D&D General Sir Plane "Not Appearing in this Cosmology"

[Incenjucar]

I would not mind some elements of the 4E cosmology merging into the old one a bit, or staying a second possible vision. Heck, imagine a campaign where the two cosmologies clashed!

 

[Scribe]

"And all threads become 4e threads, in time." - EzekielRaiden (Probably)

Just poking fun, as that does seem an interesting story, but...why did they reuse Bane, just to have it be a different Bane...lol

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Bane and Gruumsh are fighting over Chernoggar. Tiamat and Zehir are fighting over the latter's native domain, Tytharion--and because of how her invasion worked, both of them got the part they like least. She and her minions are stuck in the caverns below the surface, while he and his ilk are stuck on the mountainous surface, away from the caverns they prefer. Each is too weak to claim the whole domain, and too proud (and backstabby) to even attempt to cooperate in order to get the part they'd actually want to have.


Indeed. It's worth noting that technically Ioun is also morally grey, she just has her primary rivalry with arguably the dirt-worst deity of the whole pantheon, Vecna. When your enemy is friggin' Vecna, it's easy to come across as a good person purely from that opposition. She does seem to cleave very close to Good, but properly she's Unaligned; she comes across like Girl Genius's Incorruptible Republic of the Immortal Library, which Ardsley Wooster describes as, "They lend out any book to anybody. Many people find this irresponsible." (Emphasis in original.) In a world where magic is demonstrably real and potentially extremely dangerous, an "information wants to be free" attitude really does have some shades of morally dubious reasoning.

You also have the Unaligned Kord on Mount Celestia itself. (I always liked to think of it as Kord being Bahamut's boyfriend, which is why the two most uptight goody-two-shoes deities of the whole pantheon would tolerate a wild child like Kord living among them full time.) Though apparently in some other material he's presented as being more like The Goddamn Batman, as in, a crazy prepared type that's willing to Do What It Takes to fight bad things and protect the things and people he cares about.


Indeed. And because it's my favorite plot point of all time, I can't help bringing this one up.

Context: in 4e, the afterlife is broken. Some souls just...don't get an afterlife. They get to go to the Astral Sea, but they never get a connection to one of the divine domains. If they tried to live on said domain full-time it would friggin' absorb them over time. Really bad juju. Unfortunately, there's basically nothing the gods can do, because the Dawn War, the destruction of the Lattice of Heaven, and the immense damage to their domains has basically fried the structure they built and it's almost miraculous that it works at all. Double unfortunately, this means none of the gods really has any interest in trying to fix the problem, they just shrug their divine shoulders and focus on other things.

Except, of course, Bahamut. Because he is a badass, and he doesn't just talk the talk when it comes to being "one of the most compassionate beings in the multiverse." No, instead, since a direct solution to the "broken afterlife" problem is not forthcoming, Bahamut has commissioned artisans from all the planes to create state-of-the-art DIVINE ASTEROID ARK-SHIPS to house all the souls of folks who didn't get an afterlife. They'll sail the Astral Sea in the vicinity of Celestia and other friendly domains, allowing these lost souls to at least have a safe, protected, comfortable place while the gods look for a more permanent solution. How friggin' awesome is that?! Divine asteroid ark-ships are a canonical thing.

Except....turns out, Kord gets an itchy trigger finger in his concerns about the Dawn War coming back. So he, or at least some of his followers, hijack the prototype ship shortly after its test voyage, intending to use it for some purpose or other related to fighting the remaining Primordials, which has a huge risk of actually triggering the Dusk War instead. So now you're going out, to fight denizens of Celestia specifically at Bahamut's request in order to prevent someone from accidentally-on-purpose triggering friggin' Ragnarok II: Deific Boogaloo.

The fact that this was a perfectly cromulent Epic-level campaign chunk in 4e remains one of the most absolutely metal D&D things I've ever encountered and I love it to death. From top to bottom it's just excessively, profligately cool.

It that from the “the Plane Above” or some other source?

 

[Undrave]

the destruction of the Lattice of Heaven, and the immense damage to their domains has basically fried the structure they built and it's almost miraculous that it works at all. Double unfortunately, this means none of the gods really has any interest in trying to fix the problem, they just shrug their divine shoulders and focus on other things.

Technically Erathis want to restore the Lattice of Heaven and made it her ultimate goal, but it's more because she really wants things to be in order.

Context: in 4e, the afterlife is broken. Some souls just...don't get an afterlife. They get to go to the Astral Sea, but they never get a connection to one of the divine domains. If they tried to live on said domain full-time it would friggin' absorb them over time. Really bad juju. Unfortunately, there's basically nothing the gods can do, because the Dawn War, the destruction of the Lattice of Heaven, and the immense damage to their domains has basically fried the structure they built and it's almost miraculous that it works at all. Double unfortunately, this means none of the gods really has any interest in trying to fix the problem, they just shrug their divine shoulders and focus on other things.

Except, of course, Bahamut. Because he is a badass, and he doesn't just talk the talk when it comes to being "one of the most compassionate beings in the multiverse." No, instead, since a direct solution to the "broken afterlife" problem is not forthcoming, Bahamut has commissioned artisans from all the planes to create state-of-the-art DIVINE ASTEROID ARK-SHIPS to house all the souls of folks who didn't get an afterlife. They'll sail the Astral Sea in the vicinity of Celestia and other friendly domains, allowing these lost souls to at least have a safe, protected, comfortable place while the gods look for a more permanent solution. How friggin' awesome is that?! Divine asteroid ark-ships are a canonical thing.

Except....turns out, Kord gets an itchy trigger finger in his concerns about the Dawn War coming back. So he, or at least some of his followers, hijack the prototype ship shortly after its test voyage, intending to use it for some purpose or other related to fighting the remaining Primordials, which has a huge risk of actually triggering the Dusk War instead. So now you're going out, to fight denizens of Celestia specifically at Bahamut's request in order to prevent someone from accidentally-on-purpose triggering friggin' Ragnarok II: Deific Boogaloo.

The fact that this was a perfectly cromulent Epic-level campaign chunk in 4e remains one of the most absolutely metal D&D things I've ever encountered and I love it to death. From top to bottom it's just excessively, profligately cool.

Indeed! The 4e Cosmology is just the best! And I think it has the best Epic level adventure hooks in D&D history.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

"And all threads become 4e threads, in time." - EzekielRaiden (Probably)

Just poking fun, as that does seem an interesting story, but...why did they reuse Bane, just to have it be a different Bane...lol

Aren’t all the gods a little different in 4e?

At least Bane got a cool origin story, and source for his “name” in 4e.

FYI, Bane is not his name, but a nickname of sorts in 4e. He was the primodria’s “bane” during the Dawn War.

 

[Scribe]

Aren’t all the gods a little different in 4e?

I dont know it well enough. There were enough changes, across the board, that I really didnt look at it much.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Just poking fun, as that does seem an interesting story, but...why did they reuse Bane, just to have it be a different Bane...lol

Because DIFFERENT BANE is BETTER BANE!

Oh.... you weren't talking about Harley Quinn.

....nevermind.

 

[Incenjucar]

The 4E Bane image alone justifies the entire 4E run.

 

[dave2008]

BANE!

 

[Weird Dave]

I think all of the planes in the Great Wheel are heckin' cool (as the kids say?) because it's imagination bound by the flimsiest of rules - which, sure, you can apply to any general D&D setting. But the planes are a framework established within the history of the game as a place where the "rules of reality" don't apply in the same way. However, that being said, they suffer from the same problem as any cool setting - it's not cool if there's nothing to do there. Adventures are conflicts of one sort or another, so finding these conflicts is always what makes a game regardless of where it's set. The planes do allow for some bigger picture things (see the divine ark referenced post earlier which is SUPER AWESOME!) but there's just as much on every plane for smaller events too.

As I was developing each entry in the Codex of the Infinite Planes series (one entry for every plane) I focused on making the planes usable, even the Upper Planes. Setting up mysteries with interesting hooks and highlighting conflicts that the DM could exploit for a game or campaign was my goal. I hope I succeeded, but ultimately that's up to the individual. For my own purposes, I've got notes on dozens of smaller campaigns focused on individual planes that I think would be a lot of fun - hunting giant monsters on the Beastlands and finding out what's making them go berserk; uncovering the mystery of the Ruby Heads of Jovar on Mount Celestia and how they link to a broken lineage of duergar dwarf emperors in Erackinor; tracking down subversive Far Realm influences on Mechanus and why entire gears are transforming into glass; helping the Jotundrott of Ysgard fight back against the Aesir in epic battles of viking metal awesomeness; those kinds of things.

There is a lot of meat on the bones of the planes, but from an official support standpoint in the course of the game, a lot of that meat has been left off the plate.