Why do the Far Realms exist?

[DMH]

I have an idea for a setting where arcane magic is shaped chaos and every time it is used, the planar walls weaken...

But I really need to decide which chaos plane to use before I start any real development.

The Far Realms are supposedly plane(s) of pure chaos. Isn't that Limbo? Why can't Limbo produce the same things as the Far Realms? What is the difference, if any?

 

[Shemeska]

I have an idea for a setting where arcane magic is shaped chaos and every time it is used, the planar walls weaken...

But I really need to decide which chaos plane to use before I start any real development.

The Far Realms are supposedly plane(s) of pure chaos. Isn't that Limbo? Why can't Limbo produce the same things as the Far Realms? What is the difference, if any?

I really despise the Far Realms getting described with the word 'chaos'.

Limbo is chaos. Limbo has no order and no rules.

The Far Realm has its own order and its own internal consistancy, however those rules it does have are so utterly alien to anyone not from it so as to appear senseless, insane and nonexistant.

Limbo = Xaos
Far Realm = nonsensical realm of slimy malign tentacles that drives people nutters
Limbo = cHaOs
Far Realm = another existance, bound by own own rules that are just inimical to our own
LiMbO = butternut squirrels, but only on every other Tuesday

 

[Alzrius]

I have an idea for a setting where arcane magic is shaped chaos and every time it is used, the planar walls weaken...

But I really need to decide which chaos plane to use before I start any real development.

The Far Realms are supposedly plane(s) of pure chaos. Isn't that Limbo? Why can't Limbo produce the same things as the Far Realms? What is the difference, if any?

The difference is one of flavor and tone, really.

Limbo is Chaos as a force; that is, it's Chaos and it doesn't like Law. It's not stupid, nor crazy, it just wants to be chaotic, and to that end its only rule is that it has no rules, leaving it as a plane that is open to being shaped by those who reside there.

The Far Realm is chaotic only as the byproduct of insanity. It doesn't really care about Law, or Chaos, or anything, it's just madness. It can't be reshaped the way parts of Limbo can. Even in Limbo, there are still natural laws at work (you'll drown in water, be burned by fire, etc.); in the Far Realm, facts repeal themselves, because they don't have to be.

Limbo is chaos represented by chaos as a choice. The Far Realm is chaos represented by madness.

 

[Talmun]

(snip)...Limbo is chaos represented by chaos as a choice. The Far Realm is chaos represented by madness.

Very, very, very well put

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Far Realm = Elder Ones type of place

Not chaos, but very, very Lovecraftian. The whole universe beyond one's understanding that drives you insane type of thing. Which is why I love it.

 

[Psion]

IMC, the FarRealms are a primal chaos from which the universe was forged. Limbo is chaotic, but it is of our (or rather, the character's) multiverse. Fewer still -- or different -- laws hold in the Far Realms than Limbo.

 

[Storyteller01]

Copying Psion here...


IMC, the gods sort of 'recreated' the universe when they took control (who were the first gods? Who knows...). The far Realms are the 'left overs', or aspects of the primal world that couldn't be remade to fit their vision. Goes with Ankh-Morpork Guard's Lovecraftian note.

 

[Testament]

That makes 3 of us.

IMC The Primordials shaped the universe out of The Beyond, the original, mad infinity that was, and wrapped a single glob of it around a shard taken from Primus, the being they created to stabilize their own pocket of infinity. This created That Which, the being that allowed for change in their sphere.

Limbo is infinite possibility and change, and is embodied by That Which.

The Far Realm is infinite madness and flux, where shapes and entities die in the seconds before their birth, but live anyway. If there is any rhyme or reason to The Far Realm, it is beyond mortal comprehension.

 

[lonesoldier]

Far Realm = Elder Ones type of place

Not chaos, but very, very Lovecraftian. The whole universe beyond one's understanding that drives you insane type of thing. Which is why I love it.

<offtopic>Anyone buy that Cthulhu plushie?</offtopic>

Ankh, puts it very well. The Far Realm always make me think of the elder ones, while Limbo is just chaos.

I'm thinking that the Far Realm has serious SAN draining abilities.

 

[Shemeska]

I tend to view the Far Realm as simply another multiverse entirely that developed along lines and laws largely irrational by our perspective. Every so often the two may touch through the raw probability of the ethereal deep out of which both may have been spawned along with other myriad cosmologies that may impact either our multiverse or the Far Realm on rarer occasions. In whatever grander sea upon which they both float as bubbles of foam, they're just closer to one another now than those other infinite others. But no way to know unless the doors of Sigil do indeed go anywhere.

There's tons of ways to define the Far Realm or not