I dug up this ancient map of mine. Remember MS Paint? I was actually looking for 2009 photos for that cheesy af 'glow-up' meme that's going around on FB- I love stuff like that <3
Remarkably little has changed in the last decade, which considering how much I add and subtract as I work on the setting is kind of interesting. Something about this image has burned itself into my mind, perhaps. Or maybe it's just that most of the games I run are set on one world, Iseult, so this mostly comes up as background and context for various monsters. So maybe this is all kind of a bespoke passion project, explaining why not much has changed- no world survives first contact with the players
But I'd like to include interactions with it more, and characters in the main game I'm running right now are getting to the point where they might start venturing out there of their own accord- if they don't all get killed by Acererak I suppose
Legend (and commentary)
You could insert this into a setting at the same point you'd normally put the 'prime material plane'- but instead of one plane you have this messy tangle.
the circles are planes, and the little dot-circles are planets. The distinction between a plane and a planet is a little blurry- basically a planet is a plane that intrudes in a major way into the 'astral' plane of the Blind Eternity (name stolen from MtG)
the rectangle shapes are solar systems, and the name of their associated sun.
The planets that are bolded are the five 'earths' (the most inhabitable for human and human-like life)
Some updates are in order: I'd like to add Ginnugap and some other stuff mentioned in my the 'five earths' blog post. I'd like to add Phosma and Nastramor to the Iseult system, and Shub-Nigguruth to... some system I don't like very much. Maybe all of them ;)
I love planar maps in general, and this one in particular. A few questions. Is Fairyland a solar system? And what is Xibalba, that horn of black with the many planes on it? And what does it mean when these things overlap?
ReplyDeleteThanks! Fairyland is supposed to be an overlapping dimension. Really it should be a large circle, like 'Dreamland' and the Astral plane, while the rectangles are the solar systems... but hey it's old
DeleteXibalba is similar to hell, or the nine hells of classic D&D, with fewer moralistic connotations. It's named after Mayan mythology. Technically xibalba should overlap with each of the Five Earths, but since this is a Persephone-focused map it doesn't show this
'Overlap' just is meant to connote that there's an interaction between the planes, and with the proper technology/magic you could traverse between them or tap into them. So for example you couldn't traverse directly from Helios to Persephone, you have to trek through the Astral plane first. This is much trickier than in classic D&D, requiring voidcraft and stargates and that sort of thing