Ideas for Spirit World

[KarlKost]

I was looking for ideas for planes, and how to organize them. I want to build a Multiverse which may have several alternative worlds like in Infinity Earth, but with one general "Spiritual World". That Spiritual world would be divided in planes, with some sort of "Yggdrasil", "the world three" connecting them. Each plane would be infinite, with infinite "Realms" inside (or sub-planes), and perhaps even more subdivisions (which may or may not be infinite). Now, some of those would be sort of connected to each material world, so it would be an infinity amount of finite spiritual worlds, one for each one of the infinite material worlds. Those would be 2:

The Astral Plane (or the outer astral plane) - a plane of higher ideas. This also touches the Dreamworld
The Shadowlands - the land of the (restless) dead (ghosts)

So, the (outer) Astral Plane would be a positive reflection of the many material worlds and the Shadowlands a negative reflection. Both worlds are (almost) the same as the material worlds they reflect, but in the Astral Plane everything is bright and collorfoul and more alive, but in the shadowlands everything is grey and in decay.

Those two planes (in their infinite aspects) are actually a part (or connected to?) to the higher and lower planes, respectively.

Now, I would like ideas for a few more planes, preferably in a more generalized way, with specifics being fit into "Realms" inside of those.

For example: Hells. The place where the sinners go. In Buddhism for example, one plane of existance was that of those filled with wrath. Well, that would fit one of the "circles of hell". Not a specific plane, but rather a "Realm" inside the Hell's Plane. Or the "Abyss" of Demons and "Hell" of Devils for D&D.

I would also like a few "technological planes", like for example "Cyberspace" (which would only exist on material worlds with computers in it, and would be specific for that dimension/reality), "Hyperspace", "Quantum Dimension" - help me create interesting descriptions for those as well as interesting critters and places, like I dont know, 2D beings for Hyperspace like in one episode of Star Trek or "Schrodinger Beings" of some sort for a "Quantum Plane".

Some planes cannot be accessed by people that dont believe in them - for example, only technomancers could acess the "Quantum Plane" - at least in theory.

Also, some planes would be "Positive" ("above" the astral plane) and others "Negative" ("bellow" the shadow plane), while some goes into both poles (like the Dreamland, having "dreams" "above" the positive spiritual world and "nightmares" "bellow" in the negative), while others are out of this axis (like the Cyberspace and Quantum Dimension).

Im also thinking about a "Mirror World", a third type of spiritual plane also connected to the many material worlds (so once again, one for each one of the infinite "Earths"), with a "null charge", simply a spiritual reflection of the material world neither positive or negative.

So, a few ideas, help me to expand it

Superior Planes

Astral Planes

Arcadia or Fairyland (or land of Myths)

Heaven or Mythical Realms (the house of the Gods, like Olympus, Asgard, the Celestial Bureocracy, Elysius, Garden of Eden etc)

Gaia (or whatever the name for a plane of Life or that holds the life energy of the multiverse)

"The Primordial Plane" (help me with a better name) - the great vortex of primordial energy that is the "energy of creation". House of the Hindu God Vishnu the Creator. Also the source of all "mana", or the "Plane of Magic".

Inferior Planes

Shadowlands (the land of the restless dead)

The Many Hells

Limbo or Oblivion - a plane connected to the many infinite Shadowlands, where the souls of the restless dead are consumed should they fall in. In the Limbo or Oblivion EVERYTHING is consumed, sort like a "spiritual garbage" of the universe. The opposite of the "Primordial Plane". Represented by the Hindu God Shiva.

Dual Planes (planes present in both positive and negative spiritual planes)

Dreamworld - collection of the dreams and imagination of ALL denizens in the multiverse. You can find Darth Vader, Lord Sauron or Spiderman here, as well as the boogieman of your nightmares, plus infinite more stuff.

Etherium Plane - collection of all abstractions of the multiverse. Representations of good and evil, chaos and order. A visitor could see a spirit that represents death as the Grimreaper for example.

Non Aligned Planes

Mirror World

Hyperspace

Cyberspace or Dataspace (a plane of pure information)

Quantum Dimension

Elemental Planes (Water, Earth, Fire, Air, but also metal, wood, radiation, mud, glass and countless others)

The Great Beyond

The Anti-World - this is the place for the "things men were not supposed to know". This is an anti-place, anti-existance, the end of the multiverse. It's the origin of Ctonic forces of the likes of Cthulhu. The Oblivion is destruction, but with a spiritual purpose of restoring balance. The Anti-World is a Black Hole of nothingness, is anti being. Pray that you never meet a creature from that place.

Also, could anybody tell me the difference between the Astral and Etherium Planes in D&D?

Thanks for the help8

[whswhs]

I continue to like the four realms of GURPS Cabal better than any other treatment of this subject.

[Kage2020]

One interesting question from the metaphysics of the game/setting Equinox where new "solar system" are accessed through astral space is whether they are truly different solar systems or just different planes...

Random thought.

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by Kage2020

One interesting question from the metaphysics of the game/setting Equinox where new "solar system" are accessed through astral space is whether they are truly different solar systems or just different planes...

Random thought.

Well, Im planning a game using Realm Magic that will have "wizards" but also "enlightned scientists" technomancers who have "Quantum Manipulation" as a Realm to deal with the "parallel and alternate realities" just as with the "ultraterrestrials" being that "follow different natural laws".

In fact, those "Enlightned Scientists" dont even believe in that "superstitious nonsense" about "Spirits" AT ALL, rather having a bunch of (irl pseudo)scientific technoramblings about quantum alternate vibration existances, based on string theory, that generates parallel universes upon which some even have different natural laws etc (yes, it's a bunch of pseudoscientific mambo jambo irl, but it is real in game, or at least it works or is an "alternative truth", since the mystical interpretation of Gods and Spirits and the connections of planets with zodiac symbols and so on also work).

So, at least in the view of these guys in my game, there's no fundamental difference between the "material plane" or the world of the dead for example, it's just a matter of the "wavelenght of the quarks" that generate different laws of physics. So the same would apply for any "parallel Earth".

In a sense, althought those technomancers are probably wrong, they're also probably right...

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I continue to like the four realms of GURPS Cabal better than any other treatment of this subject.

Gurps Cabal is great, but it is too Hermetic-centric for my taste. My game will be based on the D10 "Mage Ascension" game (just based, not identical), adapted to Gurps using Realm Magic (from Thaumatology), and where magic truly is "in the eyes of the beholder". The Technocrats from the "New World Order" conspiracy for example consider all that "mambo jambo" about "zodiacs and sympathetic magic" to be "absurdly stupid superstitous nonsense", even thou they do recognize that in order to create mutations induced in an individual it is far easier to do that with a sample of DNA of the victim, or that their advanced AI algorithms have a far easier time calculation the behavioral pattern of a subject if you have the person's profile, or they are also aware of cosmic cicles that influence the outbursts of Cosmic Rays, which in turn is significant for when they are planning their "Dimensional Exploration Trips", this the study of Astrophysics is fundamental before any sort of "Dimensional Quantum Manipulation, but that's Science goddamit! It has nothing to do with "superstitious nonsense"!

That's why I would prefer some more... "Unified Field of Spirit Sciences" approach for the "other realities". Some that could be used by Merlin, Baba Yaga and Spock, perhaps with each of them seeing just a piece of it, probably having a flawed or incomplete picture of even the small pieces they manage to grasp, and then having it all submitted to their own worldviews. So, for example, a Catholic Priest "mage" could probably visit Heaven and Hell in the flesh, while an aborigenal Dreamspeaker that believes that the entire Creation is a Dream dont even believe that you can enter the "Deep Dream" with the "illusory matter", thus they believe that the Priest misenterpreted the signs, having his own mind be tricked into believing they were in a world of flesh, while a materialist scientist think that "Heaven and Hell" are just Jungiang archetypes, and that thus all the "spiritual jorneys" of mystics are just landscapes of their own minds or alternate quantum realities.

This "Unified Planar Camp" is something for me as the GM to know to have a "base architecture" which dont even need to be truly straightforward. Just to make sense, and possibly manageable, so that it can be prone to different interpretations (that may all be true at the same time even when they are absolutely mutually exclusively).

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

In fact, those "Enlightned Scientists" dont even believe in that "superstitious nonsense" about "Spirits" AT ALL, rather having a bunch of (irl pseudo)scientific technoramblings about quantum alternate vibration existances, based on string theory, that generates parallel universes upon which some even have different natural laws etc (yes, it's a bunch of pseudoscientific mambo jambo irl, but it is real in game, or at least it works or is an "alternative truth", since the mystical interpretation of Gods and Spirits and the connections of planets with zodiac symbols and so on also work).

Quantum mechanics all by itself can get a bit mystical. In the Copenhagen interpretation, the collapse of the wave function—that is, the change from probability distributions to definite values—happens when an "observation" takes place. And a common assumption (though I don't believe it's required by the von Neumann axiomatization, where I think "observation" is an undefined primitive term) is that "observation" means that someone is conscious of the state of the system: that is, that consciousness has the power to change a particle from a probabilistic range of possible locations or velocities to a single definite location or velocity. "Consciousness can alter physical reality" is at least one big step toward mysticism.

Then there's the theory of Roger Penrose that the neural substrate of consciousness is microtubules small enough so that quantum mechanical processes dominate what happens in them, leading to an argument for free will. That's always sounded to me like a revival of Cartesian dualism, making consciousness not an ongoing interaction between an information processing system (the body) and its environment, but a hidden other realm.

I'd add that quantum entanglement of separated particles could be handwaved toward the Law of Contagion in traditional magical thought.

(On the other hand, many worlds quantum mechanics seems to avoid this tendency to mysticism. It resolves the whole problem of when we change from probabilistic description to deterministic single values, or when the wave function collapses, by saying that it never collapses. In the Schrödinger's cat Gedankenexperiment, it's not that radioactive decay either does or doesn't happen, or that it is or isn't detected, or that the poison is or isn't released, or that the cat lives or dies, or that the observer sees either a living or a dead cat, or that other people learn that the cat lived or died; it's that the uncertainty continues to propagate through all those domains, ultimately giving you two "worlds" where the two different things happened. Though the price of that one seems to be that rather than "free will" letting you make the right or wrong choice, you always make both the right and the wrong choice, in parallel. So it's kind of hard to have a concept of agency in such a worldview.)

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Quantum mechanics all by itself can get a bit mystical. In the Copenhagen interpretation, the collapse of the wave function—that is, the change from probability distributions to definite values—happens when an "observation" takes place. And a common assumption (though I don't believe it's required by the von Neumann axiomatization, where I think "observation" is an undefined primitive term) is that "observation" means that someone is conscious of the state of the system: that is, that consciousness has the power to change a particle from a probabilistic range of possible locations or velocities to a single definite location or velocity. "Consciousness can alter physical reality" is at least one big step toward mysticism.

Then there's the theory of Roger Penrose that the neural substrate of consciousness is microtubules small enough so that quantum mechanical processes dominate what happens in them, leading to an argument for free will. That's always sounded to me like a revival of Cartesian dualism, making consciousness not an ongoing interaction between an information processing system (the body) and its environment, but a hidden other realm.

I'd add that quantum entanglement of separated particles could be handwaved toward the Law of Contagion in traditional magical thought.

(On the other hand, many worlds quantum mechanics seems to avoid this tendency to mysticism. It resolves the whole problem of when we change from probabilistic description to deterministic single values, or when the wave function collapses, by saying that it never collapses. In the Schrödinger's cat Gedankenexperiment, it's not that radioactive decay either does or doesn't happen, or that it is or isn't detected, or that the poison is or isn't released, or that the cat lives or dies, or that the observer sees either a living or a dead cat, or that other people learn that the cat lived or died; it's that the uncertainty continues to propagate through all those domains, ultimately giving you two "worlds" where the two different things happened. Though the price of that one seems to be that rather than "free will" letting you make the right or wrong choice, you always make both the right and the wrong choice, in parallel. So it's kind of hard to have a concept of agency in such a worldview.)

Oh yes, that's the sort of debates that the higher ranking Technocrats have in their "Ivory Tower", between the materialists determinists who consider the core of quantum mechanics a "preposterous idea based on the lack of knowledge and understanding", which they firmly believe they'll some day be able to solve with their holy graal of the "Unified Field", and the metaphysicists probabilistics that consider that "Science" rellies on experimentation and observation, and that the empiric results are clear, regarding the materialists as "negationists".

That's the one phylosophical debate that may end up breaking the Technocratic Union apart (in my game).

I love that. I love having those secret "magic" societies fighting not only because of power or influence, but MOSTLY fighting because they cant decide what is the "sex of the angels".

The scenario itself is the "Ascension War", upon which ALL the Awakens or "Enlightned" (mages) fight each other primarily to decide which of their personal "truths" is the ACTUAL truth; the "Ascension War" is the ultimate war over the fate of REALITY ITSELF.

[Apollonian]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I continue to like the four realms of GURPS Cabal better than any other treatment of this subject.

Same, although I have found some difficulty, mechanically, with the Near Astral and the Deep Astral. Specifically, while the Deep Astral is pretty much a separate realm from the other three, the Near Astral seems to overlap with and allow interaction with the Material; but you can still "walk" from the near to the Deep without requiring planar magic. I've never managed to hammer out the mechanics for this to my satisfaction, along with statting out spirits, as potential PCs, who are native to the Astral.

The caveat here is that I've never played a campaign where this actually came up, so for all I know it's a purely "on-paper" problem, not one that impedes play.

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by whswhs

"Consciousness can alter physical reality" is at least one big step toward mysticism.

That is one of the premisses of the that many technomancers in my game have. That's how many technocrats explain for example an annoying point hat doing "Merlin stuff" and creating fire out of thin air (some annoying tendency of those "primitive superstitious" when they encounter a technocrat "Man in Black" trying to stop their "crimes against reality")

Originally Posted by whswhs

Then there's the theory of Roger Penrose that the neural substrate of consciousness is microtubules small enough so that quantum mechanical processes dominate what happens in them, leading to an argument for free will. That's always sounded to me like a revival of Cartesian dualism, making consciousness not an ongoing interaction between an information processing system (the body) and its environment, but a hidden other realm.

Well, the happy skeptical "Scientist" of the Technocracy know for a fact that demons and "ghosts" exist... Some even visited their realms! So it's kinda hard to deny those.

They do have the "Theory of Antropic Field" to explain counciousness in a Quantum Level (please, dont talk to me about souls!), which is an important component of their "Dimensional Science" "Field" (Translation: "Spirit Realm Magic")

Originally Posted by whswhs

I'd add that quantum entanglement of separated particles could be handwaved toward the Law of Contagion in traditional magical thought.

Yes, indeed! In fact, that's how the game mechanics work for technomancers!

Originally Posted by whswhs

(On the other hand, many worlds quantum mechanics seems to avoid this tendency to mysticism. It resolves the whole problem of when we change from probabilistic description to deterministic single values, or when the wave function collapses, by saying that it never collapses. In the Schrödinger's cat Gedankenexperiment, it's not that radioactive decay either does or doesn't happen, or that it is or isn't detected, or that the poison is or isn't released, or that the cat lives or dies, or that the observer sees either a living or a dead cat, or that other people learn that the cat lived or died; it's that the uncertainty continues to propagate through all those domains, ultimately giving you two "worlds" where the two different things happened. Though the price of that one seems to be that rather than "free will" letting you make the right or wrong choice, you always make both the right and the wrong choice, in parallel. So it's kind of hard to have a concept of agency in such a worldview.)

Indeed my scenario will involve Infinite Earths (with infinite "spiritual" correspondent worlds), which makes BOTH concepts to be equally RIGHT at the same time while also mutually exclusively and wrong.

In this setting, magic is a matter of BELIEF, and reality is formed by the "Consensus", the "Collective Inconscious" of ALL beings... So yes, the positioning of the stars define the fate of a person depending on if that person were born under Scorpion or Aquarius, while at the same time everything is the result of the will of the "One God", but also a consequence of a purely mechanical "Big Bang".

Truth in this game is a matter of perspective

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Same, although I have found some difficulty, mechanically, with the Near Astral and the Deep Astral. Specifically, while the Deep Astral is pretty much a separate realm from the other three, the Near Astral seems to overlap with and allow interaction with the Material; but you can still "walk" from the near to the Deep without requiring planar magic. I've never managed to hammer out the mechanics for this to my satisfaction, along with statting out spirits, as potential PCs, who are native to the Astral.

The caveat here is that I've never played a campaign where this actually came up, so for all I know it's a purely "on-paper" problem, not one that impedes play.

Technically you simply need to "walk up there", since the Astral Plane is all about perceptions. You have to know where you're heading thou. In terms of fluffy, that would probably be done by "flying" up into the "sky" of the Near Astral. I would also allow you to simply close your eyes, concentrate and be there. Or simply imagine a stair or "rainbow bridge". If you "train" your perception there, you could open any door in the near Astral, or enter a mirror and be in the Deep Astral.

But I guess the easiest option in a cognitive way would be to fly up, so I would say that this is the prefered method at least for those not very used to travel in the Astral Plane.