Jaspar Arelius, alhoon planeswalker, comes in for a talk.(4E PS?)

I wouldn't shift out of the Great Wheel, but instead see what can be mined out of the new cosmology. Most of the locations can be inserted into an elemenal plane, the Feywild and Shadowfell are actually pretty easily absorbed though the latter might be a sort of waystation for souls on particular worlds.

The only 4e book I plan on getting is the new MotP, but only if it doesn't read like a plagarized version of Exalted and other White Wolf products.

A woman takes the podium. She has pale grey hair, her left wing is black and bat-like, while the right wing is white feathered. She looks at the crowd and shakes her head slightly, as if to say "you're all berks."

"So the planes are changing, so what?" her opening statements and demeanor draw murmurs of disaproval. "You think that means something? Well, I've got news for you all. It doesn't. There never was any meaning, anyway, whatever your factotums delude themselves into thinking. At least the clueless are merely ignorant, instead of being willfully ignorant."

"I've been saying for years that the planes are not what most berks think they are. Sure, one can use the Great Ring to travel from Bitopia to Mount Celestia to Arcadia, but one can also get from Ysgard to Nifelheim to the Norns by climbing down Ygdrasil. Or one can climb Mount Olympus, or the Infinite Staircase. So which is it, are the planes laid out in a ring, or are they branches on a tree, or are they a mountain and a pit? All of the above. None of the above. The planes just ARE. Any map you try to draw is no more than your own attempt to make sense of the connections and portals between them. Nothing more, nothing less."

"What's really the difference between the planes of Baator and the elemental planes of fire? They are different places, to be sure, with different physics and different magic, but the same can be said for Bitopia vs. the Beastlands vs. any prime. Oh, did you notice I said 'planes', plural? The conclusion I've come to in my researches is that, once you stop trying to impose order, chaos, or any other objective 'meaning' on the planes, is that most planars' conceptions of what constitutes a 'plane' are just plain wrong."

"What most of you consider 'a plane' are in fact a number of interconnected realms of variable and malable, but finite, size. A plane seems infinite because it is in fact a large number of realms each of which may change size and and/or slip in and out of conjuction with the others depending on the whims and power expenditures of resident Powers. As our alhoon host alluded to, there are signs of impeding shake-ups in the connections between planes, and a corresponding re-drawing of many planars' conceptualizations of how they fit together. But, once again, so what? This only means something if you impose meaning in it. It is, in fact, completely meaningless, which is even more obvious when you accept that much of the 'conventional wisdom' of planars is, in fact, totally wrong."

"For instance, most planars accept the idea that there is A plane known as the Abyss with an infinite number of layers. In fact, each layer or realm could be thought of as its own plane, it's just that they are similar and closely conjoined. In fact, they are likely similar because they are closely conjoined."

"And anyway, an inifinite number of layers, PLEASE! If there were trully an infinite number of Abyssal layers, there would, by extension, be an infinite number of denizens. If this were trully the case, it would mean that somewhere there is a Tanar'ri named "Widdle Bunny Foo-Foo", and I just don't buy it."

A few chuckles are heard from the audience, but the speaker remains completely serious.

"Those of you who do not know me may not be used to such passion coming from the Cabal, but I have been trying to pound some sense into scholarly brain-boxes for a long time. Stop trying to impose your tired philosophies on the multiverse, berks! Chaos is NOT a higher form of order! There is no order! The multiverse doesn't make sense, so stop trying to see any meaning. There is no inherrant meaning, not to the planes, not to existance itself! Wake up, you addle-coves! Unhende berks you ..."

She is finally dragged offstage by a trio of scholars.

"I agree with him. Why bother getting upset about the beliefs of one prime world? Or even a few? The outer planes have always been mutable by belief, but that doesn't mean a relatively few Clueless are going to cause some kind of catastrophic shift of the entire cosmos." These words come from a tall and muscular young human with dark brown hair including a beard and mustache.

"I've actually been to the world where the book 'World and Monsters' was written. It's history obviously shaped the beliefs of it's inhabitants. For instance a human civilization there made a pact with the Baatezu. They were given infernal power, becoming a specific form of Tiefling that all have similar features and powers, but they're civilization was destroyed and it's inhabitants scattered. These Tieflings spread through the world and so they're specific form became what the other peoples thought of as Tieflings."

"Also certain demon lords have used connections between that world and the Inner Planes, to attack the Tieflings of Bael Turath. The inhabitants assumed that they must then come from these places and also saw Yugoloths with them so assumed they must have been of the same type."

"I could go on, but I think I've made my point."