http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dungeon/1092/index.html
I never read Spelljammer but I seem to recall something from WotI about Heldannic Knights and Alphatians flying into space near the polar openings or some such?
Does anyone here ever use "space" in their campaigns?
:-) Jesper
According to Bruce Heard's Dragon artcles (I think) Mystara was not in a crystal sphere at all - he posted a very different set of rules for space travel.
Some of the Master Series modules cover other worlds, now whilst these are on other planes (or not - they are reached through other planes but they could be eelsewhere in the universe) there is very little that would link to spelljamming.
Now all that said, in the campaign I am playing in inside the Hollow World we did meet a couple of Giff...
The Heldannic and Alphatian flying ships are all designed for travel around Mystara (and if I remember correctly in the Bruce Heard article where they go to a moon - no air bubble either). The Polar Openings are the routes too and fromt he Hollow World - but they are also one area the ships don't fly - no magic.
As for Blackmoor - well according to the original modules thy were visited by a spaceship (well it crashed) implying contemporary physics, but WotI re-wrote it that it had accidentally crossed planar boundaries. So they could easily have had the technology, but remember they were great technologists not just magic, so any Blackmoorians wandering around are incredibly dangerous - hit them wrong and watch their fusion reactor blow up in your face
Nithia is actually much less likely - the Immortals erased the culture for unspecified sins. They preserved the few untained on White Isle in Irendi, but then they re-created the culture in the Hollow World! (presumably where the Spell of Preservation stops whatever they were doing wrong). So for Nithians to be wandering out there in spheres sort of implies the Immortals let them get away.
So there's nothing wrong with using the Spelljammer rules, but you named about the only 2 cultures I would not put there!
Nithia is actually much less likely - the Immortals erased the culture for unspecified sins. They preserved the few untained on White Isle in Ierendi, but then they re-created the culture in the Hollow World! (presumably where the Spell of Preservation stops whatever they were doing wrong). So for Nithians to be wandering out there in spheres sort of implies the Immortals let them get away.
There are remains of Nithia on Ierendi, but more importantly in Thothia on the Isle of Dawn. Thothia was not destroyed because it did not suffer under the Entrophic influence that plagued Nithia. So perhaps, a separated Nithian culture could also have survived in space? Nithian's most likely explored space, and they did contact the Alphatians, whose world, at least according to some sources, exist within Mystara's galaxy.
Håvard
Nithian's most likely explored space, and they did contact the Alphatians …
That's interesting. Is this official canon from one of the modules, or is this from fan-created material on the Vaults or the Mailing List?
In any case, it serves as a good starting point for Nithians In Space.
I had forgotten the Thothians and rest of the M5 stuff, but if you recall correctly then I totally agree on this bit. Also I hate to think how powerful they will be having been researching their magic a lot longer than most people...
I still have some interesting stuff I wrote on Hel/Uranus, and Haavard should have something about Venus, Planet of Dinosaurs.
When will we see the dinos, Haavard? ;)
The Heldannic and Alphatian flying ships are all designed for travel around Mystara (and if I remember correctly in the Bruce Heard article where they go to a moon - no air bubble either). The Polar Openings are the routes too and fromt he Hollow World - but they are also one area the ships don't fly - no magic.
.. except the Heldannic flying ships were powered by an artifact, and thus were immune to the "no magic" zone. In the old Dragon series about an Alphatian ship visiting the Hollow World, they had to use gnome-built rockets to go through .. but the Heldannic ships they were fighting didn't suffer from the same disadvantage.
IIRC Haavard and I were working on a Mystaraspace project loooooong ago, but it collapsed unto itself and became a black hole :D
I still have some interesting stuff I wrote on Hel/Uranus, and Haavard should have something about Venus, Planet of Dinosaurs.
When will we see the dinos, Haavard? ;)
Ah, the MSpace project! I seem to recall there being a third person involved in the project too at one point, wasn't it Marco? I cant remember who it was though. Unfortutanely, I lost many of the files from those days, as most of it was just ideas spread in the emails back and forth and I never got around to writing much of it into articles.
I still like the idea of MVenus being full of Dinosaurs, as in Space1889, but dont expect to see a writeup of that planet in a while guys, sorry
Recently, I have also had some new ideas about how the organize the Mystara solar system, among other things by making Old Alphatia a planet within the solar system....
Håvard
Just curious, but I heard someone, maybe you (?) referring to evidence of Old Alphatia being in the Mystara Galaxy rather than a different plane. This is rather intriguing. Can you show me where you found this implication?
This is from M1 Into the Maelstrom. I don't have it with me here, so I can't give you an exact quote, but it says something to the effect of Old Alphatia being somewhere within Mystara's Galaxy. I used this as an argument that Old Alphatia could even be within the same solar system, though I suppose the quotation implies that it is further away.
WotI changed this making OA a separate dimension, as it did with almost everything else. I have decided to ignore this, as I find that placing things closer to Mystara makes it easier to involve these elements in the campaign. Outer Planes are far enough away so that they almost never are involved in a campaign; do we really have to deal with what is beyond that?
Håvard
Personally, I like the Multiverse, and I'd like to see it entering the timeline more. You're right, most things do seem to be extremely grounded in the Prime Plane, and I think it's a shame considering how cool the concept of the Multiverse is. In some ways, having things on other planes actually makes them more accessible, because gates and wormholes are always going to be faster than space travel.
But I kinda see why you might want to have it in the Prime, where pretty much everything else is.
This actually leads in to another topic, which is this: everyone knows that the Prime Plane is the primary source of Immortals. But why?
Possible answers are that the other planes are all subject to Immortal interference, and thus potential candidates for immortality in one sphere can easily be dealt with by rival spheres long before they have a chance to complete their quests. If the Immortals have nothing to stop them from interfering, maybe it's the interference itself that lowers the chances of new attempts at gaining immortality there.
This would lead to mortals taking refuge in the Prime Plane, and stepping warily if they should visit other planes. In that case, most powerful mortals might just decide to stay in (or move to) the Prime, even if they started elsewhere.
Anyone got any other ideas?
This actually leads in to another topic, which is this: everyone knows that the Prime Plane is the primary source of Immortals. But why?
I don't recall why, but I always thought that one of the reasons was that the Prime Plane had a balance between the Spheres; Am I wrong in thinking that?
I guess the next question is why does a balance between the spheres mean more immortal candidates?
I guess the next question is why does a balance between the spheres mean more immortal candidates?
In a thread about rules for Immortals in 3E, several of us had a discussion about the possiblity that the level of influence (dominance) a Sphere of Power had on a Plane of Existance affected the level of power an Immortal could weild. Basically, if an Immortal of the Sphere of Time is on a plane where that Sphere is dominate, than the powers that the Immortal can use are proportionally increased.
Perhaps the balance between the Spheres in the Prime Plane is one of the reasons for the "no interference" policy and the fair playing field for candidates of Immortality.
Then again, it could be due to a higher population!
Examining all the Immortals operating in the Mystaraverse, we may actually see that there are some which were not Primers: the Elemasters, Terra, Urtson, Land (these from IM1 IIRC) were all Elemental beings before they attained immortality.
THe question is: are there other immortals who lived in other planes before reaching immortality?
If we take WotI for granted, then by all means Razud is one of those, and Alphaks too since they lived in the Alphatian universe (which lies in an outer plane), but I fail to remember others...
So we're stuck with the elemental immortals, prolly Razud, Alphaks (if u think old Alphatia is an outer plane) and Harrow (the only diabolus immortal from IM3), but he comes from another DIMENSION entirely (like Rad/Etienne), so he doesn't really count.
What's the answer then? Why do all candidates come from the Prime?
My idea is, like Hugin said, that the Prime is the only place of the Mystaraverse where ALL of the forces are present and balanced. Therefore only candidates from the Prime can become Immortals, drawing their power from all of the spheres even if being biased towards one specifically.
Prolly the Immortals tried to sponsor candidates from other planes but they either failed or were dangerous unbalanced creatures once immortality was reached, and so they were destroyed or exiled and the Prime Law was then created.
How do we explain the Elemental immortals then?
I do believe that they are indeed the most unbalanced, being tied to their homeplane and having extremely strict mindsets (the Elemasters especially). Terra seems to be the real exception however... what's so special about her then? Maybe she spent so much time in the Prime to be attuned to it? Maybe she was in fact a Monolith living in the Prime (remember old Urt from Immortal set)?
It's a difficult answer anyway... ;)
What's the answer then? Why do all candidates come from the Prime?
That question made me ponder another question? Why are there so many immortals ascended from mortal humans and so (relatively) few immortals of other races?
I mean, the "human" immortals represent almost every aspect of mortal life from the "big picture" (war, fertility, the seasons) to tiny things (riddles, patron of a single culture) but the elven, dwarven, giantish and humanoid immortals are both few and have the responsibilities of larger portfolios as far as I can tell.
Why are all other races so slow to become immortals?
:-) Jesper
In my opinion, the list of Mystaran Immortals is not a list of all Immortals in existence, it is a list of Immortals who share an interest in the world of Mystara. Indeed, many of these Immortals have interests in other worlds on the Prime Plane, or in worlds that exist in other planes or dimensions.
But all the source material is writtin from the point of view of a Mystara-based campaign, hence the Mystara/Prime Plane bias.
I seem to recall somewhere reading about Elemental beings worshipping a different set of unspecified Immortals - or was that the Spirit Realm (I can't recall because it's been so long).
Basically what I'm trying to say is, if you were to shift your campaign's focus from Mystara (prime) to, say, the City of Brass on the Plane of Fire, you would do well to come up with an unique Immortal pantheon comprised of beings who originated from that plane, or have a vested interest there who may not be known anywhere else in the multiverse.
I don't think that all Immortals come from the Prime Plane. Every official list of Immortals I've ever seen has always said at some point or another that the list is not to be considered exhaustive.
IMC, Immortals can originate from any of the Inner planes (Except the Ethereal) and from other dimensions, but not from the outer planes. The elemental planes are special cases since the only known way to achieve immortality there is through the elemental hierarchy, aka the Path of the Elemaster.
Even on the Prime Plane, Mystara is somehow unique in the number of Immortals it has produced during the centuries, due to various factors, including the high magic level and the presence of the Radience (indirectly more than directly).
Still, I agree with you that the WotI list is far from the complete list of Immortals in the multiverse.
Håvard