Reinventing the Wheel: A Discussion on Cosmology

[FoxWyrd]

I would like to hear different people's cosmologies in their homebrew settings. Would anyone like to share?

[Xuc Xac]

The world exists at the intersection of the four elements, which exist in the four cardinal compass directions and are not separate planes. As you travel north, it gets colder and the wind howls incessantly. Eventually, the ground is scoured away and there is nothing but wind and clouds. As you travel south, the land becomes rockier and more mountainous. Eventually, the mountains rise far above the tree line and there is only barren rock. As you travel west, it gets hotter and drier. Eventually, everything ignites and melts and there is only a vast expanse of flames. As you travel east, it gets wetter and the rain is unrelenting. Swamps give way to an endless rain drenched sea.

The upper and lower planes are more layers of this same reality. Move down a step and you are in the ethereal realm, a ghostly version of the world where "nature spirits" and dreams dwell. Move a step deeper and you enter the shadow realm, a dark and twisted reflection of the world where people go when they have nightmares and where angry or hungry ghosts dwell. Below the shadow realm are the hell realms and the chaotic formless depths of the dark abyss.

If you move up from the material world, you enter the Astral plane, a swirling and chaotic mess of ideas and concepts that give shape to the world below. The Astral can sometimes be accessed by dreams. The ethereal is where you dream of what is or was; the astral is where you get inspiration for what may yet be. The astral is more often touched by meditation or daydreaming or sudden flashes of genius insight. Rise higher and you enter the immortal realms of angels and demigods who can shape their domains by will according to their own ideals. Rise higher and you enter the heavenly realms, perfected worlds of the transcendent gods.

All of the elemental "poles" of the material plane also extend into these upper and lower layers of reality. Hellfire is literally from the fiery end of the hell realm. The howling winds of pandemonium are from the windy end of the abyss.

Supernatural creatures can actively exist in multiple layers at once. Faeries are both material and ethereal at the same time. The "unseelie" type go as deep as shadow. Things like phase spiders and blink dogs drift back and forth across the boundary. Angels and demons are generally immaterial but can incarnate by forming a material body from raw matter or possessing a body that already exists on the material plane. Most weaker undead are animated by spirits from the shadow realm (sometimes the dead body's original inhabitant claws its way back up out of sheer greed for more life) but most powerful undead are inhabited by devils and demons trying to leapfrog up a few levels.

Nobody is quite sure how the Far Realm fits in. Some say it's at the bottom below the deepest abyss. Some say it's somewhere "outside" of elemental space-time, not higher or lower like the known planes, but somehow in another dimension in a direction orthogonal to all known layers of reality. Anybody who really understands the Far Realm is completely mad and incapable of communicating their knowledge to anyone else without also driving them mad. Whatever the Far Realm is, it's apparently incompatible with anything else between the heavens and the abyss.

[Eldan]

I usually run the Planescape wheel, but for a current game I simplified it a bit, since we had some newbies.

There are roughly four other planes. Hades, the Underworld, which is grey and misty and where the souls of the dead linger until they slowly fade. Elysium, world of the gods, where the greatest heroes are reincarnated as giants and demigods and eternally go on glorious quests and fight each other. And Tartaros, where the titans are imprisoned and guarded by divine warmachines of living brass inhabited by spirits of fire.
And between them the spirit world, which follows the geography of the real world, but in very strange ways. Ocean sufaces are deserts of glass in the shape of waves. The clouds are forests of ghostly white trees. Mountains are sometimes much higher in the real world and allow climbing to Elysium. The deepest caves are filled with shadows that behave more like a thick liquid than the absence of light.

And of course, I had some fun with the material world, too. Civilization is mainly confined to an internal sea. The entire sea is overshadowed by the world tree, which grows on a central island. On the branches of the tree hang the stars, which are fixed and unmoving. Far from the world tree, in distant lands, the skies are just black at night, which makes navigation impossible. The moon is driven along the branches of the world tree every night by a silver chariot, solemnly guarded by the moon spirits. The sun is a dictatorial spirit of fire, light and judgement, who was banished to the furthest heaven by the gods when it tried to destroy the Earth for its sins.
The world is flat, of course. Learned clerics, especially those of the sky and sea gods, know that. After all, it takes just some simple geometry and measurement of shadows to tell how far away the celestial bodies are and to show that the ground is not curved.

[jqavins]

Have a look at this post. Cosmology is below the break.

Most weaker undead are animated by spirits from the shadow realm (sometimes the dead body's original inhabitant claws its way back up out of sheer greed for more life) but most powerful undead are inhabited by devils and demons trying to leapfrog up a few levels.

Ooh, this I like. This I'll probably steal.

Nobody is quite sure how the Far Realm fits in. Some say it's at the bottom below the deepest abyss. Some say it's somewhere "outside" of elemental space-time, not higher or lower like the known planes, but somehow in another dimension in a direction orthogonal to all known layers of reality.

Maybe some think it at the top, above the highest level of the heavens instead? Maybe some think it touches both, looping around through the "outside"?

[akma]

I actually invent different cosmologies all the time. Partly because I like inventing stuff, but also because I never liked the use of the classical elements and moral alignments as a force of nature (although I will one day make a world where there will be a universal definition of good with physical implications, which will differ significantly from commonly accepted western values). I also strayed farther and farther away from the concept of focusing on how an RPG game in the world could work, so it allowed me to go crazy.

Here are some examples:
A) There are 7 worlds, each with different natural laws and inhabitants, although they all have humans and they all share some natural laws (like "Everything is pushed towards the middle", which usually manifests as gravity and sometimes in hidden ways). The simplest way to travel between worlds is to draw a complex symbol, a different one for each world, and walk through it. It can be performed by anyone, but only few know how to draw the symbols. You have no control over where in the world you will reach, but reaching it won't kill you (so if you'd travel in such a way to earth, you could reach South Africa or Greenland, but you would not travel to the middle of the ocean or 1 kilometer above ground).

That method doesn't quite work for 3 specific worlds: one is the world of the gods, that to enter it you must come quickly after someone with the same hierarchical status as you dies or leaves; the world of abominations, which can be accessed through mirrors and the reason why the symbol thing is more complicated in this case is a technobabble I don't want to get into right now; and a world nicknamed "the locked world". The reason it doesn't work with the locked world is because everything is already in it; everything is part of the same physical space, but with huge distances between them, and each of the other worlds has a sort of shell in which they exist, which is hard to break through even if you manage to reach it. The locked world is infinite, and the other 6 worlds are inside gigantic plants on a weird surface.

B) The world is series of worlds in which you go through in order, and you continue to the next one after you go through final death. What I described so far is a template I would likely also use in future worlds. However, in the world I built it for, each of those worlds is called a "Level" and is part of "The Game". Each level has a different scoring system, which is kept in secret and is always something that goes against natural tendencies, and even the existence of the objective scoring system is a secret. Memories of previous levels are repressed, but some small effects on personality and ways of thinking could be retained, and the denizens of the world have the innate understanding that the world is a game. Each level is very different then those before it, including the rules of the game (=laws of physics), but each contains elements of the previous, each is more complex then the previous, and each will eventually destruct itself. Time does not exist between levels, and you could be the first to die in level 2 and the last to be born in level 3.

C) A world in which the players are intelligent tribal parasitic micro-organisms which travel between hosts and eat nerves. I actually haven't developed this setting much, but want to build an RPG system for it one day.

D) A fantasy world focused on planetary wars. There are no spaceships or advanced technology, but you can teleport between planets. Each solar system is also a different pantheon whose inhabitants worship, and has a planet dedicated as a world of the dead, and at least one planet focused on creating soldiers (=life forms). All of the solar systems and other celestial bodies are at war with each other, and all move towards the center of the universe for the conclusion of their war. There are celestial bodies that don't move, called stakes ("stakes in the heart of the universe" is the phrase that constantly came to my mind while thinking about it). The stakes are also at war with everyone, have very unusual and unique characteristic besides not moving and are considered horrible abominations that must be destroyed. I wanted this world to be for D&D, but I underdeveloped it because I hadn't decided how to deal with some issues, like how could adventurers effect wars with billions of participants without always resorting to epic levels, the distribution of races, dynamics of adventures on a single planet, etc.

[Pyre_Born]

Here's a rather hastily made map for a player asking for reference for their character.

https://screenshot.net/or3weuz

The names on the map are basically the "academic" names. Outside of academies it's usually the plane above, the mortal realms, and so on.

Not much exciting about the layout.

• The Mortal Realm [Materia] is the mortal coil, the physical realm, the multiverse. It is where the campaign world resides, and where everything seems to converge and hang in the balance (because the powerful creatures don't want to destroy THEIR homes after all).
• The Spirit Realm [Primeria] is the first attempt at a mortal realm, home to the first of the gods mortal children. A bit of the Feywild, a bit of Pathfinders First World, and a bit of Wonderland. Currently trying to remove the taint of the Realm Beyond after the Fey made some horrible mistakes when their parents (the gods) "abandoned" them and they threw temper tantrums.
• The Elemental Realm [Primordia] is the heart of creation, the raw essence of everything. It's basically the Elemental Chaos, a swirling vortex of chaos and primal energies.
• The Realm Between [Aquaedia] is the "transitive" plane, more 40k warp, less Astral/Ethereal. A gift from the Grand Fate to allow the poor mortals a chance to see all that they can in the short lives they have. Not so much dangerous as it is still misunderstood. Allows connection to most places in creation, assuming the residents aren't powerful enough to stop it.
• The Plane Above [Atheria] is basically the Astral Sea. An infinite sea of divine energy with countless planar sections. Home of the Gods and others that just don't like the static nature of the Material Realms.
• The Plane Behind [Simulcria] is the cosmic balance to the light and life of creation. A bit Shadowfell, a bit Ravenloft, basically the place the PC's go when they want to taste a bit of grimdark.
• The Plane Below [Inferia] is the Realm of Aurus, the Fallen Light. An attempt to create a section of creation for himself and his freed Angels. It's not really "Hell", it's not a fiery landscape bent on the destruction and punishment of mortal souls, it's more of a semi-chaotic realm where each fallen angel creates a realm to suite their needs, much like the gods in the in the Plane Above. Some hospitable to mortals, some not so much.
• The Plane Beyond [Nihilia] is sort of the Far Realm. I describe it more like the Wyld from Exalted. This is the remains of what once was, before the Shattered One began the Song of Creation and the blasphemy of form became the norm. It's residents don't so much care about mortals, they are after all insignificant and powerless, but they do seek the destruction of creation and a return to their formless, ever changing home.

That's a general rundown of the overall structure of my cosmology, not much, just adjusted for my game and group. I was struggling to find a not "great wheel" system I enjoyed, so when 4e came out and the cosmology was close to what I was thinking of, it definitely influenced it a lot and has changed drastically over the years. So far this iteration has changed very little, so I think this'll be the "final" version.

[Lateral]

I've been working on something for my homebrew setting. The big thing about it is that the conflict between metaphysical Good and Evil is gone, and replaced by Law and Chaos as the big metaphysical duality underpinning the setting. It uses the old model of the inner planes--- six primary (Air, Fire, Earth, Water, Positive, and Negative) and twelve secondary (the paraelemental and quasielemental planes), but they're not really traversable like they are conventionally, existing more as reservoirs of pure elemental energy. Everything exists within a field of Law, separating the Interior Planes from the infinite Chaos beyond; its poles are the Positive and Negative Energy Planes, and it's powered by the rotation of the Material Plane. The whole system is sort of a composite of the pre-3.5 planar polyhedron, Spelljammer's crystal spheres, and the Earth's magnetic field. There are also no gods (well, no active ones--- religion is, essentially, as it is in the real world); divine casters draw power from the elemental and energy planes, while arcane casters manipulate primal Law and Chaos. That also serves as a justification for why arcane magic is so dangerous and unpredictable; the setting's recent history includes a giant arcane ****up that led to two of the world's most powerful nations being replaced by an empire of wights.