Ravenloft Cosmology

[NykylaiHellray]

Thats start this up again

[NykylaiHellray]

I am restarting the plaines of lost innocence campaign, and I was wondering if I could use this material for a future web book, as the necropolic railways features an end of the line stop at the elemental plane of graves.

[Spiteful Crow]

Go right ahead.

[NykylaiHellray]

Did not expect a reply that fast =) lol.

Spiteful would you be interested in helping me with the plaines of lost innocence?

Also why hasnt this stuff been published in "quoth the raven" yet? =)
I mean we basically finished the stuff didnt we? =)

[Spiteful Crow]

Spiteful would you be interested in helping me with the plaines of lost innocence?

Also why hasnt this stuff been published in "quoth the raven" yet? =)
I mean we basically finished the stuff didnt we? =)

Sounds interesting, but I'd have to go back and re-read it all.

I would need to re-read what I posted here too. o_O

[Hell_Born]

I don't know if it's of any interest now, but I think I've found the "legitimacy" of that author on wikipedia; at the Planewalker website, in the Features section, under the Planar Portal category and within the Lay o' the Land section, is an article called "The Codex of Demiplanes".

One of the entries is the "Ravenloft Elemental Planes" and though it's incomplete, it does say that there's four of them and that they are "altered" versions of the standard four. It's not hard to see (or at least believe) that they're referring to Grave, Blood, Mist and Pyre.

I don't know if it's legitimate or not, but I think that the article came before that entry at wikipedia- I certainly remember reading it before the wikipedia article on Ravenloft was expanded to its present state.

[Bluebomber4evr]

It's not "legitimate"; it's fan-made material, not official canon. It's for that reason that I removed it from the Wikipedia entry.

However, don't let that stop you from using it in your own campaign.

[Hell_Born]

I did wonder. In case anyone's curious, Dragon #353 has what is apparently the complete list of official demiplanes. Ravenloft (as the Demiplane of Dread) is one of those listed, and the Demiplane of Imprisonment is one of the three fully detailed (hopefully finally clearing up the confusion between it and Ravenloft). Weirdly, the list mentions a "Demiplane of Nightmares". Think this might have an connection to the Nightmare Lands?

[Drinnik Shoehorn]

Weirdly, the list mentions a "Demiplane of Nightmares". Think this might have an connection to the Nightmare Lands?

Probably not. Whilst the Nightmare Court are undoubtedly powerful, I think it'd be a little arrogant of Ravenloft fans if we thought they where responsible for all Nightmares everywhere.

[Bluebomber4evr]

I did wonder. In case anyone's curious, Dragon #353 has what is apparently the complete list of official demiplanes. Ravenloft (as the Demiplane of Dread) is one of those listed, and the Demiplane of Imprisonment is one of the three fully detailed (hopefully finally clearing up the confusion between it and Ravenloft). Weirdly, the list mentions a "Demiplane of Nightmares". Think this might have an connection to the Nightmare Lands?

I'm pretty sure the Demiplane of Nightmares is a Mystara reference, the home plane of diaboli. Either that, or it's from the 3rd edition Manual of the Planes.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

The Mystara cosmology has a Dimension of Nightmares. It may (IDHTBIFOM) have been downgraded to a demiplane, when its native race of diaboli were updated to 3E in a Dragon article.

The 3E Manual of the Planes has a Region of Dreams, but IIRC it's one of the optional transitive planes rather than a demiplane.

[The Nightmare Man]

Ravenloft (as the Demiplane of Dread) is one of those listed, and the Demiplane of Imprisonment is one of the three fully detailed (hopefully finally clearing up the confusion between it and Ravenloft).

The 2e Guide to the Ethereal Plane for the PLANESCAPE line, makes it clear that the two planes are very different and indeed separate for each other. This "Demiplane" article in DRAGON would seem to re-establish that fact for the 3e core cosmology.

[The Nightmare Man]

Weirdly, the list mentions a "Demiplane of Nightmares". Think this might have an connection to the Nightmare Lands?

The PS source I noted above was one of the first to suggest a possible connection between the Demiplane of Nightmares and the Nightmare Lands in the Demiplane of Dread.

As stated on pg. 47 -

The small number of bloods who've found their way out of the Demiplane of Dread say that the dark powers must have pulled a portion of the Demiplane of Nightmares into Ravenloft. They say that these Nightmare Lands represent some of the most terrifying areas in Ravenloft's dark expanse.

[Bluebomber4evr]

The Mystara cosmology has a Dimension of Nightmares. It may (IDHTBIFOM) have been downgraded to a demiplane, when its native race of diaboli were updated to 3E in a Dragon article.

The 3E Manual of the Planes has a Region of Dreams, but IIRC it's one of the optional transitive planes rather than a demiplane.

Going from the Mystara Monstrous Compendium Appendix, page 26:

Diaboli come from a mysterious realm Mystarans call the Demiplane of Nightmares. Creatures from this realm are the stuff of nightmares for humans and similar beings--though most diaboli are in fact cheerful and well-meaning. Conversely, the diaboli and other intelligent beings of the Demiplane of Nightmares regard humans and demihumans as "nightmares incarnate."

The stuff about "dimensions" was only used in the original non-advanced D&D rules. Since 2nd edition AD&D had a fixed cosmology, they turned the Dimension of Nightmares into a demiplane, probably to not cause any conflicts with other settings.

[Shemeska]

I did wonder. In case anyone's curious, Dragon #353 has what is apparently the complete list of official demiplanes. Ravenloft (as the Demiplane of Dread) is one of those listed, and the Demiplane of Imprisonment is one of the three fully detailed (hopefully finally clearing up the confusion between it and Ravenloft). Weirdly, the list mentions a "Demiplane of Nightmares". Think this might have an connection to the Nightmare Lands?

As the author of that particular article in Dragon 353, a few things:

1) The list of demiplanes in the article isn't comprehensive. I only had so much space in the article sadly, and I was given a limit to how many demiplanes I could list, so I went with the most memorable and established ones, cool ones that hadn't been mentioned in any 3.x source yet, and I added the Mewling and the Clockwork Gap as new ones. The Paizo guys added two or three more to the list as well after I submitted my draft. Without a limit to the list, there were a nice number of other demiplanes that I would have liked to add.

2) I tried to make the distinction between the Demiplane of Imprisonment and the Demiplane of Dread even more crisp. The former is the planar prison of Tharizdun (though the overt naming of big T was removed in the editing process), and the latter being Ravenloft. The net is littered with notions of the two demiplanes being connected somehow, but the connection was never canonically there -quite the reverse- and I wanted to make the distinction more firmly established.

3) The Demiplane of Nightmares in the article is indeed taken from the 2e Guide to the Ethereal, as the Nightmare Man mentioned above. I can't speak on what inspiration Bruce Cordell used when he wrote the description in that book, but I went straight with his material. As to any connection between that demiplane and Ravenloft's Nightmare Lands, I'd leave it an open question myself.