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    The Vorpal Tribble's Avatar

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    Lightbulb [Plane] The Land Before Time

    This is a work in progress, so suggestions are quite welcome. Basically this is based on the fact that aboleths and other aberrations originally came from a realm before the standard D&D multiverse.

    This is what I've come up with so far...

    -=-=-=-=-

    Orsa



    It is the realm before all realms.
    It is nature of a different order.
    It is the spawning place of the ancestors of aberrations.
    Orsa is the primal beginnings before all beginnings. The realm that came before all that is known came to be. It is a place of not-liquids and semi-solid congealings of an ocean that could swallow the elemental plane of water and not notice. Entire solid realms though float within, universe-sized pockets surrounded by scabrous material of dried slime and bilestone miles thick. Threads of gel thousands of miles long spread and dissolve, all building towards something unknown. The entire plane is as a macroscopic being as thoughtless as a virus and just as adaptable. It is ultimately mindless unless one counts the id, of which it embodies at every level, making it both eternally simple as well as incomprehendingly complex.

    Within all these places creatures grew from a soup of potential where biology and life had no limits. All could grow because it all was possible. Even the most improbable came to be; beings that could think. Thought could shape the ooze for it was eager to become. Hunger and strength is what rules, not to do battle, but to subdue and feast, to survive and absorb.

    One might could say Orsa is naught but an eternally large physical consciousness, a great brain, and indeed its substance responds to the strongest will around. A number of the elder evils themselves are thought by some to have been the beginnings of true brains formed from the muck. Upon gaining knowledge of self however they also began to understand selfishness, and broke away to pursue their own goals. The living plane of Neth itself is theorized to be one such piece of the former realm.

    Orsa Traits
    * No Gravity: Creatures of Orsa move by swimming or being absorbed by the stuff of the plane and congealing elsewhere. The latter acts as the Dimension Door spell, caster level equal to the creature's HD, and the being cannot bring another along.
    * No Time: Nothing ages in Orsa, they merely evolve, growing in complexity until they became something else, often becoming absorbed into the plane.
    * Infinite Size
    * No Alignment Trait: The realm of Orsa has not yet conceived of morals or ethics, abstract ideas that have nothing to do with survival and adaption.
    * No Magic: Magic does not function in Orsa, the basic traits required not having yet evolved. Psionics however work perfectly normally as their rules are those of the mentality behind them, not what is beyond.

    History
    Orsa is where creatures not of the current multiverse originally came. Beings out of time. Holashner, Piscaethces, Shothotugg and so many others formed and gained sentience from the plane, horrible intelligences of deific power. Some rose from the muck as a fish learned to walk upon land, entering the Far Realm so as not to become one with Orsa. Only these truly survived what was to come. The spawning place evolving and coming together to explode outwards in a new way. A new place and new laws, a concept not known before. The multiverse that now exists, of heaven and hell, elements and shadow, man and elf, the gods themselves.

    Many of the aberrations we know today, the aboleth and tsochar, gibbering mouthers and chuuls, are but the shriveled offspring of their progenitors, deformed by the current universe which does not follow the correct laws. The ancestors of these beings when they returned from the Far Realm found the most suitable places they could for their offspring, upon the new planes or upon the widely scattered worlds. They did not thrive, but they survived and remain so until this day.
    Last edited by The Vorpal Tribble; 2007-10-10 at 02:35 PM.

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    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    Valairn's Avatar

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    Default Re: [Plane] The Land Before Time

    This is perfect. It really brings a lot of beautiful symmetry to planar history. Thanks for this.

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    Default Re: [Plane] The Land Before Time

    Why are there no pictures of flying dinosaurs?

    Meanwhile:
    1. Why doesn't druidic nature magic work there - surely this is a place of such uber-nature that their spells would do incredible feats of wonder?

    2. Why doesn't sorcerous magic work? It's natural!

    3. Why doesn't warlock magic work? Or does it? If not, it's a natural ability - it should! If it does, Yaaay!

    4. Why doesn't warmage magic work? It is merely a force of the soul expressed through aggression?

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    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: [Plane] The Land Before Time

    But the real question is: do three horns never play with long necks?

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    Default Re: [Plane] The Land Before Time

    Quote Originally Posted by Kaelaroth View Post
    Meanwhile:
    1. Why doesn't druidic nature magic work there - surely this is a place of such uber-nature that their spells would do incredible feats of wonder?

    2. Why doesn't sorcerous magic work? It's natural!

    3. Why doesn't warlock magic work? Or does it? If not, it's a natural ability - it should! If it does, Yaaay!

    4. Why doesn't warmage magic work? It is merely a force of the soul expressed through aggression?

    I like it
    Because all magic relies on something external. Sorcerors have an inherent connection to whatever it is that makes magic work, but they still have to have access to the magicky stuff. That's why we have antimagic fields but null psionics fields: Antimagic fields literally repel magic from their borders, so that magic fails to function within them, while null psionics fields simply nullify any powers that are manifested into them. This ur-plane simply has no connection to whatever causes magic to function, just as a sorceror can't use his natural magic in a dead magic plane.
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    Lord Iames Osari's Avatar

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    Default Re: [Plane] The Land Before Time

    Quote Originally Posted by Waspinator View Post
    But the real question is: do three horns never play with long necks?
    I wanna know too.

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    The Vorpal Tribble's Avatar

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    Default Re: [Plane] The Land Before Time

    What Mewtarthio said basically.

    I'm working on a druid PrC of this old order where they can give up levels in druid to become one of the 'other' druids, sort of how a paladin can become a blackguard.

    I'm pondering though if I shouldn't let them start being able to use psionics instead of magic...


    Quote Originally Posted by Waspinator View Post
    But the real question is: do three horns never play with long necks?
    *WHACK*

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    Lord Iames Osari's Avatar

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    Default Re: [Plane] The Land Before Time

    Hey, VT, it's your fault for naming this "The Land Before Time". You shoulda known people would be coming here looking for stats for Bigfoot, and Ducky, and Spike, and Cera, and all the rest of those characters whose names I can't remember. There was a pterodactyl named Pitri or something, wasn't there?

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    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: [Plane] The Land Before Time

    What's next, are you going to tell me that there ISN'T a place somewhere on this plane named the Great Valley? I'm dissappointed with you. For shame......

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    Default Re: [Plane] The Land Before Time

    Change thread title to "The Primordial Plane"? Other than that it looks good. It no longer exists for (almost?) every campaign world currently being played, right?
    Would make a VERY different campaign setting (just wind the clock back untold millenia). What with Dimension Door availible to everything (at will?) and no gravity and psionics only... mutations and changes might be more common directions of advancement than standard classes... and equipment might be almost nil...
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    Default Re: [Plane] The Land Before Time

    Quote Originally Posted by DracoDei View Post
    It no longer exists for (almost?) every campaign world currently being played, right?
    Oh, most definitely. I basically made it as a base for the PrC I'm going for.

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    Default Re: [Plane] The Land Before Time

    Love it, its like Evolution without the survival of the fittest
    from,
    EE

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    Default Re: [Plane] The Land Before Time

    What about the Far Realm?
    That's far temporally, as well as in every other way . . .
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