D&D General Lore Questions About Spelljamming Uses of Magic, Cosmology, Metaphysics

[Aelryinth]

FR has more Pantheons then you think. Currently It has the Faerunian Pantheon, the Mulhorandi Pantheon, Unther Pantheon, Dragonic Pantheon, Seldarine, Dark Seldarine, Orc Pantheon, Giant Pantheon, Qausi Yuirwood Pantheon, Dwarf Pantheon, Gobliniod Pantheon, Maztican Pantheon, Hindu Pantheon, Celestial Bureaucracy Pantheon, Loregiver/Al Qadim Pantheon, Elemental Tribes Pantheon, Urd/kobold Pantheon and a variety of loner monster deities. And in the ancient past the Grecoroman Pantheon, Celtic Pantheon, Norse Pantheon, and Finnish Pantheons had a presence in the Bakkar Empire. There might be others on unexplored continents of Toril or other Planets in Realmspace.

The majority of those are 'official pantheons' of the game, esp the monster ones (all of which exist on Oerth, their original home of mention). I was just mentioning some of those that were on Earth. I did miss the Inca/Aztec, but the others are just renamings of Earth Pantheons. Also note that the Loregiver Pantheon is basically the standard FR deities with new skins on them, with a couple new additions. It's not Arabia. Mulhorandi and Unther are Egypt and Babylonian, respectively. Celestial Beauacracy = Chinese and/or Japanese.
I've been with FR since the first boxed set. There aren't more then I think.

 

[tetrasodium]

It is noteworthy that Spelljammer existed in Planescape (there's a module where they mention buying a squidship) as it Athas (there's an Athasian elf who runs between the upper planes as a merchant/courier).
Be that as it may, each world can be a part of the core rules or not. However, they did hint that planewalkers from other worlds had been to Eberron, which was technically not part of the Great Wheel.

and still darksun protected itself with a sealed sphere cut off from planescape's baselines. Like eberron it does not even have the same planar structure as planescape & that's just the beginning of things.

 

[Bohandas]

Yeah. I thought that (other than its sphere not opening to the spells that are supposed to open them) Athas was merely closed off to planar travel like Ravenloft and Sigil

 

[dave2008]

Yes (unless a setting has incompatible assumptions about the outer planes, or, to a lesser extent, about the gods. ie. OG 3e Eberron (although I understand that in 5e the distantness of Eberron's gods was retconned to work like in Dark Sun...I think?))

Technically that is incorrect and Keith clarified that recently on these very forums. In 3e Eberron was always part of the wider D&D multiverse, it was just basically inaccessible. The default assumption in 3e was all settings existing in the same multiverse, and that was true for Eberron as well.

 

[gyor]

The majority of those are 'official pantheons' of the game, esp the monster ones (all of which exist on Oerth, their original home of mention). I was just mentioning some of those that were on Earth. I did miss the Inca/Aztec, but the others are just renamings of Earth Pantheons. Also note that the Loregiver Pantheon is basically the standard FR deities with new skins on them, with a couple new additions. It's not Arabia. Mulhorandi and Unther are Egypt and Babylonian, respectively. Celestial Beauacracy = Chinese and/or Japanese.
I've been with FR since the first boxed set. There aren't more then I think.

Mask is technically apart of the Mulhorandi Pantheon as part of a kind of exchange program where the Faerunian Pantheon got Sharess Bast as a "dual" citizens of a sort.

And yes they are are Egyptian (or more acuurately Grecoegyptian as they use mostly Greek names for these Gods, not the Egyptian ones, as well as Greek linked traits, including less animalistic in forms, amd weirdly with Hindu over tones), and other RL Pantheons of Gods, but even the main FR Pantheon has RL Gods in it, like Silivanus (Roman), Lovitar (Finnish), and others.

And either way still Gods competing for Worshippers and multiple Pantheons RL origins or not.

BTW I think FR is the only other Setting besides Planescape and to a lesser extent Spelljammer that uses RL Gods, I don't think Greyhawk does.

Still serves a function, reinforcing the immigration themes of the Forgotten Realms, where even most of the Gods are immigrants to Toril (with some exceptions, like Selune, Mystra and Shar).

And the Al Qadim Pantheon is not reskinned Faerunian Gods, that is just fan speculation and there is evidence in setting materials that they aren't (for one thing Al Qadim Gods don't have alignments but Faerun Gods do, and other things). This misconception was sparked by the similarities between the name Selune and the spelling of the Al Qadim Moon Goddess.

And Mazatica's Pantheon is inspired by Mesoamerican Mythology, but it's not the same Gods, there is no nation in the Actual World that has ever worshipped the Mazatican Gods.

And the Celestial Buracracy is also inspired by Chinese religion, but with different Gods except for the Celestial Emperor and Yama, which is also a Hindu God.

Interesting to note that woman who added the Hindu Pantheon to FR may have mistaken Indra for his wife who sometimes goes by the name Indrani, and who also rides and Elephant as her vechile, but who is said to have been born of a Demon, but was made Immortal when Indra married her, and as well becoming the Queen of the Gods.

The Immigrant Gods makes FR religion very different from other material plane settings in D&D religiously.

 

[tetrasodium]

Technically that is incorrect and Keith clarified that recently on these very forums. In 3e Eberron was always part of the wider D&D multiverse, it was just basically inaccessible. The default assumption in 3e was all settings existing in the same multiverse, and that was true for Eberron as well.

Eberron's not closed off /sealed like athas, but it doesn't share the same planar structure, views on gods, etc. Eberron does not import those things on top of it's own without damage (4e tried in some ways & it was a big mess)... On top of that, eberron would treat FR & probably greyhawk like the colonial powers treated Africa & the Americas while athas would just git a little more crapsack in different ways

@dave2008 is right that keith posted about this here recently, but a lot of that post goes into detail how it's not really & how there are differences. These kind of "debates" tend to turn bitter when people ignore the fact the setting's assumptions & point at old material hat say planescape & fr's norms apply to every setting even though there are settings that turn away from parts of it to varying degrees.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Yeah. I thought that (other than its sphere not opening to the spells that are supposed to open them) Athas was merely closed off to planar travel like Ravenloft and Sigil

This is not actually true; I believe that planar travel is perfectly possible in Dark Sun, there are however several limitations;

• Dark Sun does not have many direct connections to other planes, like portals, and the ones that exist typically lead to even more inhospitable ones, like the Elemental Planes.
• Although spells like plane shift do exist, those spells have their own limitations; to plane shift to say Greyhawk, you need a forked metal rod attuned to that plane. These are difficult to find, especially as people who leave the world of Dark Sun do not typically return.

Bottom line is, travel to and fro Dark Sun by the normal means is possible, just far less common. It's like going to Chernobyl today.

 

[tetrasodium]

This is not actually true; I believe that planar travel is perfectly possible in Dark Sun, there are however several limitations;

• Dark Sun does not have many direct connections to other planes, like portals, and the ones that exist typically lead to even more inhospitable ones, like the Elemental Planes.
• Although spells like plane shift do exist, those spells have their own limitations; to plane shift to say Greyhawk, you need a forked metal rod attuned to that plane. These are difficult to find, especially as people who leave the world of Dark Sun do not typically return.

Bottom line is, travel to and fro Dark Sun by the normal means is possible, just far less common. It's like going to Chernobyl today.

There is also problems like these for anyone who goes there.

• divine magic is... problematic or similar to eberron without any faith
• using/knowing arcane magic is a very good way to get hunted down & killed or worse
• One of the SK's controls a portal that can get you to/from the elemental chaos, but it's not a nice place to go & you probably won't make it through his army
• If you can get to/from athas you need to either have something of value & strength enough to keep from being used by any SK who comes across you for them to move out into the rest o the multiverse
• If you have the strength or whatever to exist alongside the SK's, you need to be able to do it without making the other SK's unite against you
• If you somehow walk all of those lines, you need to do it quietly enough that you don't have every surviving refugee coming to kill you & take your stuff to survive congratulations because you probably have a place like Thaythilor churning out lifewarped/magebred & mindraped "individuals" like its Zik-Trin(Thri-Kreen of Athas pg79.)
• 

 

[Bohandas]

Eberron's not closed off /sealed like athas, but it doesn't share the same planar structure, views on gods, etc. Eberron does not import those things on top of it's own without damage (4e tried in some ways & it was a big mess)... On top of that, eberron would treat FR & probably greyhawk like the colonial powers treated Africa & the Americas while athas would just git a little more crapsack in different ways

Eh. Eberron has a lot of magic, but it doesn't have much in the way of powerful magic (at least not outside of the dragon illuminati, who aren't even interested in openly dominating their own world).

FR and Greyhawk on the other hand have all sorts of high level wizards and demigods running around.

 

[tetrasodium]

Eh. Eberron has a lot of magic, but it doesn't have much in the way of powerful magic (at least not outside of the dragon illuminati, who aren't even interested in openly dominating their own world).

FR and Greyhawk on the other hand have all sorts of high level wizards and demigods running around.

It has organization and technology. They wouldn't need to kill off eliminster just to shepherd the primitives into the modern age, establish proper trade communication networks and so on. Even something as basic as mining. Forestry/logging, mining, etc would be upended to the point of the old ways collapsing and becoming unsustainable as modern methods are introduced to those willing to sign on the gas line of the contract with the new colonial power.

As to those high level wizards, the dragon mark houses have plenty of resources to hire them and ways to offer them a better life.