NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MG.0" data-source="post: 6781007" data-attributes="member: 6799436">Funny, but you sort of hit on something I've actually been doing in a campaign of mine for a long time.It  started with the planes - which are one of my favorite aspects of  D&D. (1st/2nd/5th edition arrangment mostly, 3rd and 4th are brain  dead IMHO)First consider this: Why do all the different worlds  have different creation myths (sometimes even contradictory ones on the  same world), typically involving the entire cosmos and yet we know that  the Gods powers are typically restricted to a single world or handful of  worlds at best?I realized that instead of looking at the planes in the traditional  sense - where Gods from their homes in the Outer Planes took matter and energy form the  Inner Planes and created the Prime Material and all the crystal spheres  and all the worlds - it could be seen another way. A way that makes more sense:The Prime Material came first. It's creation remains a mystery (in so far as I haven't revealed it yet).At  first the Prime Material contained simple matter and energy which grew  in complexity as it combined into new forms. The Ethereal plane formed  around the Prime as the embodiment of that pure physicality. The Inner  Planes then formed, each representing the embodiment of the purest  essences on the Prime. Each Inner Plane touching the Prime through the  Ethereal. Far flung parts of the Prime connect more closely with  different elements. This is why there doesn't seem to be agreement across worlds as to the number of inner planes, with some worlds reporting additional  elemental planes like Metal and Wood, and also the para and quasi  elemental planes varying in number, arrangement, and nature.Eventually  life arose in the Prime, followed quickly by thought. The Astral plane  formed as the embodiment of that thought, just as the Ethereal embodies  physicality. The Outer Planes corresponding to the alignments formed as representations of those beliefs. The Great Wheel of  connections between them are merely a natural result of the closeness of  the beliefs themselves. They have no physical nature whatsoever; they are  all purely a state of mind. Other aspects of thought like Dreams, and  Madness (aka the Far Realm) naturally formed less structured Outer Planes  again reached via the Astral.This is why the Prime sits at the center, like a spider in a web. It is the source of all. The true beginning.Now  back to the Gods and creation. Energy and matter in the Prime became  the Ethereal and Inner Planes, followed by the Primoridals. Life in the  Prime possesses thought which became the Astral and the Outer Planes,  followed by the Gods. Now we see why the primoridals come first in most  creation myths...as the Inner Planes came before the Outer Planes.The Gods didn't create the universe, or even the world. Rather the reverse.Mortals  are the key to the outer planes. That's why souls travel to the outer  planes when they die, as they (both souls and the outer planes) are  thought and belief itself. Gods draw power from mortal belief, not in  some parasitic fashion, but because they are nothing more  than the combined belief itself.The universe is literally whatever mortals make of it.</blockquote>

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