Enumerating the Parallel Multiverses

Digressions from Parallel LXV (Blossoms in the Aftermath)

It is said that Indra himself wept as his proxies deployed round after round of violent magic at a massive forking branch of Yggdrasil. Father Llymic and his horde were nearly upon the exhausted spellcatsers when the limb tore loose and tumbled into the planar beyond. Life celebrated a small victory as the doomsday army was quickly torn to pieces, but like the fingers of an angry wooden god even the smallest terminal twigs of the great tree tore prime and planar landscapes in two as it fell. It finally came to a thundering rest on Avernus, obliterating virtually all civilization, diabolic and otherwise, to be found there. With Bel gone, the remaining eight Lords greedily deployed forces to Avernus - they arrived to find the layer overtaken a forest of epic trees that grew as quickly as they could chop them down. Units sent into the wilderness were lost virtually instantly. Like its parent, the Avernus Wood connects with forests across the Great Wheel - the ratatosks that held tight to their home as it careened across the multiverse are its caretakers. Baator has twisted them into more menacing, malevolent forms, though they reserve most of their savage ire for the incursions of their diabolic neighbors. With the forest slowly expanding, creeping into Dis and beyond, the devils appear to have a squirrel problem.

Parallel LXVI

The City On the Edge of Creation and Destruction

Gone is the line between Inner and Outer, between Law and Chaos, between Good and Evil. In their place lies Creation and Destruction. And in an endless, ever changing circle lies the City, caught in Balance and its bladed Queen is the Keeper and Decider of what and who passes from below to above, and what and who passes from above to below.

Creation is a place where the Pious find relief in the Lower Planes. At its Heart lies the Eversource, from which all Creation bubbles into existence. The Powers of Creation revel in the Eversource, drawing from it and spinning out worlds of their own, to grow as they please.

Destruction is the Higher Plane where the Wicked continually fight against losing themselves. It is a tumbling and Falling place, raining down endlessly on the City. The jealous Powers of Destruction rail against the endless Creation, seeking peace through the Destruction of all.

In the Balance of the City, the common people find a safe haven. The place is the knife's edge where Creation and Destruction meet. It is a mixing pot, where one can find the many races from across all worlds and across all Planes. A grand City, evoking echoes of oft talked about legends of cities called Sigil and Glass and Brass, of places called Asgard and Utopia, Shangri-La and Purgatory. It is a waiting place, it is a place of endless commerce, of bitter rivalries and secret dalliances. It is secluded, it is wide open and free, it is hidden from all prying eyes.

And its Queen, the City's ever faithful, ever vigilant Queen, and her eyes and ears in the form of floating Sentinals, keep the peace between all Existence.

Ok, this one is really creepy.

Personality: Olmina H'hhhhhhadrafax

Olmina the Pixie's first flit across the parallels was to a delightful paper world, where she chased flocks of origami birds and crash-landed in a yielding mountain of ribbon, laughing hysterically all the while. Imagine her surprise upon returning to her verdant prime material home to find a miniature, elfin balor that remained unmistakably her father, now with a remarkable taste for slaughtering and havoc-wreaking, his esteem on those matters seemingly only emboldened by his small size.

--

Long ago on Parallel LXVII, the Queen of Air and Darkness stole away a part of her sister Titania. It may have been pure madness that found her burying bits of it across the lower planes, but doing so served to powerfully tie together the fey and fiendish races.

As many as a quarter of all fey here find their lives unexpectedly interrupted. Perhaps on a first birthday, perhaps hundreds of years into a life, a fey may find his path taking a violent biological detour towards one of the three great fiendish races. Doing so with little rhyme or reason, this has produced a wild variety of uniformly evil creatures (to say nothing of the fey-fiends that excel in fiendish society and are promoted into heretofore unseen forms). Fey-fiends on the prime are relatively seldom and powerful ones tend to take on dragon-like roles, lording over or terrorizing the populations around them. Planar fey-fiends are drawn to the lower planes; some join the ranks of the fiends while others maintain small, lower profile communities, preying on Blood War stragglers and other travelers.

--

Olmina's second trip across realities was not so much a graceful dance as a mad and desperate leap. She awoke in a humid pit deep in some version of Carceri. Emaciated figures called out to her from distant cells, identifying themselves as Zues, Hera, Apollo, and others. But Olmina did not know this place or these gods, and collapsed to the ground, weeping until she passed out from her wounds.

Funny, I could have sworn I credited your paper world from the golden hells brainstorming, but apparently not. So I am doing that right now.

What I meant when I wrote "paper world from golden hells brainstorming" above was, of course, The Land of Flight and Folding from Dark Roads and Golden Hells!

I didn't really have the chance to look at the drafts that circulated, so I'm just now discovering all the cool stuff that made it in there. A lot more than I anticipated, which is great (and I'll just be flattered that one thing of mine managed to sneak in there twice).

Dispatch from Parallel XXI:

Once a year – or decade, or century, it may all depend on your perspective – the reclusive demipower known simply as W calls down a storm of delicious treats from the black clouds of Carceri. The respite from the plane's punishing bitterness finds petitioners all but ripping each other apart over the rich chocolates, fruit-studded gummies, and perfectly sweet hard candies. For most this is only a road to further sadness and longing, as no petitioner will ever witness the storm more than once. But hidden in the colorful paper wrapping of five of the morsels are precious golden keys that gain holders access to W's strange realm, a simultaneously ominous and whimsical fortress that mysteriously appears in the wake of the delectable storm. Though the fortress is said to contain wonders and delights nearly unimaginable, the whole ritual may nevertheless be nothing more than some exercise in sadism, as most key-holders are soon enough ejected, weeping and grasping desperately at the memories rapidly fading from their minds. However, it is said that on very rare occasions W is inexplicably moved by the spirit of a petitioner and, marshaling all of his divine power, releases that soul from hell.

Yeah, if you'd told me I was going to be spending happy bike rides thinking about vaguely sinister candy-themed characters to appropriate for a planescape forum … well, I would have probably said that sounds pretty cool.

The most famous hunters of the Marshmallow Man are the raucous but noble Punch Golems, famous for their gleaming crystal armor, inveterate wall-smashing, and rousing battle cry of "OH YES, INDEED!"

Parallel LII:

“Yes, I'm late. Do you think I was expecting to follow that dumb cowboy down into the Shadow Ocean? Again with that face. The Shadow Ocean is the ocean. I suppose it used to be the shadow reflection of the Ocean Ocean, which is gone now. Gone where? Nowhere! I don't know! The world was literally blown apart and the dumb laws of physics and magic did an admirable but not exactly bang-up job putting it back together again, so you have to roll with some of this stuff. On the upside, the ocean is free from those weird phase shifts, which were turning my head into some kind of gladiatorial arena for various flavors of seasonal affective disorder. On the downside, everything else. Plenty of impenetrable weirdness and ways to die and the first language I actually understood was a wayang respectfully directing me to the 'porcelain whore district'. So let's not talk about late, ok?”

Funny, the Filth quote actually seemed completely appropriate.

Parallel LII:

“Well, I think she's telling the truth and she's not. She clearly doesn't remember a lot of it. That's true. But there are also things she leaves out of what story she does have. Why does she never talk about the ioun stones?”

The pixie began to acquire ioun stones upon arriving on this parallel. Some sought her out from very far away. Each appeared to be a crude miniature knickknack from the stone through iron ages. Some but not all of the stones, in order of acquisition:

Iron Butterfly – Allowed the pixie to cough up a cloud of razor-sharp, metallic butterflies.

Clay Top – This conjured an oversized spinning top that could rapidly tunnel through stone.

Chunk of Wood – The pixie began to permanently bend trees with her will, sometimes to the point of their splintering apart.

Bronze Sphere – This allowed the pixie to travel through the shadow ocean at the eye of a small but violent underwater storm. Non-shadow uses unknown.

Cube of Ice – With this she was able to freeze time and even manipulate it backwards in small increments.

Parallel LII:

The Harvester's visit with the Hoof King has been for naught, but thankfully the errand that had financed that lark was going, pardon the pun, swimmingly. Despite his prowess as a breeder he wasn't above heading straight to the source when a client inquired about something as esoteric and specific as an aquatic steed suitable to the shadow plane. Which found him in a cramped clockwork submersible, gazing out a porthole and waiting for the black ocean to flicker alight as it did periodically. He swore that he saw them for a second, a cloud of black creatures emerging from a trench at impossible speed. This set the wayang crew off chattering amongst themselves in their strange, impenetrable language. It had been dark and quiet again for several moments when their vessel began to shake. The ocean lit up again and they were surrounding by the things – a stamped of enormous shadowtouched creatures, nightmares in hippocampi naval fatigues. The Harvester couldn't help but light up with equinologist wonder as he considered his next move.

Wow... this one is going to have my wheels turning all day, so much cool stuff to ruminate on - particularly the part about Sigil being an utterly quiet refuge in what I imagine to be an otherwise cacophonous storm of creation. Perhaps this is a precursor to why the Dabus communicate non-verbally, it's a holdover from previous times when language was much more transformative?

Well, in a negaverse, it is likeley that good deities have given at least a try to have good undead in theyr followers number; After all, only good undead can effectivly protect the living in a world of this kind.

All the good sun gods need to think a bit more on it from now on. Because when Sun set theyr followers became living targets; I can see an order of good Mummies Paladin of Osiris plane-spreaded to bring peace beetwen living and unliving. And the God of Death and of the dead? they probably are on a coflictual situation; They probably do not lean so much on neutrality or evil, because in an universe inhabited only by undead who needs a god of death or of the dead, anymore? So they have to protect the living to preserve the cycle.