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Which was your favourite Forgotten Realms Cosmology?
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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9331880" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>I was not counting Eberron planes (which are their own thing), demiplanes like Dread etc., or any of the internal divisions of the 17 outer planes. That gives:</p><p>1 mortal plane</p><p>2 reflections (Feywild, Shadowfell)</p><p>18 inner planes (4 elemental, 2 energy, 4 paraelemental, 8 quasielemental)</p><p>17 outer planes</p><p>4 interstitial/linking planes (astral, ethereal, wild space, elemental chaos)</p><p>Far Realm? Not sure if this was ported over from the World Axis or not</p><p></p><p>For a total of 42 (or 43) distinct planes, many of which (as you note) have multiple layers to them. Several planes are meant to be very important in their own right: the Abyss, Celestia, and the Hells are the primary examples, but Mechanus, Limbo, Acheron, and Carceri also come up a fair bit.</p><p></p><p>The structure, the symmetry, is of prime importance for the Great Wheel. Every space has a tight definition: a plane for everything and everything in its plane. Every possible cosmological question has a neat, tidy, <em>scientific</em> answer.</p><p></p><p>By comparison, the World Axis is intentionally loose. It has clear definitions only at the broadest categories. It leaves all other borders and boundaries intentionally fuzzy, indistinct. And travel between even its clearly defined parts can be subtle and almost unnoticed...at first. You walk through a mushroom ring and wind up in fairyland. You fall asleep in a graveyard and now you're awakening in the land of the dead. A door in the earth leads to a place where fire walks and water sings and mountains fly. Etc.</p><p></p><p>If you (generic) claim that the structure of the Great Wheel is mostly irrelevant, then you can squint and see an image of the World Axis. My response is that that claim is self-evidently false, and that the squinting reduces the comparison to near-triviality, effectively saying "well, they're both fantasy cosmologies, so neither is at all more complicated nor more involved than the other."</p><p></p><p>Putting things at the level of actual planes, as opposed to merely places inside a plane, is an extremely important thing to do. It signifies that that plane is important, that it is at the same level as the whole world and everything in it, it is an entire world unto itself. Putting something at a level <em>below</em> that is likewise also important. It says that those places are regions, or cities, or maybe even just a single building or ruin. A whole world has a host of additional expectations that a mere locale does not.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9331880, member: 6790260"] I was not counting Eberron planes (which are their own thing), demiplanes like Dread etc., or any of the internal divisions of the 17 outer planes. That gives: 1 mortal plane 2 reflections (Feywild, Shadowfell) 18 inner planes (4 elemental, 2 energy, 4 paraelemental, 8 quasielemental) 17 outer planes 4 interstitial/linking planes (astral, ethereal, wild space, elemental chaos) Far Realm? Not sure if this was ported over from the World Axis or not For a total of 42 (or 43) distinct planes, many of which (as you note) have multiple layers to them. Several planes are meant to be very important in their own right: the Abyss, Celestia, and the Hells are the primary examples, but Mechanus, Limbo, Acheron, and Carceri also come up a fair bit. The structure, the symmetry, is of prime importance for the Great Wheel. Every space has a tight definition: a plane for everything and everything in its plane. Every possible cosmological question has a neat, tidy, [I]scientific[/I] answer. By comparison, the World Axis is intentionally loose. It has clear definitions only at the broadest categories. It leaves all other borders and boundaries intentionally fuzzy, indistinct. And travel between even its clearly defined parts can be subtle and almost unnoticed...at first. You walk through a mushroom ring and wind up in fairyland. You fall asleep in a graveyard and now you're awakening in the land of the dead. A door in the earth leads to a place where fire walks and water sings and mountains fly. Etc. If you (generic) claim that the structure of the Great Wheel is mostly irrelevant, then you can squint and see an image of the World Axis. My response is that that claim is self-evidently false, and that the squinting reduces the comparison to near-triviality, effectively saying "well, they're both fantasy cosmologies, so neither is at all more complicated nor more involved than the other." Putting things at the level of actual planes, as opposed to merely places inside a plane, is an extremely important thing to do. It signifies that that plane is important, that it is at the same level as the whole world and everything in it, it is an entire world unto itself. Putting something at a level [I]below[/I] that is likewise also important. It says that those places are regions, or cities, or maybe even just a single building or ruin. A whole world has a host of additional expectations that a mere locale does not. [/QUOTE]
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