D&D 4E setting and 4e cosmology

[rembrandtqeinstein]

I started writing a world for my next 3e campaign when I found out 4e was coming out. I really like everything I've heard about the new rules and the cosmology so I wanted to modify it to match the new setting.

In my original world I had an alien invasion which would cause the destruction of the world and eventually the players would be able to get in the way.

In the 4e world I'm going to change the immortal aliens to a society of Feywild Eladrin who know maintaining their immortality comes at the cost of destroying almost all life in the "real" world but do it anyway because they either fear death or just think their continued existence is more important than the suffering of mortals.

Then I can tie the fall of all of the great past empires in to a time when the invaders "refreshed" their immortality.

The question I have is what is a good, fantasy-plausible mechanism by which the immortals can maintain their immortality that simultaneously has a detrimental effect on the "real" world? And how can I hint that past empires were all destroyed by the same thing without giving away the whole plot? And finally what would make good "servants" for the immortals that go about preparing the world for their coming and would be the player's main heroic tier big baddies?

I put the notes for the 3e campaign in a mind map that can be viewed with Freemind which is software I highly recommend for helping organize just about anything.

http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Download

http://hosted.filefront.com/rembrandtq/

 

[AntiStateQuixote]

In the default D&D cosmology (4th edition) the World is occupied by mortal beings whose souls travel through the Shadowfell on their way to some final reward after death. Let's change that.

Souls are actually recycled to continue life on the World. When a mortal being dies its soul travels to the Shadowfell and then on to some (not final) reward in one of the Astral Dominions. Later, after an appropriate reward period, the deity that rules the Dominion sends the soul back to the World for reincarnation.

There is a finite amount of "soulstuff" created when the Gods put life into the World. During the clash between the Gods and Primordials the Gods lost the ability to create new soulstuff. Thus recycling of souls is necessary to continue life in the World.

Enter the alien race . . . which must feed on soulstuff to continue its existence. Either their society, technology or lifeforce (pick one or more) depends on the consumption of soulstuff. Periodically they must replenish their supply of soulstuff. They do so by instigating major catastrophes in the World and harvesting the soulstuff in the Shadowfell before it can go on to its afterlife reward.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Feeding on soul stuff seems like a cool Far Realm thing to do.

Maybe the original Feywild Eladrin were trying to learn about Far Realm and their probes and sensors got noticed by some being or race there and they were taken over (like Androsynth and Orz from Star Control 2). And maybe the soul stuff is actually a common element in Far Realm that the aliens used to consume but in the "normal" cosmos it only exists as souls.

Which means there could be a connection between the original creation of sentient life and Far Realm. Good stuff, this leads to the possibility of a really epic adventure where the gods run out of souls and the players would have to re-create the original creation event to refill their supply.

 

[invokethehojo]

Well, in the worlds and monsters book it said that the feywild and shadowfell are like the brothers of the real world, and that many places/people/things had versions in each world. The shadar-kai once extended thier life by dealing with the Raven queen (i think).

Maybe these eladrin made a deal with some god or being that if they destroyed the counterparts of themselves and/or thier homes/lands in the realworld he would allow them to live forever. This would have to benefit this god somehow.