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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 9394617" data-attributes="member: 58172">It is possible to reconcile the 4e World Axis cosmology with the 5e Astral Plane cosmology.Notably, 4e lacks the Ethereal Plane. Nevertheless, both Feywild and the Shadowfell are inferrably aspects of the Ethereal Plane. Positive Fey and Negative Shadow relate moreso to life and death, respectively. But there can plausibly be a neutrally mixed aspect of the 4e Ether that relates to matter itself, and by which one accesses the Elemental Chaos. To some degree the 4e Elemental Chaos is the 4e Ethereal Plane, albeit there are gradations where the "shallow" Chaos would be moreorless the same as the Material Plane that it overlaps, but then as one planeshifts deeper into Elemental Chaos, the Material Plane increasingly distorts, heightening the properties of the states of matter, until disconnecting entirely from the Material Plane. At the extremity, the "Deep Ether" and the full-on Elemental Chaos become the same thing. Note, there is a region of the Deep Ether where mainly immaterial Ether prevails.In 4e, the Chaotic Evil alignment plane, namely the demonic Abyss, locates within the Elemental Chaos, not within the Astral Sea. To reconcile this with 5e, the Abyss actually is within Astral Sea. However, when one is using the World Axis to navigate the Astral thoughtscape, one cannot access the Abyss directly. One must detour to a Chaotic Evil conceptual link to somewhere within the Elemental Chaos, perhaps a faction of Elementals who are nihilist, who oppose the use of matter by others − a kind of existential, anarchical, terrorism. From this location in the Elemental Chaos, their cultural symbols and customs link to locations in the Abyss. Probably 5e players wont bother going thru such a detour to get to the Abyss. But a special relationship between a faction of Elementals with Fiend Demons might be an interesting location in the Elemental Chaos. The 4e-ism of elementally oriented Fiends has a place within 5e.By the way, 4e Demons are more about destroying physical matter, whereas 4e Devils are more about tempting and corrupting thoughts. 4e had a weird alignment system that I prefer to leave behind. 5e returns the ethical clash between groupist Lawful versus individualist Chaotic. In 5e, both Lawful Good and Chaotic Good exist, and the True Good, namely Neutral Good, juggles between them. Similar to the way the World Axis is unable to access the Abyss directly from the Astral Sea, it would also be unable to access the Chaotic Good plane of Arborea directly. To get to Arborea, one would need to detour thru an Eladrin faction in the Feywild to connect to the dominion of Arvandor, or perhaps detour thru a Greekesque culture in the Material Plane to get to the dominion of Olympus. As mentioned, 5e players will probably access these Astral locations directly from the Sea without detours. Nevertheless such symbolic culturally paradigmatic link between a faction and an Astral dominion are doable in 5e.</blockquote>

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