#aethera

[pastart]

Lane Hitt by Matthew Ellenberger (2024)

[whatsourmotto-whocares]

Happy Pride! 🧡💛💚🩵💙💜🩷

I drew Buck x Tommy to celebrate. 🏳️‍🌈 🩷💜💙

You'd never be able to convince me that Buck isn't absolutely weak for Tommy manhandling him. 🥵

I wanna do more art of these two for Pride Month... What should I do next?? 👉🏽💌 (spicy reqs welcome 🌶👀)

I also want to do some Henren art ❤️‍🔥 And maybe a Josh portrait too bc he is adorable and deserves more love.

(also please be nice, I have RSD and posting art feels very vulnerable, if you don't like it just keep scrolling)

[fashionfotos]

[summers-light-blog]

Enshrouded

During the day, there was sunlight, warmth, happiness, peace, symbolic of life itself. However, on the contrary as dusk descended upon the land each day, there was only darkness, a symbol of death. A cowl of black that descended upon the world. A small figure stood atop a mountainous hill just beyond the Stonetalon mountains, within Ashenvale overlooking Blackheart Keep. Dusk had deprived her of the light she so despised. To what many would call beautiful, she considered the sight disgusting. To her, the solar cycle symbolized death, and more often than not, it was her own. Yet, despite the sun having set on her life, she was still here, eternally enshrouded in darkness, lies, and loss.

The woman removed her hood revealing the wiry, bleached head of hair she wore as it spilt out onto her shoulders and back. Her dead, ashen skin clashed in a violent battle against the deep seas of blood red that were her eyes, a piercing glare through the dark of night. Their faint glow reflected off her pale skin, giving her an eerie glow that could unsettle even the most stalwart soldier.

'That girl is dead.' Her mind whispered to her, it was her own voice, yet it was different and distorted. 'You are dead.' The Dark Ranger shook her head from left to right. She peered long and thoughtfully at the fortified keep. "Aethera Summerlight." She said aloud with a condescending sneer..The woman had watched from her perch afar as the Centurion carried out her duty as a Sunblade to punish her friend, Weleria and past that into the evening, and now night as the keep bustled with the light of torches and braziers dimly illuminating the fortress. “I hope you’re ready to face your demons, sister.” She scoffed coldly.

 The woman leaped off her perch with her arms spread wide at first before clasping them together above her head.as if she were diving into a raging ocean. Moments would pass, but without fail a black, wicked plaguebat would catch its mistress upon it’s back. She held loosely onto the reins as it soared through the vale towards the place she so frequently worked. “That’s far enough, Malice.” She’d say, as she stroked the creatures fur, cautious of the distance she covered as to not catch any eyes. She crouched atop the creature’s back and drew her bow as it reeled, sending it’s rear into the air and catapulting the woman who jumped off its back through the air towards the side of the keep’s upper echelons. She had calculated every second, planned her approach during a shift change, and covered her back embraced in the dark of night. She landed with a dull thud against one of walls of the keep using her bow as a hook of sorts to latch onto one of the spikes that lied below the steel-barred window.. As she pulled herself up onto the small landing. She glanced into the room for a solid moment, but she had no time to waste. The guards would return quickly as was the routine nature of Blackheart. The dark ranger focused intently on the small, closet-like room before her. Once she had the mental picture, she closed her eyes as she raised a palm to the steel that barred her entry. She raised her hand flat against the steel bars, fingers spread wide as she coalesced dark magics from her finger tips to the center of her palm and within a moment, there was silence. She counted, one, two, three and it was then, sound returned. Though it was only the roar of torches and the subtle flipping of pages. No, not just flipping, but a book closing.

She opened her eyes, and when she did she was inside, looking at the window from within rather than from outside where she had been perched at mere moments ago. The deep violent red of their glare pierced out of the corner of the room she had pictured herself in moments before. The shadow's embrace brought her this close, the light mere meters away wouldn't stop her now. It was her, she could tell. Drawing her acidic poisoned blades out of their special sheaths, she stepped once forward into the doorway that led into the study before her. A step she had prepared for, ready as ever. A step out of the shadow, and into the light. 

Aethera knew the sensation. Something off in the direction towards the room’s door-less closet was offending her aura and magic. The subtle clash of the two energies was like the warmth of soft, cotton blankets and hugs crashing against metal spikes, rust, and itchy wool. Aethera closed the early edition copy of Ysrathil’s biography and set it down on the table before her as the torches in the room flickered, being swatted at by dark magic Not long after, the room’s locks clicked behind her. Aethera stood from the couch she sat at, tensing as the sound of her being locked in registered in her mind. She glanced from left to right ahead of her trying to identify whatever it was in front of her. She was in simple clothes, her armor hung up for the day, though she always kept the gladius she was gifted by her side, and in this moment, she found herself grasping for the hilt. That’s when the shadowy figure stepped from the room into the study proper standing in the doorway before her. She swallowed, taking immediate notice of the glaring red eyes that peered at her from the shadows, though their form was mostly difficult to make out. “Pyresong? What’s the meaning of this?” She called out to the figure. No answer. Aethera waited around for something, anything, but she didn’t get it. “I’m not playing games.” Aethera said aloud, the light of the blonde’s eyes flickered madly against the growing darkness within the room. Again, no answer.

Aethera paused, squinting at the figure, she opened her mouth to shout this time, but she was cut off by the shadowy figure who spoke. “Summerlight.” They greeted, rather, stated. They spoke through dry cracked lips, her voice cold and heartless, like Weleria’s, though completely different in its own right. Aethera’s eyes squinted slightly more as she tried to make out just exactly who was in front of her. “Wha..” She started, but not before she could eke out her first complete word, the shadowy woman spoke again. “Pride. You wield that name with an arrogant pride that makes me sick. I hate you, and that damn forsaken name.” The figure said, crouching into a low stance, the faint glint of the torches that still breathed air within the room shone off the woman’s daggers in hand, dripping in a viral dull red that looked almost like blood. Aethera shrunk slightly, getting clear of the couch that was behind her, drawing the gladius from its sheath, the blade gleamed faintly in holy light as she held the blade with one hand in defensive posture, holding her free hand up in front of her as if by miracle, her assailant would stop. “Wait!” The blonde woman exclaimed, trying to make heads and tails of what was happening. “Die Aethera.” The shadowy figure growled before she darted towards her, daggers primed like the fangs of a hungry wolf, dripping with anticipation to be sunk into their prey.

As the woman quickly closed the distance, the last of the torches within the room began to die out as she passed by them, though for a brief second the woman’s face was visible and offered a hint of what she was up against. Stone-cold, unmoving features, alongside an icy glare unmatched by anything she had ever witnessed. It looked like her long dead little sister. Aethera went white, as if she had seen a ghost. “..Aythress..?” Aethera mumbled. Her sister’s long white-yellowed hair danced excitedly behind her as she ran with a deadly purpose at her elder sister. Aethera tensed, her instincts wouldn't fail her in this moment. “...No..” was all she could say before the two siblings clashed. The sound of metal clanged through the air, a drop or two of her sister’s poison of choice splashed at the blonde woman’s face, which promptly began to sizzle and burn. She winced at the substance that graced the blades of her sister. Only a drop or two was painful.. she didn’t wanna know what might happen if she got a true blow in. Aethera had grasped the woman by the wrist with her outstretched hand as she deflected the other dagger with her sword, struggling in the relentless onslaught being put up by her sister. With Aya’s free hand she thrusted at her elder sister’s stomach repeatedly, and Aethera deflected it blow after blow. At this point the dark ranger had given up on the hope of ending this in fair fight, she knew her sister was stronger than her, but Aya knew she was smarter. She took aim at her sister’s arm as it was locked in an iron grip with her other wrist. She was going to end her sister’s life one way or another and she wanted to make it as miserable as possible. Though, Aethera was a master of defensive combat, angling the blade more towards herself, the flat of her Gladius rested on her forearm with impeccable timing, deflecting the strike yet again. Aethera attempted to strike with the pommel of her blade now primed to slam itself into her assailant no matter who it was and she tried taking the opening. Though, her sibling was all too eager for the opportunity, Aya was colder and more calculating and hers wasn’t a strike she expected to land in the first place, but simply put was to create an opening. Stepping forward with plenty of power in her stride, ducking under the pommel strike that had been aimed for her forehead, the dark ranger struck with a powerful kick between her older sister’s legs, wrenching her arm free as Aethera fell to a knee with a small crying yelp, her gladius too fell and clanged to the stone floor though it hurt, she wasn't about to give up on her life just yet.

On the contrary, the dark ranger sought to end it here in this moment as she brought her hungry blades to bear towards Aethera’s neck. Aya smirked in the delicious moment of what she thought was her sister’s demise.Though, it was then the kneeling woman raised a palm to her little sister's stomach in rapid response. It was then, a flash of light blinded the undead woman alongside an overwhelming burning sensation and within milliseconds before her blades could strike, she felt herself sent flying back across the room. She let out a yelp of her own as the light seared her flesh and overwhelmed her senses. Crrrackk. She then heard the sound of her own old bones smashing against the stone wall of the room and she fell to the floor but mere seconds afterwards. After the dust settled the woman groaned and staggered back to her feet albeit not easily. The undead woman growled extremely dissatisfied, meanwhile the blonde on the other side of the room was in pure shock, but she still managed to maintain a sense of tact, staring down the forsaken woman from across the room as if she were analyzing any other enemy. She wouldn't let her mind cost her her life, she had let her mind get the better of her before and she bore the scar to prove it.

"Who are you!?" Aethera shouted, though the answer was so deceptively simple to her it couldn't be true. Her sister was buried in Quel'thalas, to her this was little more than a monster of nightmare sent to torture her. A challenge that she would have to triumph over. That's when the forsaken woman figured she couldn’t triumph in strength alone. She had to play dirty and underhanded if she was to succeed. In this moment, there was only her and her sister, locked in mortal combat. There was no war, no orders, no Dark Lady, no Warband, just an old score she wanted to settle. In the break of the heat of battle, she spoke in a sickeningly sweet voice. "Oh Aetha.. sister dearest, have you not figured it out yet?" She asked, drawing two throwing knives, though they couldn't withstand the acid that coated her combat blades, they served their purpose time and time again as effective weapons. Her bow would be too obvious of a move, so she had to resort to blades. Unfortunate. Arrows would've done the trick a little faster and a little better.

Aya reeled her arm back within the shadow of the far wall, letting loose her dagger as if she were skipping stones and then a second one in rapid succession slightly off the first mark. Aethera wasn't blind, but she was taken aback by the voice of her sister, the one she had never expected to hear again, it stung her heart. Though unconsciously, she was taking note of the other woman's offensive stance, she darted quickly stepping to the left, the shadowy woman's first dagger missed her by a wide margin, it was the second she hadn't accounted for as it struck her in the right shoulder embedding itself deep within her muscle. The woman allowed a gasp of surprise to escape her lips, as she grasped at the shoulder the dagger had pierced through, she felt the blood running down her sides, but beyond the burning sensation of a wound, she sighed relieved, not recognizing any hint of whatever liquid poison the other woman had dripping off her main blades.

"What do you want...?" She asked aloud, in slightly labored breath. "Sister sister... I want your life." Aya said flatly, with a cold and dark, and twisted tone. Aethera was quick to rebuke her claims, growing restless and angry. "You are NOT my sister." She growled, though the other woman fired back just as quickly. "Tsk tsk, oh but I am. Unfortunately." She sneered, as she began pacing around the right of the room keeping her cold red eyes ever present on Aethera, never once blinking. "Enough of this charade!" Aethera spat angrily, her eyes lit up, a small halo of light faded into existence above her head as she summoned a bubble of light surrounding her form. She concentrated all of her magic into the shield, far more than she needed to protect herself as her little sister froze. She could've thrown more daggers but she knew the light would protect her sister at least for now, so she'd wait. Drawing her bow now, she nocked an arrow, awaiting the moment her shield began to falter, though she couldn’t have predicted what happened next. Aethera let loose a holy nova of energy, the built-up light magic exploding in a mix of pure light and holy fire, sending waves upon waves of pulsing light and white hot fire into the room. The torches once burnt out along the walls now roared to life in golden flames. Aya winced and hissed as she let her arrow fly, but it burnt up as soon as it got close to her elder sister. If it hadn't been obvious before it was now, Aethera could tell the woman certainly looked like Aythress, in a twisted sort of way, it sounded like her too. Could it actually have been true?

"Why do you come to torment me ghost?" Aethera asked quietly, an unspoken test that would prove once and for all if it truly was her little sister. The elder blonde woman was clearly disturbed and pensive at the sight of her sister’s ashen features. Her freckles, even the triangle three at the corner of her left eye alone convinced her that the worst had indeed come to pass. Her sister was never buried, despite her hopes, but in fact raised by the scourge. "You abandoned me." She barked, her skin sizzling in the proximity to the light. "I'm a corpse walking, rotting away above ground because you were too much of a coward to take me with you. You're the reason I'm dead and I'm going to return the favor!" Aya hissed as the waves of light put her through agony, though they subsided as she spoke words of truth. Aethera frowned, saddened by the words that stung her ears.. The holy energy that radiated from her form subsided. Her little sister slumped to the ground, still attempting to recover from the searing pain of the light, though her eyes never left Aethera. The blonde woman paused to speak again."It's true.. And you're right.. I froze... and I failed to protect my dear sister.. and l left you because I couldn't bear to face the pain I inflicted by my inaction. Apologies won't fix a thing, not now.. but for what it's worth, I'm sorry it came to this."

Aya squinted as she stood back to her feet, though her body ached. She couldn't necessarily feel it, but her movements were sluggish and she knew her striking against a stone wall with such force left injuries that had inhibited her at least slightly. Her rationality returned if for a moment. If she tried to keep this up, there was a chance she might risk exposing herself, she’d always have another chance. "You can't hide from the shadows of your past, Summerlight.." She groaned, as she circled the room again back to the open closet. "You did this to me, remember that. This is your fault." She glared, sheathing her bow upon her back. Aya quickly flashed a glare to the door behind Aethera before looking back at her sister and squinted. The frown that rested itself upon her little sister’s features told her everything she needed to know. She felt the pain, the demand for revenge, her willpower, and her dedication all at once emanate from her little sister’s form. This was a punishment, to her even for a moment, she felt she deserved it.

That’s when she heard the banging of a fist on the door leading to the hall behind her. "Centurion Summerlight, what's going on up here?? Open up or we're coming in." She heard an orcish voice ask outside the door. She instinctively turned at the sound of her name, but aware of the enemy.. no.. assailant present within the room, she turned back quickly, but her sister was gone. The shadowy embrace, their ashen skin, those glaring red eyes. Only Weleria’s stare had ever come so close to making her feel as those pair did moments ago. She looked around frantically for her, but she sensed the offensive magic had disappeared completely, her aura told her that much. She rolled her shoulders, taking a deep breath and sighed, though she winced as she did. "I'll be right there. No reason for concern, soldiers." Glancing down to her shoulder, he eyes went wide in surprise. She grabbed the hilt of the knife and pulled the forsaken throwing dagger from her shoulder, breathing deeply as she did, groaning at the momentary pain. Ideally she'd keep it in until treatment, but she couldn't be seen with that in her shoulder, who knew what sort of mess it would cause. Not to mention explaining it on paperwork. She tucked it into her shirt, letting it rest just above her breast as she walked to the door.

Aethera unlocked and opened the door outside to the hall, a tauren and an orc woman dressed in standard issue armor looked at her with weapons drawn, but more importantly past her into the room. "Captain Snarlfang." The orc introduced herself. "Is something wrong? We heard shouting and several reports of light magic were seen from outside the window from this room. Aethera glanced behind her, taking note of her gladius that still rested upon the ground. "I'm.. okay. I was just attempting some of the tactics and swordplay in Ysrathil's biography." She lied outright, something she had rarely felt the need to do. "There's this one part that incorporates a roll in addition to several blasts of light magic at a time. It's an extremely advanced technique, cut myself trying, that's when I called it quits." She explained attempting to laugh it off, doing her best to keep what really just happened quiet. "Oh.. Well, I suppose that's fine, I'd appreciate if you take it out to the pit next time, would’t you? There's a lot of good men and women you had concerned. The last thing I need is a bunch of grunts moaning about potential threats that aren't real." The Orc said, clearly tired and ready for a shift change of her own. "It'll be done Captain, my apologies, I should be getting home anyway." Aethera explained, placing a fist softly over her chest as to not aggravate her wound. The orc and the tauren saluted her in return. "Be safe, Centurion. Have a good night." The two said before walking off.

Aethera closed the door, slumping down to the floor as tears began to well up in her eyes. All the emotion from the evening had all bubbled up and over as she let tears silently fall from her face, the blonde woman trembled as she tucked her head into her knees, terrified of what would happen next. She didn’t know what to do. She felt waves of guilt wash over her. Not only were all of it true, but her sister languished and suffered in undeath as well. There was no peace it had seemed, for either of them. Although she had tried to take her life that night, did she really have the right to blame her? She would’ve tried to do the same thing if she were in her shoes. She had only hoped, eventually maybe, she could find her peace without trying to kill her sister. She doubted she could do it alone. The woman seemed to hold a flame within her that roared to life in passion as they fought. She felt everything her sister felt in that battle. Every raw, unchecked emotion, the pain, everything. Only time would tell what lie ahead for her.

((Mentions @autumnspyre)) 

[dailybestiary]

So You're At Gen Con & Starfinder Is Sold Out. Now What?

As you may have heard by now, Paizo sold every copy of the new Starfinder Core Rulebook they brought to Gen Con.  No, seriously, every copy.  On the first day of the con.  By 4:00 PM.

Which means that there are likely a lot of fans—possibly some of you reading this right now—who are pretty bummed at this moment.

Don’t be.

You know you’re going to be able to get Starfinder in a few days at your local gaming store.  And in the meantime, there’s already another Pathfinder-but-in-space book you can get your hands on right now: the Aethera Campaign Setting.

I asked Robert Brookes, publisher of the Aethera Campaign Setting, to tell me more about the book and the world:

RB: The Aethera Campaign Setting is a science-fantasy dieselpunk setting for Pathfinder!  Imagine Starfinder, but with a more low-tech, analog and magic hybrid technology approach.  Best of all, you can use all of your Pathfinder products with it!  Aethera is a massive 500+ page tome that covers an entire star system, with new races, new classes, new archetypes and support rules for every published class, and fully supports all Pathfinder products from Paizo.  So it's like Starfinder, except you already know you like it!

Now, as you all know, the thought of another rulebook makes me shudder with horror. So I asked Robert to give me five things that should make me get excited about the system and the setting.  Not being one for following directions, Robert gave me six:

RB: 1: Fully customizable space ships you can pilot with your entire party as bridge crew and gunners.

2: Space-faring cannibal minotaurs who invaded the star system in hollowed out planetoids called Labyrinth Ships.

3: Their enigmatic kyton allies who seek to refine and rebuild life for the sake of the effort.

4: Magic-technology hybrid rules that interface seamlessly with the Pathfinder Campaign Setting Technology Guide.

5: Rules for plant symbionts that your characters can wear and use as unique companions.

6: A unique cosmology without gods, where outsiders are unconstrained by morality and divinity.

There’s nothing worse than walking around a con feeling like you missed out, or going to the book store and finding out that the entire reason you made the trip is gone.  (Says the guy who just missed out on an under-$100 copy of the 2e AD&D Night Below box set two weeks ago. Not that I’m bitter.)  But Starfinder will still be waiting for you next week.  This is a chance to take that $59.99 and get in on the ground floor of an equally fresh space setting you may love in a system you already know.

Also, full disclosure: I’m in no way associated with Aethera or Encounter Table Publishing.  I get zero free books or anything for this—I paid into the Kickstarter more than a year ago.  And Robert didn’t approach me; I approached him.  

In fact, I wasn’t even sure I liked Aethera when I first heard it pitched—I prefer my space fantasy at the Spelljammer (especially in its Shadow of the Spider Moon incarnation) or Distant Worlds technology level.  But having written an entire manifesto about how I wanted to see more publishers do new things within Pathfinder, rather than spit out yet another new rules system or OSR clone, I felt like I had to step up and support the Aethera Campaign Setting Kickstarter.  Since then, I’ve become impressed with the setting, the layout/design of the book (that pit where most third-party publishers lose me and never get me back), and the people involved.  Now I’m at the point where I can’t wait for my copy to arrive in the mail.

If you’re at Gen Con, go find the Aethera folks and check out the Campaign Setting book.  If you want to learn more, the website is here.  And if you’re not at Gen Con but want to pull the trigger, Legendary Games has you covered.  

There are a lot of third-party Pathfinder publishers out there, but nearly all of them tread in the easily marketable safe waters of class splatbooks, monster bestiaries, and spells that go boom.  I’m willing to hand over my blog for one night to Aethera because we need more publishers out there willing to take risks, play with setting, commit to serious art and design, and reach for the stars.

(Images © 2016 by Encounter Table Publishing)

[enddaysengine]

Planer Cosmology and the Power of Perspective (Planescape)

I'm going to start this with a stupidly obvious statement. My version of Planescape has incorporated Golarion into it. Different people feel different ways about this idea and the idea I'm about to get into is not right for every campaign, nor is it right for every table.  If you're not a fan, I won't be offended.

Here's the rub that I face when I add Golarion to Planescape...  the cosmology of their planes is completely different. The  Great Beyond and the Great Wheel containing some very basic similarities, but they're are also very distinct from each other.

Let's go back even further, to the very first tabletop RPG  book I bought (well... my parents bought after I nagged them).  It was 3.5's Deities & Demigods.  Not everyone's favourite, for sure, but I have a soft spot for it to this day.  One of the neat things that Deities & Demigods did is that it included a lot of information about the Great Wheel,  but it also included a lot of information about alternative cosmologies.  In addition to featuring the core pantheon, which at the time was from Greyhawk,  it featured the Norse pantheon, the Greek pantheon and the Kemetic (Egyptian) pantheon.  For each of these, they provided a map and basic description of the cosmology that went with that pantheon. For the record, I adore maps.  Looking at each of those three cosmology maps gave me tons of ideas for stories that I could tell.

One more digression, and that I'll have set everything up to get to my point. Aethera came out last week and knocked my socks off. The Aethera solar system has a unique cosmology in two regards. First, the entire solar system is cut off from the Outer Planes. Second, it possesses an extra Inner Plane, the Elemental Plane of Wood. Now, the Elemental Plane of Wood has shown up before, as an optional plane in the 3.5 Manual of the Planes. That got me thinking, why do there have to be only four elemental planes? Wouldn't Planescape benefit from being more flexible if it includes the Chinese Wu Xing elements? The Wu Xing, or Five Agents, are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water for the record. Of course it would.  If for no other reason than that it would be less culturally hegemonic. The four elements of the inner planes correspond with the four elements that Aristotle identified. Basing your entire knowledge around them is a distinctly Western point of view.  

Perspective is the solution to all these problems. It is firmly established in Planescape that belief shapes reality. When we look at the Great Wheel cosmology, that description of the planes carries with it a particular bias. Specifically, that bias originates with the Great Modron March and likely comes down to use via the Fraternity of Order. The Great Wheel Cosmology roughly follows the path of the Modrons, with the Outlands acting as the central hub. Furthermore, this cosmology biases Sigil by placing the Spire at the centre of the Outlands. Now, we know this is intentional on the part of the writers since Sigil is an important location and because Sigilites place such an importance on their city, but remember the three rules of the planes. The Rule of Three. The Unity of Rings. The Centre of All. No matter where you are on the planes, you are at the centre of existence. Placing Sigil at the heart of the map is arbitrary, at least as arbitrary as placing Hopeless or Tir na Og at the centre would have been. Hells, you could put Dis at the core of a planar map, and it would be just as accurate (and don't think Dispater doesn't)!

So what's the point? We can deconstruct the rules and categories of planes and nothing about the Planescape setting will break. The Great Wheel has four Elemental Planes that are infinite yet bleed into each other to form a ring. Golarion has four Elemental Planes that are nested inside of each other with relatively discrete boundaries. Aethera has five Elemental Planes, featuring one that is unknown to the other settings. A prime setting that draws heavily on Chinese mythology and philosophy has a different set of five, four in common with Aethera, three with Golarion and the Great Wheel, and the Elemental Plane of Metal, which is unique to its cosmology. All of these settings can coexist in Planescape. Even if they appear to be contradictory, they aren't. The Clueless aren't clueless because they don't know anything, it's that mortals have such a hard time reconciling the complexities of the universe.

People like to categorize and stick things in cute little conceptual boxes. Every year, I have an hour long discussion with my students about how we say there are "ionic" bond and "covalent" bonds in chemistry, but in reality, those two categories aren't separate, they are a continuum. Chemical bonds will have a variety of properties, some ionic, some covalent, based off of the differences in electronegativities between atoms and the two specific chemicals involved with the bonds. It takes them time for this idea to sink into their brains. Planescape likes its boxes for planes as well. Inner, Outer, Transitive, and Prime. Anything that doesn't fit into those boxes either gets labelled as a demiplane (like the plane of dreams or time) or as a planer pathway (like Mount Olympus).

Is that fair though? How are these planes less of a plane than those four main categories. Going all the way back to my Deities & Demigods days, I think that there is a strong argument that Mount Olympus should be a proper plane of its own.  Mount Olympus overlaps with parts of what the Fraternity of Order calls the Prime, Elysium, Arborea, The Grey Wastes, Carceri, but that part of the plane exists in none of those places. If you asked a Divination spell where you could find Zeus' Domain, it could give the answer of either Arborea or Olympus, depending on the diviner's point of view, and both would be true. It is important to note that this doesn't mean that Mount Olympus or the Great Beyond cosmology is "just" a subsection of the Great Wheel.  Rather, all three cosmologies are accurate and correct,  focusing on the aspects of the planes that are relevant to the worldview of the people who created those particular maps.  Creating a 100% accurate and inclusive map of the planes is likely impossible. The multidimensional geometry of planar cosmology is too complicated. We can only look at it from certain points of view, and there is much to be gained by changing  our perspective to look at the universe in a different way.

What is to be gained through this exercise? A big benefit to storytellers would be flexibility. This allows for many different types of worlds to be incorporated into a Planescape campaign, offering the diversity that is a hallmark of the setting. Creativity could be another benefit. New stories could easily spring forth simply by looking at an alternate configuration of the planes. Even if they don't, they could provide a unique personality for a particular NPC whose worldview is different from that of the PCs. Imagine an archon becoming convinced that the PCs are clueless rubes because they think there are four elemental planes,  and how could you have air be an element when metal and wood aren't. That is memorable!  The last benefit is sensitivity. Despite it being fuel for flame wars, I like to be able to include contemporary religions as an option in Planescape,  but forcing them to conform to the Great Wheel strips intricacy and nuance away from the philosophies and metaphysics that act as the root for those religions.  Metaphysical maps are often extremely important to the esoteric and mystical aspects of any given faith. If you do not allow the faith's cosmology to exist, you erase the richness of that culture. Furthermore, it appropriates culture,  and there is a certain arrogance to disregarding a religion's internal cosmology and declaring that "this is the way it really is in my world!" It is humbler by far to have both metaphysical configurations be true simultaneously.  Even if they appear to be mutually exclusive,  you are dealing with the Planes. If you can't believe six impossible things before breakfast, you just aren't going to cut it.

[whatsourmotto-whocares]

this blog is not dead!!!

...but someone in my life is, so... sorry I fell off the face of Tumblr for a month+ and I'm sure my position in the algorithm is nonexistent now, but fandom is my happy place, so I be back now. love you all. Idgaf if we've never spoken directly, I love you if you're here. esp since I know us queer and neurospicy people tend to find each other and the world is extra hard for us and so if that's why you're on this page, extra love for you. and for everyone... hug the people who matter to you, take care of each other, and/or always say what you have to say *today*. life is brief yet beautiful, my friends. 🖤

[whatsourmotto-whocares]

your art is beautiful!! thank you for sharing it with the fandom 💜🩷

Thank you so much!! 🥰❤️ I can't tell you how much it means as a creator to receive encouragement and positive comments. It makes such a huge impact to know people - or even a single person! - appreciate your creation, especially in fandom and as a small-time presence. It can be the difference between continuing to create and share and giving up on doing both.

I want to also say thank you to the other wonderful souls who have left comments in their tags on reblogs (so far) on my first ever art post in the fandom. I saw them all today and it honestly made me emotional lol and the positivity means I will keep sharing. ILY all and everyone who's reblogged or liked my art!! 💓 And I'm working on following more "911" blogs, especially any who've reblogged mine. 💞

@momotonescreaming @buckhastwohands @nine-one-wanton @dimplesflint @shrugintotherapy @theotherbuckley @sterekzankiefeels @bothered-bewildered-bisexual @karenandhenwillson @evanbi-ckley @nordax