Tati (playing Seraph): Wait, have we done a History check on the creature from the nightmares? Have I ever heard of anything like that? That's a 29.
DM: The only thing you can think of that matches the descriptions you've gotten - a leviathan that will destroy the world, a giant lizard or insect that eats the world - is the Tarrasque.
Tati: *eyes widen* I go pale and say as casually as I can, "Hey, uh. Godric. You ever heard of the Tarrasque?"
Marijn (playing Godric): "Nope."
DM: You didn't even roll for it.
Marijn: It's funnier this way.
Hamish (playing Thaddeus): I'd like to do a Religion check, and I'd also like to use my knowledge of Primordial to see if I think the red stone has been affected by an elemental creature.
DM: Doesn't seem primordial, and your Religion check doesn't turn anything up.
Hamish: Hmm, maybe not the Tarrasque, then. Isn't it an elemental?
DM: Nah, it's a natural beast. A heckin big one, but still just a really big, really hungry animal.
Adam (playing Billie): What a relief!
DM: *on wiki* Oh, oops! The Tarrasque is elemental! In that case you would find primordial influence in the rock.
Hamish: Shit.
DM: *reading* It was created by the Primordials in the Dawn War to destroy the creation of the gods, i.e. everything living on the Material Plane. So your Religion check would totally turn up the Tarrasque too!
Hamish: Fuck.
DM: *happily* I should really double-check these things before I throw them at you.
Attempts to reconcile information about the planes in Dungeons and Dragons between editions
I am concerned here specifically with D&D settings such as the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk that have some amount of interaction with the rest of the multiverse - totally self-contained settings like Eberron and Dark Sun don’t raise the kinds of questions I’m talking about.
My impression reading the Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks is that 2E and 5E treat all the settings as being part of a shared multiverse, with overlapping pantheons and shared outer planes; whereas 3E and 5E treat them as entirely seperate settings, with entirely seperate pantheons and outer planes. Overlapping gods aren’t removed from settings in 3E-4E, but they’re treated as reused setting elements rather than a single entity that straddles both. In every edition Corellon Larethian is worshiped by elves in both the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk, but in 2E and 5E he is a single god whose power extends into both worlds, whereas in 3E and 4E the Forgotten Realms Corellon's Arvandor is part of the Forgotten Realms cosmology while the Greyhawk Corellon’s Arvandor is part of the Greyhawk cosmology and there is no attempt to make these compatible.
This would be all well and good, except that every edition attempts to set itself up as a sequel to the last and explain all the changes with metaplot - 3E is 2E after Vecna attacks Sigil, and 5E’s Forgotten Realms is 5E’s Forgotten Realms is 4E’s Forgotten Realms after the Second Sundering. This would seem to imply that Vecna’s attack on Sigil split the multiverse in to large numbers of non-interacting parts, and that during the Second Sundering they came back together. This is not, in itself, a problem, but how cross-setting gods like Corellon and Moradin fit into it is left unexplained.
On the other hand, 5E’s DMG presents the Great Wheel cosmology used in 2E, the World Tree used by the Forgotten Realms in 3E and 4E’s World Axis as being different theories propounded by different cosmologists within the same setting, which seems to point towards the discrepancies between the editions being a matter of different takes on a single constant cosmology rather than the result of actual changes to the cosmology. You’d think the fact that they can be distinguished by leaving a divine domain and seeing if you’re in an outer plane or the Astral Plane, but spellcasters capable of travelling to other planes are rare enough that it makes sense that it’s hard to get accurate information about them. This, however, would imply that the information on the outer planes in previous editions is near-groundless in-setting speculation rather than a statement of fact, which does not match with how it was presented at the time.
Tracking Which Domains go Where
We are not told explicitly which divine domains go where when the outer planes combine back into the great wheel. However, we are given information with which we can surmise what happens in most ambiguous cases, at least assuming analogous ambiguous cases are handled differently. The Golden Hills are stated in Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes to be in Bytopia, despite the fact that Arvandor, where 4E’s Forgotten Realms puts them, would presumably return to its position in Arboria: This indicates that domains that have merged with other domains after the split return to their original planes rather than following the domains they merged into. Volo’s Guide to Monsters places Nishrek in Acheron despite Gruumsh’s alignment having become Chaotic, so the domains are clearly drawn into the outer planes that match their original locations rather than those that match their deities alignments. And Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount makes it clear that those Dawn War gods who originate in other settings are back where they were in 2E while the gods who originate in 4E still have domains in the Astral Plane.
So, having established which domains went where, what can we conclude about the state of the different planes?
The Straightforwards ones
Some of the planes are fairly straightforwards: Mechanus, the Outlands, Acheron and the Beastlands have never existed in any cosmology other than the Great Wheel, nor had any significant part or inhabitant do so, so we can assume them to have gone through things more-or-less unchanged. The Abyss, Pandemonium and Hell have been presented extremely similarly across editions and settings, and the Abyss and Hell get much more detailed write-ups in the 5E DMG than the other planes, so we don’t need to speculate as to what they’re like.
Planes Missing Major Powers
In other planes, the planes themselves haven’t been mentioned outside Great Wheel material, but gods with great influence in them have been. This is the case in Bytopia (which was dominated by the gnomish gods, who 4E Forgotten Realms place in Arvandor), Elysium (dominated by Pelor before 4E, when he’s in Hestivar - Elysium’s situation is further complicated by the fact that Pelor only seems to have risen to his position there in 3E, when many of the other gods who lived there had already left), Ysgard (dominated by the Aesir until 3E, where Deities and Demigods puts them in a seperate cosmology) and Limbo (where the Spawning Stone that formed the centre of Slaad civilisation spend 4E in the Elemental Chaos)
If we take the 5E DMG “different theories” approach, it may be that nothing has changed in these planes at all, and 4E simply presented an alternative cosmology that did not include these planes and put important parts of them in different places. This approach is feasible for Ysgard and Hades, where the 3E cosmologies place them more-or-less on their own, but the Golden Hills, the Spawning Stone and Pelor have explicit other locations in the World Axis, such that the only way I can see to have the same Golden Hills be in both Arvandor and Bytopia is to pull some sort of space-warping to give the hills two outsides (which, to be fair, is not unfitting for the outer planes), but with the spawning stone we can take a similar approach by proposing that Limbo is a part of the Elemental Chaos.
If we instead approach the changes as changes to the cosmology, there are still two possible approaches with these planes: it is clear that after Vecna’s attack on Sigil, large numbers divine domains split off from their planes, leaving a reduced great wheel attached to Greyspace and containing the gods worshiped there and the demihuman pantheons. However, when a number of Greyhawk gods move to Astral Sea dominions in 4E, it is not clear if the great wheel continues to exist in an even-more-reduced form, still attached to Greyspace, or if they dissolve entirely.
In the former case; we could see political fragmentation as a result of the loss of major power centres; major planar burgs (e.g. Release from Care), major outsider power groups (e.g. Prince Talasid and the Five Companions) or previously-minor gods (e.g. Olidamara) stepping into the gaps left by the more powerful gods or neighbouring planes coming together as they no longer have the resources to manage apart. In any case, once the planes come back together, the planes would face a choice as to whether to stick to the new order or return to the old one. Aspects of how this occurs are likely to differently between the planes - things are likely to be resolved peacefully on good and lawful planes and violently on evil and chaotic ones - but similar uncertainties exist for all of them.
If the planes dissolve entirely, they presumably recoalesce in 5E from the divine dominions that broke off from them and the raw essence of their alignment. In this case, the gods and planars could might revive old customs of interaction or renegotiate new ones from scratch. This possibility raises the question of what happened to inhabitants of the outer planes who weren’t inside dominions - were they annihilated and new ones created when the planes reformed? Split off to other parts of the multiverse we know nothing about? Trapped in isolated demiplanes? placed outside of time so that their consciousness resumed after the second sundering as if no time had passed? Any of these would be entirely compatible with what we know.
Planes Differing Significantly Between Editions
The remaining planes are Celestia, Arborea, Carceri, Gehenna and Hades. Gehenna is straightforwards in and of itself but has complications to do with its relationship to the Yugoloths and Hades. In each of the others, at least a layer is featured in 4E’s World Axis cosmology, and Celestia and Arboria are featured in the Forgotten Realms cosmology as well, but each plane undergoes major changes at some point from the end of second edition to the beginning of fifth:
Arborea
In AD&D, Arborea is dominated by the Olympian and Seladrine pantheons. Come 3E, Olympus and some smaller domains such as Brightwater are split off into their own cosmologies, and Arvandor comes to encompass the entire first layer. In 4E, the parts of Arborea other than Arvandor are not mentioned, but the fact that Arvandor goes from being dominated by forest in 3E to an island-filled ocean in 4E indicates the it may have merged with Aquallor. Mithardir’s fate is unclear, but possibilities include that it broke away from the rest of Arborea to become Shom, was cut off from the rest of the universe and effectively in stasis, was destroyed, went off to some other part of the Astral Plane we haven’t heard of, remained attached to Arvandor and Aquallor and simply wasn’t mentioned in 4E, became an out of the way part of Arvandor or was overtaken by the monsters of Carceri when Corellon opened the connection between the planes and is now abandoned to them and treated as an extension of Carceri.
In 5E, Arvandor is presumably connected to Olympus and the rest of Arboria again, but may still be merged with Aquallor and connected to Carceri.
If we want to equate the 2E-3E and 4E-5E versions of the Eladrins, it may be that part of Arboria also formed into the Feywild.
Mt Celestia
Mt Celestia has three significantly different presentations between the editions (four if you count 3E’s presentation of the layers, but that doesn’t really have consequences that extend to 5E’s tiered mountain version): In the Great Wheel, it is a single mountain ruled by the Hebdomad. In 3E Forgotten Realms this mountain becomes part of the larger plane of the House of the Triad, along with the three surrounding mountains of Martyrdom, Trueheart and the Court. Of these, Martyrdom was originally part of Bytopia, while the other two were part of Mt Celestia. The Hebdomad maintains its authority over Mt Celestia itself, but Tyr becomes overall ruler of the plane.
Come 4E, the House of the Triad is renamed to Celestia, and Torm moves to the city of True Court near the top of the mountain (possibly a renamed Yetsira?) and becomes ruler of the plane.
In the default setting, meanwhile, the seven layers of Celestia become seven seperate mountains. Of these, only Venya, Solania, Mertion and Chronias share names with previous editions’ layers. Venya, previously a gentle, peaceful layer, becomes the domain of the war-god Kord; The lower parts of Chronias’s slopes are explored and settled, while the Bridge of al-Sihal is moved up its slopes to guard the part that is still mysterious (There is also discrepancy here between 4E’s Manual of the Planes and The Plane Above, with the former implying the bridge is near the base of the mountain while the latter places it near the summit); Moradin and Bahamut take over Solania and Mertion from Pistis Sophia and Raziel, and along with Kord replace the Hebdomad as the rulers of Celestia as a whole; and the other mountains all come to be dominated by wilderness and used mainly for the (newly introduced) Game of Mountains.
This makes Celestia the single most complicated plane to merge back into the Great Wheel cosmology. The Forgotten Realms version is relatively simple - Martyrdom is, by analogy to the Golden Hills, presumably back in Bytopia, while the Court and Trueheart could either have returned to their original locations in Mercurial’s and Lunia or simply merged onto the sides of the central mountain to become mountains in Lunia. Default 4E celestia is more difficult - Should the plateaus of Mt Celestia correspond to the original layers of Great Wheel Celestia or the mountains of 4E’s version? In the latter case, what order should they appear in? Will Moradin and Bahamut somehow adapt the Game of Mountains to deal with the fact that the layers no longer have summits to fight over?
Furthermore, in combining the previous versions of Celestia for 5E, we need to figure out how to reconcile the different rulers of previous versions. Will Torm rule Celestia? Moradin and Bahamut? Will Kord continue to rule Venya despite having presumably returned to the Hall of the Valiant in Limbo? Will the gods whose realms have been merged back into Celestia want to place the Hebdomad back in power? Replace Kord in Moradin and Bahamut’s triumvirate? There’s a lot that’s uncertain.
Carceri
In the Great Wheel, Carceri consists of chains of concentric spheres, while the World Axis cosmology makes it a number of moving islands. The World axis version also makes all the islands cold and swampy, where in the Great Wheel only the outermost layer was swamp and only the innermost two are noted to be cold. Finally, Nerull lives in the Great Wheel version of Agathys, while the abominations on 4E’s version would make this suicidal.
5E’s description of the plane indicates that the terrain has gone back to 3E’s version, and the description of the plane as having “layers” implies that the overall form of the plane has done so as well. Whether Agathys contains Necromanteion, the abominations or both with enough space between them to keep Nerull safe (or some other comparable protection for him) is unclear.
Nerull
Speaking of Nerull, he has his own uncertainties around him that straddle Carceri and the Gray Waste: In 3E, as mentioned, Nerull lives in Carceri, but in 4E he is implied to have ruled the Gray Waste for a long time before being killed by the Raven Queen. This implies either that Nerull was resurrected at some point after his death, that there is an extremely long time gap the times of 3E and 4E’s default settings or that 3E and 4E’s Nerulls are seperate beings. Of these, the second seems the most suitable explanation, as it Nerull’s resurrection seems to go against the implications of 4E’s description of his death while treating Greyhawk and Dawn War gods as seperate beings goes against the implications of Explorer’s Guide to Wildermount presenting a pantheon almost identical to the Dawn War one but with the gods shared with Greyhawk in the locations of their Greyhawk versions. The question is raised, in this case, of which plane Nerull lives on now that he has (going by 5E’s list of the deities of Greyhawk) been resurrected, and of whether power in Hades is now held by himself, the Oinadaemon-Hel-Hades trifecta who ruled the plane’s layers in prior editions or some other group who have come into power after Nerull’s death.
Yugoloths
The other issue to do with the Gray Waste concerns the Yugoloths. This uncertainty does not relate to its 4E version at all, but to different editions versions of the Great Wheel cosmology. In 1E Hades is the Yugoloths’ home, and in 2E, while they have moved to Gehenna, they are mentioned as originating in the Gray Waste and have a magical connection to the plane as a result of this. In 5E, on the other hand, the Yugoloths are stated to originate in Gehenna and their magical connection is now to it. I see no way to reconcile these accounts. And going with 5E’s version of the Yugoloths, the question is raised of whether Khin-Oin and the Baernaloths, previously located in the Gray Waste due to the Yugoloths’ connection to that plane, are now in Gehenna as well.
So, what do people think about this? Is there anything important I’m missing? Other takes people have on things?
hey remember that time i wrote some gay shit about the gods for my dnd game because i do
avandra/pelor/rq don’t @ me k
rating: PG
warnings: minor character death
word count: 2881
he stole her from the world, named her nera, and claimed her for his own. she reminds herself of this with every breath and every touch of stolen power, repeats it like a mantra when she finally drives a dagger into his spine and whispers ‘goodbye’ to nerull, even as she feels her own body burn to ash. she was only ever mortal, after all.
(but i don’t want to be, she thinks, and becomes something - else. something closer to what he wanted in the first place. she doesn’t know if it’s the greatest irony the realms have ever created or if she truly has the worst luck the world has ever known. she tries not to think about it too much.)
the gods put her on trial for it. she wants to laugh, to cackle and shove the knowledge that nerull would have slaughtered each and every one of them given the chance - but then she looks at them, and sees. they are terrified of her for the same reason.
they give her a bargain: become a gatekeeper, or be destroyed.
fate slings itself like a cloak around her, and she walks out of that judgement hall with death in her hands.
avandra is born from the spring and song. one beat, there is nothing; the next, a woman with hair red as fire and a lute in her hands strums a soft song while she sits and guards the waystones that line the paths of the world. a group of travelers passes by. they hear the song, and hum its tune, and avandra smiles. the start of the world is golden and fresh, and she feels change like spring on the wind.
avandra is a young goddess, she knows, and pelor one of the oldest - he was one of the gods that fought in the dawn war. she’s heard its stories from ioun, in their quiet sessions of council whenever avandra is thirsty for story and song. ioun tells her like she reading off a script, though her blind eyes see nothing.
“but what was he like? was it glorious?” she asks, curiousity needling her mind.
“he was the sun,” says ioun, and she says nothing more on the matter.
avandra sees the mortal woman thrown into the judgement hall, hands shackled in front of her and brilliant violet eyes defiant - they flicker from face to face, unafraid in this hall of gods, and avandra knows - she has changed their fates, just as surely as the wind blows.
pelor stands at the top of their little half-circle of council, radiant and shining. “you, mortal raised from the bonds of mortality, have murdered he who gave you this gift, this boon - what say you in your defence?”
the woman stands, shackles clicking where metal meets metal. she looks directly at pelor and laughs. her gaze stays steady on the sun god’s face when she finally speaks. “i thought i could do better. i cleared the throne. and now that you’ve got an empty seat to fill, i want it.” her tone is clear, cutting, like a river slicing through cold mountain stone. her eyes burn with violence.
avandra looks from pelor, to the woman, and back to the faces that surround them. ioun stays silent as ever. melora is contemplative. erathis is fuming. before avandra can voice her piece, pelor speaks again.
“then take your throne, raven queen. you will be their guide, but not their keeper, or you will be nothing.”
she smiles with teeth like gravestones, and the shackles vanish.
avandra watches carefully, and feels the winds of change shift around her.
pelor is the oldest of them. he remembers murdering his brothers and mourning them in the same panting, laboured breaths, watching oblivion claim its souls one by one, watching the sun rise over a new land.
pelor watches the new goddess of death walk from the judgement hall unshackled. this is not the first time a god has fallen. it will not be the last.
he heaves a heavy sigh, and looks across to his far left - there, their second-newest addition sits: avandra, beautiful goddess of travelers, change, and spring. born of song and fair weather. she has not seen the strife of a gods’ war. pelor would keep it that way for all new gods and goddesses to come, but he knows it is inevitable. he only hopes to hold onto his mind long enough to guide them all in the right direction.
“i do not trust her,” erathis tells him as they both take their tea in one of the sitting rooms in their golden palace. elysium is peaceful around them, is always, always peaceful under their watchful eyes.
“a little late for that, erathis.”
“she killed one of us.”
“he would’ve killed all of us, given the chance.”
“and she won’t?”
pelor hums, takes a thoughtful sip of his tea. “that’s why she is the gatekeeper, not their guardian.”
erathis scoffs and sets her tea down angrily. “fine. when this all comes tumbling down, don’t come begging for help.”
pelor hums once more, inscrutable, and erathis leaves him to his own devices.
her castle is made of ice and stone and obsidian. she has seen it many a time before, but it had never been hers, not the way it is now. now, the stone shapes itself to her command, and she is left on her own more often than not. ocassionally, there is a wayward soul that lingers too long in the hollow spaces between life and death - she guides with a gentle, impunitive hand, leading them to their final destination in the outer realms.
she walks the halls of her grand cathedral of a home, filled with libraries and sitting rooms and all the trappings a mortal could ever need. shadowfell decays around her. it is nothing like pluton, for which she is grateful.
she guts it inch by inch, ripping out every creature comfort installed. there is no place for complacency, for comfort, here. if she is to be as powerful as she desires, she will need to be ready. she will need to be aware. she will need to never, ever, let her guard down.
she does not touch the libraries. they are the one remnant of the castle’s previous tenant she allows to remain.
it seems like years before she finally leaves her castle once more. she looks to the sky, and realizes only a scant few months have passed. only a year since she last saw the sun rise as a mortal woman.
well. time is unimportant, now, she thinks, and dismisses it. fate brought her here. destiny. she was meant for this. she will become more, she knows. she just has to reach out and take it.
she does not leave her castle again. she bans mention of nerull’s name, condemning him to oblivion. the only one that ever speaks it is ioun.
it is with her fellow goddess that she asks counsel. “i need a way to move forward. i know it is there. it is destined. i just need to know how to reach out and -”
her hand snatches empty air, and ioun makes no indication that she recognized the motion. she just takes another slow sip of her ever-present tea. “you will know when it is time. as faithful as the seasons, destiny is.” and ioun lifts the blindfold to wink at the raven queen.
the raven queen smiles a quiet, private smile. “thank you, ioun.”
“of course,” she says, and sips her tea.
when lolth falls to corellon’s bow, she is there to snatch destiny from her dying fingers. lolth screams and raves as the raven queen rips her soul from her body, guiding it on its way to the outer planes like any other mortal. corellon watches on, adrenaline still coursing through his veins.
a spark lingers in her hand for just a moment. when he blinks, it is gone.
“seems i picked the proper side in this war, hmm?” her smile is ice.
corellon feels a chill run down his spine despite himself. “indeed.”
avandra strums her lute thoughtfully as she looks across the planes, the urge to explore singing through the magic that makes her body, down to her feet. the waystone she sits upon is weathered and grey, but its old traveler’s magic still lingers. she makes sure of it.
she turns her gaze toward shadowfell, where the shadows lay thickest and ruin seeps into every corner, and begins to walk.
the castle is made of ice and stone and obsidian. she has never seen it before, but the way it catches the light, the way the obsidian seems to curl and bend underneath it, the way the ice shatters the light into a thousand different colors. it is beautiful, in a solemn, deadly way.
the raven queen waits at the gates to her home. “what brings you here?” her voice is crystal and ice and it cuts through avandra like a dagger.
“i was wandering.” it seems too weak an excuse on her tongue, though it is the truth.
“a bit far to wander for you, hm?” sharp eyes dig into her, and she wants to curl underneath them. “what brings you here, dear heart?”
i wanted to know why the other gods fear you, she does not say, but it burns on her tongue. instead, she says this:
“would you like to have tea?”
the raven queen looks her up and down, and she shivers under that cold glare. eventually, the ice thaws from her gaze, and the eyes that greet avandra next warm her to her core.
“i think i would, dear heart.”
pelor hears of the new friendship avandra has struck with the raven queen, and he worries, deep in his heart of hearts. he calls avandra to his side, meets her halfway between realms in the quiet space-between-spaces that seems to be unending and yet so very small, and relays this concern.
“i worry, young one - she is hungry.” she is a wolf, he does not say. you are a lamb going straight to the slaughter. what else would a goddess of fate and death have with a goddess of luck and light?
avandra laughs like windchimes. “pelor, you worrywart. i’m afraid your age may have blinded you to friendship.” she tosses her hair over her shoulder - it is always windblown, as if her hair itself is as carefree as she herself is. “our dear queen is far more charming than you give her credit for. she is not death itself, nor is she as icy as she pretends to be.”
“besides,” avandra says with a wink, “jealousy isn’t a very dignified look on you, pelor.” she leans up and presses a kiss to his cheek, dangeously close to his lips.
avandra wanders away, lute back in her hands - did it ever truly leave them? pelor steps back to elysium, back to his castle with erathis and ioun, and begins to think.
khala falls, and the raven queen strips the winter from her bones, even as her soul fades to ashes on the ground. when she comes back to her home in shadowfell, the ice seems sharper, stronger somehow.
the raven queen smiles and opens the gates once more.
avandra visits regularly, now - tea in the afternoons, stargazing at night, visits to the material planes to see the mortals she loves to play with. the raven queen does not see the appeal of consorting with mortals; but, she thinks, i suppose i am the one that guides them into death. she sees death everywhere, waiting, watching - there is nothing on these planes that will ever elude her grasp. nothing. and if it tries, she will track it down until it submits to its fate.
“destiny is inescapable,” she mutters, a flower in her hands.
“hmm?” avandra hums, confused, and the raven queen places the flower in her hair. the vibrant orange-yellow of the tiger lily complements her fire-red hair beautifully.
“nothing, dear heart,” she says, and presses a kiss to avandra’s cheek.
avandra smiles. “alright.”
in her chest, the raven queen’s heart gives a faint, weak pulse. she ignores the impulse to drag avandra back to shadowfell and make her a beautiful ruin on the softest sheets she can find, and instead weaves another flower (gloriosa rothschildiana) into her hair.
pelor finds the raven queen in her study, a book in hand and glasses perched on her nose. the glasses are for show, of course - immortality removes any pesky side-effects of aging and decay that linger on a mortal body, but the raven queen still possesses a small part of her vanity. she enjoys the way they look on her, nothing more.
“you speak with avandra.” the statement is not a question.
she places the book on the table, bookmark tucked neatly in its pages. “yes.”
“what do you plan to do with her, raven queen?” his voice holds thunder. he is the god of farmers and simple folk, yes, but he also led a war against the gods. there is a reason they all defer to him for final judgement.
“jealousy does not become you, dear pelor.” she snarks, deadpan, before removing the glasses and wishing them away. before he can speak again, she raises a hand, silencing his retort.
“you can cease you worrying, pelor. i wish no more ill will towards avandra than my own right hand.” she looks to her hands, then, wrings them in each other. “i do not think i could.” something crosses her face then, darker and more serious than any expression he’s seen on her visage before - it speaks of a silence that has run too long, and a pain that has run too deep, to ever be truly healed.
the raven queen sighs. “she is the best of us, possibly. i could never want to cage her light.”
not like you were caged, he thinks, and thinks he might understand the elusive death goddess more than he did moments ago.
“alright, then.” pelor nods, businesslike once more, and turns to leave.
“and pelor-” her voice rings in the small study as he stops midturn. “your jealously is unfounded. there is more than enough love in her heart for us both, you know.”
she does not tell him that she wishes avandra would just choose pelor once and for all. she cannot give her the light she craves. she is winter and ice and cold, cold death, and he is heat and sun and summer fruit, for all his gruff nature. she does not need someone to freeze her over and keep her preserved in perfect beauty. her beauty is in her motion, for all that they clash because of it.
pelor leaves with a contemplative frown on his handsome face, and the raven queen resigns herself to her destiny shrouded in shadow.
avandra sees pelor leave shadowfell, and watches the frown on his face smooth to easy smile. she is glad for it. he is the most handsome when he smiles. “ho, pelor!”
“ho, avandra!” he calls back, and she slings her lute onto her back and hugs him tightly.
“you didn’t give the raven queen too much of a scolding, did you? i knew that taking on responsibility for winter would be too much for her, but she insisted, and you know how she gets when she’s stubborn about something.”
pelor laughs like summer thunderstorms, a deep rumble she feels in her chest from where her arms are wrapped around him. “no, my dear, i did not.”
avandra’s brow turns quizzical. “then what did you speak about?”
pelor laughs again, and presses a kiss to her cheek.
avandra frowns for a moment more, and realization dawns. “oh - oh!” she smiles and tightens her hold on him with a laugh of her own. “i was wondering when you’d both realize.”
pelor smiles in response. “sorry for the wait.”
“well, we’re gods, aren’t we? we’ve got all the time in the world.”
and avandra takes him by the hand, and she leads him back to the waystones that she holds so dear.
the raven queen waits in her castle of ice and stone and obsidian for a long while.
the castle seems to creak with the waiting, the very foundations themselves feeling in time with their stony queen of winter and death.
after a time, avandra comes, faithful as the dawn.
“i knew you’d still be here, waiting for me, you melodramatic fool of a queen,” she says, warmth in her tone, and she can already feel herself bend towards her light like a flower in bloom.
“always, dear heart,” and she presses a kiss to avandra’s lips before she can speak again.
it is - hard, at first, to reconcile in her heart her love for this god and goddess; they are night and day and just as different. pelor is the sun and the raven queen is the moon; summer and winter and light and dark and life and death in equal, opposite measures. but she is their medium. their spring. their chance and their thaw. she loves both of them with everything in her heart, and she would have it no other way.
DM: Meanwhile, back at the house Una, Thaddeus and Billie are talking to a djinn.
Andy (playing Una): I ask, "What's your name?"
DM: "Hammelat."
Hamish (playing Thaddeus): I ask, "Pronouns?"
DM: "Meaningless for an elemental being."
Andy: I love them already. "What's your story?"
DM: They say, "My kind were punished by the gods for our part in the Dawn War. I was bound to this bottle until I have granted five wishes or favours to mortals."
Hamish: "How many are left?"
DM: "Two."
Hamish: "What's your favourite wish you've granted?"
DM: They smile fondly. "I was tasked to slaughter a family of nobles for a rival family. The bloodshed was glorious."
Andy: Ooh! "What was the family's name??"
DM: It can't be Diana's eladrin nobles, they died too recently.
Andy (playing Una): I can speak Supernal, the language of the Astral Sea.
Hamish (playing Thaddeus): Since when?
Andy: *proudly* Since I took a feat!
DM: Linguist, you learn three new languages.
Andy: No actually, it's Ancient Lore of the Dawn War. I know a bunch of stuff about the Dawn War now, speak Supernal, and I get +2 to History and Religion.
Tati (playing Seraph): Ooh, now we know what you were doing in the library while we were learning about Demogorgon!
These creatures are really, really old, and to the vast majority of mortal cultures, they are utterly unknown, with the few people aware of them being terrified of mentioning them for fear of being silenced. If there is one thing that all the Gods (New, Younger, Old, Elder, Outer) can agree on, its the need to keep news Protogenoi silent. Even the Nether Gods and the rumored Lost Gods worshipers get in on the act, for all have a vested interest in hiding the truth, that the Gods are not in fact the gods, but instead that gods are the creation of mortals to replace the original rulers of conceptual reality, the Protogenoi.
Observant scholars have noticed that of the rulers of the three realities (conceptual, Objective, Subjective) Gods seem very radically...different from the Titans and Primordials, far more human and less elemental. Also gods are disproportionally more powerful than the Titans or Primordials from a multiverse scale, despite how much more powerful the individual Titan/Primordial is to a god, the gods are clearly the top dog outside a few isolated prime worlds. Early texts, long ago lost to the world reveal the truth, long before gods came unto the scene there was a race of immortal who guided the realm of the conceptual, the Protogenoi. While gods act in accordance to their worshiper's wishes, and vary only in how they do so, the Protogenoi would change based not upon mortal perception of them, but instead upon the world's own conception of reality.
What does that mean? I don't know, and neither do most mortal scholars trying to understand this system. Some speculate that the Protogenoi might be based on the collective unconscious rather than belief, and that they shaped the world according to how mortals subconsciously understood the world in a somewhat Jungian manner. If this were true, then the Protogenoi set up the foundational building blocks of the multiverse far more than gods ever have and had their reign continued the world would be a dramatically different place. It is also entirely possible that had their reign continued there wouldn't be any mortals to enjoy it, as the Protogenoi are not entities who walk around and interact with the world, instead their bodies are the world. A protogenoi would literally be a planet, or an ocean, or the stars themselves. While all but one of them are dead now, their bodies still provide the foundation of many parts of the world.
The 25 islands of time as well as the so called “Prime Material Plane” are all made from the bodies of Protogenoi, the Prime is supposedly made out of the body of three. Who these Protogenoi are is a question lost to the ages, it is know that Wild Space is made out of the corpse of Ouranos, who was slain by the others for some great crime, Phanes the King of the Protogenoi (or maybe queen), Ophioneus the first to be killed by the Gods, Nyx the only Protognoi who escaped the Gods wrath but committed suicide, Arche who was the last to die, and of course Gaia the last who remains alive to this day. Some also mention that three of the most powerful Protogenoi are known as Ebberon, Khyber, and Siberys, but those three are sometimes known as “The Progenitors” and might be something entirely different. Records are scarce and what there are have often been damage or are repressed. You'd think you could just ask the Titans or the Primordials, but the later have lost a great deal of their sanity during the Dawn War and the former are colossal assholes, so it can be hard to determine.
These entities lived in the world, or rather were the world themselves, and supposedly could interact with the world anywhere their bodies touched. They could change the environment at will, local physical landscapes would often become animated and serve as their mouth piece, and they could always simply destroy all of the life on their bodies and star over. Obviously the local mortals....no the biggest fans. This was compounded because the Protogenoi had a very mean habit of producing horrific monsters within their depths and then unleashing them on the surface to fuck with mortals. Why they did that is not known, but it is speculated that it was part of their being the conceptual beings of the subconscious, they would tap into the collective unconscious and via that manifest horrific creatures who embodies mortals own attitudes, prejudices, and fears. Why they did that is unknown, possibly it was to teach mortals a lesson, maybe it was an innocent attempt to communicate, or maybe they were just massive dicks. This period was known as “The Age of Monsters” because mortals were basically eking out an existence while being hunted constantly by horrible monsters they barely understand, like being a non Mormon in Utah.
Eventually though, the Gods came into the Picture and proved a powerful balancing act to the Protogenoi. The Old Gods failed to defeat them but certainly scared the ever loving crap out of them, the Elder Gods took it a step further and actually imprisoned them. The Outer Gods simply ignored them, but the Younger gods had basically enough of their crap and waged war upon them, eventually killing all but one in a period known as “The Death of the Immortals” Some say they had the aid of the Titans in this, other say that the Younger gods eventually fought the Titans but long story short, the Protogenoi were no more. Save Gaia, the only living one left. It was she who lead to the creation of the first mortal (quite by accident mind you) and so the gods feared that her death might lead to something bad happening to mortals, so she was left alone, imprisoned but never killed.
Dwelling in anger and disgust, she regularly creates new breeds of horrific monsters who occasionally attack the gods, but she bears no grudge against mortals. Gaia is not a nature goddess, she is a being of the creation of life, and sees all live, be it the mortals who emerged on her flesh or the subconscious monsters that came out of her bowls as her children and resents any attempt to have them killed. Thus she gets regularly pissed off when mortals insist on killing the monsters that she created, for they are her children. Gaia is a complicated creature, as she has infinite love for her creations, but doesn't seem to understand that some of her creatures regularly kill the other ones.
Gaia's children come in three types, those she created while she was a Protogenoi (mostly sentient mortal races), those who she created while imprisonment (mostly horrifying but still mortal monsters) and those she created since the death of her kin (mostly eldritch abominations). She wants all of them to live together in “peace” as she understands it....which is not peace in the “no dying” sense of the term, it is instead peace in the “each group eats just enough of the other ones to control the population but not too much to threaten them”. Most mortals...not so into the idea, though some are. She also is very much against any form of creation going extinct, and the so called “Hollow World” exists within her bowls.
As for the other Protogenoi, well they are dead, and their souls currently are providing energy and power to the gods themselves, but where their bodies once lay do still have a form of power and have massive magical powers. And the creatures they created still exist (mostly) and wander around the world doing shit, the dead Protogenoi still even have worshipers. Finally, while gods clearly rule over the Conceptual realm now, and have even broken the power of Objective and Subjective reality, the fact that all gods work so hard to keep information about the Protogenoi silent and destroy any cults of those who still exist (except Gaia who they leave alone) which suggests that it might be possible to have the Protogenoi, either those long dead or new ones yet to come to reclaim their domain over conceptual reality, but of course would mortals even want that?
The only living Protogenoi is Gaia, but her dead kin still exist, including
After the Younger Gods took power, there was a time of relative peace, as the Younger Gods didn't have the power to fight with the other forces directly, and mostly contented themselves to rule over mortals directly. But slowly mortals themselves drew disenchanted with the Younger gods, and in a great and powerful revolution (that lasted a century) they were able to mostly overthrow the younger gods except in a few core regions of a few Prime Worlds. Since they were overthrown by mortals, not another force, the damage was actually quite simple, and many mortals weren’t even aware there was a war, because a new breed of Gods had come into being, the New Gods, who have ruled the world since then. Since the New gods were fractured and constantly infighting, people didn’t pay them much mind generally, and life moved on as it always does. However, over time, the Gods started to identify themselves by portfolios in a dramatic way, far more so than any other divinity before them. The Primordials created all of the portfolios, but the Gods saw themselves as editors, perfecting and refining the Primordials creation. This cause friction with the Primordials, who had long found the mortal ability to alter the world disturbing, finally had enough of this shit and embarked on a great project to reorder the universe so that mortal subconscious no longer had the power to alter reality. in the process, this would render the gods little more than glorified spirits, but to them this was more than an acceptable price to pay. the Gods found out about this plan and....they weren’t please.
Since..ever, the Blood War has been the largest and most devastating war in the multiverse, a Great War like conflict that is nothing more than a meat grinder for the most evil individuals in the world. However for a brief (by divine standards” movement of 300 year, that war was equalled in intensity (and in some senses even surpassed) in terms of its intensity and brutality by another war. The Dawn War. The Primordials and the Gods went to war, with the Titans playing both sides (The Low Titans served the Gods, the HIgh Titans served the Primordials, with the so called “Dawn” titans staying neutral.) Entire planes were destroyed in this war, and Material PLane realms were wipe out by the thousand. While there were more Primordials than gods, and they were generally more powerful, they were also far less organized and had less support from the mortal races, while hte Gods could create entire armies of powerful creatures. The Resulting war eventually spread across the entire world, with the Outsiders (mostly) choosing to support the gods and the Elementals (mostly) choosing to serve the Primordials. Eventually though, after MUCH damage and with the critical aid provided by mortal servants, the Gods won, and became the top dog in most of the Universe...kinda.
Next time we will talk about the results of the Dawn War and how it changed the world forever.
