Inspired by Lords of Madness (Updated with 65% more ideas, and 74% more confusion)!

[Aberzanzorax]

Why are none of the Far Realms entities looking to... well, spread the influence of the Far Realms? Trying to make the cracks wider, open the seals, etc? An entire race dedicated to bringing the realm of tentacles and chaos to the PCs?

Interesting question. Two ideas:

1. I've read that far realm creatures or Cthulhu gods don't like our imposed geometry. It's stifling. But they are trapped here. They don't want to weaken the boundaries, they want to get back. While they are here, domination is a mere diversion with survival being the real key. Why don't beholders just go crazy and blast everyone? It's not fun...it's too easy. They prefer to do things more subtly.

2. In my idea where the far realms is a single being...our world is an infection. It's using its "cells" to fight us off. It's not evil per se (but from our limited perspective, where the abberations want to round us all up and enslave or exterminate us, it ain't friendly either). It too wants to close the gaps...but rather than merely close the gaps and keep the infection a living threat, it wants to eradicate our existence so that it can be at peace.

The domination could also just be a short term means toward a greater goal: either the sealing of the connections or the destruction of us all. Maybe the illithid wanted to create the Githyanki and Githzerai and "let them rebel" for purposes unknown...purposes such as Githyanki developing the existence of astral swords (one of the only ways to kill someone who has sent their spirt from their body...as they know that astral travellers will attack the far realm en mass in 1,000 yrs) and for the Githzerai to control the chaos of Limbo (which has corrolarys to the chaos of the far realm). Gith was a dominated fool who led a planned uprising. The lich queen of the githyanki is actually an alhoon who shapechanged immediately prior to lichdom, and now wears this permanent, if distasteful, skin. Better to control them through the belief that they are free than to control them outright.

 

[Zaukrie]

Aren't the Kaorti looking to expand the Far Realm into our universe? They are in my campaign....

 

[Aberzanzorax]

The Kaorti are indeed.

BUT remember who the Kaorti are. They were a group of mages from our plane who ventured into the far realm. They got trapped while there and twisted....hence they're somewhat of an "us" and somewhat of a "far realm".

If you look at our world and the far realm as two "organisms" then the Kaorti are a cancer in both.

They would be like the "Mr. Smith" in the Matrix trilogy....the Monkey wrench.

In fact, this is sounding a bit like the Matrix, now that I think about it.

 

[Rechan]

Interesting question. Two ideas:

My general thinking though is that if the Far Realms' influence is spread, one can easily eradicate things by way of infection. Instead of just 'killing the mundanes because they're bad', you're converting them by exposing them to more Far Realms taint.

I have the idea for the 'Far Realms spreaders'; a race of ... aquatic starfish. I know that sounds silly, but it's more their general shape; five unremarkable limbs, claws on each, regeneration, and a gut-spear that launches out and facilitates different powers depending on role or caste. Their schtick is that they are from the Havoc Sea, an ocean in the Far Realms. And they want to spread the Far Realms to flood the Real World with the Havoc Sea, so that they have dominion over the Real World.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Sea stars (my biology friend in college forbade me from calling them starfish....cause they're not fish...*shrugs*...eh) are not particularly silly. At least, they're no sillier than squid heads or squid-fish (or some beast with the head of a Dragon-scary, a lion-also sort of scary, and a goat-WHAT???? Really? A scary, scary goat?).

Mythology fills us with silly ideas, but it is in the expression of those ideas that matters. Chimeras (and Illithids and Aboleth) DO scare my players (and me, when I play).

I think starfish, er sea stars, do have a lot of potential: regenerating limbs (a la hydra heads), squidlike, but passive in movement (if not in mind). They remind me of two things: 1. brain bugs from the movie "starship troopers"...kinda like queen fomorians...they're the brains, but they're vulnerable... and 2. Vermicious Knids from Willy Wonka and the Great Glass elevator. They were alien, ate people, and had amorphous geometric forms.

I wonder if there couldn't be some perversion/antithesis of the Modrons that could contribute tot the story here.

As far as the sea, I think that has a lot of potential....the far realm being mostly "fluid" whether actually the state of fluid (vs. solid or gas) or the other meaning of fluid...changing, mutable. (or both).

This still could fit with my idea (for me anyway...I'm not trying to push it on you guys, but I'll share my thoughts) that the far realm is an organism. The fluid could be like the fluid of blood (which does have solids, such as the cells) while the sea stars, aboleths, kaorti, and others could be other components....biology is complex, and we rarely control our bodies in exactly the way we want.

If you go my "organism" route, the question become whether the sea stars are working in the best interest of the far realms or not. They could even be "beneficial" creatures like when someone has allergies....antigens that try to fight off an unkown threat that's not all that bad, and actually make you feel sick through their actions.

If you're not intersted in my motif, I'd love to hear any background/ideas about your star people.

Creatures of the stars? HMMMMM. How Cthulhu pun.

 

[Spatula]

I have the idea for the 'Far Realms spreaders'; a race of ... aquatic starfish.

Makes me think of Lovecraft's Elder Things. Or... Starro...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

There are lots of nasty things in the sea- poisonous mollusks, assorted medusans with stinging cells, intelligent cephalopods, fish that change color...and sex, critters that take on some of the characteristics of the things they eat- and modeling Far Realms beings on sea critters has a lot of merit.

The Far Realms becomes, in a sense, the Marianas Trench of the D&D Cosmology.

Personally, I've used Illithids and Beholders as 2 types of alien entities in a "War of the Worlds" type D20 Modern campaign.

Illithids also feature heavily in my time & dimension spanning post-apocalyptic D&D homebrew (yes, inspired by the text in Lords of Madness). Flayers from the future started flinging space debris (meteors, comets, etc.) at the planet in order to hasten the Illithids' rise to power...and have a partial success and a partial failure. They kill off the majority of surface foes who would oppose them, but they also had a malfunction at a critical moment and crashed landed...

 

[Rechan]

I meant silly in the sense of appearance. Sea Stars don't look fairly intimidating. But then, Aboleth are giant one-eyed trout.

On the topic of The Far Realms as one giant entity, I did have an idea a while ago I proposed to someone on these boards: The Real World once was a piece of the Far Realms. The entity that was in control of it 'fell asleep', and the chaos actually started to organize itself until it eventually fell into Order. So you have the Far Realms surrounding this Island of Normal.

If this were, for instance, the "Far Realms = One Big Entity", the Real World could inhabit a pocket. Maybe the Real World is, in a sense, a corrupted portion or the equivalent of a dead/rotting organ. In fact, the Real World could be a natural part of the Far Realms (like how the intestines is filled with bacteria); it's a stabilizing affect, somehow.

Aberzanzorax, I am curious about your theory in one respect: if the Far Realms is one giant organism, then couldn't it be killed? And if it's killed, what happens to the universe? Is there any sort of planar repercussions? Because knowing PCs, if they find out it's a plane that's alive, then they're going to want to kill it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Aberzanzorax, I am curious about your theory in one respect: if the Far Realms is one giant organism, then couldn't it be killed? And if it's killed, what happens to the universe? Is there any sort of planar repercussions? Because knowing PCs, if they find out it's a plane that's alive, then they're going to want to kill it.

Just tell them that its harder to kill than the Tarrasque- it has Regen 10 x 1,000 to the 1,000th power HP/rd, defeated only by striking its center with the corpses of all the divine beings in the rest of the universe, and will reincarnate itself unless you get all the remaining conscious beings to sign off* on a single wish to keep it dead while juggling warhammers.

*Legibly.

 

[Rechan]

Just tell them that its harder to kill than the Tarrasque- it has Regen 10 x 1,000 to the 1,000th power HP/rd, defeated only by striking its center with the corpses of all the divine beings in the rest of the universe, and will reincarnate itself unless you get all the remaining conscious beings to sign off* on a single wish to keep it dead while juggling warhammers.

*Legibly.

Heh.

There are other things. Things that aren't death, but about just as much. Like lobotomizing it or rendering it comatose. (Although, there is the distinct possibility that it all ready is this, otherwise you would see something like Cthulu's awakening happening). Another solution is not actively trying to kill it, but instead turning it against itself: AIDS makes the body's immune system ignore germs; if one could devise a method to make the various Aberrations and Far Realms defenses turn against itself, then that would at least send all of the aberrations converging on the Far Realms, affecting the host body.