During that awkward two year-period between the announcement of D&D‘s Fifth Edition and said edition’s actual release, both Dragon and Dungeon magazines continued puttering along. Christopher Perkins was in charge (of both? Of just Dungeon? This was never clear to me, and the actual organizational structure seemed to be changing wildly month-by-month during the entire Fourth Edition period), and the overall quality for the magazines improved. Which didn’t mean that either one felt particularly necessary unless you were still somehow a diehard Fourth Edition fan, but did mean that the content mill kept chugging along, and due to Fourth Edition’s love for all things planar there were still plenty more planar articles on their way. I’m going to cover these for the most part chronologically, and while I don’t think that anything from this entire two-year period really warrants rereading, perhaps it will be interesting enough to hear about out of morbid curiosity. 

Dungeon #200 (March 2012) included a commemorative adventure titled “Flame’s Last Flicker” by Shawn Merwin. Flame was an infamous reappearing villain who originated in Dungeon‘s first issue in the adventure “Into the Fire.” The dragon’s popularity led to first a reappearance in “Out of the Ashes” (issue #17) and many years later in “Old Embers Never Die” (#100). Merwin’s way of honoring this history was to turn Flame into a draconic demilich and require players to go back in time to defeat all three of his previous incarnations in order to destroy his phylacteries. 

I usually find time traveling adventures distasteful (i.e. fucking stupid), but this isn’t a bad concept, especially for what is essentially set up as just a series of dragon based battles (plus one battle without a dragon, I guess for variety). The planar aspect of things results from Flame killing off Bahamut’s champions, devouring their souls, and using them to power up Tiamat in a plot that kinda sorta makes sense in a bad fantasy novel sort of way. Players need to venture into the Astral Sea in order to figure out what’s going on with these souls, and then head from there to the Scales islands outside of Tytherion in order to repeatedly murder Flame. Unfortunately, all of this is highly dependent upon Fourth Edition’s terrible cosmology, as well as its love for murdering people’s souls, and as a whole it only makes sense in that particular version of D&D. Plus, it requires Bahamut to really, really suck and not try to lift a finger throughout the entire story. I also can’t help but feel like most players will be sick to death by fighting red dragon after red dragon, but maybe that’s me. Aside from this, the adventure seems insanely difficult, given that through all of these battles the PCs are not allowed a single long rest, but as something designed for Fourth Edition’s obsessive power gamers maybe that’s a good thing.

“Far Realm Fiends” in issue #201 of Dungeon (April 2012) is the type of wishy-washy article that started cropping up in third edition D&D and became absolutely endemic by Fourth Edition. It tells you that what it offers are options, but really DMs should do what they want… as if that wasn’t always true in every case of the game, ever. “This article suggests only one possible interpretation. Build your own version of the Far Realm around your characters and the story you all want to tell.” That time and energy is ever wasted with this sort of nonsense always annoys me, and it also has the effect to de-canonizing articles even before they’ve been published. That sort of inclusion implies to me that nothing contained should be considered anything but terrible fan-fiction, and while that’s always the case with pretty much all writing, it’s a good way to make me want to ignore your article completely.

As for the actual content, it’s not as straightforward as the title implies. Four new creatures are added (plus sub-types), each of which seems fine enough, if at times difficult to picture considering the short descriptions and lack of any images. Their names are staggeringly uncreative things like “doom hulk” and “mind slasher,” so it’s a bit embarrassing to use them, and sanity siphons aren’t even described at all, instead we just learn that, “On their arrival [in the Far Realm], the shifting boundaries of space, time, and thought rip apart their minds and bodies, leaving them screaming sparks of arcane fury.” So like, they’re just energy now, or what? But beyond the creatures, there’s a couple random paragraphs about Far Realm landscapes, then a section on terrain and hazards that includes options for a time storm, twisted space, and geometric impossibility. In all, it’s just a mish-mash of Far Realm ideas that aren’t given much thought and seem completely half-baked. I suppose it could serve as a bit of Far Realm inspiration, but you’d find more interesting material of a similar sort in pretty much any Call of Cthulhu release.

Issue #203 of Dungeon (June 2012) contained a pair of articles centered around the Astral Sea. “Hunt for the Heretic” is an adventure by Sterling Hershey that’s essentially a Spelljammer story rebranded for the wonky Fourth Edition cosmology. For unexplored reasons, the PCs arrive at a city on the Astral in the middle of an attack from marauding githyanki pirates, who lately have been raiding nearby ships. Then, they hunt down those pirates and… win. That’s it. That’s the whole adventure. Basically, it’s the world’s most rote seafaring adventure, but set in space! Err…  I mean the Astral Sea. Fine, I’m being overly negative so far, as much of the actual adventure is given up to an investigation with a surprising amount of options, which I appreciate, but as written this is another one of those skill check setups rather than something centered around role playing. There’s plenty of great detail to all of this, and I like every part of the investigation itself and its conclusion except for how it’s presented and is supposed to be played. If you took all of this material and turned it into something reliant upon roleplaying it seems like it could be a lot of fun, though all of the Astral Sea nonsense with its planar dromonds and ships feel tacked on to me. If you want the Astral Sea to give you a basic, though strong, seafaring adventure, then this is a good module to consider, even if that feels like the most dull way of using the Astral Plane possible. I guess I just don’t get why the Astral Sea needs to be a thing given that there’s plenty of water elsewhere to use for seafaring adventures.

“Perils of the Astral Sea,” by Michael E. Shea for the same issue, is a great tie-in with this adventure and could be used to add something besides swashbuckling to the area. Most of the article is devoted to three new creatures… well two new creatures and one surprising return from Planescape. Remember the Aleax from the original Campaign Setting? Probably not, as I never got the sense that they received much use, but Shea brought it back for Fourth Edition. Kind of. It no longer looks like its intended victims, now it “resembles an ageless, armor-clad human with white skin and shining white eyes.” Which is to say that it loses one of the most noteworthy parts of the Aleax’s identity for no discernible reason. The first “new” monster is the atropal deathscreamer, a CR 26 variant of the atropal from Third Edition’s Epic Level Handbook. This version isn’t nearly as tough as the original atropal and feels like a bit of a pushover for a party this high-level. Last is the githyanki antipaladin, who are tough Vlaakith loyalists and otherwise yet another githyanki stat block. And as is the way of these Dungeon articles, there’s two other random bits at the end for some reason, describing Dawn War scars and Astral Lodestones. *shrug*

Michael E. Shea wrote a similar article for the next issue as well (Dungeon #204, July 2012) titled “Denizens of the Demonweb.” This time there’s five new-ish creatures, all with insanely high levels, and all of whom are completely forgettable or just versions of other monsters reskinned (i.e. yochlol queen’s guard). There’s also a couple paragraphs with more information about the demonweb, but on the whole it’s an entirely skippable piece unless you’re running a level 25+ Fourth Edition game that wants to beat up Lolth in her home.

Christopher Perkins’ opening editorial for issue #414 of Dragon (August 2012) is named “De Planes, De Planes!,” which is the second time in Fourth Edition that one of these editorials has used that… joke? That’s just embarrassing, though fortunately Perkins’ article isn’t a misguided defense of Fourth Edition’s terrible cosmology, instead it’s a bit of rumination on his own Planescape campaign, in the middle of which he hides the information that the Great Wheel would be making a return to the game… but with certain facets of Fourth Edition’s cosmology intact. Maybe? His answer is another of those “do what you want, it’s your own game” sort of things, which is to say it pretends at answering the question while in fact doing nothing of the sort:

D&D is not truly D&D without the Great Wheel, but for many players and DMs, the 4th Edition cosmology is their preferred “take” on the planes [doubtful….]. We also have campaign settings with cosmological needs of their own. Our goal with D&D Next is to present a planar toolbox that allows us to borrow or assemble whatever cosmological elements suit our needs, and yours as well. You’ll see lots of references to the inner and outer planes of the Great Wheel, as well as references to planar reflections of the natural world, namely the Feywild and the Shadowfell. But our underlying goal is to let the campaign setting determine the cosmology, be it one of yours or one of ours. What will your next campaign cosmology look like? I’m betting it’ll look nothing like mine, and that’s no catastrophe.

First of the issue’s planar articles is a Bazaar of the Bizarre magic items rundown titled “From the Attic of Alluvius Ruskin” by Jim Auwaeter. It begins with a description of the shop itself, which is very close to the old Planescape version and even has a reference to Yggdrasil, despite that definitively not being a part of Fourth Edition D&D‘s cosmology—or even Third Edition’s for that matter. Lu herself is newly aged, and other details about her such as always wearing leather gloves are also noteworthy; it’s obvious that Auwaeter has a love for the old Planescape lore, and not only that is an excellent writer such that even the article introduction is fun to read. While it only details four items, their descriptions are written as quotes from Lu trying to sell to PCs, which is another lovely touch and includes some old school cant even if other references tie in with the new cosmology. The actual items consist of a mimir, karach armor, a spellsword soulblade (even here Fourth Edition loves stealing people’s souls), and a modron toy. How does the toy function as a key to Mechanus when the plane no longer exists is a mystery I’ll leave for the next article to answer, but maybe Nordom can offer some assistance with this mess given that it originated with him and the Nameless One.

Speaking of Mechanus, next comes “Ecology of the Modron” by Brian R. James. The introduction to this article features a quotation by a Guvner ex-factol saying that there is a plane, i.e. Mechanus, that is the orderly counterpart to the Far Realm. And you know what, as much as I hate Fourth Edition’s cosmology, if you do insist on using it then this is a pretty damn good way of inserting Mechanus back into it. That’s right, this is an article that casually rewrites the entire history of the Fourth Edition cosmology and adds another major plane to it like that’s no big deal. “The clockwork realm they call Mechanus is just one of many bizarre realities that coexist within an even greater planescape that scholars name the Accordant Expanse.”

Likewise, suddenly the Great Modron March is a thing that everyone retroactively is familiar with again, Primus and his cronies are all milling about, and for the most part modrons are modroning with regularity as if they’ve always been there… though with more than a few radical changes along the way. Primus, aka the Prime Architect (essentially), now predates the Dawn War and all of its nonsense and is, of course, a primordial. This being disassembled themself into the component modrons, and the Great Modron March is now theorized as a sort of weird defragmentation process needed to periodically, uhh… do something intentionally vague.

Individual modrons are certainly similar to their prior incarnations, but far from identical. Some of them sleep while some don’t, they all have telepathy, and their corpses disappear upon death. Much of this article is given up to their biology, with descriptions offered for how they sense the world and even how their circulatory and digestive systems work. It is a good article, and James’ details are revealing and interesting… but again, they’re just not Planescape’s modrons, and so what’s here feels only tenuously related to their depiction in other editions. For instance, they are now “fueled by a psychomorphic substance only found in the Accordant Expanse,” which I guess sounds kind of cool but limits them in weird ways and also doesn’t at all mesh with the Great Wheel’s version of Mechanus. Many details are kept from before, for instance the entire hierarchy is included, but the changes are legion and feel unnecessary. For the most part, James’ modrons feel different just for the sake of being different, which is generally the Fourth Edition aesthetic, but given that this article exists partially to bridge the past continuity with the current game I fail to understand what anyone involved was thinking.

Still, James does have some additions to (Fourth Edition) modron lore that I don’t want to skip past. First is that they’re obsessed with closing portals between planes:

They see these as weak points in the fabric of the cosmos, riddling existence like worms burrowing through a rotten apple. They insist that anytime a being passes through a planar portal, the very structure of the cosmic firmament is weakened. Thus, modrons have begun to appear at portal mouths to contest the passage of other creatures until they can “repair the wound.” Some contingents have started collapsing such passages wherever they find them, no matter the purpose of the portals. 

It’s a cool concept that makes for easy plot hooks, though I don’t think it meshes well with the Great Wheel. It also causes some obvious-yet-unanswered questions, like what the hell do modrons think about Sigil and the Lady of Pain?

The other really odd thing about this article is a paragraph at the end of its Great Modron March description: 

The recent invasion by plague demons from the malign parallel universe of Voidharrow left countless dimensional cysts eating away at the fabric of the cosmos. Since that outbreak, modrons have been appearing at these sites in numbers as never before. This vanguard appears to be losing the fight against the malignant cysts, and scholars fear that Primus will direct the next Great Modron March through the heart of the planes to eradicate the demonic infestation once and for all.

What the fuck is this talking about? When I looked for more information about Voidharrow the main source I found was the Forgotten Realms wiki‘s rundown, which makes it seem like normal Fourth Edition demonic muck and pretty dull. Is there some other use of this term that involves a parallel universe? I’m still not able to make any sense of what’s being alluded to here, but casually adding malignant parallel dimensions seems like kind of a big deal.

Nearly as fascinating to read as this modron reconceptualization is John “Ross” Rossomangno’s recap of what he calls “The Iggwilv-Graz’zt Affair.” This is just one of many “History Check” articles peppering the last couple years of the magazine, and many of these are both planar in nature and will get at least a mention here as we finish off the rest of these magazines’ runs. They rarely have new information, but nonetheless are often enjoyable and clarifying, and they have a weird side project in retconning all of these events that make no sense within Fourth Edition’s cosmology and history into taking place there nonetheless. For instance, Iggwilv’s whole existence is a Greyhawk-centered storyline, but that no longer seems to be off-limits for writers. I give demerits for nearly all of these history checks being told by Vistani narrators, but on the whole the series are just fun recaps for old time players like myself. 

The last planar article from this issue is a Character Themes column titled “Sensates, Ciphers, and Xaositects” by David Chalker. However, it’s very much a crunch piece focusing on new powers for members of these groups, and everything else included just recaps old information. Still, there are two pieces of artwork, the cipher one being particularly fun, and I’m never gonna say no to commissioning new depictions of the factions and Sigil. 

But there’s still a bit more planar material left in 2012, specifically in Dragon issue #417 (November 2012). Two of these articles are a pair of history checks, “The Blood War” by Sterling Hershey and “The Shadow That Was” by Derek Guder, and both are essentially recaps of Planescape adventures. “The Blood War” returns yugoloths to the game and recaps “Squaring the Circle,” baernoloths and all, while “The Shadow That Was” goes through Dead Gods while also keeping Tenebrous around as the vestige included in Tome of Magic. Both are totally unnecessary, but more than that are just super weird in that they don’t fit in either the old cosmology or the new one. Both use Sigilian cant, have an old school interpretation of devils and demons (that even uses the words baatezu and tanar’ri), and act like the Styx is something that works how it did before. When Pandemonium gets mentioned in the later article, there’s some lampshading of the retconned multiverse saying, “You want me to stop and explain ‘layers’ and ‘planes’? Bar that, prime. That’s a whole other story and much too involved for this little chat. You’re going to need to buy me a lot more bub to get me to sit around long enough for that.” It’s all very messy and just makes for a weird cosmology that seems like it would make neither Great Wheel nor World Axis fans happy by trying to do both at the same time, badly.

The final planar article for the year is one that I have even less to say about, “Fallen Angels: The Ecology of the Succubus.” Unlike the previous articles, this one seems to go full-in on the World Axis, which is to say that they’re devils and all of that shit. This means a lot of really awkward contortions in order to explain why Malcanthet, a demon lord, is still Queen of the Succubi, but if you’re into Fourth Edition’s cosmology then this sort of thing is already the norm. Anyhow, I don’t recommend reading it unless you just really, really want succubi to be devils instead of demons to the point that you’re willing to read eight full pages on the subject. For anyone interested in the old school version of succubi this should be a complete skip.