Since the PDFs can't help me, and I don't own the Manual of the Planes, can someone tell me what the geography of the Outlands is like. The Dungeon Master's Guide says it's a wheel, and that's it. I've always got the picture of a rocky desert with a wacky-colored sky in my head (Like some of the Spaceman Spiff environments).
Outlands Geography?
Wed, 2005-12-14 19:28
#1
Outlands Geography?
Wed, 2005-12-14 20:49
#4
Outlands Geography?
There were two suns in the sky today, fighting like robins bickering over their nest. As if to balance out the chaos in the sky, the fields grew all crystalline and hard, like they say it is near Automata. We managed to get some food from the dead people, but I don't trust them. They stare at you with their glowing eyes, and don't seem to care about anything but going back to their fields and endless harvests. They're scary.
After the suns were finally chased off by night, the crystal grass still glowed with motes of light. We menfolk went out to look, and saw the glowing things were small golden children. We don't know which sun it was that was bleeding babies, but there didn't seem to be much else to do but take the little things in, even if the women are busy enough with our own kids. They seem so helpless.
The dead people tried to take them from us, but we drove them away. Fortunately, they weren't very strong souls, but they might have friends.
Wed, 2005-12-14 20:54
#5
Outlands Geography?
Another thunderstorm attacked the Spire, or tried to. This was a big one, filling half the sky with a buzzing electrical discharge, wearing it thin so that parts of it were as pale as stars. In a perfect circle around the great, thin, crooked mountain, though, the celestial fire just burnt out, becoming thin whisps of glowing vapor and then, in a smaller circle, nothing at all. The ring of stone the traders call Sigil, floating above the top of forever, seemed to swell like a contented hunting cat after a good meal. Mother said that's just a trick of the eye. Everything's something's trick, I told her.
The ground that night was smooth and hard, like marble, covered with a fine purple moss. I was standing it, staring at the storm wrapped in a cloak sewn up with charms that Mother thought would keep the sky from snatching me up. Because I fell from the sky as a baby, Mother thinks the sky is always plotting to take me back. It never took the frogs back, or the clinging vines, though, so I'm sure she's deluded. Everyone in the village has a different theory about where we sky kids rained from. The olders call us suns-blood. The normal kids call us sun-poop or pee-people. Nuncle Carl thinks we fell from Sigil, but whenever he starts to say that Mother always purifies the air with a gesture. Don't start theorizing and talking about Sigil, she warns, or we'll attract factions. You can never get those out. Down near the Spireward Sea there's a village where nobody has kids anymore because they've decided nothing's real unless it's created directly from their minds. The cradles there are all filled with shadowy half-children you can only see from the corner of your eye, but they insist it's only a matter of time before they get it right. Sigil's Pain itself, Mother says.
It all gets really tedious, so I come out and watch the starless heavens. Normally no one joins me, not even the other sky kids, but sometimes I can find Seed. Even in the dark, I can usually see his eyes glowing in the distance. Seed's dead, I guess. He says he used to live in a house like me, but he got sick and had to go away. Now he lives out in the endless harvest with the other dead people and cuts plants all day and night, except when he hangs around here. I asked him if he wanted to stay with us, but Seed says he can't yet. He says he has to find another focus or he'll fade away. I don't want to ever be dead. Mother says even suns die, and points out the hill where the villagers buried one. I wonder what it's doing now.
Someday I'm going to run away with the bariaurs, and I'm bringing Seed with me. The bariaurs don't ever stay in one place; Nuncle Carl says they escaped the story that birthed them long ago. I'm sure the bariaurs know how Seed could do the same. Seed says he's not so sure.
Thu, 2005-12-15 12:45
#6
Outlands Geography?
Wow. Just... Rip, I have to say. I've said that I like your work before... I've said that they were awesome or inspiring and all sorts of other platitudes... that was, without a doubt, one of the goddamn coolest things I've ever read on the internet. It needs to be a story... or a book... or... or... I dunno, SOMETHING!
It generally looks like whatever plane it's closest to. Near Glorium, the Outlands start to look like Ysgard. Near Mechanus and Arcadia the plants and hills become more geometric and structured, growing in square patterns. Near Limbo things get wilder and move around more unpredictably - it's not as chaotic as Limbo itself, but it can be very confusing.
Near the Abyss it does become desert, much as you describe, as that's what the Plain of Infinite Portals is like, with the "sad climate of late Autumn." It's barren, dusty plains near Baator, too. Near Gehenna it becomes more volcanic, though there's also a swamp there.
Near the center of the plane, where it isn't near anything, the land's a perfect mix of plains, forests, canyons, mountains, rivers, deserts, and lakes. No terrain feature dominates any other. Everything is in balance: every mountain opposed by a canyon, every desert by a lake, every plain by a forest.
This is all from Sigil and Beyond, page 27.