Abyss versus Far Realm

[StarFyre]

well

In all the stuff from 2e and 3e on the far realm, and the great stuff in i think, dragon magazine... it sounds like the far realm is much worse and the stuff is far more powerful. the describe god likebeings, more powerful than anything, gods included, in the regular universe, just floating around, in their own insanity.


the thing is, they are all insane, so they may not do anything or interact; stuck in their own thoughts.

The environment, if it can be called that is also much harsher.

I gotta start sculpting some far realm stuff...it's so much fun

Sanjay

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I am already looking through the Lords of Madness book to pick which monsters/beings my party will first run into and also what non-Aberration monsters I will convert to Aberrations.

 

[Stone Dog]

I'm wondering about this issue for my Ptolus campaign, since deep cosmological stuff is at the heart of the setting. Whether the Galchutt are from the Far Realm (which fits their flavor) or from the Abyss (which fits their politics) will be something I need to chew over for a while.

It depends... do the Galchutt want to leave the world a smoldering ruin or make it into something of their own image? Demons hate the world and want it gone. Aboleths want to make the world into something they want it to be. Which are closer to the Galchutt?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It depends... do the Galchutt want to leave the world a smoldering ruin or make it into something of their own image? Demons hate the world and want it gone. Aboleths want to make the world into something they want it to be. Which are closer to the Galchutt?

The Galcutt are, in 3E, the progenitors of the demons who currently rule the Abyss, but unlike them, they're forces of unmaking, more chaotic than evil (although still plenty evil). So, in 4E, they'd seem like a natural fit for ancient Abyssal lords.

In Ptolus, though, mindflayers, aboleths and the like were all servitor races of the Galchutt (along with most of the stuff from the Book of Vile Darkness). So that strongly conflicts with 4E.

I had just been hoping for a happy marriage of Ptolus and the 4E cosmology. Not a big deal; I'll likely just use Beyond Countless Doorways if my campaign every goes planar anyway, which I don't see happening, beyond using the Plane of Mirrors.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

Got to say that I've never particularly cared for Far Realm in D&D. I do like Lovecrafty elements, but I've always thought they work better if they're either rooted to already-existing things (the inhuman and maddening obyriths in Fiendish Codex I were an excellent example of this), or are weird and inexplicable anomalies that have no place in the cosmology, yet they're there.

Also, in practice, FR tends to end up as "yet another plane of evil, but more potent than any other", whereas it should be "bizarre and dangerous thing which isn't any more evil than it's good, just fatally alien". (It can be argued that the Lovecraft's Great Old Ones and Outer Gods, with the likely exception of Nyarlathotep, are not evil at all, merely uncaring and very, very dangerous.)

It's one thing I likely will not be using in my 4e games.

 

[Mirtek]

They don't have a substantial enough distinction.

The idea that "they're so alien we can't understand it, but the Abyss isn't alien---just really FUBARed" doesn't work. If we can't understand it, we can't present it to our players. Therefore we end up falling back on the exact same conventions and tropes as the Abyss uses.

Same problem with the obyrith demons. The fluff text says that their forms are inconceivable for us mortals, yet all the pictures of the obyriths were drawn by mortals and I as a mortal can see and comprehend them. So the statement in the fluff text is wrong, it has to be wrong.

There is absolutely no way that mortal game designers can describe something that mortals can't comprehend, because if they can describe it, then it's not something that mortals can't understand

 

[kennew142]

Far Realms is something I will definitely be using in my next 4e campaign, even though my cosmology will likely be very different from the official D&D cosmology. IMC demons are a more mundane sort of evil, the sort that wants to destroy creation because it exists. Creatures from the Far Realms do not want to destroy anything. They are like alien, uncaring terraformers (exoformers?), changind the rules of reality to better suit themselves, with no regard for any sophonts who may happen to exist in our universe. They have no malice towards our form of life; they just don't care.

That said, I have been thinking of connecting the abyss and the far realms in some way. Since I don't use gods in my campaign, perhaps the abyss is the result of the far realms intruding into the normal universe via the Elemental Chaos (the weakest point it could find in normal space?).

As a fan of all things Lovecraftian, I am not sure that there should be any place on the map (cosmologically speaking) that you can point at and label The Far Realms.

 

[Stone Dog]

As a fan of all things Lovecraftian, I am not sure that there should be any place on the map (cosmologically speaking) that you can point at and label The Far Realms.

Maybe not the map, but there are a few stars you can point at and say "There. We don't talk about That Star at this time of year, but keep your eye on it all the same. Things may come down from it toward the Old Hill. If you see that, sound the alarm."

 

[hopeless]

Hmm...

So, apparently we are going to have the Far Realm as a part of the core cosmology of 4E, rather than the bolt-on addition it was in 3.X.

What I wonder is how this fits with the Abyss. There seems to be an awful lot of conceptual overlap--each purports to be the realm of insanity, hideous abominations, and horrific evil. With the new focus on demons as "inhuman monsters out to destroy reality," that's even more true.

How do you think these planes should relate to each other? Is there really room for both, or should one of them be scrapped? If there's room for both, what ought the difference between them to be? And if one should be scrapped, which one and why?

I look at this and I think... Xoriat.

Do you agree?

 

[kennew142]

Maybe not the map, but there are a few stars you can point at and say "There. We don't talk about That Star at this time of year, but keep your eye on it all the same. Things may come down from it toward the Old Hill. If you see that, sound the alarm."

This I agree with. It reminds me of Babylon 5, and the walkers at sigma 957. To them, we are just ants.

It is fine to have places that the Old Hill, Goatswood and Sigma 957 in your cosmology, but it's better not to have a discrete place on the map where the old ones hang out whenever they're not disturbing the natural laws in our neck of the cosmos. IMO this makes them trite, and steals their mystery.

I look at this and I think... Xoriat.

Do you agree?

I do. And Xoriat is so far realmsy that its orbit has a random period. While technically on the map, it is hard to point to.