Ghostwalking Around the Great Wheel

Opening Remarks

Well, yesterday I came across my copy of the Ghostwalk campaign option book while scanning my collection for feats for one of my new characters. When reading through it again I was struck by the novelty of the idea. It’s well detailed and rather well executed (though there are a few parts that I take issue with [And will address in this text]) and, like a good PS fan, I started to wonder in what ways could Planescape and Ghostwalk be integrated. So far I’ve come up with three different workable scenarios. First and easiest is the tried and true “Crystal Sphere With Its Own Weird Rules For Souls and the Afterlife”, the second is treating Manifest as a unique demiplane, while the third involves the use of Ghostwalk rules in order to play petitioners or lost souls. This is just me working on a project for no reason as I will probably never actually use these rules. Also it gives me a chance to detail “Soft Places” (A concept I borrow from the “Sandman” series of books which Mr. Gaiman probably borrowed from many places and mythoses). I hope something useful comes out of this.

My Grievances with the Ghostwalk Setting

In the ‘Core Ghostwalk’ option it is stated that only humanoid souls have the option for becoming ghostly. For this reason many races dislike Manifest and its entire ghostly Ward thing. The secondary antagonists of the city, the Yuan Ti, seem to only be enemies of Manifest due to the fact that their souls cannot remain amongst the living for the extra time. It all seems rather arbitrary and silly. I’d remedy this by saying that any being can become a ghost and creatures who are intimately tied to their deities (as in having a single racial deity) feel greater pulls to move on into the True Afterlife. Another reason for the relative scarcity of nonhumanoid ghosts in Manifest would be the same as the reason for nonhumanoid creatures in other cities – they are kept out by the guards (both living and unliving). This also retains the reasons for the dislike that the Yuan Ti feel for Manifest as they hate the thought of mere humanoids commanding the gateway that their race passes through to reach the Afterlife.

The other part of the Ghostwalk core setting that I have extreme distaste for is the concept of the ‘True Afterlife’ put forth in the DM section. I would propose that the Grand Portal merely acts as a conduit for the souls of the dead to pass through onto the Outer Planes. The passage of the body through the Grand Portal becomes merely a custom sacred to the deities or other beings which watch over Manifest and does not actually have any benefit for the spirit in the Afterlife.

Ghostwalk Deities in Planescape

Here are the homeplanes of the Ghostwalk deities in a PS type setting.

Aluvan – Elysium

Chaniud – Arcadia

Dracanish – Mechanus

Durann – Mount Celestia

Eanius – Beastlands

Galaedros – The Outlands

Khostren – The Gray Wastes

Nessek – The Outlands

Orcus – The Abyss

Phaant – Baator

Soggelos – Arborea

Tephaneron – Ysgard

Uhanam – Mechanus

Wyst – None (Mobile)

Option 1 – “A Unique Prime Material Crystal Sphere”

This is the simplest option. Utilizing the changes I’ve implemented Manifest becomes merely a city on a Prime material world. The world’s Crystal Sphere blocks travel onto the Astral plane for the spirits of mortals so that all souls channel through Manifest and the Grand Portal. Alternately the sphere could block all Astral travel out, instead holding a mini-Astral for use in Dimension Door and other such spells. Perhaps the only path onto the Outer Planes for mortals is passing through the Grand Portal – a taboo according to local customs and culture (probably due to the dangers of the Outer Planes). In this case the Deathwarden dwarves could also serve as guards against incursions of Outsiders. Perhaps the Deathwardens first took their post after one such incursion by a fiendish army or some such thing. Such incursions would probably be rare (once every millennia a being could come through) since the portals into Manifest would be few and not particularly well known.

Option 2 – “The Place Between Places”

Utilizing what I am dubbing option 2, Manifest is treated as a special demiplane. The city and its surroundings (out to just passed the edge of the Manifest Ward) becomes a home for lost souls and lost travelers. In this arrangement Manifest is connected to many Prime worlds and allows mortals to travel from world to world if they understand the dark of such travel. Spirits on the other hand have another exit from the demiplane, through the Grand Portal and out onto the Outer Planes (A path which mortals cannot take). Upon leaving the demiplane one of two things occurs to a ‘ghost’. When passing back onto the Prime the Manifest Ward loses its grip and the ghost becomes incorporeal. When passing through the Portal a ghost transubstantiates onto its plane of final rest, becoming a petitioner or some such thing.

Finding the demiplane of Manifest is an exercise in futility. The plane lies in one of the Soft Places of reality. Souls end up on the plane when, due to odd factors, they become lost or blocked from traveling to the beyond (this is different from being trapped on the prime and warped by negative energy to become an undead ghost). The only proper way for a mortal to travel to Manifest is to reach certain areas and become hopelessly and completely lost (This greatly bothers merchants who have to figure out their own ways to keep trade routes open). See section “Soft Places”.

The city of Manifest is one of many such cities that have existed in the plane since some unimaginable time. Ruins in the depths beneath the city (caverns which radiate out passed the above ground border of the demiplane, the entire extent of which are uncharted) point to ancient Illithid, Gith, beholder, and even draconic civilizations that at one point inhabited the demiplane. The current incarnation of Manifest is the one detailed in the Ghostwalk campaign book.

The demiplane of Manifest would be a relatively unimportant place to planar beings. The main problems that a nexus place such as Manifest would have would be incursions from cross-prime species seeking to utilize Manifest as a hub to expand their empires. The Illithids, Githyanki, and races like them would probably love control of the plane, though the relative difficulty of locating it makes this prospect difficult.

Sidenote: “Soft Places”

There are places where the fabric between our reality and others is thin. These places, called Soft Places by those in the know, form in unmapped areas, in areas where mystery and superstition supercede emperical knowledge. When one travels off the edge of their map, when they reach the sign that says ‘here there be dragons’ (when dragons are obviously not found in that region due to climactic concerns) then one may have found himself in a soft place.

There are stories of lost travelers meeting other lost travelers from other lands and times. Men from radically different parts of the same world suddenly finding themselves drinking water over a fire together, men meeting their own children, or their fathers, or those of their offspring who will never be born. Men have walked through lands unknown to them only to find themselves thousands of miles from where they started.

The exact nature of each soft place is unique. Some are simple to enter, as simple as taking a step. Some are ethereal and dream-like and upon leaving one finds themselves asleep by the last recognizeable place that they can remember believing that they dreamt the entire event. Some are difficult to leave, only by thinking the proper thing or aligning one’s mind in a certain way or following a guide can one leave such places.

Soft places are places of uncertainty and mystery. As a world reaches an Age of Exploration and the world becomes more and more concrete and mapped such places seem to vanish and slip away, lost to the rigid structure of knowledge.

Examples of soft places are the Gates to the Plane of Fairy and the Glade of the Fountain of Youth.

Option 3 – “Well Tommy, You're Dead!”

The last option requires the complete divorcing of the Ghostwalk Setting and the Ghostwalk Rules. The city of Manifest is discarded or, at least, deemphasized as the word “Ghost” and the word “Petitioner” are switched. Since Ghostwalk ghosts are Outsiders, it is not an extreme stretch to make them the standard petitioner state. Each petitioner could get further abilities relating to their deity’s wishes or their plane of origin. The state of becoming a free roaming ghostly petitioner would be a unique case, of course, most petitioners are tied to their deities/realms and would not leave even if they wanted to. But the PCs in this sort of endeavor would be special cases, charged by deities or having found their mortal memories or merely being flukes in the multiversal order.

In any case, the entire Outer Planes could be treated as a “Manifest Ward” in such a campaign. Upon leaving the Outer Planes the petitioners would become immaterial, traveling the prime as ghostly specters. Perhaps Temples or Cemeteries or other places with links to the lands of the dead would create natural manifest zones.

It’s a simple solution, and planning adventures for incorporeal characters could be quite difficult, but it could also be an interesting campaign experience.