#d&d planes

[lockhinge]

"Yes, the Infernal Plane and all of its tiers. It's like a cake… of evil!"

- DM

[dicecast]

New system

Stars 

Sky

Sun

Moon

secondardy

Blood 

Flesh

Shadow

BReath 

[dicecast]

The native of Daanvi: The Etherguants

a.       God fuck these guys, the most pretentious blokes on the planes.  The Medusas of the mind here are most commonly found on the Ethereal Plane, mostly raiding the Material, and have a nice simple goal…to eliminate the Material Plane.  Yeah, like I said, fuck these guys.  Their most noticeable trait other than the hunchbacks is that their masks have beneath them some sort of horrific insanity that will tear your mind apart on the inside and trust me you don’t want to deal with that.  What’s weird about them is that for Thousands of years people thought that Daanvi was utterly uninhabited by natives, for 12,000 years the Etherguants seemingly vanished for reasons unknown, only to emerge again about 530 years ago, after which they started to spread into the Etheral Plane dramatically while taking back Daanvi.  The vast majority of their activity is made up of scouting parties, small band of Etherguants exploring key points of the Material Plane, gathering information, questioning locals (few survive) and often taking some prisoners before retreating back into their world.  Occasionally they will just straight up raid a village or small towns kidnapping as many people as they can to take back to their home for some unknown purpose. About thirty years ago however, they started to launch full invasions of certain parts of the Material Plane, with the full intent it seems of total eradication of all life.  They focus primarily upon beings capable of any form of belief and those who have been captured have said quite openly they hope to starve the Outer Planes to death.  The Ethergaunts seem to randomly hate the Rule of Three, the Unity of Rings, and Center of All, for reasons that nobody knows, but it appears they have made the destruction of that a personal priority. They are divided into 5 categories, Red, Blue, White, Grey, and Black, though as they don’t seem to attach special significant to colors why this division?  Fuck you that’s why.  Reds are the scientist, scout, and warrior Caste, Blues are engineers and builders, Whites are diplomates, Bureaucrats, and scholars, Greys are spies and Philosophers, and Blacks are the commanders.

b.      In regards to relationships, among the other Alien races, they fight the most with the phaerimm, as both seem to have similar powers of mind control and don’t really work together well.  The Phaerimm were particular horrified to find that they could be mind controlled by the Ethergaunts, though it is difficult and that goes both way, and are willing to ally even with the Sharn to prevent this fate. Their other great foe are the Malaugrym, who aren’t in the mood to tolerate more rivals, and so strive (mostly behind the scenes) to create alliances to oppose their incursions.  What they would have thought of the Slarecian is unknown, but their creations at one point hunted down and killed a Black Ethergaunts, so it must not be good.  Despite these threats though, the Ethergaunts have largely been successful in their invasion without too much difficulty except for three instances.  Firstly, there was a time when their invasion coincided with a Blood War battled and an entire army of Ethergaunts were wiped out, though they inflicted tremendous damage to both sides in the process.  The Second was a when a Trio of Dragons turned their full attention to driving back an invasion.  The Third was then they accidently ran across a hoard of Darkspawn and fought a 18 year war with the creatures before eventually retreating, as the sheer numbers of those Blighted creatures brings fear even to the Black etherguants.  The Etherguant invasion makes them many enemies, though they seem to fear Dragons and the Blight, and have found themselves bogged down due to the Damned making an effort to weaken their war effort.  For reasons unknown they hate mind flayers and make a priority to destroy them first, which is a war that most people can get behind.  Finally for reasons that are really unknown, the Kaorti HATE  them, which is weird because the Kaorti don’t hate anything.  Yet they have been found launching raids against the Ethergaunts and trying their darndest to defeat their armies.  

c.       Ethergaunts are famous for being obsessively rational, however what they call rational…isn’t.  Their behavior from an outside perspective seems erratic, arbitrary, and entirely self-destructive (such as not extending their protection from magic to Divine).  Anyone who talks to them (a tricky task, as they can only talk through a mind slave) will hear them justify all of their actions as simply the most rational course of action but they will hardly bother to explain WTF that actually means, since your inferior brain simply can’t understand their rationality.  It’s like the worse of the Enlightenment meets Cthulhu.  For example, they love randomly building ziggeraunts and pyramids for no reasons all over the lands they control, because that is “rational”. They also have a hatred of Gods, who they believe are not rational.

d.      SECRET DM KNOWLEDGE:  The Etherguants motive is not in fact the elimination of Mortals, that is simply a means to an end.  It isn’t even the destruction of the Gods, though that is certainly part of their plan. No, their goal is much more sinister, the eradication of Conceptual reality itself.  They believe that the world is defined by straight forward conflicts between two forces (Hegel anyone?) and the Universe is torn between the forces of Objective and Subjective reality.  However that battle cannot truly happen as Conceptual reality constantly interferes with said challenge by imposing its existence upon the world. Thus before the final battle between Objective and Subjective can begin, they must destroy the irrational Conceptual reality, where the world might change by people’s belief in it.  Then the final battle may commence to start the process of remaking the universe, which will of course end with the most rational side winning.  The Etherguants believe that this is Subjective reality, which is clearly the most rational because Pyramids lemon face BALOOON muffin.a.        To this end they are trying not to wipe out mortals necessarily, but instead to destroy the worshipers of Gods and thus weaken them, and try to brainwash the other mortals so that they are incapable of any form of belief.  They are planning to set up indoctrination camps for this purpose.  The reason why their invasions haven’t been seen in large parts of the Material Plane is that their home plane keeps being attacked by the forces of the Deities, and should the Gods ever get their act together and unify the Etherguants would be wiped out in an instant.  However their unity, extreme power, home team advantage, and of course their secret masters have allowed them to keep the gods at bay, though it means only a small number of their forces can actually attack the Material Plane, mostly via the Ethereal Plane.  They are secreted allied with the servants of both the Titans, and the Pridmordials (in particular the Yozi/Neverborn), who would gladly see the God’s knocked down a peg. b.      The Etherguants are led by a secret “Council of 5”, a band of 5 super powered creatures who command the whole race. Each one is being of epic power and can create Avatars and Aspects.  These 5 in turn serve a being known as “Reason” who is not a god, but more like an inspiration.  Cults of this entity have occasionally sprung up around the Material Plane known as the “Cult of Reason”.  

In short....fuck em

[dicecast]

Beings of Shavarath: The Tyranids

These creatures are among the most feared in all of the planes, though they are rarely seen by Primes.   Their own domain is nothing more than an endless battlefield of death and destruction, but what makes them scary are their unbelievably huge forces which can be found invading other planes.  Now a giant insectoid army of evolving monsters coming in an endless hoard isn’t exactly…pleasant to consider charging at you, but you know, better than a demon hoard right?  I mean sure they strip mine everything they approach and use their victims to make more, but you know that’s fine right?  Here is the problem, they don’t eat people.  They eat ideas.   Or more specifically, they eat Planes built upon ideas and so while they aren’t a direct threat to the Material Plane, the Hive Fleets are seen as one of the greatest threats in the world to Planes, as the massive Tyranid armies can cause havoc on almost all planes in their never ending quest for resources.  These creatures are infamous for their unique form of reproduction, any time they attack a plane, they can tear bits of the plane itself  off and add it   to these massive “Flesh Vaults” that they carry with the fleets, which they use to create new Tyranids.  Depending on the type of creature they consume, a new type of Tyranid is created, and they can be specialized dramatically.  These creatures are commanded by some sort of Hive Mind, though as far as anyone can tell, it isn’t centralized in any singular location but is rather a larger collective mind (similar to Many of One).  

       So can they actually win?   Nobody actually knows, they are tearing up whole planets worth of various planes but…the planes are infinite so what does that mean.  Well it is doubtful that they could destroy an actual plane but they certainly damage it, and as Planar cartographers are always pointing out, some infinite planes are smaller than others.  So while it is unlikely the Hive could completely destroy a plane, they could reduce it to a much smaller infinite plane (this is the part where mortals normally hit somebody).  However some fear that should they eat enough, the plane itself will completely collapse and have to be remade, which will drastically effect the Outer Planes dramatically.  

   On the Material Plane Tyranids are mostly unknown except when Shavarath is far away , but the occasionally scouting fleet will emerge on the Material Plane to raid for more basic resources.  These hoards will ravage the entire region of the material plane, strip mine all the resources they can grab, and return home. As they cannot use Material Plane resources to reproduce unlike ideas, Tyranids try to avoid the material plane, all losses there are permanent.  However when Shavarath is in alignment, they sometimes come in en mass and try to take over the Material Plane, nobody knows why this is as it doesn’t really benefit them in the long run.  Even weirder though, Tyranids have been known to be randomly nice, Hive Fleets have been known to wander across the Material plane not destroying but repairing the world around them to be livable and improved, creating so called “Eden Worlds”, marvelous realms of extremely alien but beneficial forms of life (ok there is the odd mana monster that eats people, but those are just hungry). These Eden worlds often are a massive source of magical resources, food, and just general usefulness.  Tyranids have even been known to land on the Material Plane and help the locals farm or rebuild their cities, sometimes even creating entirely new cities for mortals to live in.  They never explain their logic or reasoning, they just start working then leave.  In one instance a great ancient city was severely damaged by an earthquake, only for a Hive fleet to emerge and the Tyranids to rebuild the city to its original specifications.  They also have been known to randomly attack major threats to mortals as a whole, such as undead armies or the Blight.  In fact on no less than 8 occasions Demon/Devil/Daemon incursions into the Material Plane were halted by the Tyranids, and once they attempted (and failed) to turn back the Burning Legion.  Nobody knows why they do this, only that the “Eden Fleets” will almost never engage in combat on mortals until they return home, while raiding fleets will almost never rebuild the world until they return home, each flee evidently having a specific task.  

    Currently the Hives are mostly focused on trying to consume the Outlands, because the Divine Realms are too scary, and the Middle Planes are difficult to invade as they are always moving.  The major battle fronts right now they are focused on Bytopia, Arcadia, The Outlands, the Fernia, Gehenna, Abbadon, and somewhat inexplicitly the Blood Rift.   They avoid Arboria however, as that plane has a tendency to eat them, and Avalon seems to confuse their Hive Mind.  Where ever these incursions occur, they strip the entire plane bare, eating all of the natives of Pettioners, and then start taking the plane apart.  The remains of the plane are taken back home to “The Flesh Vats” massive vates of flesh that are fed by ideas and as these planar chucks are put there, new Tryanids emerge.  So invasions pay for themselves and almost every infinite plane has an infestation of these guys somewhere.   Again, nobody is quite sure if what they are doing can work, chucks of planes the size of planets have been destroyed and eaten by these bastards but again…the planes are infinite.  As a rule, natives do not like this and work to get rid of them as quickly as possible, in fact Modrons, Rilmani, Proteans, and Inevitables are so quick to destroy them that most Tryanids don’t even bother, but the good and evil planes are especially at risk.

       The Lower Planes are so distracted by their own affairs that directing their armies at hoards of Tryanids simply doesn’t seem feasible, and they can go for quite a long time before somebody notices them and kills them.  The upper planes however really can’t handle this, they are over stretched and over taxed as it is, and diverting already desperately needed forces to deal with these planar incursions just isn’t in the cards.  They mostly try to divert them off of their plane or destroy their Hive Fleets before they start reproducing, but if they get a hold then they usually try to get good deities handle this, which of course further puts them in debt to the Divine Realms and makes Eblis sad. (Eblis BTW destroyed an entire Hive Fleet by himself when they approached his realm).  Other Upper Planes have had…inventive solutions to the problem.  Bytopia regularly hires Yugoloth armies to handle them, with the hope that both sides destroy each other.  This is a pretty good solution but it means that random adventurers wandering through Bytopia always have to be on guard against a random force of Yugoloths or Tryanids running around.  Arcadia employs Armies of Fairies to keep the hoards at bay, while the Blessed Islands have taken to letting Demonic/Devil incursions unto their territory with the hope of destroying these enemies and each other.  Elysium have taken to creating massive “trap Portals” to teleport the entire Hive Fleet to a different plane, ideally Abbabon (Screw you Devils). Aborea just randomly eats them, and Heaven’s massive oceans normally handle things (though small bands can still be found in the Upper Planes. All of the Upper Planes occasionally employ adventurers to clear out bands that they can’t be bothered with, due to their constantly understaffed fight against evil taking up most of their priorities.  The Lower Planes meanwhile normally just let them eat until they can divert the forces, and then wipe them out in a massive battle that makes any other battle short of the Blood War itself seem like nothing in contrast.  Finally the Tyranids have thoroughly invaded the Realms of both the Jinn and the Elementals, who are fighting massive wars with these fuckers, often unheard of as mortals cannot easily gain access to these planes.  

      As their numbers are absolutely overwhelming, they can keep going for a long time, though even they are somewhat over stretched at the moment.  The Tyranids have only been defeated fully once when they ran right into a Darkspawn hoard, thought that is more of a tie than anything else.  The Darkspawn were eventually wiped out, but due to the Blights unique properties, the Tryanids found that they could use the Darkspawn as a form of reproduction and instead had to retreat empty handed.  It is likely that their invasion of the Blood Rift is going to end equally badly, as impressive as the Hive Fleets are, against the endless conflict of the Blood War they are simply being destroyed.  In fact, their own plane has been counter invaded by armies of Demons and Devils, both of whom were trying to wipe out the Tryanids but have instead become trapped into a fighting each other.  The Tryanids are playing with fire however, as should both sides see them as a true threat, they might unite against them and…well ask the Angels how well that went.  

     The Plane itself is rather simple, the Surface is a massive three way battlefield while the underground is the massive nests of the Tyranids as they work hard to breed more of themselves.  Three Armies (Angels, Demons, Devils) counter attacked the Tyranid forces at the same time and managed to successfully drive them from the surface of their own infinite plane, only to find themselves in conflict with each other.  The Plane is now a major battle for the Blood War, with the Angels pinned down in the middle protecting the Portal to the Radiant Throne, all the while trying to hold off the forces of the Demons and Devils while pitting the two sides against each other. Every so often all three sides will launch attacks on the Swarm, but they inevitably fall to infighting before they can maximize that effect.  The Swarm for their part finds the endless war annoying, but mostly ignore it, when a new Hive Fleet Emerges, it breaks out of the ground dramatically scattering all the combatants while it departs for a new home.  

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