No one was more surprised than me with how good The Plane Below: Secrets of Elemental Chaos turned out, but upon thinking more about that release a lot of this quality derived from Elemental Chaos being a surprisingly setting-agnostic plane. Much of it is easy to fit into the Great Wheel, whether in Limbo or the Inner Planes or the Abyss, and even aside from that cosmology many of its locations are easily integrated into all sorts of fantastical environments. There’s a sprinkling of the usual Dawn War and primordial nonsense that forms the Nentir Valley/Fourth Edition core cosmology, but it’s not overwhelming. Elemental Chaos is just a big slurry of crazy stuff happening, and pretty much any campaign setting can figure out a way to plug that material in if you’re really interested in it.
Conversely, the Astral Sea, i.e. the titular plane from The Plane Above: Secrets of the Astral Sea, is reliant on this new cosmology for almost everything. Realm after realm after location after location is centered around this new setting, and as a result very little here is compatible with anything from prior editions of D&D, or Fifth Edition in the future. That’s not to say that what’s here is bad, but this is essentially a book only for Fourth Edition fans… which is a choice that has done it few favors considering that although we’re still early in 2010, the number of remaining Fourth Edition books is small and from here on barely remembered. If you want to read more than you ever cared to about the Dawn War and its after-effects then this is the book for you, but if you’re invested in ideas that could translate well to the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, or just your own homebrew campaign then a lot of what’s here is going to disappoint. The Astral Plane is Fourth Edition’s world for the gods, but not your gods, only its own very specific and limited pantheon. It might be the most setting-specific book of the entire edition, and the irony that it pretends at no setting at all, as Fourth Edition’s conceit for its “world” remains that it’s indistinct enough to be used by anyone, only made for a release with extremely niche appeal.
A great deal of this comes from the Astral Sea’s new and surprising creation myth. In previous editions, the Astral Plane was in essence the nowhere plane, to the point that its description in the Third Edition Manual of the Planes began by saying, “It is the space between everything. It is the road that goes everywhere. It is where you are when you aren’t anywhere else. The Astral Plane is the space between the planes.” Well that’s not remotely the case anymore. The Astral Sea, its new and greatly diminished version, is “the world above the world of mortals, an infinite silver expanse dotted by countless small shards of land, scattered larger islands, and the dominions of the gods.” While before, the most important aspect of the plane was the Astral’s relationship to the universe’s metaphysics, now it’s there due to the relationship between mortals and gods. It is in fact a world built by the gods and for the gods, and this new origin story suffuses all but a handful of its aspects.
Here’s our new and unsurprisingly-yet-disappointingly Dawn War-focused explanation for this plane:
The Astral Sea is a former battlefield still ravaged by the cosmic conflict known as the Dawn War. The deities were the original inhabitants of the astral realm when the world was newly created by the primordials and the mortal races had yet to find their final forms. Along with shaping and refining the creation of the world, the gods had grand plans for a single realm that would link all their dominions together with an all-powerful astral connection known as the Lattice of Heaven.
When the gods intervened to prevent the primordials from destroying the world and starting a new creation, the primordials responded by invading the Plane Above. Gods died, dominions crumbled, and the incomplete Lattice of Heaven was shattered into fragments. The astral world that had nearly become a fantastic interlocked mesh of divine dominions blew apart into an infinite silver sea. Much later, when the gods had eked out a narrow victory in the Dawn War, only a few of the divine dominions that survived the devastation still functioned for their deities, hinting at the glory that died forever when the primordials destroyed the Lattice.
The Astral is nothing more or less than this busted Lattice of Heaven. The only individuals largely uninvolved with either the Dawn War or the game’s current patheon are the githyanki, who have their own ridiculous issues in this edition. If you’re not terribly interested in this pantheon, with its milquetoast deities like Ioun and its tedious Dawn War-derived lore, then look elsewhere. This is a book about the Lattice, and the history of this ill-defined conflict impugns upon all who tread its confusing “seas.”
Now, the difficulty for the Astral ever since it was rebranded into a sea has long been making sense with the typically three-dimensional navigation within this plane. This issue was glossed over until now, where we’re introduced to the Astral Horizon, which is a pseudo-surface upon which ships and other vessels float. Almost all relevant locations are located upon the Horizon, but that isn’t to say that people can’t just move three-dimensionally about, as even non-flyers/swimmers can “move slowly through the Astral Sea by sheer willpower (they have a fly speed of 2 [clumsy] and can hover).” While the rest of the book is going to pretend that this world works within essentially two-dimensional navigation (despite the lack of maps…), no consideration will ever be given towards an individual, say, approaching the peaks of Celestia from above. Divine Dominions, as realms have been rebranded, all have their own particular rules as well, but the book will always assume use of the Astral Horizon rather than more creative approaches. There’s a whole ton of islands in this book, despite the fact that sailing is in no way required for moving around and that in most respects these locations are more like meteors than anything we’d find in “the world.”
The rest of the book’s first chapter focuses primarily on broad concepts of adventuring in this plane, and while there are some details on new concepts like the navigational color strands, let’s skip forward to chapter two with its equally monumental changes. The afterlife in Fourth Edition has always been pretty weird, but how that interacts with the Astral Sea had been left vague until now. Petitioners are now called “Exalted,” but those rebirthed in this manner are rare indeed… and random. Even those who would qualify for this position are now often stuck outside of their gods’ domains, making them into a new type of being: “Outsiders,” which have nothing to do with the prior meaning of this term. Because of the Lattice of Heaven’s flaws, they instead are just stuck as mortals outside of these realms. “Outsiders are incapable of entering the active dominion of any deity. Those who attempt to cross the color veil of a functioning divine dominion either press up against the veil as if it were an impassable wall or are instantly teleported between two and twenty miles above or below the dominion.” Except for with Hell, because the designers decided the rules don’t apply there because they say so.
The purpose of Outsiders and their new border island communities is obvious: if the gods are so powerful (and in Fourth Edition they’re really not), then why don’t they protect everyone in their domains? It’s a good question, and so instead of coming up with a reasonable answer, it turns out that while Outsiders can’t get into divine domains, gods also hate it on the borders. “It’s not impossible for the gods and their strongest servants to visit the border islands. It’s just not comfortable. The aftershocks of the broken Lattice of Heaven weaken beings of pure spirit while they’re on the border islands.” And gods would rather be comfortable than help keep their nearby worshippers from being murdered, enslaved, and tortured just outside of their domains, so these communities are left to their own devices, which we’re repeatedly informed means that they’re essentially fucked.
My frustration with so much of Fourth Edition’s cosmology is its combination of lack of consistency and lack of sense. Gods never act in their best interests, but they also don’t act in the interests of their supporters. Souls do one thing in the afterlife, unless they do another, or another, or another. It all feels random and whim-based, and with this illogical. Earlier in this chapter, there’s a section about how angels always act, followed by sections about exceptions for six gods—this in a pantheon that only even has 20 gods total. The world never feels like it developed naturally from the needs and desires of those who live there, instead it feels formulated to funnel campaigns into a strictly delineated form of adventuring that puts the players at an egotistical and almost onanistically solipsistic power fantasy.
As for the Astral Sea’s locations, there are many, many new ones included here, and if anywhere from before returns it’s always filled with new lore. But almost all of these locations rely upon this cosmology to make sense, making them very difficult to move to other campaign settings, which made the book feel interminably long. You will read the words Dawn War over and over and over again. I get it, that’s the foundation of this entire cosmology, but there’s very little here for people who, say, wish to use their own gods, or Poseidon and Vishnu, or whoever else. It is a campaign setting book that isn’t aware of it. I’ll cover the main sections, but while going through my notes I can’t help but find it remarkable how little of this book I retained.
Arvandor is where the elven deities live—except they’re Not Just For Elves AnymoreTM. They don’t believe in prisons, except for when they do, and because a bunch of Dawn War nonsense abominations randomly ransack and murder huge swaths of their followers pretty much all of the time. This is cool with them, though, and, umm yeah that’s why people visit them: to get mauled by abominations, many of which are stronger than the gods. Its border islands are pretty much fine, with nothing in particular to recommend them rather than any random island locations within “the World.”
Celestia is no longer one cool, big mountains, it’s instead a cluster of mountains being fought upon by immortals playing a dumb game. Seriously. Three of the mountains are ruled by their respective gods, but the rest change ownership annually as part of the Game of Mountains, not to be confused with the Game of Making elsewhere in the Astral. I find this intentional quirkiness tiring, but even if you don’t it’s not like the rules of this game are included, since being intentionally vague is what Fourth Edition is all about. “Part of the game’s appeal is that rules and team sizes change each season.” Sometimes, I wish the designers of this edition would just say, “Our deadlines were too tight for me to spend the time to figure out how any of this works.” I get it, you’re busy, and no one is going to want to actually feature the Game of Mountains in their campaign, but even so its description was bafflingly muddy.
Chernoggar is the realm of infinite warfare where Gruumsh and Bane fight because that’s what they’re into. That’s really it, though. Moving on.
Dragon covered Hestavar in more detail earlier, and I appreciate the book saying to just read that earlier article… or I would if Wizards of the Coast kept these issues available on their website. I realize that they’re not difficult to find online, but nevertheless The Plane Above is now incomplete. There’s new information about how Erathis is working to mend the Lattice of Heaven, how Pelor hides what may be a gate to the Far Realm, and how Ioun… exists. The border islands are profiled, and right outside Pelor’s door is a vast market where, “You can have slaves … and you can make deals to purchase slaves.” Apparently he’s just fine with this, and the “good” alignment must mean something completely different in Fourth Edition than it does anywhere else in the English language.
Instead of really covering Hell, the book focuses almost entirely on Avernus and the “Outer Torments,” i.e. its border isles. There’s also a three encounter mini-adventure right in the middle for some ineffable reason, which has little plot but does have a series of high level fights. All of it contradicts every other depiction of Hell in the game’s history enough to make it largely incompatible, though at least we get a bit more lore about Asmoedeus’ rise to power in this edition.
Last is Tytherion, which introduced my biggest disappointment in this entire book. For all its rambling nonsense and endless string of battles, the Scales of War adventure path did some legitimately cool things, in particular with the death of Tiamat and the next stage of the githyanki empire. Well no more. As explained later in the book, “The Scales of War adventure path, presented in Dungeon magazine as a part of D&D Insider, takes an alternate view of … history.” Everything within the path is retconned to have never happened, and so Tiamat is chilling in her lair the same as ever. There’s backstory about her taking half of Zehir’s realm, but since that’s one of the new Fourth Edition deities no one knows anything about in the first place it’s difficult to care. In general, the decisions as to which deities to include were baffling, but this was never as much the case as for someone like Zehir, who replaces already existent snake deities for no readily apparent reason. The two gods of the realm fight for dominion, much like with Chernogarr, though for the most part it’s a cold war scenario rather than an endless series of pointless battles.
The book’s third chapter, “The Deep Astral Sea,” focuses first on Races of the Astral. It hates the couatls, saying that essentially this most goodly of all people is nothing but a bunch of virtue-signaling posers. Everything about this depiction is weird and a bit off-putting, and it felt like someone had an axe to grind, though towards whom is unclear. Githyanki are just githyanki, and maruts are given more details and backstory but are still dull enough that it’s hard to care (and their Bastion of Inevitability is just a stupid fucking idea). A new race, the Quom, has an excellent backstory and driving motivation, but as usual for this edition absolutely no complexity, and what’s worse they’re so tied in with this cosmology that they’d never really be seen or heard from again (I think they popped up in a single Dungeon article and that’s it).
The second half of this chapter—why are these sections combined? This book’s organization is so odd—covers Shattered Domains, i.e. the realms where deities no longer rule. Carceri is now much, much more boring than before and features a dearth of greheleths that’s inexcusable. At its center, the multiverse barfs out abominations because this universe apparently didn’t have enough pointless fights in it already. For reasons unclear, this area is guarded from the outside, while abominations are mostly allowed to do what they’d like, which seems like exactly the opposite of what anyone logical would do but that’s how Fourth Edition likes to roll.
Ershiani is the realm of a petrified primordial and that’s really it, though a pair of encounters is again randomly included in case DMs for some reason find that compelling. Kalandurren is the realm of the now-deceased prior death god, Amoth, and is basically where a moronic interplanar gladiatorial coliseum is set. Here, magical wards prevent spectators from fighting, the Doomguards are… about for some reason—the book never seems to understand who the Doomguard are, let alone their philosophy—and characters can be forced into fights for bullshit reasons. It’s contrived even by Fourth Edition standards, and I know I say something like that a lot lately but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
Pandemonium is similar to before but now bereft of most aspects that used to make it unique instead of cliched. Shom, on the other hand, has a rather unique and cool backstory that even brings one of the most obscure races from the history of D&D back into the game, the illumians (who appeared in 3.5’s Races of Destiny and… I think that’s really it; until now, I thought they never appeared again, period), before telling us that they’re now all dead. Whoops. It’s no longer interesting though and is just another place for various groups to punch each other, which is generally what happens with any area of Fourth Edition if you just wait long enough. Oh well.
Last in this hodgepodge of a chapter is a section about “Motes in the Astral Sea,” which are essentially demiplanes and so usable without this cosmology, yay! Except not. They’re of course mostly tied to the Dawn War and primordials and such, and are generally just hard to give a shit about because there’s nothing else special about them.
The book’s final chapter is “Astral Denizens,” which includes a bunch of new, god-level abominations no one sane will ever use in a campaign—including a renamed hecatoncheires deracinated from its Grecian heritage—a bevy of new and imminently forgettable devils, way too many statblocks for githyanki, a couple of quoms, and then a bunch of information about the exalted for various deities. There’s a lot here if you’re interested in fights, but almost all of the new lore is contained in that first section about abominations.
While The Plane Above‘s illustrations are, on the whole, more flavorful and worthwhile than most in Fourth Edition, the only maps in this entire book only exist to facilitate battles. Want to know what Arvandor looks like, or how the islands just off Chernoggar are arranged? Well screw you, that’s not what this game is about, it’s about punching people from one square into another one. I found this particularly frustrating considering that a ton of energy was spent making it so that the realms and known parts of the Astral are finite in this edition, and therefore much more mapable than ever before. Hell in Fourth Edition has a single, unchanging size and shape unlike in any other incarnation, but no map to help a DM run a campaign there is in sight.
I know that I keep repeating myself, but in summation, this is as close to a Fourth Edition cosmology book as we’d ever get. There are probably some excellent planar ideas to be cribbed from here, for instance the specific Astral Sea hazards are excellent, but your enjoyment of this book as a whole is really going to derive from how much you enjoy running high level, specifically Fourth Edition-cosmology based adventures. The Plane Above is not bad at what it tries to do, it’s just that what it’s trying to do is something very few of us have interest in, including even people like me who just like adventuring in D&D‘s other planes of existence. If, like 99+% of even hardcore D&D players, that’s not your particular interest, then I wouldn’t give this book a second glance.
