prappleizer
commented
2 years ago Oh this is very spicy and cool!
I dig the idea of dark matter being gravity leakage from other dimensions — and along those lines, I think "parallel dimensions" is probably the way to handle other "planes," which is something we'd need in order to fit D&D spells like Banishment and Plane Shift. I think that it would be interesting for this to be true, but characters IN universe might not yet know this, which opens up the opportunity for adventures to explore / learn about / fall into weird effets of, this.
Maybe one of these dimensions is the etherial plane, spirit realm, or the astral plane (astral plane doesn't make much sense in d&d lore without the whole crystal spheres stuff that is totally incompatible with our setting), but kind of a limbo / shadow realm for wayward spirits / ghosts, but also ghost planets, ghost stars, ghost dust, etc.
I think this is super cool — Maybe the way this cosmology kind of works is that the nearest parallel dimensions (of an infinite number) are ones closest to our own dimension... but different. Hence wayward spirits / ghosts, but also ghost planets, ghost stars, ghost dust, etc. (which may well seem to be such because that dimension is just different than ours).
We should figure out where our aberrations and/or fiends come from.
Agreed. I think that if we divide between more bestial fiends/aberrations, I like the interdimensional creatures thing — maybe even it's not that the other dimensions have aberrations, but the travel between dimensions warps/twists creatures in a way that causes aberrations.
But I really like the idea of intergalactic crusaders — especially because based on the current agn/jet rules, they can get to us but we can't get to them. So we can defend ourselves, but not launch an attack on their home galaxy. This could be a really interesting motivation for a campaign involving getting the galactic races/entities to put aside their wars and differences to fight off the common threat. I think beholders, mind flayers, githyanki, etc (i.e., intelligent ones) may fill the niche of these crusaders well. They may even be that way due to interdimensional travel, but travel into that other galaxy from which they've launched their crusade.
Dark energy seems to be this large scale driving force towards entropy, perhaps an antagonistic force in the setting related to long term big bads / evil empires / evil wizards. But maybe we can do something fun with dark matter as well!
What if dark matter is the gravitational influence of material within another (or multiple other!) mirror plane(s), superimposed upon the material plane? So the gravity leaking through the borders of dimensions causes the illusion of non-interacting matter, and perhaps the physical workings of these other planes is quite different to the material plane's workings. So like, "fantasy self-interacting dark matter"!
Maybe one of these dimensions is the etherial plane, spirit realm, or the astral plane (astral plane doesn't make much sense in d&d lore without the whole crystal spheres stuff that is totally incompatible with our setting), but kind of a limbo / shadow realm for wayward spirits / ghosts, but also ghost planets, ghost stars, ghost dust, etc. Maybe related to some kind of truly buck-wild animist spiritual cosmology that could be fun to explore but also kind of crazy..... like the wandering souls of the dead pieces of the cosmos.
I'd also love to work "the far realm" into this. We should figure out where our aberrations and/or fiends come from. The 40k eqsue lore is alway kind of tempting, where the interdimensional space between worlds produces monstrosities not quite of either world. Linking it to space travel is definitely well done already by tons of brands, so maybe that's not the best thing to do.
You mentioned that travel between galaxies is possible, if the AGN jet is aligned (super cool, btw) so maybe demons / aberrations are just from another galaxy that happens to have its AGN aligned, and they're on like a "holy" crusade to take over this galaxy and spread to whichever other galaxies are within range of our galaxy's AGN. So maybe aberrations / demons think of themselves as like divine crusaders, while having many of the typical features of like beholders, mind flayers, aboleths, fiends etc.
Interested in your thoughts!