Whats so special about the Far Realm?

[Hussar]

Currently playing a Starlock...my mark doesn't affect the target except by making it hurt. Some- not all- other classes' marks actually change target behavior. Hussar, your idea opens the door to ALL marks having an immediate- if temporary- effect on target behavior.

I think that's a good thing.

I can see where you're going with this. I wouldn't want it to get too out of hand, because marking isn't supposed to be a power per se, more of an addendum.

Maybe Starlock curses could give bonuses to things like intimidate. Or, maybe you could make an Intimidate check against a cursed target as a minor action. Success=target cowers. Probably have to wait until the baddy is bloodied first, or it would be too powerful, but, I could see the cursed guy getting really scared after being bloodied and give the Starlock a better chance of just ending the fight with an intimidate check.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That abberant isnt trying to eat you. Hes mearly trying to speak with you via his digestive organs.

Almost: that abberant isnt trying to eat you. He's mearly trying to speak with you via his preferred communication organs...too bad they happen to be harmful to you.

 

[amerigoV]

An idea from Mass Effect - their motivation is very fathomable - every 50K years or so they come here and HARVEST everything. In ME, the critters are intelligent machines and that is how they proprogate - they let the technology level of the galaxy grow to a certain level and then harvest it to create more of the creatures (and these are huge, battle cruiser sized creatures with a distinct lovecraftian look). They ensure the cycle by planting certain technologies that allow races to jump ahead to the proper level (sorta like fertilizer).

So you can place the timeline near one of these harvests. Individual aberrations have specific functions in the harvest. Mindflayers are likely the generals/coordinators on the ground. Perhaps discoveries in magic and psionics are really developments planted by the Far Realm to enhance the creatures brains to their maximum tastiness.

Plus it explains why you cannot sling a dead cat without hitting a ruin in most fantasy worlds - there have been a number of harvests leaving the world in ruin.

 

[NoWayJose]

Far Realms - These are places with completely different rules for physics, chemistry and geometry. The "normal" rules are different here. Some examples of what you can do to get the feel of this:

I was thinking along the same lines.

If the Far Realms is truly an aberration of physics, then let's walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

Use completely different game rules every time the Far Realms intersects with the D&D game.

And randomly change the rules each time, just to screw with the players' heads.

 

[amerigoV]

I was thinking along the same lines.

If the Far Realms is truly an aberration of physics, then let's walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

Use completely different game rules every time the Far Realms intersects with the D&D game.

And randomly change the rules each time, just to screw with the players' heads.

Great idea! And perhaps this is the true origin of F.A.T.A.L.

 

[Essenti]

"Aboleths, Illithids, and other aberrations are not true denizens of the Far Realms...

This is yet more faulty thinking perpetrated by those of us safely situated on this side of the veil. So many of us easily and incorrectly assume the squirming wriggling mass of flesh screaming in yonder smoking quivering heap was once a dweller from the depths of the Far Realm--yet even that thing could never survive on the other side.

This sadly twisted aberration *poke* is made of the stuff of our world.

Warped by the influence of the Far Realms? For certain! Actual entities birthed in the otherness? Indeed not!

These sad perversions of life are merely scars in the fabric or our reality, tears in the veil, hastily re-stitched by nature herself using whatever was on hand, or tentacle, as it were.

These poor creatures react with minds and bodies made of similar muck to our own, though they are not but a fleshy cloak, mask, or glove for whatever might've penetrated the veil. A true denizen of the Far Realm is something else entirely; completely foreign and alien... we can only ever see the tools and machinations of their will."

--Essenti De'Soles, to the students of the Seventh Circle.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I've got a more plebian take on the Far Realms: They are the underlying explanation for anything you want to do that invokes ones of those B movie treatments of twisted sci/fi, or occasionally strange "horror", mainly from the 60s and 70s.

This makes unfathomable motivations easy, too. Remember when you were, say, about six? And you had that sister/brother/cousin/school acquaintance that had "cooties," because certainly their behavior followed no discernable pattern? Aboleths are unfathomable and just as nasty as your younger sister when you are that age.

Of course, this is easier to pull of if you were six in the early 70s. It naturally mixes the two thoughts.

 

[Scott DeWar]

Are you saying that this is where those cooties are form?

 

[Viking Bastard]

I'm particular to cosmologies inspired by oWoD, Planescape, Discworld and Neil Gaiman's works, where the universe is ultimately defined by belief and/or will.

It works as it does because it has been willed to do so. Sometimes by great powers (divine or primordial or whatever) and sometimes, but to a lesser extent, by the beliefs of mortals. Sure, once the universe was the Great Wheel, but something catastrophic shifted reality and now it is the Great Tree and has always been the Great Tree (the shift may be so "new" that not everything has really gelled yet, resulting in minor inconsistencies, perceived by the locals as cosmic quirks).

The Far Realm(s) are other universes. They are universes whose core beliefs are different. Sometimes, they are kind of similar but still alien and foreign (giving us Mind Flayers etc.), but often they are near-incomprehensible to us. When a being from one universe enters another, it gets rewritten according to the rules and concepts of the local universe, but it may not fit; the further they are removed from our concept of reality, the more damaging they are to our universe (and by extension, we to theirs).

You cannot traverse universes without ripping reality. And where there's a rip, there is a bleed -- not only of monsters and critters, but of concepts and ideas.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Are you saying that this is where those cooties are from?

Of course! Where else would they be from? Just put yourself in a 1972 B-movie, and it makes perfect sense.