The Unfinished World

[LordVreeg]

[blockquote=EM]Those who travel the Wilderness of the Unfinished World will find ample opportunities to become heralds, heroes, or villains.[/blockquote]
I like this.  The Heralds part calls out to me.  I love making things very goal and role oriented, but the role of herald, with connotations of some bardic warrior bringing the rare and wonderful cargo of news, is an interesting concept.

[blockquote=EM]Doing so can even expand the border of the settled land and push back the Wilderness by a few miles. The largest settled lands have grown to their present size in this manner.[/blockquote]
Sort of like Moorcock's carving order (and thus land) out of stuff of chaos surrounding the world?

[Epic Meepo]

[ic=The Finished Worlds]How do we know the world's Unfinished, when it's the only one there is? Simple. It ain't the only one there is.

I hear some folk claim that their gods walk among us. And maybe some gods do from time to time. But most of the time, gods've got better places to be. Finished places that put our half-grown world to shame. Listen to the tales of the heavens and the hells and you'll hear words like "continent" and "metropolis."

Give me a world where a land can hold its shape for a thousand miles in each direction and a city can house a million souls, and I'll show you a Finished World.[/ic]The Unfinished World occupies in the Material Plane, where hopes and dreams and souls only exist while bound to the flesh of material creatures. But there are also countless Astral Planes, higher dimensions where hopes and dreams and souls - not to mention formless creatures called Memes - are the very building blocks of reality. Also known as Finished Worlds, these higher planes have no gaps that must be filled by Wilderness.

Instead, each Finished World is a distorted mirror of the Material Plane, one that reflects not the world that is, but the world that might come to pass, should the world be completed in the image of a particular philosophy. Stable lands and seas cover the surfaces of these Finished Worlds. The deities that rule these places have forged enduring empires populated by souls made flesh, each otherwordly nation vying to make its own reality the future shape of the Material Plane.

[spoiler=The Primordial Chaos]Some scholars argue that each Finished World represents one of the mortal world's possible futures. While this may or may not be true, there is no denying that the Material Plane's past has a definite life of its own. Beneath the deepest caverns and ocean trenches of the Unfinished World is the Primordial Chaos, a vortex of churning elemental matter. This maelstrom at the heart of the world is an echo of the chaos that ruled the early universe. No mortals and no deities reside here; the sole inhabitants of the Chaos are the demons and elementals that it sometimes spawns.[/spoiler]

[Epic Meepo]

[ic=Wild Magic]Chaos is not random. Every effect has a cause and every cause has an effect, even in total chaos. What sets chaos apart is its sensitivity to small changes; the most insignificant cause might have a spectacular and almost unpredictable outcome. Scholars call this chaos theory; most everyone else calls it wild magic.

And magic is a good name for it. The ability to understand and manipulate chaos can bend the world to your every whim. Wave a butterfly wing in your hand here, create a storm over there, perhaps, or any number of other things. Whatever your intended result, where better to practice magic that warps the shape of reality than in an Unfinished World?[/ic]Because the world is Unfinished, the laws of nature are in constant flux. With effort - and the appropriate insight - a creature can even manipulate those laws of nature to produce seemingly unnatural effects. Collectively, these effects are known as wild magic, and represent an alternative to the divine magic that originates with the gods.

While divine magic is granted in exchange for faith and reverence, wild magic requires no such bargain. Some creatures can use force of will and an intuitive understanding of physical laws to enact wild magic. Others must use raw intellect and extremely complex calculations to produce a particular effect. In either case, wild magic relies entirely upon a creature's own personal talents; gods of wild magic can and do exist, but a creature utilizing wild magic does not rely upon their intervention to cast its spells.

Despite the strong connection between wild magic and the Unfinished World itself, wild magic also functions beyond the boundaries of that world. On any plane of existence where the Unfinished World can be accessed, so too can wild magic be accessed. Indeed, practitioners of wild magic often study other worlds, hoping to better understand the wider principals of chaos theory. Likewise, wild mages from distant planes often turn their attention to the Unfinished World as an object of study.

[spoiler=Astrological Alignments] Like practitioners of wild magic, the movements of celestial bodies can also enact changes in the natural laws of the Unfinished World. Certain alignments of planets and stars are particularly chaotic, evil, good, or lawful. Creatures born under these astrological alignments are born with an affinity for certain spells and abilities only available to individuals of their own alignment. A creature born under an evil star, for example, would have access to abilities that only creatures of an evil alignment could use.

Note, however, that alignment is a function of the heavens, not a function of creature's behavior. An individual of an evil alignment has access to evil magic, but need not be an evil person; indeed, an evil-aligned individual could have nothing but good intentions, using evil magic to fight those whose actions are considered evil. Similar statements could be made about chaotic-, good-, and lawful-aligned creatures. Such is the curious nature of astrology, arguably the most mysterious branch of wild magic.[/spoiler]

[Tangential]

The Meme concept is quite intriguing. I heartily approve, and enjoyed the discussion surrounding it. It's very Gaiman-eseque.

Just to be clear: does divination magic work in the Wilderness?

How many "settled" pockets are there? How big is the Unfinished World geographically?

Are there any deities with a large enough following to make a pantheon list feasible?

You describe elementals as minor Memes. Would you elaborate on what makes this so?

To what degree are people aware of Finished Worlds? Are they viewed as the afterlife?

Does the night sky look the same across the Unfinished World? Can it be used to navigate by the educated?

Are there portals or gates to and from the Unfinished World, where/how does it sit in a larger Cosmology? Will it ascribe to the Astral Sea model of Beyond Countless Doorways/4e?

[Epic Meepo]

Just to be clear: does divination magic work in the Wilderness?

How many "settled" pockets are there? How big is the Unfinished World geographically?[/quote]Are there any deities with a large enough following to make a pantheon list feasible?[/quote]You describe elementals as minor Memes.[/quote]considering[/i] describing elementals as minor Memes. When I finalized the back-story of elementals, I decided against doing that. After all the final decisions were made, only full-power deities were Memes. (I wanted to prevent Memes from becoming the sole defining characteristic of the setting.)

To what degree are people aware of Finished Worlds? Are they viewed as the afterlife?

Does the night sky look the same across the Unfinished World? Can it be used to navigate by the educated?[/quote]Are there portals or gates to and from the Unfinished World, where/how does it sit in a larger Cosmology?[/quote]Will [the cosmology] ascribe to the Astral Sea model of Beyond Countless Doorways/4e?[/quote]My cosmology is intentionally taking the cosmology of 4e to the extreme. Since 4e cosmology was designed to be bare bones and vague, my cosmology is even more bare bones and vague. The Finished Worlds are like astral dominions, but there's no Astral Sea in between and there is no one specific scheme of portals and gates. The Finished Worlds are realms of the mind, and describing the connection between them is like describing the connection between different dreams you've had. There's no real way to do it.