Cosmology (Action)

While normally a campaign specific thing, some kind of core cosmology helps us to understand the Action rules.

In Action the basic cosmology has different planes lined up next to each other as if on a string. This string has the present game world in the middle. To one side lie the material worlds and elemental planes - realms of matter and substance. This is sometimes called the inner planes or the ethereal realm. On the other side lies the realms of ideas, dream worlds, and the heavens and havens of different religions. This can be called the outer planes or astral realm.

Axis Mundi

This "string" is called the Axis Mundi. On way to think of this is as a 5th dimension (separate from the three normal spatial dimensions and time), that can only be traveled along using mystical means. By going "deeper" or "stepping sideways", a character can distance himself from the prime without physically moving in normal three-dimensional space.

Each world occupies a place along this string. Sometimes, several worlds can be equally distant from the prime and still be separate, but generally, each spot along the Axis Mundi holds a single plane or realm. The scale of the Axis Mundi has two direction, woth the Prime in the middle (at zero). Material/Ethereal planes have negative values, while spiritual/astral realms have positive values. Higher absolute numbers means the plane in question is further from the Prime.

Note that this scale is arbitary; it could just as well be reversed, or centered somewhere else. But as the Axis Mundi has no firm endpoints, it is a practical way for prime beings to understand the orientation of the cosmology. Creatures and civilizations from other places along he Axis Mundi might use their own homes as point zero, and still arrive at mostly the same results.

Note that not all of the Axis Mundi is occupied - there are stretches of it that are simply empty, where only the Aether exists. This is an empty, hostile place to be. There are also soft spots in the various worlds, "bulges" where a world is bend along teh Axis Mundi and thus closer than usual to either the astral or ethereal. Such places are often good starting points for planar expeditions, and sometimes even transport creatures randomly between planes.

The Prime

This is the game world where most of the action happens. It is situated on the neutral point between the ethereal and astral, and gets many of its unique features from the balance of matter and ideas.

The Shell

The prime is surrounded by the shell, a barrier that prevents the outer realm from mixing in with the prime reality. Different worlds have shells of different strengths, and a stronger shell bars more interdenominational transfers, making the use of supernatural power that much harder.

The Aether

Surrounding all of this is the etheral or astral plane, two names for the very same thing. The unified term for this here is the aether. This is the medium trough which all inter-dimensional travel must pass, and this includes most supernatural powers that act as conduits for planar powers. The aether is formless and lacks features.

The Inner Planes

Traveling "down" the Axis Mundi - towards more negative values - you come to the material planes. These are the source of the matter and energy that make up the Prime, but the further you go, the more raw and chaotic these places become and the less meaning and organization there is. Those ethereal realms closest to the Prime are habitable, but as you go further away the mixture of different elements becomes more and more spotty and chaotic. Large chunks of raw elemental energies or clumps of raw matter are not good places for Prime beings to live. The creatures encountered become less and less anthropomorphic, less and less comprehensible, and more and more willfully destructive as you go.

Faery

The closest of the elemental realms is faery, a plane similar to our own, but governed less by reason and psyche and more by raw urges and elemental powers. Faery appears like a more fantastic version of our world; forests are greener, mountains higher, seas bluer and stormier. Changes in the Prime are mirrored in faery, but generally with a long lag; faery resembles the Prime as it was decades or centuries ago.

Deep Faery

Closely linked to Faery, these "deeper regions" are even more wild and unpredictable than normal, and they no longer mirror the Prime. Often the habitat of strange fey princes and powers with little love for the Prime and little understanding of the higher realms.

Elemental Chaos

Beyond deep faery, the ethereal realm break up - there are areas of pure elemental forces. These include the classic elements; earth, water, air, and fire as well as positive and negative energy "poles" that are a source of life and undeath, respectively. All kinds of strange mixtures exist here too, but all these worlds seem incomplete and half-finished to someone from the Prime.

Abyss

At the far end of the elemental chaos (some call it the centre of it) lies the Abyss, the primal cosmic whirlpool from which all matter comes, but which also dissolves all order and reduces all meaning to nothing.

Astral Realms

Traveling "up" the Axis Mundi, you find places that are more and more idealized, but at the same time less and less real. To begin with there is almost as much a mix of matter and forms as on the Prime, but slowly it polarizes into different realms for different ideas - and these areas cannot tolerate any nonconformity.

Shadowlands

The closest of the higher realms appears as a dim version of the Prime, almost indistinguishable form the real thing and mirroring physical reality. As opposed to Faery, this realm often appears more extreme and have a futuristic look, representing the dreams and future visions of people from the Prime. Large areas of the shadowlands are cityscapes, and more advanced than the cities of the prime in both size and scope. But there are also regions of dark and scary wilderness as wellas fasinating places of soul-wrenching beauty.

The recently dead pass these regions on their way to the afterlife, and many linger here for a while, making this a place of shades and ghosts. The good dead usually pass on quicker, while the evil dead are reluctant to go to their eternal reward, so most of the spirits found here are malignant or lost.

Land of Mists

Deeper regions of the Shadowlands appear solid and real, but are actually playgrounds for powerful or obsessed spirits, either dead or who find their way here when the Prime was no longer sufficed for them to express their egos. Each such realm is separated by mists - seemingly ordinary, but impenetrable to all senses and most mystic powers. Effectively, each realm within the mists is a separate mini-reality, usually governed by its own egotistical lord and is a manifestation of the lord's subconscious. Such a realm exists and disintegrates with it's lord, disappearing into the mists when there is no strong will to force the realm to stay constant.

It is possible to learn the paths trough the mists, traveling from one shadow realm to another with some certainty. Sometimes such a passage becomes so well established that anyone can traverse it, and the mists become transparent and barely noticeable, creating countries and continents within the Land of Mists. But such regions are never stable - they can disappear by the whim of a ruler or just drift apart again.

Dreamlands

Beyond the Land of Mists lies the dreamlands - even more temporary. Every dream ever dreamed takes palce here, and the realms can change just as quickly as a dream can. Few travelers come here except to explore the dream-conscious of someone on their home plane.

Astral Havens

This is the realms of the greatest spirits of all - the gods and devils that capture and channel the imaginations of multitudes of prime beings. This is where the faithful dead find their final reward or punishment. Each such haven is the home to one or more powerful spirits, and these can dictate how reality works in their realm. Because these spirits are so powerful, their realms appear much more lasting than those of the Land of Mists. But in actuality, the lords of these realms can change things at whim, and the inhabitant survive only on the whim of their ruler.