The 30 cosmoi
I'm including the Far Realm in this list, because although it is not a cosmos in its own right, it IS best thought of as the parts of Reality that got "rejected" from the cosmoses (or "cosmoi" if you prefer that pluralization) proper.
The basic idea I went with, here, was that the First Ones- as the first real intelligences in this Reality- spent their time traveling the unformed Chaos until each of them found Perfection. That Perfection, of course, was different for each of them, since they were radically different beings with radically different perspectives and powers. Once each First One found Perfection, it tended to gather more concepts and objects to add to it, until each Perfection grew into an entire universe- and then multiverse- a cosmos in its own right. Each of these cosmoi is assumed to be at least as "large" or extensive as the "central cosmos," which was described above in the "On Cosmology" post; the fact that most of them are far more homogeneous than the central cosmos is irrelevant.
Once the "pure" and "perfect" cosmoi were formed, the story goes, the First Ones gradually began to notice movement in the Chaos that existed beyond the Perfection- and then followed that movement to discover The Others. When the First Ones discovered each other, their discoveries precipitated "link cosmoi" along paths between their original "perfect" cosmoi- the idea being that the links were results of attempts by the First Ones to understand each other and each other's perfect homes.
In the middle of all this activity, unnoticed by the First Ones and their servants and creations at first, a new cosmos started to form amid the cast-off debris. Under nobody's control and formed by no conscious mind they were aware of, this central cosmos nevertheless assumed a reality and structure that was clearly just as real as anything in the cosmoi the First Ones had a direct hand in- and thus it presented a mystery to them. Furthermore, it presented a place for them to all interact simultaneously, instead of one-on-one as the "link cosmoi" did. This is how the central cosmos detailed in the above post formed.
After that, the cosmoi beyond the central one formed a sort of "cage" in the Far Realm surrounding it. It was this structure that the Shades- the mortal race who first discovered and used Urgic Magic- noticed, when they breached the Far Realm, and resolved to break out of. This is what led them to hatch the Plan for the Bridge Plane, the Ritual of Opening and the Final Gate, which formed such a large part of my campaign's plot. One has to admit, on reflection, that any structure so large embedded in what should be a domain of ultimate Chaos and Madness would be noticed and reflected upon (if not actively studied).
So, that said, let's do the list. In advance, I will explain that I'm doing this based on the ordering of First Ones from most to least powerful: Entropy, Thought (split into Madness and Dream), Spirit, Matter, Time, and Fate. The Seventh First One that my PCs became at the end of the campaign doesn't count here, because this is a description of the Reality that they had to deal with. It was assumed that Evolution would eventually create its own cosmoi, as well as creating new planes/regions in the central cosmos. The list is as follows:
I'm including the Far Realm in this list, because although it is not a cosmos in its own right, it IS best thought of as the parts of Reality that got "rejected" from the cosmoses (or "cosmoi" if you prefer that pluralization) proper.
The basic idea I went with, here, was that the First Ones- as the first real intelligences in this Reality- spent their time traveling the unformed Chaos until each of them found Perfection. That Perfection, of course, was different for each of them, since they were radically different beings with radically different perspectives and powers. Once each First One found Perfection, it tended to gather more concepts and objects to add to it, until each Perfection grew into an entire universe- and then multiverse- a cosmos in its own right. Each of these cosmoi is assumed to be at least as "large" or extensive as the "central cosmos," which was described above in the "On Cosmology" post; the fact that most of them are far more homogeneous than the central cosmos is irrelevant.
Once the "pure" and "perfect" cosmoi were formed, the story goes, the First Ones gradually began to notice movement in the Chaos that existed beyond the Perfection- and then followed that movement to discover The Others. When the First Ones discovered each other, their discoveries precipitated "link cosmoi" along paths between their original "perfect" cosmoi- the idea being that the links were results of attempts by the First Ones to understand each other and each other's perfect homes.
In the middle of all this activity, unnoticed by the First Ones and their servants and creations at first, a new cosmos started to form amid the cast-off debris. Under nobody's control and formed by no conscious mind they were aware of, this central cosmos nevertheless assumed a reality and structure that was clearly just as real as anything in the cosmoi the First Ones had a direct hand in- and thus it presented a mystery to them. Furthermore, it presented a place for them to all interact simultaneously, instead of one-on-one as the "link cosmoi" did. This is how the central cosmos detailed in the above post formed.
After that, the cosmoi beyond the central one formed a sort of "cage" in the Far Realm surrounding it. It was this structure that the Shades- the mortal race who first discovered and used Urgic Magic- noticed, when they breached the Far Realm, and resolved to break out of. This is what led them to hatch the Plan for the Bridge Plane, the Ritual of Opening and the Final Gate, which formed such a large part of my campaign's plot. One has to admit, on reflection, that any structure so large embedded in what should be a domain of ultimate Chaos and Madness would be noticed and reflected upon (if not actively studied).
So, that said, let's do the list. In advance, I will explain that I'm doing this based on the ordering of First Ones from most to least powerful: Entropy, Thought (split into Madness and Dream), Spirit, Matter, Time, and Fate. The Seventh First One that my PCs became at the end of the campaign doesn't count here, because this is a description of the Reality that they had to deal with. It was assumed that Evolution would eventually create its own cosmoi, as well as creating new planes/regions in the central cosmos. The list is as follows:
- (0) The Far Realm: This is best thought of as the cast-off concepts, ideas, and objects that none of the First Ones found necessary for their own visions of Perfection, nor were incorporated into the creation of the central cosmos. The Far Realm is without Time or Space in any meaningful sense: once you enter it, it is possible to leave in any time, in any place, in any cosmos- if you can only find (or create) a portal leading to exactly where and when you want to go. Out (Un)there, it is just as possible to meet one's own distant descendants as it is to meet creatures that went extinct on one's homeworld tens of millions of years ago. It is also possible (in fact, much much more likely) to meet Things that have no evolutionary (or other) connection to your homeworld or its physical laws at all.
- (1) The Central Cosmos: This is the "expanded Great Wheel" that I somewhat detailed in my previous post. Little more need be said about it here, except that it is the only cosmos that was not created explicitly by the attention and actions of any First One. In many ways, this cosmos can be thought of as the "real" prison of the Demiurge- my players certainly did, when they learned about the Cage and started to realize What was waking up.
- (2) Entropy: This cosmos is best thought of as the Negative Energy Plane writ large. Every plane in it is Negative-Dominant, and several of them even have a trait that's even more intense than the Strongly Negative Dominant one. Few things with any substance survive here for long; instead, it is populated by spiritual predators constantly looking for any life-force they can grab/consume. Creatures "made" of pure Void or Vacuum, such as the original form of the Elder Evil Pandorym, would fit quite well here (in fact, in my own game the entity Pandorym was explicitly stated as having been called from the Pure-Entropy cosmos). For some reason, my players never wanted to visit this one directly, but if they had, I would have drawn inspiration from the "dark" cosmos that the Valisk habitat ends up in in Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy. As with all cosmoi beyond the Far Realm and Center, this cosmos has permanent portals to its linked cosmoi.
- (3) Entropy-Madness: This cosmos actually saw use in my games as a disposal location. The concept with this place is that physical laws themselves are constantly under attack and changing: nothing stays constant for longer than a nanosecond. It is actively corrosive to anything from another structured existence which enters it, breaking that thing down into its fundamental particles and then refitting those fundamental particles into new organizational schema or modes of interaction that bear little to no resemblance to their original physical laws. This cosmos was directly inspired by descriptions of the "novo-vacuum" in Greg Egan's novel Schild's Ladder. Even in the midst of these constantly changing laws of physics, though, this cosmos still manages to keep its two permanent portals to Pure-Entropy and Pure-Madness.
- (4) Entropy-Dream: This cosmos was never actually looked-at by my PCs, even in passing or investigation. Conceptually, it would be a place of endless Nightmares, a reality that's actively hostile to anything sentient that dares to live within. The best literary comparison I could probably make here would be the Labyrinth that the Patryns are imprisoned in, in Weis & Hickman's Death Gate Cycle. Basically, reality itself changes its laws and configuration so as to be against you, at every turn. Anything from this cosmos that actually managed to get outside would be incredibly dangerous to anything it met. This cosmos has permanent portals to Pure-Entropy and Pure-Dream; the Dream side is watched constantly by the inhabitants on the other side, while the Entropy side is simply a common gathering spot for hungry predators looking for the next unfortunate material morsel to come through.
- (5) Entropy-Spirit: This cosmos is essentially a "ribbon" of planes in no particular order, which are a constant battleground between Angels and "Demons" (which are actually properly termed Qlippoth, in UK's semantics). The line between Good and Evil, Death and Life, is very explicit and unmistakable in this cosmos, and planes near the center of it are constantly being fought over by both sides. This cosmos has permanent portals to "Heaven" (the Spirit cosmos) and "Hell" (the Entropy cosmos) that are well known by planar scholars native to it.
- (6) Entropy-Matter: This is also a "battleground" cosmos like the Entropy-Spirit one, but in this case the conflict is between Elementals and Qlippoth. The Qlippoth of this cosmos are essentially "negative" versions of the Elementals; for example, there are Earth Qlippoth, Water Qlippoth, and so on. Qlippoth of this cosmos are best thought of as variant Unelementals (from the Epic Bestiary) that happen to have Elemental Creature templates added to them. Sentience is rare in this cosmos, and generally anything from outside it that does have self-awareness slowly begins to lose its ability to think as time goes by. This cosmos is made up entirely of Elemental planes and their negative counterparts, as well as a single Ethereal-esque transitive plane connecting them; the permanent portals to Matter and Entropy are both located within that plane.
- (7) Entropy-Time: This cosmos is just a sea of chaotic non-physical space populated with "bubbles" which are universes corresponding mostly to standard laws of physics. In other words, it's Spelljammer writ (very) large, with the exceptions that "elements" are the atomic elements familiar to we Earth people rather than concepts or forces like Fire, Air, Water, or Wood. Also, dimensional travel does not exist in this cosmos, and the speed of light is an absolute limit- so getting around is quite slow by divine standards. Both the portal to Entropy and the one to Time are located in the "Phlogiston" between bubble-universes here.
- (8) Entropy-Fate: Here I need to reveal the "gimmick" that I based Fate's cosmoi on: she experiments with different game systems. In this cosmos's case, the game system that dominates it is the World of Darkness, by White Wolf; here you will find Vampires, Werewolves, Magi, Changelings, Antediluvians, Black Spiral Dancers, Oracles, and all the rest. The only changes made to the White Wolf canon would be the permanent portals to Entropy (which the locals would probably think of as a portal to Hell, perhaps what the Nephandi for example draw power from) and Fate (which would be thought of as just a portal to another part of the Tellurian until one actually arrives and discovers how radically altered the laws of physics suddenly are).
- (9) Madness: Distinguishing this cosmos from the Far Realm isn't easy, but it is possible by noticing that the Far Realm is mathematically random, whereas this cosmos is only apparently random. That is, those experiments run by statistics teachers wherein they have students write a "random" sequence on the board alongside a sequence created by a random-number generator, with their backs turned, and then they're able to tell which one was made by the students when they turn to look at them both, is writ large here. This cosmos, in other words, is what intelligence thinks is random, whereas the Far Realm is actually random. The difference would really only be noticeable to a statistician in most cases. Of course, this cosmos also has portals to the Madness-linked cosmoi, which the Far Realm proper does not.
- (10) Madness-Dream: This is another cosmos that never got detailed during my game, but here I'll say that it was intended to be a sort of "benign Far Realm." It's filled with all kinds of weird stuff, at least to the eyes of non-natives, but it isn't actively corrosive to intellect nor is it particularly hostile environmentally to anything that enters it. Most inhabitants here are essentially generating their own planes around themselves, similar to the effects of being on Limbo but much larger in scale. This cosmos also, of course, has permanent portals to Madness (which the locals call "Unformed Potential") and Dream (which the locals call "Realized Potential").
- (11) Madness-Spirit: The forces of nature in this cosmos are subtly altered from standard. Instead of either Nuclear force, this cosmos features a sort of "Alignment" force or "Judgement" force, and actual atoms are made up of fundamental alignment particles. Chemical reactions, such as Acid, don't work here- but creatures manage to exist anyway on reacting memes, philosophies, and ontological planets. If you think of this cosmos as a set of Outer Planes without anything else, you'll be pretty close to its actuality; this is a place dominated by Abstracts. The permanent portal to Madness is referred to as "The Unaligned" by locals, since nothing native to this cosmos can possibly be unaligned; the portal to Spirit is termed "Transcendence" (even though it really isn't).
- (12) Madness-Matter: This cosmos is dominated by various Elemental Planes, but not the standard elements: rather, this cosmos contains planes which mix the Elements in every possible configuration, even including some that make little to no sense (such as "Airy Earth mixed with Water"). The fact that Elements which were not included in the formation of the Central Cosmos are included here, along with "atomic" Elements that make no sense in the fantasy paradigm (like Hydrogen and Helium), make this cosmos a very chaotic and dangerous place for outsiders to be. It has the usual permanent portals to its linked cosmoi, Matter and Madness.
- (13) Madness-Time: The Madness-Time cosmos is a difficult one to explain, largely because it is best defined by what it is not. In particular, it is a place wherein laws of physics are absolute and inviolable, but those laws are not remotely what they appear to be- the best example I could draw from Earth is to point out how quantum mechanics, in its probabilistic-wave-statistical-sums way, "sums" to form what look like Newtonian physics. Magic doesn't work here, but you wouldn't know it from the crazy things advanced natives can do- if you think of this cosmos as a place to put Uber-Science that isn't magic but looks like it should be, then you're not far off. Of course, it has the usual portals to Madness and Time, but in this case the portals are explicitly studied by the locals and they know them well.
- (14) Madness-Fate: This cosmos features another changed game system. In this case, the cosmos's game system is Toon. Yes, this cosmos is the home of the cartoon roleplaying game! It has permanent, un-erasable portals to Fate and Madness, of course.
- (15) Dream: The Pure-Dream cosmos is a series of planes held like bubbles within some far vaster remake of the Region of Dreams; sentient inhabitants of these planes are few but are extremely powerful where they do appear. Every last human-analogue, for example, has a Power Ring which gives him or her the ability to Alter Reality as that Cosmic Ability. This cosmos is inspired mostly by Moorcock's "Dancers at the End of Time" stories.
- (16) Dream-Spirit: Compared with the Central cosmos, this one is quite benign, featuring almost the standard laws of physics in its makeup even though there are no Material or Elemental Planes here. Instead, this cosmos essentially features every alignment combination given an infinite number of layers to express itself: the Spirit side is represented in the importance of alignment, while the Dream side shows itself in the infinite manifestations of each alignment. Many planes and layers here would seem virtually identical to Central Cosmos natives, to some they knew at home, but out in the greater vastness of this cosmos, glorious wonders (in the Good planes) put their own home to shame, and Indescribable Horrors (in the Evil planes) likewise exist to make a non-native glad to leave.
- (17) Dream-Matter: Imagine an Elemental Plane of Earth. Next to that, imagine an Elemental Plane of Minerals. Now imagine an Elemental Plane of Diamond. Next, picture an Elemental Plane of Gold. Now throw on an Elemental Plane of Soy Sauce. Then Ice Cream. Then Blood. Continue this exercise with every concept you can think of, and then wrap them all up in their own Astral/Ethereal Transitive plane, and you have some idea what Dream-Matter looks like.
- (18) Dream-Time: This cosmos is best thought of by noting the fact that modern-day scientists working in String Theory (or more specifically M-Theory) believe that the number of possible ways to resolve the formulation of their theory's fundamentals to derive a set of self-consistent laws of physics, might be as large as 10^500. Of course, our universe can only be one of those incredible number of possibilities, but what happens to the rest? Well, in my Reality, the "unrealized" possibilities exist here- alongside copies of the "realized" ones. In other words, this cosmos is a series of universes stacked together like bubbles in a soap solution, each and every one of which has a slightly different set of laws of physics. Every possible set of physical laws is explored in this cosmos, somewhere.
- (19) Dream-Fate: The game system for this cosmos is Exalted. Little else need be said here.
- (20) Spirit: The Pure-Spirit cosmos has no Gravity force; space exists in relation to one's closeness to "the White" and what passes for gravity pulls you down towards "the Black." Instead of the gravity force, an Alignment/Judgement force exists instead, with the ultimate Source and Arbiter of that force being the White, which is Metatron's manifestation here. A sort of "island" of eternally-growing earth exists at the conceptual "top" of this cosmos, the closest solid land to Metatron; chips of mud are constantly forming on the bottom of this island and flaking off to fall through tens of billions of (effective) light-years to the Black far below. I took inspiration for this cosmos from the "Kaqxachle Metaplane" in the Primal Order book "Chessboards: Planes of Possibility." Since this is a long-out-of-print product, I'm sure not many reading this post will have it available to examine, but the above text should give you enough of an idea to go on provided you keep in mind the fact that the "chips" that fall through this cosmos are considered its individual "planes," and many of them are continent-sized.
- (21) Spirit-Matter: This cosmos is utterly dominated by supernatural forces- no explicitly natural forces can actually work here. In other words, magic and psionics are fine and dandy, but technology and any (Ex) abilities just plain fail to work. In planar terms, picture an Astral sea with Elemental planes on one side and Outer/Aligned planes on the other, and you've more or less got it; the politics of this plane are consumed by the eternal war between Spirits (i.e. Outsiders, specifically Angels Fiends, and the like) and Genies (including Elementals and Elementars). In this cosmos, it is not at all unusual to see angels and devils team up to take down an elemental, nor to see opposed elementals such as Earth and Air team up to take down an angel or other Spirit.
- (22) Spirit-Time: This place is an entire cosmos devoted to Order; every particle within it carries meaning somehow. Galaxies here are not spiral shapes, but instead form perfect spheres, cylinders, octahedra, and other geometric forms. Everything is under control. It essentially acts as an enormous computer, running programs to answer the Big Questions- i.e., What is the Creator, What is the Meaning of Life, What is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, and Why is its Answer 42? That sort of thing. Any entry into this cosmos would be noticed almost immediately because of the disruption it introduces into the flow of information and perfect computation. Natives, those that outsiders would consider sentient anyway, are by and large absurdly intelligent- far more so than natives of just about any other cosmos- and also very rare in terms of cosmic space they occupy. The majority of life-forms here are subsentient creatures that help preserve the cosmic order and carry out calculations based on it, and hives are by far the most common social structure.
- (23) Spirit-Fate: This cosmos is made up of several sub-multiverses, each one dominated by/running its own game system. The feature that all the game systems here have in common is that they fundamentally include some conflict between a Good force and a Bad one. So, you'll find Star Wars here, along with Middle-Earth/MERP, Scion, and many others.
- (24) Matter: The pure-Matter cosmos is (unsurprisingly) dominated by Elemental Planes. However, all these planes are connected to one central Matter Plane, wherein all Elements are represented in some form, and wherein battles between the various Elements constantly occur as they jockey for dominance over one another. Not only will you find every Element you can name here, such as Earth, Fire, Metal, and Wood; you'll also find many Elements here that you can't name, such as "???" and "Snow of Yesterday." These alternate Elements otherwise exist only in "Pseudoelemental Layers" of the deep Far Realm.
- (25) Matter-Time: In this cosmos, Elemental Planes exist apart from anything like alignment or judgement- no alignment-based powers will work here. That said, the Elements themselves each come in several versions, which relate to each other in an essentially Time-based manner- for example, one sequence is Sparks->Fire->Ash, while another is Crystal->Earth->Sand. Multiple Material Planes exist here, along with a single Astral space as a Transitive.
- (26) Matter-Fate: The game system in this cosmos is d20 Modern. Different planes of existence essentially encapsulate different universes, such as one for Urban Arcana, another for Dark*Matter, yet another for a mecha-flavored campaign, and so on.
- (27) Time: The Pure-Time cosmos is a fairly hostile one to most D&D parties, because its single defining feature is that nothing Supernatural works. At all. No spells. No Psionics. No teleportation (the speed of light is an absolute limit for both travel and communication). And so on. This cosmos really just looks like one giant universe, bearing a suspicious resemblance to the one we of Earth find ourselves within; if you want an excuse to send your D&D party to Earth for a while, this could be it. Just don't expect them to thank you for it.
- (28) Time-Fate: This cosmos is dominated by game systems featuring few to no supernatural options, where the supernatural options which do exist are generally Dark/Evil and in general, Not Recommended. Call of Cthulhu/BRP is the flagship game to consider here, but several others (many of them horror genre, I'll admit) also fall in here.
- (29) Fate: The Pure-Fate cosmos is a series of multiverses linked by the local Plane of Shadow to one another, all of them "running" one flavor or another of D&D. Here, you'll find the 1st Edition multiverse preserved in all its glory, with the 2nd Edition Planescape Great Wheel running right next door to it (in dimensional terms). Also present are alternate cosmologies for basic D&D worlds, such as Eberron and Forgotten Realms/Toril, as well as Athas, and yes, even 4th Edition (the Shadowfell forms that Edition's link to the rest). Even BECMI D&D is here, as are games which were largely derived from D&D back in the day, such as Gamma World.
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