Oh, they can certainly say that, but the fact is, beyond the mists, it doesn't really matter where the domains are.. I think the original lore is far more consistent and complete, plus, it stands up to scrutiny, unlike 5th edition, which is more likely to edit out a chunk of lore if it is not pushing book sales fast enough... they no doubt have staff who are deeply invested and knowledgable on D&D lore, for sure, but we are currently in a short era under the sway of a man who seems completely blind to the fact that he is doing to D&D what the movie industry is doing.. taking popular themes from old titles, cranking out substandard and overly simplified versions of it and presenting it under a cloud of inscrutable marketing cloak and dagger bullshit, then silencing any critique by calling all objections "gatekeeping"... well, my objection to that is that D&D has a magnificent and complex lore base unlike any other medium for storytelling and having some idiot thinking that is a problem for new players is exactly what is wrong with the new products being brought out. Lore is optional, but it is not expendable! I respect what has been achieved with 5th edition, but they are very mistaken if they think that dumbing it down is the reason for it's success.. social media, live streamers, youtube creators and a generation of folks who are sick and tired of how fucked the movie industry has become at telling new stories is the reason D&D is skyrocketing to social acceptance, the history of lore can provide all the creative nourishment needed for new players to flourish and tell their own stories, we learn to do things by example best of all, so, I turn my efforts to preserving and presenting the full scope of the D&D lore as best I can, and wait for the current era to get a better captain. Heh, sorry, that was quite a rant in response to a simple question.
@@AJPickett I think it is hard to complain too loud about what 5e has done in regards to lore without looking at 4e long and hard. Arguably the worst deviances of 5e lore from the 2e/3e era is what they chose to retain of 4e lore
@Tyler Annand Oh I agree with that completely. COMPLETELY (also, holy shit you are on fire with the responses to questions in the comments today, I am just reading your replies, nodding to myself and saying "Yep, exactly what I would have said")
For a bit of flavor, a DM may consider in dreams that all lights are on dimmer switches, because the mind cannot instantly render a scene. So you may think to make rooms seem bland or dark and filled with mundane objects who's details only reveal themselves when players are focusing on them. Perhaps bookshelves full of books that swap places when the players aren't looking and whose pages are scrawled with nonsense or totally blank. Or maybe a landscape that shifts slightly based off of intently the players are studying them. Just some flavor ideas.
AJ, these videos are such a rich resource for DMs (like myself) who enjoy taking their players into obscure and esoteric places. Thank you! And please keep up the great work!
Hiding a powerful item in a dream sounds really cool. It would have to be an artifact or something equally dangerous, something that must not be found, but you can't risk losing. Oh, or maybe a person. Or maybe even the dreamer themselves. What would happen if you brought the physical body of the dreamer into their own dreamscape???
Cool idea. Perhaps the artifact would have a different form to the dreamer: like a wand that has the form of a machine or an animal that the players would have to figure out how to get the principal to manifest into a wand. Lots of great npc potential there. Especially if the object was maybe something that the npc was afraid of or maybe they created it, and for one reason or another are too ashamed of it to accept it.
If you're making videos on the domains of dread, may I suggest the one with the portal in Chult. I forget the name at the moment but its mentioned in ToA.
Dreamlike realms always interest me. My own cosmology has a deity as old as the first sentient creature, born from the first dream. The incontestable ruler of the dream realms who longs to be in the waking world, and the rage from his inability is what makes nightmares. Mergos the Nightmare Fiend. I love all your "extra realities" videos and I look to them for inspiration. I wish you well, and I hope I can afford to support you on patreon one day.
In classic Great Wheel cosmology, sentient creatures long predate the Gods (even if the Gods claim otherwise). Of course home settings are often outside of the Great Wheel
The Moonstone dragon is usually found either in the realms of faerie(feywild) or the realms of dreams, and in its 5e lore it seems to visit people in their dreams as well. The connection you made between those two realms is really cool and perhaps showcases why the dragon prefers them. The thought of a Ravenloft/Dread equivalent Moonstonen-esque nightmare dragon is horrifying.
Now here is an idea: Just as the domains of dread are connected/apart of the shadowfell, maybe their is a feywild equivalent, where the ‘light powers’ scoop up paragons and create the domains of… dreams?
One thing I would like to incorporate into dream realms is actually drawn from The Wheel of Time books. When characters are in the World of Dreams, they have to be cautious about entering someone else's dream, as they may find themselves becoming part of the dream and therefore under the control of the dreamer.
1.) is that true for all principles: that if they did, their sleeping selves die, and their dreams have defense mechanisms against this? 2.) what happens if a principal leaves the dream? 3.) you just said powerful individuals. Does that mean good people can be taken to the domains of dread? 4.) how do you leave the domains of dread, or travel between them, and is it different for the principal of it than a random person? 5.) is it true that the black spelljammer is some sort of pirate constantly outrunning the ethereal mists as they try extending out from the crystal spheres to catch him? I thought I remembered something about that, but I can’t find it, so I’m wondering if I imagined it.
Good individuals can be taken to the Domains of Dread (example: many adventuring parties) but are not turned into Dark Lords... Rather they are used to torment the other Dark Lords for a bit. Leaving a Domain of Dread usually requires either the implied permission of a Dark Power (they are done with you) or braving the Mists (which will only get you to another Domain of course). That being said there have been... Escapees... Who exploit planar mechanics or make themselves boring to the Powers and thus get booted
Makes me want to create some type of "Even Horizon" adventure with defective magical transporters and hellish chaos tainting people, maybe a powerful Cleric or Wizard NPC sent to help who becomes the main antagonist after getting corrupted.
Anna's story is very sad and compelling. I want to add it into a game somehow. Maybe somebody hid a powerful artifact in her dream, and the only way to spit it back into the material plane is to end her dream, one way or another.
"Monkeys who playfully throw large pinecones"??????? Our monkeys throw shit, lololol That said- this sounds very much like reality, romanticized, sigh.
Adore how you've presented, writen and thought about this lore. Thanks so much AJ. I just watched Locke and Key awhile ago. So thought about scenes in that when you talked about hiding things in the dreamscapes.
I think I heard in a video here on youtube that the dark powers are something like undead gods from long ago. But I can't seem to find anything about it myself. In any case, I have made 2 homebrew darklords myself, though one is just a DnD conversion of a character of mine that I came up with long before i got into DnD (but now got some influence from it). The other is a dracolich who is a lvl 20 wizard, and breaths a miasma that turns victims into zombie plague spreaders (a type of zombie from that guide to Ravenloft). I decided to ignore picking what type of dragon he was, and just had all his draconic powers be death related. He is an undead dragon of pure death and decay.
I feel like you'd like the Nightmare Lands boxed set that came out in Second Edition for Ravenloft. The Nightmare Lands are a dream themed domain of dread that has what appears to be multiple darklords and that can reach out through dreams to attack people outside of their domain. The boxset has a whole mini campaign basically in it and a rule set for adventures in dreams.
I've always entertained the idea that Cyre from the eberron setting is a newly abducted domain of dread. The nation abducted for the purpose of containing some horrid war criminal or some such. I got excited when I saw a mention of it in Van Richtens guide.
Demiplane of Dread: Spawned from 1st Ed idea of Demiplane of Imprisonment, Manual of the Planes (Ethereal), and the Ravenloft mini-campaign module (great horror module that ran like a homebrew). That spawned the entire Ravenloft "universe" new canon after that. I believe that also inspired the Shadowfell and modified all undead beings to be only linked to the shadowfell and other negative materials, completely isolating canon mummies (positive material plane, thus harboring a cursed disease) from the original core and real-world based undead creatures as elemental Earth linked. I kept those when I broke from the evolving canon for my homebrew that locked into the early 2nd Ed before TSR was out of the picture and WotC spun that multiverse into WTF mode. The dreamscapes, I ran hours of missions in those. The one you addressed was just one dreamscape. It was totally solid and had its own solid demiplane because the girl was dreaming for so long. Dreamscapes are usually temporary demiplanes, almost impossible to find, and can only be accessed via the deep ethereal in ethereal form by someone who knows where to find said dreamscape. People physically in the ethereal entering said dreamscapes die quickly because of the nature of the dreamscapes, their bodies still subject to real-world matters in that chaotic scene while an ethereal form would manifest as if it was native to it. Like, the scene changes suddenly to be underwater if you are an air breather. You panic at first but realize you can still breathe and can swim really fast. As a physical person there, you are drowning. Also, you are suddenly in outer space. As an ethereal guy, you find that your feet are cold and you drift about. As a real-world person, your blood boils while your body freezing solid sprays out all the "cold steam" of your bodily liquids from its orifices and newly forming cracks. Invading dreams is primarily a feat that is only common in Night Hags and Gold Dragons can do effectively by actually being their instead of mere mind tricks. I would ramble on my Mirror Dimension missions here as an intersect point but I digress. Thank you for helping me catch up to how things changed over time, AJ. And revealing to me on how some things reverted back to how they were. Awesome video.
@@47thStreet In 1st Ed, Ravenloft was a huge module and there were related releases... that was far before it became its own demiplane (80s). It was referenced in 1st Ed's Manual of the Planes, where one dreaming creates a temporary demiplane. Someone in a coma could create a long-term one and you could go on an adventure to heal a party member in a coma by going into his/her dreamscape. I haven't seen them since the 80s and I was hoping AJ would bring it up so I can repurchase them for nolstalgia's sake.
What about a primary in the dreamscape capable of lucid dreaming? The god of their own realm and they know it, but unable to awaken and can't remember why.
The Domains of Dread are like a terrarium or habitat, each one created for a specific pet. Think about it Each dark Lord is not only evil but irredeemibly Evil. each at some point made a choice that was not only evil but taboo for its own kind. A doppleganger doing murder is nothing. But a doppleganger killing it s elders is unthinkable. A dark Lord is unique, interesting to the Dark Powers. Each Dark Lord is then given its own domain but trapped and tortured in a way specific to it. Like the aforementioned doppleganger being unable to physically harm its victims directly. And every so often the mists drop in treats for the dark lords to feed on or play with.. adventurers.
I thi k we need to be careful with that irredeemable word. Irredeemable evil is... Boring to the Dark Powers. Rather, they want beings who redemption is within their grasp but because of their personal flaws will never take the final steps to achieve it
@@tylerannand3777 very good point. The coolest darklords (IMHO) are the ones with inner conflict and/or failings that doom them even though escape/redemption is still theoretically possible..
@@tylerannand3777 yes but I think that the Dark lords keep failing holds to the irredemable part. I mean strahd doesnt' need to become good. or redeemed. He only needs ot stop playing the game the dark lords set out for him But his personal flaws keep from doing that. The dark lords set out the bait and Strahd jumps at it EVERY TIME, certain that this time THIS TIME things will be different. And the dark powers laugh and laugh at how well trained thier pet vampire is.
@@booley yeah... Irredeemable in practice but not in principle. They don't want someone who would never at some level want redemption... The Dark Powers are not interested in some bloodthirsty killer who revels in ever moment of it with no shame or regret or remorse... or anyone who couldn't ever find redemption under their own power no matter what... They want people who want to be different (or think they want to be different) but can't overcome their own flaws to do so
I had a two year campaign set in a dream realm imagined by a Demodand coopted by the dread lords to contain multiple self loathing powerful adventures, that one ended with the death of an elder god of the far realm.
I just thought of a all new villainous plot. A covetous mage steals a powerful artifact from a kingdom. He hides it in the dreamscape to cover his escape. His plan involved a poor soul trapped in a nightmarish dream induced state where the mage locked him in to a specific nightmare. It's also where he hid the artifact. To protect this, he created some monstrous entity to guard it. He made a mistake though, and the creature killed him as he tried to retrieve his prize. His soul is now trapped in the dream as well. The players, tasked with the artifact's retrieval, must uncover his plot, find a way into the dream and face his ghost and the creature of his undoing. I would probably give the artifact some dream related powers as well. To help throw in a few more plot twists......
Hmmm interesting. I have a horizon walker, the campaign is FULL of portals to my domain of dread, and ethereal travelers. She has already discovered a few plots by dream walking. Im trying to come up with a good magic item that will benefit her talents. But I’m jus not sure...reached level 7 tonight. I said that the lvls will start creeping by at a slower pace now. As I love where the characters are atm, and want to give em some fun items to improve their classes. She already has a magic bow. I want to lean on something that will aid the eldritch secrets they are uncovering. Perhaps buffs for sanity checks.
You mentioned Star Trek transporters. I've always considered Subspace to be the Ethereal plane and Star Wars' Hyperspace to be something like the Astral plane.
I definitively treat Barovia as if it were semi ethereal. When my players us illusion or animation magic, things don't tend to go as planned. I have a Creation Bard in my party. His 5th level Animate Objects spell is stable enough, but when he uses Dancing Object, well things tend to get fun. I let him animate the statue to Mother Night in the wolf cave. It betrayed the party. When ever he animates a normal object, instead of going back to an inanimate state, it just flys off to live a life of it's own. When my players use Minor Illusion I give it a semblance of of life. It's harder to dismiss, lasts twice as long, moves. The Cleric tried to show everyone a visage of Bluetspur frol her Divination and everyone took psychic damage. Fun times.
In my previous video on the ethereal I do mention that its almost like the phlogiston is the opposite side of the ethereal, there are many similar qualities. As for the dreamscapes, they don't interact with the Phlogiston, the stuff just has no business being inside anyone's head (unless they are a planeswalker I suppose)
The 5e description of Ravenloft seems to heavily tied to the shadowfell. I think it may even have said that Ravenloft is embedded in the shadowfell somewhere. Is the there a connection between the shadowfell and the deep ethereal? I guess there's that whole this about the plane of shadow being removed from the deep ethereal and being made into a parallel plane like the fewwild. I guess that would mean that even under that paradigm, the inherent nature of contemporary Ravenloft is of an ethereal one combined with the negative nature of the negative energy plane in the shadow fell.
4e shifted the planes around a lot, and 5e preserved some of it. The Shadowfel has some characteristics of the earlier edition's Ethereal, Plane of Shadow, and Negative Energy Plane... The Feywild doesn't neatly line up with pre 4e lore either
@@chadstinson9886 I don't entirely disagree, but 5e has chosen to preserve at least a bit of it (most notably the Shadowfel, Feywild, and reconfiguration of the Inner Planes)... And of course 5e has introduced new contradictory lore of its own to maneuver
Something that has entertained me as a GM is a sort of demi-plane akin to the garden maze in the movie "Labyrinth" or the Hallmark version of Alice in Wonderland. You could have a Mazemaster similar to a dark lord or feylord, who would be the near-omnipotent god of the demi-plane, but whose mercurial, "chaotic neutral" personality would want to test and play with the PCs rather than help or harm them. The brilliant creatures of Jim Henson in Labyrinth served as a sort of blueprint for the weird and wacky characters the player characters would encounter: Cheshire cats (though this one is from Alice), creatures with three heads (funny not scary) who perhaps disagree with each other on when to eat the players and how to cook them (cf. "The Grail" by Monty), great, big, friendly fluff dragons ("The Neverending Story") on whose backs you can pass a couple of the thorny walls far below, but who have to set you down relatively quickly because of indigestion (they have to fart) and then forget all about you and fall asleep. Was there any mist obscuring the edges of the maze from on high? Did you see all of it? Not really, no to both of these questions. There was just too much too see and take in of this perpetual labyrinth, so that your mind couldn't process all of it. Like in Minecraft, more and more chuks just kept loading into your central memory cortex (or "mind" as us buff old, Tolkienista traditionalists would call it) so that you couldn't possibly process all of it. Too much for mortals. And then you were set down on a daisy-covered meadow in the middle (if it even has a middle) of the maze, reeling from thoughts and emotions, trying to categorise and understand the many tunnels and passageways you have just seen. Way out? There isn't any of course. There is just a way in: to its True Centre. There, with the proper keys you may or may not have picked up along the way, you may finally unlock and open up the portal (a bonfire? a pack of cards? a weather-proof wardrobe?) to reach your own World Primal... and if you haven't picked up all the right keys? Don't worry: you can always try to find your way back across the dimensionless leagues of grassy, sunlit pastures, though you never will, of course. Many, but by no means all of the verdant corridors shift and change like the ocean. You'll never find the same keys again, but certainly others that are just as good in places that are just as wonderful. Perhaps the Mazemaster will even take pity on you, because it is an emotion he has never savoured before, like a vintage wine that must be tested at least once, even for a Divine being, to be crossed off the bucket list. In the maze there is even a little wood, where merry Wood-elves live in perfect bliss and harmony though they were once taken from their Home World against their wishes by the Master. The only blight on their existence is that little tribe of smallish Orcs that pester and terrorise them so that they have to take precautions and perhaps even enlist the aid of some good-natured adventurers passing through their habitat. And then, there's the Green Dragon and the tyrannosaurus and the meat-eating plant (or its cousin) from the "Little Shop of Horrors"...
So, without getting into my campaign too much, is it reasonable to have a PC be the creator of a dreamscape without the party (including the PC) being aware that they are in said dream?
All this talk of the Ethereal has me thinking of those who who regularly visits these planes. Surly Planes walkers and those who are use realms like the ethereal or the plane of dreams to travel long distances. But what of characters who are almost always invisible to those grounded on the Material Plane? Psion Uncarnates at max level are always in ethereal form except for when they concentrate on becoming tangible. I can also see Teams of 'Hunter's of the Dead' taking regular trips into the ethereal to track down and obliterate incorporeal undead, or conversely a Team of 'Master's of the Shroud' entering the ethereal to "collect" new undead as minions.
Or the guest stars of my next video, the Demodands, relentlessly tracking down victims to drag to the depths of Carceri, to be tortured for eternity at their hands.
This reminds me abit about a monster block i remember seeing in the book where it mentions something tantamount to a eldritch horror dreamed up or created by the dark powers. Perhaps it could be pale night given they have lore related to making evil entities that or maybe a sort pf cabal of evil/dark entities
The Domains of Dread are ultimately a gilded cage which makes me think of the other famous cage in DnD, Sigil, and following that bit of logic it's quite possible the Dark Powers aren't even all that dark. After all isn't the Lady of Pain's whole MO basically the same, toss someone into a Demiplane and throw away the key.
But if you dream within a dream do you move to another part of the dreamscape? Or are there layers? What would be the ideal way to run an Inception like story through the dream realm?
I like to think the dark ones that created the domains of dread are actually multiple factions of such beings working together I'm a symbiotic relationship. Some are portions of the minds of gods and such beings that want to punish. Ether from a sense of justice, vengeance or even evils own self destructive and self serving nature. That then split off from the original. Then there's other older things that build the domains that the first group drags souls into and acts as jailers for.
@@booley 5e says that Eberron is in a very isolated crystal sphere on the Prime shared with other settings (3e treated it as an alternative cosmology beyond the Great Wheel); so it is in no position to avoid the pull of the Mists now
Nope, they are (intentionally) unknown and unknowable. Some in-game scholars speculate a few times, but nothing with any authority. It is heavily implied the Domains are relatively new planar phenomenon though
While listening I started hypothesizing myself. Fair warning: it's a long rabbit hole. What if the (original) mist-like Ethereal plane is the source of the mists that takes one to Ravenloft? My idea: The Ethereal mists respond to emotions. Succubi (lust) and Kuo-Toa (madness) both can either see into or travel into the plane. Furthermore, the mists that drop people into Barovia are more of a medium than an antagonist. They respond to the environment. Note those lost in Domains of Dread are bound to or rife with negative emotions. The Vistani can leave, and are the source of what few positive emotions exist in these places. So maybe the mists, and the possible Ethereal plane, behave like water. Emotions determine your buoyancy. Positive emotions float, negative emotions sink. Dread lords are so negative they are like anchors in this aspect, and are thus stuck in the Dread demi-planes, unable to float out. The Ethereal, then, becomes the unwitting highway to such planes, with only few getting out. The Feywild has a similar problem, as it is rife with high and wild emotions. It's a literal lighthouse for the Ethereal plane, which then forms pocket doorways between the Material and the Feywild where these emotions are high and the barrier is thin. Thoughts?
I do like how altering one aspect of the core mechanics (ether responds to emotions, aka, Ghostbusters Two psychoreactive slime) breeds a whole new theory and changes so many things, its thought exercises like that are the Home Gymnasium of the DM's mind, building story muscles.
Im thinking for me the domains are a subconscious dream space of deities. As we know the infernal and abyssal forces keep each other in line. But these other potent malicious forces need a check of their own so to speak. This way other powerful beings can keep an eye on things in a way, and perhaps in some esoteric ways be gaining something for themselves. After all, the entirety of suffering and death that occurs in the domains would likely keep some sadistic being well entertained. Perhaps some domains are secretly lorded over by a sort of limbo minded entity, toying with fresh adventurers and wayward souls called to the mists. Almost like an anti kelemvor or something?
@@AJPickett I’ll do my best. I suppose in my head I had pictured a feel similar to the video game, with a western slant on limbo. As a sort of endless misery, trapped within a hell of their own making sort of thing. Think what happened to Bobby in Supernatural, only a bit more twilight zone. Bleak and desolate. So the being(s) behind the domains I feel would embody that idea, somewhat indifferent, somewhat entertained by the dregs collected and displayed before them. A zoo of misery. If there is a retune of them whose to say these beings don’t show off domains to one another, like little terrariums of fucked up weirdness. The entities always on the search for their next addition to the fish bowl. The trapping of people like Strahd simply being akin to spider catching in your backyard. The anti-kelemvor bit could be seen in an entity that finds justice in your cycle of torment. Seeing the never ending wheel of their putrid existence squeak on. These dark lords do not deserve to pass on, only to live through their insufferable mistakes over and over. I could see how one could fold these concepts together, as a pantheon. Something for each domain. Hopefully that makes sense...you could interpret limbo to mean a few things I suppose lol Orrr something I’ve been toying with. Perhaps they are more like gardeners, literally the power that be. Tending to the sprawling mass of pocket worlds. Visually I see something like the gungan city from the phantom menace, with the city being the domains, and the water being a containing force all its own. The mist if you will. This place growing as a tumor like extension within the Shadowfell, the mists drawing particular entities to itself, as many an adventure begins within the domains at our tables. These gardeners having evolved from fell muck to tend to the spheres. In this analogy think of how a whale carcass is a biome on the ocean floor, an entire community of specially adapted organisms evolved to exist on and migrate from carcass to carcass. Only the domains carcass never runs dry. Expanding, rebirthing, endless dreary fodder for our bizarre community. Or like a Siphonophore. Each piece of the domains linking together to bring existence to what we experience in game. Which frankly I think I like more as a concept. Anyway thats enough of my unhinged ramblings. Not sure if thats what you were asking or not! 😹
Awesome stuff. I'm homebrewing a boss monster that "teleports" through the material plane by shifting into the Ethereal Plane to skip around. In the material plane it seems like it just jumps around instantly, and if you catch it in the Ethereal Plane you can kill it as it's vulnerable there. Any thoughts about this kind of idea? Makes sense or no?
Sounds like an Gendruwo, a type of Memedi that inhabits the Ethereal. Usually like all Memedi, they're harmless and extremely adverse to combat, but Gendruwo will actually pick up a weapon and fight if they think they are in danger. Usually they just pop in and out of the Ethereal to grab people as a 'prank', but if say, it was under a curse that mimics Enemies Abound where it thinks everyone is trying to kill it, I think it would fit your idea pretty well. I have an NPC in my game who is a Gendruwo who acts as a spymaster for a general. He tends to do that cartoon thing where someone steps behind an object too small to hide them but somehow vanishes behind it when he goes to the Ethereal. Likewise he'll step out from behind candelabrums or walk out of a closet the party had just seen was empty when he enters the Material Plane. Because they're shapeshifters too, he looks like a non-descript humanoid of whatever race is most common to where he is, but the few times the party has seen him in the Border Ethereal in his natural state, thanks to See Invisibility and True Seeing, he's 25ft tall and looks similar to a yeti crossed with an oni.
@@TheDarkdoomful Interesting. Similar to but not really what I'm going for. My monster is based off the Shrike from the Hyperion series of books, but changed around to fit in somewhat with DnD lore. So it's a large, around 3 meter tall humanoid construct with four arms, covered in blades and sharp edges. In the books, he teleports by shifting into what's essentially a plane called the Void Which Binds, which makes it look like it's teleporting. It's definitely more of a sci-fi bend than a fantasy one, but I'm also working some Spelljammer into my setting so I think that's fine. It has other abilities as well, but It's basically a god-like terminator that can teleport and loves impaling things (obviously I want it to be killable since it's a big boss in my campaign, so I'm making it vulnerable in the Ethereal). I'm reskinning it to work with DnD mechanics. Since it moves through the Ethereal, it also appears in dreams and visions (which also helps weave it into the story more and maybe give the PC's a hint where it's power comes from, if they pay attention).
I heard somewhere that the domains of dread are created by the shadowfell because as an anti-emotion plane it reacts strongly to strong emotions likely to snowball into more (like strahd being rejected) & seeks to contain them
Everything exists in the same location, but at different frequencies, like, ALL the radio, Television and cell phone data is flying around you ALL the time, but you don't hear it until you tune in to it.
@@AJPickett I remember you saying that on another video and I think about it fairly often actually :) I’m trying to visualize them and I had it where the ethereal was the blank paper everything else was painted on and all the planes have a thought bubble that combine together to create the astral plane but now it looks like both are both and I’m going to have to watch a bunch of your videos again and dig around to unpretzel my mind after this video :)
on an adjacent note is it possible to bottle up phlogiston and bring it to the material plane to use as explosives? the only info i can find on the forgotten realms wiki is that it evaporates away inside a crystal sphere. is there any info on how that works when sealed in something like glass?
The Ethereal Plane *long* predates Tharzidun's existence. It is the primordial medium from which the rest of the Great Wheel was formed, Tharzidun and his prison had to wait until Gods showed up which was... Fairly late all things considered. (4e lore disagrees but seems to have been broadly disavowed at this point) Of course we do have things out there much older (by some measures) than the Great Wheel... Other cosmologies, the Eldest Ones, Leshay, Draeden, probably the Temporal Prime, arguably the Far Realm (as much as time matters to that place at all)
@@tylerannand3777 Well yes and no. Tharizdun predates the canon dnd Universe. He (and the other Great old once) was simply an inhabitant of an other Universe that got destroyed (thanks to Tharizdun) and the GOOs fleed to other universes to so they weren't completely annihilated. Tharizdun on the other hand dreams now, in a destroyed universe from whom he thinks it's the only one in existence...his power radiating out into others creating avators of him. And if these avatars get strong enough they might be able to awake the true Tharizdun...witch would be the beginning of the end of this universe 😅
@@SamaelHellscrem Tharzidun being anything other than a very powerful and very evil God originally is a 4eism that is... questionable if it got transferred into 5e at best. There are lots of things that predate the Great Wheel (Draeden, Leshay, some inhabitants of the Temporal Prime, etc); but Tharzidun isn't one of them
Hi AJ. So could the dream.scape be used in a similar way to the movie "Inception" with Leonardo Dicaprio? BTW your kickstarter mat's are working fantastically, thank you!
My Question is for whoever wants to answer: in a very few words, talking about your own homebrew domain of dread and its dark lord. I just love reading other people's work.
I've had two over the years in my homebrew setting... A sailor on a haunted ship in an eternal storm who takes on refugees in the storm but then grows paranoid that they seek to mutiny... And a debauched hedonistic Noble trapped in dual realm, one and endless and debased and dangerous party and one a cruel mental asylum; and falling asleep in one offers no rest except to wake up in the other
I've always liked Baernoloth (who have a penchant for experimental methods exploring the nature of Evil) and Ancient Baatorians (who famously faded away from normal existence early in planar history) as potential original Dark Powers... I've heard others who think they are belief-beings akin to (but distinct from) Gods. Official Lore, of course, is appropriately silent on the matter. There is evidence to suggest Domains of Dread are (on a planar scale) rather new planar phenomenon
@@KS-PNW it depends on the perspective. From a Ravenloft perspective, I agree... The Dark Powers need to remain inscrutable in origin. From a Planescape perspective; building demiplanes to clinically experiment on the nature of Evil is exactly the sort of things a Baernoloth might do
When discussing travel into a dreamscape, I believe he's talking about doing so with some kind of projection. I don't believe it's possible to take your physical body into the dreamscape, as entering the rainbow curtain from the deep ethereal (if you've managed to get out there) just results in you returning to the boarder ethereal.
It can occur both ways, usually the only way to physically enter would be through a rupture, and even then, the person is converted into dreamstuff.. perhaps all objects are, except maybe powerful artifacts. I think a bit of fuzzy rules is fine as its really up to the DM how each realm works.
@6:55 Oh. Oh it's *that* place. This is one description from 3.5 (the DMG, wasn't it?) that has uncomfortably stuck with me *forever*. Speaking of disquieting things, if we're talking about Van Richten's Guide, then one cannot recommend enough finding copies of 3.5's Heroes of Horror, and the third party 3.0 sourcebooks for the Domains of Dread. They...magnify what you will find in Van Richten's, significantly. Just a content warning for Heroes of Horror is all; 3.5 is less careful about subject matter than 5e at times.
I use all the books yr talking about, especially the sword and sorcery 3/3.5 ravenloft sourcebooks, I wish they could have published some adventures but I understand that their liscence was limited in that regard. I love the original stuff of course, but it has to be said that a lot of the 2nd ed adventures are a little sparse.
I wonder if Ravenloft could be used as a bridge between the Shadowfel & the Faewild. Every Dark Lord eternally trapped in their "Tragic Backstory," I can also picture other large bergs of Ravenloft separated from the "Core" lands that fo the AD&D (AKA 2nd Edition) version, ones in which the technology level is sufficiently different. Imagine a Cyberpunk Techno-Dystopia with Vampires thrown in & an Undying vampiric CEO doing everything to try to keep the ONE person he cares about alive like Mr. Freeze in Batman. The CEO's quest for everlasting life led to them discovering a necromantic bloodborne virus that transformed them into a vampire, but in a frenzy they attacked the one person they cared about & did everything for, & now are desperately trying to keep them alive as the vampirism doesn't seem to work for them or would twist them in a way that would shatter him. I can also imagine a small rebuilt city that's closer to Gama World within an irradiated Wasteland & in which a baron tries to hold a rebuilt city together by day ala Auntie Entity in "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome," but stalks the wilderness as a werewolf that's a mutated monstrosity that's three times the size of a regular werewolf under the full moon, & thus being the biggest threat to the settlement they strive to keep together. This could be them repeating the pattern that brought about the wasteland, just as their rage caused them to launch the nukes. Just a few non-standard settings for Ravenloft domains.
Neverland could be lots of places, but Wonderland is made of concepts and abstracts (which makes me want to put it in the Outer Planes), and is bizarre and incomprehensible but not malicious (which makes me think it is in the Hinterlands somewhere?)
@@zenvariety9383 I could buy that also, but all the weird math stuff and everything makes it feel more... zany Outer Planes to me than Fey (which despite all their otherworldliness are also fairly 'natural' in most DnD depictions)
I have 2 questions. The first kinda random but, in the elder scrolls the theory concerning existence is that all the elder scrolls universe exists in a Godhead. Is it possible for a lucid dreamer to create a fully functional existence universe in the deep borders of the deep ethereal & the dream realm with the lucid dreamer as the godhead? The second is a bit less meta but, some people are said to have a deep spiritual or soul bond or psychic connection. Can two dreamers with such a deep & profound bond have there dreamscapes so intertwined that a visitor can go from one to the other simply by entering thru one of the dreamer dreamscapes?
Those are more creative license question than lore questions, and unfortunately, my answer is "your table, your rules" I am n to here to tell you how you are allowed to play the game. Sounds cool, I can see those themes in novels and movies, so, sure, tell those stories at your table.
The campaign I'm running takes place in Etharis (Grim Hollow setting) and the players are trying to keep it from becoming a new plane of dread. Easy right? But there are some powerful beings who have vested interests in this planes vulnerability. Demons and devils, angles and gods where do we find help? The far realms? Perhaps a new layer of reality? Time to think outside the box, the walls are closing in. Good times ;). Oh yah, Merry Christmas everyone!
Etharis is an entire planet yes? I don't think we have any examples of things quite so large being pulled into becoming a new Domain... Usually a valley or the like at most
@@tylerannand3777 Yes. Hence the "interest" from other powers. Maybe we can pull it into the Abyss, or a new heaven or it becomes the basis for an entirely new plane of existence? Keep the players guessing.
@@coreyeaston6823 entire worlds have been pulled into the Abyss before (though they wouldn't make a 'new heaven' even if pulled into the Upper Planes... One planet is just a drop in the infinite oceans of an Outer Plane)
@@tylerannand3777 All these things are true. Then the question the players are asking is why are the upper and lowers plans so adamant at preventing a whole world being consumed by the domains of dread? I love layering questions with more questions?
@@coreyeaston6823 I don't see a lot of evidence to suggest any outer planar being cares much either way, they certainly don't seem to be taking steps to prevent the Domains of Dread from doing their thing in general. Instead I would guess that Dark Powers don't have much use for a whole world full of people. Their interests tend to be much more... Focused
Aren’t the Domains of Dread in the Plane of Shadow ?
5e (or maybe 4e?) moved them to the Shadowfel, but historically they were one of the premier ethereal demiplanes
Oh, they can certainly say that, but the fact is, beyond the mists, it doesn't really matter where the domains are.. I think the original lore is far more consistent and complete, plus, it stands up to scrutiny, unlike 5th edition, which is more likely to edit out a chunk of lore if it is not pushing book sales fast enough... they no doubt have staff who are deeply invested and knowledgable on D&D lore, for sure, but we are currently in a short era under the sway of a man who seems completely blind to the fact that he is doing to D&D what the movie industry is doing.. taking popular themes from old titles, cranking out substandard and overly simplified versions of it and presenting it under a cloud of inscrutable marketing cloak and dagger bullshit, then silencing any critique by calling all objections "gatekeeping"... well, my objection to that is that D&D has a magnificent and complex lore base unlike any other medium for storytelling and having some idiot thinking that is a problem for new players is exactly what is wrong with the new products being brought out. Lore is optional, but it is not expendable! I respect what has been achieved with 5th edition, but they are very mistaken if they think that dumbing it down is the reason for it's success.. social media, live streamers, youtube creators and a generation of folks who are sick and tired of how fucked the movie industry has become at telling new stories is the reason D&D is skyrocketing to social acceptance, the history of lore can provide all the creative nourishment needed for new players to flourish and tell their own stories, we learn to do things by example best of all, so, I turn my efforts to preserving and presenting the full scope of the D&D lore as best I can, and wait for the current era to get a better captain. Heh, sorry, that was quite a rant in response to a simple question.
@@AJPickett I think it is hard to complain too loud about what 5e has done in regards to lore without looking at 4e long and hard. Arguably the worst deviances of 5e lore from the 2e/3e era is what they chose to retain of 4e lore
@Tyler Annand Oh I agree with that completely. COMPLETELY (also, holy shit you are on fire with the responses to questions in the comments today, I am just reading your replies, nodding to myself and saying "Yep, exactly what I would have said")
@@AJPickett I'm a teacher on holiday break, what else do I have to do with my time ;)
For a bit of flavor, a DM may consider in dreams that all lights are on dimmer switches, because the mind cannot instantly render a scene.
So you may think to make rooms seem bland or dark and filled with mundane objects who's details only reveal themselves when players are focusing on them. Perhaps bookshelves full of books that swap places when the players aren't looking and whose pages are scrawled with nonsense or totally blank.
Or maybe a landscape that shifts slightly based off of intently the players are studying them.
Just some flavor ideas.
AJ, these videos are such a rich resource for DMs (like myself) who enjoy taking their players into obscure and esoteric places. Thank you! And please keep up the great work!
Hiding a powerful item in a dream sounds really cool. It would have to be an artifact or something equally dangerous, something that must not be found, but you can't risk losing. Oh, or maybe a person. Or maybe even the dreamer themselves. What would happen if you brought the physical body of the dreamer into their own dreamscape???
Cool idea. Perhaps the artifact would have a different form to the dreamer: like a wand that has the form of a machine or an animal that the players would have to figure out how to get the principal to manifest into a wand.
Lots of great npc potential there. Especially if the object was maybe something that the npc was afraid of or maybe they created it, and for one reason or another are too ashamed of it to accept it.
Sounds exotic, but yeah, it can be done. Good luck keeping the asleep though.
Hollow Knight played with the concept a lot.
If you're making videos on the domains of dread, may I suggest the one with the portal in Chult. I forget the name at the moment but its mentioned in ToA.
Another light snack, like a kind of brush-on glue ;)
Im get the exactly moment that you posted, and I'm loving the series of Etherial! You always made high quality videos!
Much love from Alaska man, your videos help keep me warm while I wait to bus to work. Keep up the great work
"Quirky rules" like my dream of an incredible shop that sold hundreds of different types of soda, but the owner only speaks Welsh.
Love this concept. Literally infinite possibilities 😀🍿
I've always loved the idea of a mindscape or a dreamscape, the best example I can think of is The Cell
Love catching these as they drop
Dreamlike realms always interest me. My own cosmology has a deity as old as the first sentient creature, born from the first dream. The incontestable ruler of the dream realms who longs to be in the waking world, and the rage from his inability is what makes nightmares. Mergos the Nightmare Fiend.
I love all your "extra realities" videos and I look to them for inspiration. I wish you well, and I hope I can afford to support you on patreon one day.
In classic Great Wheel cosmology, sentient creatures long predate the Gods (even if the Gods claim otherwise). Of course home settings are often outside of the Great Wheel
Supporting me on patreon costs a minimum of $1 per month, just set your support per video to $1 and maximum donation per month to $1.
@@tylerannand3777 I didnt know that, but yes I don't use the wheel. Thanks for the tidbit!
AJ’s videos are an automatic pick and click! 👉🏻💥
He's a great lore master he keeps to the lore and doesn't make up his own. I bet he's a great dm
after this i look forward to the lore behind the astral plane.
I've been waiting for this ever since the first time you mentioned these places. Our loremaster delivers once again! :D
The Moonstone dragon is usually found either in the realms of faerie(feywild) or the realms of dreams, and in its 5e lore it seems to visit people in their dreams as well. The connection you made between those two realms is really cool and perhaps showcases why the dragon prefers them. The thought of a Ravenloft/Dread equivalent Moonstonen-esque nightmare dragon is horrifying.
Now here is an idea: Just as the domains of dread are connected/apart of the shadowfell, maybe their is a feywild equivalent, where the ‘light powers’ scoop up paragons and create the domains of… dreams?
5e explores 'domains of delight' somewhat, though they are not perfect parallels
Just so much more please. I wrote a tone-down adventure in Bluetspur and I'm excited to see how it stacks up.
Def one of the coolest domains.
Is this the O.G. Blutspur?
Looking forward to videos on specific domains of dread because I know very little about them or their unique inhabitants
You might want to check out Hour of The Raven and Ravenloft travel Agent, both channels are devoted to Ravenloft And have covered a bunch of domains
Damn. I need to watch over every part to count up levels of inception
I'm glad because of this video I will watch in detail later and make a better comment
One thing I would like to incorporate into dream realms is actually drawn from The Wheel of Time books. When characters are in the World of Dreams, they have to be cautious about entering someone else's dream, as they may find themselves becoming part of the dream and therefore under the control of the dreamer.
1.) is that true for all principles: that if they did, their sleeping selves die, and their dreams have defense mechanisms against this?
2.) what happens if a principal leaves the dream?
3.) you just said powerful individuals. Does that mean good people can be taken to the domains of dread?
4.) how do you leave the domains of dread, or travel between them, and is it different for the principal of it than a random person?
5.) is it true that the black spelljammer is some sort of pirate constantly outrunning the ethereal mists as they try extending out from the crystal spheres to catch him? I thought I remembered something about that, but I can’t find it, so I’m wondering if I imagined it.
Good individuals can be taken to the Domains of Dread (example: many adventuring parties) but are not turned into Dark Lords... Rather they are used to torment the other Dark Lords for a bit.
Leaving a Domain of Dread usually requires either the implied permission of a Dark Power (they are done with you) or braving the Mists (which will only get you to another Domain of course). That being said there have been... Escapees... Who exploit planar mechanics or make themselves boring to the Powers and thus get booted
Ulraunt's Guide to the Planes: The Shadowfell is a good book for domains of dread.
I’ve always wanted to make a domain that combines the lore of the fall of Atlantis with some southern gothic flare
So the Domains of Dread are planes where the prisoner has great power but ultimately are trapped... I'm looking at you Asmodeus.
Impress me Warlock! And even if you don't I still appreciated your efforts!
Makes me want to create some type of "Even Horizon" adventure with defective magical transporters and hellish chaos tainting people, maybe a powerful Cleric or Wizard NPC sent to help who becomes the main antagonist after getting corrupted.
Anna's story is very sad and compelling. I want to add it into a game somehow. Maybe somebody hid a powerful artifact in her dream, and the only way to spit it back into the material plane is to end her dream, one way or another.
Looking forward to the Domains of Dread vids.
You might enjoy Hour of The Raven and Ravenloft Travel Agent, both are devoted to the realms of the mist
"Monkeys who playfully throw large pinecones"??????? Our monkeys throw shit, lololol That said- this sounds very much like reality, romanticized, sigh.
Adore how you've presented, writen and thought about this lore. Thanks so much AJ. I just watched Locke and Key awhile ago. So thought about scenes in that when you talked about hiding things in the dreamscapes.
Yes! I love shows like that, also "The lost room" and the movie "House".
I think I heard in a video here on youtube that the dark powers are something like undead gods from long ago. But I can't seem to find anything about it myself.
In any case, I have made 2 homebrew darklords myself, though one is just a DnD conversion of a character of mine that I came up with long before i got into DnD (but now got some influence from it). The other is a dracolich who is a lvl 20 wizard, and breaths a miasma that turns victims into zombie plague spreaders (a type of zombie from that guide to Ravenloft). I decided to ignore picking what type of dragon he was, and just had all his draconic powers be death related. He is an undead dragon of pure death and decay.
I feel like you'd like the Nightmare Lands boxed set that came out in Second Edition for Ravenloft. The Nightmare Lands are a dream themed domain of dread that has what appears to be multiple darklords and that can reach out through dreams to attack people outside of their domain.
The boxset has a whole mini campaign basically in it and a rule set for adventures in dreams.
Yay!
I've always entertained the idea that Cyre from the eberron setting is a newly abducted domain of dread. The nation abducted for the purpose of containing some horrid war criminal or some such. I got excited when I saw a mention of it in Van Richtens guide.
Yeah, I don't even like Eberron and that was exciting for me, so I can only imagine.
Demiplane of Dread: Spawned from 1st Ed idea of Demiplane of Imprisonment, Manual of the Planes (Ethereal), and the Ravenloft mini-campaign module (great horror module that ran like a homebrew). That spawned the entire Ravenloft "universe" new canon after that. I believe that also inspired the Shadowfell and modified all undead beings to be only linked to the shadowfell and other negative materials, completely isolating canon mummies (positive material plane, thus harboring a cursed disease) from the original core and real-world based undead creatures as elemental Earth linked. I kept those when I broke from the evolving canon for my homebrew that locked into the early 2nd Ed before TSR was out of the picture and WotC spun that multiverse into WTF mode.
The dreamscapes, I ran hours of missions in those. The one you addressed was just one dreamscape. It was totally solid and had its own solid demiplane because the girl was dreaming for so long. Dreamscapes are usually temporary demiplanes, almost impossible to find, and can only be accessed via the deep ethereal in ethereal form by someone who knows where to find said dreamscape. People physically in the ethereal entering said dreamscapes die quickly because of the nature of the dreamscapes, their bodies still subject to real-world matters in that chaotic scene while an ethereal form would manifest as if it was native to it. Like, the scene changes suddenly to be underwater if you are an air breather. You panic at first but realize you can still breathe and can swim really fast. As a physical person there, you are drowning. Also, you are suddenly in outer space. As an ethereal guy, you find that your feet are cold and you drift about. As a real-world person, your blood boils while your body freezing solid sprays out all the "cold steam" of your bodily liquids from its orifices and newly forming cracks. Invading dreams is primarily a feat that is only common in Night Hags and Gold Dragons can do effectively by actually being their instead of mere mind tricks.
I would ramble on my Mirror Dimension missions here as an intersect point but I digress.
Thank you for helping me catch up to how things changed over time, AJ. And revealing to me on how some things reverted back to how they were. Awesome video.
I would suggest it was inspired by X2 (castle Amber) more than anything else
What books or modules did you find those dreamscapes in?
@@47thStreet In 1st Ed, Ravenloft was a huge module and there were related releases... that was far before it became its own demiplane (80s). It was referenced in 1st Ed's Manual of the Planes, where one dreaming creates a temporary demiplane. Someone in a coma could create a long-term one and you could go on an adventure to heal a party member in a coma by going into his/her dreamscape. I haven't seen them since the 80s and I was hoping AJ would bring it up so I can repurchase them for nolstalgia's sake.
@@That80sGuy1972 Thanks! I'll double check the 1e manual of planes and start looking at some Ravenloft stuff then. :) Thanks mate
@@47thStreet Glad to have at least have given you a little help. Shout back if you find it, will ya? Thanks!
Big guy hides in someone's dream would be a gr8 plot piont
Interesting, thanks!
What about a primary in the dreamscape capable of lucid dreaming? The god of their own realm and they know it, but unable to awaken and can't remember why.
The Domains of Dread are like a terrarium or habitat, each one created for a specific pet.
Think about it
Each dark Lord is not only evil but irredeemibly Evil. each at some point made a choice that was not only evil but taboo for its own kind. A doppleganger doing murder is nothing. But a doppleganger killing it s elders is unthinkable. A dark Lord is unique, interesting to the Dark Powers.
Each Dark Lord is then given its own domain but trapped and tortured in a way specific to it. Like the aforementioned doppleganger being unable to physically harm its victims directly.
And every so often the mists drop in treats for the dark lords to feed on or play with.. adventurers.
I thi k we need to be careful with that irredeemable word. Irredeemable evil is... Boring to the Dark Powers. Rather, they want beings who redemption is within their grasp but because of their personal flaws will never take the final steps to achieve it
Exactly so.
@@tylerannand3777 very good point. The coolest darklords (IMHO) are the ones with inner conflict and/or failings that doom them even though escape/redemption is still theoretically possible..
@@tylerannand3777 yes but I think that the Dark lords keep failing holds to the irredemable part.
I mean strahd doesnt' need to become good. or redeemed. He only needs ot stop playing the game the dark lords set out for him
But his personal flaws keep from doing that. The dark lords set out the bait and Strahd jumps at it EVERY TIME, certain that this time THIS TIME things will be different.
And the dark powers laugh and laugh at how well trained thier pet vampire is.
@@booley yeah... Irredeemable in practice but not in principle. They don't want someone who would never at some level want redemption... The Dark Powers are not interested in some bloodthirsty killer who revels in ever moment of it with no shame or regret or remorse... or anyone who couldn't ever find redemption under their own power no matter what... They want people who want to be different (or think they want to be different) but can't overcome their own flaws to do so
Adding to my dnd playlist on my channel bub
he's got his orb
I had a two year campaign set in a dream realm imagined by a Demodand coopted by the dread lords to contain multiple self loathing powerful adventures, that one ended with the death of an elder god of the far realm.
If your running a Ravenloft campaign you might really enjoy Hour of The Raven whole channel about the lore
The story of Anna reminds me of an episode of Star Trek Voyager with the creepy clown...
I remember that one!
I just thought of a all new villainous plot. A covetous mage steals a powerful artifact from a kingdom. He hides it in the dreamscape to cover his escape. His plan involved a poor soul trapped in a nightmarish dream induced state where the mage locked him in to a specific nightmare. It's also where he hid the artifact. To protect this, he created some monstrous entity to guard it. He made a mistake though, and the creature killed him as he tried to retrieve his prize. His soul is now trapped in the dream as well. The players, tasked with the artifact's retrieval, must uncover his plot, find a way into the dream and face his ghost and the creature of his undoing.
I would probably give the artifact some dream related powers as well. To help throw in a few more plot twists......
Awesome video as always dude merry Christmas and happy holidays
Yup! Feywilds can be frightening as Shadowfell/Domains of Dread as dome people tends to forget.
Hmmm interesting.
I have a horizon walker, the campaign is FULL of portals to my domain of dread, and ethereal travelers.
She has already discovered a few plots by dream walking.
Im trying to come up with a good magic item that will benefit her talents. But I’m jus not sure...reached level 7 tonight. I said that the lvls will start creeping by at a slower pace now. As I love where the characters are atm, and want to give em some fun items to improve their classes. She already has a magic bow.
I want to lean on something that will aid the eldritch secrets they are uncovering. Perhaps buffs for sanity checks.
You mentioned Star Trek transporters. I've always considered Subspace to be the Ethereal plane and Star Wars' Hyperspace to be something like the Astral plane.
Hey I say whatever helps you conceptualise it in your head is perfectly fine.
I definitively treat Barovia as if it were semi ethereal. When my players us illusion or animation magic, things don't tend to go as planned. I have a Creation Bard in my party. His 5th level Animate Objects spell is stable enough, but when he uses Dancing Object, well things tend to get fun.
I let him animate the statue to Mother Night in the wolf cave. It betrayed the party. When ever he animates a normal object, instead of going back to an inanimate state, it just flys off to live a life of it's own.
When my players use Minor Illusion I give it a semblance of of life. It's harder to dismiss, lasts twice as long, moves. The Cleric tried to show everyone a visage of Bluetspur frol her Divination and everyone took psychic damage.
Fun times.
How dose the ethereal and dreamscape interact with the phlogistion
In my previous video on the ethereal I do mention that its almost like the phlogiston is the opposite side of the ethereal, there are many similar qualities. As for the dreamscapes, they don't interact with the Phlogiston, the stuff just has no business being inside anyone's head (unless they are a planeswalker I suppose)
The 5e description of Ravenloft seems to heavily tied to the shadowfell. I think it may even have said that Ravenloft is embedded in the shadowfell somewhere. Is the there a connection between the shadowfell and the deep ethereal? I guess there's that whole this about the plane of shadow being removed from the deep ethereal and being made into a parallel plane like the fewwild. I guess that would mean that even under that paradigm, the inherent nature of contemporary Ravenloft is of an ethereal one combined with the negative nature of the negative energy plane in the shadow fell.
4e shifted the planes around a lot, and 5e preserved some of it. The Shadowfel has some characteristics of the earlier edition's Ethereal, Plane of Shadow, and Negative Energy Plane... The Feywild doesn't neatly line up with pre 4e lore either
4e was trash it should be disregard as a whole.
@@chadstinson9886 I don't entirely disagree, but 5e has chosen to preserve at least a bit of it (most notably the Shadowfel, Feywild, and reconfiguration of the Inner Planes)... And of course 5e has introduced new contradictory lore of its own to maneuver
I recommend ignoring the latest fluff and just using the classic Ravenloft setting. Fan adaptions make 5e no problem
Something that has entertained me as a GM is a sort of demi-plane akin to the garden maze in the movie "Labyrinth" or the Hallmark version of Alice in Wonderland. You could have a Mazemaster similar to a dark lord or feylord, who would be the near-omnipotent god of the demi-plane, but whose mercurial, "chaotic neutral" personality would want to test and play with the PCs rather than help or harm them. The brilliant creatures of Jim Henson in Labyrinth served as a sort of blueprint for the weird and wacky characters the player characters would encounter: Cheshire cats (though this one is from Alice), creatures with three heads (funny not scary) who perhaps disagree with each other on when to eat the players and how to cook them (cf. "The Grail" by Monty), great, big, friendly fluff dragons ("The Neverending Story") on whose backs you can pass a couple of the thorny walls far below, but who have to set you down relatively quickly because of indigestion (they have to fart) and then forget all about you and fall asleep. Was there any mist obscuring the edges of the maze from on high? Did you see all of it? Not really, no to both of these questions. There was just too much too see and take in of this perpetual labyrinth, so that your mind couldn't process all of it. Like in Minecraft, more and more chuks just kept loading into your central memory cortex (or "mind" as us buff old, Tolkienista traditionalists would call it) so that you couldn't possibly process all of it. Too much for mortals. And then you were set down on a daisy-covered meadow in the middle (if it even has a middle) of the maze, reeling from thoughts and emotions, trying to categorise and understand the many tunnels and passageways you have just seen. Way out? There isn't any of course. There is just a way in: to its True Centre. There, with the proper keys you may or may not have picked up along the way, you may finally unlock and open up the portal (a bonfire? a pack of cards? a weather-proof wardrobe?) to reach your own World Primal... and if you haven't picked up all the right keys? Don't worry: you can always try to find your way back across the dimensionless leagues of grassy, sunlit pastures, though you never will, of course. Many, but by no means all of the verdant corridors shift and change like the ocean. You'll never find the same keys again, but certainly others that are just as good in places that are just as wonderful. Perhaps the Mazemaster will even take pity on you, because it is an emotion he has never savoured before, like a vintage wine that must be tested at least once, even for a Divine being, to be crossed off the bucket list. In the maze there is even a little wood, where merry Wood-elves live in perfect bliss and harmony though they were once taken from their Home World against their wishes by the Master. The only blight on their existence is that little tribe of smallish Orcs that pester and terrorise them so that they have to take precautions and perhaps even enlist the aid of some good-natured adventurers passing through their habitat. And then, there's the Green Dragon and the tyrannosaurus and the meat-eating plant (or its cousin) from the "Little Shop of Horrors"...
So, without getting into my campaign too much, is it reasonable to have a PC be the creator of a dreamscape without the party (including the PC) being aware that they are in said dream?
It's possible.
where is the wisdom score becoming base str score come from? Source?
Oh that may have been a bit of home brew sorry, I'm not sure, but it works out well for basic stuff.
All this talk of the Ethereal has me thinking of those who who regularly visits these planes. Surly Planes walkers and those who are use realms like the ethereal or the plane of dreams to travel long distances. But what of characters who are almost always invisible to those grounded on the Material Plane? Psion Uncarnates at max level are always in ethereal form except for when they concentrate on becoming tangible. I can also see Teams of 'Hunter's of the Dead' taking regular trips into the ethereal to track down and obliterate incorporeal undead, or conversely a Team of 'Master's of the Shroud' entering the ethereal to "collect" new undead as minions.
Or the guest stars of my next video, the Demodands, relentlessly tracking down victims to drag to the depths of Carceri, to be tortured for eternity at their hands.
This reminds me abit about a monster block i remember seeing in the book where it mentions something tantamount to a eldritch horror dreamed up or created by the dark powers. Perhaps it could be pale night given they have lore related to making evil entities that or maybe a sort pf cabal of evil/dark entities
Could be, who knows?
Took me a while to realise you were talking about dnd
The Domains of Dread are ultimately a gilded cage which makes me think of the other famous cage in DnD, Sigil, and following that bit of logic it's quite possible the Dark Powers aren't even all that dark. After all isn't the Lady of Pain's whole MO basically the same, toss someone into a Demiplane and throw away the key.
Though the Lady's Mazes seem to be a bit more escapable on average than the Demiplane of Dread
But if you dream within a dream do you move to another part of the dreamscape? Or are there layers?
What would be the ideal way to run an Inception like story through the dream realm?
Entirely possible
Do you have a list of the dragon magazine articles/other sources you drew from for this video? I’d really love those to refer to
Is the Örb a portal to Ethereal?
The lore deepens...
What orb?
I like to think the dark ones that created the domains of dread are actually multiple factions of such beings working together I'm a symbiotic relationship. Some are portions of the minds of gods and such beings that want to punish. Ether from a sense of justice, vengeance or even evils own self destructive and self serving nature. That then split off from the original. Then there's other older things that build the domains that the first group drags souls into and acts as jailers for.
Where does Dal Quor, the plane of dreams, fit in this? Or is Dal Quor only a plane in Eberron?
Only Eberron, though it shares some similarities
Eberron cosmology is over in the naughty corner playing with itself.
@@AJPickett except for that one dread realm i wish they had expanded on
@@booley 5e says that Eberron is in a very isolated crystal sphere on the Prime shared with other settings (3e treated it as an alternative cosmology beyond the Great Wheel); so it is in no position to avoid the pull of the Mists now
Are there any named dark powers/gods thay we know made a domain of dread?
Nope, they are (intentionally) unknown and unknowable. Some in-game scholars speculate a few times, but nothing with any authority.
It is heavily implied the Domains are relatively new planar phenomenon though
No
Well kind of.. we don't know the underlying powers but we do know about the actions that led many of the darklords to become trapped in the mists
Thank you
While listening I started hypothesizing myself. Fair warning: it's a long rabbit hole.
What if the (original) mist-like Ethereal plane is the source of the mists that takes one to Ravenloft?
My idea: The Ethereal mists respond to emotions. Succubi (lust) and Kuo-Toa (madness) both can either see into or travel into the plane.
Furthermore, the mists that drop people into Barovia are more of a medium than an antagonist. They respond to the environment.
Note those lost in Domains of Dread are bound to or rife with negative emotions. The Vistani can leave, and are the source of what few positive emotions exist in these places.
So maybe the mists, and the possible Ethereal plane, behave like water. Emotions determine your buoyancy. Positive emotions float, negative emotions sink. Dread lords are so negative they are like anchors in this aspect, and are thus stuck in the Dread demi-planes, unable to float out.
The Ethereal, then, becomes the unwitting highway to such planes, with only few getting out.
The Feywild has a similar problem, as it is rife with high and wild emotions. It's a literal lighthouse for the Ethereal plane, which then forms pocket doorways between the Material and the Feywild where these emotions are high and the barrier is thin.
Thoughts?
I do like how altering one aspect of the core mechanics (ether responds to emotions, aka, Ghostbusters Two psychoreactive slime) breeds a whole new theory and changes so many things, its thought exercises like that are the Home Gymnasium of the DM's mind, building story muscles.
Wow this was intriguing
Im thinking for me the domains are a subconscious dream space of deities. As we know the infernal and abyssal forces keep each other in line.
But these other potent malicious forces need a check of their own so to speak.
This way other powerful beings can keep an eye on things in a way, and perhaps in some esoteric ways be gaining something for themselves.
After all, the entirety of suffering and death that occurs in the domains would likely keep some sadistic being well entertained.
Perhaps some domains are secretly lorded over by a sort of limbo minded entity, toying with fresh adventurers and wayward souls called to the mists.
Almost like an anti kelemvor or something?
Limbo minded entity, can you explain that more for me?
@@AJPickett I’ll do my best.
I suppose in my head I had pictured a feel similar to the video game, with a western slant on limbo. As a sort of endless misery, trapped within a hell of their own making sort of thing. Think what happened to Bobby in Supernatural, only a bit more twilight zone. Bleak and desolate.
So the being(s) behind the domains I feel would embody that idea, somewhat indifferent, somewhat entertained by the dregs collected and displayed before them. A zoo of misery.
If there is a retune of them whose to say these beings don’t show off domains to one another, like little terrariums of fucked up weirdness.
The entities always on the search for their next addition to the fish bowl. The trapping of people like Strahd simply being akin to spider catching in your backyard.
The anti-kelemvor bit could be seen in an entity that finds justice in your cycle of torment. Seeing the never ending wheel of their putrid existence squeak on.
These dark lords do not deserve to pass on, only to live through their insufferable mistakes over and over.
I could see how one could fold these concepts together, as a pantheon. Something for each domain.
Hopefully that makes sense...you could interpret limbo to mean a few things I suppose lol
Orrr something I’ve been toying with. Perhaps they are more like gardeners, literally the power that be. Tending to the sprawling mass of pocket worlds. Visually I see something like the gungan city from the phantom menace, with the city being the domains, and the water being a containing force all its own. The mist if you will.
This place growing as a tumor like extension within the Shadowfell, the mists drawing particular entities to itself, as many an adventure begins within the domains at our tables.
These gardeners having evolved from fell muck to tend to the spheres.
In this analogy think of how a whale carcass is a biome on the ocean floor, an entire community of specially adapted organisms evolved to exist on and migrate from carcass to carcass. Only the domains carcass never runs dry. Expanding, rebirthing, endless dreary fodder for our bizarre community.
Or like a Siphonophore. Each piece of the domains linking together to bring existence to what we experience in game.
Which frankly I think I like more as a concept.
Anyway thats enough of my unhinged ramblings. Not sure if thats what you were asking or not! 😹
Oh yeah finally in the first 10 commenters, absolutely love this. Can't wait for more
Awesome stuff. I'm homebrewing a boss monster that "teleports" through the material plane by shifting into the Ethereal Plane to skip around. In the material plane it seems like it just jumps around instantly, and if you catch it in the Ethereal Plane you can kill it as it's vulnerable there. Any thoughts about this kind of idea? Makes sense or no?
Sounds like an Gendruwo, a type of Memedi that inhabits the Ethereal. Usually like all Memedi, they're harmless and extremely adverse to combat, but Gendruwo will actually pick up a weapon and fight if they think they are in danger. Usually they just pop in and out of the Ethereal to grab people as a 'prank', but if say, it was under a curse that mimics Enemies Abound where it thinks everyone is trying to kill it, I think it would fit your idea pretty well.
I have an NPC in my game who is a Gendruwo who acts as a spymaster for a general. He tends to do that cartoon thing where someone steps behind an object too small to hide them but somehow vanishes behind it when he goes to the Ethereal. Likewise he'll step out from behind candelabrums or walk out of a closet the party had just seen was empty when he enters the Material Plane. Because they're shapeshifters too, he looks like a non-descript humanoid of whatever race is most common to where he is, but the few times the party has seen him in the Border Ethereal in his natural state, thanks to See Invisibility and True Seeing, he's 25ft tall and looks similar to a yeti crossed with an oni.
@@TheDarkdoomful Interesting. Similar to but not really what I'm going for. My monster is based off the Shrike from the Hyperion series of books, but changed around to fit in somewhat with DnD lore. So it's a large, around 3 meter tall humanoid construct with four arms, covered in blades and sharp edges. In the books, he teleports by shifting into what's essentially a plane called the Void Which Binds, which makes it look like it's teleporting. It's definitely more of a sci-fi bend than a fantasy one, but I'm also working some Spelljammer into my setting so I think that's fine.
It has other abilities as well, but It's basically a god-like terminator that can teleport and loves impaling things (obviously I want it to be killable since it's a big boss in my campaign, so I'm making it vulnerable in the Ethereal). I'm reskinning it to work with DnD mechanics. Since it moves through the Ethereal, it also appears in dreams and visions (which also helps weave it into the story more and maybe give the PC's a hint where it's power comes from, if they pay attention).
@@DandyGuy Ethereal construct that looks scary but is vaguely humanoid? Probably an Ethergaunt weapon
Youve done a ton of lore on the realms but have you done/considered other settings like grey halk, brithrite, ect
Overviews maybe.
Great videoam
I heard somewhere that the domains of dread are created by the shadowfell because as an anti-emotion plane it reacts strongly to strong emotions likely to snowball into more (like strahd being rejected) & seeks to contain them
Could be, but there are also mysterious Dark Powers behind it.
hmm dream walking has always been interesting but boy am i glad i never tripped into some of these places
I am just imaging a dreamscape of pokemon from the Ash is in a coma theory
Now I’m once AGAIN super confused about where the astral plane begins and the ethereal ends
Everything exists in the same location, but at different frequencies, like, ALL the radio, Television and cell phone data is flying around you ALL the time, but you don't hear it until you tune in to it.
@@AJPickett I remember you saying that on another video and I think about it fairly often actually :) I’m trying to visualize them and I had it where the ethereal was the blank paper everything else was painted on and all the planes have a thought bubble that combine together to create the astral plane but now it looks like both are both and I’m going to have to watch a bunch of your videos again and dig around to unpretzel my mind after this video :)
on an adjacent note is it possible to bottle up phlogiston and bring it to the material plane to use as explosives? the only info i can find on the forgotten realms wiki is that it evaporates away inside a crystal sphere.
is there any info on how that works when sealed in something like glass?
No known way of forcing phlogiston into a sphere... though letting the phlogiston in is theorized to be what shattered the shattered sphere
Phlogiston can't be brought inside a crystal sphere according to the lore .
You can't bring it in. It's more like space then air it's there you can move through it but to contain it is impossible
@@AJPickett damn, ill find free splodys somewhere out there!
@@tylerannand3777 noted
Figured ethereal plane was bleed from Tharizdun's prison...
The Ethereal Plane *long* predates Tharzidun's existence. It is the primordial medium from which the rest of the Great Wheel was formed, Tharzidun and his prison had to wait until Gods showed up which was... Fairly late all things considered. (4e lore disagrees but seems to have been broadly disavowed at this point)
Of course we do have things out there much older (by some measures) than the Great Wheel... Other cosmologies, the Eldest Ones, Leshay, Draeden, probably the Temporal Prime, arguably the Far Realm (as much as time matters to that place at all)
@@tylerannand3777 Well yes and no.
Tharizdun predates the canon dnd Universe. He (and the other Great old once) was simply an inhabitant of an other Universe that got destroyed (thanks to Tharizdun) and the GOOs fleed to other universes to so they weren't completely annihilated.
Tharizdun on the other hand dreams now, in a destroyed universe from whom he thinks it's the only one in existence...his power radiating out into others creating avators of him. And if these avatars get strong enough they might be able to awake the true Tharizdun...witch would be the beginning of the end of this universe 😅
@@SamaelHellscrem Tharzidun being anything other than a very powerful and very evil God originally is a 4eism that is... questionable if it got transferred into 5e at best. There are lots of things that predate the Great Wheel (Draeden, Leshay, some inhabitants of the Temporal Prime, etc); but Tharzidun isn't one of them
Hi AJ.
So could the dream.scape be used in a similar way to the movie "Inception" with Leonardo Dicaprio?
BTW your kickstarter mat's are working fantastically, thank you!
Yes, as I mentioned, be wary of the dreamscape concealing the way back out.
My Question is for whoever wants to answer: in a very few words, talking about your own homebrew domain of dread and its dark lord. I just love reading other people's work.
I've had two over the years in my homebrew setting... A sailor on a haunted ship in an eternal storm who takes on refugees in the storm but then grows paranoid that they seek to mutiny... And a debauched hedonistic Noble trapped in dual realm, one and endless and debased and dangerous party and one a cruel mental asylum; and falling asleep in one offers no rest except to wake up in the other
So...much...more...ideas!!!
I've always liked Baernoloth (who have a penchant for experimental methods exploring the nature of Evil) and Ancient Baatorians (who famously faded away from normal existence early in planar history) as potential original Dark Powers... I've heard others who think they are belief-beings akin to (but distinct from) Gods. Official Lore, of course, is appropriately silent on the matter.
There is evidence to suggest Domains of Dread are (on a planar scale) rather new planar phenomenon
@@KS-PNW it depends on the perspective. From a Ravenloft perspective, I agree... The Dark Powers need to remain inscrutable in origin. From a Planescape perspective; building demiplanes to clinically experiment on the nature of Evil is exactly the sort of things a Baernoloth might do
Does the Ethereal Plane overlap/border the Feywild?
It'd certainly border it.
When discussing travel into a dreamscape, I believe he's talking about doing so with some kind of projection. I don't believe it's possible to take your physical body into the dreamscape, as entering the rainbow curtain from the deep ethereal (if you've managed to get out there) just results in you returning to the boarder ethereal.
It can occur both ways, usually the only way to physically enter would be through a rupture, and even then, the person is converted into dreamstuff.. perhaps all objects are, except maybe powerful artifacts. I think a bit of fuzzy rules is fine as its really up to the DM how each realm works.
I thought that this world be completely about the relatively new concepts of domains of delight (and domains of dread). I like the integration though
Good video AJ
I wonder if Vecna could shed some light on the Domains of Dread. Especially since he escaped.
Vecna, by his very fundamental nature, ain't telling.
In the grand scheme of things, he didn't spend a ton of time there; and he *really* isn't looking to go back any time soon
@@tylerannand3777 true. I did like the cluster he and Kas shared though. Awesome backdrop for higher level adventures.
@@KS-PNW You can tell who was important in that though, because when Vecna escaped they literally kicked Kas out of existence entirely
@@tylerannand3777 yeah.. ironically that's the type of thing Kas probably would have hated...
@6:55 Oh. Oh it's *that* place.
This is one description from 3.5 (the DMG, wasn't it?) that has uncomfortably stuck with me *forever*.
Speaking of disquieting things, if we're talking about Van Richten's Guide, then one cannot recommend enough finding copies of 3.5's Heroes of Horror, and the third party 3.0 sourcebooks for the Domains of Dread.
They...magnify what you will find in Van Richten's, significantly. Just a content warning for Heroes of Horror is all; 3.5 is less careful about subject matter than 5e at times.
I use all the books yr talking about, especially the sword and sorcery 3/3.5 ravenloft sourcebooks, I wish they could have published some adventures but I understand that their liscence was limited in that regard. I love the original stuff of course, but it has to be said that a lot of the 2nd ed adventures are a little sparse.
I wonder if Ravenloft could be used as a bridge between the Shadowfel & the Faewild. Every Dark Lord eternally trapped in their "Tragic Backstory," I can also picture other large bergs of Ravenloft separated from the "Core" lands that fo the AD&D (AKA 2nd Edition) version, ones in which the technology level is sufficiently different.
Imagine a Cyberpunk Techno-Dystopia with Vampires thrown in & an Undying vampiric CEO doing everything to try to keep the ONE person he cares about alive like Mr. Freeze in Batman. The CEO's quest for everlasting life led to them discovering a necromantic bloodborne virus that transformed them into a vampire, but in a frenzy they attacked the one person they cared about & did everything for, & now are desperately trying to keep them alive as the vampirism doesn't seem to work for them or would twist them in a way that would shatter him.
I can also imagine a small rebuilt city that's closer to Gama World within an irradiated Wasteland & in which a baron tries to hold a rebuilt city together by day ala Auntie Entity in "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome," but stalks the wilderness as a werewolf that's a mutated monstrosity that's three times the size of a regular werewolf under the full moon, & thus being the biggest threat to the settlement they strive to keep together. This could be them repeating the pattern that brought about the wasteland, just as their rage caused them to launch the nukes.
Just a few non-standard settings for Ravenloft domains.
MOM WHERERERS MY MEADDDDDD
@deathknell5167who is this?
This made me think on what type of realms Neverland and Alice in Wonderland realms are.
Neverland could be lots of places, but Wonderland is made of concepts and abstracts (which makes me want to put it in the Outer Planes), and is bizarre and incomprehensible but not malicious (which makes me think it is in the Hinterlands somewhere?)
@@tylerannand3777 Wouldn’t Wonderland essentially be the Feywild?
@@zenvariety9383 I could buy that also, but all the weird math stuff and everything makes it feel more... zany Outer Planes to me than Fey (which despite all their otherworldliness are also fairly 'natural' in most DnD depictions)
I have 2 questions. The first kinda random but, in the elder scrolls the theory concerning existence is that all the elder scrolls universe exists in a Godhead. Is it possible for a lucid dreamer to create a fully functional existence universe in the deep borders of the deep ethereal & the dream realm with the lucid dreamer as the godhead? The second is a bit less meta but, some people are said to have a deep spiritual or soul bond or psychic connection. Can two dreamers with such a deep & profound bond have there dreamscapes so intertwined that a visitor can go from one to the other simply by entering thru one of the dreamer dreamscapes?
Those are more creative license question than lore questions, and unfortunately, my answer is "your table, your rules" I am n to here to tell you how you are allowed to play the game. Sounds cool, I can see those themes in novels and movies, so, sure, tell those stories at your table.
The campaign I'm running takes place in Etharis (Grim Hollow setting) and the players are trying to keep it from becoming a new plane of dread. Easy right? But there are some powerful beings who have vested interests in this planes vulnerability. Demons and devils, angles and gods where do we find help? The far realms? Perhaps a new layer of reality? Time to think outside the box, the walls are closing in. Good times ;). Oh yah, Merry Christmas everyone!
Etharis is an entire planet yes? I don't think we have any examples of things quite so large being pulled into becoming a new Domain... Usually a valley or the like at most
@@tylerannand3777 Yes. Hence the "interest" from other powers. Maybe we can pull it into the Abyss, or a new heaven or it becomes the basis for an entirely new plane of existence? Keep the players guessing.
@@coreyeaston6823 entire worlds have been pulled into the Abyss before (though they wouldn't make a 'new heaven' even if pulled into the Upper Planes... One planet is just a drop in the infinite oceans of an Outer Plane)
@@tylerannand3777 All these things are true. Then the question the players are asking is why are the upper and lowers plans so adamant at preventing a whole world being consumed by the domains of dread? I love layering questions with more questions?
@@coreyeaston6823 I don't see a lot of evidence to suggest any outer planar being cares much either way, they certainly don't seem to be taking steps to prevent the Domains of Dread from doing their thing in general. Instead I would guess that Dark Powers don't have much use for a whole world full of people. Their interests tend to be much more... Focused
its happening!
Isn't there a pyramid mummy type domain of dredd
Probably.
It's called Har'akir it's ruled by a slumbering mummy called Ankhtepot
Its starting to become more and more likely that he Earth is accually a massive demiplane of dread..........
The Principle is actually Barney the Dinosaur.
And the Principal has to be someone of power but ultimately powerless. I wonder who it would be... 🤔
Dope