Astral Plane / Dream Land / Other Place / Spirit Plane

[Lloyd Dupont]

I am trying to come up with some basic cosmology / fact about a very special outerplane that bathe the multiverse and all other outerplane. I need it because I see it as the way to find a path between distant planes and players are going to be lost in an outer plane soon. I want it because I want to have adventures in one of those mysterious place of floating gates and fractured reality. It's probably a good place for some souls to go to and many gods to live in, or be reachable from. And probably the highest magical secret can only be found there.

Now I can just make it up, but I have some conflicting desire in my mind (like locality, so it can join 2 distant specific spot in distant material planes, and dreamland quality without location) and I have trouble conceptualising it... And I like to read some material / cosmology other have written on such a place

Any good reference / reading / suggestion?

Edited August 8, 2019 by Lloyd Dupont
Improved title, corrected typos

[JonHook]

The Elder Things have mastered the ability to navigate a plane of existence that is very similar to what you're describing. They call it The Great White Space. I do not know if it has a source in any literature that you could read. It might be a device/concept designed specifically for the role-playing game. I'm not sure. 

But, with The Great White Space, the player characters can transition from Earth to The Great White Space, and then exit to any other planet or plane of existence. If they can figure out how to navigate The Great White Space, that is.

Maybe there is a device, or spell, or creature that can take them through The Great White Space to the strange destination you have in mind. 

To read up on The Great White Space, check out the Alien Devices section of the Call of Cthulhu Keeper Rulebook. 

[Lloyd Dupont]

I will definitely check up great white space, thanks!

[Videopete]

Wasnt the Great White Space more like the Webway from 40k, ie a artificial plane outside spacetime to facilitate travel and extradimensional storage.

[mvincent]

16 hours ago, JonHook said:

The Elder Things have mastered the ability to navigate a plane of existence that is very similar to what you're describing. They call it The Great White Space. I do not know if it has a source in any literature that you could read.

The adventure "Age of Cthulhu 9: The Lost Expedition" would be a good source of inspiration for more details about The Great White Space (as part of the adventure takes place there). I'm unsure of the literary origins though.

[Travern]

On 8/8/2019 at 7:45 PM, JonHook said:

The Elder Things have mastered the ability to navigate a plane of existence that is very similar to what you're describing. They call it The Great White Space. I do not know if it has a source in any literature that you could read.

Basil Copper's The Great White Space (1974), where the concept originates, obviously, is still in print (and Amazon offers a Kindle version).

Edit: Here's the plot summary from Amazon reviewer "Eclectic Reader"

Quote

Having made some inroads into what might be an amazing scientific discovery by exploring "the mountains and the outer caves" of a baffling remote area before being deserted by his porters, Professor Clark Ashton Scarsdale is organizing an expedition to return to this mysterious land with a small crew of scientists and a photographer to what the Professor has termed "the Great White Space" in hopes of making one of "the epoch-making explorations of this first half of the twentieth century." The expedition is a dire one as Scarsdale explains: "Some strange things have been happening in the world this past few years... [and] out there in space... Yet most of mankind seems absolutely oblivious of the implications." Guided by his research and the discovery of stone tablets containing indecipherable inscriptions, among other things, Scarsdale and four others assemble the Great Northern Expedition and enter a hell-like world beyond imagination.[…]

Copper immediately creates a sense of foreboding in The Great White Space by having his narrator, science photographer Frederick Seddon Plowright, reveal at the very beginning of the novel that he alone survives the proposed year-long Great Northern Expedition and that he has become "a man without a shadow" due to events which take place during the disastrous excursion. Ironically, Professor Scarsdale's offer that Plowright will have "the adventure of a lifetime," has more meaning to it than either man knows.

 

Edited August 14, 2019 by Travern

[klecser]

This thread makes me want to pick up The Lost Expedition as my next AoC product...

[Lloyd Dupont]

For the record, after reading a bit on the astral plane in some D&D book I went with the following...

The Astral plane (as in the D&D astral place) is the place in between the planes.... The home plane is a bit too far from the plane of abduction and there is one stop in the astral plane... (As to how the dark elf found their plane from roaming the astral plane is left unanswered...)

They will find clue that will lead them to explore a great library in the dream world where there are spell to visit the astral plane,,,, and also some clue about enemy of the dark elf roaming the astral plane (illithid, githzerai)

after that:  they will just have to go back to the astral plane and find the dark elf fortress, lure the IIlithid there, and get away to their plane.

That's the rough idea....

 

 

Edited August 14, 2019 by Lloyd Dupont

[mvincent]

58 minutes ago, klecser said:

This thread makes me want to pick up The Lost Expedition as my next AoC product...

It's one of my favorite AoC's. Some notes:

1. it's pulpy: many combat opportunities if desired. This (and the fact that it mostly took place in a jungle with mutated dinosaurs) made it a useful transition for my D&D/Chult group.
2. it provides high SAN rewards, which can be useful for the first adventure in a long campaign (i.e. PC's have more longevity, since the initial boost makes them less likely to snowball from failing future SAN rolls)
3. The default starting date for the adventure is Feb-1924, which is the earliest date of any the AoC's.
4. Their Great White Space has a lot of similarities to D&D's Astral plane: weightless environment, using your mind to move, etc.

[JonHook]

3 hours ago, klecser said:

This thread makes me want to pick up The Lost Expedition as my next AoC product...

I hope you do, and I hope you and your players enjoy it, (should you get a chance to run it). 

[mvincent]

2 hours ago, JonHook said:

I hope you do, and I hope you and your players enjoy it, (should you get a chance to run it). 

Ah, I didn't notice your name until now. Yes, my group has thoroughly enjoyed (and highly recommend) your adventures! Thank you for your work!

[JonHook]

3 hours ago, mvincent said:

Ah, I didn't notice your name until now. Yes, my group has thoroughly enjoyed (and highly recommend) your adventures! Thank you for your work!

Thank you for your kind words.