An alternative great wheel

As a temporary break from my planar musings for 13th Age, I have decided to take a crack at building an alternative cosmology for 5th edition. The cosmology in the DM's guide is a bit more complicated than it needs to be in order to please Planescape partisans. I do not wish to insult that setting, but I think that many of the planes suffer from either being too hostile for adventuring or too similar to other planes. This post will explain where my cosmology departs from the canonical cosmology.

Worlds of Existence primer

The cosmology of 13th Age divides the universe into a few ages and a few worlds: the World or the Land, the Overworld, the Underworld, Hell, the Otherworld, the Aquatic Age, and others. Other worlds are alluded to in the sourcebooks, but we never received a map of the worlds so that GMs could detail it as they wished. This is my expansion of that cosmology.

Planetouched primer

Planetouched is a general term for player character races who are descended from the planes. Perhaps their ancestors were mere mortals who made a pact with or married angels or demons, lived in close proximity to a source of planar radiation or toxins, tourists from another plane of existence, or maybe nature itself is literally their mother.

When creating a character who is planetouched, take some time to consider their origin and how this would affect their appearance and history. Many sourcebooks have given colorful origins for planetouched: Legends & Lairs: Mythic Races, Secrets of the Planes: Planar Races, Children of the Planes, etc. I advise treating these as backgrounds and reskins of existing races from the rulebook, third party sourcebooks, and Vault of the 13th Age. There's no need to waste your one unique thing on being planetouched.

For example, the Neirut from Planar Races may be represented by Forgeborn whereas the fiery races from The Traveler's Guide to the Elemental Plane of Fire may be represented by Elementborn. I will try to present more examples in later posts.

Nymphomaniacs: centaurs, satyrs and tritons

A little house rule I am introducing is in regard to single gender monsters: there are no monsters which consist solely of one gender and especially not ones which must reproduce by non-consensual relations with humans. That is supremely creepy and has no place in a group activity like tabletop roleplaying games.

My go to example are centaurs, satyrs and tritons in their original sense as wild male nature spirits in Greek mythology. These three dudes are now fey (see 13th Age Monthly Vol 2) and are the male counterparts of nymphs, hags and other female fey. They are all the same species which display great physical differences based on their gender and other factors.

I will be adopting this sort of model for all my monster ecology. That said, the human superpower is still that they can have kids with lots of weird creatures. I just prefer not to dwell on creepy or fetish material. Call me a social justice warrior if you like, but I will not budge.

Multi-type monsters

Both 13th Age and 5th Edition use "types" as a quick means of identifying and targeting monsters.

• 13th Age has Aberration, Beast, Construct, Elemental*, Demon, Devil*, Dragon, Giant, Humanoid, Ooze, Plant, Spirit** and Undead. (*13 True Ways; **13th Age Monthly)
• 5th Edition has Aberration, Beast, Celestial, Construct, Dragon, Elemental, Fey, Fiend, Giant, Humanoid, Monstrosity, Ooze, Plant and Undead.

I think that is a decent list that covers a lot of ground while being easy to tweak. A little house rule I would use is that a given monster may have multiple types as appropriate a la Dark Dungeons or Fantasy Craft. These would be separated by forward slashes: e.g. a chimera of goat, lion and dragon would be [Beast/Dragon], or a fey like the nymph or satyr would be [Humanoid/Spirit].

Elementals primer

What are elementals? Generally speaking¹, elementals are masses of base matter animated by a possessing demon, spirit, undead or other entity. They may be broadly divided into two groups: wights² and works³. Wights are the prototypical amorphous and homogenous elemental, which are the "elementals" presented in 13 True Ways. Works are elementals that have been somehow shaped into a more or less fixed form with unique traits.

Beyond air, earth, fire and water, there is also the fifth element and variants of these five. The fifth element, or quintessence, encompasses lots of weird things and will not be discussed here. Variants of the classical four elements include lightning, smoke, mud, lava, ice, vapor and so forth. There isn't any difference between these and mixtures of different pure elements because they are platonic ideals unconnected with real world science.

13th Age Monthly Volume 1 introduced the Spirit type. Sometimes the distinction between elementals and spirits and constructs may be ambiguous. As stated above, an elemental is a dual entity consisting of an animating force such as a spirit and a body composed of normally inanimate matter. Whether the animating force is a demon, specter or nature spirit will determine their behavior and motivation. The most common elementals are animated by nature spirits and are responsible for causing physical phenomena like earthquakes, morning dew and frost on windows.

Constructs and elementals are similar because their bodies are composed of base matter and both have animating spirits bound into them, and in some cases constructs may animate spontaneously or self-replicate or display a metabolism. The key (and perhaps only) distinction is that a construct's body is always a recognizable artifice⁴, hence "construct." So-called "junk elementals" arising from scrap yards would therefore qualify as constructs rather than elementals even though likely animated by a nature spirit or ghost.

Contrary to popular belief, the elemental planes are not inhabited primarily or mostly by elementals. The elemental planes are inhabited by flora and fauna no less diverse than that of the tellurian.

Endnotes

1. As an adjective "elemental" may refer to anything related to the elemental planes and their elements, such as the giants and various beasts which inhabit them.
2. The word "wight" means "a person of a specified kind, especially one regarded as unfortunate" or "a spirit, ghost, or other supernatural being." The undead of that name are properly known as mortwights or literally "dead people."
3. This is derived by analogy from the dictionary words earthwork, firework and waterworks.
4. This is similar to the distinction between a flesh golem and a zombie.