarchy and punishment system like Baator.
It doesn't have a climate as deadly as the one of Gehenna.
It doesn't consume the very identity like Grey Waste.
And it doesn't enjoy mindless butchery like Abyss.
Even in comparison to Acheron and Pandemonium it feels less painful - there is no large war in Carceri and it doesn't provoke everyone going mad.

From what I see, a mortal can actually survive there, as long he doesn't cross anyone pass. Maybe he will need to find some kind of protector, which could mean a slavery, but again, as long as he is obeying his orders, the locals won't kill or torture him for sports.

Inability to leave? Again, by medieval standards, the majority of populace never left their hometowns.

It isn't a sweet life, but much better then on any other Lower Plane.

So, what am I missing? Why those places are considered that bad?

[Bronk]

Air

ruvoka

Earth

ruvoka

Fire

ruvoka

Water

Ruvoka

Man, those ruvoka really get around!

Water
(but no whales or dolphins)

I have a question about Great Dreamers and their entourages. They're whales, but magical, and as far as I can tell they just travel through wildspace and the flow in a miles wide ball of water that they create by forming a portal to the Plane of Water, but not Air.

Do they need to breathe at all, or do they make air pockets for themselves somehow?

Do these whale-like beings (which may be former or future regular whales making up the entourage at least) ever visit the Plane of Water through the portal?

Does the Great Dreamer interact with the Animal Lords at all, and how do regular whales interact with the Animal Lords?

[enderlord99]

Carceri
Carceri is an Outer Plane and supposed to be a literal Hell. But again, from what I read in Planes of Conflict, Carceri seems to be the most "soft" among the five Lower Planes.
Carceri doesn't have a soul breaking hierarchy and punishment system like Baator.

It sort of does, it's just not an organized one.

It doesn't have a climate as deadly as the one of Gehenna.

Sepending on the sphere, it can get pretty damn close.

It doesn't consume the very identity like Grey Waste.

It sort of does, just not as directly

And it doesn't enjoy mindless butchery like Abyss.

Yes it does.

[Edreyn]

I am not saying Carceri is a paradise. It is a Lower Plane, it has features similar to other Lower Planes, and it's an ugly place. What I am saying, that it is less tormenting then the other four.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I am not saying Carceri is a paradise. It is a Lower Plane, it has features similar to other Lower Planes, and it's an ugly place. What I am saying, that it is less tormenting then the other four.

You're looking at it the wrong way. If you read the description and think "that's relatively nice", you haven't imagined a bad enough situation consistent with that description. So, have fun with that .

[Clistenes]

Bear in mind that BG3 is going to be a 5e-based product, which afaik doesn’t do Spelljammer stuff.

Is it still being done? I thought WotC had said "no to Kickstarters..."

Is there any clue about how is it going to be?

By the way, they don't need either a Spelljammer 5e ruleset or any of the Spelljammer fluff. They can just introduce stuff that just happens to look like Spelljammer (it's not as if WotC has the rights on starships...) and they don't need special rules, just have the characters travel by Nautiloid-like vessel instead of using normal ships or teleportation magic...

[Caelestion]

CarceriFrom what I see, a mortal can actually survive there, as long he doesn't cross anyone pass. Maybe he will need to find some kind of protector, which could mean a slavery, but again, as long as he is obeying his orders, the locals won't kill or torture him for sports.

In Planescape: Torment, you go to Curst, the gate-town to Carceri. There, the biggest threat to people are other people, given that no one trusts anyone else and constant, cut-throat politics is just another day. Since Curst is only the gate town to Carceri, the plane itself must be much worse. (It's also home to the gehreleths, nasty flesh-eating fiends who don't belong to any of the three major types.)

[Fable Wright]

Is it still being done? I thought WotC had said "no to Kickstarters..."

Is there any clue about how is it going to be?

By the way, they don't need either a Spelljammer 5e ruleset or any of the Spelljammer fluff. They can just introduce stuff that just happens to look like Spelljammer (it's not as if WotC has the rights on starships...) and they don't need special rules, just have the characters travel by Nautiloid-like vessel instead of using normal ships or teleportation magic...

So funny story.

Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes has the Giff in it. There is a functioning spelljammer at some location in Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Ghosts of Saltmarsh have some naval encounter tables that can be really easily repurposed to spelljammer asteroids.

And Baldur's Gate 3 is supposedly going to have a tabletop low-level tie in, which may include Spelljammer rules. And supposedly, Keith Baker managed to sell Eberron by mentioning that all the cosmologies were connected...

I am not saying Carceri is a paradise. It is a Lower Plane, it has features similar to other Lower Planes, and it's an ugly place. What I am saying, that it is less tormenting then the other four.

Gehenna is arguably the least miserable plane. You can gain territory there. Carceri? Carceri, everyone around you is personally invested in your misery. Their only enjoyment is making you suffer. The Abyss will abuse you for giggles. Baator will grind every bit of worth out of your soul. Gehenna simply doesn't care, and lets everyone play the game to win at any cost. Hades washes away everything but despair, including that which makes the despair meaningful.

Only the inhabitants of Carceri care about your personal, unrelenting suffering.

And that's terrifying.

[afroakuma]

Why some planes are considered much worse then the others? For example, why Athas and Ravenloft are considered that bad? Why are they considered more dangerous then the "generic" Underdark?

If you want to be reductivist about it, of course you'll never find anything different about it.

Man, those ruvoka really get around!

They do; it's implied - though not elaborated on completely - that there's at least one tribe, and likely more than one in some cases, on each Elemental, Para-Elemental, and Quasi-Elemental Plane.

I have a question about Great Dreamers and their entourages. They're whales, but magical, and as far as I can tell they just travel through wildspace and the flow in a miles wide ball of water that they create by forming a portal to the Plane of Water, but not Air.

Do they need to breathe at all, or do they make air pockets for themselves somehow?

It is specifically described as "airy water," so there is some air content.

Do these whale-like beings (which may be former or future regular whales making up the entourage at least) ever visit the Plane of Water through the portal?

It's not officially documented that they actually possess the ability to make a gate - that's just one plausible theory as to where their bubble comes from. It's not outside the realm of possibility, of course.

Does the Great Dreamer interact with the Animal Lords at all

Obviously nothing is documented about this, but I would expect that the Great Dreamers and a Whale Lord would be aware of one another. How they would feel about one another, well... there are many ways one could choose to go with that.

and how do regular whales interact with the Animal Lords?

Going by the behavior of other animals, I'd suspect the Whale Lord would travel with a rotating pod of whales and occasionally conduct business with powers of the sea and the elsewhales.

[Edreyn]

Maybe I imagine both Gehenna and Carceri wrong? Also, I really don't understand difference between them, I mean difference between behavior of inhabitants.

As I understand, on both Planes everything is built on egoism, cynicism and betraying others before they betray you. The only difference is that on Gehenna, locals are satisfied with their fate.

And Gehenna physical aspects seem to be much more deadly - at least on Carceri there is no lava, no endless slopes and no Styx waterfalls.

As for how Curst is shown in Torment - of course I am familiar with this game. And honestly, I'd say that Curst quests don't really let dive into atmosphere of mischief and intrigue. For comparison, I can mention drow again, specifically drow from Baldur's Gate 2. The whole chapter about getting dragon eggs, and betraying both matron mother and her ambitious daughter, allowing the demon to kill them, then using dragon eggs for your own benefit. Now that's what I call roleplaying betrayal!

So, can someone explain what is really different between Gehenna and Carceri? Except physical parameters.

[Grey Guard]

It's not spelled out in great detail, but it's not unreasonable to connect a few basic dots - gods investing themselves directly in the Blood War are diverting their attention away from their actual worshipers, and putting targets on themselves to boot. If the fiends know they can undermine the opposition's newest bestest ally by sending agents to the Prime with murder on their minds, they will absolutely do so.

The Material Plane is and must be the chiefest concern of deities.

Makes perfect sense.

On that note, of the origins of the Baatezu. Hellbound seems to indicate that all Devils and Demons owe their existence to the Yugoloths, that they're the sluffed off remnants of law and chaos that the 'loths purged themselves of with the Heart of Darkness. In Fiendesh Codex II, we get a long introduction about how the devils were originally archons and angels in the service of the gods of Law and Asmodeus, that took on the evil traits of the demons they fought, and left for Baator to continue their duty of fighting the chaotic demons.

Which is propaganda? Which is true? Are both wrong?

Chaotic side did the same thing - the eladrin and tanar'ri cooperated during the War of Law and Chaos and it's not impossible to think that they might be provoked into it once again, if on a limited scale. A big thing about it now is that Good and Evil are more prominent concerns than they were way back when.

Where can I learn more about the War of Law and Chaos? I get snippets of Eladrins and Tanar'ri working together, and then in a 3.x supplement I get snippets of Eladrin armies helping to genocide the Obyriths.

[Efrate]

If you have read FC 1 and 2 best bet prolly these threads. Might take some time but tons of good stuff.

[afroakuma]

Maybe I imagine both Gehenna and Carceri wrong? Also, I really don't understand difference between them, I mean difference between behavior of inhabitants.

Gehenna is a plane where everyone wants something, where the only rule is survival of the fittest, where there's a place for nothing and nobody unless they can claw it out by themselves. Everything has a price, and there's an honor-among-thieves attitude that says we can all be awful together because everyone has the same ambition - climbing to the top of the heap to avoid the consequences of being at the bottom. It's pretty honest about how horrible it is, and the same is true of the locals. They won't screw you until it's a good idea, because you won't screw them until it's a good idea and it would be a waste of an exploitable resource to screw you ahead of schedule. In one sense, it's one of the most literal planes in terms of showcasing where power lies, and for the avaricious, that's great - if you can build and protect a level spot anywhere on Gehenna, you can charge admission, rent, protection money... sure, it's nakedly despotic here, but you always know where you stand.

Carceri is a place where everyone wants the same thing, and that thing is forever out of reach for them, and they deeply hate the very idea that anyone else might possess it. If Gehenna is Greed, Carceri is Envy, a poisonous morass of downward-clawing that seeks to drown anyone and everyone for the crime of being not as miserable right now as they could be. Carceri is a plane of lies and betrayal, from the seemingly-benign landscapes with poison and caustic death right under the surface, to the locals, who have turned turncoatery into an art form. Carceri is the plane of the crab problem. There's no way to get ahead, and the hunger for spite drives the natives to lash out even at the expense of whatever happinesses they've personally accrued.

Picture a race. Gehenna is the runner who looks back when near the finish line to see if there's someone whose face they could kick off of for a burst of extra speed. Carceri is the runner who gets right to the finish line and simply has to stop and turn back to personally rub it in the face of its rivals - resulting in losing the race.

On that note, of the origins of the Baatezu. Hellbound seems to indicate that all Devils and Demons owe their existence to the Yugoloths, that they're the sluffed off remnants of law and chaos that the 'loths purged themselves of with the Heart of Darkness.

Ah yes, the yugoloth propaganda.

In Fiendesh Codex II, we get a long introduction about how the devils were originally archons and angels in the service of the gods of Law and Asmodeus, that took on the evil traits of the demons they fought, and left for Baator to continue their duty of fighting the chaotic demons.

Technically not at odds with the yugoloth propaganda, since the 'loths claim to have purged their lawful evilness into the ancient baatorians, not the baatezu.

Which is propaganda? Which is true? Are both wrong?

We know of the baatezu that they fell - or at least the original cohort did. It is unlikely that the yugoloth propaganda has any significant truth to it, though of course the best lies often contain a kernel of truth. The FCII story has substantial elements of being an Asmodeus press release moreso than the one definitive truth. As with all of these types of question, it's open for you to make your own determination for your game.

Where can I learn more about the War of Law and Chaos? I get snippets of Eladrins and Tanar'ri working together, and then in a 3.x supplement I get snippets of Eladrin armies helping to genocide the Obyriths.

FCI and FCII are your chief sources; these threads are also useful.

I have a question about Great Dreamers and their entourages. They're whales, but magical...

You are a maker of problems. As soon as I finished answering this, I started ruminating on it and I have been unable to stop myself from doing this:

Spoiler: Tale of the Whale

Show

• Unusual merchants are hiring adventurers to seek out a relic in the shape of a three-pointed star. Upon their departure, strange lights are spotted in the sky, and the next morning a beached whale is found dead near the town.

• A coastal druid has been kidnapped by an obscure cult seeking a sacrifice to their undersea master.

• A dragon steals a chest believed to contain a stone tablet of prophecy.

• On the night of the new moon, people turn up drowned along the shore, along with another whale carcass. Sahuagin are blamed but appear to have problems of their own...

• On a remote isle, a wizard plots to use a petrified god in a bid for immortality.

• Collected by an elsewhale in the wake of their campaign against the wizard, the party are conscripted by the Whale Lord to destroy the petrified god statue by carrying it into Hades.

• The activities of the cult of Yeathan surrounding a dark prophecy have drawn the attention of mind flayers, who are beginning to assemble a psionic beacon that will call some doom from the skies onto the world.

• As storms begin to wrack the seas, the party journeys to another world to meet the darfellans and learn of their war against an apocalyptic force from deep within the seas - a force whose agents now bring war on the darfellans anew.

• The prophecy of the Sky Whale and the Tentacled Eclipse is drawing ever closer. Ancient knowledge is needed to discover a solution - and that means plumbing the haunted depths of a flooded and blasphemous temple to entreat the fiendish Dagon, Demon Prince of the Depths.

• The giants will forge a sky lance to combat the Tentacled Eclipse, but time draws short and the goals of the foe remain unclear. The party journeys to space aboard a stolen illithid vessel to meet with a scholar of lost spelljamming civilizations and discover the true origins of cetacean races.

• Aided by the unlikely alliance of sahuagin and aquatic elves, the party moves to execute a dangerous gamble to give the world more chances than one against the Tentacled Eclipse - they will brave the darkest depths of the seas to confront the Great Unbeheld and destroy the crystalline foothold that the dark god Panzuriel is using to manifest his power in the world.

• Though Panzuriel's anchor to the Material Plane has successfully been displaced, the sky lance strikes the wrong victim - a Great Dreamer, a cosmic whale seeking its millennial consultation with the leviathans of the world, rather than the vast nautiloid that had been hunting it. With the ichor of this semi-divine being raining down on the world, the machinations of the Demon Prince of the Depths are revealed, and an alliance of seafaring peoples must hold off the forces of darkness as a small, brave cohort challenges the manifestation of Dagon and then journeys to the Abyss to prevent his return once and for all. If they fail, the primal ocean will rise anew, and the War of Law and Chaos will reignite on Dagon's terms across the Material Plane itself.

Spoiler: About Whales

Show

• In the wake of the shattering of the First Sphere, a deity awoken by the lifesong of the Spelljammer and the voices carried on it sets out to create vast living beings that will pass on the song across the many worlds that the refugees will settle. Its first children, the kindori, are content to bask in the light of the stars, so it creates new children, powerful but to be removed from interference in the lives of the landed folk through habitation in water. Its next children are the great leviathans, and many lesser children are born in short order.

• In the wake of the shattering of the First Sphere, a dark will watched the violence that spilled forth life into the phlogiston and toward many worlds. This entity desired still more violence, and raged against those who would work harmony instead of bloodshed. While it feared the gnomoi and the Juna, it loathed and lashed out at the deity of the cetaceans, finding itself more evenly matched but slowly being overtaken and sinking into the darkness between worlds to plot its next strike.

• From the depths, the dark entity birthed monsters of foul nature to oppose the creations of its adversary. These in turn created lesser versions such as the dreaded kraken, which would battle the early cetaceans and bring violence to the depths of the seas. However, as the dark one could never organize their direct veneration of it, it plotted to use its agents to bring about a more sinister plan.

• With a single horrific act, the dark entity murdered many cetaceans and cursed the remainder to be reduced to mere beasts, giving dominion over the seas to its progeny. In doing so, it took for itself a name and became venerated by the exultant krakens and monsters it had brought forth. This was Panzuriel.

• Concerned about the possibility of rapid decline and death without its worshipers, the cetacean deity protected its greatest creations - the leviathans - and elected to disperse its own divine essence through the Elemental Planes of Air and Water and into the Material Plane, scattered and no longer meaningfully divine, but still possessed of a mandate to watch over the cetaceans. Thus were born the Great Dreamers, the fragments of the lost cetacean god.

• Panzuriel grew bold and plotted to unleash new servitors which would respond to his divine will to become greater monsters. When he corrupted a water god named Yeathan with the help of Dagon, the other gods of the seas began to fear, correctly, that Panzuriel plotted to subjugate them all. Deep Sashelas, with the help of other sea gods, fought Panzuriel and ejected him from the Material Plane - all but one crystallized leg, at the bottom of the sea.

• The lost souls of the murdered cetaceans were collected by the gods of the upper planes to become the balaenas. Through the strange ways of belief interacting with the planes, elsewhales arose in this time. With the cetaceans having become either too vast and alone to function outside of long periods of hibernation, or else too limited in intellect and nature to be granted an afterlife in the realm of their diminished god, the Beastlands provided a haven for their spirits, and a Whale Lord emerged - a large, thoughtful type motivated to research the unique nature of threats to his patron animal.

• A group of humanoids volunteered to be stewards of the teachings of the cetacean god before the fragmentation and were transformed into darfellans. With their god scattered across wildspace, the darfellans lost their teachings and their religion, ultimately turning to a figure who became the divinity known as the Whale Mother. They remember the dark adversary below the waves.

• Panzuriel's protean servitors attracted the attention of a transformative divine will calling itself Anguileusis. They became the anguiliians and later, through the influence of the devil shark Sekolah, the first sahuagin.

• Anguileusis desired to become corporeal in order to better bond with the race of which he was patron, in the same way that Panzuriel had been manifest on the Prime. Through a ritual, he was born physically into a flesh body, but powerful interference from elven mages caused the rite to fail and for his body to petrify. Recently, a group of adventurers stopped a rite that would have resurrected Anguileusis, resulting in his divinity being trapped inside a stone statue.

• A prophecy was written that a great sky whale (a Great Dreamer) would be confronted by a Tentacled Eclipse (an illithid spelljamming vessel, captained by a mad alhoon who believes the Great Dreamers hold the keys to the secrets of the Juna). It was prophesized that a rain of ichor from the slaying of the sky whale would restore the dark and writhing hateful one from the bottom of the sea.

• With the forces released from the sundering of the cetacean god, the murder of one of his semi-divine offshoots, and the subsequenct incarnation of and then dissolution of the protean Panzuriel on the Material Plane, the demon prince Dagon hoped to exploit instabilities in reality that would result from these events to cause the lawful order of the multiverse to begin to unravel.

[Bronk]

You are a maker of problems. As soon as I finished answering this, I started ruminating on it and I have been unable to stop myself from doing this:

Spoiler: Tale of the Whale

Show

• Unusual merchants are hiring adventurers to seek out a relic in the shape of a three-pointed star. Upon their departure, strange lights are spotted in the sky, and the next morning a beached whale is found dead near the town.

• A coastal druid has been kidnapped by an obscure cult seeking a sacrifice to their undersea master.

• A dragon steals a chest believed to contain a stone tablet of prophecy.

• On the night of the new moon, people turn up drowned along the shore, along with another whale carcass. Sahuagin are blamed but appear to have problems of their own...

• On a remote isle, a wizard plots to use a petrified god in a bid for immortality.

• Collected by an elsewhale in the wake of their campaign against the wizard, the party are conscripted by the Whale Lord to destroy the petrified god statue by carrying it into Hades.

• The activities of the cult of Yeathan surrounding a dark prophecy have drawn the attention of mind flayers, who are beginning to assemble a psionic beacon that will call some doom from the skies onto the world.

• As storms begin to wrack the seas, the party journeys to another world to meet the darfellans and learn of their war against an apocalyptic force from deep within the seas - a force whose agents now bring war on the darfellans anew.

• The prophecy of the Sky Whale and the Tentacled Eclipse is drawing ever closer. Ancient knowledge is needed to discover a solution - and that means plumbing the haunted depths of a flooded and blasphemous temple to entreat the fiendish Dagon, Demon Prince of the Depths.

• The giants will forge a sky lance to combat the Tentacled Eclipse, but time draws short and the goals of the foe remain unclear. The party journeys to space aboard a stolen illithid vessel to meet with a scholar of lost spelljamming civilizations and discover the true origins of cetacean races.

• Aided by the unlikely alliance of sahuagin and aquatic elves, the party moves to execute a dangerous gamble to give the world more chances than one against the Tentacled Eclipse - they will brave the darkest depths of the seas to confront the Great Unbeheld and destroy the crystalline foothold that the dark god Panzuriel is using to manifest his power in the world.

• Though Panzuriel's anchor to the Material Plane has successfully been displaced, the sky lance strikes the wrong victim - a Great Dreamer, a cosmic whale seeking its millennial consultation with the leviathans of the world, rather than the vast nautiloid that had been hunting it. With the ichor of this semi-divine being raining down on the world, the machinations of the Demon Prince of the Depths are revealed, and an alliance of seafaring peoples must hold off the forces of darkness as a small, brave cohort challenges the manifestation of Dagon and then journeys to the Abyss to prevent his return once and for all. If they fail, the primal ocean will rise anew, and the War of Law and Chaos will reignite on Dagon's terms across the Material Plane itself.

Spoiler: About Whales

Show

• In the wake of the shattering of the First Sphere, a deity awoken by the lifesong of the Spelljammer and the voices carried on it sets out to create vast living beings that will pass on the song across the many worlds that the refugees will settle. Its first children, the kindori, are content to bask in the light of the stars, so it creates new children, powerful but to be removed from interference in the lives of the landed folk through habitation in water. Its next children are the great leviathans, and many lesser children are born in short order.

• In the wake of the shattering of the First Sphere, a dark will watched the violence that spilled forth life into the phlogiston and toward many worlds. This entity desired still more violence, and raged against those who would work harmony instead of bloodshed. While it feared the gnomoi and the Juna, it loathed and lashed out at the deity of the cetaceans, finding itself more evenly matched but slowly being overtaken and sinking into the darkness between worlds to plot its next strike.

• From the depths, the dark entity birthed monsters of foul nature to oppose the creations of its adversary. These in turn created lesser versions such as the dreaded kraken, which would battle the early cetaceans and bring violence to the depths of the seas. However, as the dark one could never organize their direct veneration of it, it plotted to use its agents to bring about a more sinister plan.

• With a single horrific act, the dark entity murdered many cetaceans and cursed the remainder to be reduced to mere beasts, giving dominion over the seas to its progeny. In doing so, it took for itself a name and became venerated by the exultant krakens and monsters it had brought forth. This was Panzuriel.

• Concerned about the possibility of rapid decline and death without its worshipers, the cetacean deity protected its greatest creations - the leviathans - and elected to disperse its own divine essence through the Elemental Planes of Air and Water and into the Material Plane, scattered and no longer meaningfully divine, but still possessed of a mandate to watch over the cetaceans. Thus were born the Great Dreamers, the fragments of the lost cetacean god.

• Panzuriel grew bold and plotted to unleash new servitors which would respond to his divine will to become greater monsters. When he corrupted a water god named Yeathan with the help of Dagon, the other gods of the seas began to fear, correctly, that Panzuriel plotted to subjugate them all. Deep Sashelas, with the help of other sea gods, fought Panzuriel and ejected him from the Material Plane - all but one crystallized leg, at the bottom of the sea.

• The lost souls of the murdered cetaceans were collected by the gods of the upper planes to become the balaenas. Through the strange ways of belief interacting with the planes, elsewhales arose in this time. With the cetaceans having become either too vast and alone to function outside of long periods of hibernation, or else too limited in intellect and nature to be granted an afterlife in the realm of their diminished god, the Beastlands provided a haven for their spirits, and a Whale Lord emerged - a large, thoughtful type motivated to research the unique nature of threats to his patron animal.

• A group of humanoids volunteered to be stewards of the teachings of the cetacean god before the fragmentation and were transformed into darfellans. With their god scattered across wildspace, the darfellans lost their teachings and their religion, ultimately turning to a figure who became the divinity known as the Whale Mother. They remember the dark adversary below the waves.

• Panzuriel's protean servitors attracted the attention of a transformative divine will calling itself Anguileusis. They became the anguiliians and later, through the influence of the devil shark Sekolah, the first sahuagin.

• Anguileusis desired to become corporeal in order to better bond with the race of which he was patron, in the same way that Panzuriel had been manifest on the Prime. Through a ritual, he was born physically into a flesh body, but powerful interference from elven mages caused the rite to fail and for his body to petrify. Recently, a group of adventurers stopped a rite that would have resurrected Anguileusis, resulting in his divinity being trapped inside a stone statue.

• A prophecy was written that a great sky whale (a Great Dreamer) would be confronted by a Tentacled Eclipse (an illithid spelljamming vessel, captained by a mad alhoon who believes the Great Dreamers hold the keys to the secrets of the Juna). It was prophesized that a rain of ichor from the slaying of the sky whale would restore the dark and writhing hateful one from the bottom of the sea.

• With the forces released from the sundering of the cetacean god, the murder of one of his semi-divine offshoots, and the subsequenct incarnation of and then dissolution of the protean Panzuriel on the Material Plane, the demon prince Dagon hoped to exploit instabilities in reality that would result from these events to cause the lawful order of the multiverse to begin to unravel.

Well, I'm glad to be a bringer of problems if it results in this amazing history! This is amazing, and I'm fitting it right into my campaign!

[Yanagi]

Gehenna is a plane where everyone wants something, where the only rule is survival of the fittest, where there's a place for nothing and nobody unless they can claw it out by themselves. Everything has a price, and there's an honor-among-thieves attitude that says we can all be awful together because everyone has the same ambition - climbing to the top of the heap to avoid the consequences of being at the bottom. It's pretty honest about how horrible it is, and the same is true of the locals. They won't screw you until it's a good idea, because you won't screw them until it's a good idea and it would be a waste of an exploitable resource to screw you ahead of schedule. In one sense, it's one of the most literal planes in terms of showcasing where power lies, and for the avaricious, that's great - if you can build and protect a level spot anywhere on Gehenna, you can charge admission, rent, protection money... sure, it's nakedly despotic here, but you always know where you stand.

Carceri is a place where everyone wants the same thing, and that thing is forever out of reach for them, and they deeply hate the very idea that anyone else might possess it. If Gehenna is Greed, Carceri is Envy, a poisonous morass of downward-clawing that seeks to drown anyone and everyone for the crime of being not as miserable right now as they could be. Carceri is a plane of lies and betrayal, from the seemingly-benign landscapes with poison and caustic death right under the surface, to the locals, who have turned turncoatery into an art form. Carceri is the plane of the crab problem. There's no way to get ahead, and the hunger for spite drives the natives to lash out even at the expense of whatever happinesses they've personally accrued.

Dang, well put.

I get the impression from Planescape stuff that the gehreleths are at once individual crabs bullying and dragging each other down, but they’re also, collectively, what stops any other party from retaining a solid power position from which to create a solid hierarchy.

[Edreyn]

Gehenna is a plane where everyone wants something, where the only rule is survival of the fittest, where there's a place for nothing and nobody unless they can claw it out by themselves. Everything has a price, and there's an honor-among-thieves attitude that says we can all be awful together because everyone has the same ambition - climbing to the top of the heap to avoid the consequences of being at the bottom. It's pretty honest about how horrible it is, and the same is true of the locals. They won't screw you until it's a good idea, because you won't screw them until it's a good idea and it would be a waste of an exploitable resource to screw you ahead of schedule. In one sense, it's one of the most literal planes in terms of showcasing where power lies, and for the avaricious, that's great - if you can build and protect a level spot anywhere on Gehenna, you can charge admission, rent, protection money... sure, it's nakedly despotic here, but you always know where you stand.

Carceri is a place where everyone wants the same thing, and that thing is forever out of reach for them, and they deeply hate the very idea that anyone else might possess it. If Gehenna is Greed, Carceri is Envy, a poisonous morass of downward-clawing that seeks to drown anyone and everyone for the crime of being not as miserable right now as they could be. Carceri is a plane of lies and betrayal, from the seemingly-benign landscapes with poison and caustic death right under the surface, to the locals, who have turned turncoatery into an art form. Carceri is the plane of the crab problem. There's no way to get ahead, and the hunger for spite drives the natives to lash out even at the expense of whatever happinesses they've personally accrued.

Now, that's a very nice explanation, it really cleared things up for me.
{Scrubbed}

[Tzardok]

I've been thinking about the Japanese pantheon: My understanding is: Izanami, Izanagi, Amaterasu, Susanoo and Tsukuyomi; those are the greater powers of the pantheon. Are there any others? What alignments, domains and favored weapons would they have in 3.5?

[FēlīxPersōnārum]

Well, I'm glad to be a bringer of problems if it results in this amazing history! This is amazing, and I'm fitting it right into my campaign!

I believe it was meant as an adventure hook to actually run as a campaign, though of course you can just assume the campaign’s been run and fill in the blanks on the results, and use that as history for your campaign.

[Yanagi]

I've been thinking about the Japanese pantheon: My understanding is: Izanami, Izanagi, Amaterasu, Susanoo and Tsukuyomi; those are the greater powers of the pantheon. Are there any others? What alignments, domains and favored weapons would they have in 3.5?

Inari, Ebisu, Benten, and Hachimon bear looking at. Raijin and Fujin.

If you count syncretic Shinto-Buddhist figures, Bishamon.

[Caelestion]

Wikipedia claims that Hachiman, the god of war, is another syncretic Buddhist-Shinto figure. He's also notable for having supposedly been one of Japan's legendary emperors before he ascended.

[Bronk]

I believe it was meant as an adventure hook to actually run as a campaign, though of course you can just assume the campaign’s been run and fill in the blanks on the results, and use that as history for your campaign.

You may not have noticed, but he seamlessly wove amazing new lore into existing lore... while also making it a playable scaling campaign.