Planescape and Ebberon

Well, I have a bit of a plot device in mind that will hopefully allow DM's to access any cosmology they wish. Of course, how similar Eberron is to the standard cosmology will pretty much determine whether anything from it shows up in our material.

Since I plan on using Eberron and PS I plan on having their seperation linked with the creation of the warforged. Ordinary Golems are formed from elemental spirits right? This is what makes for their ability to be easily controlled, WF on the otherhand, as sentient golems, were formed from the soulstuff of the outer. This eventually led to a gradual "stretch" of astral borders, screwing with Eberrons planar make up. The last war was the catalyst, it's massive amounts of magical tear finishing off the Drift. Eberron drifts in the astral now, a gravity of it's own surrounding it and keeping it's (?) outer plane and inner plane color pools (large enough to be seen as "planets" from Eberron) in orbit around it. However, Ebberons flux reality causes it's "planets" to bleed into the material now and then, causing the increase in magic or portals etc. as detailed in the Ebberon CS.

There's still links to Sigil, but Eberron time flows differently then other time. As you enter Ebber "space" from the astral, time goes from non-existant to slow, and touching down on Ebber or it's sun itself causes normal time. For a reason none has yet to determine, nine max HD Astral Dreadnoughts hover around and protect it from incursion by astral enemies. But the 'yanki have had problems of their own, who knows what will happen once they have settled their issues. Will they look twoards Ebberon as a much more conveinant breeding plane? Adventure hook anyone? :twisted:

Then maybe it was an affect all along of Ebberon itself. In it's cosmology Eberron is a dragon as well as the world. (at least thats what I've gathered so far from the setting teasers) So perhaps Eb the draon/plane has always been drifting away from the wheel, and this drift from the planes caused the stretching and warping enough to allow the creation of warforged, and not the other way around.

I think the important thing here is that Eberron has some major planar influences that most worlds don't have - predominantly the Far Realm and the Region of Dreams, both of which have on occasion linked the world with catastrophic results.

And just as important are the planes that don't influence Eberron. The world has no influence from the Abyss, or Baator, or Gehenna, and only limited contact with the upper planes. The only elemental planes that affect the world are Fire and Ice. This all changes the planar dynamic significantly.

This is a smart way to give a world a unique flavor, and I approve.

Whether or not Eberron's planes are the same as or part of Planescape's planes are a matter for the individual DM to decide.

The problem here is that the planes of Toril's tree do belong to the Great Ring in the normal fashion. All of the gods of the Realms have realms assigned to them within the 17 outer and 18 inner planes in 2nd edition, so it seems silly to also give them a bunch of identical realms in a cosmology suspiciously similar to the Great Ring in all respects except for methods of planar access.

The Torillian Tree has nothing new to offer a planewalking campaign except a needless plurality of Astral Planes. If it had some feature that the Great Ring didn't already have I'd be totally with you on this - I think more interesting planes are better than less interesting planes. But using both the Wheel and the Tree in the same campaign seems unnecessarily redundant.

While I like planescape a lot, I actually like WoTC's current policy on planes and campaigns better. While it does conflict with the 2e planescape model, it wasn't like that model didn't cause a whole lot of consistency errors of its own. It took separate campaigns that had not before been posited as belonging in the same universe and ramrodded them together for effects both interesting and sometimes problematic.

I actually like the Great Tree cosmolgy as it stands in the FR campaign--for one, it allows for their to be a greater degree of coherence to the setting. Lolth, for example, is much more powerful in the FR setting (a full-blown goddess rather than a pumped-up demon queen) than she ever was in the original Great Ring setting. Making her a separate entity from that Lolth explains why that is. Similarly, the tree set-up captures something important about a Faerunian setting--that its material plane, moreso than others, is a crossroads of planar influences and, as such, is one of the most important playing fields for extraplanar forces to work. If you make this just some perspectival error of the Faerunians, you make the setting a good deal paler.

I have found that being a little more strict about the cosmology also *gives* me adventure ideas. For example, I am planning to send some FR players off to the great ring for a little change of pace--which can be done without jury-rigging the system as it stands. The Manual of Planes states the plane of shadow can serve as a link between cosmologies and, by its illustration, straightaway implies that such a link exists between Faerun and the Ring. So, now the players have to find a way onto the plane of shadow, endure the trials of that plane, and then have the opportunity to play tourist in the great ring. Not only will the adventure be more interesting, but it makes the great ring something special, something the players had to really work to visit. As an aside, this view of the plane of shadow also gives substance to another aspect of FR--that new gods do appear in Faerun from other worlds, but that this is rare and requires them to abandon their old world (or, perhaps, send off an independent aspect of themselves--whatever).

If we want to think of Eberron in terms of ps, perhaps it could be treated as a particularly isolated planar constellation--an island if you will. Perhaps, too, Dal Quor is one of the few places with (a very few, untravelled, virtually unknown) connections to other planes--so that no direct planar travel has occurred for some time (remaining true to the Eberron setting). Planescapers might make their way to Dal Quor, perhaps even travel to dream versions of Eberron, but couldn't influence the world directly. Similarly, a very few natives of eberron might be able to form dream bodies that could travel to other planes, but be unable to bring anything back with them to the eberron proper (except that ever so invaluable resource of experience).

Last I checked, the same idea was posited in Spelljammer. In fact, there were several books on the crystal spheres of each solar system.

Personally, I would rather not combine the two. I think each one uses its different cosmology in different ways, and that each cosmology is important to that particular setting.

In Eberron, it's not just that they use different names and arrangements for planes. The planes are actually different, in that there's an evil fire plane, a good air plane, a plane of gloomy afterlife, a plane of vicious death. Sure, you can easily come up with equivalents, but Eberron was never about planewalking. All that stuff's much to surreal for such a down-to-earth world. There isn't even any substantial contact with the gods. Except for divine magic working, there is no proof that they even exist (mostly, I mean you can go up and talk to the Silver Flame, but the rest of the religions never have representatives of any deities come and visit the faithful. They're really quite quiet). Plus, the NPCs are so famously low-level that only your adventuring party could have access to plane shift.

I'm not even a entirely a fan of the Great Wheel. It has ups and downs. For ups, it's certainly neat enough. Everything has a place; every alignment and element and elemental combination has its plane. On the other hand, I really admire how the planes in Beyond Countless Doorways, for example, are just planes that are. Each one has a whole slew of characteristics, but not some overriding philosophy or feature, and I think it makes it an even more imaginative place to travel. If only it had as much development.

The Great Wheel is an archetypical symbol. It's use is not just elegant, but symbolic for the cycle of life.

I could see an indirect link between Eberron and the D&D cosmology (including Sigil), by having the Eberron planes correspond to areas of normal Outer and Inner Planes. In order to reach Eberron Proper through these planes, you'd have to pick a plane as it was swinging close to Eberron.

Sigilian portals would never link to Eberron Proper, but could connect to these planes. Then, it's just a matter of skill with a planar sextant and good timing.

I kind of had an image that Eberron can be found in the Astral pinning down Khyber in an attempt to stop him/her wrecking havoc on the planes while Syberis curls his/her body (the ring of Syberis) around his/her partner and enemy, wings enfolding the struggling pair to prevent Khyber receiving outside aid. The demi-planes circle between Syberis and Eberron like moons.

This cosmology just seems kind of poetic and allows planar travel to Eberron while making it difficult and very uncommon – you need to be strong enough to get through the barrier but inconspicuous enough that Syberis doesn’t directly intervene (I don’t want a dragon the size of a planet chasing me).

It’s also worth noting that the dragons of Eberron worship the dragon gods noted in the Draconicon (or whatever) the same as any other dragon across the planes, possibly recalling them from before the world was sealed off.

Eberron is NOT part of the Planescape universe at all. It's already been stated officially. It has nothing to do with any other published worlds ethier. So you can't officially go to Krynn, Faerun, Ravenloft, Darksun, or any other pre-published D&D world. But a individual DM can do whatever they want. If you just like the Eberron races you could simply incorporate them and make them "Planescapeish". It wouldnt be hard to do at all really. I'm already going to incoporate any new classes I like that can fit. (Besides things like Tiefling Ninja are damn cool.)

DAMMIT. double post.

Actually I see such a PC being killed for his wealth and decanter. The powers that be would definitly want to control the water supply and with a decanter of endless water they could basically sell water to the highest bidder and never run out.

While the uninspired 'canon says all campaign settings are different' party line is appreciated, we're Planescape. This means two important things:
1. We break the rules whenever we think it would be cool to do so.
2. It's our job to connect all the campaign settings. Ideally, we should do so with as much respect to the CS's concept as possible.

And really, it doesn't matter to a large degree, again because we're Planescape. We're not focussing on Eberron, Abeir-Toril, or Athas. We might pull things from those worlds, we might visit those worlds for a storyline here and there, but we focus on the planes - inner and outer, rather than material.

My campaign last year, I treated the eberron cosmology as extra planets in the ebberon solarsystem/crystal sphere link by portals and conducts to ebberon itself, though the player characters didnt visit them, they just went to the sun and back instead...

Kal

True but If a DM want's to connect it to PS it shall be.I mean heck it's conceivable to combine spelljammer and PS making the spelljammer world THE Prime with the crystal spheres something like demiplanes on the astral.