How old is the Far Realm?

[Deadguy]

Is there any special connection between the CN outsiders (slaadi lords) and the Far Realms guys? Because it kinda leaves the "standard" CN outsiders without much of a niche, if there is something that is madder and more anti-laws than them. I mean, if the REAL Lords of Madness are out there, then aren't the ordinary CN outsiders just...funky frogs?

I would say that that mis-characterises the Chaotic planes. They are wellsprings of Potentiality. Anything that can happen anywhere in the multiverse might come into being there. And their fabric is open to manipulation by beings that find themselves within it.

The Far Realm has nothing in common with the multiverse at all. It lies outside all such considerations. Such potentiality it has has nothing in common with what does exist or should exist. It is Madness beyond even the dreams of gods and the eternals of the Great Wheel.

The mistake would be to think of the Far Realms as being anything like Limbo. The Far Realms are not roiling chaos. It is a place beyond the comprehension of any being from within the Great Wheel, unless such beings are re-shaped (and driven mad) by the fabric of the Far Realms (and then they begin to lose the ability to interact with the mundane world).

 

[paradox42]

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

Ah, my friends the Uvuudaum (or is the plural form Uvuudaums? For that matter, is a plural form of the word relevant to Far Realm denizens even if multiple such creatures appear? ). Anyway, these are in the ELH, and I've used them to spectacular effect in my Epic game.

There's also the Neh-Thalggu, the Brain Collectors, but since they have both an Epic and a non-Epic version it's unlikely they really count as "Lords" of the place or even named beings for that matter.

There are no official ones, and the arguments against statting Far Realm "gods" are persuasive.

Not to those of us who regularly stat up gods and other such beings for our Epic games well above 20th. But, you can have fun by making stats like Land Outcast's at least. Then ask the players: how much damage do you think you have to do, to equal Spoon? Can you hit AC Red?

Anyway, Dicefreaks is full of cool ideas for Epic games, and they regularly do justice to beings stat-wise that some have said shouldn't even be attempted due to the extreme power involved- for example, the Lady of Pain is floating around on DF somewhere.

Tome of Magic also mentions a few vestiges with apparent Far Realm connections:

Orthos (Sovereign of the Howling Dark)
Otiax (The Key to the Gate)

Vestiges never have monster stats.

It's worth mentioning, WRT the Tome, that the author of the Pact Magic section drops several hints into it that vestiges actually reside in the Far Realm, or something very much like it. It's apparent that they do have some sort of consciousness and independent existence, but that where they exist is so far from ordinary reality that they don't have any "real" existence as far as the Great Wheel is concerned. The fact that one vestige is supposed to be a former scholar of Pact Magic who went looking for the plane that vestiges live on and hail from, coupled with the fact that that place has to be some plane utterly unknown to the multiverse at large, is highly suggestive of a Far Realm origin (or at least, "home base") for vestiges.

 

[Shemeska]

It's worth mentioning, WRT the Tome, that the author of the Pact Magic section drops several hints into it that vestiges actually reside in the Far Realm, or something very much like it. It's apparent that they do have some sort of consciousness and independent existence, but that where they exist is so far from ordinary reality that they don't have any "real" existence as far as the Great Wheel is concerned. The fact that one vestige is supposed to be a former scholar of Pact Magic who went looking for the plane that vestiges live on and hail from, coupled with the fact that that place has to be some plane utterly unknown to the multiverse at large, is highly suggestive of a Far Realm origin (or at least, "home base") for vestiges.

I think there might be better explanations for a number of vestiges, and honestly I think that there might not be a common explanation for their existance. For some vestiges, claiming a Far Realm connection seems absolutely nonsensical. Geryon being devoured by Asmodeus and having his essence consumed by either that archfiend or the plane of Baator itself... it'd be silly to claim the Far Realm is involved somehow. Karsus as well, we know exactly where his soul is fragmented and thus the cause of the quasi-life status he exists within, and so again it'd be silly to invoke a Far Realms connection.

Some vestiges work perfectly well as dead gods, whose slumbering astral corpses lack enough worship to sustain a truly self-aware, conscious existance, but who possess enough lingering substance to be tapped by binders.

Other vestiges seem best explained as petitioners, fiends, and other powerful outsiders who after being killed and having their metaphysical essence merge with or become devoured by their native plane, retain some flaw or too much personal focus to cease to exist independant of the plane at large. No longer truly independant extensions of the plane, they'd exist as scattered, diffuse fragments of their former self, only vaguely conscious but possessed of a harrowing desire to reclaim their former existance and taste what they lost. Binders with enough detail could exploit these remnants.

A handful of vestiges might work as people trapped in the Far Realm, or killed there, whose souls because of their alien status in that other multiverse might continue to seek to return to the normal multiverse. That other reality might not be able to do anything with their essence as it might for beings native to it, and the process that normally happens to truly dead souls might fail spectacularly, leaving them as diffuse, partially aware wretches, seeking to reclaim what they lost, leaving binders with yet another opportunity to gain power.

 

[Ripzerai]

Ah, my friends the Uvuudaum (or is the plural form Uvuudaums? For that matter, is a plural form of the word relevant to Far Realm denizens even if multiple such creatures appear? ). Anyway, these are in the ELH, and I've used them to spectacular effect in my Epic game.

There's also the Neh-Thalggu, the Brain Collectors, but since they have both an Epic and a non-Epic version it's unlikely they really count as "Lords" of the place or even named beings for that matter.

We could also add the daelkyr from the Eberron setting. While Xoriat isn't technically the same thing as the Far Realm, the daelkyr would work fine in either plane.

Not to those of us who regularly stat up gods and other such beings for our Epic games well above 20th.

Perhaps not, but this isn't about power. Nobody's saying you shouldn't stat Far Realm "gods" because they're too powerful; they're beyond stats because they can't be interacted with, regardless of how epic the characters are.

I personally don't care one way or the other, however, which is why I happily linked to a set of stats for Piscaethces. If you want to use her as an end-boss or even just a minion of an end-boss, more power to you.

Then ask the players: how much damage do you think you have to do, to equal Spoon?

The answer, of course, is that the players can't possibly do spoon amount of damage. That's rather the point of assigning an impossible statistic.

 

[Henrix]

I'm not sure how old it is, maybe it came into existance around 2002?

According to Bruce Cordell's article in Dragon #330 it debuted in The Gates of Firestorm Peak in 1996.

 

[BOZ]

because he wrote that module?

 

[Warren Okuma]

How old? One turn old. Each turn the Far Realms destroys it self and reforms. Or not.

 

[Wraith Form]

I don't care if they follow the laws of mathematics or physics, but grammar is something else entirely.

Hear hear. Bravo, sirrah!

 

[Warren Okuma]

Just in How old is the far realms? Fnord.

 

[Wraith Form]

[in T. F. Gumby voice: ] My. Brain. Huuuuuuurts.

[bashes self in head with brick]