Planar Configurations; How Do You Design The Multiverse?

Here is the cosmology I wrote for my old "Gods of the Fire Islands" PDF, back in the day. I'm not sure if it's still available for download on ENWorld; I haven't checked in quite some time.

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Cosmology of the Fire Islands


In the beginning, there was only the Ethereal plane (Papa) and the Astral plane (Rangi). When the two were forced apart, light and matter (the Prime Plane) began to coexist between them. Thus, the universe according to the Fire Island traditions is organized with the Prime Plane wedged tightly between the Astral and Ethereal planes.

The Material Plane, or “Papa,” is organized by its four distinct layers of elements, in three layers. Earth and Water are side-by-side in the middle, with Fire below and Earth above (see figure). The elemental demi-planes (not shown), such as Dust, Rain, Mud, Steam, and Magma, form on the boundaries of these planes, and are evident in the material plane wherever two or more planes overlap (i.e., Magma lies on the boundary of Earth and Fire, and Rain lies on the boundary between Water and Air.)

The Plane of Shadow, the Infinite Layers of the Abyss, the Negative Energy Plane, and the Nine Hells are all demi-planes within the Ethereal Plane, and are collectively referred to as “The Underworld.” Buried beneath the world, these demi-planes are not visible from the Prime Plane.

Likewise, the Positive Energy Plane, The Celestial Realms, the Twelve High Heavens, and The Void are demi-planes within the Astral Plane, and are collectively referred to as “Rangi,” or The Sky Powers. They appear in the Prime Plane as the sun (Heaven), the moon (Positive Energy Plane), and stars (The Celestial Realms) moving across the sky (The Void).

Hawaiki is the land of mankind’s ancestors, the birthplace of Tiki and the place where his children's souls live forever in peace. It lies adjacent to the Material Plane, but is accessible only by traveling through the Underworld. When a person dies, their soul is sent to the Underworld for judgment, and those who are found worthy are carried to the Ancestor Island in a canoe rowed by beautiful women. Those who are found wanting are forced to remain in the Underworld forever.

Gradine said:

I run exclusively in Eberron and use the setting's original Orrery model (so no Baator or the like), although I don't tend to involve a lot of planar content in my campaigns.

Next session they'll likely be heading to Thelanis though, so that'll be fun!

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It was fun, it fact!

In general, though, I appreciate how Eberron utilizes constructs like manifest zones and coterminous periods and the like. It really helps create more interesting details within adventures and world building.

I have been thinking about a Great Triangle, with vortices of Race (mostly nonhumans, includes demons as the evil representatives), Nature (basically if you are a druid or storm/nature cleric, evil is predatory (mostly rakasha, slaadi, and succubus/incubus), good is guardianals and empyreans), and philosophical/"civilization" (war, love, agriculture, devils, angels, modrons). Race is mostly about making you the elfiest elf ever, dwarfiest dwarf ever, gobliniest goblin ever, etc. Part of the reason it is a triangle is so that each vortices can interact with the other two, so there can be all kinds of overlap.

Not sure I will ever do anything with it.

I use the Great Wheel. In 4e I did use the World Axis because it was so deeply ingrained into the rules system, and I didn't feel like doing the work needed to "fix" everything. In 5e I switched back.

Elderbrain said:

I use the Great Wheel. In 4e I did use the World Axis because it was so deeply ingrained into the rules system, and I didn't feel like doing the work needed to "fix" everything. In 5e I switched back.

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I'm curious, how was the cosmology so ingrained in 4e? I liked the 4e cosmology, but I can't remember anytime in the 4+ years we played that it mattered at all. In fact, it didn't come up at all and I don't think my players knew anything about it.

I use something that resembles the world axis in broad strokes. The details are a little different, but the general idea is the same.

At the center of the Cosmos is Mother Sea, the Goddess who is her own domain. Above her is Father Sky, who envelops her and protects her from the Astral Sea beyond, and collectively with the Firmament, they make up The World. Within the Astral Sea are the domains of the Celestial Gods, as well as the Nine Hells, the former domain of He Who Was before he was overthrown by rebellious angels. All enclosed by the Celestial Sphere. The sphere is perforated by the Stars, portals through which it is said the Aboleth first entered the Cosmos. All of this (save the Aboleth) immerged/immerges/will immerge from the Primordial Chaos, “before” (until?) the First War and the “subsequent” (resulting?) ordering of time. It was/is/will be corrupted by the influence of the Mad God, and became/becomes/will become the Infinite Abyss, where demons dwell and the Mad God is imprisoned.

Parallel to The World is Faerie, which hosts the courts of Eldaran and Tauriel, and the Netherworld, where Grandmother Crow presides over the souls of the dead. It is unclear exactly how these Otherworlds are connected, but they seem to be linked in some way, and yet are at once distinct worlds.

Of course, this is only the most predominant model among philosophers, which has a clear humanocentric bias - it hamfistedly attempts to fit the Turathi story of He Who Was into a polytheistic framework, the attempt to place Faerie and The Netherworld within the Cosmos is sloppy and dissatisfying, it dismisses the Elder Dragons as natural (albeit extremely magically potent) creatures, and it outright fails to account for the Dwarven pantheon, which is an absolutely glaring omission. Still, it is the most comprehensive model to date despite these flaws.

Because I started this thread, I think it's only fair that I detail one of my cosmologies.

1. The Lhaervynian Model: In this cosmology, there exist four layers of existence. They are as follows:

A: The Physical Realm: This layer of reality is composed of the Prime Material Plane, the Feywild, the Shadowfell, the four Material Elemental Planes, the four Ethereal Elemental Planes, the Elemental Chaos, the Ethereal Plane, the Shadow Well, and the Faerie Well.

The Prime Material Plane: The world of Lhaervyn is on the Prime Material Plane, which is given substance by the four Material Elemental Planes, and is given 'character', or 'nature' by the Elemental Chaos, which dictates the natural and scientific laws that govern the structure of everything material, from the humblest brook to the most majestic mountain. The Prime Material Plane is connected to the four Material Elemental Planes, the Elemental Chaos, the Feywild, and the Shadowfell through direct Planar Energy Links (Material Elemental Planes) or direct Planar Data Links (the Elemental Chaos, the Feywild, and the Shadowfell. Through its Planar Data Links with the Feywild and Shadowfell, the Primae Material Plane governs the general appearance of its two reflections.

The Feywild: The Feywild is given substance by the four Ethereal Elemental Planes (direct Planar Energy Link), is given form by the Prime Material Plane (direct Planar Data Link), and is given general character by the Faerie Well. Because it has no Material Elemental Subtsance except that which it borrows from the Prime Material Plane, the Feywild's appearance changes in accordance with changes on the Prime Material Plane. The reverse, however, is not true.

The Shadowfell:The Shadowfell is akin to the Feywild in many ways, but is given general character by the Shadow Well, rather than the Faerie Well.

The Material Elemental Planes: These are very similar to the traditional elemental planes of D&D, with a couple notable differences; the plane of Earth has no surface, but somehow has breathable air, and the plane of Air is the home of air Elemental Myrmidons created by the Wind Dukes of Aaqa. The Material Elmental Planes arose from the Elemental Chaos

The Ethereal Elemental Planes: These are ethereal, ghostly versions of the Material Elemental Planes, they arose from the Ethereal Plane. Ghost Elementals, psychic ideals of fire, air, earth, and water, haunt these unsettling planes. Note that the Ethereal elemental Planes are separate from the Ethereal places that overlap with the Material elemental Planes.

The Ethereal Plane: The Ethereal Plane is, in many ways, very similar to the Ethereal Plane of the traditional D&D model.

B: The Spiritual Realm: This layer of reality encompasses the Realm of Poison Skies, the Realm of Blood Oceans, the Realm of Blistered Ground, the Realm of Azure Skies, the Realm of Pure Seas, the Realm of Verdant Lands, the Fiendish Realms (the Abyss, the Nine Hells, Gehenna, Pandemonium, et cetera, wrapped up into a single plane), the Celestial Realms (the Seven Heavens, Bytopia, Ysgard, et cetera, wrapped up into a single plane), Mechanus, and Limbo.

The Realm of Poison Skies: Through a direct Planar Energy Link with the Fiendish Realms, this plane supplies the Fiendish Realms with all atmospheric materials and energy. There is very little land or water in this place, which is toxic to non-fiends.

The Realm of Blood Oceans: Through a direct Planar Energy Link with the Fiendish Realms, this plane supplies the Fiendish Realms with all liquid materials and energy. There is little open air or land in this place, which is a realm of mortal and immortal blood with a poisonous atmosphere.

The Realm of Blistered Ground: Through a direct Planar Energy Link with the Fiendish Realms, this plane supplies the Fiendish Realms with all mineral materials and energy... blah, blah, I'm sure you understand.

The Celestial versions of the aforementioned realms are opposite reflections of their Fiendish counterparts.

Finally, Limbo and Mechanus supply the Fiendish and Celestial Realms with concepts of Law and Chaos, in addition to acting as they do in traditional planar configurations.

C: The Cognitive Layer: Thus layer of reality is a place of ideals, nightmares, and fantasies. It encompasses The Font of Nightmares, the Font of Fantasies, Xarrchakt, the Progenitor of Aberrations, Symnullsu, the Progenitor of the Righteous, the Nexus of Love, the Nexus of Hate, the Nexus of Logic, the Nexus of Insanity, the Font of Prudence, and the Font of Creativity.

In many ways, these planes are akin to those in previous layers; they supply each other with energy, and serve their own, individual, purposes. The Nexus of Hate supplies the Fiendish Realms and their associated planes with notions of hate, odium, and the such. The Nexus of Love does the reverse for the Celestial Realms, and the other Nexae supply Mechanus and Limbo with ideals of judgement and unrestrained thought. It should be noted that Dendar the Night Serpent is an entity from Xarrchakt (or possibly the Font of Nightmares).

D: The Positive and Negative Shell: These two are pretty self-explanatory.

These details are, of course, caustically contested among scholarly circles.

cbwjm said:

Normally I would use the great wheel. When our campaign was moving briefly I to the elemental planes I decided that it was a mix of the 4e elemental chaos I the centre where all elemental planes mixed and the elemental borders formed para elemental planes (I think this might actually be the 5e version)

Recently, I've been playing around with having the actual cleric domains the greater planes of by the universe. Where these planes intersect, other lesser planes are formed. The material plane is formed from the intersection of all of the greater planes.

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This was my original post back in the day, I do like to tinker with things and come up with setting ideas so my current one is that the planes are formed by the dragon aspects/gods. In total there are 6 dragon gods each representing the following: Astral sea, elemental earth/fire, elemental air/water, upper planes, lower planes, and the great dragon Io binding them all together to form reality. The material plane has no dragon god and is instead formed from the others. The feywild doesn't have a dragon god representing it (for some reason, no idea why) and after the great cataclysm now orbits the material plane between the upper and lower planes. When closer to the upper planes it is a place of light and life, when closer to the lower planes it twists into the shadowfell.

dave2008 said:

I'm curious, how was the cosmology so ingrained in 4e? I liked the 4e cosmology, but I can't remember anytime in the 4+ years we played that it mattered at all. In fact, it didn't come up at all and I don't think my players knew anything about it.

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Because all the monsters assumed the 4e cosmology and fluff. In 4e, Giants were created by the Dawn Titans, the Dawn Titans were Evil, therefore all Giants were made Evil, including traditional good-aligned Giants such as Storm Giants (who couldn't be Chaotic Good anymore anyway, since 4e eliminated that alignment outright, along with Chaotic Neutral. If you had the word "Chaotic" in your alignment in 4e, you were Evil, period. Likewise, if you had the word "Lawful" in your alignment, you were Good. Lawful Evil and Lawful Neutral didn't exist in 4e, at least, no more explicitly then those alignments exist in, say, GURPS. There were creatures that behaved in what we would call a Lawful Evil manner - Devils, for one - but as a game mechanic the alignment didn't exist and wasn't recognized.) The Metallic Dragons all ceased to be good and became unaligned. Demons became Elementals and gained elemental resistances because the Abyss was moved to the bottom of the Elemental Chaos. Eladrin became a type of Elf rather than Celestials (or High Elves became Eladrin, depending upon how you want to look on it.) You get the idea. And it was completely unnecessary - the Eberron book for 3.5e, for instance, had a new cosmology without killing off the old one. The 4e writers could've taken their cool new ideas and released a new campaign setting for 4e that incorporated all these ideas, without putting them in the core rulebooks and literally changing the cosmology of other campaign settings to match, i.e. the Forgotten Realms.

Now, I am not saying all this to "dump" on 4e, just to point out that there were some pretty massive changes that threw a lot of older players for a loop. There were a lot of really good ideas, concepts, monsters, and yes planar material in 4e - especially what they did with the Feywild and the Shadowfell. I love Shadar-Kai and the Raven Queen. And I did buy every book up until the "Essentials" line came out (which I did not buy for the same reason that I did not buy the 3.5 edition after having bought the original 3rd edition.) Some of the changes I either didn't mind or actually preferred - for instance, I've always used a grid and minis when playing, so the fact that 4e assumed this was no sweat off my back. Introducing new types of Dragons and other monsters was fine in my book. And having different challenge rating stat block for, say, skeletons was smart - i.e. weak skeletons for low-level PCs, strong skeletons for higher-level PCs.

I try to keep the Multiverse pretty straight forward in my campaign setting.

-There's the Material Plane of course, where some lesser deities have made their home within their own private pocket realms.
-There's the Eternal Depths, an ice cold endless cavern, shrouded in total darkness, where those who died at sea go.
-There's the Celestial Realm, where the gods live. Humans cannot survive here, and would be struck blind from laying sight on godly beings. The gods do not resemble anything mortals can imagine.
-There's the Mirror Dimension, a pocket dimension used for some forms of teleportation.
-There's the Path, a pocket dimension found wihin natural terrain, where only fey and druids can go.
-There's the realm beyond, where those who've died tend to go, to face the judgement of the God of Death.
-There's pocket dimensions inside some objects, such as the palace a Genie made for herself inside her lamp.
-There's the Cathedral of Lights, a pocket dimension on the material plane, where the Lady of the Waves lives after being banished from the Eternal Depths.