It is a distinct and noble honor for me, Sir Cleve of Krynn, the bodak-benignant, the cacodemon-congenial, to be asking such fine, informative folk as yourselves the following query:
My beloved employer and dear friend Kesto is a bookseller of the utmost integrity and the most devout desire to deliver knowledge where knowledge is asked for. Naturally, he was quite dissapointed when a few days, a customer (a pale-eyed and ridged-brow folk with a quiet but polite manner) asked him for a book detailing the existence of something I believe to have heard as an "Ordial Plane."
Brighteyes and I fished manically through The Veil but alas, nothing did we turn up! The ridge-browed patron left empty handed, and Kesto was unable to serve a customer to the fullest extent (an appalling thought to he and I both!).
So I turn the request to the gentle, well-versed planeswalk-types that poplulate this board. What is the Ordial Plane? From whence does the information concerning it derive? How well recieved is the idea of an Ordial Plane (whatsoever that may be) among the common blood? Tis it canon, or apocraphyl? I thirst for knowledge, and will that never another customer at the Veil leave without knowing all the fine owner and I can impart! Thank you for your most kindly help!
-Sir Cleve of Krynn, Paladial Bodak.
Now, you do understand the Unity of Rings and the Rule of Threes correct, berk? I don't want to waste my breath. Oh well, I've never been one not to enjoy describing laws....
Unity of Rings - The universe and everything in it is arranged in a ring because, it is said that the ring is the most pure form of existence. It creates a balance of opposites that perfectly mirrors our multiverse. Examples of the Unity of Rings are: The Great RIng itself, the City of Sigil, and other such phenomena.
The Rule of Threes - The universe and everything in it has a tendency to be "Three Dominant". Three Plane types: Prime, Inner, Outer. Three Moral Alignments: Good, Neutral, Evil. Three Ethical Alignments: Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic. The three dominance appears in other aspects though this primitive typing device has not the symbols to relate them.
Now, inspect the Transitive Planes. There are two: The Ethereal and the Astral. The Ethereal creates a path between the Prime and the Inner planes; the Astral between the Prime and the Outer planes. The Rule of Threes says that there should be one more Transitive Plane. The Unity of Rings says to complete the "Greater" Ring that plane must form a conduit fromt he Outer planes to the Inner Planes. This third Transitive is called the Ordial.
This is merely conjecture and no proof has ever been discovered. Many theories about the Ordial plane's inhabitants and purpose have been theorized but nothing with any discernable merit.
The original theory was designed by Magnum Opus and can be read here.
And now, Sir Cleve, your language is archaic, download the newest patch or please vacate my viewing screen. I will not stand outdatedness in my realm.
-Primus, the One and Prime
As far as the true Ordial goes...nobody's ever been there. At least, if they have, they're not talking. Nobody's even sure how to get there. Some people think that the powers sealed off all portals to the Ordial for some reason. Some people believe that even the powers can't access it.
So, the mysteries of the Ordial remain more of a mystery than even the Far Realm.
Also, Planewalker has classed the planes into several groupings. Cardinal, Transitive and Pseudo.
The Cardinal Planes are the Prime, Inner and Outer.
Transitives are the Astral, Ethereal, and Ordial.
Pseudo are Time, Dream, and Shadow.
I didn't have a role in that setup, but it makes some nice logical sense. However I take issue with giving Dream its own plane rather than using it as the border between the Deep Ethereal and the Border Ethereal where it touches upon a prime world. I liked the notion of the 'wall of color' being the domain of dreams and dreamscapes. That same idea first detailed in the 'Guide to the Ethereal' was translated almost in its entirety to the Dream Plane in the 3e MotP, including the Dreamscape with Anna and the dragon. *smiles*
Not to say that that might change of course whats there above.
And Cleve... tell Brighteyes to pay his rent. He was two hours late last month in paying. And so I want him to pay up two weeks early this month. If he decides to be grumpy like he usually is, tell him I can just as easily move a new group of people into the building nextdoor to him which I own as well. And I'll move in a few members of some minor sect calling themselves the folio firedancers. You can infer from that.
And don't look at me like that. You know very well that
Bodak death gaze of yours doesn't affect me, but it does make my tieflings hide behind my mirror. Stop that you little goodie-two-shoes.
Am I to understand the following (and please, correct me if I am wrong!):
Whereas the Ethereal Plane connectifies Elemental Planes with the Prime, giving the Prime its real matter, insofar as the Ethereal is something of a stream-of-substance;
and whereas the Astral connectifies Prime Material with Outer Plane, giving Outer its very realization as a construct of sheer belief, insofar as the Astral is more or less a stream-of-pure thought;
...then it follows that the Ordial connectifies Elemental with Outer Plane, giving Outer Plane shape and form and being, insofar as the Ordial is a stream-of-imagined-matter!
The stuff of the Ordial must be thought-substance! Ideas given real body and life! A place of reification! Abstract become real! Gods given flesh.
Intriguing!
Though I do sense an imbalance here. Through the Elemental Planes, Ethereal gives shape to the Prime. Through the Prime Material Plane, the Silver Void gives shape to the Outer Planes. But through the Ordial, once more, the Outer Planes are given shape, here by the Elemental Planes.
Should not the Ordial give shape to the Elemental Planes via the Outer? Or is it wrong to ascribe this sense of directionality to the existence of the transitive planes? I fear I have become a bit too enamoured with the Unity of Rings!
But the symmetry is simply so appealing! For each main dimension to have a perfect opposite -- Ordial to Prime, Astral to Elemental, Ethereal to Outer -- why, it is just the kind of delicious concept Kesto will be delighted to hear of. Though not so for the news of his rent. Oh how I detest dealings with Lower-Plane-Spawn. If only Shemeshka [pardon, Shemeska] were as nice that charming A'kin chap.
-Sir Cleve of Krynn, Paladial Bodak
I suggest you duck and jump through a portal into Vacuum. It won't stop her, she'll just be slowed.
((A'kin is another Arcanoloth that lives within the Cage. He is called the "Friendly Fiend" and that is the name of his shop. He sells all sorts of interesting items and seems friendly enough to customers. Despite this he is as evil as Shemeska, though he doesn't actively engage in the control of a Crosstrading Empire. His evil is the 'buy you cookies knowing that one day those cookies'll come back to haunt you' kinda guy. Not actually haunt you. But the chips will smudge your shirt so that when you speak to Zaphkiel in the only meeting he's ever had with a non-Celestial in millenia he becomes offended and blows you to bits.
A'kin is also the writer of the outlawed book "The Factol's Manifesto" a publication that reveals the secrets of every Factol in Sigil [Before the FW].
Also, Shemeska hates A'kin. She will not tolerate the voicing of his name in her presence and refers to him as "That 'other' Arcanoloth." Why? Is it merely jealousy over territory disputes? Something old in their pasts that causes this hatred? Are they actually the same fiend polymorphed to appear subtley different. Or is she merely a spurned lover who misses him? [Some around here say that their "love" is not so spurned and Shemeska's elaborate gowns are so elaborate so that noone can see the bruises left from their amorus get togethers.] Now, what does that Medusa say? Oh yes, "Alas, I cannot prove a word...")
Originally posted by Mostly Clueless
Campaigning for Clueless rights and better Clueless housing in Sigil since 2003
Clueless have houses?
Originally posted by Shemeska the Marauder
The as yet unreleased idea from Planewalker was to have the Ordial as a true transitive plane, and also unknown. Unknown in character anways as none have been there and returned, nor are there known portals, or otherwise any way to reach the supposed plane. But it makes sense according to the Rule of Three that it should exist...
Don't listen to that Preening Fiend! The Ordial plane is complete screed. As the Mover of an entire Prime (numbered the 3rd) in my service to the Sign of One I never imagined anything as "Ridiculous" as the Ordial. Therefore it does not exist. As a Seeker and a dues paying member of the Planewalkers' guild I have never encounter this supposed Transitive Plane. Accessibility defines a Transitive Plane.
Many were the forays beyond the Gatetowns of the Land, where access to this Ordial phenomenon is spouted by the few greybeards to lay. The strange, wonderous, and blasphemous sights that my Hinterlands expedition catalogued will one day be legendary (tanar'ri farmers, Keepers playing a game called "volley ball"), however the myth of the Ordial is just that. A Snipe Hunt, a ruse, the pompous proselytizing of a preening Fiendess!!!
Should you truly need to steer someone to a reliable method of transport through the Planes feel free to point them to Seeker's Hall in the Foundary District. For a pitance I can show them the wonders of the Infinite Staircase.
Pay her no Heed, good Sir Cleve.
What Xanxost means: There isn't a law that doesn't deserve to be broken, annoying law-types refer to this as the Rule of Chaos! Annoying law-types like the Fraternity of Order try to categorise chaos, and that usually ends up in barmy law-types. Everyone wins! Wings? Xanxost doesn't have wings!
Maybe the Ordial exists, maybe the Far-Realm exists.
Maybe the Ordial is actually the Far-Realm!
Xanxost doesn't know, but he'll go there if we need to write a book about it. Xanxost loves studying native wildlife! Just ask the Tanar'ri!
Sir Cleve, when you wish to discuss about the Planes, the Signers are the worst people to go to. Kindly consider everything that the prime mover just said as perfect screed.
If you want the real darks, come to us, the Rilmani. There's no guarantee we'll give you the darks, but I'm going to be generous today.
First off, the Ordial has accessiblity. The thing is, nobody's figured out where that accessibility is. If you want the way of things from the mouth of a Rilmani, several people have found the Ordial, but nobody realizes they've been there. The Ordial is a subtle thing.
Second, the imbalance you sense is not an imbalance. Trust one who lives to preserve Balance. The Inner Planes create the building blocks for the entire Multiverse. All of the Prime worlds and the Outer Planes are created from the elements, para-elements, quasi-elements and energies. The Outer Planes are also created by force of belief, but that's beside the point right now.
According to most people, there exists no direct link from the Inner Planes to the Outer Planes. That's why there has to be an Ordial. The Outer Planes couldn't exist if they didn't have a way to be built by the Inner Planes. Therefore, there has to be something to complete the ring, looping the Outer Planes, at the "outer edge" of the Multiverse back with the Inner Planes.
That's all of the dark that I'll be giving to you right now.
But consider this. The Ordial could be anything and anywhere. Suppose it is the so-called "Far Realm." Suppose it is instead the Hinterlands of the Outlands, my home plane. Suppose it's something entirely different. It makes one wonder if Planewalker.com is going to visit us and get the darks from us. We'll support them if they decide to take a trip to the Spire.
Originally posted by Sir Cleve
The stuff of the Ordial must be thought-substance! Ideas given real body and life! A place of reification! Abstract become real! Gods given flesh.
Sounds like Diskworld after the Hogfather died.
However, until just a few years ago the plane of dreams was thought to be a myth, yet recently myself and two other walkers were able to create spells that allow a person to travel to them.
Like many other rumours on the planes, this one might be true. However, any specifics about the plane (except that it is likely transitive) you hear are most likely as barmy as the people who tell you they've been there.
Each set of cardinal planes has a defining characteristic, and this defines the transitives between them, and even bleeds through into the other sets of cardinals. Outer is defined by belief, inner by substance, and prime by travel.
On the outers and inners my opinion is fairly undisputed, but people start looking ascance at me when I mention the third defining trait. They just see that the prime worlds can be walked on as easily as most outer planes or solid bits of the inner planes, but what they fail to consider is the thing that makes up most of the prime: pholgiston and wildspace.
It is possible to travel physically from Krynn to Toril, but try to travel from Acheron to Mechanus and you are in for an endless trip. You can walk from fire to magma, for sure, but what you are really doing is shifting your mindset to a less firey one and a more earthy one. Similarly, the Astral has little substance, and the ethereal has little to do with belief. Likewise, the Ordial has almost nothing to do with travel; it is beliefs given substance, nothing more, nothing less.
Sigil's the only known place considered to be on the Outer Planes that has an abundance of portals to the Inner Planes. By the laws of the Multiverse, it's pretty impossible to make a planar jump directly from Outer to Inner and vice-versa, but you can do it in Sigil if you find the right portal. Perhaps Sigil is directly linked to the Ordial...or She knows how to tap the Ordial's power...
Interesting theory. It would explain why magic can be used there and not at the spire.
I... agree... with... Xanxost....
*mysterious smile*
Then there's the fact that no evidence exists to support the existence of the ordial. It isn't simply that no one's been there - there are no phenomena to attribute to it. With the Far Realm there was something happening on the etherial, but with the ordial there isn't anything at all.
The Ordial is something similiar. The name is just a place holder for a plane that by all planar reasoning SHOULD exist. But there's literally no evidence to prove that it does aside from the fact that it fulfills the rule of threes. It's conveniant and it fits the ideology of the outer planes.
Of course it fails the rule of fours for the inner planes. So things may be even stranger than we can imagine. *grins*
In any event its ample fodder for planar games if you want to incorporate it because there's nothing set down about it. It could be anything and everything you need it to be.
*smacks around her tieflings*
"It's all your fault Colcook! I don't make mistakes like that!"
*pitches a fit*
4 True Elements
4 Para Elements
8 Quasi Elements
8 Quasi-Para Elements
2 Energy Planes
1 Quintessence
Add them together and what do you get? Thrice three tripled, the ultimate pinnacle of three-ness, 27.
You all know what the propriator of that bastion of questionable dark says, though, and I must offer the same disclaimer.
Alas, I cannot prove a word.
Originally posted by Togashi Kabara
or both groups just planeshift to the prime then to the inner. takes two jumos, but its not so bad. not as direct. but functional. plus, it doesnt break any of Primus' much-vaunted laws.
Most Rilmani, by the way, can't enter the Prime of their own volition. They have to hitch a ride on a summoning spell
And what, pray tell, are the quasi-para elements?
paraelement +quasi -quasi
ooze clay silt
ice crystal frost
magma obsidian pumice
smoke spark fumes
Originally posted by Sildatorak
Add them together and what do you get? Thrice three tripled, the ultimate pinnacle of three-ness, 27.
Rather than 3^3 = 27, I would think the ultimate pinnacle of three-ness to be 3^3^3 = 19683.
Originally posted by overtrick
Rather than 3^3 = 27, I would think the ultimate pinnacle of three-ness to be 3^3^3 = 19683.
Now we just need to figure out what the other 19656 inner planes are ;)
And a few of the transuranics over 110 got faked in their discovery a while back, and we're only now starting to actually find them. If nanoseconds of existance is what you'd call finding them. ;)
The "quasiparaelementals" are of course pure screed. When you come down to it, having separate planes at all is a bit of a stretch. If one had the time and inclination, he could walk 'round the entire set of elements without going through a single portal, unlike the Outer Planes. Sure there are areas of "clay" and "frost" but there're also areas of acid ooze and lightless fire, that doesn't mean there are sodding Planes of Acid and Darkflame. The trick with the Elemental Planes (and listen up you barmy factioneers, this'll save your life someday) is that everything mixes. If you're goin' to Earth and think your in the clear with a shovel, think again, there are pockets of Fire and Ash just waitin' to swallow uncanny bloods.
There could easily be 19683 Elemental Planes, or there could be one big Quintessence Plane, or anything in between. It's all a matter of perspective, berks.
Would it be wrong to conjecture that the rule of threes really demands that there be (3^3^3)^(3^3^3)^(3^3^3) elemental planes?
That's surely enough to allow for one elemental plane PURELY of mint-chocolate. And another entirely dedicated to collagen. And perhaps somewhere in there, a plane composed of nothing but WD 40.
My point is, the rule of threes is not built for exponential equations. It refers to 3. Not 27!!!
*drum hit*
But seriously, I'd stay away from that plane if I were you. I hear it's a really seedy place.
*drum hit*
I mean, you know everyone's pushing something when the place is filled with pump-kin.
*drum hit*
Okay, I'm stopping before it gets even worse.
Well, the Greeks came up with the earth/air/fire/water idea, however the Pythagoreans also held that a 5th element existed, one that flew upwards at the moment of creation to eventually form the essence of the stars.
This idea mutated over time and some held that Quintessence, as it became known as, was the 'pure' element, of which everything had a bare fraction of at the core of its being. It was soul stuff in some regards.
Some schools of Alchemy also held that the 5th element was alcohol and other fermentation derived liquids. But thats straying too much from the original point at that juncture.
When I posted, I actually thought that people were talking about the soup of the Ethereal and not really the Greecian view. But now that I think of it, the soup is more the negative of quintessence. It's the four other elements all swirled up (with positive and negative energy). As an avid explorer of the Elemental Planes, and an avidly curious berk particularly about physical science, I've been looking for signs of this quintessence around. Near as I can tell it's nowheres, the "spark of life" the Shemeska mentioned is positive energy, of course.
Looking back now, though, I have an intriguing idea. To get back to the roots of this thread, could the "Plane of Quintessence" and the Ordial be the same thing? Since quintessence is supposed to be the purist form of matter, but it's immutable and unreachable to mere prime mortals. Sounds like a fifty-fifty mix of matter and thought.
I've used stuff from other non canon sources like the PS-list before for flavor stuff, but I've never used it as more than plot and setting gems to polish and cut. Nothing ever gets used as is. I take a nifty seed and then I plant it and we get something usually quite different in the end.
The only thing I've really used in its entirety from Mimir are their articles on jink across the planes.
Fun stuff.One of the greatest truisms in the multiverse is that every rule has an exception. As Shemeska said the name is place holder for what should theoretically exist given the rule of threes, but we haven't found it yet, though I doubt we ever will because I seriusly doubt its existence. As much as the Rilmani want you to believe their Abiorachs get to the Inner planes easier than anyone else, they get there like the rest of us, with portals, or planeshifting. Thats the great thing about portals and gates and what not, they jump mulitple planes at a time.
Beside those adolescent freaks (the Abiorachs) get chewn up and spit out all the time by the forces of the inner planes. Raw existence is not something to be taken lightly.
----END RANT---
Basically my view is that the Ordial is the brain child of someone who was looking for meaning in rules. They wanted those rules to always apply everywhere, but thats just not the way things work on the planes (be they inner, outer, prime, or transitive...hey thats four kinds, to obey the rule of threes we'd have to get rid of a category) There is no greater meaning, things just are, there could have just as easily been nothing, but the role of dice said something exists. Why? Just because.
I've never had the Ordial in a campaign, but I still think it's a worthwhile rumor to keep around.
Originally posted by Mephit James
I agree, the Ordial raises some issues, but it's still a reasonable idea. Besides, it's not like there are no places in the multiverse where the borders are locked down (Sigil, Athas, the higher levels of Celestia, Ravenloft...). Of course that begs the question who is blocking the Ordial? My money's on a Power, but it could be something bigger. It could also be something smaller, like a powerful planeborn: what if the Ordial were a fairly small area like the Cage? It would help explain why it's so hard to find.
I've never had the Ordial in a campaign, but I still think it's a worthwhile rumor to keep around.
I'd have to agree that its bounded small area like Sigil if someone's keeping it under lock and key. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a whole pantheon, let alone a single power capable of sealing something like the Astral or the Ethereal. It is possible that the place exists, the rule of threes is correct more often than not (thats why its the rule of threes and not the sometimes things come in threes coincidence...thingy), so its not a totally wacked out idea.
But even in those locked out places, they still obey rules of adjacent planes and what not, and it is an undisputable fact that you cannot use contact outer planes on the inner planes. If the ordial existed as a direct link between the two you could.
There are a few flaws in it though:
1) Travel on the Ethereal does involve belief, to get from one place to another you have to change your mindset.
2) You can physically walk from Baator to The Abyss, it takes a long time and you have to change your mindset but it can be done.
3)By its mere presence we should be able to summon elementals on the outerplanes, and use contact outer plane on the inner planes. And we can't.
_____________
The other (and probably main reason) people look at you ascance is because the rest of us bleakers have to feed you by sliding a dish through a solid iron door. There's a reason we have you locked in the Mad Bleakers Wing: YOU'RE INSANE
;)
What I mean is that that is a strong piece of evidence against it. Perhaps the energies destroy the creatures summoned, but shouldn't a spell crystal from the outer planes appear on the inner and still grab the elemental? As far as I have heard this does not happen, all that does occur is an out right failure of the spell to function. Same goes with contact outer plane, cast from the inner planes, which doesn't summon anything. No spell crystal appears on the outer planes to barrage a being with questions, it simply fails.
We know the spell crystals aren't destroyed in transit, because when you cast something on the prime the crystal appears on the plane you are trying to contact, it doesn't go wizzing across Astral or Ethereal (at least none of the books ever said thats what they did).
I do not deny that the existance of the Ordial is possible, it very well may exist. I simply doubt its existence, the planes have been around for a long time. I find it improbable that something as massive (in the figurative sense since there is some debate as to the planes actual size) as the Ordial hasn't been discovered. If we can't access it, it doesn't allow planar contact, and no one can interact with it in any way, then its pretty irrelevant if it exists or not.
Course everything is meaningless when you get down to it...
It could of course be new plane, maybe a demiplane thats been hidden away on the deep ethereal for a long time. No one cared about it, since it didn't really have anything useful. But now it has finally grown into a full fledged plane. Who knows? Course the blasted Rilmani will claim to but who gives them any hedence anyways;)
The Ordial could be a place of null magic (the conflict between divine energies from the Outers and alchemical energies from the Inners creating a field of destructive magical interference) so that any spells attempting to bridge the gap are cancelled. This would explain why no one has been able to "boost" spells through the Prime.
The Ordial could also be the source of planar energies flowing into the Outer and Inner Planes, supplying them with the very building blocks of the multiverse. The Outer and Inner Planes therefore act like buffers between this primal source and the rest of the multiverse. When spells travel through the Ordial they are travelling through an area where magic hasn't coallesced into a coherent form, so the spells just dissolve (OOC: For any physicists out there, this would be similar to travelling back in time to before the Big Bang, an impossible act since time was formed at the Big Bang.)
Point is, until something definite is discovered about the Ordial, it can't be disproved. Now if you'll excuse me I have to wash the stink of Guvner-thought off my skin...
And the stink of Guvner... *shudder* It took me a week to get rid of that out of my own fur when I snagged copies of ex Factol Lariset's journals after she 'transcended'. A polite way of saying took a short walk down a long ooze portal wearing a crimson grin on her neck. *gloat* But Baernaloths know... that woman must not have bathed that last week of life because her books smelled something rotten! Ugghhh...
Now if you'll excuse me, the thought of that has made me feel unclean and I must go take a long, hot, expensive bubble bath.
Chances are that this "Ordial" (Ordinal?) plane is just some place where the powers are taken from belief and given physical form.
Now of course no one can get there. There is no way the powers would reveal their secret to anyone or anything. Of couse, now it is only a metter of time before someone pops in there and figures out how the gods are put together. After that it shoulden't be to hard to take them apart
.Originally posted by Mephit James
I don't think that anything can definitely rule out the Ordial simply because no one's been there. If no one had stumbled onto the Abyss, bodies'd think that all planes need to have a set number of layers. If the Ethereal were a dark, it'd be a fact that all planes either have multiple layers or are homogenous (which the Ethereal flouts with its Border and Deep areas). There are plenty've unique situations all over the planes and I for one wouldn't bet a halfling on this possible unique circumstance being impossible...
The Ordial could also be the source of planar energies flowing into the Outer and Inner Planes, supplying them with the very building blocks of the multiverse. The Outer and Inner Planes therefore act like buffers between this primal source and the rest of the multiverse....(OOC: For any physicists out there, this would be similar to travelling back in time to before the Big Bang, an impossible act since time was formed at the Big Bang.)
Point is, until something definite is discovered about the Ordial, it can't be disproved. Now if you'll excuse me I have to wash the stink of Guvner-thought off my skin...
There are definitly plenty of unique situations around the planes, I agree, but we have encountered the Abyss, and everyone knows about the Ethereal. They're not theoretical things that we can't find. We've had an exceedingly long time(or not or infinite amount of time depending on the your views of the origins of the multiverse) to find this place, and yet no one has.
"...supplying them with the very building blocks of the multiverse." Thats an interesting theory especially coming from an Inner Planes being such as yourself. One would think you would support the (generally accepted as fact though I suppose not proven) view that the Inner Planes supplied the building blocks to multiverse.
We can't disprove the existence of the ordial, agreed. But the burden of proof lies with the affirmative. We also can't disprove the existence the plane of kittens. Its a basket of kittens but its natural laws say that no one can get to it or find it or anything like that. So by definition we can't we can't disprove it, because it can always be argued that you just haven't found it yet, and since you never can find it you never will be able to disprove it. It has to be accepted on faith;)
(ooc: YAY for abstract physics! Under the view that time started at the big bang, the term "before the big bang" is nonsensical. Before implys time, and if there was no time then then before can't exist.)
@Xanxost: I beg that you remember that you are the exception that - ahem - "proves the rule." The only reason you're dependable is that slaadi in general aren't.
@sxoa: Didn't know you were a bleaker. I'm somewhere between ring givers, fated, guvners, and xaositects myself. ie: I try to stay out of faction politics.
@Justabouteverybodywhoisn'tcompletelyclueless (pardon my Gnomish): A few of us are trying to create a d20 game that in flavor is basically a cross between Planescape and d20 Modern, but uses slightly different rules. The games don't mesh well on their own.
David Brin in his Uplift series of novels described a method of travel through what he called E-Level Hyperspace that reminded me a lot of the Ordial, a realm of ideas and surreality that rivaled a Dali landscape.
I imagine that traveling through the Ordial (if travel is even an appropriate concept in the Ordial) would be a lot like the Beatles animated movie The Yellow Submarine in all its psychedelic glory. Weird & wonderful & defying categorization.
I will admit that relative to most (if not all) of you I am a newcomer in the world of Planescape, but I wished to present my thoughts to all.
Originally posted by plasmaphoenix
Instead of considering the planes as members of types (elemental, energy, etc.), why not consider them as axes?
That's a good thought.
In the center is the inner planes, the elemental planes laid out in a circle, positive energy above, and negative energy below. The ethereal plane spirals out from the inner planes.
Moving outwards, the inner edge of the spiral condenses into the material planes (prime center, positive above, negative below).
Continuing on, the material planes flow into the astral plane.
The astral plane flows into the outer planes (law centerward, chaos outerward, good above, evil below). The outlands lie in the center.
Beyond the outer planes is an extraplanar barrier of some kind. Beyond this the spiral degrades into a very complex pattern. Law and chaos, good and evil become one and the same. This is the far realm.
The Spire, I picture extending from the barrier down the of the spiral until it reaches the inner planes. Perhaps the Spire itself is the ordial plane. This makes sense for a few reasons.
1. Sigil is at the top of the Spire, and Sigil exists to some degree in every plane (except the far realm, I think (are there any portals to the far realm in Sigil?)). This explains the portals, and why people who fall off Sigil end up in a random plane.
2. The base of the Spire absorbs magical energy and the top expells it. The Spire may be the conduit that returns energy to the inner planes.
Why the Spire exists and how it was created, I don't know, but it seems likely that the Spire lengthens the life of the multiverse by slowing the flow of energy from the outer planes to the far realm
However, this all is just speculation.
(First IC post from old Ohtar Turinson- and only the prime=ordial theory is a representative of the views of the player)
For proof, here we have the planes:
Inner-Ethereal-Prime-Astral-Outer
Notice the center. The multiverse has a center, one point with half the mutiverse on one side, and one on the other. And what's worse: It's the sodding Prime! No wonder the Clueless sods think the Prime's such a big deal.
With an Ordial, however, the chart reads Ordial-Inner-Ethereal-Prime-Astral-Outer-Ordial-Inner-Ethereal...
Any point can be the centeral point, there's three transitive, and it loops around in a ring.
The Guvner's should agree with this.
*Is completely boggled.*