Planescape General and Q&A
Thread starter question: How much do you actually care about the paraelemental planes and the quasielemental planes? Do you consider them to be an interesting facet of the setting?
Discuss Planescape and the Great Wheel here, whether the original AD&D 2e version, the 3.X version, the 4e version (yes, it exists in 4e, down to the baernaloths, the yugoloths, the Heart of Darkness, Maeldur et Kavurik, Tenebrous, Pelion, and the Last Word all being canon as of Dragon #417), the 5e version, or your own original blend.
I am exceedingly well-lanned on Planescape canon under a holistic blend of 2e, 3.X, and sometimes even 4e lore. If you have any questions at all about the setting's lore, feel free to ask, and I will give you direct quotes and citations from as many primary sources as I can, unlike afroakuma. I will note when something is open to GM interpretation, and explicitly note whenever I give merely my own personal interpretation.
>Basic setting summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planescape
>Comprehensive Planescape reference index: http://www.rilmani.org/psIndex.txt
>Planewalker.com planar encyclopedia: http://mimir.planewalker.com/encyclopedia/plane
>Canonfire.com planar encyclopedia: http://canonfire.com/wiki/index.php?title=Outer_Planes
>Rilmani.org planar encyclopedia (contains unmarked fanon, so beware): http://www.rilmani.org/timaresh/Outer_Planes
>List of all the multiverse's gods (contains all gods mentioned in D&D products, but also has plenty of speculation and fanon for mythological deities and for powers with few details on them): http://mimir.planewalker.com/forum/list-dead-gods#comment-58090
Old threads with previous questions and comprehensive answers: https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/search/text/%22comprehensive%20planescape%22/
>>46650537
I had already mentioned Tcian Sumere, Orcus's Negative Energy Plane fortress from Dead Gods: Out of the Darkness's chapter IV, here >>46648075
>>46652730
>>46654327
If you would like to learn about the 2e Planescape setting through just a single book, I would recommend *avoiding* the original boxed set. It is not particularly vital to playing or running Planescape. If anything, it is rather unpolished and unrefined.
The single most important book for Planescape 2e is the "Planewalker's Handbook." It is the most up-to-date summary of the entire setting, useful for both players and GMs, and everyone who intends on using the setting should read through it as much as possible.
If you are interested in reading more after that, you will want "In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil," "Factol's Manifesto," and "Uncaged: Faces of Sigil" for running the City of Doors.
"Planes of Law," "Planes of Chaos," "Planes of Conflict," and "A Player's Primer to the Outlands" will acquaint you with the Outer Planes.
"Inner Planes," "Guide to the Astral Plane," and "Guide to the Ethereal Plane" should cover the remaining planes.
Those are the primary books you will want. If you wish to understand fiends and the Blood War, you should also download "Faces of Evil: The Fiends" and "Hellbound: The Blood War." Likewise, if gods and other divinities interest you, "On Hallowed Ground" should serve you well.
>>46654216
I disagree. Taking the 2e Planescape books as a whole, I cannot identify a single running theme throughout the products, nor an aesthetic other than the relatively consistent use of Sigilian cant.
The planar cosmology is what distinguishes Planescape from other settings in my opinion; tone and aesthetic are much more mutable and less essential.
>>46654403
2e's On Hallowed Ground covers this topic fairly well. Essentially, divinities like those of Oerth's and Faerun's respective pantheons are small-time in the grand, multiversal scale, because their worshipers cover only a single crystal sphere (the Prime's equivalent of a solar system).
The truly important deities are multi-sphere gods who have worshipers across a wide variety of crystal spheres. This includes D&D-original gods such as the draconic pantheon (e.g. Bahamut, Tiamat, Io), the elven pantheon (e.g. Corellon, Sehanine) and various obscure gods from all over the books (e.g. Surminare, Mellifleur, Ilsensine), but it also covers *all* mythological deities.
It seems that the Celtic, Chinese, Egyptian, Finnish, Greek, Indian, Japanese, and Norse pantheons are all composed of multi-sphere powers (presumably, there are multiple Chinas, Egypts, Finlands, Greeces, Indias, and Japans across the Prime). Even the Babylonian and Sumerian pantheons coexist as per pages 60-65 of On Hallowed Ground, and they have a fierce and quite literally murderous rivalry.
As for Earth, there is no one, unified "real world" sphere. A few examples:
- As page 34 of Dragon Magazine #359 points out, Gary Gygax once explained in a 1984 interview for Polyhedron that Earth does exist.
- Dragon #100's "The City Beyond the Gate" sees the party travel to a museum in modern-day London to retrieve the Mace of St. Cuthbert.
- Polyhedron #73 and #74 give us the Space 1889 setting converted into a crystal sphere.
- Page 52 of Spelljammer's "Realmspace" explains that Elminster's hideout in Realmspace connects to Wyoming in the year 1894. Astute observers may note that 1894 is half a decade apart from 1889, and that "Realmspace" was published a year before Polyhedron #73 and #74.
- 2e's Historical Reference setting and the Masque of the Red Death adventure both present a different magical Earth.
There are many Earths and many crystal spheres with Earth, and they all work differently.
>>46654427
>Is there any canon wordcount put towards Athas (the Dark Sun setting) anywhere in the game? I know it's technicslly isolsted, but y'know.
Athas is absolutely, indisputably connected to the Great Wheel at large.
Pages 11 and 13 of the Planescape Campaign Setting boxed set's A Player's Guide to the Planes contain provisions for Athasian characters, pages 138-139 of Dead Gods contain an Athasian NPC who had accidentally made it to Sigil, and page 90 of the Factol's Manifesto makes it clear that the Harmonium is often compared to the Champions of Rajaat (as if the average Sigilian is well-versed in Athas's secret history).
Page 16 of the Guide to the Ethereal Plane explains "the Gray" to be the aberrant Border Ethereal of Athas's crystal sphere, and page 32 of the Planewalker's Handbook contains an entry on Athas.
>Is there any greater tragedy than Eberron coming out too late to have interactions with Planescape?
3.X's policy was to have each individual setting be self-contained in an isolated "Material Plane" (which stilled contained other worlds, but never any other setting's worlds), and for each setting to have its own cosmology. Thus, Oerth had the Great Wheel, Toril had the shoddily-written World Tree, Eberron had its planar orrery, and even the quasi-first-party Krynn sourcebooks had their own cosmology.
Under 3.X's style of cosmology, such alternate cosmologies can be reached through the Plane of Shadow as per pages 60-62 of the 3.0 Manual of the Planes. If you were to use 2e's style of cosmology, on the other hand, which has but a single, unified Prime Material Plane with many crystal spheres, then Eberron's cosmology would have to be jettisoned in favor of the Great Wheel's, bringing it in line with 2e Toril and 2e Krynn.
3.X made the Plane of Shadow a full-fledged transitive plane (not just a demiplane), and just about the only consistently macroversal facet of the cosmology as well.
>What's my best option for playing a furry charactet?
Planescape has supported playing *any* PC-valid race since its inception in the original 2e boxed set. Thus, you could choose just about any furry race and play that.
The Outer Planes alone are *full* of anthropomorphic animal outsiders. All of the guardinals of Elysium are anthropomorphic animals, and they are that plane's exemplar species. The animal lords of the Beastlands are also anthropomorphic animals, although they are much more human-looking, and almost kemonomimi-like. The slaadi of Limbo are frogs (save for their lords), the molydeus tanar'ri of the Abyss are wolf-snakes and the marilith tanar'ri are serpents, the warden archons of Mount Celestia are bears and the noctrals are owls, the gelugon baatezu are insects, and I have only scratched the metaphorical surface.
2e's much-reviled On Hallowed Ground supplement even allowed you to play one of Elysium's guardinals from levels 1 to 20+, although that book had horrifically broken balance issues even by 2e standards.
Heading into Spelljammer territory, one of the Prime's major intersphere merchant races was the dohwar, a species of anthropomorphic *penguins* who arrange themselves into corporations with "executive board members" and "presidents" and ride non-anthropomorphic space pigs as "deathsquealers." There are also the early-firearm-toting giff, anthropomorphic hippos.
Furry characters have always had a major presence in the Great Wheel.
Okay so I thought I knew a lot about D&D cosmology until I started to bring elements of Spelljammer into my games. Holy fuck I have some questions.
1. Where should I start reading to get the most information about the multiverse quickly? Preferably something available online.
2. Where is the best place to learn about yugoloth? Specifically baernoloth. And more specifically Apomps the Three Sided.
3. Where can I learn more about demodand?
>>46658719
Also, on top of all of this, the single most heavily-pushed fiendish subspecies in all of AD&D 2e is the arcanaloth. They are anthropomorphic jackal/hound-person wizards of the yugoloths, and any section involving yugoloths is bound to include one illustration or another of these furry arcanaloths interacting with one another.
Uncaged: Faces of Sigil and the Faction War both had two arcanaloths (A'kin the Friendly Fiend and Shemeshka the Marauder) as major power players in Sigil. The Faction War even ended with Shemeshka as one of the two most politically influential people in post-war Sigil.
Shemeshka is an especially noteworthy case, since page 96 of Uncaged: Faces of Sigil identifies her as "less an unclean jackal than a groomed fox from the fields of Arcadia. Her spotless coppery fur is soft and tangle-free, and thin white streaks fan out from the end of her snout to the edges of her face." Thus, she is an anthropomorphic fox-person.
I do not think there is any denying that 2e Planescape was shamelessly furry. It does not help that Todd Stewart, one of the 3.X Dragon Magazine and 4e Dragon Magazine writers for planar lore under Paizo and Wizards of the Coast, had taken on Shemeshka's name as his username and had used Shemeshka and arcanaloths as an excuse to insert fox-furries everywhere he could.I am not exaggerating here; this writer has an actual FurAffinity account.
>>46658996
>1. Where should I start reading to get the most information about the multiverse quickly? Preferably something available online.
It is not quite online, but as per this post of mine >>46658175, I strongly recommend the 2e Planewalker's Handbook.
>>46658996
>2. Where is the best place to learn about yugoloth?
Fortunately for you, the yugoloths were the single most heavily-pushed race in all of Planescape 2e.
Your main sources of information on the 'loths should be Faces of Evil: The Fiends, Planes of Conflict: Liber Malevolentiae: Gehenna, and Hellbound: The Blood War: The Dark of the War. The third and final book is the one that most strongly pushes them, confirming them to be the orchestrators of the Blood War and the source of all fiendish teleportation (which, of course, can be stripped away in the third adventure presented in Hellbound).
Uncaged: Faces of Sigil also contains two notable arcanaloth NPCs: A'kin the Friendly Fiend, and, of course, everyone's favorite fox-boy/girl, Shemeshka the Marauder.
D&D 3.X contained very little information of note on the yugoloths, but page 113 of the 3.0 Manual of the Planes introduces the Crawling City, the capital of the Gehennan yugoloths (as opposed to the Gray Waste yugoloths' capital of Khin-Oin).
A good summary of the yugoloths can also be found in this article, which draws exclusively from official sources:
http://canonfire.com/wiki/index.php?title=Yugoloth
>Specifically baernoloth.
Information on the baernaloths is much scarcer. Their original monster writeup from the Planes of Conflict monstrous supplement can be found here:
http://www.lomion.de/cmm/yugobaer.php
The baernaloths are also briefly touched upon in page 71 of Faces of Evil: The Fiends, as well as pages 23, 31, and 50 of Planes of Conflict: Liber Malevolentiae.
Hellbound: The Blood War: The Dark of the War goes into heavier detail on the baernaloths in the early days of the multiverse. Consult pages 8, 10, 11, and 27 of that book. Hellbound: The Blood War: War Games: Squaring the Circle is an adventure that revolves around the magnum opus of one particular baernaloth, Daru Ib Shamiq, and I would recommend reading that adventure to see just how much a single baernaloth can accomplish.
>>46658996
>And more specifically Apomps the Three Sided.
>3. Where can I learn more about demodand?
You will generally read about these in the same places, since Apomps is a baernaloth who then became the creator of the gehreleths, and could now be considered a gehreleth himself. The original writeup for the gehreleths in the Planescape Monstrous Compendium 1 can be found here:
http://www.lomion.de/cmm/gehrelet.php
Pages 82-87 of Faces of Evil: The Fiends contains the most comprehensive writeup you will ever find on the gehreleths and Apomps. They are also touched upon in pages 12 and 23 of Planes of Conflict: Liber Malevolentiae.
Pages 32-33 and 71 of Hellbound: The Blood War: The Dark of the War also go into some detail on the gehreleths. Page 53 of On Hallowed Ground clarifies that Apomps is a "near-power" and not an actual full-fledged god.
The demodands play a minor role in the Something Wild adventure, and there is a shator gehreleth NPC named "Xideous" in pages 114-115 of Uncaged: Faces of Sigil.
>>46659187
I know I took completely the wrong message from this, but does this mean it's safe to assume that the guy on enworld, whose name is Shemeska the Maurader, is an actual reliable source on the baernoloth?
Like if I were to pick a baern from his series on them, and use it as inspiration for the personality of Apomps, I would be coming pretty close to how a baern was intended to behave?
>>46659615
Todd "Shemeska" [sic] Stewart never touched 2e Planescape.
He did write some of Paizo's magazines' planar lore. He had also authored Wizards of the Coast's 4e magazines' article on Shemeshka the Marauder.
Todd Stewart had introduced a few original yugoloth NPCs into 3.5 Dragon Magazine: Sharlocke the arcanaloth archmage in Dungeon #144's Diplomacy adventure (not credited, although he admits elsewhere that he was consulted for that), Felthis ap Jerran the *redeemed ultroloth* in Dragon #351's Gate-Town of Ecstasy article, and Harishek ap Thulkesh the demented baernaloth and clockmaker in Dragon #353's Multiple Dementia article. His most cherished original character for whom he has commissioned multiple furry art pieces for, Shylara the Manged the arcanaloth, was even made canonical in the 4e magazines' article on Shemeshka.
"Shemeska" is quite possibly the world's greatest yugoloth fan, and his fan stories on the yugoloths could be viewed as faithful depictions of the 'loths. We have even had some posts from Mr. Stewart himself here:
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/45565252/#45600386
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/45565252/#45600530
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/45627125/#45629968
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/45627125/#45630332
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/45627125/#45631006
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/45627125/#45631643
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/45627125/#45631871
That said, Apomps is more gehreleth than baernaloth by this point. He was cast out by the clan of Baern and had broken all ties with them, and thus it would be more appropriate for him to be more similar to the demodands in the sources I list here >>46659510.
It is also worth noting that Paizo's Shackled City 3.5 adventure path, which comes in a hardcover compilation, involves Carceri as a major plot point, but the demodands there are trivial goons at best.
>>46660038
Thanks anon. I hope to one day know as much about this shit as you. I've already fund some of these in pdf form.
>>46658033
>How much do you actually care about the paraelemental planes and the quasielemental planes? Do you consider them to be an interesting facet of the setting?
I actually prefer the inner planes to the outer planes. I don't really look into quasielemental all that much because some are fairly silly, but paraelemental planes and their borders are interesting for me to explore.
By contrast, you know exactly what you are getting with each outer plane.
>>46660328
Not OP, but I don't have a problem presenting interesting Outer Planar scenarios. You might know what Mt. Celestia is like, but actually travelling up it is a unique experience which usually has to be tailored to the party. There's something incredibly cool about the party going on a spiritual journey in a place where physical reality reflects and reacts to that. An adventuring party that takes the Path of Mystic Union is going to have a very, very different experience compared to normal. You'll also never really get the same thing whenever you go to Limbo either - well, the raw chaos is a given, but what you actually find in that chaos is usually pretty unique.
And really, I'd say the opposite is true when it comes to the Inner Planes. Fire has lots of Fire and lots of Efreeti/salamanders. A lot more predictable, to be honest.
>>46660832
The Plane of Fire could have basically anything. You might run into a fire elemental scholar, a talking flaming elephant, or a mermaid of fire. And that's just assuming the fire-element creatures, and not referencing the various demons or dragons or other fire-immune creatures which could inhabit the place.
Also, while there is a lot of fire and a lot of stuff on fire, there are also places where stuff lives which can be scattered or hidden anywhere. Nobody knows where that crazy fire mage stuck his tower or that a group of fire giants are setting up a fortress, so it's entirely possible to run into them.
By contrast, if you go to Mt. Celestia, then you are going to see exactly one thing: Mt. Celestia. You won't be finding anything that isn't on Mt. Celestia or anything which might be strange for Mt. Celestia, because that is the one place you end up. Sure, you can have great adventures there, mainly because of the different characters and creatures you run across.
You'll note that Mt. Celestia is seven layers, probably just so you have have a bit of variety there. Heck, most outer planes have multiple layers, probably because the outer planes would be rather repetitive if they didn't.
Still, it's just my opinion. I like the inner planes and the elemental theme more.
>>46661008
Well, it's not like I hate them or anything, and my current campaign began with a trip to Water, where they swam up a coral-covered pillar of stone to a crashed and ruined floating city from ages past.
I definitely see your point there though, and I'll probably think about using one of the Inner Planes again soon... but I still like the Outer Planes better. There's tons of unpredictable variety on em, tons of weirdness and plenty of really interesting/beautiful vistas (I always consider grand and wondrous sights to be something important in Planescape).
>>46660328
>>46660832
I must agree with >>46660832. Even completely disregarding the Outlands, the Outer Planes have received *far* more detail than the Inner Planes. Simply compare the content of the Planes of Law/Chaos/Conflict boxed sets to the singular Inner Planes book.
Thus, one can never quite expect what to see in any given Outer Plane, whereas the Inner Planes are underdeveloped and thus much more one-note. The paraelemental planes, quasielemental planes, and energy planes suffer from this more than anything else, since they barely have any lore or points of interest within them, and they do not come across as "important places" at all. The sole exception amongst these the Positive Energy Plane, which brings us the many soul fonts that provide souls for the multiverse.
>>46661008
Your very examples for the Plane of Fire do not do much to inspire the imagination.
>fire elemental scholar
>talking flaming elephant
>mermaid of fire
>crazy fire mage
>group of fire giants
Every single one of these can be summarized as "X, but on fire," which is fairly predictable.
If anything, the single highest-quality article on the Inner Planes is "Elemental Hazards" from Dragon Magazine #347, because it presents a variety of environmental wonders native to each plane that offers a uniquely twisted interpretation of the plane's signature element.
Amongst the eight wonders of the Plane of Fire in that article, for example are "inferno stars," miniature suns that are so hot that they burn whole swaths of even the native denizens of the plane, and "lambent flames," ever-shifting fields of purple flame that offer respite from the heat due to being merely "120 degrees Fahrenheit hot" rather than "fire damage hot."
These are the sort of interesting takes on the Inner Planes' features that I would like to see more of.
>>46661008
>By contrast, if you go to Mt. Celestia, then you are going to see exactly one thing: Mt. Celestia.
As opposed to visiting the Elemental Plane of Fire and seeing exactly one thing: the Elemental Plane of Fire? I am not sure I see your point here.
>You won't be finding anything that isn't on Mt. Celestia or anything which might be strange for Mt. Celestia, because that is the one place you end up.
Entirely false. Every Outer Plane has strange and unique locales to it that represent unusual interpretations of that plane's themes. Mount Celestia's Tower of Fire, Elysium's Quesar's Birthplace, Limbo's Pinwheel, Pandemonium's Harmonica, Mechanus's Delon-Estin Oti, Baator's Garden, the Grey Waste's Corpus are all good examples of these. This is all before we get into the holdings of the exemplar races or the divine realms of the powers.
>>46661286
A necromancer who desires solitude, and so built a tower on the Plane of Fire. The flickering light of flame can be found everywhere, even through the walls of completely enclosed rooms in the tower.
A water elemental, who somehow survived and transformed into a moving, living, boiling lake of steam.
Fire giants in an obsidian fortress, who had harvested the material through a portal to the Plane of Magma. The portal empties into a lava pool forming the moat, and the giants frequently end up drowning enemies who dare to attack them.
Mind you, I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you. Of course, just about everything on the Plane of Fire is going to be dealing with heat/fire. It's much like how just about everything on one of the evil outer planes will be evil, or the lawful planes will be lawful.
>>46661548
>A necromancer who desires solitude, and so built a tower on the Plane of Fire. The flickering light of flame can be found everywhere, even through the walls of completely enclosed rooms in the tower.
This is hardly Plane of Fire-specific; one could set this in a variety of other planes, from the Quasielemental Plane of Radiance to a secluded corner of Krigala in the Beastlands, and not much would change.
>A water elemental, who somehow survived and transformed into a moving, living, boiling lake of steam.
Again, not particularly Plane of Fire-specific, considering that there is an entire Quasielemental Plane of Steam that can and will burn you in certain pockets as per page 105 of the Inner Planes book.
>Fire giants in an obsidian fortress, who had harvested the material through a portal to the Plane of Magma. The portal empties into a lava pool forming the moat, and the giants frequently end up drowning enemies who dare to attack them.
Fire giants, if anything, are more iconic to Ysgard's layer of Muspelheim, which is even home to the fire giants' patron god, Surtr, as per pages 123-125 of Planes of Chaos: The Book of Chaos.
>It's much like how just about everything on one of the evil outer planes will be evil, or the lawful planes will be lawful.
Any given one of the Inner Planes, save for perhaps the Positive and the Negative, has a single theme to work with: whatever that plane's element is, and absolutely no symbolic or metaphorical interpretations of that element (because, as per page 4 of the Inner Planes book points out, these planes care only about physical reality and nothing belief-based).
Even so, there is plenty of leeway to any given element's physical nature, as the "Elemental Hazards" article of Dragon #347 shows us. However, such a singular and highly-focused theme pales in comparison to the breadth of thematics and possibilities associated with any given Outer Plane.
>>46661983
The Elemental Plane of Fire's theme is simply "fire's physical nature," and nothing to do with fire's symbolism.
Conversely, Mount Celestia has a broad range of themes to work with: "law," "good," "mountains," "precious materials" (e.g. silver, gold, platinum, jewels, pearl), and "self-improvement via challenges, trials, and tribulations."
Arborea gives us themes of "chaos," "good," "nature," "passion," and "individuality."
The Outer Planes simply offer much more to work with.
