An Alternate Cosmology: The Far Realm, And Elements of Alternate Ecology for Many Aberrations

Lords of Madness, possibly the most in depth exploration of aberrations ever written for D&D, tells us that aberrations come from many places: the far future, the distant past, alternate worlds, different planes. What they all have in common is that even more than fiends, even more than demons . . . aberrations are wrong. They do not belong in our world. In our cosmology, even. There is a reason for this, which I will endeavor to explain in this article. Some of it, I touch on, briefly, in my Alternate Ecology of Aboleths.

Most mythologies begin similarly. "In the beginning, all was darkness and void." "All was watery, unformed chaos." In some stories there was a limitless ocean of milk. The Norse spoke of a gap of misty emptiness between fire and ice. Most Native American peoples spoke of a world covered in water. What they all have in common, is the notion of chaos predating all, existing, uncreated. In most cases this chaos is characterized as liquid.

What creator gods actually seem to do isn't make something from nothing...but rather, organize chaos into order, make substance from ephemera, give form to the formless. So creation is that initial formative act, the division of light from dark, categorization, rules placed on infinity.

Most mythologies have the gods arise from this same chaos. Many have other entities, not gods, but sometimes as powerful, arise as well, usually even predating the gods. Examples include Tiamat, (the Sumerian one, not the D&D dragon goddess) Apsu, Ymir, Apep (aka Apophis). The Greeks personified the whole thing, and named it Khaos, which is where we get the word. And the oldest beings, predating even the Titans, were born directly from it.

Let's diverge for a minute and take a look at the mostly still official cosmology for D&D, the Great Wheel.

The Great Wheel and the Inner Planes

You'll note that I've added a few things, like re-adding the deep ethereal from the old days, adding in the Elemental Chaos from which the elemental planes emerged (from 4e), and adding the dimension of Dreams outside the Ethereal but connected to it, and connected to the Astral on the other side. I also marked everything blank as Unreality, or Outside. The Far Realm, off by itself, is firmly outside, but connected to Creation (everything else with a graphic) via Dreams, Elemental Chaos, Limbo (what Pathfinder would call the Maelstrom), Pandemonium, and the Abyss. So there's a lot of ways to get there, but all the paths are very long.

Let's start with the Outer Planes. Arguably the furthest point in Creation from the Prime, they (sort of) can be thought of as encircling it. Now i used this graphic for a reason. I think of them more like shifting, orbiting spheres, and proximity on the wheel just indicates ease of travel between them. They don't touch. Their orbits vary, they come closer to or father away from the Inner Planes and the Material, and sometimes even overlap, much as the planes of Eberron do. Always overlapping the Inner Planes, not shown, is the Outlands , or Concordant Opposition. It's the closest to the material, philosophically and ethically. Because all this is a metaphor that also happens to be literally true. That's the Outer Planes for you. Everything out here really has to do with philosophy, morality, the higher or lower mind. That's why you get here through the Astral, propelled by will and psyche. No matter how weird it gets out here, how repulsive, it's still part of creation. It's things that can be comprehended, even though you might not want to, and they might not be logical. Even Limbo, Pandemonium, the Abyss. They represent the depths of depraved, dark and twisted minds, and push the limits of reality, but are still part of what is. They verge on the Unreal, though. And are one of the easiest paths to the Far Realm.

Next up, the Inner Planes. These are encompassed and bound by the Ethereal and the Deep Ethereal. Unlike the Astral, these planes are not philosophical, or moral, in any sense. They are physical, primal, the building blocks of the Material, even the ethereal bits. The Ethereal incorporates the Spirit Worlds: elemental spirits from those planes, wandering ghosts in the misty borders themselves, the bright source of life in the Positive, the dark force of death from the negative, the rainbow mirror of the Feywild, and the grim reflection of the Shadowfell, each with their 'fey' spirits. Again, full of weird things, especially in the Domains of Dread or Delight...but part of reality. Accepted. Maybe even needed.

Surrounding the Deep Ethereal, out where things get...thin... is the dimension of Dreams. The place where the Unreal filters into the real via the medium of dreams and nightmares, where our intuition and our spirits meet. Where the spirit meets the mind as the Ethereal touches the Astral through it. Through Dream, you can get to the Far Realm, because you can go anywhere through dreams. Outside that, somewhere, the Elemental Chaos spins, looking much like sections of Limbo, but more elemental, less abstract. From there, again, you can get to the Far Realm.

(As an aside, if the Outer Planes have to do with the psyche and the mind, and the inner planes have to do with the flesh and the spirit...which one actually has to do with the soul? Both. Neither. I'm not getting into that one yet, that's another article.)

So we've established a general cosmology, and where the Far Realm is. Sort of. And what it is. Sort of. It's the realm of literal and complete chaos, far beyond the meager imaginings of mortal's minds, more lawless than Limbo, more evil than the Abyss. It's out there. It's inconceivable. It's what there was, before anything else....except not exactly. It's more like what was left of infinite insane chaos when the gods were through making Creation orderly. The worst bits. Which is why its not just random, but also inimical. How can such a place exist, outside all order, beyond the reach of the gods? Well...the Norse had a word we could use: Utangard, meaning literally 'outside the walls'. It included, for them, realms like Muspelheim and Jotunheim, which were realms of giant, and outside the purview of the gods. (Yup, bringing back some of my Alternate Ecology of Giants...which are basically manifestations of primal chaos through the Elemental Chaos, and dragons might be too...but I digress. Again.)

The answer to that question, honestly is...it doesn't. It is outside reality. It doesn't exist. But . . . there it is. It has the potential to exist. It once existed, before Creation. It will exist again at the end. But it also never did, never will, can't. That's the point of it.

I'll restate the initial passage here: aberrations come from many places: the far future, the distant past, alternate worlds, different planes. They also all come from the Far Realm. Because it is all those things, and none of them.

We cross between material planes via the Ethereal, or via Dreams...The Far Realm can be reached that way. It is an alternate material where drastically different laws apply, or none at all, because the gods never existed, never codified reality...or were destroyed and reality broke down again, or, or, or....

The mindflayers are an ancient empire from the distant past, but came there from a far future where they ruled everything...but that is not our future, though they strive to make it so. It isn't a real future at all, but only a potential one. A very different timeline where everything went a very different way, where the Far Realm and the Aberrations won, where the Far Realm is reality...which cannot be, is not, will never be. Unless they win. Then it always was. They only have to win once. We have to win every time. There won't be a second chance because we will never have existed, and our rules and laws prevent us from existing when we don't, can't exist. Theirs don't. Head hurt yet?

The beholders, as I established in their Alternate Ecology, are the last compacted souls and material of dying realities, manifested into a single observer, a Beholder, in order to try to continue to exist. Schrodinger's Monsters. They don't exist either, except that they perceive themselves to do so, and they want to destroy the reality they are in to bring back their own...which because it died, also never existed. That too, is the Far Realm. The false, and terribly true memories of a world that never was. The beauty in the eye of the beholder.

Aboleths are from the beginning. They swam through the formlessness, the nothingness, the dark, so full of potential but without reality, the hideous spawn of Something bigger and more foul, mere larvae searching for a chance to reach adulthood, which reality inhibits. They need to return the world to non-existence to free themselves to grow. That cannot be, for the world is, always was, and always will be...unless they win. The formlessness of the beginning that they remember, that never existed? That is the Far Realm.

The other planes they come from? Limbo spawns the slaadi, extraplanar creatures that are somehow not outsiders, because they have no moral existence. They are aberrations, spawned in truth from the far edge of Limbo where true chaos waits...the Far Realm. The Abyss and Pandemonium have their obyrith, (or qlippoth,) things that predate the first demon, the first angel, the first devil, things which only gained a moral dimension when they learned hate of the new creatures of their planes. Born in the deepest reaches of all, they too hail, in truth, from the Far Realm. And like other aberrations, or aberrant fiends, they want to destroy all that is, even though they have come to be native to Creation over endless eons. And where they are from, where they wish to return all...that is the Far Realm.

And lastly, the Far Realm is , at once, everything and nothing. An entire separate milieu, outside Creation, uncreated, eternal, non-existent, vibrant, dark, light. Indescribable, horrifying, beautiful, like an ant suddenly perceiving and understanding human speech...then going back to normal with the vaguest memory that it once knew more. Like a splinter in the mind. A fractal, farcical fable of frayed planes sliding through one another like knives through jello . . . but they are the knife and the jello at the same time.

A note on Eberron: Be very, very careful here. It is far closer to the Far Realm than any other material plane, and intersects with it from time to time through a not-place called Xoriat, home to the aberrant manipulators known as the daelkyr, who seem, unlike many such, to know what their purpose is.

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