What are your theories?
My personal theory is that the Ordial Plane is the platonic realm, the absolute source of which the Material Plane is the shadow. Floating throughout this region are the perfect forms of both objects and concepts. Here, one can find the platonic rose, the perfect cloud, or the absolute ideal of boredom. Thus, the Ordinal Plane holds the original templates of what the Inner and Outer planes produce in mass quantities - elements and objects, or alignments and concepts. Of course, the mass produced versions aren't as pure as the platonic ideal, and further down the line, when the products of the Inner and Outer planes combine, forming and influencing the Material Plane, they are but a shadow of the platonic originals.
Of course, this raises interesting questions, such as:
What does a platonic concept like 'originality' or 'nationalism' look (or sound or smell) like? Does this mean there is a platonic Outland somewhere in the Ordinal? What does the Ordinal Plane look like and what is traveling through it like? What happens if, say, Shemeska were to meet the platonic Shemeska?These questions are yet to be answered. What are your theories?
Chris Nichols
I had it be a place where matter transforms into concepts, and vice versa. It had a major part to play in a play-by-post game I ran for awhile, with catastrophic results. A large portion of the Hive was destroyed with an Ordial gun, as elements switched places and solid things transformed into the ideas of things, without enough belief to keep them solid. The other planes (For example, Neth, who the PCs talked to, and the Plane of Vacuum, who was actually a PC) called it the Alchemist, and knew it had withdrawn from the planar community long ago to become the Hermit.
The Axiomatic and Beast of Legend templates are somewhat based on the notion of platonic forms, as is the modron.
Common rumor throughout these parts is that the Ordial is nothing more than another "transitive" plane, similar in makeup to the Astral and the Ethereal. Its purpose is different, though.
Where the Astral connects the Outer Planes and the Prime; the Ethereal, the Inner Planes and the Prime, the Ordial connects the Outer Planes to the Inner Planes, thus completing the planar law of the Unity of Rings. My personal opinion of the Ordial is a place of sparkling lights reminiscent of fireflies amid a faintly foggy, mildly shimmering background. It's more open and clear than the Ethereal, less so than the Astral, and a place of mystifying beauty and undiscovered enigmas.
I would imagine that the easiest entrance to the Ordial would be found somewhere in Limbo, since Limbo is a place where all of the elements mix and mesh into a massive soup.
Of course, I think I can also make a fairly convincing case that Sigil is the Ordial Plane...
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*[/sulk] You should all know it is pointless to try and shut me up.
http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=144172&highlight=ordial
I guess the ordial is the "paladins killing baby orcs" thread of the Planescape board, only much more interesting and not as one sided.
There are actually five transcient planes, one of which I consider, in my campaign, the newest Inner Plane(My Inner Planar cosmology includes all the Planescape Inner Planes, plus the Quasi-Para Planes, and with the addition of Shadow and Wood as major Elemental Planes(Plus Wood's Quasi and Para offshouts) This makes a total of Eight Core Elemental Planes, if you count Positive and Negative).
Transcient Planes:
Ordial: Inner and Outer
Astral: Prime and Outer
Ethereal: Prime and Inner
Shadow: Everywhere in the Multiverse where there are shadows
Far Realm: This Multiverse to others.....
Of the Transistive Planes, the Ordial and the Far Realm are the hardest to gain access to(Go to the website, the Ordial Plane, to find out info on this weird place, and how to get there).
The Far Realm can only be accessed from ultra-rare portals(This is the one place in Sigil where no portals connect to) or by travel so far backwards, or forward in time that Time itself ceases to have meaning.
In any case, however, the Ordial as platonic realm idea still has possibilities. For instance, while axiomatic creatures are close to platonic versions of the templeted creature, there's undoubtedly more than one axiomatic tiger roaming the Outer Planes. However, all these planar axiomatic tigers devolve from the one platonic axiomatic tiger found on the Ordial Plane.
As to the question of why people haven't traveled to the Ordial and why elements can't be summoned through the Ordial to the Outer Planes, the answer is easy. The flow of the Ordinal travels outward, as platonic forms move away from the pure realm of the Ordial in the shadow realm of the Material. From the fountainhead of the Ordial, all the rest of reality is "downstream"; consequentally, travelling "upstream" into the Ordial is extremely difficult. Further, the Ordial has a bi-directional flow, with physical platonic forms flowing "inward" to the Inner Planes and mental platonic forms flowing "outwards" to the Outer Planes. So, even if an elemental is summoned and drawn into the Ordial, it is immediately pushed back out, falling "inward" back into the Inner Planes.
Another possibility of this platonic Ordial Plane is the as the ultimate source of things, the Ordial may be the "home" of the Creator (also known as the Source or the Great Unknown). The Ordial, may even be the Creator! If this is the case, is it any wonder that this plane is harder to get into than Shemeska's panties?
Of course, I must add Magnum Opus' eternal disclaimer...
Alas, I cannot prove a word...
Comments?
I apologize, but I know nothing of 3rd edition termologies(Like template).
As for Elementals not being able to be summoned to the Outer Planes, thats only partially true.
All Elementals summoned to the Outer Planes get their bodies from the Elemental Planes, but their minds from the Outer Planes. Or, perhaps, the Elementals in question are simply the "tainted" Elementals which follow one of the Archomentals(either good or evil).
Originally posted by Sword_Of_Geddon
Axiomatic? Are you refering to the good and evil versions of the normal animals found in the 3rd/3.5 edition Monster Manual?
The axiomatic template creates lawful versions of normal animals, and it's found in the MotP (along with the anarchic template). I don't know about the Beast of Legend template, though.
Wyvern
Originally posted by Sword_Of_Geddon
Monster of Legend? That concept was first introduced in Planescape Monstrious Compendium Vol 2, I'd know, because I have that book.
So do I, but I wasn't aware that it had been updated to 3rd edition as a template.
Wyvern
Originally posted by Wyvern76
So do I, but I wasn't aware that it had been updated to 3rd edition as a template.
Wyvern
It has, but it doesn't really fit the Monster of Legend idea though. The 3e Paragon template is a better fit IMO. The 2e Paragon doesn't really have a match in 3e.
I don't like the idea of an ordial plane. Most who use it call it "another transitive plane". The astral and ethereal planes can be filled with much more than simple transportation, and can hold many adventures in themselves. The ordial plane being supported for that reason seems to deny the true value of these other planes. If the ordial plane was filled with an interesting environment of its own, this would move my opinion slightly more in favor of it, but its artificiality would likely not move me to accept it.
Additionally, the ordial plane conflicts with my belief of how the planes exist. The inner planes contain the matter that creates the demiplanes and the prime material plane. The polydimensional soup in which these exist is the ethereal plane. I think of the astral plane as a mental construct of magical beings that links the prime material plane to the outer planes. The outer planes are created and shaped by the belief of beings. Thus, the inner planes make prime material and demiplanes, and they in turn make the outer planes. Introducing an ordial plane links the belief of primes and planars to the elements that the primes are constructed of. To me, this equates the ordial plane to a plane that connects planescape to my house. One exists only because of belief, the other is a tangible thing that would exist regardless of people.
I believe the ordial plane is merely the vehicle of a dungeon master who wanted to move players between the inner and outer planes without the time-consuming journey through the prime material plane, and apart from the overused Sigilian portals that just happen to lead where the party needs to be. This attempt at innovative and speedy travel stagnated into the environmentless ordial vehicle that some now accept.
Matter and energy start in the Inner Planes, mix together to become the soup of potential form and pre-conciousness that is the Ethereal, and coalesces to form the Prime Material. The Prime Material, some argue, is the origin of sentient life, sentience that starts of with the simple thought that creates the Astral before gaining the capacity for the sophistication of morality, belief and conviction that form the Outer Planes. Of course everyone already knows this, but this arrangement is not without its mysteries.
Mystery One: How can anything material exist on planes made of thought and belief? I believe that the answer to this mystery is that the compositions of the Astral and Outer Planes are not actually thought and belief, they are merely shaped by those forces. There is some underlying "substance" (which I will call quintessence for lack of a better term) if you will, that is the fundamental building block of all things that exist in the multiverse. This quintessence is also what makes magic possible. This possible answer leads to another mystery, however.
Mystery Two Given that everything is made of this quintessence, and there is a definite directional flow of the Multiverse (I>E>PM>A>O), why hasn't the entirety of this quintessence ended up on the Outer Planes? The obvious answer to this is that it recycled and sent back to the Inner Planes.
The Spire is a siphon that sucks quintessence out of the Outlands. It's pull is greater the closer you get to it (hence the rings), the Outlands haven't been sucked dry because the other 16 planes in the Great Ring bleed off excess quintessence through the gates at the Gate towns.
The quintessence leaves the top of the spire, and then enters another plane, that exists both outside the Outer Planes, and inside the Inner Planes the so-called Ordial. The reason the Ordial's existence is unconfirmed, is that it exists entirely of pure quintessence flowing from the spire to the inner planes. If anything more complex were to enter, it would be broken down into pure quintessence.
Now the Spire's pull is a powerful force; if left unchecked it might pull everything through it too quickly, speeding up the cycle and unmaking everything before boiling back into existence and then unmade again. Luckily there is a safety valve, a dam, and that dam is Sigil. The purpose of Sigil is to slow the flow of quintessence to a manageable level by collecting it within it boundaries, and then letting some of it trickle out through its portals, instead of going to the Ordial. If anything were to cause Sigil to be destroyed or moved, the flow would become such that nothing could withstand it, perhaps not even the Spire itself.
I believe that this might be the reason the Powers are denied access to Sigil; their presence might prove to be too much and they would either be caught in the flow and broken down, or they might even break Sigil.
Furthermore, given this model for the functioning of the Multiverse, I think it is clear that The Ordial plane and the quintessence is the Great Unknown of the Athar, the Source of the Godsmen, the Entropy the Doomguard serve, the True Death of the Dustmen, and the Cadence of the Planes of the Transcendental Order
By the way, I am pretty sure that the correct term is Ordinal rather than Ordial.
Originally posted by cnposner
By the way, I am pretty sure that the correct term is Ordinal rather than Ordial.
No, the correct term is Ordial. This is the name given to the plane in the Mimir.net article that first speculated on the possibility of its existence. Ordinal, meaning a designation of rank or order (i.e. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.) is a different word. What connection there is between the two terms is a question that can only really be answered by Jon Winter, who wrote the original article.
Originally posted by RandomPrecision
I believe the ordial plane is merely the vehicle of a dungeon master who wanted to move players between the inner and outer planes without the time-consuming journey through the prime material plane, and apart from the overused Sigilian portals that just happen to lead where the party needs to be. This attempt at innovative and speedy travel stagnated into the environmentless ordial vehicle that some now accept.
Actually, I believe the original intent of the ordial plane was to provide another source of mystery and speculation in the planes. I've never heard of any PCs actually using it as a means of getting from one place to another in-game. As far as it being "environmentless", since nobody's ever been to the ordial plane and come back alive and sane, nobody can say what kind of environment it might or might not have.
Wyvern
When you think that the druidic beliefs are ones that link really closely with the elemental planes (Specially in earlier editions where elemental travel became a druidic freebie at high levels). Celtic Druidic belief didn't do four elements.
They recognized Earth, Water, and Air as elements.
They saw Fire, as well as life and death (positive and negative) as forces, not elements. and considered them different and separate from the elements.
So we have two sets of Three things making a U so to speak. Then link em togther into a three dimensional circle. (ring here?) But none the less holds with a trio set up.
Originally posted by Ornum
There was an official mentioning of the possible existance of such a plane in the Ethereal Guide, but it didn't give a name to it. Since both the Ethereal Guide and the Mimir article were both released in '98, I'm not sure which came first.
The Mimir article predated the Ethereal Guide by several years. Remember that mimir.net is a later incarnation of the original geocities Mimir site.