Planar Cosmology

The cosmology of Whiteleaf is similar in many ways to the standard "Great Wheel" cosmology of most major published D&D settings, as described in the Manual of the Planes and other official sourcebooks. However, it has several noteworthy differences which are summarized here.

In general, rather than a "wheel", Whiteleaf's cosmology can be equated to a series of nested spheres. Inmost of these is the Prime Material Plane, which includes the entirety of the physical universe in which Terrestra is only one planet, but is "lensed" almost entirely upon Terrestra, so that the rest of the cosmos sees virtually no interaction between "outer space" and "the planes". Surrounding the PMP is the "outer" surface of the Cosmic Clockworks, which faces both "outward" and "inward" when considered as a spherical shell around the PMP; it is possible to stand upon one "gear" of the Clockworks and look up to see Terrestra in the sky, but it is also possible to look up from another gear, both of them being equally "outside" of the Clockworks's interior, and see the next shell, which is the Protean Sea of Chaos. Yet another shell "encloses" the Sea itself, despite the Sea being infinite in all directions; this shell contains most of the other Outer Planes, but most particularly it is home to a "stack" of the four most critically important such planes, as noted below, with the flow of infinite creative energy from beyond the cosmos entering at the "top" of this stack, and flowing "down" until it reaches the Abyss, which is infinitely destructive to the same degree and by the same token. (Unbeknowst to most scholars, the actual source of the energy inflow is the Realm of Dreams, which connects Whiteleaf to other cosmologies, though it is not conducive to travel between incompatible realities; every sleeping mind in every universe contributes their dreams to the same Dream-Realm, but it is generally not possible to go to sleep on Whiteleaf and wake up on Krynn or Eberron or Earth or Oerth.) Still another shell exists either "outside" or "inside" this one, it's not clear which, and contains the sixteen Elemental Planes; either that same shell or another also contains the four known Energy Planes, two of which intersect with the Cosmic Clockworks and the Protean Sea in a way that may or may not make them actually part of the same realm.

To list the seventeen Great Wheel outer planes and their changes in Whiteleaf: * The Cosmic Clockworks replaces the Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus; it is still a realm largely composed of gears, but rather than hanging randomly in space, these gears are all tightly fitted together into a single vast "surface", with apertures inside or between the gears that lead down to the "interior" of the great machine. As one penetrates deeper into this realm of absolute cosmic Law, space itself shrinks, so that the realm can be infinitely large despite having a finite exterior; even more paradoxically, it has a definite center, even though there is a limitless amount of space separating the center from the edge. The center contains both the Temporal Energy Plane (or a portal thereto at least), as well as the divine realm of the Mathematarch, the god of comprehensive but incomprehensible cosmic order and perfect mathematics, Primus of the Modronic Legions, and general best claimant to the functional title of "ruler of all Creation". Between the external barrier of the Clockworks Surface, which protects the Prime Material Plane from having any direct contact with the Protean Sea, and the inmost central realm of Prime and Time, there stretches a limitless amount of constantly-infibulating physical space, with a theoretically-comprehensible but largely trans-human coordinate system clearly labeled upon its multiple axes and vertices, allowing for relatively feasible navigation through its infinitely-regressing dimensions. * The realm of cosmic Harmony, known in the Great Wheel as Arcadia, is nearly duplicated in Whiteleaf by a realm named Concordia, while the actual name Arcadia is used for a different plane as described below. While a few details of the geography are different (for instance, Concordia doesn't have a mountain-top sun which sheds equal halves of light and darkness across the realm as it rotates), the general cosmic purpose of the realms is identical; this is a realm of positively-aspected Order, where Good characters are more likely to feel at home than Evil ones, but not due to any mechanical effect of the plane itself upon their actual souls, whereas Chaotic beings do experience exactly such an effect. As a version of the Planescape cosmology intersects with Whiteleaf's multiverse, the organization known as the Harmonium regards Concordia as the plane of their original foundation whenever they are interacting with the Whiteleavian City of Doors, even though the "real" Harmonium in the primary Sigil was actually founded on the Great Wheel's Arcadia plane. * Mount Celestia does exist in Whiteleaf, and the Seven Heavens also exist in Whiteleaf, but in the Great Wheel these are two different names for the same actual collection of planar layers, whereas here the Celestine Realm (often collectively called "Celestia", but never Mount Celestia to refer to the plane as a whole) consists of the Seven Heavens themselves, as well as Mount Celestia and the plains around it, which are effectively a "superstructure" for navigation from one Heaven to the next. The Seven Heavens consist of layers of solid white clouds extending away from the mind-bogglingly tall mountain; from a few especially favorable vantage points (most notably the Moral Compass Inn's legendary Viewing Tower, an array of telescopes created by the artificer and alchemist Liam Osha'naussi, which is one of the few artificial structures that exists on the Mount Celestia "superstructure" plane), it is possible to view the entire mountain and all seven of these cloud-layers, each of which extends infinitely off into the distance before being lost to sight. One who climbs the difficult Celestian slope will periodically find himself rising up through a gap in the cloud cover, and may turn aside to step onto the clouds, walking out onto the layer itself; eventually the surface transitions from weirdly solid cumulus to ordinary ground partially shrouded in a gradually fading mist, and the primary Heaven itself has been reached. These Heavens bear very little resemblance to what is described in the Manual of the Planes (though, as morphic realms which partially take on the aspect of a visitor's expectations, they could look like the canonical versions if you really wanted them to; it's just that the authors of MotP treated these as physical dimensions which simply existed, and not as manifestations of a force of Good which is partially shaped by collective human belief, and thus has to make space for people who are not impressed by the same manifestations of Good as those authors). Instead, each of the seven Heavens is devoted to a Heavenly Virtue; lowermost is Prudence, the least spiritually taxing and most inherently self-rewarding of the Virtues, which consists simply of the wisdom to avoid things that are harmful to oneself...a useful trait to practice, certainly, but not exactly a deep moral sacrifice. Slightly more rarefied and thus requiring a longer climb up Mount Celestia to reach is the second virtue's Heaven, that of Temperance, followed by the third and the fourth and so on, up to where the actual peak of the mountain rises above the highest cloud layer, the Heaven of Hope. Though visible as a shining beacon from even the greatest of distances, Hope is almost impossible to actually reach, and the leader of the Celestine Host, the archangel Zaphkiel, oversees all of Creation from here. One fact which anyone who looks at Mount Celestia cannot fail to notice, despite the fact that nobody will talk about it, is that the spacing of the seven cloud layers clearly indicates that there should be an eighth one, which is obviously missing. Different observers vary in where exactly they say the gap lies, whether it is above Hope or below Prudence or somewhere in the middle, but no-one has ever looked through Osha'naussi's telescope and not immediately remarked upon the clear omission, to which the tower-keeper simply shrugs as if he'd never noticed, and cannot be persuaded by any means that the oversight is in any way strange. (To anyone whose plot-hook senses are tingling, relax; this is effectively a "Somebody Else's Problem Field" as described in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, and while it is technically a mystery whose solution would reveal something important about the setting, it is also intentionally beyond the ability of basically any entity in creation to solve, and that's very much the point. So don't worry about it for now; the GM will let you know if there's ever anything you can actually do about something like this.) * Bytopia is never called by that name, instead being referred to as the Twin Paradises, but it is pretty similar in overall concept, as a bucolic pastoral landscape whose sky-scraping mountains eventually rise high enough that they descend onto a second world, mirrored above the first with several layers of intermittently luminous partial cloud cover between them. The "far" world is a largely unspoiled but not particularly dangerous wilderness, protected by rangers that allow for occasional tourism from the "near" world but ensure that it is never damaged through over-use; essentially this plane is "heaven" for people who enjoy their jobs but also enjoy their vacation, and thus very specifically want to spend their "eternal rest" living in one place while periodically getting away to another. * Eden, or Elysium, is the plane of ultimate Good, and it is also the most "dangerous" of the Upper Planes by far, which is why entry into it is strictly regulated by the Archons, Angels, and Guardinals; only the Eladrin Fae believe everyone has a right to go there, since anyone who can't manage to leave under their own power is better off not wandering the rest of the cosmos anyway, in their slightly callous and uncompromising definition of Right versus Wrong. While most people would emphatically choose the eternal bliss of Elysium over the neverending misery and gloom of Hades, it is still not precisely a good thing, or rather it is too much of a good thing, much as the pleasure of a heroin overdose is a chemical misapprehension of the brain's fundamental reward mechanisms. Those who satisfy the collected Celestines' complex and highly nuanced set of conditions for "earning" a visit to Elysium, as well as a rescue from that visit if it fails to end on schedule, are those who have truly exemplified the Good alignment's various precepts to the best possible extent, those whose moral maturity is nearly impossible to find fault with. Conversely, to those who not only fall short of that metric but reject the very idea of measuring along any such axis (that is to say, Evil beings, who are not Evil just for the sake of being jerks, but actually disagree strenuously with the idea that Good is good at all, believing that life should be a dog-eat-dog struggle where the strong massacre or enslave the weak), Eden is the ultimate trap, and these individuals would like nothing so much as to invade the plane en masse, despoiling it so thoroughly that it can never ensnare another soul into its comfortable stasis. (As a footnote, it is rumored that the warmly glowing, never hot or blindingly bright, orb of solar radiance which shines above the Edenic plane is actually the Positive Energy Plane itself, or a portal to it at least; no Celestine oracle has yet confirmed whether this is actually true.) * Not quite a plane of Chaos, but close, the Happy Hunting Ground is the resting place for those souls who lived in such close attunement to Nature that they barely qualified as human anymore, and certainly didn't deserve to be called "civilized" by most definitions. Many of the souls who find their way to this world after their deaths reincarnate as animals, or even as plants; it is rumored that some parts of the plane are also inhabited by half-human and half-animal beings, anthropomorphic "furries" that mix humanoid sapience with certain biological purities of their "wild" half, and thus have the ability to think thoughts and feel feelings which, some might argue, Man Was Not Meant To Know. However, if this subsection of the plane does exist, it keeps a discreet difference from the area where most newcomers arrive when first visiting or manifesting upon the Beast Lands themselves. * Arcadia * Ysgard * The Outlands * Limbo * Pandemonium * The Abyss * Carceri, or Tartarus * Hades, or Sheol * Gehenna, or Je Hinnom * The Nine Hells * Acheron