User:Spazalicious Chaos/The World of Varanost (3.5e Campaign Setting)/Cosmology
Varanost is awesome enough to where it doesn't need an extensive cosmology, but it has a small one.
The Prime Material Plane[edit]
Nearly all Varanost adventures take place here. The entire rest of the setting describes the Prime Material, or at least a section of it. Varanost is a section of the Prime Material consisting of two continents. The world has physics and curvature equivelant of ours, but it gets fuzzy from their. Varanost must have an edge of the world, some philosophers say, because no one has ever seen anything more than a hundred miles from any shore. No one who has gone out to find another continent has ever returned, and something blocks sight abilities beyond a hundred miles from shore. Philosophies as to why run from a band of fog that separates worlds to Varanost being on the inside of a giant skull in some eternal battlefield. Perhaps the reality will never be known...
Ethereal and Shadow Planes[edit]
The soul and shadow of Varanost, respectively, these planes are desolate and featureless expanses covered in rolling banks of fog, white fog in the Ethereal, black fog in the Shadow. Some things live here, but most of their activity revolves around the actions of those on the Material Plane, which is always visible but untouchable in these planes.
Heaven[edit]
Any living creature not native to this plane that even gets a glimpse of it through a spell must make a DC 35 Fortitude save or go permanently blind. Any such creature that sees the plane in person automatically fails the save. Theories as to why this is all revolve around the one fact everyone knows about it: it is a plane of creation. Many theorize that this is the substance from which the sun came, while others believe that souls who arrive here destroy themselves out of sheer selflessness so that their essense can be formed into new life. Whatever the case, the nature of the plane makes it impossible to know.
Hell[edit]
"Darkness visible" is the one term best at describing this plane, for it is pure and absolute living darkness hungry for souls to drown. While it is impossible to gaze upon the Heavenly realms, it is easy to view Hell. Here, everything is in torment, even it's native creatures. Happiness, Joy, Love, Honor, Loyalty- nothing positive can be found here, as it's very existence is anathema to reality and even itself. It is a plane of constant agony that can not be conceived by the mortal mind (pardon my Lovecraft), and thus it has little place for any adventure, for it is planar law that nothing can ever go well in the depths of Hell.
Astral[edit]
The empty space between the Material, Heaven and Hell can only be described as like being in an endless night sky. It is rumored that being fly great stellar sailing craft through this endless night and that in the center of the Astral one could find the Moon and the fantastic beings that inhabit it.
