How old is the Far Realm?

[victorysaber]

Here is er... another planar question.

How old is the Far Realm? If there is no absolute age, is there a relative age for it?

Does it predate existence?

Does it predate the creation of the planes?

Does it predate the current gods?

How was it created?

 

[Dragonbait]

How old do you think it should be?
Take that answer and add infinity to it, and that is still too young.

 

[Ripzerai]

Not only does it predate existence, but it's not contemporaneous with existence.

That is to say, it doesn't exist now. You reach it by traveling before Time began or after Time ends. But it doesn't have any existence in the present day.

That's not to say it doesn't influence the present day through leaks and rifts and ether gaps and so forth. Supposedly, there's a portal in the Region of Dreams that leads to it.

The Far Realm is a "place" beyond time. It was not created by anything. Linear time has nothing to do with it, nothing in common with it. It's better to ask how the known multiverse was created, because the known multiverse has a beginning and an ending, and the Far Realm does not. If you think of all of Time as a loop, the Far Realm is what lies outside that loop.

One view, that I like, is that Time is somehow the waste product of an inconceivably vast Far Realm entity, and the known planes are thus a kind of accident, a temporary bubble that grew within the Far Realm.

 

[victorysaber]

Are there any named lords of the Far Realm?

 

[Shemeska]

The Far Realm's connections to the multiverse of the Great Wheel are few and tenuous, and the physical laws and concepts of one may have little or no meaning in the other. Time as understood in the Great Wheel may be irrelevant in the Far Realm, and as Rip said, the Far Realm exists outside of our concept of time.

But, that said, it would be wrong to consider the Far Realm something that the Wheel floats within, or that the Far Realm is outside and surrounding the Wheel. There's absolutely no physical overlap between the two. For all anyone knows, the Great Wheel and the Far Realm are both seperate, incredibly different and divergent multiverses each with their own rules and predominant concepts. Since time began in the Great Wheel within the Great Wheel, there's no objective 'time' to measure age of the Wheel versus that of the Far Realm, or any other seperate multiverses that might exist.

So "which came first" or "which is older" isn't really a relevant question that can be answered.

Presumably whatever interaction between the two might happen at random points in time, such as Piscaethces briefly interacting with the Wheel and spawning the Aboleths perhaps by accident shortly after the formation of the Wheel's prime material plane. Another such interaction on her part need not happen after that first one within the rubric of time in the Wheel, because our concept of Time holds no meaning for her/it. Our idea of time is just as alien and horrific to them as theirs might be to use.

 

[diaglo]

in the RPG multiverse it is very, very, very young

 

[Land Outcast]

The Far Realm Should Not BE

And it's not an opinion, 'tis a fact

 

[Shemeska]

Are there any named lords of the Far Realm?

Named beings yes. "Lords" is entirely up for debate. We don't know honestly.

Mak Thuum Ngatha 'The Nine Tongued Worm' - worshipped as a deity by the psurlon of the Astral Plane

Piscaethces the Blood Queen - one of the "elder evils" worshipped by the Aboleths (don't read too much into the name, because they don't embody Evil, and time is well, meaningless on that elder designation). Other so-called elder evils are worshipped as gods by the Aboleths

Tharizdun / Elder Elemental God - maybe. It has been suggested, but there's no firm proof.

The critters in the ELH whose names I cannot spell are powerful, but not unique beings from the Far Realm

The Dragon King - name for a being imprisoned in an artifact on Toril, recent material has seemed to rewrite it to being from the Far Realm rather than a deity from another world on the prime material

 

[Desdichado]

in the RPG multiverse it is very, very, very young

Heh. When I saw the thread title, I actually thought that was the question. I was about to say it's approximately 8 years old, since "The Gates of Firestorm Peak" was published (IIRC) in 1999 or so, and that's the first reference to it that I know of.

Of course, since it so clearly is mimicking Lovecraft's writings, you could possibly make a case that it actually was invented in the 1920...

 

[diaglo]

Heh. When I saw the thread title, I actually thought that was the question. I was about to say it's approximately 8 years old, since "The Gates of Firestorm Peak" was published (IIRC) in 1999 or so, and that's the first reference to it that I know of.

Of course, since it so clearly is mimicking Lovecraft's writings, you could possibly make a case that it actually was invented in the 1920...

ditto on both counts. maybe three counts.

who's counting.