Primordials in Planescape

My impression is that the primordials objected to the gods attempting to bring stability to the world they were endlessly reshaping - that it was a philosophical difference that would have required some kind of war to hammer out regardless of what Tharizdun was doing.

Most of the gods vs. primordial war seems to have been between gods and primordials, with demons (primordials corrupted by the evil seed) only showing up afterward. I do notice that 4e has Dagon as substantially older than corrupted primordials like Demogorgon and Orcus, so perhaps obyriths are a completely different class of being, not connected to primordials.

I really like the gods vs. primordials story when it comes to D&D mythmaking - not myths inspired by real world deities, but in filling out the Greyhawk pantheon and so forth. I wouldn't consider it to be the "real" version of events with regard to Planescape, since it happens much too early for the gods as such to be around at all. The Wind Dukes of Aaqa battling the obyriths is what "really" happened, with the myths came later. But still, there seems to have been some kind of primal struggle in the Inner Planes before they settled in their modern structure, and Law and Chaos were in contention before the Wind Dukes were even born.

BTW, Ripvanwormer, I am developing something similar to the Primordial vs. Gods thing in regards to the Previous Age/Multiverse. Basically, there is a prevalent belief/theory that the first gods went to war with the Elder Evils and won. This occurred at the very beginning of the current Multiverse, not long after the elemental planes were spawned by the Ethereal. The Elder Evils were, of course, significantly weakened and fewer in number already due to the destruction of the previous multiverse.

Much is made of the aboleths' perfect memories, however.

No, you're thinking of the Juna. They're not deities; they're a race of three-sided aliens. They didn't spawn the main races; they just seeded them on the various worlds. They're just an incredibly ancient, powerful mortal race.

That's actually from Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss, page 126. The 92nd layer of the Abyss, Ulgurshek, is a draeden, a type of being originally described in Frank Mentzer's D&D Immortal Set, but very similar to (and, likely, identical to) the Sleeping Ones in the Paraelemental Plane of Ice.

The draedens did go to war against the earliest Immortals in their original context. The dispute was that the draedens hated matter and prefer to "swim" in planes of pure void, while the Immortals preferred planes of substance and form. The draedens lost and mostly went dormant, waiting for the entropy or disaster to destroy all the hated matter and leave the planes nothing but delicious void once again. Those draedens who remain active are normally found in the depths of space and the Astral Plane, where there is little substance to disturb them.

As I said, a lot depends on what your definition of a "god" is. The class of gods active in the multiverse today seem to be a relatively recent innovation, younger than the aboleths and obyriths. It was stated explicitly that obyriths such as Dagon existed before there were any gods. There do seem to have been godlike entities who were far older, however. If you wish to consider the primal beings who existed while the planes were first being formed "gods," that's probably valid, but they do seem to be a distinctly different class of beings from the gods known today.

The Far Realm exists beyond time - before the beginning and after the end of all things, outside the cycle of creation and destruction rather than before it. The primordials and "gods" are creatures born within Time, part of its great cycle. The beings called "Elder Evils" in the book of that name encompass many different classes of beings; some of them are Far Realm entities, some of them would be considered primordials in 4th edition, some would be considered gods or other entities. I would draw a sharp distinction between what Far Realm entities desire, which can vary, but primarily means shattering the circle of Time entirely and drawing everything into the Far Realm; what draedens desire, which is to return everything to a state of pure void, but not to shatter Time or interfere with the boundaries of the Far Realm at all; and what primordials desire, which is to return the mortal world to a state of primal chaos, not void.

There were probably a lot of different ways multiverse could have developed after creation, and a lot of the early conflict had to do with determining what the laws of nature would be, or if nature would even have laws. Guide to Hell's creation myth describes the Twin Serpents decreeing the Rule of Threes, Unity of Rings, and Center of All precepts. I'd treat this as metaphor, but something like this probably happened, with the Astral forces imposing order and physics on elemental Chaos. That's a different struggle than the one with the draedens, though, and different from the conflict with the Far Realm entities (which haven't yet been able to invade in force).

As a rough timeline:

The Far Realm doesn't really fit into the timeline at all. It attempts to impinge itself upon Time-bound reality, but hasn't completely succeeded. If it did succeed, all history would cease to exist and every event would be drawn into the nonlinear existence of the Far Realm. There may be a rupture at the end of time, and before the beginning of time, when the Far Realm is more accessible and the boundaries between the multiverse and the Realm Outside are more or less meaningless, but if the Far Realm ever completely won, the multiverse would be unable to recreate itself.

At the beginning of time, the planes were formless and void. The draedens existed. At some point they came into conflict with the forces that created the elements and the planes of alignment, and went into dormancy.

As per 4th edition, there may have been some sort of conflict between the primordial ancestors of the elementals, who preferred substance to be in a state of chaotic flux with no permanent forms, and with the first Astral beings who desired stability and form. The elemental beings would have been as opposed to the draedens as their Astral counterparts, since both preferred substance to pure void. This may evolve into the 3rd edition war between the Wind Dukes and the obyriths, though the Wind Dukes were originally elemental beings and the obyriths are apparently from the Abyss. I think there may have been a war between the current elemental rulers, who wished to divide the elemental chaos into discrete planes (and succeeded), and other elemental beings who desired the Inner Planes to remain an indistinguishable mix.

That brings us to the present age, when most of the planes are filled with substance and form and a certain amount of stability holds sway.

That's three different conflicts, and three different Ages, though all take place within the current multiverse. There may have been other cycles of the Multiverse, but only the leShay are thought to have survived from previous multiverses.

It's been suggested that Tharizdun and Ghaunadaur are beings from the Far Realm, though this hasn't been verified. Tharizdun seems, like the draedens, to wish to reduce everything to pure void. Unlike the draedens, he doesn't want anything to survive, even himself. He simply wants the universe to end; there's no indication he desires the Far Realm to assimilate it, however. Ghaunadaur doesn't seem to have any goals other than madness.

I don't imagine the kuo-toa are a very reliable source for events that happened long before their species existed, but the draedens are probably the first living creatures in the multiverse, and deserve a certain amount of creator credit for that alone, like beings in mythology like Tiamat and Ymir who resisted further creation but unwillingly played a role in it.

The idea that the Far Realm exists outside time, before the beginning and after its end, is from the third edition Manual of the Planes.

I would place the primordials chronologically before the formation of the modern inner planar structure, and before the birth of the Wind Dukes, before any order was brought to the inner planes.

The origin of ioun stones is another point of divergence between the Forgotten Realms and other 2e settings, because in FR Ioun was an ancient Netherese wizard who created the first ioun stones.

The 4th edition Forgotten Realms campaign guide suggests Ghaunadaur is from the Far Realm, but that might be the first time this suggestion was made.

""The 4th edition Forgotten Realms campaign guide suggests Ghaunadaur is from the Far Realm, but that might be the first time this suggestion was made.""

Not quite. LoM posited that Tharizdun, Ghaunadaur, and The Patient One might be a triad of 3 aspects of the same deity/entity. This seems highly unlikely to me, however.
I strongly doubt that Ghaunadaur is from the Far Realm. While it's true that he causes insanity or feeble-mind to everything he touches, he isn't inimical to Multiverse life like Far Realm entities are, and doesn't share their goals. So if he is from the Far Realm, his mind has been so polluted with ideas from this Multiverse (example: his clerics have access to the evil and chaos domains), that he can scarcely be considered an Elder Evil, let alone a being of the Far Realm (in other words, he's been naturalized to this multiverse).
Tharizdun problably isn't from the Far Realm either-- as ripvanwormer pointed out, he is probably an insane Draeden who achieved deity status.

I should mention that this is a major difference between primordial/Elder Evil-eque powers of this Multiverse and natives of the Far Realm in the canon (though I do not think they mentioned it directly). The Far Realm and antediluvian beings have no concept of evil, good, law, chaos, or balance, and, though they may be listed as evil- or chaotically- aligned for gaming purposes, they do not offer such domains to their clerical cultists or arcane devotee cultists. Those which have been heavily exposed to the ideas of this multiverse (Tharizdun, Ghaunadaur, etc.) are an entirely different matter of course, and do indeed offer these clerical domains. (There may be other 3x sources that contradict this unspoken rule, but it is definitely the case in LoM.)

Anyhow, with all this information, I'll probably edit the Elementals' creation story to some degree.

Back to the creator deities/first deities that I posited, I believe they likely would have been primordial beings like you intitially mentioned "that exist independent of belief", but not quite. They would be more akin to the Elemental Lords (Kossuth, Istishia, Akadi, and Grumbar), who can benefit significantly from belief (Kossuth is the most worshipped by mortals and as a result is an intermediate rather than lesser deity like his brothers and sister), but would not "die" were they to be entirely deprived of worshippers. It could even explain why these first powers would have gone to the trouble to create the Multiverse (or at least the first sentient races). This would have exhausted them and left them weak in the short-run, but in the long run they would end up more powerful from worship. Unfortunately, they likely did not anticipate that the mortals would create their own personal deities from belief.
Of course, I do not think the origins of the multiverse should be clear-cut even to the DM, so it's nice to have conflicting stories as we do. Mortal clerics, the powers, and the outsiders of the Upper Planes claim one thing, the sages and aberrations claim another, and the beings of the Lower Planes claim something else.

Ugh, I can't stand 4e's story elements. Too many retcons.

Same difference. Why can't they build on the classic 1E-3E story?

""Primordials fit in with the myth-mash of having all these differing pantheons existing together in the multiverse.""
Except that the Elemental Lords, Archomentals, and others have been changed from that to Primordials, which is what the Titans have been placed in as well.

""Though as I have stated that there's something universal about 'Primordials' based in many culture's myths, and that some cultures have a concept of a conflict between Gods and Primordials like the Aesir vs. Giants, Olympians vs. Titans or Devas vs. Asuras""
Except that the elementals don't really fit in with all of that. There is no hint at a major conflict between the elemental lords & archomentals and the current pantheons.
There's no way that the elemental lords would be primordials since they most certainly predate the Titans, Formorians, etc. by far (as the elemental planes, ethereal, and astral were the first planes to come into existence. Only after that did the Outer Planes and the Prime come into being from a seeping of the various elements, paraelements, and quasielements.)

Well, sure. But the majority of gods won't know, and the PCs are unlikely to ever know a lot of what the elemental lords know, so I don't think it much matters for most purposes. And even if the Elemental Lords remember how things used to be, that doesn't mean reality itself won't have changed the past around them, in defiance of their memories... see below for more on this idea.

I accept it, though from some unscientific polls I've done, I don't think it's generally accepted. Not that these things are determined democratically.

Me too. Probably the Inner Planes began as demiplanes and eventually blossomed into full planes. I've seen some people argue fervently otherwise, however.

I think the first powers would be the deities of the amphibious peoples, who are likely to have been the first aboleth slave races. Ramenos and Blibdoolpoolp are the chief survivors of this era. Ghaunadaur would likely have been around in this era, too, along with the primordial slime creatures.

The early amphibious gods might have gone on to create new species, including mammalian ones, who eventually created their own gods.

The Law-Chaos war likely began before the creation of mortal life (the obyriths, at least, are explicitly older than mortals or gods), though it didn't end until the mortal races were well-established. If you believe Fiendish Codex II, Asmodeus's fall was a result of the Law-Chaos war, his fervor for destroying obyriths causing him and his allies to become more like them, eventually becoming baatezu. 4th edition's Demonomicon claims that Pazuzu corrupted Asmodeus personally. Which, I suppose, is possible.

In a way, the Law-Chaos war is still going on, since the Blood War is a continuation of it. The beginning of the Blood War noted in the Hellbound timeline should be read as the beginning of the Law-Chaos war, since later events on that timeline like the appearance of the planar lords, the exploration of the planes, and the first use of petitioners to replenish planar races undoubtedly preceded the Battle of Pesh. And on that timeline, the first appearance of the gods and the first use of petitioners in that way are a long, long time (millennia, at least) after the Blood War began.

I'd place the aboleth empire, then, some time in the middle of the Law-Chaos conflict. The warring obyriths, vaati, and proto-devils probably ignore it at first, until the gods created by uplifted mortal races begin to interfere with their battles. They finally begin to conquer the Material Plane, and the Battle of Pesh, which changes the planar order, happens only after millennia of that.

I'm not clear on when the illithid empire (called Nihiliath in 4th edition) fell. A long time ago, certainly, and before the birth of the more ancient of the modern pantheons ("before the crowning of Ra"). Before the dawn of the Green Age of Athas between 74,000 and 14,000 years ago, when psionics bloomed on that world after a githzerai mind-bomb created the degenerate gith. And more than 12,000 years ago, when illithids from Glyth founded the city of Oryndoll on Toril. But it couldn't have fallen before the birth of humanity, since the gith races are human-descended.

I'd say beings like Cronus, Ra, Lendor, the jotuns and so on are relatively recent in multiversal terms, but although much older than the young gods in their respective pantheons. They emerge only with the birth of ancient human civilizations. The question here is whether the ancient pantheons emerged all at once, fully formed, with the titans already and always defeated, or if there was actually a period before the dawn of civilization when humanity worshiped titans instead of younger gods. Perhaps Cronus and his siblings were created in Carceri, complete with a history and memories of once having reigned in Arborea. They're no older than the myth cycle from which they emerged, and thus no older than the Olympians who are their supposed descendants.

It's tempting to put the primordials of 4th edition at this point, contemporaneous with the titans, so that they can fulfill the same role in the fictional D&D pantheons that titans, jotuns, Tiamat, and so forth fill in the historical D&D pantheons. And ignore any idea that they're the same as the elemental rulers. You get the same question here, of course. Were the primordials ever free, or was the great battle between primordials and gods already over when the two camps sprung into existence?

My inclination is toward the latter view. Mual-Tar was always chained; his chains have existed as long as he has. But Mual-Tar himself, and the gods who chained him, remember things differently. They remember a false history created by belief.

Ancient Netheril, of course, are much later. I associate the Elder Elves who opened the Vast Gate with the inhabitants of the Sinking Isle on Oerth, who would have lived more than 5,000 years ago (before the beginning of the elven calendar), but I have no idea how much more.

I think the only Spelljammer book that mentions Athas is The Complete Spacefarer's Handbook. It doesn't offer an explanation for why Athas is inaccessible, and doesn't even say that it definitely is. What the book says is "Whether it is unreachable by spelljammer or merely so far from these worlds that any journey would take lifetimes is unknown."

I think the explanation that Hyena gives above is fanon.

It's likely that defiler magic doesn't even work outside Athas's crystal sphere (since crystal spheres often have their own unique magic systems). It doesn't really make sense that it would, when you think about it. The way magic works on Athas, whether by preservers or defilers, is by draining the life from surrounding living things. It's not possible to do magic on Athas without doing this. Preservers do this slowly, in a way that can be renewed. Defilers do it quickly and blight the landscape around them. Magic on other worlds doesn't have any inherent effect on the surrounding life. It comes from other planes, typically the energy planes, or it flows across the land in ley lines, or from the moons, or in the form of Toril's Weave. A defiler on Toril would use the Weave the same as anyone else, and would be limited to using magic the same way other wizards use it. No matter how hard they pushed their spells, life would be unaffected. If they shot a tree with a fireball or a negative energy burst, they could kill it, but a non-defiler could do that just as easily.

However, Planescape mentions that defiling magic works in the Outer Planes. Perhaps because defilers believe it does. You can do magic in the Outer Planes by whatever system you brought from your world of origin (modified by whatever constraints are put in place by that plane or realm), so a wizard from Athas corrupts the landscape, a wizard from Toril draws from the Weave, and a Wizard of High Sorcery from Krynn is affected by the waxing and waning of their world's distant moons. But if you move to a world, you're bound by whatever the local system of magic is, so a Wizard of High Sorcery from Krynn has to draw from the Weave instead of Krynn's moons while visiting Toril. A wizard from Toril can benefit from Oerth's ley lines but not Cerilia's (since Cerilia's ley lines require divine blood to use). A wizard from any other world, while visiting Athas, has to draw magic from the surrounding vegetation, and can learn to defile while on that planet.

""I'm not clear on when the illithid empire (called Nihiliath in 4th edition) fell. A long time ago, certainly, and before the birth of the more ancient of the modern pantheons ("before the crowning of Ra").""
Well, yes, Ra is part of the modern pantheon, so it would be before him.

""I'd say beings like Cronus, Ra, Lendor, the jotuns and so on are relatively recent in multiversal terms,""
Agreed.

""or if there was actually a period before the dawn of civilization when humanity worshiped titans instead of younger gods.
I'd go with this one.

""That's never been in any DS canon I ever seen. That's sounds more like something that came SJ which is nothing more than an interpretation of how things might have happened. DS canon never even mentions any deities by name.""

The names given were by using what general info we get from Spelljammer-- the Grey would have had to be erected by powers that could exist in the Phlogistan, particularly by powers for whom the galaxy and crystal spheres in general is part of their portfolio. It probably did come from Fanon, however.

""Magic on other worlds doesn't have any inherent effect on the surrounding life. It comes from other planes, typically the energy planes, or it flows across the land in ley lines, or from the moons, or in the form of Toril's Weave.""

In practice, yes. In theory it would be possible since most real-life cultures have folklore about "warlocks" and "black magick" practitioners who fuel their magic with the life-energy of other creatures, and this (along with curses) was used to explain the existence of plan diseases. There are more than 6 separate diseases known in English-speaking countries as "witch's blight", for instance. Many qi/chi cultivation schools also talk about and admonish people who suck the chi out of trees and then use it (which kills said tree)
Defiler and preserver magic in Dark Sun is based directly on this system and on white magick in many new age religions, who claim that their magick works with the forces of nature/balance or even restores them. Among many of these covens, the definition of "black Magick" and the "left handed path" not only includes magick that causes harm and subverts the will, but also any magick that causes imbalance.

"Sealing off Athas to prevent the spread of defiling magic would be like sealing off Oerth to prevent the spread of elves."

Would it be possible to seal off Faerun to prevent the spread of drow who rebel against their upbringing to become noble rangers? It seems like one finds those everywhere now.

Give up the Order of the Stick? BLASPHEMY!

The original back story for the psurlons, from the Dark Sun Monstrous Compendium II, is that many thousands of years ago they originated on a world other than Athas. They tried to link the minds of their entire species together, but a psychic backlash caused a massive rift to the Astral Plane to open up and destroy their world. As a race, they have come to accept their new home in the Astral Plane and have no desire to go anywhere else, but individual psurlons have noted that Athas may be able to survive the psychic forces that destroyed their original home, and are interested in repeating their experiment there. That said, the book says they're only found on Athas if summoned there.

Lords of Madness claims the psurlons originated in the Far Realm, but doesn't offer an explanation for why they left it. In the absence of any compelling Far Realm-related story, I'd prefer to go by their original version. They're not necessarily mutually exclusive - they could have originated in the Far Realm, colonized a world on the Material Plane, and then destroyed that. Or the world they destroyed could have been part of the Far Realm. But I don't see where that adds anything interesting to the race. I do like the Mak Thuum Ngatha connection.

Of course, there are Athasian elves in Pelion, and there's the Athasian ghetto, New Tyr, in Sigil (and Athasian halflings have been spotted in Sigil's halfling neighborhood, too). Dregoth, Ravager of Giants, left Athas to explore the Outer Planes during the 168th King's Age. Ancient githyanki tried to conquer Athas approximately 14,000 years ago, and invaded again in Free Year 6. The Grey obstructs planar travel without making it impossible.

The PSMCIII is actually pretty close to the DSMCII. It says "Psurlons were once natives of a prime-material world, the name of which is now lost," and recounts that it was destroyed by the giant psurlons. The handful that survived fled to the Astral. It also calls the psurlons "newcomers to the Astral Plane (relatively speaking)." It's not clear if the cold, airless prime-material world they go to rear their young is the remnants of their homeworld or not.

I've started listing ideas for a psurlon-themed crystal sphere here. I'm thinking they originated in the Far Realm after all, invading their "native" world long, long ago in the name of their terrible god.