The descending stair

The "descending stair" is a cosmology model proposed in Classic Play: The Book of the Planes. It is based on historical cosmogonies including Kabbalah, Gnosticism, Alchemy, and Plato's Cave.

As the book explains:

"The Descending Stair cosmology traces the descent of energy through the cosmos (Games Masters with a religious bent could do well to research the tree of the Sephiroth). The highest plane is the Firmament, which then descends through the Questing Grounds (an engine for converting the pure energy of the divine into forms compatible with the lower cosmological regions) and the Afterworld. The next plane in the chain is the Vault of Stars, which traces the shapes of the energy’s intentions and destiny. The Astral and Dream planes form a bridge between the wholly immaterial upper planes and the more physical lower planes. The energy explodes into the lower regions in the form of the Positive Energy Plane, which then splits into the four Elemental Planes. These planes provide the raw ingredients to form the Material Plane. The Shadow Plane and evil planes are aborted regions beyond the stair."

The Descending Stair

I mentioned this cosmology years ago during earlier forays into plane building, but I lost focus and forgot about it for a while. I recently regained interest after reading the two-part article "Touched by the Otherworld." To that end, I would like to retread and revise my ideas for this cosmology.

The cosmology may be imagined initially as a series of supra-planes or "worlds", each of which gives rise to the next: Briah, Yetzirah, Assiah, and Gehenna. These worlds aren't just alien locations created by game convention, but energy channels that actively and constantly feed into sustaining their derivatives.

• Briah is the world of creation. It encompasses the upper planes, planes of order, and planes of discord. It is the abode of the aberrations, celestials, and similar. These planes give rise to souls, which descend into the following planes to make life. Sometimes, existing spirits may enter incarnation.
• Yetzirah is the world of formation. It encompasses the elemental and transitive planes. It is the abode of elementals, giants, and similar. This would include the Ethereal Sea from Beyond Countless Doorways by Malhavoc Press. The elemental planes interpenetrate the prime plane, giving rise to the weather and other natural phenomena.
• Assiah is the world of action. It encompasses the material plane and its echoes. It is the abode of beasts, humanoids, fey*, and similar. This would include the preternatural planes from The Faerie Ring books by Zombie Sky Press.
• Gehenna is an aborted world. It encompasses the lower planes. It is the abode of fiends, undead, and similar. These spirits are born from the wills and souls of the preceding planes.

*Fey in particular occupy something of a unique niche, inspired by The Complete Guide to Fey and Exalted: The Fair Folk. I said this before in ancient posts, but fey are reincarnated beings: spirits embodied in physical fleshy forms. Ancient aberrations became trapped in the material plane as it formed, becoming the nature spirits of the prime plane and the alien visitors of fairyland, and this process continues on other spirits including fiends and undead.

One of the reasons I like this model is that it provides a better context for the messy planar cosmology and monster taxonomy of D&D, which otherwise feels pretty arbitrary. I will incorporate it into my Indo-European cosmology as another way of looking at the creation and ordering of the universe.

Umlautia

Throughout this blog I’ve alluded to an imagined campaign setting that addresses the problems I have with D&D’s backwards worldbuilding. I’ve finally decided to start detailing that setting instead of just complaining. I chose the placeholder name Umlautia, as a dig at amateur fantasy settings that casually use umlauts without understanding how umlauts work.

When building Umlautia, I want to address a few important and interlinked concepts: planes of existence, theology (gods and demons), power sources for character classes, and monster taxonomy. Unless these neatly fit together, the world building will fall apart under scrutiny as in standard D&D.

My inspirations include Eberron and Scarred Lands, which are some of the most detailed and rational settings in the history of the game. So I have to take notes from the greats. The highest mention goes to Nentir Vale, which at least tried to rationalize D&D before getting thrown out with the bathwater in 5e, providing the basis for my adjustments.

Cosmology

In order to world build rationally, I need to pin down the workings of cosmology, theology and taxonomy in my game.

Having a bazillion different planes is needlessly confusing, so I settled on a variation of the omniverse cosmology mentioned in the DMG. There are only a handful of planes and each will be detailed sufficiently that they will be interesting to visit.

The planes of Umlautia are limited to the material, feywild, shadowfell, ethereal sea, elemental chaos, upper, and lower.

The material plane has a stupid name, because every plane is material. Under Umlautia, it has different names: world, mortal world, earth, earthly plane, middle earth, midgard, tellurian, etc. This is the plane in which we humans live.

The feywild is known by names like fairyland, faerie, otherworld, alfheim, tir na nog, avalon, etc. It is based on the fairylands of English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh mythology. This plane is the abode of the fair folk. Time and space have different meanings here.

The shadowfell is known as the underworld, xibalba, helheim, diyu, yomi, irkalla, sheol, etc. It is based on the underworlds of world mythology. This plane is the abode of the dead and some demons. Most people who die end up here.

The ethereal sea condenses the astral and ethereal planes. Its inspiration in popular culture is the astral plane of occultism and the dreamlands of Lovecraft. Everyone projects their mind here while they sleep, and may train to project while awake.

The elemental chaos is known as ginnungagap, muspelheim, niflheim, chaos, void, tiamat, apsu, etc. It is based on the primordial chaos of many ancient mythologies, but especially on the nine worlds of Norse mythology. This is the abode of elementals and giants, leftovers from creation.

The upper planes are known as heaven, olympus, valhalla, tian, elysian fields, blessed isles, etc. It is based on the heavens, godly realms, and pleasant afterlives of world mythology. This is the abode of gods, angels, and heroes. Only the greatest of dead souls are allowed to enter.

The lower planes are known as hell, perdition, the abyss, tartarus, naraka, etc. It is based on the various hells of world mythology. This is the abode of demons, imprisoned titans, and the damned. Only the wickest souls are consigned here.

Cosmogony

Unpacking the theology is where things get harder. I need to devise a creation myth to explain why the cosmology is arranged, who the gods are, where spellcasters get their powers from, etc. This is where the Nentir Vale’s dawn war is a useful shorthand, since it recycles the recurring motifs of creation myths across the world. Many custom settings like Fumanor, Scarred Lands, Kingdoms of Legend, etc independently come up with similar ideas, showing how archetypal these motifs are.

Long story short, there was a war or two between two or three generations of deities. One side (titans, primordials, jotun, vanir, tiamat/apsu, etc) represented chaos, the other (olympians, aesir, annunaki, igigi, etc) order. This resulted in the creation of the planes and additional generations of deities. The chaos powers lost and their leaders were killed or imprisoned in the lower planes.

Nentir Vale further specifies that both sides are prevented from mucking the world by primal spirits, who empower druids and barbarians. (These are comparable to the primordials, vanir, firbholg, etc from mythologies.)

Fumanor posits that the chaos powers created demons and order created devils to compete (channeling Moorcock’s law/chaos mythos). I would take a page from Exalted and posit that the archfiends are the imprisoned titans, who created the demons willfully or otherwise.

Essentially I’m just copying Indo-European, Mesopotamian and Chinese folk mythology wholesale.

Theology

I really like Eberron’s agnostic approach to deities, so I intend to go with that rather than try to detail a pantheon I’d never be able to keep track of and write myself into corners. However, I still need to detail power sources. Where do spellcasters get their power? What distinguishes them? This ties a bit into theology by forcing me to at least divide the agnostic pantheon into power sources.

So my setting includes the 4e power sources like martial for fighters and rogues, arcane for sorcerers and wizards, divine for clerics and oracles, primal for druids and barbarians, etc. In my setting, martial arts channels vis (Latin equivalent of ki) so that fighters can accomplish weaboo fightan magic.

One of the theology discrepancies has been distinguishing between clerics, druids, and warlocks without half-measures. The divine power source draws from the gods (olympians, aesir, etc), the primal from the primal spirits (vanir, firbholg, 2nd gen titans, primordials, etc). Warlock patrons are drawn from other pantheons, not the same as the clerics and druids.

In addition to the gods and primal spirits, other pantheons include the archfiends (who replace evil gods), the fairy lords, the remaining primordials, and so forth. Each pantheon is associated with one of the planes: the gods with the upper planes (and the judge-gods of the dead with the shadowfell), the primal spirits with the world, the archfiends/titans with the lower planes, the primordials with the elemental chaos, the fairy lords with the feywild, etc. 

But how do these additional pantheons relate to one another and the titanomachy? Burrowing from mythology again: the titans fought for chaos and became the archfiends, the gods fought for order, the primordials/primals allied with the gods, the fairy lords remained neutral, etc. 

Nothing complicated. I can iron out the details later, what matters is the simple symmetry and easy tracking.

Taxonomy

Lastly, I need to figure out how the monster types from the MM fit into the cosmology. For the most part this is easy, but some types are difficult. I already went over my problems with the types in general a while ago, so I won’t repeat myself here.

The types of celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, and undead easily map to the upper planes, elemental chaos, feywild, lower planes, and shadowfell.

The dragons and giants are simple enough to explain as the children of the primordials, as they are in mythology.

The aberration type doesn’t fit. The closest I could figure is that it includes the furthest parts of primordial chaos, who never took part in the creation of the planes. Like the Fair Folk in Exalted.

The monstrosity type never made sense to begin with, being a meaningless catchall, so I’m fine with discarding it entirely.

Conclusion

So, generally speaking, each plane has an associated pantheon, monster type and power source. The upper plane has the godly pantheon, the celestial monster type, and the divine power source. I can iron out the details later, but that’s the gist of it. I find this a lot easier to work with than the unwieldy great wheel of canon.

Pantheons and syncretism, old gods and new

D&D doesn't have a coherent theology. Fantasy gaming quickly runs into the problem of inventing new objects of worship on the fly, resulting in an incoherent theology that is devoid of the syncretism that simplifies real religions. Since the overwhelming majority of campaigns don't involve divine intervention, the precise nature of the gods isn't important.

Indo-European planes

A Proto-Indo-European (PIE) campaign setting would have a much simpler cosmology compared to D&D’s typical bazillion planes. The PIE planes would consist of only a handful of planes, if they can even be called planes at all. We have the primordial cosmos that existed before the world, the world itself, and the underworld. There’s no heaven or hell, that’s a Christian thing. There’s no elemental planes, because it’s unnecessary.

The primordial cosmos has few to no details associated with it, but it’s probably where creatures of chaos come from.

The world consists of the sky, the earth, and the ocean. The earth is a flat disc bordered by the ocean. The sky is a dome upon which the celestial bodies travel. This is where the adventures happen.

The underworld exists below the earth. It’s inhabited by the shades of the dead and possibly by monsters of various stripes.

These cannot necessarily be said to be planes, since you can potentially travel between them by walking. Plane shifting spells or transitive planes aren’t needed.

Proto-Indo-European mythology

For the most part my posts have been setting agnostic, though I have been slowly trying to build my own setting that addresses my pet peeves with typical fantasy world building. My pet peeves for the most part stem from the needless overcomplexity of D&Disms such as alignment, cosmology, taxonomy and haphazard kitchen sink fantasy. Now I decided specifically to use Proto-Indo-European mythology as the basis for my current world building. Indo-European includes the Baltic, Celtic, Greek, Iranian, Norse, Roman, Slavic, Teutonic and Vedic cultures, among others. I chose this because D&D takes the majority of its inspiration from Indo-European mythologies (and possibly influenced by earlier mythologies if the Vanir hypothesis holds weight). That makes easier the fitting of existing classes and monsters into the new framework, since most of the groundwork is already laid.

There isn’t enough scholarly resources for me to study the mythologies of other proto-cultures. I would like to, though.