Planar Renovation Project: Limbo

BTW, good luck with this thread. I started the last couple of PRPs and I was never able to corral the differing viewpoints into anything coherent that we could collectively agree on (as opposed to the Arcadia and Bytopia threads that did more or less come together)
But even in my "failures" I still got to hear a lot of great ideas!

Okay, so since the purpose of the Planar Renovation threads is to give someone a reason to go to a plane, here's a rare event that can inspire research trips even when it's not happening, and full-on holy wars when it is.

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In many mythologies, the world arises from Chaos. The act of creation is the act of imposing form on limitless potential.

Even in real physics this is a poetic interpretation of the supposed state of existence atop which our universe arises. Physical law, projected backwards in time, breaks down at the point where there is no "before" on which to experience a symmetry of "before" and "after."

Thus, one reason to go to Limbo is to experience creation: the creation, perhaps, of entire worlds.

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Benbens

In Egyptian mythology, the benben was the first mound of earth that arose out of the primal ocean of chaos. From this mound the sun emerged, and with it the gods that shaped the world. Planar scholars have given this name to a phenomenon that occurs within Limbo as part of its aspect of the primal, creative existence.

A benben is a region of the chaos ocean which begins to solidify. The elemental shifts begin to slow, and the elements within the soup start to separate out into larger chunks. The region gradually expands, most often with a rim of fire thrusting outward at the edge, followed by a bank of expanding air, and a core of slower earth and water collecting at the bottom. In some cases, one element may start predominating, or the local conditions outside the benben may have an unusual effect like drawing earth upward in preference to other elements, but these reports are rare in the extreme.

As the benben increases in size, its rate of growth also increases. Small benbens grow slowly enough that some are consumed by the chaos ocean and nothing further happens. A benben that manages to become the size of a continent starts expanding rapidly, its sorted elements attracting their kind faster than the chaos ocean typically replaces them. When this happens, voids open up around the benben, which appears to be drawing matter to itself with gravitational force. These voids slow the process of growth momentarily, allowing Limbo to catch up. The chaos ocean slams into the border of the benben, where its material compacts and hardens, forming a crystal sphere. The anarchic energies are not stopped, though, and they ripple through the benben to focus in the center, where they meet in a conflagration of power that tends to average out, leaving a nonchaotic, neutral space at the center of the new world. This is abhorrent to Limbo, which ejects the sphere as any plane drops a layer or region that changes alignment. The newly neutral crystal sphere is hurled in some mystical direction toward the natural place of matter, the Inner Planes. On the way it encounters the phlogiston, and takes its place among the spheres of the Prime.

Not all crystal spheres are born this way, to be sure. This is also the natural, undisturbed course of events, and the best-reported instances involve creator gods -- typically greater gods -- taking a hand, shaping the new world as it forms. If a priest brings report of an unclaimed benben to a god whose portfolio includes something natural like oceans or mountains, he can usually expect rewards beyond the capacities of nations, for those gods can emphasize their desires as the world is formed. Wars have been fought in the depths of Limbo over benbens found by one god and attacked by that god's enemies. Mortals, especially Signers, who find a benben sometimes attempt to shape the world themselves. However, they usually underestimate the power of the final implosion that forces the benben out of Limbo. The energies that move a world are not to be trifled with.

Benbens begin unpredictably and rarely. They are only found in "distant" regions of Limbo, far from divine realms; it has been hypothesized that gods who find Limbo commodious dislike the atmospheres that are more likely to give rise to benbens. A regular project of crank scholars on the Planes is to create devices that can locate a benben or the conditions which they claim are conducive to benben formation -- by definition, no one can predict when or where a benben will form. Interestingly, by the time one of these cranks has a device or spell ready enough to hire a few adventurers and go test it out, they usually have hit on something or other, even if it isn't what they expect: the device or spell leads such a group somewhere else entirely, usually risky, sometimes profitable.

As for rarity: well, benbens are confirmedly found perhaps once a century, and there is usually a mighty ruckus over it for anywhere from a year (if it was found during the very earliest stirrings) to a week (if it's found just as the void is peaking and the crystal sphere is about to form).

However, once the crystal sphere is formed, that doesn't necessarily mean the end of the spat. Having your deity's hand in the creation is useful, weaving arcane threads of yourself into a new world is handy, but cutters who are less mighty can still leave tokens in the new world to track it down after it hits the Prime. The unclaimed world will soon be populated by deities of flora, fauna, and the sentient races -- or sometimes by odder powers -- who will be keeping a peery eye out for those interfering, but someone willing to risk the attentions of these powers can stake a pretty claim indeed.

The legend is still told of the Payment of the Rua'tau, a dwarf nation that owed an ancient debt to a powerful entity that had turned evil since the pact was made. They held up their end of the twisted bargain, giving their whole world in payment... after their mightiest heros weakened its foundations, rendering the entire planet a trap. They left for another, and found a benben that they followed to the Prime and held against every force and persuasion sent to them by the deities that coveted their new world. You can find a few Rua'tau in Sigil today.

I would like to see a race, even if homebrewed, that shows the more cunning side of chaos. Not everyone Chaotic falls into the CN Slaad-wacky alignment. For a CN leaning to CE race idea: a group exposes a certain caste of its people to the Chaos soup itself as a test of their god's favor. Those who fail die instantly. Those who live are warped in body, some to the extent of no longer resembling anything humanoid....think of creatures the Far Realms or H.P Lovecraft and you'll be close. Now, just what enhancements they are granted could be easily resolved by a random effect table.

Just my two cents.

For a place that's immune to the soup, a place of respite, how about the flip side of benbens?

Heat Death

Where there is order, there is useful potential energy in the transition to disorder. The most ancient of natural planets and stars have consumed all such energy sources, and their atoms now lie crushed by entropy, scattered and useless. This is the chaos at the end of things. No life can survive upon the barren rock or cold ash of these aged celestial corpses.

When a world's heat death is complete, its sun burned out, its stars gone, its winds still, the fertility of its land consumed, the presence of entropy in such vast quantities sometimes opens a portal to Limbo. In order for this to happen, the world's death typically must have been natural: a victory by Good or Evil in an armageddon would infuse the world with those alignment energies, while a sudden plague or magical warfare typically leaves the planet rich with energy sources -- just not energy sources humanoid creatures can easily use. But a natural planetary or solar corpse, frozen at the bottom of its entropic well, can sometimes slip to Limbo.

There, the corpse is further reduced, but not entirely. Limbo's soup scours away the tiniest remaining scraps of order: ruins with writing, fossils that could have been read, dust of gemstones that could barely have been food for bacteria. When this is done, the object that remains is surrounded by an empty space in which chaos is represented by the stark reality of entropy. This, too, is pure chaos, and so the soup of creation/destruction does not form here.

The cores that remain can be the size of continents, surrounded by elemental voids several miles high. They are barren rock, and they lack natural atmosphere, but they offer respite from the soup. Planewalkers who can supply their own air and protection from cold (a necklace of adaptation will do) find them a useful place to rest. A few cutters have set up waystations that rent out necklaces for people to get some sleep; they build enormous, weird statues near their businesses, and put out flyers in Sigil with depictions for travelers to Limbo to try visualizing in case they want to walk or teleport there.

Just a quick comment to say what I don't like about Limbo. It encourages order.

The plane is hostile to you by default,it doesn't matter if you are chaotic or not. But if you focus, the plane becomes your plaything. Focused thoughts, meditation, etc. are very lawful in my opinion (and my understanding of PS ideology).

Also, making you able to think things into reality, makes the plane too much like ethereal.

I'm currently thinking of an implementable-in-game mechanic how the chaotic soup can be redesigned to reward chaos.

I was toying with this myself. The only thing that has come to mind is that rather than structured thought imposing its will on the plane, perhaps the plane rewards more creative, artistic, free-thinking types by
1) making their creations more permanent (relatively speaking) although more fluid and adaptable. These pockets might be fairly "permanent" but since a wild imagination is always in motion, someone who visits the plane sporadically may not immediately recognize the pocket as being the same place he visited last time. If so, these pockets could be safe for visitors even if they change frequently.
2) allowing the creative type to suffer less severe "attacks" of chaos or letting the creative type find some way to adapt to it quickly so that the threat is less of a threat
(e.g. a wave of flame materializes but turns into beautiful sparkly lights when it washes over the in-tune chaotic soul; or perhaps the person adapts temporarily to the threat - e.g. asbestos skin)
3) make the creative person and his/her creations less offensive to the slaad and other residents
I could easily see the slaad vigorously attacking the (seemingly) structured minds (and mental creations) of the githzerai, seeking to tear them apart; but perhaps the slaad would appreciate (or at least tolerate) an island in the chaos that was a fluid piece of art created by someone with a wild imagination

It's been a while since I've been into the Green Lantern mythos, so I had to look up Kyle; but if you are referencing his artistic talents (and not the convoluted Ion history I see on Wikipedia) then yeah, that's my possible suggestion.

I'm not completely sold on it myself; but it does feel a little more "organic" than githzerai mental monks (who I always pictured as being focused and somewhat lawful in their thinking - aside from their embracing of the concept of individual freedom which could fit in Limbo)

But if we do run with this theme of "islands of artistic creativity" would that result in things like a bubble of reality that looks like Salvadore Dali's "The Persistance of Memory" (i.e. the one with the melting watches)? I could think of a lot art-world mini-realities that could be created but ultimately, I don't know if it would produce anything fun for the PCs, which I think should be the ultimate focus of this topic.

I think your idea has possibilities. Might this also provide a habitat for the elusive non-slaad native species that people have been suggesting? Perhaps there is a race of protean creatures to come to these ad hoc realities and take on various appropriate roles (e.g. in the faux palace of a mad "king" perhaps the jester or the knights of the court are these imposters)? In your analogy of Jack Sparrow, these chaotic "parasites" might find Jack's deserted realm too bland for their tastes so they start showing up as other copies of Jack himself.

I could see these creatures somehow feeding off of the creativity of the mad or fiercely independent; but being creatures of change, they would get bored and want to shake things up/change the landscape/etc. This way the pocket realities would never become locked into some stagnant pattern. (Again, look at Jack's barren reality prior to his duplicates showing up, as an example hence the need to shake things up) These beings could be viewed as harmful to the pocket creator as their habit of warping the realities would likely induce madness in just about any petitioner after a while. As the petitioner is driven more insane, this reality becomes increasingly unstable until even the chaotic parasites can't play along anymore and move on to another strong willed petitioner with a different pocket reality.

Well, I had something to contribute, but lost the data for some reason. Stupid Internet Explorer...

I was watching a documentary about the planets in our solar system, and thought some of the ideas link well with the concept of Limbo. For example, Jupiter is a place of constantly evolving and devolving storms, some that have lasted for hundreds of years. Further in space, we find stellar collections of gas and matter. In fact, the way light travels through space, what we see here is an indication of what was billions of years ago. So the quasars and black holes that are billions of lightyears away show us what the universe was like during its formation.

From this I see Limbo--

Storm Fronts: Limbo, unlike other planes, has no layers, orbs or similar stable places for its inhabitants. Instead, it has storm fronts, locations of stable matter that flow through the chaos. The fringe of a storm front is always colliding with the soup, and is always changing as a result, but its interior is mostly stable. This is due to the storm's origin--a petitioner, or a planewalker, or a native, or some other suitably willful individual capable of shaping chaos matter. In the case of the petitioner and native, they are unharmed by Limbo's randomness; they seek to exert their individuality over the plane, and the plane tries to exert its will over them, which manifests in the constantly changing state of individual storms. Most storms come and go with alarming frequency, but some last up to several hundred years, or more, depending on the nature of its inhabitants and their ability to control the storm, and fend off invaders.

(As a side note, I've always felt that the idea of permanence in Limbo is unnecessary for the concept of the plane. I mean, I've had discussions where friends argue that Limbo could not support any location for very long unless it was powered by a willful being. I disagree, and Jupiter is the example--one of its largest storms has been around for 300 years or so, and shows no signs of going away. The "physics" that govern Limbo's chaos are more complex than our own, but even so... Another point is the mutability of the planes. Yes, the outer planes can be formed and changed, but how often does it happen? We know it takes a lot of effort to make even a small portion of a plane shift to another plane. But the Prime worlds aren't subject to this, and the Inner Planes are practically immune. Where a million years of stability pass in the Prime, perhaps a thousand years pass in the Great Wheel, and only a hundred or so pass in Limbo. This means that exploring adventurers could easily come across a large storm front that has no petitioner at its center. Naturally, they don't know how long it's been there, and how long it'll last, and so staying to investigate is extremely foolish, but it can still happen.)

The storms of Plugin <em></em> Not Found as a perfect example of what Limbo might look like to someone capable of "seeing" it from the outside. In fact, this idea--of external observation--leads to a question: how does one travel through chaos? Follow my logic here--petitioners and natives know how to travel through chaos, because they're unaffected by it. Visitors, however, must fight against it until they can form a stable mote/storm front. But even when these storms exist, and are fairly stable, there's no way to map paths or connections between storms. Everything is constantly changing. So a person who can "see" through the soup, or who knows how to form a path between two locations, has information that others don't, and could make a nice business out of selling it. I see Limbo as a home, or a place to visit, for some gods of travel or exploration; they're drawn to it because the paths are always changing, so there's always something new to find. Of course, this leads to certain kinds of adventures: the players are sent into Limbo to explore a newly discovered storm, or to retrieve a piece of magic/scientific equipment (kinda like a space probe) that was lost in the chaos.

Quasars and Black Holes: I'm nowhere near an expert on quasars, so I might have this wrong, but I've always seen them as a place that spews forth matter and energy. Following the idea of the benben, perhaps the center of Limbo (in a metaphysical sense) is a massive Plugin <em></em> Not Found that constantly spits out matter and energy. Every once in a while, a benben forms that becomes stable enough to move into the rest of the 'verse. While the discovery a benben is great for those who are interested, perhaps the discovery of the quasar's location is even better, because it means having a direct link to every benben produced in Limbo. At the opposite end, there's the Plugin <em></em> Not Found of chaos. This is where a Prime world goes when it experiences natural death. At the center of the black hole is nothing, and nothing can survive, but around it are dying worlds--or dying gods, or the vestigial souls of ancient powers.

I have one more question, hopefully to further stimulate the discussion: with the examples of benbens and natural solar death, what is the need for the Positive and Negative Energy planes, or the Inner planes? In other words, while these ideas are cool, aren't we infringing on the purpose of other planes? Or can there be more than one place in the 'verse where worlds are born, or go to die?

I agree with you and I much prefer the Elemental Chaos = Limbo (sort of) that they used in the 4e. But that's what customization of your personal campaign is all about. I like the idea of various worlds/planes/pantheons rising out of the chaotic mire, some to become sustainable and independent and some to get re-absorbed (as a plethora of mythologies/religions start out with form and order rising out of chaos).
Personally, I tend to think of the Inner and Outer Planes as sort of overlapping where the energies of one somewhat co-exist and co-mingle. For example, do the death-tinged layers of the Grey Wastes draw on the same energy as the Negative Energy Plane? Probably; but one is more related to to the mental concept of death and suffering (Grey Wastes) while the other is the emotionally neutral negation of life (Negative Energy)

This won't be to everyone's taste, but for the sake of discussion: in my mind, I made three overlapping planar axes (although this resulted in my adding a few additional Outer Planes)
Life (Positive Energy, Elysium/goodness) ----- Negation (Negative Energy, Grey Wastes)
Structure (Earth/Mineral, Mechanus) ----- Formlessness (Vacuum, Limbo)
[And if you don't think that Vacuum is a good match for Limbo, review the PRP for Vacuum where the idea of ephemeral things popping into existance in the void only (most of the time) to be reabsorbed.]

[My third axis, in case you are interested, is
Energy (Fire/Radiance, new plane of knowledge/consciousness based on Thoth's Library) ----- Extinguishing of Consciousness/Energy (Ice, new plane like the Far Realms where the mind flayer gods attempt to consume all knowledge)]

And if you wanted to get really metaphysical, this is just a single pole of creation/negation in three different aspects (life, structure and ,for my setup, consciousness)

So back to the topic, I view Limbo as a potential birthplace for "structure" that tries to break free of the pull of the chaotic soup from which it rose. Will this new form be good and/or life-affirming or evil and/or life-extinguishing? Who knows? Anything MIGHT be born from this cauldron.

I originally went with a similar approach with the Outer Planes with all things within being purely mental constructs (and it fit with the theme of reaching the Outer Plane via astral projection) but this led to the problem of the PCs losing any items that they had gained while exploring the Outer Planes.
Perhaps most DMs prefer this approach as it limits any campaign-upsetting items from returning to the mundane world; but it just ticked off my players so changed approaches.

But back to topic, I could still see Limbo as a primordial birthplace of IDEAS (sort of like the chaotic jumble of one's mind as one is just drifting into or out of sleep - when some truly crazy/creative ideas sometimes appear)

It's also the case that, in my cosmology, the Prime Material came before the Outers. In that case, benbens would be a sort of "Gen II" planetary formation, or a "second Creation" process -- the kind of Primes that get made when there are already Primes floating about.

Or hey, if you like the idea of benbens but not in Limbo, stick 'em in the Pos, or the Ethereal, as you please. :^)