Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hamburger Mary" data-source="post: 1418592" data-attributes="member: 17363">Where do you find anything in the description that say that good and evil fight because they hate one another? My point is that as it is written - and we are arguing over a very small amount of information - nothing says that the war is about good and evil. Unlike the Blood War, it is not implied that this is a war someone chose to start at some point in time, or one that could some day end. What it specifically says is that "warfare defines all aspects of their existence" and "the warfare never ends". Likewise, it specifies that slain soldiers eventually return, further perpetuating the war. So as I see it, this is not about good and evil. It is about war. It takes the form of good and evil because those are core concepts of the universe (well, the D&D universe). Sure, it would be more imaginative if it was fiendish bunnies fighting celestial ducks, or modrons engaged in a subtle web of political intrigue, but one of the stated goals of Eberron is to provide a place and reason for the existence of creatures from the core rulebooks. For me, this gives a good reason for the existence of warlike outsiders: they are embodiments of the concept of war, shaped by the touch of good or evil. The celestials and devils of Lammania are shaped by the elemental nature of that plane. And I suspect that we will see a similar trend in the other planes: it's specifically mentioned that not all creatures on the "light" plane are good, so it would follow that not all creatures on the "dark" plane are bad.  "Death is sad" is a fairly big generalization to make when all we have is a one-sentence description of the plane. As other folks have pointed out, that's a good general description of Hades, but doesn't mention the Elysian Fields, the Furies, the waters of Lethe, or any of the elements that make that afterlife interesting. And if it is the case that death is sad, that also raises the other issue of "Wow, so no matter what I do, I'm going to eternal misery when I die?" which has its own philosophical implications. *shrug* Ultimately, I don't disagree with you. The planes are fairly straightforward. But I think that probably does serve the goals of the world. And I still find it to be more interesting than Baator (I guess I'm just missing the "delicious flavor" there, but to each their own).  With the tiny amount of information we have, it seems to me that it's just as much of a "what if" to say that it's just like the Far Realms. But my intention was not to say "I'm right and you're wrong", but rather to say "You may be jumping to conclusions -- here's another possible alternative." You're right, there is little data to support my aberration theory. What I was working from was:* That stated goal of giving creatures a logical place in the world.* On one of the WotC threads, Hellcow said that aberrations specifically had some sort of defined role.* Mind flayers are iconic creatures, and are not normally extraplanar (although I may be again reading into things to assume that they are extraplanar here). If I'm correct, at least one aberation has been given a significantly different backstory tied to this plane. Baker also worked on Goodman Games' Complete Guide to Beholders, which painted those creatures as far more alien than usual. *shrug* Again, it's all conjecture -- I assumed these boards were a place for discussion and conjecture, and if I was mistaken in that, my apologies.   And it's one of the few planes that we get any sort of significant amount of information about, and even that is extremely limited. So there may be more twists to the other planes when we finally get all the info. Or not. Maybe they are all boring and derivitive. Just trying to look at the possible positives instead of dismissing things out of hand.  Now, this is an excellent idea!</blockquote>

Verification