D&D 5E Is Paladine Bahamut? Is Takhisis Tiamat? Fizban's Treasury Might Reveal The Answer!

Bolares · Jul 21, 2021

DEFCON 1 said:
Eberron does not have metaplot. That is an explicit point of Eberron's design.

What I mean is that if the novels were canon it would have one...

PsyzhranV2 · Jul 21, 2021

Dire Bare said:
You repeat this line a lot here in this thread. Maybe it's not us . . .

Again, how you prefer to view the D&D worlds and multiverse is fine, how you choose to use it in your games is fine. Not trying to tell you your preferences aren't legit or are somehow lesser. But to be upset that your ideas don't match up with current official canon, and that others actually like the existing canon, or have even other ways of looking at things . . . I mean, it's okay that they don't, but it just isn't something to get so worked up over.

Imagine you're at a coffee shop, enjoying your latte, minding your own business, when suddenly somebody runs up to you and starts proselytizing to you. You tell them that you're not interested in whatever religion they're selling, but then they reveal that they're Baha'i and argue that whatever you believe, Baha'i's got that covered, because really, all religions are just different stages of the revelation of Baha'ism, and are fundamentally the same in their reverence of God, and all the world's major religious icons were prophets of that God.

Except that you're a Buddhist and thus don't even believe in the existence of a capital-G God, much less the idea that Gautama Buddha was a misinterpreted prophet of said God rather than a perfectly enlightened being above all gods. And so you stare at them going "What the actual hell are you talking about?" Only for said God to have been the barista the entire time, watching your conversation and silently laughing at you, before showing you a vision with incontrovertible proof that everything you believed about the universe was wrong.

Doctorbadwolf's example of the Progenitor Dragons being "demoted" by being shoved into the Great Wheel is similar. If we take Eberron as standalone, the Progenitors created everything. They may have been literal god dragons, or they may be personifications of the abstract forces of creation, destruction, and transformation; but point is, they're top of the heap. But if we take Eberron as being one universe among many in the Great Wheel... well, we don't have the solid story of who created the universe; maybe it was Ahriman and Jazirian, maybe it was the interplay of the purest essences of Law, Chaos, Good, and Evil mixing together and reacting with each other, or maybe WotC's gonna retcon it in Fizban's as being Bahamut and Tiamat who created not just the Material Plane but everything; but point is, it wasn't the Progenitors. The Progenitors are now three powerful, but not all-powerful beings who rather than creating the entire universe decided to go to an existing, if empty corner of the universe and turn it into their playground. The story largely plays out the same as before: the Progenitors create the 13 planes, Siberys and Khyber argue, eventually Khyber kills Siberys but then Eberron imprisons Khyber, creating the planet Eberron; but the Progenitors in this scenario still have been demoted to a lower class of being. And if a person from Eberron learns the truth of their existence and place within the universe, whether by communing with the Progenitors or by being shown the truth by an interloper from another world, that would shatter their entire worldview.

dave2008 · Jul 21, 2021

doctorbadwolf said:
Basically. The Great Wheel is two things. One, is a diagram. I don't care about the diagram at all. The problem would be the exact same if the diagram was a world tree or a world axis or a flow chart or if there was no diagram and it was just an alphabetical list of planes with their descriptions.

The other thing the Great Wheel is, is those planes and their descriptions. It's The Nine Hells, Astral Plane, Planes of various prime elements, Sigil, and all the things contained within those planes and locations. In 4e, the City of Brass is in the Plane of Fire if you're playing Greyhawk. You just have to use old material because no new stuff was published. In Nerath, an AU version of the City of Brass is in a hot area of the Elemental Chaos that combines fire and air, possibly other elements, to create a pocket of stability rules over by genies. In FR, IIRC it is similarly placed but has some different history, and stronger ties directly to the world in the form of the politics of Calimshan. In Eberron, I don't recall if there even is a City of Brass in 4e, but if there is it was placed somewhere that fit Eberron's cosmology.

Fernia is not a renamed plane of fire, it is much more complex than that.

Thank you for clarification. I believe I see the issue, but I no longer think I can offer you any help. We are just to different in this respect. I don't think I can explain any better without sounding condescending and that would not be my intent. You will just have to be unhappy I guess (until WotC changes course) - sorry!

Parmandur · Jul 21, 2021

Maxperson said:
From what I can see, the language used for the creation portion are "legends say" and "sages agree" and so on. It's rumor that they created the universe, and it's possible that it was true that they created the Eberron universe by isolating it from the rest of the Great Wheel. Or that they never existed at all.

Is there something outside of the 3.5 creation myth that gives the progenitor wyrms objective reality and says definitively that they created everything?

Or maybe they created a universe. Or maybe the universe at a given table.

Bolares · Jul 21, 2021

Urriak Uruk said:
its planes have profound and shifting influences on the Material Plane

They are no called to be part of the material plane, or demiplanes either. Even inside the great wheel, Eberron planes are still planes, that influence the material plane, but are not part of it.

Parmandur · Jul 21, 2021

Bolares said:
They are no called to be part of the material plane, or demiplanes either. Even inside the great wheel, Eberron planes are still planes, that influence the material plane, but are not part of it.

That, or they may be Moons.

DEFCON 1 · Jul 21, 2021

Bolares said:
What I mean is that if the novels were canon it would have one...

I wouldn't even really agree with that... because any idea that novels were "metaplot" would imply that it should affect the game itself. But they don't... nothing that happens in any Forgotten Realms novel changes whatever the current campaign setting guide that people would use for their games. It wouldn't be until a follow-up setting guide got published that maybe something that happened in a novel would get referenced in the new book. But even that's unlikely. I mean take a look at the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide... how many of Elminster's exploits from all the novels he has been in are referenced even tangentially to what appears in that book? So for all intents and purposes... almost nothing Elminster has done has impacted the game's so-called "canon" or "metaplot". Thus it might as well not even exist.

Urriak Uruk · Jul 21, 2021

Bolares said:
They are no called to be part of the material plane, or demiplanes either. Even inside the great wheel, Eberron planes are still planes, that influence the material plane, but are not part of it.

EDIT: So, you're right; the Ring of Sibyris seems to be clarified to also be what encases Eberron and shelters it from the Great Wheel. It is not clear if the Ring also encases the 12 Planes/Moons (in previous editions it did not) or if the moons orbit the Ring, and themselves are not sheltered from the Great Wheel (meaning, Eberron is within the Ring, but Mabar is not). If the latter, theoretically one could jump to Thelanis from Eberron, and from there to say the Feywild, or vice-verse. If the former, this doesn't really work.

It's not clarified either way, so I guess that's left to interpretation.

Bolares · Jul 21, 2021

Parmandur said:
That, or they may be Moons.

Or both, or neither (god I love Eberron!)

Bolares · Jul 21, 2021

DEFCON 1 said:
nothing that happens in any Forgotten Realms novel changes whatever the current campaign setting guide that people would use for their games.

stuff that happened on the novels interfered with tomb of anihilation... Artus Cimber, the ring of winter and all of that