Cosmology

[Arc]

This ought to be where we write about how the world works as a larger whole. Starting with a question: How does it start? This is like the Big Bang theory, if we decide to make it start off that way. So, considering conditions, what would we like to start it off with? I think we have options about a Positive energy/ negative energy explosion, not unlike the normal Big Bang, or we could say it evolved in a less world-shattering fashion. I'm not really particular at this point, but I think we should make it a reasonably integrated thing, to say that the start should have SOME effect on the outcome.

[Arc]

Okay, So I was going through the new rule on Knowledges and when I was creating the Knowledge: Astronomy Skill, I realized that I hadn't yet explained what I wanted in the cosmology to allow this skill to function the way it does. So here goes. (remember this is a give and take process. Ideas stem from Ideas, so this bounce-back factor will happen a lot.)

The Material Planes (plural) are suspended in a rather large (possibly infinite, possibly finite) space of some other transitive plane. The area between is NOT the other transitive plane, mind you, just a large cotermination, like how the Plane of Shadow connects with the material plane in the shadows. So whatever transitive plane (to be determined later...) is beyond the solid parts of the material plane, is mostly transparent, sometimes translucent. I.e. we can stand on one "Realm" of the Material, and see another chunk of "Realm" far far away. Hence, Astronomers need to use (and develop, if the campaign spans enough time...) telescopes to observe these other planes. In my imagination, I see ye olde gent sitting at a large reflection telescope, making measurments of objects larger than the sun in our sky, just blurred due to distortions of space or things or events on the transitive planes. This will give us some really neat setting (imagine how cool it would be to look up and see a great big huge flattened dougnut out near the moon, slowly spinning...) and also to make the campaign world(s) easier to differentiate for things like places that have higher or lower technology or magic, or entirely different attributes altogether. This way, its possible for people to cross over to other "Realms", but not as easy it would be if they were simply over the mountains or past the sea of fire or whatever. This way we can explain a lot of seperation yet a lot of crossover in a single game-world, without ever having to force a DM to use EVERYTHING at his disposal.

[Shinigami]

Just a thought to broaden starting points or major changing points in games, there could be physical embodiments of each Realm that rule their respective realms from behind the scenes, allowing the "living" things that occupy the area to believe they are in control while in actuality they're not. They could be humanoid or non, but in any case they would probably be a race of their own, kind of like gods but not exactly the same thing. More like a supreme immortal emperor... that way if we ever think of a cool new idea for a Realm then it could be feasible that two rulers had a little get-together and made a baby Realm-ruler. Or, they could be in a plane of their own, and run the entirety of existence from a Planar "command center" with outposts in every Realm...
Just a couple ideas that instantly popped in my head.

[Arc]

Aright, So I had made this little model of the Inner Planes (a.k.a. Elemental Planes) And it works pretty good, since I got the idea from the Manual of the Planes. I'll post a pic of it or a map later on, but here's the idea.

The Elemental Planes can be thought of as a cube, with each plane one side of the cube, bordering 4 others.

The "top" is the Positive Energy Plane, and the "bottom" is the Negative Energy Plane. The planes on the side are Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, in that order, so that they connect along the edges, forming Paraelemental Lines between each. (The line between Fire and Earth is Magma and between Air and Water is Ice, etc.)

Later I may append a map as I said before. I'm still working out how exactly the Elemental Cube fits into the rest of the cosmology, so more later on that.

[Arc]

Shin, you brought up an excellent point: these realms could easily be some sort of manifestation of these entity's powers. As in, when a creature becomes powerfull enough, and gains enough support, perhaps the worship drawn to them manifests as power to create or alter reality. And the more worship, the more the entity could expand its land/territory...

Or something like that. The truth is, I had been thinking along these lines about how dieties come to be in this Multiverse, gaining worship out of affection or fear, and using that power to act as dieties.

The question arises from this, Should the Realms of the material plane actually grow with worship or should it be more along the lines of how many creatures live on that realm? I think if its based on worship we may encounter problems when a group of worshipers is wiped out or there's some really effectibe propaganda: The Realm's size would change, and probably reasonably drastically. Accordingly, if it were based on the actuall ammount of life on a world, then it could be much more static, so that the only time the Realm makes a large change is durring a massacre or some massive event.

Also, Giving these entities' Realms a basis on creatures living there can expand into a similar function of Worshipers to the Gods proper. As Souls on a Realm effect the Realm, so too would Worshipers effect a Diety's realm.

I lost my train of thought. More later.

[Arc]

back to the err cosmology. So, We've got Material Plane (several Realms therein), some unattached Elemental Planes and a few Transitive planes just sitting there. So to connect the Outer, Inner, and Material planes, we attach the Transitives to a few of them. Now, we know we need a Plane of Shadow, an Ethereal Plane, and an Astral plane. Typically, the Astral allows fast travel and the Ethereal is slower. The Plane of Shadow is generally just sort of there...

So how shall we connect them...?

[Arc]

So I think we've figured out a basic set of suppositions.

The three Transitive planes in ascending order of distance seperation (the metephysical area that they can reach).

There are Three Greater Spheres in the cosmos, the first is the Prime which is a collection of finite self-contained spherical Realms (each ruled by a Power); The Elemental Sphere of Fire, Earth, Air, Water, Positive, and Negative; The Outer Planes containing all the Alignment based planes and specific Planes related to the Powers.

The Transitives reach from the Prime Material to the Planes in parentheses.

(Material)->Transitive Plane of Shadow->(Material)
(Material)->Transitive Plane of the Ethereal->(Elemental)
(Material)->Transitive Plane of Astral->(Outer)

So Basically you can't get to the Outer Planes by way of the Ethereal, while you COULD jump off the Astral to the Elemental shell instead of going all the way to the Outer Planes, etc.

[Arc]

I've got an idea of what I want the Realms to be like and I've thought of a way to explain it historically.

The Realms vary greatly between each other. One realm may consist of thousands of tiny little villiages spread over miles of farmland, with only a smattering of brigands roving the Realm. Another may be a phobic land of half demons and half devils dwelling in massive city-states that war constanly with each other. Another might be one giant city itself with thousands of wards and trade centers that export to the far reaches of the planes.

Variety is the key here, folks. The more different, the better. (and some of these places should be MASSIVELY different)

The simplest way to articulate this will be to change the population in ways that reflect their surroundings. If each God in the Third Tier created their OWN races, we can use that as a basic structure to determine what sorts of races are present in the current setting.

Basically, the dieties created a few single races, then the races interbred and evolved and interbred again, thus creating large "phylums" of races and contributing to the "Type/Subtype" of monsters and creatures. Note that each Deity did NOT create a bunch of Player Character races and let them breed, many of the races created would be classified as monsters by your typical adventurer. In other words, there should be plenty of ECL adjustments and non-similar-level parties out there. Check out the Extra Rules for Races, and my thoughts on ECL adjustments, and check out the Dieties section for the exact info on who begat what and what races stem from who.

[Arc]

Recently I was making up my own model of gravity and I looked into the theories on the forces of gravity, electromagnetism, Strong, and Weak nuclear forces, and I noticed that the Grand Unified Theory system works very appropriately to model the behavior of Forces in Aeos Worlds. Basically what this means is that there are many many forces at the very bottom and they begin to merge into larger forces as energy is increaced. So at very high energy levels, Elemental forces merge into a single Elemental Force, and so on.
Here is a PDF diagram of how the Forces combine in Aeos Worlds.

students.uwsp.edu/jbush160/forces.pdf

[Seraphine]

Alright, two things I wanted to comment on. These are just possibilities, not at all set in stone yet.

1: Manefestation of dieties. Sometimes planes could be created by dieties or some force with great power and they shape the plane to thier will, or other times perhaps the nature of the plane creates a deity. The concept of fire may create a fire god. The nature of the god may change the nature of the plane or the nature of the plane could change the god. The first planes to exist were probably the former because there was nothing else to will into existance an abstract plane (ex. abstract plane of inspiration or melody). But later on such ideas may become existance and could form a plane. Abstract planes are probably a no-no for prime-materials beings though.

2: Faith. All gods seem to need faith. They all seem to have thier own power but they all seem to get more powerful with worship. Sometimes when gods are forgotten they fade away into nothingness, those gods were created from faith alone or rather the religion created the god, not the god created the religion. Sometimes though, the gods existed first and created the religion around themselves to gather faith, faith being a better source of power (aka incantation communion-ism).

[Arc]

Your first idea, Dieties rising from Planes, does work excellent for the second and the third tier Dieties, but as Fourth Tier came up, they of course, Dieties that gave rise to planes. Aeos is a special case of the first type being that he simply was, and there was no differentiation between area and object, or thought and being. The Fourth and Fifth Tiers were eventually entirey mortal spawned, so they didn't start out that way. But I like the idea that Aeos simply Thought and then the Concept simply was, and it became a thinking being on its own, without direct help from Aeos, and thats how He created the Second and Third Tier. Perhaps the reason that Aeos lost control of the Third Tier was because of that relationship between the gods and their element led them to a massive level of control over them. I'd like to think that the Third tier created some of the Abstract Planes (which could be Perfect, as you described in Dieties), and when the Fourth Tier took over, they too created some Abstract Planes, out of things that the Mortals themselves had invented. That level of control could be what convinces current sages and scholars to believe that the Fourth Tier were the creators of the Multiverse. Sounds good, Seraphine.

[Arc]

Oh, and see Dieties for my reply on your second idea, Sera.

[Seraphine]

One last thing on that. Just because we are at the fourth / fifth tier of dieties now, doesn't mean third tier type dieties can't still be formed. Imagine if you will a new cult or religion comes around believing in something like a fire god. Thier faith and will may just create a small diety. Probably not much power, and doesn't even have full control of the elemental plane of fire, but has a good hold of how fire behaves.

[Arc]

Sounds excellent. I'd say that I don't think that it'd really qualify as a Third Tier proper, but thats academic and we can both say that the thing was created in the same fashion.

A word on power though, the power f such a creature would probably be quite miniscule, perhaps only enough to create a being of approxamately human dimensions, unless this cult is more than a millennia old and has several hundered thousand members... I imagine it would be quite difficult to simply will something into being, and it would act as quite the step up to have a creature to will into godhood than create. The other problem would be why people would begin to worship something they do not have any proof of? Perhaps such groups follow leaders who are disillusioned of the current dieties and wish for something better? Thus creating a self perpetuating religion? Or perhaps they would see terrible forces of nature such as storms, volcanoes, or even powerful creatures and revere them until they gain sentience and divine power? Wow. Thats an intersting idea... People worshiping a Volcano for a god. and it talks back, too. Huh. Good thinking, S.

[Seraphine]

I almost hate to make this post after all the stuff you've got all set up already but something's been bothering me.

It's mainly the concept of good and evil. I have a hard time seeing the begining of the universe even having an idea of good and evil. The concept of those are so relative to the societies that they form in it's hard for me to see as a fundimental priciple that would come first (cross ref: Dieties thread on the tiers of dieties). Seems to me that there needs to be law, even divine law, to come first before such things can be established. Instead I purpose that thier place be replaced with positive and negative. Positive being the concept of creation, negative being the concept of destruction. Both can be used for good and for evil, just like law and chaos. Logically it would make more sense if Good and evil were only developed once there were societies and worshipers.