The Cosmology of Eberron

[Hand of Evil]

Are you kidding? It provides so many fun plot hooks... now we have a specific place that alienists draw their power from, with a history in the world. Makes alienists even more likely to be persecuted in Eberron.

Not to mention all the fun stuff you can pull from Call of Cthulu d20.

I love the waxing/waning planes. Very nice idea. And I do believe the excerpt mentioned that scholars in Eberron do have charts for when these planes are coterminous and such, but it's left up to the DM to do the specifics to suit his campaign. Works for me. From the info they give in the core book, we should be able to fudge the last coterminous moment of the major planes, and a simple calculation can tell you when the next one will be. And, of course, you could always rig some major magic mojo that alters such timetables or forges a 'bridge' to another plane for your campaign story.

And, yet again, it gives me a great way to steal the insect spirits & Horrors from Shadowrun to use in Eberron.

Plus the whole rogue plane/planet think - a plane that a) orbits another plane b) has an orbit that only comes close to the material every X period of time, great campaign idea.

 

[~Johnny~]

The thing that annoys me more than anything are the made up names that seem to have little or no connection to the contents of the plane. Made up names for the sake of having it sound foreign annoy me.

I think they make a lot of sense. I can see how a standard D&D campaign would use descriptive, scientific names like "the negative energy plane," because they're not something broadly experienced. The people who know about them are specialists, and probably somewhat isolated from one another. But these planes are something that everyone on Eberron experiences. Just as people name worlds, nations, and months, it's logical to assume they'd have names for other worlds/dimensions.

 

[Gez]

Are you kidding? It provides so many fun plot hooks... now we have a specific place that alienists draw their power from, with a history in the world. Makes alienists even more likely to be persecuted in Eberron.

Not to mention all the fun stuff you can pull from Call of Cthulu d20.

No, I'm not kidding. When the "Far Realms" behaves like the other kids, it's just another plane. There's demons from the Abyss, slaadi from Limbo, archons from Celestia, and pseudonatural things from the Far Realms. They no longer are alien. They just are another category of outsiders.

I prefer when they aren't just another category of outsiders, but something other, not really understood. When the Far Realms are really far. When these things are impossible to describe or understand really, just because they don't obey the same rules as the universe. In short, when they're there, but without being supposed to be there. An anomaly. Not bound by the forces of alignments, not present in the same dimensions as the creation, not even really existing (see Sepulchrave's Chtonic creatures to get a rough idea, except Sep's chtonics are demons).


Back to Eberron
The cosmology is quite close in its idea from the orrery cosmology in the Manual of the Planes. There's the same idea of planes waxing and waning and becoming coterminous regularly.

 

[Olive]

Are you kidding? It provides so many fun plot hooks... now we have a specific place that alienists draw their power from, with a history in the world. Makes alienists even more likely to be persecuted in Eberron.

I kinda agree with both of you. I thinkt he far realm should be beyond the core cosmology of a campaign, but Eberron breaking that means I'll likely have more cool creatures from there to bring into play.

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

From the Article:

"Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead

A place of hopelessness, eternal despair, and consuming apathy, Dolurrh is the realm where mortal souls go after death."

Kind of gives the player motivation to keep his/her PC alive, eh?

Something seems missing in this explanation to me.

Likely the answer is that certain souls progress to become angels or demons and participate in an enternal good VS evil stuggle I guess, but that doesn't sound complete either. That is one good strong point in the great wheel structure, every alignment a corresponding afterlife...

 

[Gez]

Kind of gives the player motivation to keep his/her PC alive, eh?

Something seems missing in this explanation to me.

I was going to point the same thing. If all life can give is eternal despair and consuming apathy, then we can understand better the incentive to achieve lichdom.

Otherwise, it makes for a very depressing universe. Why would a good-aligned person decide to have children, if creating a new mortal life means damning one new soul to eternal apathy and consuming despair?

There must be a way out. I'm sure a dead druid would prefer to go to Lamannia, even if reincarnated as a beaver.

 

[Spatula]

Fires up the imagination to muse about what happens to the dead when the plane of the dead (Dolurrh) is ... co-terminus.

The Day of the Dead?

The whole idea really does give a lot of inspiration for campaign ideas (like: what happens when there's a planar conjunction where 2 or more planes are co-terminus with the prime at the same time?), some of it seems like it could be a headache. Fire spells, summoning spells, etc. being impeded at certain times, for example.

 

[Umbran]

Just as people name worlds, nations, and months, it's logical to assume they'd have names for other worlds/dimensions.

Yes. And in English, the months are named after gods, feasts, and numbers. All names with meaning, not random words. The worlds in the sky are named after gods and mythological figures. The states of the US are named after people, other places, or with meaningful Amerindian or Spanish words. The names of nations of Europe and Africa have origins of some sort. Almost never is an important place named with a nice sounding syllable or two plucked out of nothingness.

My gripe is simply that they break a common rule of fiction - don't make up foreign-sounding words merely for the sake of having foreign-sounding words. Such constructed things are a pain in the neck, as they don't give you mnemonic support. It is a small, petty gripe, I admit.

 

[Olive]

What's the etomology for the word heaven? Hell comes from the Greek god Hel I think...

 

[shilsen]

What's the etomology for the word heaven? Hell comes from the Greek god Hel I think...

Off the top of my head I'd say they both come from Old High German. Hel was the goddess ruling the underworld in teutonic mythology.