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In the 12 gods article under the religion, it says that Hadeys 'is said to dwell and rule in the Shadowlands '. This could be the Shadowfell just like the Raven Queen rules there in the standard cosmology??

Huh ... I guess I always just assumed the Transitive Isles had those. The Feywild is a region in the character creation guide, but other than that, I can't think of any other mention of cosmology.

After reading the creation myth in the wiki, I think there's potential for the 4e cosmology to fit. Elysium could either be the Astral Sea or the Feywild, though the Astral Sea probably fits better. Herebus is an easy, easy fit for the Shadowfell. Chaos could be the Elemental Chaos (surprise!!), and Thartharus the Abyss.

The question that comes to mind is how these realms are structured. Are they all fractured and shifting, like the Shifting Sea? Perhaps just the 'planes' which mirror the material plane in 4e: Herebus and whatever the Feywild equivalent is? Or do these planes even mirror the 'normal' world, or are they separate worlds like in Greco-Roman myth? The Astral Sea in the default 4e cosmology sounds pretty similar to the Isles to me to start with. I'm not sure they all have to be as transient as the shifting seas, since they'll be visited much less often, but the shifting seas idea definitely makes modularity a lot easier to accomplish.

Phoenix8008 said:

In the 12 gods article under the religion, it says that Hadeys 'is said to dwell and rule in the Shadowlands '. This could be the Shadowfell just like the Raven Queen rules there in the standard cosmology??

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I would say ... something like that, yes. (Note that I had no part in writing that, I'm just speculating.) It would probably be Herebus from the creation myth. Very similar concepts in any case. Though it does raise the question of whether the Shadowfell mirrors the 'real' world - an underworld that is mostly water and drifting islands doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Of course, it would be good to get some input from the setting's creators to see what their intents were.

The Transitive Isles definitely has a Feywild, though I'm not sure how much is known about it. I think it features in one or two of Halford's games to some degree. I think Kythira is fairly heavily Feywild-connected, and to a lesser extent the non-urban areas on Daunton's island.

Part of the reason there's so little about the Feywild in the setting is that, well, there's not much information about the Feywild, outside of perhaps the Manual of Planes, which I don't have, and may not have been available at the time. It's really shockingly poorly explained in the core books. I remember when we were talking about Kythira, I shuffled through my core books looking for where it actually talks about the Feywild -- surely it must be there somewhere, I thought -- and came away with the following information: There's something called the Feywild. It's Fey. And probably wild. That's pretty much it. I decided to think of it as kind of like the traditional Underhill concept; a mysterious semi-parallel plane-like thing that Elves and Eladrin are native to.

About the shadowfell I know basically nothing. Anyone want to give a few sentences of summary?

Feywild is an echo of the 'real' world as it would be if all natural. No human cities or other changes from the natural world except for Eladrin cities.

Shadowfell is a dark echo of the 'real' world as it would be if civilization was mostly destroyed or very degraded and infused with much essence of death and darkness.

Recently got Manual of the Planes and love the fluff it adds! Especially how it finds places in the planes to put old favorites from editions long past. Can you say Spelljammer? Or the Isle of Dread? Not huge writeups, but they are mentioned and placed in places and ways that make sense with the 4E cosmology.

The Feywild is Middle Umbra influenced Penumbra; the Shadowfell the Lower Umbra influenced Penumbra (Shadowlands), in oWoD-speak.

*snip*

Lord Sessadore said:

The question that comes to mind is how these realms are structured. Are they all fractured and shifting, like the Shifting Sea? Perhaps just the 'planes' which mirror the material plane in 4e: Herebus and whatever the Feywild equivalent is? Or do these planes even mirror the 'normal' world, or are they separate worlds like in Greco-Roman myth? The Astral Sea in the default 4e cosmology sounds pretty similar to the Isles to me to start with. I'm not sure they all have to be as transient as the shifting seas, since they'll be visited much less often, but the shifting seas idea definitely makes modularity a lot easier to accomplish.

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I think the feywild, shadowfell, and other proximate planes are pretty vague and shifting by their very nature.

The Elemental Chaos is an obvious no brainer where things shift over seas of pure energy. That itself meshes very well just as written.

As for the other three I always felt that both the feywild and shadowfell, were like phoenix said, an "echo" of the real world. In the feywild things are natural, trees are larger, grass is greener, and any structures you find will mostly be in harmony with their surroundings. I always thought it best to think of the shadowfell as a literal shadow of the real world. Like a shadow its darker, you sometimes see things in it and wonder whether or not it was your imagination, and like shadows everyday normal things can take on frightening new shapes and sizes.

In both of these mirror-esque realms often times distances can seem distorted and traditionally in any fiction I've read major landmarks (Oceans, large lakes, rivers, and basically whatever is conveniant for story purposes) seem to maintain the same approximate position.

The astral sea is like the elemental chaos, its a vast open space of indefinite distances where various realms drift around. You dont navigate so much by direction and landmarks as by feeling and intuition. Using that interpretation I think the astral sea also fits very well into our world as elysium, without any modification.

This of course is all opinion, but I will say that I read a lot of fantasy fiction (As I'm sure we all do) and these seem to be common throughout any that have similar realms.

I'm interested in DMing a game (its been a while, and it would be my first time as a 4e DM, but I'll give it a crack).

The game will have two stages; the first will be a Jabberwocky-esque fantasy dream sequence of follow the leader that serves mostly as a plot seed for future adventures (yes, you read that correctly. Go back and read it again). Eventually, the adventure will turn into a simple dungeon crawl. This should bring PCs from level 1 to a little bit beyond level 2.

Due to the nature of the game, I will need to know who the players are before the patron walks into the Hanged Man and asks for help. Exactly five players are needed.

Give me a hollar if you're interested.

Great! Please remember to submit an adventure proposal to the judge email address: l4w.judges@gmail.com

There are some guidelines in the charter for what should go in an adventure proposal.