jgsugden
Legend
When I reference my cosmology in other threads I often am asked more about it. Rather than retyping it every time, I thought I’d provide a summary here so that I can reference it. I have been building and revising it since the early 1980s.
The Known Universe
History
In the beginning there was only Ao, The Source. A million years ago Ao created the Light (The Positive Energy Plane) and the Dark (The Negative Energy Plane). These three semi-sentient entities created Tiamat, Bahamut and Vorel, the eldest true sentient beings, a hundred thousand years ago.
As siblings do, these three fought. Tiamat slew Vorel in her fury and Bahamut raged against her to punish her for her evil. Their 60,000-year battle spawned the elements of the universe before they called a truce. When they did, they went their separate ways and turned to creation, rather than war. They created dragons, primordials and giants to serve them, as well as a singular Heaven for the spirit of Vorel to occupy.
These newly created beings lacked true free will and were bound to the dictums of their Gods. They spent tens of thousands of years collecting the refuse from the battle of Tiamat and Bahamut and depositing it in the Elemental Plane, a singular plane that contains all the elements of the universe.
12 of the primordials, giants and dragons managed to locate Fonts of Power in the wreckage of the battle and through it gained free will. They became the next 12 Gods, and in turn they created angels to serve them like the primordials, dragons and giants served Tiamat and Bahamut. These free willed beings then created elves and dwarves to partner with the angels as they explored their universe … and came into conflict with each other. While there was conflict, this was a universe of laws and order where free will was incredibly rare.
Gods died, and new ones rose to take their place during these conflicts. About 8,000 years ago one of the angels, Asmodeus, was tasked with creating a place to put disobedient spirits … and he in turn crafted the singular Hell plane as a prison for spirits that would not be allowed to reincarnate or go to the Heavens.
Soon after the Gods realized that Asmodeus had fooled them. He had ascended to Godhood by taking one of the sources of power and then tricked the other Gods into making the Hell plane in order for him to harvest more power from spirits sent there.
As chaos ensued, the semi-sentience of the Light and Dark felt the incursion of chaos and instinctively battled against it by cutting off the Gods from the source of their power. They were banished from the Prime plane which contained the fonts of their power and ascended to other planes (The Heavens, Hells and Elemental) to reside. A new status quo established itself and thousands of years passed.
Roughly 4500 years ago the Intrusion occurred. An entire ‘other’ Universe, known as the Far Realms, collided with the Known Universe. The primary point of contact was within the Hells, but the collision rocked all planes. This collision brought chaos into a lawful universe.
The Light and Dark instinctively crafted the Astral Sea as a buffer between planes to prevent the collapse of all planes. It became a buffer between planes that cushioned them from the reverberations of the collision.
However, damage was already done. Reflective Planes had been created from the collision. These Reflective Planes exist between all of the planes that existed at the time (Prime, Heaven, Hell, Positive Energy, Negative Energy, Elemental and the Far Realms). The Shadowfell is the Reflective Plane between the Prime and Negative Energy Plane. The Feywild exists between the Prime and Positive Energy. The Ethereal exists between the Far Realms and the Prime. Other Transitive or Reflective planes exist, but these are the most well-known and populated.
The damage extended beyond the planes and into the being that resided there, with no plane experiencing more corruption than the Hells. Many fallen Angels, known as Devils, were corrupted into Demons. These demons were born with an inherent obsession to do anything and everything to reach the point of conflict between the Hells and the Far Realms – found at the center of the Hells. Asmodeus found his realm besieged by a nearly endless army of demons. He used his Devils to hold them off and has spent every moment since then doing whatever lawful act he could to bolster his troops to hold off the Demons – as if they penetrate his realms and reach the center of the 9 Hell Regions he controls, the entire Known Universe may be lost.
The influence of the Far Realms warped other creatures into aberrations of various types. The wounded universe spent a thousand years adjusting to the infusion of Far Realm chaos.
In his efforts to gather power to repel the Demons, Asmodeus discovered that giving free will to mortal races allowed for worship and bargains to be used to harness power from the free will. He freed a corrupted elf, Lolth, and gave her free will and then struck the first Warlock Bargain with her. Once this was realized by the other Gods, the Gods began to create species to worship them or strike deals. Thus, roughly 3500 years ago, there was a massive expansion of species.
As the species expanded the Gods gathered more power and granted it to their most effective followers. These grew into additional Gods who gathered more power through worship and pact. The quickest riser amongst these expanding races was the humans who discovered and mastered Arcane Magics, with their greatest mind, the Archmage, being the first to master spells that rivaled the peak of divine granted power. It was during these years that the psionic arts derived from ordering the chaos of the Far Realms, was also mastered.
Roughly 1000 years ago the Light and Dark instinctively acted again, recognizing the chaos that was occurring with all of these free willed beings running around. It hardened the boundaries between the planes and cut off access. This severance, known as the Rendering, resulted in very limited ways for traveling or communicating between planes. That status persisted for nearly 1000 years and ended when the ‘pressure’ between the planes ‘popped’ in a moment known as the Spark when these boundaries all collapsed at once. That was roughly 2.5 years before the start of the first campaign I run in my setting.
Planar Design
The Known Universe consists of the Prime, Heavens, Hells, Astral, Elemental, Positive, and Negative Primary Planes. It is connected by collision to an entire other Cosmology known as the Far Realms. Between each of these 8 Planar Regions are Transitive Planes (aka Reflective Planes) that mix the two primary planar sources.
The Prime is infinite. There is a Prime World in the Prime that has a surface area 12 times as large as Earth. This world contains the 12 Sources of Power used by the most powerful of Gods. The Prime World is a Dyson Sphere like structure with a 100-mile-deep layer where gravity flips after 50 miles. Inside the center of the sphere is a purple ‘star’ that lights the massive Deep Underdark wasteland. Given the massive size of the world, I can house any number of concepts in my setting. Sailing across the world would take 50 years.
The Deep Underdark is the interior surface of the sphere, while the 100 miles between the Interior and Exterior Surface is broken down into several layers. The Underdark is not as populated as the Exterior Surface due to harsher living conditions, but it is massive. It is estimated that 70% of the sentient population of the Sphere lives on the Exterior Surface, 10% on the Interior Surface, and 20% between them.
Beyond the Prime World are countless other worlds spread throughout infinite space. Few have elected to explore space over the millennia, but those that did have discovered entire massive worlds that they could claim as their own.
The Heavens are finite. The heavens house the souls of those that certain gods reward, but it has a huge problem – it has finite borders that cannot be expanded. As such, the 7 Realms of the Heavens send souls back to the Prime to be reborn as quickly as new souls arrive. There is a single plane with 7 regions. Mortals traveling there primarily stick to the City of Gold, one of the greatest marketplaces of the multiverse, as access to the remainder of the Heavens is controlled.
The Hells are not so limited. The Hell Plane is a singular plane broken down into hundreds of regions. The center 9 are controlled by the Devils and Asmodeus. They protect it from the residents of the rest of Hell, known as the Abyss, that is occupied by Demons and other Fiends. If the Devils were ever to falter in their duty to defend against the Demons, the Demons might fight their way to the center of Hell and bring destruction to the universe in the form of expanding the breach to the Far Realms.
While there are theoretical limits to the Hells, the true nature of the borders are lost to the chaos of the Abyss. The most visited place in the Hells is the Iron City of Dis, another massive marketplace located in one the regions controlled by the Devils.
The Astral Connects the planes. Known as the Astral Sea or Astral Plane, the Astral is a buffer between planes. Most multi-dimensional gates connect to the Astral. Entrepreneurs collect these gates and drag them together to create connectivity between the planes. The greatest collection of these gates is Sygil, the City of Doors. It serves as a Neutral Meeting Space, a marketplace, and a home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs and smugglers. The Lady of Pain, a Goddess, rules over it with an iron fist and maintains order. There are a seemingly infinite number of pocket dimensions that connect to the Astral that are hijacked by wizards to create Portable Holes, Bags of Holding, etc…
The Elemental Plane is a massive junkyard full of treasures. The Elemental Plane was a dumping ground for the refuse of the battle between Tiamat and Bahamut when they were at their peak of power … and many have since discovered that the refuse is filled with treasures beyond belief. Dwarves and other species have long mined the plane for resources. It is a singular plane with huge pockets of various elements and para-elements. The City of Brass, located on a pocket of earth surrounded by fire, air and magma, is the most well-known place in the Elemental – another of the major marketplaces of the universe.
The Positive and Negative are not for Mortals, Gods or nearly else. These living planes are the Light and Dark. Only two beings in all of creation are known to travel there – the Raven Queen and Asmodeus. The Light is the source of the Weave through which all Arcane, Divine and Nature magic flow… and that flow carries through all planes and comes together in the Negative Energy Plane.
The Far Realms is alien. There is no other word for it. The rules of the Known universe do not apply there. The minds of those of the Known Universe can’t comprehend it. Traveling there is beyond difficult, and surviving even a few moments without going mad is unheard of in all of time. What is known is that it is far more ancient than the Prime, and that the only magic there is Psionics. There are no Arcane, Divine, Nature or Supernatural magics there.
The Shadowfell is between the Dark and Prime. It is a reflective plane that constantly tends to reshape itself to appear as a corrupted version of the Prime. Only the presence of powerful beings can slow this tendency. Moments of Great Evil on the Prime (or Shadowfell) can cause a section of the Shadowfell to break and create a reflection known as a Ravenloft Domain. These domains may be stuck in time, constantly reliving the moments of the evil, or they may just be prisons for reflections of the horrible evil that existed on the prime.
The Feywild is infused with life … too much life. The Feywild is a bright realm infused with the life energy of the Positive Energy Plane. Being in it is blissful. Archfey traveled there long ago and conquered it. The infusion of positive energy tends to cause beings there to feel isolated from reality and free from the strictures of morality. It also reflects the Prime in a similar way to the Shadowfell, but with a tendency to remove the structures creates by intelligent species and with the blessings of nature enhanced by the life force flowing through the planes. As it is closer to the source of all magic, it tends to be a place with more magic than other realms.
The Ethereal is a Nightmare Realm. The Ethereal connect the Prime to the Far Realms. It is a place where spirits and aberrations wander. While it can be used as a conduit to bypass barriers on the prime, it is also a dangerous place to stay for more than a moment as it contains nightmare Elder Gods and other disasters waiting to be discovered. Most that travel there are careful to avoid fully entering it. They instead linger in the border ethereal where the danger is lower.
The Other Transitive Planes exist, but are rarely utilized. The other transitive planes exist, but are infrequently visited.
What about the other Planes in the Great Wheel? They’re generally there, but just regions within other planes. Limbo, for example, is a massive pocket dimension within the Astral Plane. Gehenna, Hades and Tarterus are amongst the vast regions within the Hells.
The Known Universe
History
In the beginning there was only Ao, The Source. A million years ago Ao created the Light (The Positive Energy Plane) and the Dark (The Negative Energy Plane). These three semi-sentient entities created Tiamat, Bahamut and Vorel, the eldest true sentient beings, a hundred thousand years ago.
As siblings do, these three fought. Tiamat slew Vorel in her fury and Bahamut raged against her to punish her for her evil. Their 60,000-year battle spawned the elements of the universe before they called a truce. When they did, they went their separate ways and turned to creation, rather than war. They created dragons, primordials and giants to serve them, as well as a singular Heaven for the spirit of Vorel to occupy.
These newly created beings lacked true free will and were bound to the dictums of their Gods. They spent tens of thousands of years collecting the refuse from the battle of Tiamat and Bahamut and depositing it in the Elemental Plane, a singular plane that contains all the elements of the universe.
12 of the primordials, giants and dragons managed to locate Fonts of Power in the wreckage of the battle and through it gained free will. They became the next 12 Gods, and in turn they created angels to serve them like the primordials, dragons and giants served Tiamat and Bahamut. These free willed beings then created elves and dwarves to partner with the angels as they explored their universe … and came into conflict with each other. While there was conflict, this was a universe of laws and order where free will was incredibly rare.
Gods died, and new ones rose to take their place during these conflicts. About 8,000 years ago one of the angels, Asmodeus, was tasked with creating a place to put disobedient spirits … and he in turn crafted the singular Hell plane as a prison for spirits that would not be allowed to reincarnate or go to the Heavens.
Soon after the Gods realized that Asmodeus had fooled them. He had ascended to Godhood by taking one of the sources of power and then tricked the other Gods into making the Hell plane in order for him to harvest more power from spirits sent there.
As chaos ensued, the semi-sentience of the Light and Dark felt the incursion of chaos and instinctively battled against it by cutting off the Gods from the source of their power. They were banished from the Prime plane which contained the fonts of their power and ascended to other planes (The Heavens, Hells and Elemental) to reside. A new status quo established itself and thousands of years passed.
Roughly 4500 years ago the Intrusion occurred. An entire ‘other’ Universe, known as the Far Realms, collided with the Known Universe. The primary point of contact was within the Hells, but the collision rocked all planes. This collision brought chaos into a lawful universe.
The Light and Dark instinctively crafted the Astral Sea as a buffer between planes to prevent the collapse of all planes. It became a buffer between planes that cushioned them from the reverberations of the collision.
However, damage was already done. Reflective Planes had been created from the collision. These Reflective Planes exist between all of the planes that existed at the time (Prime, Heaven, Hell, Positive Energy, Negative Energy, Elemental and the Far Realms). The Shadowfell is the Reflective Plane between the Prime and Negative Energy Plane. The Feywild exists between the Prime and Positive Energy. The Ethereal exists between the Far Realms and the Prime. Other Transitive or Reflective planes exist, but these are the most well-known and populated.
The damage extended beyond the planes and into the being that resided there, with no plane experiencing more corruption than the Hells. Many fallen Angels, known as Devils, were corrupted into Demons. These demons were born with an inherent obsession to do anything and everything to reach the point of conflict between the Hells and the Far Realms – found at the center of the Hells. Asmodeus found his realm besieged by a nearly endless army of demons. He used his Devils to hold them off and has spent every moment since then doing whatever lawful act he could to bolster his troops to hold off the Demons – as if they penetrate his realms and reach the center of the 9 Hell Regions he controls, the entire Known Universe may be lost.
The influence of the Far Realms warped other creatures into aberrations of various types. The wounded universe spent a thousand years adjusting to the infusion of Far Realm chaos.
In his efforts to gather power to repel the Demons, Asmodeus discovered that giving free will to mortal races allowed for worship and bargains to be used to harness power from the free will. He freed a corrupted elf, Lolth, and gave her free will and then struck the first Warlock Bargain with her. Once this was realized by the other Gods, the Gods began to create species to worship them or strike deals. Thus, roughly 3500 years ago, there was a massive expansion of species.
As the species expanded the Gods gathered more power and granted it to their most effective followers. These grew into additional Gods who gathered more power through worship and pact. The quickest riser amongst these expanding races was the humans who discovered and mastered Arcane Magics, with their greatest mind, the Archmage, being the first to master spells that rivaled the peak of divine granted power. It was during these years that the psionic arts derived from ordering the chaos of the Far Realms, was also mastered.
Roughly 1000 years ago the Light and Dark instinctively acted again, recognizing the chaos that was occurring with all of these free willed beings running around. It hardened the boundaries between the planes and cut off access. This severance, known as the Rendering, resulted in very limited ways for traveling or communicating between planes. That status persisted for nearly 1000 years and ended when the ‘pressure’ between the planes ‘popped’ in a moment known as the Spark when these boundaries all collapsed at once. That was roughly 2.5 years before the start of the first campaign I run in my setting.
Planar Design
The Known Universe consists of the Prime, Heavens, Hells, Astral, Elemental, Positive, and Negative Primary Planes. It is connected by collision to an entire other Cosmology known as the Far Realms. Between each of these 8 Planar Regions are Transitive Planes (aka Reflective Planes) that mix the two primary planar sources.
The Prime is infinite. There is a Prime World in the Prime that has a surface area 12 times as large as Earth. This world contains the 12 Sources of Power used by the most powerful of Gods. The Prime World is a Dyson Sphere like structure with a 100-mile-deep layer where gravity flips after 50 miles. Inside the center of the sphere is a purple ‘star’ that lights the massive Deep Underdark wasteland. Given the massive size of the world, I can house any number of concepts in my setting. Sailing across the world would take 50 years.
The Deep Underdark is the interior surface of the sphere, while the 100 miles between the Interior and Exterior Surface is broken down into several layers. The Underdark is not as populated as the Exterior Surface due to harsher living conditions, but it is massive. It is estimated that 70% of the sentient population of the Sphere lives on the Exterior Surface, 10% on the Interior Surface, and 20% between them.
Beyond the Prime World are countless other worlds spread throughout infinite space. Few have elected to explore space over the millennia, but those that did have discovered entire massive worlds that they could claim as their own.
The Heavens are finite. The heavens house the souls of those that certain gods reward, but it has a huge problem – it has finite borders that cannot be expanded. As such, the 7 Realms of the Heavens send souls back to the Prime to be reborn as quickly as new souls arrive. There is a single plane with 7 regions. Mortals traveling there primarily stick to the City of Gold, one of the greatest marketplaces of the multiverse, as access to the remainder of the Heavens is controlled.
The Hells are not so limited. The Hell Plane is a singular plane broken down into hundreds of regions. The center 9 are controlled by the Devils and Asmodeus. They protect it from the residents of the rest of Hell, known as the Abyss, that is occupied by Demons and other Fiends. If the Devils were ever to falter in their duty to defend against the Demons, the Demons might fight their way to the center of Hell and bring destruction to the universe in the form of expanding the breach to the Far Realms.
While there are theoretical limits to the Hells, the true nature of the borders are lost to the chaos of the Abyss. The most visited place in the Hells is the Iron City of Dis, another massive marketplace located in one the regions controlled by the Devils.
The Astral Connects the planes. Known as the Astral Sea or Astral Plane, the Astral is a buffer between planes. Most multi-dimensional gates connect to the Astral. Entrepreneurs collect these gates and drag them together to create connectivity between the planes. The greatest collection of these gates is Sygil, the City of Doors. It serves as a Neutral Meeting Space, a marketplace, and a home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs and smugglers. The Lady of Pain, a Goddess, rules over it with an iron fist and maintains order. There are a seemingly infinite number of pocket dimensions that connect to the Astral that are hijacked by wizards to create Portable Holes, Bags of Holding, etc…
The Elemental Plane is a massive junkyard full of treasures. The Elemental Plane was a dumping ground for the refuse of the battle between Tiamat and Bahamut when they were at their peak of power … and many have since discovered that the refuse is filled with treasures beyond belief. Dwarves and other species have long mined the plane for resources. It is a singular plane with huge pockets of various elements and para-elements. The City of Brass, located on a pocket of earth surrounded by fire, air and magma, is the most well-known place in the Elemental – another of the major marketplaces of the universe.
The Positive and Negative are not for Mortals, Gods or nearly else. These living planes are the Light and Dark. Only two beings in all of creation are known to travel there – the Raven Queen and Asmodeus. The Light is the source of the Weave through which all Arcane, Divine and Nature magic flow… and that flow carries through all planes and comes together in the Negative Energy Plane.
The Far Realms is alien. There is no other word for it. The rules of the Known universe do not apply there. The minds of those of the Known Universe can’t comprehend it. Traveling there is beyond difficult, and surviving even a few moments without going mad is unheard of in all of time. What is known is that it is far more ancient than the Prime, and that the only magic there is Psionics. There are no Arcane, Divine, Nature or Supernatural magics there.
The Shadowfell is between the Dark and Prime. It is a reflective plane that constantly tends to reshape itself to appear as a corrupted version of the Prime. Only the presence of powerful beings can slow this tendency. Moments of Great Evil on the Prime (or Shadowfell) can cause a section of the Shadowfell to break and create a reflection known as a Ravenloft Domain. These domains may be stuck in time, constantly reliving the moments of the evil, or they may just be prisons for reflections of the horrible evil that existed on the prime.
The Feywild is infused with life … too much life. The Feywild is a bright realm infused with the life energy of the Positive Energy Plane. Being in it is blissful. Archfey traveled there long ago and conquered it. The infusion of positive energy tends to cause beings there to feel isolated from reality and free from the strictures of morality. It also reflects the Prime in a similar way to the Shadowfell, but with a tendency to remove the structures creates by intelligent species and with the blessings of nature enhanced by the life force flowing through the planes. As it is closer to the source of all magic, it tends to be a place with more magic than other realms.
The Ethereal is a Nightmare Realm. The Ethereal connect the Prime to the Far Realms. It is a place where spirits and aberrations wander. While it can be used as a conduit to bypass barriers on the prime, it is also a dangerous place to stay for more than a moment as it contains nightmare Elder Gods and other disasters waiting to be discovered. Most that travel there are careful to avoid fully entering it. They instead linger in the border ethereal where the danger is lower.
The Other Transitive Planes exist, but are rarely utilized. The other transitive planes exist, but are infrequently visited.
What about the other Planes in the Great Wheel? They’re generally there, but just regions within other planes. Limbo, for example, is a massive pocket dimension within the Astral Plane. Gehenna, Hades and Tarterus are amongst the vast regions within the Hells.
