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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imret" data-source="post: 2690995" data-attributes="member: 991">First and foremost, there is the Throne, the non-anthropomorphic, impersonal intelligence responsible for all of Creation. It has placed the Ten Thousand Worlds (various Prime Material Planes) in the Space Between, an infinite nothingness, the blank canvas on which the Throne enacts some great and inscrutable Plan. Where the Space Between wraps around a Prime Material it becomes a Periphery, its infinite potential given a dim semi-reality by its contact with a real world. Thousands of spirits dwell in these realms, shadows of things in all the Worlds.At the center of the Space Between (a tenuous concept in an infinite non-space, but there it is) rages Creation's Heart, the swirling elemental vortex from which all current things but the Unbound were made. Reaching the Heart is difficult, requiring both magic and the correct location (a volcano's heart, in the midst of a great hurricane, deep within the Undertunnels or under an ocean) unless a gate can be found.Certain powers, while not nearly equal in divine power to the Throne, share its nature as remote and separate from the specific campaign world - they are known by various names and natures by most, if not all, cultures in all the worlds. Placed by the Throne as its adjuncts, a solar power oversees the life in each of the worlds, a lunar power maintains the heirarchy and laws of the Periphery spirits, and a largely quiescent intelligence manages the cycles of the landscape; the seasons, tides, and the like. Sadly, I haven't named them yet, as much of this is under construction.The gods are powerful spirits, imbued with the energy of creation either by the efforts of mortals in their sphere or by direct worship. All gods are answerable to the Throne and its servant powers, but largely left to their own devices, as the Throne is largely unconcerned with details smaller than whole worlds and the gods are dependant on mortals for their power. Each deity is served by angels and spirits according to its nature and paradigm, the angels changed from a single basic creature to suit divine needs and the spirits elevated from the Periphery.Sitting in opposition to the Throne and its servitors, indeed in opposition to all mortal life, are the Unbound. They are the first beings created, of infinite variety and lifespan, formed in the earliest days of the Worlds from the very material of the Space Between, rather than that of the Heart. The Unbound are largely imprisoned in the Abyss, a dark and infinite mirror of Creation; amid jungles of toxic fungi, deserts of shattered bones, and mercury swamps, an uncountable host of horrors play out their natures.At the center of the Abyss, so to speak, is the Fortress Malsheem. Fashioned from the bones and essence of the Lord of the Unbound, this black iron citadel is the size of any six mortal capital cities and its eponymous lord, little taller than most men, sits brooding and plotting upon his throne. The form is a lie, a whim of the great bleak terror that turned the Unbound against the Throne, but it serves well to distract the mortals from its other ends.When mortals die, their most basic essence slips into the Periphery; from here it is called by its patron deity, remade into another form of spirit, doomed to wander the edges of the living world, or dragged screaming to the Abyss by Yeth Hounds, dependant on the spirit.Alignment does not appear in my cosmology as understood in D&D; instead, there is Taint. Fundamentally, Taint is the touch of the Unbound as marked by the solar power to cast out those who dabble in things that would destroy all life, given the chance. Taint is visible, and immediate, and largely irreversible.Well...THAT was longer than I'd intended.</blockquote>

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