I'd like to see the planes, particularly the elemental planes, expanded. We've had topics about this or that mention this in the past, but I was bored and painted the diagrams from the old Planescape setting to illustrate what I was sort of picturing. An expansion like this might have to wait until Gaudi and Hal are closer to release, or it could be part of the event leading UP to it.

Essentially, the idea is that there are areas between the elemental planes that have characteristics of several planes. Between the elemental plane of Fire and the plane of Earth, you would have the paraElemental plane of Magma. In the typical D&D world, you also had planes that were composed of pure positive (good, life) energy and pure negative (evil, undeath) energy. When elements approach the energy planes, they also form separate planes of strange origin: the quasiElemental planes.

Benefits of expanding the planes in the long run could do a lot of good things for Lusternia...as it is, the realm as a whole feels a bit small. We know that at least two elemental planes are out there, so adding more would be interesting. Also, I can imagine having lords of the paraElemental planes that could swear loyalty or give tithes to particular groups, creating conflict on the planes (gasp! No, can't do that! Might encourage pee kay there!). They could also be used as bashing areas, likely harder then the 4 main elemental planes, and possibly very dangerous.

Conflict between the elemental planes would also make sure the cities are always in a competition with each other over resources as limited as villages. This could create a constant pressure on most intercity alliances.

Here are the paintings of what it might look like. Imagine the circles are each hemispheres...the hemisphere with the 'positive' plane would be the top, and 'negative' the bottom.

If the areas were dangerous enough, it would be neat to see it possible to slip between the elemental planes in areas where the borders are 'thin.' By dangerous, I mean housing settlements with mages that have the plane perma-demensed so planar enemies have to fight through hartstone-power demenses to even walk. Now that would make raids and hunting harder! Why don't NPC's do things like demense, eh?




Disclaimers:
1. Something like this is probably already in the works, is my guess.
2. I realize if the cities have resources to fight over, that the communes need something too. I'm not worried about that part, just the interesting part of quasi and para elemental planes.
3. I know this is not a new idea.
4. Might have to scrap the quasi planes, as I'm not sure how you fit positive and negative planes into our current planeology. But still, the para planes are neat.
5. I don't know why earth+water=ooze in the old setting, sounds like mud to me.

I don't think we need to go as far as quasielements.

But I do agree that paraelemental planes would be nice! It'd be very interesting as it's like "new technology" to us, no historical figure having found them, so we don't have another "rediscovered arts" thing going on, which is cool, but overdone.

EDIT: Dangit, your edit ninja'd me. Stupid lag.

I don't think this is necessary. Just give the existing planes some more flavor; add quests besides the sands and stuff, and make the Lords of Tide/Rock do more and be more interesting.

After all historically mentioned things come out, then yes I think it would be cool to discover more planes.

Yeah, lusternia currently feels quite small, as I actually know my way around to almost every location, something I've never managed in achaea after about two real years. I think it would be better to expand the current planes, instead of adding new ones, because of the abilities that would be required to go there, would would get those abilities (would it be in planar? elementalism? celestialism?), those kind of things. Makes it sound very messy. And I need more fun ways to get essence too

But neutral planes would be useful.
Do both, add new neutral planes and expand existing.
Someday.

I agree that the planes should be expanded and made more interesting, and that, in time, we should discover planes beyond the Astral. However, I don't see any need to steal from Planescape more than we already do. The Gods can be perfectly creative on their own, as is evident from what they've done so far with Lusternia

- Nyren / Shorlen

Lusternia is small compared to Achaea, but, correct me if I'm wrong, Lusternia is huge compared to Achaea after six months, or however long it's been. They're building at a good pace. I'm as impatient as anyone, but give them a break.

That said, I think ideas for what to build could be useful.

Well, there isn't a NEED, but it would be cool anyway.

Anyway, psh, Dags, they should come before historically mentioned planes, because Fire/Air would probably need Gaudiguch/Hallifax/Continuum/Vortex to come out, so it'd be a lot harder to pull off.

But tell you what, it'd be something to get Serenwilde to hate the cities more, maybe. Have them do a marginally-less-so Cosmic Hope and we'll be all paranoid they'll screw up again! (And maybe they can, or what, I don't know.)

I love this idea, just now sure how it will work with the current planar physics of the place. It sure would be fun though!

The Ethereal Wildes, a place in the Ethereal Plane formed by the interplay between the stable force of Mother Moon and the corrupting force of Mother Night, a place full of beings that are not Fae, but are half-tainted, half pure. When they are killed, they drop unformed essence, which can be converted into silvery or shadowy essence. This would give the communes a place to bash other than Earth and Water for essence, and make us not butt heads with the cities every time we try to, and it would be an easily accessable mid level bashing ground for the communes, something the cities have but we don't.

- Nyren / Shorlen

It's already been said Communes aren't getting a planar bashing ground. Sorry Shorlen.

Awww, no fair. Now we have to keep listening to the cities whine when we use theirs -grins-

- Nyren / Shorlen

We need subplanes, or planes below Prime, like the Underworld, why because it's cool, well something like that, going up is boring, i wanna go down!
Having fighting between the elemental planes would be cool but worthless, unless you make all the essence go to one of them, which wouldn't be that cool, the Night/Moon fighting has quests related to that and such.

I agree, but I'm not sure how much they fit into the gameworld, since the Prime was the first plane, and the rest were built on top of it, I thought. Or something. Maybe I'm wrong.

- Nyren / Shorlen

Brief Hijack: Why do you sign your name, its not hard to know who you are.

Partially habit, I suppose. And partially because my name isn't Shorlen when I'm talking OOC. To me, there's an important distinction between IC and OOC, and to me, names are important. -shrugs- And, partially, it's because I'm jealous I don't have a cool signiture