Skein of Worlds:Old Main Page

This is an attempt to better organize and expand on the setting I started on the D&D message boards a long time ago. (Yes, I'm ArchmageOmega on that board.) I also have an old website for this, but I intend this page to be more up-to-date and complete. BTW, if you have a better name for this than Skein of Worlds, let me know. This is a work in progress, so if you have something to contribute, please say something. I'll go back and clean up the presentation of this once I get it all down. --MagiMaster

Overview

This setting is designed for Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, but could easily be adapted to other systems since it doesn't specify too much in the way of rules. I will use terminology from D&D and The Manual of the Planes to describe things though, since that's what was originally used to design this. (It's also no coincidence that it's organized similarly to The Manual of the Planes.)

This is based on the standard cosmology, the Great Wheel. In the Great Wheel cosmology, it is assumed that the material plane is an infinite plane, full of spheres of material; however, only one or two of these spheres are ever used. The most immediate difference in the Skein of Worlds is that most of these spheres are inhabited and there are ways of travelling between them. Most of the other differences stem from trying to restrict methods of travel and from extrapolating the consequences of that.

Finally, the Skein of Worlds setting is designed to accommodate any level of play from level 1 to epic to deific.

The Material Plane

The material plane consists of an infinte number of spheres hanging in an infinite void. These spheres tend to group together in small clusters with large gaps (and little interaction) between clusters.

The Spheres

There are three different types of spheres: the elemental spheres or planets, the positive energy spheres or suns and the negative energy spheres or black holes.

The Elemental Spheres

The elemental spheres, or planets, (usually) exist as a balance of the four elements. Each planet has an overall balance, but few planets are uniform. Different areas of a planet can have slightly different balances of the elements. This can be more obvious in some places than others. One of the clearest examples is a hot, dry desert where there is too much fire and not enough water. In places of especially high concentrations of one element vortices into the Elemental Tempest can form. A planet that is heavily unbalanced towards one element might gain a minor elemental trait. Rarely a planet may be lacking all four elements. Such a place would be a lifeless ball of cold, grey dust with a thin, unbreathable atmosphere.

Earth

Earth provides the solid ground. It is the most stable element, and rarely fluctates much. Areas with too little earth are dusty or flowing. Quick sand or tar pits would be a localized example of this. Areas with too much earth would be very rocky and mountainous. Earth vortices tend to form in deep caves.

Air

Air provides, well... air. Air fluctuates a good deal as the winds come and go. Areas with too little air tend to make breathing difficult. This might manifest in any number of ways, from a simple lack of air, to stagnant air, to a lot of dust or water vapor suspended in what air there is. Areas with too much air tend to be very windy. Air vortices tend to form in large, high clouds.

Air exists even underground and underwater. Areas underwater with too little air can't support sealife very well. Areas underwater with too much air tend to manifest as underwater fountains of bubbles and the like.

Water

Water provides the oceans, lakes, rain and all other forms of moisture. Water doesn't fluctuate very rapidly, but its changes are sometimes pronounced, bringing dry days and rain, or drought and floods. Areas with too little water are simply dry. Areas with too much water tend to have a lot of lakes and heavy rains. Even areas underwater can lack water, even if that's hard to put into words. Such areas would be similar to areas that lack air aboveground, but are overall pretty rare. Water vortices tend to form in the deep ocean rifts.

Fire

Fire provides warmth. Areas with too little are cold, and areas with too much are hot, but fire is the most unstable element. It can fluctuate wildly even within a single day. Fire vortices mainly form in volcanoes.

The Positive Energy Spheres

The positive energy spheres, or suns, are the source of most light on the material plane. They're about the same size as a planet, but don't have much in the way of a surface or native life. Suns are mainly giant vortices into the positive energy plane.

If a planet was close enough to a sun, it might gain the minor positive-dominant trait. The sun would be very large in the sky, and even at night it wouldn't be as dark as in other places. Such a place wouldn't necessarily be any hotter though. Worlds with the positive-dominant trait would be hard places for normal civilizations to flourish since the forces of nature would be so much stronger.

The Negative Energy Spheres

The negative energy spheres, or black holes, are very similar to suns. They're about the same size, and don't have much of a surface or native life. The biggest difference is that a black hole is a vortex to the negative energy plane. Since it neither emits nor reflects light, it's very difficult to see, unless it's close enough to block the light from something else, such as a number of stars or a sun or planet.

A planet too close to a black hole would be a very dark place. Even during the day, it wouldn't be as bright, and at night the black hole could be seen as a great black disk in the sky. Any native life on such a planet would tend to grow and reproduce fairly slowly.

Planetary Systems

As previously mentioned, spheres tend to clump together into small systems. There's almost always at least one of each type of sphere in a system, and usually several more. (Planets tend to be about 3 times as numerous as either suns or black holes.)

Suns are easily visible from anywhere within a system, and even from other systems (as stars). Planets are usually visible from within the same system, although the further planets may require a telescope to see as more than a bright star. Black holes are rarely visible unless they eclipse something else.

Note: I have no idea how spheres move within systems. Simply rotating in place isn't enough, but they have no particular reason to orbit each other in any simple way.

Travelling Between Spheres

Travelling between spheres within a system is, naturally, easier than travelling within systems, but no means of travel is particularly easy on the whole.

Portals

The simplest way to get between two spheres is through an open portal. You can clearly see what's on the other side and simply step (or ride, or sail) through. Finding and opening a portal though is no simple task.

Portals are ancient artifacts of unknown origin. (Actually, they have many origins, but few people know much, if anything, about them.) A portal links two places somewhat like a gate spell. There are many portals in existence, but most are hidden, locked or both. The key to a locked portal can be any number of things from a specific item to a time of day or year to a particular bloodline. Unlocking a newly discovered portal can be very difficult since there is often little to no information as to the portal even existing, much less when it was made or what it was used for.

Not all portals are locked though. Even though they may always be open, they still might be very hard to find. There is no distinct boundary between one side and the other. Light, sound, objects and even magic pass through unhindered. If there is no way to look around both sides of the portal (where one might see two different views), there's really no physical way to tell where one side begins and the other ends. Even magical means rarely work. Normally, detect magic would cause a portal to glow brightly (even blindingly so); however, most portals were built with enchantments to prevent such simple spells from working on them. (This could have been done for any number of reasons, and likely varies from portal to portal.)

Though rare, there are some large, always open portals out in the open. These tend to become important centers of trade between the two planets they connect. Assuming the portal is built on suitable terrain (and sometimes not-so-suitable terrain), the area around it is likely to grow into a fairly large city spanning both sides of the portal. (Portals on suns and black holes exist, but are even rarer than portals on planets. Large, always open portals on a sun or black hole are basically non-existent for a number of reasons.)

Finding and unlocking a new portal and charting what's on the other side can be a great adventure, or an even greater business opportunity. This is another reason why many portals remain unknown. Their finders may not want to share the secret, eventually taking it to their grave. On the other hand, many such secrets are passed down from father to son, or master to apprentice, so some portals that may seem undiscovered might just be well kept secrets.

Portals are always built into either a natural or artificial structure. All known portals are immobile and it is theorized that moving one would be a bad idea.

Magic

The range of Teleport is nowhere near big enough to move between even the closest planets (which would be about 200000 miles). Greater teleportation and teleportation circle are powerful enough to move between spheres. (Even spheres in distant systems are part of the same plane.) This isn't without problems though. Getting an accurate description of a distant sphere generally means having to go there, which defeats the whole purpose. It does allow someone to revisit a sphere they've been to before though, or to allow others to visit a sphere they've been to.

Gate, plane shift and similar spells are useless for direct travel between two spheres, but since the Astral Plane coexists with all spheres, it can be used to visit even unknown spheres. The Astral Plane isn't without its own hazards though.

There exist some spells designed specifically for moving between spheres. Note: insert such spells here.

Other Means of Travel

Some creatures are capable of travelling though the Void. By observing these, some wizards have built craft capable of travelling between spheres. Merely surviving in the Void requires a great deal of magic, but moving over the great distances between spheres requires even more. Any such craft is a great feat of construction, engineering and magecraft, but few if any can move fast enough to travel between systems.

There may be other methods of moving between spheres, but anyone who knows of such a method is keeping it secret.

The Void

The Void is all the space between spheres and makes up most of the material plane. Despite being called the Void, it's not entirely empty. Each element is present in minute amounts, but this medium is thin enough to rarely matter. As hostile as it may seem, the Void isn't lifeless either. Creatures capable of surviving and thriving in the Void tend to be very powerful. With so little to subsist on (besides each other), most of these creatures will travel to spheres from time to time to feed. Thankfully, such an event is rare as one would imagine the consequences of such a visit to be pretty terrible.

The Transitive Planes

The transitive planes are those planes that exist as fabric upon which the other planes rest, at least metaphorically speaking. The vocabulary of mortals is ill equipped to truly describe things that exist in more than three dimensions. What follows is an attempt to use this limited vocabulary to describe the various ways these various planes interconnect.

The Etheral Planes

The simplest of the transitive planes is the Etheral Plane. This plane exists as like a shadow behind the material plane, at least around the spheres. It seems that the Etheral Plane doesn't extend very far into the Void. Only the closest of spheres are connected etherally. Some planar travellers tell of the Deep Etheral, where it extends farther and farther into the Void, at the same time getting farther and farther from the material plane. Such tales invariably involve frightening encounters with strange and dangerous creatures, although how much truth there is in these tales is unknown.

While near the material plane, the Etheral looks very similar. Colors are muted, but the terrain is mostly the same. Moving deeper into the Etheral is like moving though the layers of an onion, although there seems to be no center to move towards or away from. As the material plane gets further away, the terrain becomes more and more alien. Landmarks are lost, and even which way it is back to the material plane becomes harder and harder to determine. Not only do travellers through the Etheral Plane risk getting lost, they must also deal with the difficulty of moving deeper and deeper through the layers. Most spells that don't allow travel to a specific place can only traverse a single layer at a time. The Deep Etheral may be a means to travel between spheres, but by no means is it an easy route.

Old buildings may bleed over into the first layers Etheral after many long years, and if such a building has been recently destroyed, it may be possible to see a ghost of the building still. Life, on the other hand, doesn't bleed through in the same way as inanimate materials do. Life only exists within a single layer, and each layer seems to have at least some life of its own.

The Astral Plane

The Astral Plane is, more than any other plane, the fabric upon which everything else rests. All places connect to the Astral Plane in some way. Being the place between places, it's a fairly strange place. Few of the normal rules apply there. Distance is especially tricky. For example, while near a sphere (or more correctly, the vortex leading to a sphere) it may appear like a grapefruit held at arms length. You can circle around it just as if it really were such a ball; however, you can't simply reach out and grab it. As you try to move closer, the ball simply gets bigger. Even once it seems to be the size of a house, it's still out of reach, but it takes longer to circle around. Eventually, you get close enough to begin to vague shape of the terrain below, until you suddenly appear on the surface of the sphere you were approaching. This isn't at all precise though, so you may end up a long way from where you thought you'd land. All this time, this one sphere is the only one you can see clearly. The other spheres in the same system are just faint dots in the distance. Other systems are completely lost in the gray of the plane.

There's more to it than that though. Any spheres connected by a portal will be connected by a thin gray thread. While the gate is open, this thread appears as a bright silver and is fairly easy to see; however, while the portal is closed, the thread is dull, fading into the background of the plane. In this state, it's quite hard to see.

Following a thread away from a sphere is fairly simple once you've spotted it, but again, nothing is ever as simple as it first seems. Since you can rarely see where a thread is going (and fairly quickly you won't be able to see where it started) you just have to follow it blindly until you eventually get somewhere. If you lose track of the thread somewhere in the middle, it is practically impossible to find it again. If you have the magic to get back to where you started, you can try again. If not, you may have to find somewhere else to settle down. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the time it takes to travel between spheres seems to have more to do with how well you know where you're going that with the distance between those spheres on the material plane. Moving between two familiar spheres might only take a day or two of travel. Travelling to an unknown destination could take several weeks.

You can also attempt to follow a thread down to the sphere it came from. Unless the portal that thread came from is out in the open and the thread is glowing, you're sure to land fairly far off the mark. If neither are true, your chances of success are very slim.

In addition to the weirdness surrounding spheres and portals, there's the rest of the plane. At all times, there are three great orbs hanging in space around you. One is a bright white. The second is a deep black. The third is a chaotic swirl of color. The relative size and orientation of these three orbs might change, but this movement seems to have little to do with any movements you might make.

These great orbs always seem very large and very far off. If, however, you leave the spheres and attempt to travel towards one of these orbs, it will slowly get bigger, while the other two will begin to shrink. Eventually you'll get to the point where the orb fills half of the area around you. You will then find yourself travelling away from a great gray orb with two small spots on it. Soon afterwards, you'll land in one of the outer planes.

There's still more to moving around the Astral Plane than this, but that will have to wait for the description of the Divine Realms.

Finally there is all of the other stuff that exists physically on the Astral Plane. Random bits of matter, ranging from dust to continents, wind up on the Astral Plane from time to time. Finding this stuff seems to be mostly a matter of luck, at least the first time. Various creatures call these places home. Some scholars believe that all life on the Astral Plane was brought there from other places at some point in the past. Some other scholars believe that while this may be true for most creatures, some may actually be native to the plane.

The Shadow Plane

If, while on the Astral Plane, you attempt to move away from everything, if you move in the right direction, somewhat inward, you might notice the dull gray light of the plane beginning to fade. Eventually you'll enter an area dominated by shadows. This is the Shadow Plane. One way of describing it is the Astral Plane's Etheral Plane. This description may not be entirely inaccurate. While it's possible, if not easy, to reach the Etheral Planes from the Astral Plane, it seems to be much easier from the Shadow Plane. Unfortunately, distances between places on the Shadow Plane seem to be somewhat more related to the distances on the material plane.

A sphere on the Shadow Plane is not simply a giant portal like it would be on the Astral Plane. If you get close enough, there is an actual surface to land on. The shape of the surface seems to have little to do with the shape of the sphere it's connected to. On these shadow spheres, there are ocassionally pools of... something. These pools are portals to the Etheral Planes connected to the same sphere, but not always to just the first layer.

These shadow spheres are inhabited, but these creatures don't seem to have much to do with the creatures from the connected spheres.

The Deep Places

It has already been mentioned that you can travel deeper and deeper into the Etheral Planes, but the same is also true of the other transitive planes. On the Astral Plane, if you attempt to travel towards the gray horizon in between the three great orbs, they will eventually fade into the distance and you will be surrounded by an endless gray nothingness. This is the beginning of the Deep Astral. It is possible to get farther and farther away from everything else in the cosmos, but little is known about what, if anything, is out there.

The same is true of the Shadow Plane. Travelling deeper and deeper into the shadows, you begin to move away from the shadow spheres and all other connections to the rest of the cosmos. Here, there seems to be nothing but raw shadow. These Deep Places seems to go on forever, becoming more and more inhospitable to a traveller from the material plane, but some scholars theorize that if you were to go deep enough into any of these places you might leave the cosmos altogether. No one knows what such a place would be like, but most people would think it exists call it the Far Realms.

The Inner Planes

The three great orbs hanging in the gray of the Astral Plane are all portals to great planes of energy. The spheres of the material plane are all intricately linked to one of these three planes.

The Positive Energy Plane

The suns of the material plane are all giant vortices to this place, the source of all light and, for most creatures, life energy. While most people might guess that such a place would be a paradise, it can be a dangerous place. Following one of the vortices on a sun, you would first arrive on a surface much like the one you just left. The most immediate difference would be the change from standing on a blindingly bright surface under a pitch black sky, to a dull white surface under a blindingly bright sky.

While in this place, a normal creature is surrounded by life energy. While this feels great, and wounds heal very quickly, it is not always a good thing. In places of especially high concentrations of life energy a normal creature can absorb enough energy to actually explode. As a last, desperate resort, you can injure yourself to bleed off some of this energy, but as quickly as wounds heal, this is only a temporary measure.

In a plane so full of life energy, it should come as no surprise that it is also quite full of life. In fact, most, if not all, of the life that exists on the suns of the material plane is made up of visitors, either temporary or permanent, from the Positive Energy Plane.

Like in many other planes, it is possible to move in more than 3 directions. You can attempt to move towards the source of the light that permeates the plane. While this is similar to the Deep Shadow, it's usually not called one of the Deep Places. That title is usually reserved for the depths of the transitive planes. What you would find if you ever reached the source of the light remains unknown.

The Negative Energy Plane

By travelling to the great black orb in the Astral Plane, you'll find yourself in the place where all black holes go. The Shadow Plane may be dark, but this place is different. The Positive Energy Plane is the source of all light and life; this place is the end of it. It's not that there's no light here. Light pours into this place from all of the black holes and from the Astral Plane, but light here fades very quickly. The result is that things in the distance fade from view quickly. In addition to that, the Negative Energy Plane leeches the life out of everything within it. This ebbing life energy causes living things to glow faintly, at least until their life energy runs out.

Normally this drain on ones life energy is just slow enough to be countered by strong magic, but in places the negative energy becomes concentrated enough that you can feel years of your life being pulled away.

The Elemental Tempest

The third of the great orbs leads to the Elemental Tempest, the source of all four elements. This place exists as a foam, with each bubble containing a different mix of elements. These bubbles are larger the closer you are to the Astral Plane. Some are large enough to hold entire civilizations. The bubbles aren't entirely stable though. Fortunately, for those living there, the older and larger a bubble is, the less likely it is to change, at least nearer to the center.

These bubbles rarely consist of a single, pure element; however, most do have a dominant element.

The Divine Realms

Work in progress

Other Places

Work in progress