Invisible Fortress:Creation cosmology

The world of the Invisible Fortress campaign does not adhere to the standard cosmological models of D&D. While not all characters are fully aware of the extent of the contents of this article, some players may desire to know, and it has impact on magic which cares about other planes.

Feywild

The Feywild is infinite, and chaotic. Long ago, the primordials awoke within the Feywild and began a journey. At one point, they stopped to rest. They built Creation and Yu-Shan, and created the gods and creatures that populated the new world.

The Feywild remained beyond the borders of Creation, and the chaotic nature of it was partially tamed by the stability of Creation. The areas of the Feywild bordering Creation, while still being wild and chaotic, mirror the lands they border and can at least be comprehended by mortal minds. If one were to delve deeper into the chaos, that would no longer hold true and many concepts up to and including "form" would cease to hold meaning.

In the First Age, Reality Engines were produced to convert regions of the Feywild into more territory for Creation. The presence of the fey is inherently destabilizing, and the Feywild took back its losses during the Balorian Crusade, and then some. There may still be Reality Engines operating out there, somewhere, creating pockets of Creation within the Feywild, much like the Feywild pockets that exist within Creation.

The fey

The fey are the natives of the Feywild. In some sense, the primordials are (or were) the most powerful fey in existence, but more truthfully their power has allowed them to transcend the label.

To speak of a fey's natural form is to speak of an oxymoron; they do not exist. Fey take on finite shapes in order to enter Creation and in order to mimic the processes of Creation while in the Feywild, but prior to the existence of Creation and when speaking of the fey further into the chaos, there is no such thing as "form".

Within the Feywild, stories become real, fantasy is tangible, and dreams are as effective as a sword.

Creation

Creation is the world most people are familiar with. It is a flat world, approximately 120 million square miles (in the real world, Earth has a surface area of approximately 197 million square miles). If you subtract the western ocean and the Inner Sea, Creation's landmass is approximately 95 million square miles (compare to the 57 million square miles of land area on Earth).

As a flat world, Creation has five poles (each associated with an element), rather than the two poles you'd find on a spherical world:

• The Elemental Pole of Water is located in the west, where the western ocean gives way to endless sea before becoming a water-themed region of the Feywild.
• The Elemental Pole of Wood is located in the east, where the trees of the eastern forests and jungles grow taller and taller before becoming a forest-themed region of the Feywild where the trees go on forever both up and down.
• The Elemental Pole of Fire is located in the south, where the southern deserts give way to a volcanic mountain range before becoming a fire-themed region of the Feywild.
• The Elemental Pole of Air is located in the north, where tundra transitions to arctic terrain and glaciers before becoming an ice-themed region of the Feywild.
• The Elemental Pole of Earth is located in the center, where the Imperial Mountain stands.

Yu-Shan

Yu-Shan, the City of Heaven, mirrors the Blessed Isle in both size and shape, though it exists in the Astral Plane. The primordials created Yu-Shan for themselves, while the gods lived on the Blessed Isle and the mortals lived everywhere else in Creation. After the Primordial War, the gods moved in to Yu-Shan and the mortals moved in to the Blessed Isle.

Although located in the Astral Plane, Yu-Shan is entirely encased within an barrier that no power short of perhaps one of the primordials themselves would be able to pierce.

Shadowfell

The Shadowfell was created during the Primordial War. When the first primordial was killed, the universe had no concept of how to handle the situation. The Shadowfell and the Void were spontaneously created as a result. Prior to the existence of the Shadowfell, a mortal soul that died would immediately pass into Lethe to be cleansed for reincarnation. Now, some souls wander the dark mirror of Creation that is the Shadowfell.

The primordials who died in the Primordial War became the Neverborn. Each Neverborn exists in a tomb which teeters on the edge of falling into the Void. The Neverborn have gone mad, and wish to end their current existence, either by falling into the Void (and thus annihilating themselves, as happens to everything which falls into the Void), or else restoring themselves to life as a primordial. The general consensus is that the utter destruction of Creation will bring about one of those two outcomes for the Neverborn. Nobody knows which will occur, but the Neverborn don't care.

The Deathlords are a group of powerful ghosts who serve the Neverborn directly, and they are responsible for corrupting the essences of a number of champions of the Unconquered Sun. These corrupted champions venture into Creation under the direction of their Deathlord masters, in order to further the goals of their Neverborn masters.

Stygia

Stygia is the "capital" of the Shadowfell. While most unlife throughout the Shadowfell reflects memories of civilizations present and past, Stygia has no counterpart within Creation. Stygia is a necropolis located on the Isle of Sorrows (the Shadowfell counterpart to the Blessed Isle), ruled by the Dual Monarchy.

The Dual Monarchy consists of the White Monarch and the Black Monarch, each of which has a male aspect and a female aspect.

• Usine is the male aspect of the White Monarch. He represents the Monarchs' Way district of the city, and controls the jade effigies which guard Stygia's borders. Usine's Bright Panoply contains the greatest riches of the Shadowfell, and their presence brings joy to an largely joyless world.
• Eset is the female aspect of the White Monarch. She serves as the Mouthpiece of the Void and knows the Secrets of Oblivion. Eset can summon or calm the terrible storms of the Shadowfell.
• Setesh is the male aspect of the Black Monarch. He is the architect of the Calendar of Setesh, and his mastery of it grants him the power of prophecy within the Shadowfell.
• Nebthys is the female aspect of the Black Monarch. She never makes proclamations or revelations, but she hears every whisper of the dying and occasionally shares them with individuals in order to set events in motion for whatever her mysterious agenda is.

The Calendar of Setesh

Day and night do not progress in the Shadowfell. As you might imagine, this can create difficulty for the activities of the unlives of the Shadowfell's residents.

Setesh solved this problem with a magnificent machine which hangs in the sky above Stygia. The Calendar of Setesh ensures that day follows night and spring turns to summer. The dead believe that they must worship the Dual Monarchs to make the sun rise... and they are literally correct, as those prayers power the Calendar.

Nine Hells

Not all of the primordials died in the Primordial War; a number of them surrendered. Those who surrendered were permanently transformed into the Yozis, and metaphysically encaged within the body of their king, Malfeas the Demon City. Malfeas, surrounded by Cecelyne the Endless Desert and Kimberry the Sea that Marched Against the Flame, forms the Nine Hells equivalent for this campaign.

Much like their Neverborn brethren, the Yozis wish to escape their prison. Instead of destroying Creation so that their own existence might end, however, the Yozis' goal is to make Creation a hell on earth, so that their metaphysical imprisonment would extend to allowing them into Creation proper, since they would still be in hell. Also much like the Neverborn, the Yozis have corrupted some essences of the champions of the Unconquered Sun to serve as their minions who are not bound as they are.

Astral Plane

Any form of magic which creates extradimensional spaces creates the space somewhere within the infinitely large Astral Plane. Similarly, magic which can make an object disappear to be called back later (such as a Warlock's Pact of the Blade) will send the object to the Astral Plane, at least temporarily. Even Yu-Shan itself is located within the Astral Plane.

Unlike the standard Astral Plane rules in D&D where you can move just by thinking it, this Astral Plane does not allow any motion at all, barring magic which explicitly allows it. You still do not age, or hunger, or thirst, and don't even need to breathe while you are located within the raw Astral Plane (being inside an extradimensional space will generally have you following the normal rules for such things), but you cannot move... which makes casting a spell to leave rather difficult when you can't supply any verbal, somatic, or material components. A spell such as astral projection which is designed to navigate the Astral Plane still allows you to do so normally.

Autochthonia

Few, if any, are aware of the existence of Autochthonia. It is a civilization located within the body of the primodial Autochthon the Great Maker, who along with Gaia allied himself with the gods and humans during the Primordial War. After the War concluded, however, he grabbed a collection of human souls waiting to be reincarnated and fled to the Astral Plane, creating a world within himself for them to live in.

Autochthon's self-modification resulted in giving himself the primordial equivalent of cancer, and now he exists in the primordial equivalent of a coma. Still alive, but unaware and dying, while the humans inside him scrape by to find a life in a dying mechanical world. Many Autochthonians understand that their world is dying, and if they can find their way back to Creation, there will be a flood of humans arriving like locusts.