The Tree of Life -- a new planar pathway

Otz Chaim (The Tree of Life)

    Oceanus is the planar pathway for the Upper Planes; it has a dark reflection in the Styx as the river for the Lower.  The lawful side has the Labyrinthine Portal, and artifice among the chaotic gave rise to the Infinite Staircase.  But for the World Tree there is no such twin.  This is a proposal for a lawful reflection of the World Tree: the Otz Chaim, the Tree of Life.  This presentation glosses over the monotheist aspects of the Tree (Dead Topic!); this would be a tree associated to the faiths of Mount Celestia and their struggles with the denizens of the Nine Hells and Acheron.  In a new campaign, this may simply be inserted into continuity as a pathway that has always been there, or it might be a new thing, a constructed pathway nurtured by the archons or the inhabitants of Bytopia or the gardeners of Arcadia, perhaps simply for the sake of generosity to planar travelers, or perhaps as part of efforts to restore Arcadia's lost layer.  PCs might even be involved with the planning and growth phases, if the GM is interested in such a campaign.

     The information used here is based roughly on the material of GURPS Cabal, with Planescape adaptation for the planes it touches.  This version is presented for the traditional Great Wheel cosmology; another version for Pathfinder's cosmology of the Inner and Outer Spheres will follow.

     The Tree of Life appears to be a giant fig tree with ridged bark.  Gravity varies at different points along the Tree.  Portals manifest as portions of the bark marked off by rings of different coloration, and radiate magic to arcane or planar sight.  They lead to similarly marked portals on the other side, trees whenever possible, usually variegated stone if not.

     The Tree is carefully organized, and presents the same aspect to all planewalkers; it branches out at ten named points, the sephiroth, singular sephira, each of which is attuned to a certain kind or set of planes in the cosmos.  Each sephira is a planar touchstone.  The sephiroth always appear in the same relative order, and are listed below starting at the bottom.  (Note, by the way, that attunement to the energies of a sephira is a kaballistic achievement which is normally supposed to be done in order, from the bottom up.  Each planar touchstone may require attuning to a lower one first -- or there might exist a "Treewalker" prestige class for lawful planewalkers, each layer based on a sephira, for 10 levels culminating in a perfection of law in the self!)  Each is about a day's easy travel from the next for a human climbing or walking, so the whole Tree would take a little over a week to traverse.

     The Otz Chaim is rooted on the Prime Material, so it can stretch across all of reality.  Indeed, its caretakers say that one who knew the right route could theoretically find a portal anywhere in reality, and that the Tree of Life underlies all structure in existence; that the known portals appear naturally simply because they open spontaneously at thin border points.  This is theology, though.  More normally, travelers can ascend along two sides of the trunk.  One side causes each sephira to manifest in an elemental form, giving access to the Inner Planes, and one causes the sephiroth to manifest in iconic form, giving access to the Outer Planes.  To travel from the Outer to the Inner, or vice versa, means a traveler must descend to the Prime and re-ascend; there are no shortcuts around the trunk.  (Some claim that in fact these are two different Trees, the Tree of Life reaching the elemental planes and the Tree of Knowledge reaching the planes of belief.  If so, though, they're very intertwined at the roots.)  The exception to the ascension is the Elemental Plane of Earth reached from Malkuth, the lowest sephira. 

     The Tree opens more easily accessible gates in the lower sephiroth to layers of Outer Planes more welcoming of travelers.  The higher one goes, the more secure the gates: the guard is more numerous, made up of tougher individuals, and often fortified on the arrival side.  Usually, the layers accessed are deeper into the plane, but that's often not the case.  The planewalker traffic on the higher levels of the outer-planar trunk of the Tree is thinner, made up of bloods on serious business that they don't rattle their bone-boxes about.

     The best example of this is Mt. Celestia, gates to whose layers appear in neat order as one goes up the Tree.  Lunia's gate is freely open to travelers (like all gates to Lunia, the branch dunks arriving planewalkers in the Silver Sea; the gate appears in the side of a mighty fig tree that leans out over the waters, so at least you're close in to shore).  Mercuria's layer is already guarded on the other side by lantern and hound archons who will want to know your business; by the time a traveler has ascented to the fifth sephira of Geburah, where Mertion's gate appears, he can expect a frosty reception from powerful archons who are running a military installation and don't have time for sightseers, especially as the gate opens directly from a small tree into a broad, well-cleared field inside a walled courtyard kept under watch.  Fortunately, all the gates to Mt. Celestia are two-way, so a traveler can turn right back around the way he came; the archons won't leave the Seven Heavens on their own accord, though a troublemaker might find himself pursued by the living paladins and (often archon-summoning) mages encamped on the other side of the gate, who won't let problems for the Heavens fester just out of sight.

The Sephiroth in Brief Outline

1: Malkuth.    A place of foundations and beginnings.  It appears as an enormous tree rooted on a stout island in a normal Prime Material crystal sphere, its trunk fading into invisibility, the lower levels intertwined with stout stone buildings.  Portals here reach points on the Prime and the elemental planes of Earth, Mineral, and Dust.

2: Yesod.    A place of interfaces and edges.  One side of the trunk gives access to the Ethereal and some of the better-known demiplanes; the other sways in the Astral.  It also touches Mechanus (division between the Upper and Lower Planes), as well as the Outlands and Sigil.

3: Hod.        A sephira of flux and phase shifts, its portals access either the paraelemental planes (Ice, Magma, Ooze, and Smoke), or the mercurial layer of Mercuria on Mt. Celestia, the petrifying layer Thuldanin of Acheron, and the diametrically-opposed poles of conflict that are Amoria and Oinos.

4: Netzach.    A sephira of fluidity and sensuality.  Elementally, it access Water, Steam, and Salt; among the outer planes, portals here are found to Venya, Eronia, peaceful Abellio, and the so-called gentle land of Khalas. 

5: Tiphareth.    A place of light and heat.  Its elemental side reaches Fire, Radiance, and Ash; its portals on the Great Wheel touch Solania, layer of the Sun; blazing Avernus, in one of the few portals to the Nine Hells anywhere on the Tree; the home fires and forge-fires of industrious Dothion; and the blind volcanic rage of Chamada.

6: Geburah.    A place of mixed energies, sometimes as shadows, sometimes in open war.  It crosses the plane of Shadow; it also houses the militant bastion of Mertion, the only Upper Plane represented here, holding its ground against spillover from the wars of Avalas.  The shades are quieter but no less disturbing where the portals lead to the icy whip-caress of Mungoth, or the gloom of Niflheim.

7: Chesed.    The sephira where the spark begins to separate and purify from the substrate reality.  It is a merciful respite from evil, though the sacred is not necessarily safe in all ways.  Its elemental portals reach Air, Lightning, and Vacuum; Jovar's heavily guarded portal sits here, and the angels watch well the gateway to Thalasia. Tempestuous Shurrock blows the branches here, about the only loosely-watched portal, since only a previously-unknown portal to the boundary layer of Buxenus will get you past the wardens unseen.

8: Binah.    The darkest and most dangerous sephira.  Its elemental portals gape to the Negative Energy Plane.  On the Outer Planar side, there is no celestial haven: the gates here open to deepest Pluton, night-shrouded Krangath, bitter Ocanthus and, in a strange stretch of the power of law, a shifting portal to different layers of Carceri!

9: Chokmah.    The highest sephira with any known usable portals leads to places of hidden, nearly-unattainable wisdom.  On the elemental side is the mute, vibrant life well of the Positive Energy Plane; on the Outer Planar side, travelers who come here rarely discuss their trips, for they deal with hidden Belierin (the portal here's only in, and while it may look unwatched, it isn't), Nemausus (which doesn't even look unwatched, these days), Tintibulus, the somewhat quiet layer but still sufficiently deadly layer of Acheron visited by studying mages.  The only supposedly open portal is to Grenpoli, Baator's only other connection to the Tree.  If you think that's a safe route, you're not likely to have made it here in the first place.

10: Kether.      Kether is the Crown, the sephira of ultimates.  There's a portal here to Chronias, to be sure, but the only ones who can use it are those who are prepared to enter Chronias anyway, and they don't leave.  Are there other, usable portals here?  Maybe.  Suggestions run around that there are portals here to the fabled Elemental Plane of Time, and these days maybe to the prisons of the vestiges, or a way off the Tree entirely and into this "Far Realm."  But no one who knows is talking freely.

GMs can detail each sephira to fit their games, especially shifting politics.  In general, each will be populated by beings native to the planes the sephira touches, seeking to control portals to their world for whatever purposes they pursue; there will be a planar touchstone, with effects arising from the nature of the sephira.  A few suggestions are below.

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Malkuth: Malkuth lies within a crystal sphere.  An enormous tree, miles around at the base, branches out at staggering heights from elephantine branches that periodically cast down roots to support their weight.  Tropical warmth bathes the air underneath a thick green canopy, usually dappled with stray sunbeams and sometimes dripping with a soft rain that has wended through the leaves.  Entangled with the roots are numerous temples and halls of stout stone, housing a small city-state of all manner of species calling itself simply Malkuth.  Many of them worship the Tree itself as the tutelary Power of their sphere, and whether it is aware of the fact or not, the faithful priests of the Tree of Life are functional.  (A cleric of the Tree can pick from the Law, Plant, and Travel domains.)

The gnarled roots of the Tree in Malkuth tumble across a tropical island dozens of leagues wide, and can lead to any of numerous Prime Material worlds.  Most cluster around some root thrust down from a branch high above.  What links the worlds in a given cluster, if anything, is a philosophical mystery many of the caretakers are interested in, and there are plenty of theories.  The deepest roots of the Tree penetrate into a grand cave system, where they hold portals to elemental Earth as well as its associated quasi-elemental planes, Mineral and Dust.

Malkuth touchstone: The soil around the Tree is interspersed with plots of luxury crops that can grow decently in shade: tobacco, cacao, coffee, and tea, among others.  Most food the city needs must be imported, and they trade these crops for the supplies they need.  Some of the soil is kept aside to nurture the Tree itself, and this is often enriched with material from the Plane of Earth.  A day spent in meditative cultivation of the Tree (which requires either a successful Profession (farmer) roll, or direction from a knowledgeable local), provides the base ability to cast detect plants at will (detect animals or plants, limited to plants).  The higher-order ability can be used once: as transport via plants, with additional passengers as a druid of caster level equal to your ECL, but with only one destination, the Tree itself in Malkuth.  The focus is an elaborately carved piece of bark (worth the money as both an artwork and as a limited, slow-renewing resource).

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Yesod: The Tree of Life must be climbed physically from Malkuth to Yesod, with the ridges of bark wrinkled underfoot.  As the traveler loses sight of the ground below, he finds planar portals reaching into either the Ethereal, where the trunk is wrapped in misty grey fog, or the Astral, where the trunk is lined in silvery light.  (If he avoids either he eventually gets to the top branches of the living Tree on the crystal sphere, but other than thin air, open sky and miles upon miles of dark green foliage, there's little to see.)  Gravity in Yesod is toward the Tree, but doesn't extend very far off.  On the ethereal side, travelers can choose to exit into the Ethereal itself simply by stepping off, and moving as normal through the Ethereal Plane; this would allow access to demiplanes a planewalker knew how to find, or other sites in the Ethereal.  The Astral side is much the same; a traveler who steps off here can simply will himself back on as long as he's nearby, or he can choose to drop into the Astral proper. 

This sephira is a place of borders and edges.  There are many dips that appear to be enormous, healed-over notches, some of which contain portals and some of which hold parts of a tent city called Liminal that serves as a temporary camp and bazaar for travelers going further up the Tree.  It's no surprise, perhaps, that the gate to Sigil is here, and there's a fair amount of traffic.  Its Sigil end moves around various trees in the city; the lawful residents of the tents attribute the pattern, if any, to the Lady's will, and if it's a bit chaotic for their tastes at least she hasn't closed it yet.  There're also more standard portals to a few points in the Outlands, and a single gear-shaped discoloration of bark that leads to Mechanus, exiting the Labyrinthine Portal.  This one's only open at intervals an expert can calculate, and travelers headed to Mechanus should also know that access to the Labyrinthine portal is one-way out; if a basher wants to get back, he'll need to make the proper arrangements with the modrons.  Finally, there are several well-used gates here to and from points in Lunia; the ones going in all lead to the Silver Sea, of course, but some are more convenient to a given locale in that layer than others.

If the Tree connects to the Infinite Staircase, or to other interplanar nexuses, those connections would likely be along one of the branches off of this bole, but if anyone has found them they're not saying.

Yesod touchstone: the branches of the Tree blossom here, casting off petals into the Astral and Ethereal (male in the one, female in the other).  To attune himself, the seeker must cast himself into the plane and collect fresh specimens of these, contemplating the Tree from within the surrounding plane for a day.  Later recharge merely requires traversing Yesod from Malkuth to Hod.  The base ability is the use of longstrider; the higher-order ability causes the effect of temporal stasis.  It only lasts for a number of days equal to the user's ECL, can only be used twice, and only functions on a willing creature.

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Hod: This sephira is made of phase shifts, expressing order as it oversees transitions.  The elemental side reaches the paraelemental planes of Ice, Magma, Ooze, and Smoke.  Creatures of fire and magma can scar the Tree where they pass, so the gates to Smoke and Magma are often marked with char.  Bashers from Ice, some of them loyal to Cryonax, set up camp here and claim to be protecting the Tree from such folk, questioning travelers about their business and sometimes extorting tolls.

The Outer-Planar side of Hod touches Mercuria, and the archons on the other side would rather folks started at Lunia and earned their way upward, so they'll want to know why someone's in such a hurry, and the gates are watched.  They're not your main worry, though: Hod also reaches Thuldanin, second layer of Acheron, and the Mercykillers keep a tight watch on traffic through Hod.  Seems the usual portal ends up close to the Mines of Marsellin, and they'd rather control it themselves.  However, the other forces of the plane do put up a fight, so on any given day the army in charge you meet might change.  (As long as they have some living berks to spare; the petitioners don't cross.)

Interestingly, Elysium and the Grey Waste are both reached by the Tree, too, starting here: portals to their first layers, Amoria and Oinos, can be found here.  The open portals to either shift in number and density, and whichever one's more numerous tends to impart an air to the sephira.  If there are plenty of portals to Eronia open today the sephira is bright and easy to pass, and even the Mercykillers are likely to be more Sons of Mercy than Sodkillers.  If portals to Oinos outnumber them, keep your head down around the gatemen.  These shifts are apparently linked to the patterns of elemental control on the other side of the Tree, though how is hard to say.

Hod touchstone: To attune to Hod requires understanding patterns of change.  The seeker must watch the patterns of portal control or Amoria/Eronia shift for at least 24 hours, communicating somehow with the other side of the Tree to obtain news, or waiting until this information can be communicated to him.  He must then successfully analyze this data with an Int check against a DC of 13.  Recharge requires gathering information about events since the planewalker last passed through such as with Gather Information or Diplomacy, against CD 10.  The base ability is an increase in Leadership score by +3.  Three times, each once per day, you can cast any spell your GM allows with transmute in the title, at least including rock to mud, mud to rock, or metal to wood.

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Chokmah: The ninth sephira is the last sephira accessible to most travelers.  It's a long way up, and a basher looking down, through some trick of the pathway's geometry, can see the entire Tree, or at least a symbol of it, all the way below him.  The elemental side reaches the Plane of Positive Energy, and the whole sephira vibrates with that life.  The branches are thin but strong, their leaves a rich green that both glows softly and drinks in the energies of the Ethereal and Astral.  The branches sway in unseen currents, even in the Astral where no such wind should exist, and a traveler climbing the branches needs a good grip (Climb DC 20 to make headway) or he may find himself cast into the surrounding plane (Balance checks at DC 20, if someone must fight or work in the sephira).  Even the Astral side is speckled with shafts of bright colored light, as if a rainbow sun were shining from above.

It's a quiet place of hidden wisdom.  The portals here reach Belierin, the mysterious third layer of Elysium, and these are heavily guarded by guardinals and even devas who rarely expect any authorized traffic.  Others reach Nemausus, once the deepest layer of Arcadia and now misplaced on Mechanus.  The guards here are Harmonium, formians and modrons, but each group is likely to have different purposes to their guard, sometimes in conflict.  The modrons'll sometimes permit passage, but the others are almost certain to be looking to catch any trespassers.  A few portals also enter Grenpoli, the City of Secrets deep within Baator.  They're less guarded; travellers must abide by Grenpoli's laws and arrive without weaponry, though.  Which portals lead back out is something a traveller either has to know or has to bargain for.  Only the portals to Tintibulus, the almost-empty third layer of Acheron embodying severe geometry, are fairly easy to pass, usually for folks seeking magical research.

Chokmah touchstone: Attuning to the Tree on Chokmah requires learning something about oneself through the environment.  This vaguely-defined process has resulted in a number of peculiar means being pursued by new arrivals, though spells of divination followed by a day or so of meditation are generally considered a safe course.  Anything that earns at least 10 XP should also work, at the GM's discretion.  Someone attuned to Chokmah has a +1 bonus to Wisdom, and 9 floating levels of spell-like ability that can be used in any combination to duplicate spontaneous spells of the Knowledge domain.  Later recharge requires repeating the process.

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Kether: The highest sephira deals with ultimates.  The slender branches here are inaccessible to all or most would-be travelers.  Gravity is directed down along them rather than toward them, so they appear to branch up and off into radiant infinity.  The portals here are keyed rather than guarded.  One is known to lead to Chronias, like the Bridge of al-Sihal.  The key is simple: one must be a petitioner of Mt. Celestia already worthy of entering Chronias.  That's all.  Without it, a traveler simply walks along the branch unendingly, until he turns around and is back at the fork.  Where the others go, it's unclear; by definition these branches lead to planes almost entirely beyond mortal ken.  Some say this sephira will become mature when the Tree bears a new fruit and the planes themselves develop a new level of reality.  Some say these branches grow into new paths when new planes appear, and find themselves reconfiguring the tree.  It's true that the branches do grow when used as a planar touchstone.  Since there's no through travel here, most only come for that reason.

Kether touchstone: do 250gp worth of crafting here, and offer it to the tree in sacrifice; the Tree will absorb it and grow.  Base ability, +2 to the Craft skill used or +1 caster/manifester level to the spells/powers invested into a crafted item; higher order ability, +1 caster level to Creation spells or +1 manifester level to metacreativity powers, usable 10 times.