The Ordial Plane: My Intepretation

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Har Megidon's picture
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The Ordial Plane: My Intepretation

This is a basic plan for the Ordial Plane in my campaign. I shall update this as I get more ideas. Eventually I'll put stats up for the creatures, but for now, you just get this lackluster information.

Info:
Linking the planes of Belief and Substance, the Ordial Plane embodies Information. There are three layers. Each is visible in the sky like the layers were arranged like a triple helix. The first layer consists of enormous red fields divided by the occasional hill, and the sky appears to be white with black stars. Crystals made of information are occasionally found here. They are often made into trinkets that have bonuses to intelligence and wisdom. The second layer is a blue desert, with a completely black sky. The third layer is unknown.

Creatures:
Divine Lettters: The most famous of these is O from Planescape Torment. They are embodiments of letters from the Divine Language. These creatures appear to be humans, "wrapped" around a great light. They grow more powerful and intelligent the more of them there are, similar to cranium rats. It is said that if all of the Divine Letters are gathered, they would become omnipotent. They are named after letters from various languages. They can naturally speak all languages.
Relen: These creatures are humanoids, with grey exoskeletons and no face. They are extremely curious, always seeking to learn more about any subject. Many Relen join the Sensates or the Guvners, depending if they are more curious about the multiverse or it's laws.

Tim4488's picture
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Re: The Ordial Plane: My Intepretation

Not sure I like an Ordial Plane with "often made" magic items and races that commonly join one faction or another. The plane is supposed to be mysterious, elusive, and inaccessible or near to it in most of what I've read. This write-up seems to make it a little too "mundane," if such a word can apply in the planes.

Har Megidon's picture
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Re: The Ordial Plane: My Intepretation

Tim4488 wrote:
Not sure I like an Ordial Plane with "often made" magic items and races that commonly join one faction or another. The plane is supposed to be mysterious, elusive, and inaccessible or near to it in most of what I've read. This write-up seems to make it a little too "mundane," if such a word can apply in the planes.
Well, I haven't really thought of much ideas to increase it's mystery, other than the inherent mysteriousness of the Divine Letters. I'll probably divide it into three parts, and have the third part be the whole vauge and mysterious place.

Har Megidon's picture
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Re: The Ordial Plane: My Intepretation

Har Megidon wrote:
Tim4488 wrote:
Not sure I like an Ordial Plane with "often made" magic items and races that commonly join one faction or another. The plane is supposed to be mysterious, elusive, and inaccessible or near to it in most of what I've read. This write-up seems to make it a little too "mundane," if such a word can apply in the planes.
Well, I haven't really thought of much ideas to increase it's mystery, other than the inherent mysteriousness of the Divine Letters. I'll probably divide it into three parts, and have the third part be the whole vauge and mysterious place.
UPDATE: And that's what I've done.

Palomides's picture
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Re: The Ordial Plane: My Intepretation

Drat! Why is it that every time I start something and then get lazy and put it to the side, someone else jumps on it?

Regardless, I was working on some ideas for the the indigenous Australian pantheon. Much like the Native Americans (another diverse group with a verbal tradition), this covers a lot of ground with a lot of similar themes but where a lot of tales get tweaked or changed by the various groups in different areas. In addition, I am not an expert on this so take these starter ideas with a grain of salt.

The Australian gods come from the Alchera, the "Dreamtime". This is a realm beyond time, the place that is the ultimate source and the ultimate destination of all existence (both the physical world and the souls of the living).
Altjira, the head of the pantheon, could not leave the Dreamtime without losing his powers. So he directed the other gods to visit and shape the terrain (and in doing so, gave all the physical features of the land religious and cultural significance and resonance).
But since that time, with the disrespect and the loss of the traditions that connect the Dreamtime to the Prime, the Australian gods have become increasingly distant from mortals.

OK, so where am I going with this? I was debating where to place the "Dreamtime". I toyed with the idea of making it a pocket realm in the deep Astral; but then I started thinking about it more.
The Dreamtime is the source of the driving force that took matter and created the world and all its physical features. It is also the place (and destination) of the metaphysical souls that inhabit these physical vessels.
Since it seemed rooted in both the physical and the metaphysical, I started debating if the Ordinal wouldn't make a good residence for the Dreamtime (and arguably for all the creator forces that existed "before time began"). The plane that reached out to create the physical from the raw elements and to create the metaphyical from the thought/morality of the Astral. Streching the two branches back around to meet and create the wonders of the Prime Material.

Despite the name, I don't envision this as the plane of dreamscapes and nightmares. I see it as a place outside of comprehension (to mortals) and only translatable in an analogy of "dreams are to real life" as "mortal existence is to the Dreamtime". It is a realm that at first glance has parallels to reality; but on closer examination has much more depth and interconnectedness than we can understand in our fleeting glances of it.

Don't know if this will appeal to anyone, but this was my germ of an idea on it.

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Re: The Ordial Plane: My Intepretation

My idea for the Ordial has it as a plane of the Ideal and the Perfect. I have these vague notions about reaching the Ordial from the Inner Planes by moving towards the center of a given Core element (finding a perfect place of stone on Earth, an ideal fire of Fire or what have you). On the Outer Planes, you'd reach the Ordial by finding something that reached perfect Goodness or Evil, or the ideal war (maybe the 'Loths are orchestrating the Blood War as a way of gaining access to the Ordial?) or something equally idealized.

Combining things you get:
Prime as a melding of Possibility (Ethereal) and Thought (Astral)
Outer Planes as a melding of Thought (Astral) and the Perfect/Ideal (Ordial)
Inner Planes as a melding of Possibility (Ethereal) and Perfect/Ideal (Ordial)

I don't see the Ordial as a place that would see much, if any traffic. It's a place that shapes the Multiverse, and the only beings that might enter the place are those who are fit to take a part in that shaping.

Anyway, just wanted to contribute.

Kobold Avenger's picture
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Re: The Ordial Plane: My Intepretation

If the Ordial Plane is a plane of the ideal, then maybe the Dream Plane is a cast-off shadow of that plane.

Rook13's picture
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Re: The Ordial Plane: My Intepretation

After my original viewing of the Magnum Opus article, I decided (for my game) the Ordial was the foundation from which the rest of the Multiverse was built, within the flux of the Far Realm/Xoriat/Realm of Madness. I didn't follow quite the same pattern Palomides did here, but I also used this to explain some of the peculiarities of the setting.

The Dreamscape idea (from Kobold Avenger) is interesting, & would explain why it's so difficult to physically enter the Dreamscape. Likewise, the Ideal concept (Wicke) explains why it's so difficult to get to the Ordial (& thus prove its existence), as well as provoking a slightly different idea: what if it's not a [bold]place[/bold] you need to reach, but a state? Reaching the Ordial Plane might be less a journey than a transcendence.

Loki De Carabas's picture
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Re: The Ordial Plane: My Intepretation

I really like the idea of placing the Dreamtime there.

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