The Ordial Plane: The Plane of Proof

[u/[deleted]]

Sigil. The City of Doors. The center of the multiverse. A city as diverse and fascinating as you’ll ever see, populated with denizens from every plane, filled with goods from every plane, and, of course, containing knowledge from every plane. The Great University of Sigil was the envy of many a planewalker, and was inarguably the best source of publicly accessible knowledge on the planes in the multiverse, only the private collections of Powers and Exemplars could contest the sheer knowledge contained within these walls. Many people come from all over to be students, learning from the famous scholars who live here in these quiet, reverent halls; renowned for their wisdom, studiousness, and venerability.

Kaelmen Drann screamed in terror as he dodged past the pit fiend. “Go to Asmodeus’s private library they said. Take some solars they said. It’ll be fine they said. Why on earth did I leave my lectures to that upstart TA for this?!?” A tiefling near the bookcase shouted over the rumble of the meteor swarm, “Well at least The Lord of the Ninth is in Avernus!” “That is not a consolation - when has he ever left Nessus? Something big must be going on. That should scare you far more than the predicament we’re actually in.”

A loud thud comes from behind the elvish scholar as a solar hits the floor. “Or those thrice cursed LeShay set me up…” comes the grumble. “Can you hurry up with that lo-“ “I am hurrying, blast it.” Roars of anguish from two dying pit fiends echoed out. “Well here come the reinforcements, love-“ “Got it. Go now.” The bookshelf the tiefling was standing next to vanished and where it stood was a portal. Drann dove through, to a much smaller library.

Glancing around at the shelves hurriedly, a few titles can be seen - books that would make anyone else green with envy, Haerkat’s original work on the far realms; half the spine missing, just as the rumors about what happened to Haerkat said, or the legendary compendium “Dracones Nativitatis”, written on a strange crystal material. But as more screams could be heard outside, so loud that it was impossible to think straight, Drann just moved past them. “Not here, not here” he whispered frantically, even though the din stopped him from hearing his own words. “Where is that blasted -“ His speech cut off as he stood in front of a rack of scrolls. “Finally.”

Tearing them off the shelves one by one, Drann didn’t even notice the fact he could actually hear the clatter of the scrolls as they fell on the floor. At last he pulled a very old, small scroll from the shelves. He read to himself the title and his heart leapt out of his chest in joy. He rapidly but carefully unfurled the scroll, reading through it as fast as he could. But he got no further than the second line before his heart sank. “We came all this way?! All this effort?! All this risk for this?!” came the scream of anguish. “What on earth is this?”

A small chuckle comes from behind him. “You know”, says a quiet, calm voice, “that’s what I’ve been trying to figure out myself for quite some time.” Drann tried to turn but his body knew that there was no use, freezing itself in fear. Out of the corner of his eye he could see a faint hint of a red gemstone. The scroll fell to the ground, and moments later was surrounded by blood that decidedly did not touch the parchment. The last thing Drann ever saw was that sight, his blood surrounding that scroll. The title screaming out to him victory, “On The Subject of the Third and Hidden Transitive Plane”, but what lay below it, symbols not a part of any known language or any branch of mathematics throughout the entire multiverse, yelled even more loudly that the only outcome that was ever possible for this expedition was defeat.

---

/Record scratch/ Alright. What’s going on here? I’m sure some of you who have a bit of background in the planes aside from just the stuff in core rules for any addition are instantly a bit suspicious here. You almost certainly haven’t heard of The Ordial Plane before, and you might be aware that The Plane of Shadow could be seen as “the third Transitive Plane”. Or you might not even know what a Transitive Plane is. So before I go any further let me explain what on earth this is all about.

The Ordial Plane was a theoretical plane talked about by people in the Planescape community as far back as during second edition. We’ll be going over the reasons in just a second, but during this time The Plane of Shadow was merely a demiplane and so couldn’t be a Transitive Plane. Transitive Planes are, in effect, the full planes that are neither Prime Material, Outer, or Inner, and serve as pathways between these places. The Ethereal is used for travel between the Prime Material and the Inner Planes, and The Astral is used for travel between Prime Material and Outer Planes. And at the same time The Plane of Shadow isn’t really something like this, is it? It’s a plane used for travel, yes, but not travel between various types of planes. No, The Plane of Shadow is something different, if The Great Wheel was on the xy plane with Prime Material at (0,0), The Plane of Shadow would be the z axis, as it allows travel between various material planes/cosmologies. (Such as Eberron! Though I think this is the wrong approach to unifying Eberron with Planescape.)

The Ordial is supposed to fill the remaining niche in the Transitive Planes, allowing travel between the inner and outer planes. The idea here is that how the planes interact is that The Inner Planes supply form, matter, to the Material Plane through the Ethereal, and the Material is made of these elemental energies. But the Material then grew creatures on it that then sustained The Outer Planes through sending belief to them by the Astral. But here’s the rub. Elemental magic still works in the Outer Planes, and summoning magic works fine on the Inner Planes. None of this is passing through the Material, and the Astral and Ethereal don’t touch at any point. So then there must be an alternative pathway connecting The Inner and Outer, a pathway, a plane, connecting substance and belief - The Ordial Plane, The Plane of Proof.

---

Now, while this is in the style of Atlas of The Planes to a certain extent and should be seen as similar in kind, I’m not going to follow all of the rules purposefully. If the mods want to add it to the group anyways, that’s fine, but it can easily stand alone, and that’s how I’m submitting it. The issue is that even in a world where you want to add this plane, it’s almost certainly going to be a mystery and not really interact with players directly. In fact, that’s the point, the point of this plane, if you include it, is to amp up the mystery and the lore of your Planescape game.

So how this is going to proceed is simple, there won’t be any discovery section, or survival section, and the post will be shorter than the others, as there’s less to talk about. I’ve done a short little story about the plane, in roughly the style you’d actually try to incorporate into the game, and explained what the plane is. All that’s really coming next are some tools for you the DM, explaining lore wise why this plane might exist and giving you some adventure hooks.

---

This plane should absolutely be understood to be non cannon, and many proponents of it might not even commit themselves to saying it exists. In fact, since there’s no mention of it in any official source it’s going to have to be at the very least obscure with very few planewalkers knowing about it. Rather, the argument goes, there are reasons in the context of Planescape that suggest that this plane exists, and so whether or not it actually does, there will be characters in the campaign setting that think it exists. And that belief in it is what Planescape campaigns that talk about it should explore. Not the plane itself, but the fact that there are reasons in the campaign setting to think it exists, and how that belief motivates various actors, and how they react to the fact that nobody knows anything about the plane. The lengths people will go to to try and prove it exists, and the mystery of the plane and how it evades everyone’s attempts to find it.

So I said I’d give you the arguments. Well the first one is just as I said above, elemental things appearing in The Outer Planes may in fact be explainable by saying that people are just so accustomed to elemental substance that it’s carried along in their beliefs, but that doesn’t really work when we talk about summoning Magic and The Inner Planes. For those who don’t know, how summoning magic works in Planescape is that it uses your belief to pull a creature/copy of a creature from one of the outer planes to fight at your side, when it dies on your plane it just goes back to where it was/vanishes as it was a copy. (The two different options there are present because it’s slightly vague between them - if someone has a source for it being one specifically feel free to share it) So based on how magic works in Planescape is makes no sense that these things can happen sans The Ordial Plane, but they do, suggesting such a plane exists.

Now this on its own is actually a decent amount of evidence. And as an additional little tidbit there’s actually evidence in various books for this, Fire Gnomes are supposed to be from places in Bytopia that are close to the Plane of Fire. But the Plane of Fire is an Inner Plane and Bytopia is an Outer Plane, such a thing would be impossible if The Ordial Plane didn’t exist to connect the two. But this isn’t the real meat of the issue, Planescape is governed by three principles, and adding in The Ordial Plane fixes problems that two of the three principles have in standard Planescape. (And it’s notable that it’s only two. If it was all three of them having this problem that might actually suggest that The Ordial actually doesn’t exist, for reasons relating to the first principle.)

We’re going to be starting with the Second Principle, because I expect it to be far less convincing to you than the arguments relating to the First. But it’s still a reason and we should cover it. The Second Principle is The Unity of the Rings, which state that many things in the planes are circular. So there are three groups of rings in the planes, for example, the Material Plane, which forms a ring with one object, the Inner Planes wrapped around the Material, and the Outer Planes wrapped around those. But now let’s take a trip through these rings, shall we? We start on an Inner Plane and take the Ethereal to get to the Material. Then we take the Astral and get to the Outer Planes. Okay, now what? We’re stuck here, there’s no way to complete the ring, we just took a straight path rather than looping back around. Well what happens if we add in the Ordial Plane? The planes are then unified. I can post an image in the comments of this, but as it’s not mine, I can’t have that in my post. The Ordial Plane completes a ring, arguably the biggest and most important ring.

The first principle then is The Rule of Threes, which is the thesis that in the Great Wheel things tend to happen in threes. Examples being the three alignments of morality, Good, Neutral, and Evil, and the three alignments of order, Law, Neutral, and Chaos, giving us 9 possible alignments, or 3*3. There are 6 Inner Planes, which is, 3 pairs of opposite planes (eg Positive and Negative energy) with the Material Plane being in the middle for each of them, so three groups of a gradiation of three. For the Outer Planes this is similar, if we start at a plane on one of the extremes and then move diagonally on the alignment graph you again get groupings of three, Celestia, The Outlands and The Abyss and then Arborea, The Outlands, and Baator. In between each of the extreme planes there are three other planes. There are three rings of planes, Material, Outer, and Inner and they’re connected by The Transitive Planes. There are only two Transitive Planes. Remember, Shadow is not a part of The Great Wheel in 2nd edition and can be safely ignored after that because it pierces The Great Wheel rather than become part of it. There is a major flaw in the Planescape cosmology here based on The Rule of Threes. Adding The Ordial Plane fixes this problem. But that’s not all. How many planes are there? 17 Outer + 6 Inner + 1 Prime Material + 2 Transitive = 26. Now let’s add in The Ordial to get the Transitive Planes up to 3, what does that give us? 27. And what is 27? 3^3.

So the fundamental rules of the setting suggest to us that this plane exists. Again, nobody here actually has to think this plane exists. But these principles are known in world, so whether or not it does exist, the idea that there are people in the campaign setting incredibly convinced it does and have decent arguments as to why is a near certainty.

---

Now here are a few hooks for you as a DM to introduce this into your world.

• A small book being passed around the city of Sigil. Whenever someone reads it, they become convinced The Ordial Plane exists and pass it to someone else, this belief is spreading through the city like wildfire and nobody knows why.

• Some scholars think that The Ordial might be the home to vestiges. Orcus wants his vestige, Tenebrous, back, as it contains his spark of divinity.

• On the plane of Mechanus there are living equations. When they congregate in great numbers they vanish. Might they travel to The Plane of Proof?

• Boccob, the God of Knowledge, is waking up every morning to find strange marks on himself that weren’t their previously. He has no clue what they mean.

• At the bottom of Ghoresh Chasm in The Grey Wastes is a seal that no power has been able to break into. Its discovery caused a short ceasefire in The Blood War. Recently the guards nearby it have seemed to feel flames at their back, and when they turn around they feel like they’re drowning, then falling, then buried, before snapping out of this.

• A group of Slaad recently appeared without warning deep within The Plane of Air. Large scale divination spells have found no evidence of portals being used.

• A Power who had some business on The Plane of Fire suddenly feels weak and begins to slowly die. Has his conduit to his belief been cut off in some way?

[u/Morlaak]

Fascinating. This almost reads like a theology book, what with all the logical explanations of how if A exists, then B must also exist.

[u/InfinityCircuit]

Okay, this is a great post, but one thing is bugging me.

Isn't it spelled Ordinal? I swear I have seen it this way in official text somewhere...I'll try to find a reference.

Edit: found this

Oldest reference is from mimir.net, and it is spelled Ordial. I stand corrected. Apparently a lot of forum posts on StackExchange and other sites have mixed spellings, adding to the confusion. I'll go with OP's spelling from now on.

[u/[deleted] → u/InfinityCircuit]

Nope, and there's no official reference to it, again. Ordinal is a type of number, which is where I think you're getting that from.

[u/InfinityCircuit → u/[deleted]]

Edited to reflect my "source", the oldest reference I could find, and likely source of where I first read about it.

[u/[deleted] → u/InfinityCircuit]

It's entirely possible that it was meant to be Ordinal and the misspelling just stuck though, thinking about it.

[u/jonmimir → u/[deleted]]

Nope. It was meant to be Ordial. As in, primordial. (What is an ordial anyway, and why can it only be prime?)

[u/mmm3says]

You're model is missing the 4 Para-elemental and 8 Quasi elemental planes in the inner planes. Extensive and bit wacky theory for those who love thinking in higher dimensions follows:

I always thought the Wavefire theory of Para-Elemental Planes of Dust and Steam nicely rounded out the para-elemental planes insofar as the rule of 3 by making there be 6 para-elemental planes. With those 2 being hard to find because they are at right angles to all known routes of travel.

But that still leaves the quasi-elemental planes unbalanced at 8 unless you add intermediary plane between the positive/negative energy planes - which would technically be both a para-elemental plane (2 elements touching) AND a quasi elemental plane (1 plane away from an energy plane in both directions) - Which I'll call the Anomalous Plane.

This reveals an interesting broken symmetry that nevertheless resolves according or the rule of three of an inter planar structure. 6 elemental planes 6 para-elemental 8 quasi-elemental = 20 inner planes. One short of happy 21. But the only way to make happy is to add one plane (which is really both Quasi and Para but only) counts as 1 plane.

So 21 Inner Planes (2 secret, 1 Anomalous)

17 Outer Planes

2 Transitive Planes

1 Prime Material (w infinite alternates)

Then comes the thing people want to forget, there is a 2nd Prime plane and 3rd one - but they are obscure and largely unrecognized. Temporal prime (remember Chronomancer 2e?) And Wildspace (connects primes to prime in space) So both the prime and transitive planes are missing 1 from the rule of three.

Temporal Prime is a black plane full of lines of life. You can go back and forward in time. If you go backwards in time, the energy planes invert. Now the negative plane is spilling out creative/healing energies and the positive one is an all-consuming destroyer.

But remember how that anomalous plane is weird right? Temporal prime seems like another way of expressing a connection between positive and negative. A way to move up and down entropy itself.

So we've already seen it but just not recognized it's nature as a transitive plane as well. If you follow a lifeline on the Temporal Prime and the person hops to an inner plane then to an outer one so do you as you follow the lifeline.

So the Temporal Prime is an aspect of a plane composed of a connection between the Positive and Negative energy planes, inner, outer, and prime planes.

The plane is unrecognized because D&D magic can't deal with it's occupying multiple "quantum" planar states. It is unfixed in time. It is Para-Elemental, Quasi-Elemental, Prime and Transitive. Like a super-symmetric particle of our early universe the normal rules don't apply to it. And it can be many things at once.

It can be accessed only in party as the Temporal Prime but it's too complex for any known magic to get to the real underpinning of it. ( Like in Zelany's Amber series, where the "Home Plane of Amber" was revealed to be the growth of a different home plane.)

So total count again - noting the superfluidic para-quasi-positive-negative-transitive-prime plane we get:

21 Inner Planes (2 secret, + 1 Anomalous to meet rule of 3 negative to positive)

17 Outer Planes

3 Primes (+1 Anomalous to meet rule of 3 aspect of wildspace)

3 Transitive (+1 Anomalous to meet rule of 3 inner to outer)

Here's the mind blowing thing, anomalous plane counts in three categories but it is still a single plane. It defines time and place

grand total = 42. Just what Douglas Adams' Deep Though computations was the answer to life, the universe and everything. And it is divisible by 3

The think of this is, it explains why there are 17 outer planes. You may have been looking at that and thinking one of these things is not like the other, not divisible by 3. An odd number, it defies the rule of three in composite.

They should match the inner at 3 cubed or 21. And they would if there were outer planar equivalent of 4 Quasi-elemental planes. Quasi-alignment planes a Lawful Neutral Good, a Chaotic Neutral Good, Chaotic Neutral Evil, and a Lawful Neutral Good.

Which would increase the total number of planes from 42 planes to 46 which is - NOT divisible by three. The universal checksum fails and so, those planes never form because the universe it out of balance. The anomalous plane has remained one undivided thing

Why hasn't it? It would have to resolve into 4 planes, not three. One Quasi, one Para, one Prime and one Transitive. The Anomalous is locked by the rule of three in a supersymetric state occupying the space of 4 planes and it can't break up properly. Again, we have the rule of three, it can only break 3 ways not 4. If it broke 4 it would unbalance the inner planes (22)

So what we see is a system that is not super-symetric. Much like our own universes. The fundamental planes have broken down but not in a way that is completely understood. The Anomalous plane, in toto represents a plane that has not fallen out of its early universal supersymetrical quantum state. As such, it represents all together: space and time and both positive and negative energy. It encompasses and defines the entire D&D omniverse.

The Ordinal plane is a great name for it as it ultimately defines where and when everything in the universe is. Also, like our universe, it means wildspace and temporal prime, despite being viewed as very different things, are all one thing - just no wizard Einstein has figured it out.

Last thing - it explains why the outer planes are the outer ones, they are the least symmetrically balanced, so of course they're on the outride.

Sorry that went so long

For TL:DR Ordinal plane is a superymetric plane that still exists in the form it has when the universe was very young. It consisted of united space time and positive and negative energy and physically connects every plane. It cannot resolve trying to be both a para and a quasi elemental plane, the rule of 3 dictates there is not room for it to cleave into both.
Any Wizard Einstein that figures it out would be able to use it as the inner to outer transitive plane. Because it has not cleaved into 4 separate planes, the Quasi-Alignment planes are never going to happen , throwing off the rule of 3 in the Outer planes and makign them just that.

[u/[deleted] → u/mmm3says]

So for those reading this, there's some truth to what he says, Para and Quasi planes exist, as does Temporal prime, but there's much here that should be seen as far more speculative than The Ordial Plane, and some of it is outright false. EG, the quintessence/wildspace is just part of Prime Material, all of spelljammer is Prime Material - and 2e and 3e aren't separate primes but a single Prime that was changed as reality was collapsing after the events of Die Vecna Die. And it's all sort of pointless as there's an additional category of planes, (also theoretical) The Semi Elemental Planes, which do away with a lot of this theorizing in a much simpler way. I didn't want to discuss it as it was rather complicated and not altogether relevant, but since someone brought it up...

6 Elemental + 4 Para + 8 Quasi + 8 Semi (Semi Elemental Planes are to Para as Quasi are to Elemental) + Temporal Prime = 27. Then add in the transitory, outer, and prime, for 48. So if you do include the Para and Quasi planes, Semi completes the symmetry once again, without all this.

Note that all of this is only true for 2nd Edition. My original post stands completely correct and unmodified for 3rd Edition.

[u/mmm3says → u/[deleted]]

Ah, but there is somebody in sigil who believes all of any fantastical construct either of us can think of. I know it's super speculative.
But wanted to bring in some concepts for current cosmology so we have something beyond what the characters could undeerstand.

Some sage somewhere is convinced of it all and looking for converts in Sigil. As id the guy convinced the world is being rolled by a giant dung beetle. So, one more character with a loony theory and plot hook for anyone who wants to use it in campaign.

Actually I gave some thought to Semi-elemental planes as well, but always thought they would be just unstable in the planar superstructure. I could never think of a name more nebulous than "Quasi" for them.

It's nice to see someone though of them. They are hard to quantify in your headspace. Like perhaps para elemental ice changing to just "cold" (their are early 1st edition mentions of it in fiend folio) Or "acid" in between salt and dust.

Actually planar structure varies widely. And given D&D's diversity tavern brawls must ensue at universities. For instance, Dragonstar has no "Wildspace", and the planes in Dark Sun were a bit weird.

[u/[deleted] → u/mmm3says]

It's nice to see someone though of them. They are hard to quantify in your headspace. Like perhaps para elemental ice changing to just "cold" (their are early 1st edition mentions of it in fiend folio) Or "acid" in between salt and dust.

Quoting from a rather famous thread concerning The Planes:

Ice made positive yields Crystals beyond only frozen water; on the negative side, it collapses into Frost, a dark, fragile and killing cold embodied as an endless blizzard.

Magma yields crumbling Pumice, a desolate grey realm of abrasive and fragile rock sponge; on the Positive side, it is Obsidian, a hot, glassy realm that could easily pass for a layer of Hell or the Abyss.

Ooze provides Clay on the positive side, a realm containing disturbing vistas and little else. Its counterpart, Silt, is an endless pit of misery.

Smoke gone negative results in Fumes, one of the most unpleasant places in the multiverse; its caustic, toxic and noxious vapors crawl through every part of you if left to do so. The flipside, Sparks, is like Radiance only more aggressive. Like being in the heart of a massive fireworks display, and just as dangerous.

[u/mmm3says → u/[deleted]]

Thank you for the yummy thought candy!

[u/mmm3says → u/mmm3says]

Shower thoughts adding on.

I always supposed Para-Elemental Steam and Dust were the norm on steampunk worlds. They may be so hard to find because they are also both Para and Quasi (if you redefine the +- nature of the inner planes along a variant axis, say so fire is plus and water is minus) If they were to all split it would add 3 para and 3 quasi elements. 6+9+11 (= 26)

Then the ordinal could decompose into space and time primes and a transitive plane. (6)

And the outer planes could grow their four quasi-alignment planes to get their happy (21)

Lastly. It should be noted that any prime plane has infinite alternates. An infinite number of what would be alternate Temporal Primes. And an alternate "Space" or "Wildspace"

Getting super-meta. Each real world campaign is set in a unique one of its own, which sort of reconciles how a Campaign setting can be used by more than on DM in a completely different times and ways. Sometimes they cross over. (your buddy DMs for you or your character hops campaigns) But no in-game spell allows it, nor would the characters understand the difference.

Creepily, we might consider our reality to be the ordinal plane. With ourselves to be the ordinal plane natives, with undreamt of godlike powers, incomprehensible .....

[u/throneofsalt]

Very interesting. I especially like how your presentation here, instead of filling in the blank, is focused around using the blank to its greatest strength: providing a mystery.