There are various ways people of Sivobog visualize the cosmology of their world. Some picture the planes as two intersecting circles, calling left circle the physical (or aether) and right circle the spiritual (called ether), then marking the intersection of circles as the Material plane (and its echoes, however many are known). Rest of the left circle are Elemental planes, or Elemental Chaos, and rest of the right circle are afterlives.
This graph was constructed by the Lumians before the Planar Order was founded, which is why it's hard to say precisely what year it was. At the current times the graph is a little outdated and since then there has been made a better model spread between the people, one made by Elves of the Planar Order. The Planar graph established by the Planar Order is to this day the most accurate one there is. So, let's go through it from the bottom up to see what all the planes are about!
Elemental Chaos
Sivobog lacks separate Elemental Planes as much as it lacks a proper chaotic plane. These are both represented by the Elemental Chaos - the mixture of all the elements in a weird, unpredictable way. All the elementals come from here as well as genies, and it's constantly in conflict because of the elements trying to dominate the world. Nearly anything can be an element, as long as it's some sort of primordial matter. Currently the dominant elements are air, earth, fire and water (in no particular order besides alphabetical), while other, less dominant elements include but are not limited to: ice, ooze, candy, lightning, explosion, bear, surprise, wood, metal and so on and so forth. Each of these has its main kind of genie, and its elemental, so hopefully in the future we'll get to discover these.
There are some other special properties of Elemental Chaos, the main one being that it's not connected to Ether, but that is a topic for another day. Now, let's focus on...
Prime planes
Prime planes, sometimes also dubbed Inner planes or Material and Echoes, is a group of planes that are echoes of one another. Each major change to geography of one of them is reflected in geographies of all other four planes. However, all five of these planes still add their own flavor to the world - Feywild being overgrown with plant life or showing extreme natural conditions, Surdus being gray-scale and quiet, etc..
Material Plane is the main focus of the Sivobog setting. Not that the world revolves around it... okay, it kinda does, since most of the gods' followers are located there.
Feywild is a plane of Fey and wilderness. Nearly any beast, plant or monstrosity that was ever made can be found in Feywild, even if it's extinct on its original plane. It's an extremely dangerous flat plane, limited only by the seas, after which comes infinite frozen wasteland.
Grigora is the plane which is overall much faster than all other planes. At first sight it would resemble the Material Plane, but anything native to it is moving around much faster than its equivalent on Material Plane. Visitors from the other planes seem extremely slow to the denizens of this plane, and they seem extremely fast to others while visiting other planes.
Surdus is the colorless, mute plane. It's perfectly calm, nothing can ever be heard there, and all the colors are drawn from it. Its natural denizens are oozes, and its ecosystem seems to be very slow but efficient.
Tumultum is the colorful, noisy plane. The exact opposite of Surdus you could say. Visitors of this plane get to experience both over-saturation of sight and sound, possibly risking being blinded and/or deafened by staying on this plane without proper protection. That's because whoever the denizens of this plane are, they are at constant state of extreme celebration. Thunderous music can be heard at all times, and flashing lights of colors including ones beyond human imagination. Planar Order thinks denizens of this plane are either something humanoid-shaped, oozes, or something nobody could ever expect. They’re not certain yet, because it’s too hard to see them.
Ether
Ether is a plane that connects Prime planes and Afterlives. It's a realm that seems to be an echo of its own, through which one can fly and see things unseen to many. A visit to this realm without a proper guide would result in seeing things one would never unsee.
Besides the souls that are tested, the main denizens of this plane are the two Psychopomps - one being the Psychopomp of Life, and another being the Psychopomp of Death. More about these two pals in another article, hopefully in the near future.
Afterlives
Afterlife planes consist of Heaven, Hell, Shadow, Infelix and Fortuna. All of these are echoes of one another, which means that they also share the geographical features, but are flavored in a different way (hell being hellish, shadow appearing dead etc.).
Heaven is the plane, into which generally all souls of good people go after they die. Simple as that, it's populated by celestials. Denizens of this plane all have one main goal, and that is to ensure humanity reaching the Perfect Fate - a fate desirable by the gods the most. Problem is just that anything with a soul has free will, and thus the creatures can do theoretically anything they want to. Angels thus have an innate ability to see most possible fates all at the same time, knowing what needs to be done to ensure the Perfect Fate.
Hell, being the opposite of Heaven as expected, is the plane into which all the souls of bad people generally go, turning into fiends. Fiends also have a special ability they developed, immunity to any sort of divinations. With that, not only are they invisible to divination magic, any predictions of the future (including the fate vision of angels) shows just what would happen if no fiend would intervene. Hell's denizens thus try to reach the absolute chaos, just to make gods mad.
Fortuna is a plane only one every 1000 souls goes to, regardless of being good or bad in their life. It's a plane filled with the luckiest souls in the multiverse. Infelix is the exact opposite, accepting again only one soul and is filled with the unluckiest folk.
Shadow (sometimes referred to by accident as Shadowfell) is a plane of shadow and death. When a dead soul goes to neither Heaven nor hell, to neither Fortuna nor Infelix, they're tested for years whether they won't become good or bad. If they manage to stay neutral this whole time, this is the plane where they end up. It's populated by eternally rotting people, who never managed to pick a side in the fight taking place across the multiverse.
 |
| My inspiration for Fortuna and Infelix. |
Godsrealm
In the Heavenly plane, angels guard a secret portal that leads into the plane called Godsrealm. This plane is so infinite in size, that it contains two other planes of infinite sizes, as well as one demiplane. It also contains lots of general space that's mostly unused, since gods are pretty busy.
Godprison is a plane, into which gods put people who try to become gods themselves just when they're about to succeed in it. It's a plane of infinite desert with gases that provide nutritions and cease aging, making this the eternal prison for any of its denizens. There is no way out. Out of all mortals only a few chosen know of this plane, with others seeing the original graph with this plane left out.
Observatory is the demiplane in which stands a gigantic telescope as well as several globes and maps. Gods use these to observe worlds. This demiplane looks like a gigantic machine.
Crossroads are the entryway to other worlds. Whoever wants to leave Sivobog has to either use powerful magic, or pass through this plane, that is connected to Crossroads planes of other worlds. One of the most popular examples would be the city of Sigil for Forgotten Realms.
Dreamscape
All planes except for Ether are also connected to Dreamscape, the plane of dreams. I wrote a whole article about that one and how it works already here, so why don't you go check it out?
That would be all for today. Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!
No comments:
Post a Comment