The Seven Realms and their Guardians
by LoZompatoreIf you are interested I made some speculations about the Seven Realms and their Guardians in an article called "The lost origin of the Elves" published in Threshold Magazine #12. The relevant section is in the "The High Elves" paragraph and notes #47, #48, #49.
In this article I made some daring connections between the carnifex, the eldar of the Dragonlord Trilogy, the high elves of GAZ 7 and even the abelaats but, even if you don't buy them, I guess the points I list below could be useful for inspiration:
1) - As the Immortals cannot interfere in first person in the Prime Plane, even the carnifex's demise should have been engineered by means of mortal proxies who, likely, sabotaged the magical experiment of the carnifex described in M3 and leading to their extraplanar demise.
2) - Such mortal proxies should be the equivalent of very powerful Master-level PCs, with different and complementary powers, and possibly busy in following their own paths to Immortality. They could well be the leaders of their people, or some of the most prominent figures among them (thus explaining the presence of Hyperbius the Sun Brothers' Master in the Yellow Realm).
3) - At the end of M3 it is said that one or more worthy PCs following their own path to Immortality can be rewarded becoming the new Guardian of one or more of the Realms which becomes their own Home Plane (albeit I guess the PCs are still not full-fledged Immortals). So the title of Guardian and the Realms are rewards set by the Immortals for worthy heroes.
4) - Said so, it could be possible to infer that all the Guardians are mortal proxies rewarded by the Immortals for their contribution to the defeat of the Carnifex. All together they could have been members of the same high-level party who performed the daunting task of tricking the Carnifex into exiling themselves into the Pits of Banishment (possibly a prison Outer Plane arranged in advance by the Immortals, together with the Seven Realms acting as its sigil).
5) - If so, such high-level "NPC party" would have included peculiar non-human members such as Coroman (Blue Realm - unknown race), Astacus (White Realm, perhaps a crabman?), Morilon (Yellow Realm - a simbasta?), Silcharde (Black Realm - unknown race) and the above-mentioned sollux master Hyperbius (Yellow Realm).
6) - In M3 it is also specified that Amberiel of the Green Realm is tired of her endless guard, while Belotra has become so sclerotized by her serivce that she dislikes any change to the environment of the Green Realm. So I guess that the guardians are likely the same people since the Carnifex's exile, or their service must be extremely long (millennia) before a "changing of the guard" is envisioned.
7) - Connecting with point above, it is to be noted that mortal and relatively short-lived beings (including humans and elves) inhabit the Seven Realms as retinues and bodyguards of the Custodians of the Seven Sigils. Moreover, in M3 it is said that, in each of the Seven Realms, "it is always the same day". While somewhat cryptic, in my opinion this sentence might mean that the flow of time in the Seven Realms is extremely slow when compared with the Prime Plane. If- say - one day in the Seven Realms elapses in one year in the Prime Plane, then just 40 Seven Realms' years of 336 days would cover more than 13000 years on Mystara.
8) - To explain Amberiel / Belotra attitudes, maybe this slowing of time is still felt at subjective level i.e while just ione day elapses in the Seven Realms and all living beings inside age by just one day, it is still perceived as lasting and demandning as a full year in their minds.
9) - Under the assumptions above, the Guardians may be heroes of Mystara's ancient past, with the potential of placing the forgotten ruins of their kingdoms/cultures somewhere on present-day Mystara
10) - The whole plot of M3 is actually a trap set by Alphalks to free the Carnifex and let them invade Mystara as a vengeance for PCs' actions in countering his plots. By crossing the Seven Realms and by defeating their guardians the PCs are instrumental in "cracking" the seal separating the Pits of Banishment form Mystara end enabling the Carnifex to open a gate to return to the Prime Plane.
A further level of intrigue by Alphaks could be inserted by exploiting the time dilation of the Seven Realms suggested above. The PCs could actually spend whole Mystaran years in the crossing of the Seven Realms - even if for them just a few days elapsed - and they return back to their dominions in Norwold some years later (say at the end of the PWAs era) with respect to their entrance, utterly skipping the events of WotI and finding the world in chaos - also thanks to their absence and their impossibility to counter Alphaks' plots.