Help me build an OGC outer plane cosmology

[VelvetViolet]

Annoyed at the fact that the official D&D cosmology is closed content, I wanted to create my own great wheel for publishers to play around with. But I wanted to ask for suggestions on how to detail the various planes. The Pathfinder outer planes are OGC, as are the planes in Classic Play: Book of Planes, so both those sources will be used.

Right now I've got the basic geometry of the great wheel done:


There are 25 planes for every alignment: the standard nine as well as the neutral alignments with one or more tendencies. This model helps to differentiate it from the traditional great wheel.

Now, I'm going for a Gygaxian feel, so what planes should I fill these spaces out with?

Note that there are not a fixed number of outer planes, so there may be more than one plane for each alignment. These may be considered layers of the same plane for game mechanics, but a given layer can be dramatically different from another layer to the point of seeming like a different plane with the same alignment. For example, the Lawful Evil plane includes both Dante's Nine Hells and the Chinese's Ten Courts of Hell.

 

[Nellisir]

Are you looking for "new" plane suggestions, or ones taken from folklore, or just from existing OGC sources? I'd start where Gygax started - folklore & mythology. Dante's Hell would work in LE slot, and the Ten Courts in the LN(E) space.

 

[VelvetViolet]

Are you looking for "new" plane suggestions, or ones taken from folklore, or just from existing OGC sources? I'd start where Gygax started - folklore & mythology. Dante's Hell would work in LE slot, and the Ten Courts in the LN(E) space.

All three. I need to fill out all 25 outer planes and create a proper OGC substitute for the original Manual of the Planes. The only OGC sources I know of are the Pathfinder outer planes and the Classic Play: Book of Planes outer planes, and this unfinished list for a scrapped OGC outer planes book. I'm going to try to include as much of those as possible.

EDIT: This is very vaguely what I'm going for, but I'm going more for a general great wheel setup that includes the various interpretations of outsiders from D&D 2e/3e, 4e and Pathfinder in one cohesive cosmology.

Something I've found particularly interesting would be the organization of the lower planes and the fiends. For example, the big three (demons, devils, daemons) could be generic terms for fiends of particular alignment, with a number of different races within those alignments. The Katabolzu (scheming plotter devils), Rabas'ri (rampaging destroyer demons), Ma'atori (scheming plotter demons), Iatzirath (lying profiteer daemons), Euthanatoi (militant nihilistic daemons), for example. Not only that, but there'd also be the proto-fiends like the lawful Ahrimanes and the chaotic Qlippoth that were overthrown, and the mysterious neutral evil Anathemas still worshiped by the Iatzirath.

 

[Nellisir]

I don't have the Book of Planes, though I thought I did. :/
I'll think about this and see what I come up with.

 

[VelvetViolet]

I've got some ideas for new outsider races to fill out the milieu.

Geo-Metrons -- inhabitants of (insert absolute lawful plane here) and exemplars of order, the Geo-Metrons manifest as floating spheres, cubes and other polyhedrons that exist partially in the 4th dimension, giving them a rather... unique appearance. They attack by firing laser beams. The ultimate goal of the Geo-Metrons is to restructure the mutliverse into a state of perfect, unchanging, self-defeating mathematical order, thereby averting the heat death of the universe caused by entropy and chaos. They even consider life itself an abomination for its chaotic, changing nature. The fate of races in their path is to be converted into "hyper-life" servitors (e.g. cenobites, husks, necrons, therians, nightmarish transhuman future gone wrong, etc); according to some sources, the Plane of Agony (see Tome of Horrors) was created by a Geo-Metron god named "Colossus" precisely for this purpose.

Mazoku -- inhabitants of the Thousand Hells, the Mazoku are the least evil of the devils, though this is a cold comfort to the souls of the damned they are obliged to torture for a living (for the purposes of purifying them of evil according to official doctrine, rather than using them for fuel like the Katabolzu do). A quirk of the Mazoku is that they become more humanoid as their power increases: lower class devils appear animalistic or monstrous, while upper class devils appear as attractive humans or elves. The Mazoku hierarchy is organized into clans that jockey with one another for power, each led by a Demon King (gui wang); the Thousand Hells are collectively ruled by the Demon Emperor (yanluo wang, "king of hell"), who takes a daughter from each Demon King as his concubines, and his resultant children (who act as representatives of their respective clans) are then expected to compete with one another for the blessing to become the next Demon Emperor. While technically devils, the Mazoku refer to themselves as the "demon race" when translating to other languages (their language does not distinguish between demon and devil), and refer to other fiendish races collectively as "akuma" ("fiend," as the word "mazoku" does not carry connotations of evil like "fiend" does).

EDIT: More ideas:

Billions of years ago, twin primordial deities of law named Ahura Mazda and Ahriman set out to order the planes that were forming from the dreams of their father Chaos. Ahura Mazda represented Good, while his brother Ahriman represented Evil. Ahura Mazda wished to make the plane that would eventually become Heaven the center of the universe, while Ahriman wanted to make the plane that would become Hell into the center of the universe. So they fought, and Ahura Mazda won and reluctantly cast his brother into the lower planes. Ahrimane crashed into the deepest pit of Hell, and there he lay for eternity, dead but dreaming. From his corpse crawled the first of what would become the Ahrimanes: horrifying tentacled monstrosities that consumed all light they came across, the precursors to the devils.

By the time of Lucifer's fall and the coming of the Katabolzu, the Ahrimanes had largely vanished from the known universe for unknown reasons. The few that still existed in Hell were but pale shadows of their ancestors, but even then the depths of the their evil and their order was so great that even Asmodeus feared them. So he killed the ones that could be killed, and the few that could not were imprisoned in vile ice and stone. Even then the nupperibo, weak devils formed from petitioners without outside interference, could still metamorphose into new Ahrimanes if given enough centuries. So these pathetic creatures are ruthlessly abused by the Katabolzu, and should they show any promise, sometimes "promoted" by being rendered down, purified of taint, and reformed into lemures.

But the most disturbing of the Ahrimanes are not the tentacled monsters that battled the qlippoth in long past archaic days of old or the revolting nupperibos that still hold the Katabolzu in fear, but those few Ahrimanes who, unlike their brethren, were (and should they be alive today and wandering the planes, still are) physically indistinguishable from human beings. Billions of years before the gods and men came into existence.

EDIT: More ideas:

I'd like to use the visions of Hell, Limbo, Heaven, Purgatory and Pandemonium as they appeared in Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost, since it's public domain and is very iconic. We can take some inspiration from the video game adaption since adventures in Hell will typically follow that kind of formula.

 

[Orius]

Well, you could go back to some of the suff Gary yoinked from mythology and the like to use for the planes. That stuff is pretty much public domain. This is particularly true when you look at the orignal names of the planes rather than the later (more easily copyrighted!) names introduced in Planescape. Since you're drawing from Zoroastrian and Abrahamic cosmology, you can probably find more ideas from dipping into that well.

The Nine Hells, as stated, is a rip off-of Dante's Inferno, so you can use that. Similarly, Celestia is based partly on Purgatory, so that's also useable, perhaps place Purgatory at N(LG) and Paradise at LG especially when accounting for the Divine Comedy and the underlying Christian theology.

Hades/The Gray Waste can be represented by something like the Greek Underworld though it might be better placed in the N(E) slot, with Tartarus at NE. Yes, Tartarus is normally between Hades and The Abyss, but the Greek Underworld wasn't particularly a place of punishment for the wicked. I believe the evil associations come from Greek translations of the Bible translating Sheol as Hades and then later Christians associating the concept with Hell. You could also put in the Elysian Fields and the Isles of the Blessed if you want more from Greek mythology, bump the Elysian Fields down to N(G) and put the Isles at NG, or just mix them and keep Elysium where it is.

Gladshiem/Ysgard you can replace with Asgard. It was orignally valkyries and Norse warriors battling all day and drinking all night in preparation for Ragnarok anyway, so just go back to the source. Niflheim was originally conflated with Hades/The Gray Waste, but that could maybe go somewhere around N(CE) or replace Pandemonium.

The Happy Hunting Grounds/Beastlands could remain a place for animal spirits, but I'd bump it down to a neutral spot. The Happy Hunting Grounds is a really bad name for the plane as described in Planescape (no one hunting there is going to be happy!), but the Beastlands of course is IP. Or you could just incorporate it into a Spirit World (see below), since animals are neutral.

Stuff Gary didn't use but would work pretty good with the setup:

Annwn would fit well in an unused spot on the Upper Planes. You could maybe mix in some elements of Avalon, Tir na Nog (removing it from its shoehorned spot in the Outlands), and other Celtic ideas as well.

A generic Spirit World could make a good fill-in for The Outlands.

The Mayan Xibalba would make a great Lower Plane, I'd place it where Tartarus/Carceri or Pandemonium is.

I'd also recommend Diyu as well, but given your writeup on the Mazoku, it looks like you're already using some of those ideas. If they're the "least evil" of the devil races, perhaps their realm could replace Acheron?

 

[VelvetViolet]

Yeah, I was thinking having an outer plane for each of the mythic afterlives/pantheons. The Happy Hunting Grounds is the afterlife for Great Plains Indians; and I was thinking of making it a layer of a garden plane that represents the various "garden of eden" myths and afterlives. Pathfinder places Nirvana at neutral good and Elysium at chaotic good (the Agathions are actually pretty clever as the NG celestials, since they resemble animal-headed hindu deities). The Outlands I would use as the Plane of Concordant Opposition, which is also an Inner Plane (to match with some Gygax material); not sure whether I should retain the quirk about it looking different for each observer. You should read up on the Pathfinder planes and the Book of Planes outer planes; BoP adds some really interesting places like Chasm (a rent between the lower planes and the upper planes through which damned souls are thrown), Infernus (a catch-all for the lower planes, where devils and demons squabble for souls), the Afterworld (an afterlife for everyone of non-evil alignment), and Mâl (a dead plane that is slowly reawakening an ancient evil).

I found a lot of names that could be used for outer planes: Alfardaws, Assama, Garden of Irem, Nirvana, Olympus, Elysium, Valhalla, the Happy Hunting Grounds, Shangri-La, Wonderland, Erewhon, Xanadu, Eden, Pearly Gates, Seventh Heaven, Zion, Fairyland, inferno, abyss, gehenna, hades, pandemonium, perdition, the pit, abaddon, hell, sheol, chasm, jahannan, domdaniel, purgatory, limbo.

I've also got the names of the fiendish races down:
Katangelos (plotting schemer devils) - devils as presented in 4e (and pathfinder), primarily humanoid and with goblin/gremlin-like classes, few to no big ugly monsters. These are originally fallen angels who took over Hell from the remaining Ahrimanes.
Paroketh (lying profiteer daemons) - these are daemons that exist to make a profit off planar warfare, since their home plane is situated in a war zone; their quirk is that it's impossible to tell if they are lying by any means whatsoever; the lower castes resemble insects, while the higher castes resemble rakshasa.
Scelesti (militant hedonistic daemons) - these are the daemons from GR's Book of Fiends, who tempt mortals to further the cause of evil; divided into "choirs" representing the seven sins
Nefandi (militant nihilistic daemons) - these are the daemons presented in Pathfinder: they want to return the multiverse to a state of nonexistence
Rabisu (rampaging destroyer demons) - these are demons close to 4e vision of demons; they were created by the Qlippoth to fight the Mazzikim
Mazzikim (plotting schemer/militant hedonistic demons) - these are the demons as presented in 3e and Pathfinder: they have humanoid and goblin/gremlin-like classes in addition to big ugly monsters and exalt in sin and tempting mortals; they were created from experiments by daemons, and later partially conquered the Abyss
Ahrimanes (proto-devils) - the first deviloid race to exist, vanished mysteriously
Qlippoth (proto-demons) - the first demonkin race to exist, were overthrown by the Rabisu and the Mazzikim
Anathemas (proto-daemons) - the first daemonkind race to exist and believed to be the source of all evil, they created the Paroketh and Scelesti before vanishing
Ruchin (demodands), including Hendiadys (shaggy), Scheheleth (tarry), Khaymawr (slimy) - a race somewhere between daemons and demons, created by the Anathema Eipos ("east wind") to be servants

There's also the dumalduns, dreggals, and maelvis.

EDIT: Note that different afterlives can be separate layers of the same plane, rather than having to argue which one gets the spot.

EDIT: Pathfinder also combines several of the outer planes, since it dispenses with border planes. For example, Tartarus was folded into the Abyss.

 

[Nellisir]

Alignment = Plane = Inhabitants (subsets)
Colored (Pure) Planes
N = "Spirit World" =
NG = Nirvana - Elysium =
NG(C) = Elysian Fields =
CG = =
CN(G) = Asgard =
CN = =
CN(E) = Niflheim - Xibalba =
CE = = Qlippoth, Demons (Rabisu, Mazzikim)
NE(C) = = Ruchin (Hendiadys, Scheheleth, Khaymawr)
NE = Infernus = Anathemas, Daemons (Paroketh, Scelesti, Nefandi)
NE(L) = Tartarus =
LE = Thousand Hells - Ten Courts - Nine Hells = Ahrimanes, Devils (Katangelos, Mazoku)
LN(E) =
LN = Aleph = Geo-Metrons
LN(G) = =
LG = Paradise =
NG(L) = =

Tinted (Tainted) Planes
N(G) = Eden - Happy Hunting Grounds =
N(CG) = Isles of the Blessed - Tir na Og =
N(C) = Annwn =
N(CE) = =
N(E) = Nod =
N(LE) = Hades =
N(L) = =
N(LG) = Purgatory =

Notes: I tried to put associated planes in some kind of relationship. Annwn is represented in different ways, but the inhabitants often play an adversarial role, and it seemed a good locale for wild and dangerous fey creatures. Tir na Og and the Isles of the Blessed are very similar concepts. Going from neutrality to evil, one encounters Chasm. The numbered Hells are all subsets of the Thousand Hells. Aleph is "first" in the eyes of its inhabitants. The greek for best, or perfect, might also work here. Hades got bumped to the N(LE) slot because it's not wholly adversarial and it's got a clear ruler.

 

[VelvetViolet]

Some good ideas, but I think that Chasm could be more appropriate not as a plane, but a nexus outer plane like Yggdrasil, Oceanus, and the rivers of the underworld (Styx, Acheron, Lethe, Phlegethon, Cocytus). In this way, Chasm is a border separating the lower planes from the middle and upper planes.

 

[Nellisir]

Some good ideas, but I think that Chasm could be more appropriate not as a plane, but a nexus outer plane like Yggdrasil, Oceanus, and the rivers of the underworld (Styx, Acheron, Lethe, Phlegethon, Cocytus). In this way, Chasm is a border separating the lower planes from the middle and upper planes.

Fine with me. I'd put them into a separate category of "transitive" (or nexus) planes.

Incidentally, my list isn't meant as a definitive thing, just a way to organize ideas and suggestions so they can be seen easily. It's confusing for me to keep it all in my head when a bunch of names and suggestions are thrown out in a paragraph.