Saying Hi + a question about Blackrazor's origin

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Glim's picture
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Saying Hi + a question about Blackrazor's origin

Hi,

First off, I'll have to introduce myself, I guess. I'm a long-time lurker, first time poster here, and delighted to be aboard.

I'll start right away with comitting heresy, by admitting that I haven't actually played any Planescape per se (my system of choice is 3.5, the setting is not for everyone, takes a special kind of DM I haven't run into yet, and basically it's hard enough getting a gaming group together these days). I have however spent some time getting to know Planescape, and the planes, through this site, as well as The Mimir and a bunch of others.

Anyway, enough about me. On to Blackrazor.

I admit that canonfire might be a better place to ask about Greyhawk specific artifacts. However, its history is shrouded in a mystery that I think is more suited to planewalkers.

Blackrazor is a creepy artifact sword that sucks souls and corrupts its wielder with sinister whispers. It comes from the classic module White Plume Mountain, and it's such a hot item that it's been converted to every edition so far. More information is here for example, and my copy of White Plume Mountain is the Revised adventure WotC gives away for free. (page 30 and 31 deal with the background of this legendary sword).

This article basically says that the Revised adventure is the first time ever that some of the history is revealed. And here is where it gets intriguing.

The sword comes from a different reality/dimension/multiverse (the terms are used interchanged throughout the text), therefore its composition is unknown, and the stars and constellations represented on its blade are unfamiliar.

Now, I'm wondering where (or when) in the Great Wheel this strange reality fits. Some facts are known:

  • It is now (long) dead.
  • It used to have laws of physics that differ from the current multiverse.
  • The wizard K. visited this place brought the weapon from there, into the current multiverse.*
  • The entity-now-known as Blackrazor was a native of this place. And undead (of Atropal scale) to boot.**
  • All of the planes within this reality were under the control of a single group of beings, who liked order a lot.
  • Their control faltered, and the reality was overrun by meanies from forbidden realms.
Click here to expand or collapse this section
* - The canonfire wiki says he 'time-communed', but doesn't annotate at all, so I don't know where they get this from. This may or may not be important. See list below.
** - Notice that the text contradicts itself a little here, first stating that the entity-now-known-as-Blackrazor is a native, and later on that he is an intruder.

Theories provided to shoot holes in:

  1. It actually is a long dead multiverse, namely the one that existed before the current one, and the beings of Order are in fact the leShay. The problem with this is how a wizard gets to there. He's a little over 2000 years old, so he couldn't have been around back then, and even if he did use some form of time-travel, it's still quite a feat to get to an ex-multiverse that ended up being never-existant.
  2. It's not a multiverse. It is a half-world. A very exotic one, in that it's not a potential-plane that's put on pause in it's development, but one that has lived a whole lifetime and is now dead. The controlled 'planes' might have been layers.
  3. It's the original Plane of Law, before someone (Unnamed forces of Chaos, Obyriths/Qlippoth ?) decided to mess it up real bad.
  4. It's something more mundane, like a demiplane for instance, that has been particularly bothered by these unknown invaders (Far Realm entities and/or Elder Evils?)
  5. Since the Revised adventure is a child of 3rd edition, it could be an alternate cosmology altogether. I have never liked this particular approach myself, and would hope to find a better way to integrate this mysterious reality with the great wheel.

I guess my first ever post has gotten a little out of hand, but please don't be discouraged. Speculate and discuss Smiling

If this subject has been discussed extensively elsewhere, please link, and I'll shut my trap.

sciborg2's picture
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Re: Saying Hi + a question about Blackrazor's origin

great post, lots of great ideas, sadly I'm not familiar with Blackrazor. I like the idea of this sword existing before the current iteration of the Multiverse though.

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Loki De Carabas's picture
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Re: Saying Hi + a question about Blackrazor's origin

Hey Glim,

sorry it took a bit for this to hit my radar. You've found pretty much all the canon references to Blackrazor, and proposed some interesting explanations for it's existence. In the final analysis it all comes down to what works for you as a DM. (With that sort of baseline your gamers will have one heck of a campaign in front of them.)

In my own campaign series it's a fragment of the prior multiverse.

Great to see you unlurk, if you need anything just shout.

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Glim's picture
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Re: Saying Hi + a question about Blackrazor's origin

Thanks for your input sciborg2 and Loki.

Good to see I found most references, I feared I had overlooked something important.

I've gone with the previous multiverse story as well. Due to the bard in my game rolling extraordinary high on a lore check, I actually got to use it too, in a way Smiling

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Re: Saying Hi + a question about Blackrazor's origin

Lore and knowledge checks always figure prominently in my games. Without them you don't get past square one. I approve.

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ripvanwormer's picture
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Re: Saying Hi + a question about Blackrazor's origin

Because I'm a terrible person, this is the first time I've seen this thread. Mostly I just look at the updated topics on the front page and I miss a lot.

Glim wrote:
* - The canonfire wiki says he 'time-communed', but doesn't annotate at all, so I don't know where they get this from. This may or may not be important.

This comes from the late-2nd edition adventure Return to White Plume Mountain by Bruce Cordell, which stated (page 3) "While future-communing with the last surviving entities of a dying multiverse, he [Keraptis] received the sword called Blackrazor."

Taking literally, it's possible the dying multiverse was "our own," the same multiverse that Planescape and Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms are set in. That is, perhaps Keraptis was communing with entities from the far future of his own cosmos, just before it was due to wink out for the last time.

Alternately, it's an alternate reality similar, but not identical, to the Planescape multiverse. There was an "Ecology of the Sharn" in Dragon #373 that presented a parallel multiverse like this, destroyed by Tharizdun.

I think Blackrazor was one of a group of godlike parasitical entities who destroyed the dying multiverse, infesting it like worms and draining it of all of its energy. I was inspired by that idea when I wrote an origin myth for cloakers and dimensional warpers in this thread.

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