Just posted another Kickstarter update for
The Faerie Ring. Including the text here for your reading pleasure:
One of the key aspects of The Faerie Ring, we built new whim-fueled locations filled with secrets and violence, intrigue and adventure. These tend to take three forms: the preternatural planes, the demesnes of the fey lords, and fey cities and other sites of power.
THE PRETERNATURAL PLANES
These are the Realms of the Fey. A new type of plane that's easy to slot into your campaign as a faerie otherworld. (The "Sample of The Faerie Ring" PDF linked in
Update #3 goes into greater detail.)
The Preternatural Planes—countless in number and constantly changing—are inextricably linked to the Material Plane, existing on its very edges and orbiting like moons. Sheathing the Material Plane, they dance around it in complex patterns, each plane’s cycle as unique as the plane itself. At one extreme is the Astral Plane, stubborn and still, content to fill its given role and never budge its course. Others go so far as to periodically overlap and coexist with the Material Plane. And just as the analogous moons, the planes are constantly waxing and waning in relation to the Material Plane, advancing and receding in their influence.
They are entangled so closely with the Material Plane that they often behave as a single, highly complex plane. Perhaps, the Preternatural Planes are simply layers in a vaster Material Plane within which what we now call the Material Plane is but the dominant layer—for now, anyway.
For the most part, these realms are reasonably similar to the Material Plane, sharing many qualities but for a significant emphasis on some force or characteristic. The Plane of Shadow, for instance, resembles a Material Plane engulfed and twisted by shadow. Planar traits can vary widely, of course, and some Preternatural Planes are so bizarrely idiosyncratic that they seem baffling and unsettling to those from more “normal” realms. Scholars busily try to make sense of it all, of course, using science and magic to seek patterns to the mysteries, plotting the vastness of unlimited realities on complex maps and in intricate orreries that seek to mirror reality itself. Some secrets, however, may not be coaxed away from the selfish planes so easily, and it can be perilous to pry.
Here are merely a handful of the Preternatural Planes:
Aralu (or the Gaol of Always): The endless subterranean labyrinths of Aralu serve as a terrible, secret prison for the fey. No one admits to knowing its origins although, of course, one hears rumors. I’m told the chambered caverns seem to extend to forever, no one knowing just how far or the number of prisoners held within. Many of the inhabitants are artifacts of forgotten ages. What secrets must they must hold.
Dream (or Dreamtime, the Dreamlands, the Plane of Dreams): A meandering but pervasive realm of dreams and nightmares, this plane connects all those entities with the capacity for dream. A constantly changing realm, whose natives flit along, following the currents of dream.
Nibiru: The Hidden Crossing, the Lost Alleyways, Nibiru is the unseen framework of the multiverse. The behind-the-scenes byways that connect one plane to another. If you know how to get here, there's nowhere you can't go. Finding your way back is another story entirely.
Nowhere (or Plane of the Lost): Where do lost things go? Nowhere. All of the things ever lost can be found in Nowhere. And once things find their way to Nowhere, they typically stay. This junkyard realm is not an easy place to leave, for Mahu is the door, and he jealously guards what he considers his—which includes anything and everything within Nowhere. It is not just objects, though; creatures are caught within its borders as well, giving rise to odd ecologies as creatures of random races are forced to make do within the vast fields of junk.
Sea of Rahab: As if entrapping the darkest and most terrible depths of the sea, the Sea of Rahab is a watery nightmare created during the fall and rebirth of the Chaosbringer, Rahab. Forever, she occupies her throne within, choreographing the chaos. Of late, her twisted children stir more than usual and are beginning to cast their gaze beyond the borders to which they had grown accustomed.
CITIES AND SITES OF POWER
Within those planes are the fey cities and centers of power. This is where gather the masses for courtly feasts, launching raids on the humans, buying and selling of things that would make a golem blush, gathering of shadowy cabals, and more.
Here are merely a handful of important fey centers:
The Embassy: Nestled in the crossroads realm of the Eternal Twilight, the Embassy is the center of the faerie world. It serves as neutral ground where the various courts (both Seelie and Unseelie) meet, whether in grievance or revelry, in accord with ancient treaties.
Those lands peripheral to the Embassy are claimed by various of the more powerful fey lords and are anything but neutral ground, being typically strongly contested.
The Goblin Market: This massive, city-sized market is never in the same place twice with its dizzying array of exotic goods and its cutthroat mercantile ecosystem. It is a sea of fey and non-fey, all looking for that special something: a memory, an exotic slave, a forgotten dinner set, a lost god in a bottle, the way out.
Kalapa (in Shambhala): The submerged city of the matabiri is not really as the legends would have it. The tales of Shambhala as the land of the peaceful and pure were lies to draw in more test subjects. It is really a den of nightmares from which few escape.
Perdition: A vast necropolis, Perdition rests in Purgatory—a soul trap for the dead and a very unpleasant place. Here, the resident lost souls are lorded over by mysterious fey, the so-called angels of death. Are they jailers—or are they prisoners, too? All the plane’s inhabitants cling to mythical claims of a path out of Perdition but continue in their unending unlife as its citizens.
Tír na nÓg (in Mag Mell): The Morrigan's own twisting demesne city. It is the Escher-like home of her minions the sidhe. Her rule here is absolute, and you are always in terrible danger should you find yourself within its walls.
Xibalba: Mysterious walled city at the end of all time and creation. None have breached its walls to find more.
Zussael: The great city-state of the Darkling Dominance. Impossibly tall spires, swaying to the seeming breaking point, oddly angled alleyways, and a shifting layout, the shadowy darklings call this city home and headquarters.
DEMESNES
Fey sovereigns possess a connection with their demesnes from birth. These demiplanes are an extension of themselves: sovereigns are either born in the demesne’s tender grasp or immediately hear its call and seek it out. Their demesne is specifically linked to them. It is theirs. Its traits and landscape are completely controlled and alterable by the sovereign, slowly molding and remolding in tune to each sovereign’s subconscious over the course of a lifetime or rapidly shifting in response to conscious manipulation.
Sovereigns can travel back and forth from their demesnes at will and, seemingly, even draw power from them when needed. Each demesne can exist either as a pocket dimension (a demiplane with attributes according solely to its sovereign’s whim) or superimposed over part of another plane, again at the sovereign’s whim. For most sovereigns, this latter method is typically only possible with the Material and Preternatural Planes serving as host planes although certain lords have been known to travel the multiverse, latching on to whatever plane is available. When superimposed, the host plane is pushed from the demesne’s insertion point to its periphery, possibly creating an incongruous seam. Kept too long like this, the demesne risks becoming a permanent addition to the host plane: Manitou’s abdicated lands, for instance, have long since “taken root.”
Mogwoi sovereigns are alone in possessing no true demesnes. However, they can form permanent links with portions of the Material Plane; such a territory acts as a surrogate demesne and, indeed, is typically called their demesne. These mogwoi territories are typically remote and dangerous. Though not as malleable as the true demesnes of other sovereigns, they still respond and lend their power to their mogwoi lords in a limited capacity.
Should a sovereign be permanently destroyed, his or her demesne collapses if a demiplane. However, those demesnes that have bonded to another plane—and, of course, mogwoi territories—remain but become twisted and warped.
Here are merely a handful of demesnes:
Heartwood: Korapira’s demesne, the Heartwood lies as the hub of the Green Expanse, connecting all the old, dark forests of the multiverse. Its shifting boundaries suffuse with other forests and make possible passage even between planes. Of course, without knowing the paths of power, it’s almost impossible not to get lost, which can prove disastrous.
Korapira's living and growing Palace of Leaves, breathtakingly composed entirely from the surrounding forest, and the vast Gardens of Sheol, exquisite flowers and elaborate landscapes where Korapira's perverse experiments take place, take up its majority.
Scáthbaile: Queen Mab's demesne of Scáthbaile is a land of dreams and darkness, though this makes it sounds stranger than it is. The trees tower hundreds of feet high. The moon glides above the forest, fully thrice the size it appears in the familiar skies of mortal lands. Within the pale white halls of the queen's Shell Palace are hundreds of star sprites, who provide most of the illumination. Indeed, those sprites who have displeased her are often chained into Queen Mab's chandelier for days or even weeks.
Strangle Grove: Red jack's adopted demesne, Strangle Grove appears to have developed a spark of sentience. It has much more control over itself than other demesnes do. It is capable of morphing its features at an alarming rate and has developed quite the imagination over the years in shaping itself. Very much the predator, it devours those hapless souls that find themselves within its borders. It is allowed to pretty much do as it pleases as long as its actions support Red Jack’s goals.
