The Allmother

Explain!

It may take too many coins and perhaps goes somewhere else. The essential points would be:

In a massive fight between good and evil in the outer planes, a powerful and titanic magical item was cast into the astral plane because it had been severed from it's main piece but not before sucking the main combatants in as a prison. As it floated in the astral plane, the inherent magic that was bleeding off energy, like a red hot nickel ball cooled a crust onto the surface, grew small bacteria called "creatures", and was readily able to be mined for magical materials such as residuum and quintessence. It is literally bleeding off uncontained magical fonts. The gods are emanations of belief but not of the creatures, of the item's residual memory of the energy it fed off of during the war. It makes manifestations of deities that infect the minds of the creatures to help bleed off the residual energies of the core.

Now . . . whether the creation of gods by the item and the belief in them by the creatures creates manifestations of them in the outer planes would be an interesting idea to look into and what sorts of chaos that would cause for those who fought the war.

This is just one example of how that could have happened:

There was an item made in the forges of Mechanus that was stolen by a fallen angel (Name____) being chased by a repentant demon (The Flagellant?). It was a Godseed. Used in accordance with the laws of order, it would be used to make a new world on a material plane. It was sought by many.

It caused a great war that raged through the planes. By the time the demon caught up with the angel, armies had been formed on both sides. To increase the seed's vitality, it had been brought to Limbo and was being loosely protected by unaffiliated hordes of slaads that surrounded the abandoned Gith Fortress. Along the way the seed had been poisoned by ______ but blessed by ______. It was planted in Limbo and it began to sprout but somehow the seed was severed from the stalk. The Flagellant knew the Fallen One would not stop and so wrestled it into the split seed as it was cast into the ether. Their struggle and fight within the core of the seed is what churned the magical energies enough to make a world. Simple manifestations of the idea of them on the surface represent the ongoing battle within the very fabric of the plane.

Some agents know this and actively seek to weaken the scars of the world enough to release the prisoners back to the outer planes. Some seek to protect it.

This is just an idea.

Hmm; the deities being emanations of the item's magic gives it a world-in-a-world feel that I'm not sure I like. Tiny creatures on a tiny world worshipping tiny gods, surrounded by other planes with other creatures and gods on a different scale entirely.

What if... the item was a portion of a fractured Plane? Say, at some point in the distant past (outside of time?) the war between Good and Evil shattered the Prime Material, throwing the other planes into diffraction/disarray. Angels with the help of Mechanus gather most of the pieces to forge into the seed/foundation of a new Material, attempting to keep Evil influence away from it. Then its planting in Limbo, corruption/stillborn, and struggle within the dead/corrupted seed itself. The bleeding-off then is the remaining essence/vitality of the Material itself, forming a sort-of material plane around the seed where it sits and rots in the Astral (or wherever).
The belief-creation of gods might be because the existence of the Prime Material is essential to the ordering of the outer planes, and so its current circumstance only allow the Gods to interact or manifest in indirect or refracted ways, the easiest being with the belief of the corrupted Material's denizens.
Of course, that would probably also interfere in a big way with things like planar travel, summoning, etc. Not sure how easy that would be to work out.


Also, perfectly fine with reskinning the Seven Sisters Three as Arcana! Just throwing the names out there because I had 'em and wanted them used somehow. Had a lot of fun thinking up strange names for Thsk to be wary of =D

Maybe the Brink, because of its direct connection with the Abyss holds some secret to the creation of the world? Or did that come up later?

I think the Brink was created later, but I DO think you're right that it is accessing the secrets of the world in some way. I think we mentioned that the disasters of the Brink were created by the experiments of the Circle of Wild Mages. I kind of imagine the wellsprings of the Wild Mages as accessing that power within the earth in some way as well.

With regard to the existence of the gods - I feel like it can't get too overcomplicated. I would like the gods to just be gods, not projections of an artifact, with other gods that are actually the real gods that exist (that's what I took from the previous posts). I find that a bit confusing.

I like the idea of Verge being created around some kind of godly artifact. That feels like a very rich idea with implications for magic in the world. (The oldest underdark forest trees have roots that tap the artifact, Wild Mage wellsprings somehow reach down into the magical emanations it gives off [the magical water-table?], etc). It also seems to imply that magic is consumptive? Which I like. That feels like it fits with the frost giants as well, who consume artifacts in order to regain the power of their titan ancestry.

I'd like to know the nature of the world-artifact. I like the idea above of it as some kind of glue to repair a fractured material plane. Maybe it is a piece of the Allmother herself? Her Heart? Her Spleen? Her Hope, Her Love?

Using a piece of the god of creation to glue reality together sounds pretty good, actually. Maybe different people have different ideas on what piece of Her was used? Which would inform their religions and cultural worldviews. If they know about it at all.

...it was probably Her Heart.

Also:
The Seven Sisters Three, Arcana domain (1)
Patron of obscurity and confusion (1)
Sometimes worshipped as a single deity, sometimes as a small pantheon (2)

Alright, I had a thought on the way home last night and don't know where to put it, so it's going here.

I'd originally thought of the dark elves' turning from Rilu'huacan to Luat as involving the death of Reloccan near Dragonwick, but the timelines for that don't really work out (I feel like we've been treating Reloccan's death as somewhere in the more recent past, say a couple hundred to at most a thousand years ago). Then Jesse mentioned our elves being pretty weird, and Jaeger made an offhand(?) comment about all elves dying early from sickness. So what if the drow's situation happened long ago and doesn't have anything directly to do with the bog elves'? It ultimately depends on how coherent the gods are, but: What if there's just something wrong with Reloccan? Like a sickness, or corruption? Something that stems from the underlying corruption of the plane, something that affects elven lifespans, and something that means that at various points in history, for various reasons, all elves eventually lose their god? The dark elves heard their god go insane and turned to Luat for protection, the bog elves saw theirs slain and essentially still live on His corpse, and probably other elves elsewhere have other stories. And what if, what if, the reason that Grigori has imprisoned the world's most powerful Necromancer is because she discovered something important about Reloccan's situation?

I dunno; it sounded ok to my sleep-deprived brain but I'm still not sure if it's just a 14-year-old's awesome idea for a power metal song. Please pull it apart for me.

Ooooh, ok ya I like this. This feels like a rich idea. I feel like it also maybe says something interesting about our Bog Elves. Like maybe that there was a very good reason for the gnomish god to kill him.

It sounds like Martín, the most powerful necromancer, was trying to resurrect a dead god?

Maman, is the god of the Giants. The All Mother. Creator God of the Giants. The All Mother birthed the other gods with exception to Don Joswee.

Don Joswee was an outside element that the Lesser Races were able to bring in from another plane and halt some of the degradation of the planar portals. The introduction of DJ is the reason for the death of the elven life trees.

Don Joswee's presence in this world is because of the original machinations of the Undying who pierced into another plane to bring him in contention with the Allmother. All had something to gain when he was originally summoned.

Possibility: Muurgsh is grokking Reloccan.

Don Joswee's entry into the world caused a great upheaval, splitting continents and probably creating the Brink as well. The Allmother put a large part of herself into holding the world together to prevent it from coming completely apart. The elven god Reloccan aided her in this, partially binding himself to the world (trees!) and acting as a defense of the Allmother. Muurgsh, seeking revenge for earlier ocular reasons, demanded a deal with the Seven Sisters Three: She would help him to take Reloccan apart, in return for first pick of the elven god's former domain and its Trees. The ritual absorption is slow and steady, leading to two things: 1. Muurgsh cannot reconcile the influx of Reloccan's fundamentally opposite essence into his own, driving him increasingly insane as the elven god is consumed, and 2. the weakening of Reloccan is a blow to the Allmother and Her ability to hold the world together. Which is fine by the Seven Sisters Three, as they are actually in league with Don Joswee.

A lesser form of that ritual is what the orc hero Tenk won from (an admittedly distracted) Muurgsh, leading to the rise of his people on the northern plateau.

Next time, on The Young and the Restless But Also They're Gods...

Just chewing on the nature of the magic item at the center of the world, and thinking about other takes on what's already been said:


The Godseed is an Omni-magical potentiality. The intrinsic nature of this Plane will crystallize when the seed sprouts. The demigods are warring to decide the nature of this new plane (law, chaos, good, evil, water, fire, etc, etc).

The seed must undergo _______ before it can sprout. (Scarification)

It is the minds of the inhabitants/state of this world that will determine which Aspect blooms from the world.

The Undying each have an Aspect that they are cultivating, to bring forth in the world.

What about days of the week?
Sistraday
Kronnesday
Allmsthday
Doonday

The Radiant Sword is life magics because, "Live by the sword. Die by the sword."