Magic

The next chapter in the setting book is Magic, and as you can imagine, it is mostly a gigantic list of spells. Yeah, D&D. This is a big reason why I left and embraced rules-lite. However, there's some other material here too that I'm reviewing to see if it needs to be Remixed or not.

Given the difficulty of casting magic in a Dark Fantasy X ruleset with Lovecraftian magic vs a D&D ruleset with Vancian magic, you'd think that the low-level access to magical items and whatnot would be impacted, but I actually think that regardless of the rules, this is a signature element of the setting, so I'm not really very interested in changing it. Again; I'm going with the handwavey notion that between low-level guildmembers from the dragonmarked Houses and dragonshards it's relatively easy to have low level magical items and services available, because infusing these things with magic is significantly different than trying to grapple with the forces of the Universe itself by your own force of will, which is what spellcasting is.

This does kind of infer that in Eberron Remixed compared to the Dark Fantasy X setting that there could be a whole group of "pseudo-mages" running around using wands, staves, rings, etc. and other magic items to emulate what wizards and sorcerers can do in other D&D settings. Mechanics vs mages: kind of Massha to D&D's Skeeve, if you get the reference. I suppose that this might be so, but then again, we never meet any other mechanic like Massha in the entire MYTH Aventure series that I recall, so while the possibility for this kind of pseudo-mage exists, they're probably rare. Honestly, the cost of wands and staves and magical rings is still probably prohibitive except for the super-wealthy, which means that mechanics would mostly be eccentric rich people. And relatively low level spells even so.

Although I'm kinda leaving this as a slightly cracked door for entry into a place that I don't really want to go, I'm not really. I don't envision that any character I would have would ever be given time by his loving GM to ever sit around and develop a hobby of making magical items, so there's no reason for me to worry about rules for magic item creation. I'm going to leave the acquisition of magical items firmly in the hand of the GM. That said, my philosophy as GM is that if some player really wanted to play as a mechanic pseudo-mage, mimicking to some degree the spellcasters of a D&D-like rule system by using magic items, I'd indulge him. I wouldn't go overboard giving him access to too much stuff too easily acquired, because I'd want to keep him a bit hungry, but I'd also not be so stingy that he felt like he wasn't able to play the concept he envisioned either. And the roleplaying cost would probably be steep although interesting; he may end up finding himself very much like a guy very deeply in debt to the fantasy mafia of sorts in order to keep himself supplied, which would drive all kinds of interesting adventure opportunities for the whole group.

Of course, many of the magic items are for very specific and elite uses; magic notarizations and wardings, magical travel via flying ships or lightning rail, magic communication through the Sivis message stations, magical street lights, House Jorasco hospitals, etc. For the most part, I'm going to not remix this stuff and leave it with the assumption that it has in Eberron as Printed, with only the exception that only exceptional people regularly have access to much of this. This does, of course, include the PCs, and the rich and powerful in local communities, but most local Joe Blows see this as an extravagance of a completely different caste of people than anyone that they know.

The rest of the chapter that isn't just a big ole spell and domain list is the discussion of Eberron's cosmology, as well as an odd and rather lengthy section on possession, which doesn't seem to have anything to do with Eberron per se, and I think is reprinted in some of their other later 3.5 era sourcebooks, such as Hordes of the Abyss. Eberron As Printed, as most of D&D, is simply too complex in its cosmology for my taste. Given my lack of spells for planar travel, there's no need for a Plane of Shadow, and Ethereal Plane or an Astral Plane, or the other default D&D stuff unless I just think that the concept is interesting enough that I want to include it. (And of those, only Shadow qualifies.) And many of the Eberron specific planes are still too D&Dish for me, especially if they have any connection at all to an alignment. I'll touch on them in a moment, but I find it unusual and refreshing that the setting book makes no effort to really describe how to decide if a plane is coterminous, waxing, waning, or remote; it explicitly says to just use those conditions as plot devices and to do so sparingly anyway. Personally, I think the idea that you can always find ways to traverse to any plane if needed, kind of like faery rings from old folklore or how Greek and Norse mythology did it, is important, but making it interesting and challenging is too.

I'm going to very heavily remix the planes listed here and come up with what is essentially a completely different cosmology borrowed from Dark Fantasy X. Even Eberron's planes, which are considerably different than the Great Wheel, reek of D&Disms rather than having a real cultural resonance they would if they were more closely based on our shared mythology of Western Civilization. Also, this is because I didn't rewrite the entire monster list (or even any of it, for that matter) so I don't have threats that are native to Dal Quor, nor can I without creating quori monster stats, for instance. It's easier to utilize the cosmology that the monster list already assumes. That said, I'll try to map concepts from the Eberron cosmology to my own cosmology as best as I can if there's an element signature to Eberron that's worth maintaining. And that's an interesting observation; while the cosmology and names of the planes are often different, in reality, the concepts behind the planes of Eberron aren't usually; they still feel exactly like planes described in Manual of the Planes. Risia, the plane of cold and ice, for example, has actually a few different counterparts in the Great Wheel, including Stygia, Fernia is not at all different than the Elemental Plane of Fire, etc. All the more reason to go with something that I like better anyway.

The planes don't rotate like an orrery, or sit in any geographical construct like a Great Wheel, but rather cluster around each other like a collection of soap bubbles, and they occasionally shift and become connected or disconnected from each other in various formations, but always the World of Eberron (represented by the big blue circle labeled "The World" near the center of the construct) is connected to various different planes. These connections are represented by the small black bars. Not every plane is connected to Eberron at all times; to reach Jotunheim or Othrys or Vanaheim, for instance, you have to travel through at least one other plane from Eberron. Because of the mosaic of connections, there's more than one route to get to most places as well; to get to Vanaheim, for instance, you can travel through Asgard or Olympus first. Not that you would want to do either, really—in spite of the fact that in D&D both planes are kinda sorta represented as relatively friendly places, they are not to be seen as such from the point of view of inhabitants of Eberron here in Eberron Remixed; they are profoundly dangerous places. Not actively hostile and evil, necessarily, but just extremely dangerous and unconcerned with the affairs of mortals.

The positions of the circles are not meant to be taken too literally; that's a diagram to represent the connections between the planes, not actual geographic positions of them in some kind of planespace. Let's discuss the planes in light detail below in case you need to use them for something:

• • The World; the big blue circle in the center of the cluster, more or less, is the main campaign setting of Eberron.

  • While I said earlier that Christianity replaces the Church of the Silver Flame, and it's pretty much the only "real" religion in the setting, that doesn't mean that certain mythological beings don't exist as an order of magnitude more powerful creatures than mortals; they simply aren't "gods" in the typical pantheonic sense. So Asgard, Vanaheim and Olympus are pretty much exactly what you'd expect them to be; the homes of the Greek Olympians, the Norse Aesir, and their associated creatures, etc. Stuff like centaurs and whatnot exist in Olympus, not just Zeus, for instance. These powerful beings; the Olympians and Aesir, are pretty aloof with regard to humans, and rarely take much of an interest in them, nor do they travel to Eberron for pretty much any reason, although whether that's because they can't or because they won't isn't really something anyone knows. The minor creatures like centaurs, on the other hand, occasionally find their way into Eberron.

  • Jotunheim is another one that you should probably know what to expect; loads of ice and snow and jotuns, or ettens to use the Old English equivalent word to jotuns (I know, I know, my reluctance to just call them giants is a weird affectation that I don't even understand myself completely.)

  • Othrys was the equivalent to Olympus except for the Titans in Greek mythology. In Eberron Remixed, it's the home to a great many chthonic and primordial creatures, mostly kept in a state of semi-imprisonment. This is partially represented by the fact that it is only coterminous with Olympus, and the Olympians keep a strong eye on incursions from this plane for any reason and root them out with extreme prejudice. That said, sometimes things do get through Olympus stealthily, often making their way to the Underworld, which is a plane of tunnels and caves, not unlike the Underdark from D&D in some respects. Othrys and the Under World were originally meant to be more closely based on Greek mythology and the writings of guys like Lovecraft and Wells describing underground realms than on anything in D&D, but it is a good place if you need any Khyber, or Dragon Below type elements in your game, to put that kind of stuff.

  • Faery is the plane of the fey, few of which, I admit, I have in my monster list. It's a beautiful place, but not a welcoming one, and it should be seen as the very dark kind of faerytales about people being kidnapped, lost forever in faery rings, and weird stuff like that. It is surpremely chaotic and kind of sadistic, as are its inhabitants. When among the friendliest of people you're likely to meet here are people like Queen Mab or the Erlking—as powerful as an Olympian or Aesir and twice as inscrutible—you know that this isn't really a place that the unprepared want to go wandering around in "looking for adventure."

  • Lacertus is a place that is home to a great variety of strange animals and people, and is believed to be the original home of snakemen, lizardmen, and the last refuge of creatures like dinosaurs that linger only in the Talenta Plains on Eberron—and even then, they were probably extinct and came to the Talenta Plains from Lacertus. In addition to the reptilian inhabitants, powerful kingdoms of intelligent apes and mandrills lurk in the forests. There are a few settlements of regular, Eberron-like people, although they have been here long enough that this is the only home that they know, but they eke out a somewhat precarious existence hidden in mountain strongholds, and stay away from the apes, the lizards and the snakes as much as possible.

  • The Citystate of Brass is merely the only reasonably welcoming place on this entire plane, which is otherwise a vast expanse of fire, magma and other deadly terrain. The ifrit of the City of Brass, however, maintain a relatively cosmoplitan trade hub across multiple planes, and there are some regular folk from Eberron who make permanent homes here. The jann believe that their distant non-human ancestors were ifrit. The undisputed lord of the wilderness outside of the citystate itself is Surt, the massive, fiery figure of doom in various legends and stories, and the entirety of the plane outside of the citystate is usually called Muspel or Muspelheim.

  • Shadow is very similar to the Plane of Shadow or Shadowfell from D&D, although it is perhaps more like it from 4e's cosmology than from 3e's. Dark, dangerous, and crawling with undead, it is also a dark mirror of Eberron in some ways, and bears nearly as much in common with the Upside Down from Stranger Things. Many believe that Zobna was actually located here, or at least was somehow shifted here, before the Hyperboreans fled that place to come back to Lomar somewhere in the Frostfell continent. The plane of Shadow is also the connection between the world and the many and varied realms of the daemons, and many such wander unchecked across the dark landscape of Shadow. The Daemon Realms themselves come in all kinds of bizarre shapes, sizes, and flavors, and could look very much like the many layers of the Abyss or Hell in D&D, and are, of course, the homeland of the various daemons. This is my catch-all term for any type of fiendish creature, since I eschewed the alignment based devil/demon split of D&D entirely.

  • The last plane is Abominatus, and it is not currently reachable by any means readily available to even seasoned planar travelers, although strange and sometimes unpredictable methods of reaching it are rumored. It is the source of the setting's Lovecraftiana, and has a similar role to the Far Realm in D&D or Xoriat in Eberron specifically. Any quori related stuff can come from here too, if needed.