Making a campaign setting

Hello, fa/tg/uys and ca/tg/irls. I've decided to start running a D&D 3.5e campaign after about 4 years or so of playing, and I've decided on creating my own campaign setting. I don't really have much as of yet, but I was hoping I could throw what I have at you guys and see what you think, and maybe get some help. Thanks!

By all means, go for it. No guarantee on useful feedback, though.

Before there was anything, there was Nowhere.
In Nowhere, there was No-one, Nothing, and No-When.
Then, from the depths of Nowhere... Suddenly there was Everywhere. Suddenly, from the hearts of No-When and No-Thing, Every-When and Every-Thing burst forth, given life by Everywhere.
And from Everywhere, the 4 alignments were born, each born to balance the other, and to uphold the fabric of Everywhere.
And from these 4 alignments, the planes were fashioned, gods birthed, and the universe created.
But the gods of this new world soon grew lonely, so they stole the heart of No-one from Nowhere and from it, fashioned the first mortals, which the gods taught the ways of the universe.
No-one, left empty from the theft, his brothers slain, his entire world gone, vowed to bring everything back to the way it was before.
"From Nowhere, Everywhere sprung. From No-When, Every-When sprung. From No-Thing, Everything was born. From Nowhere, you were born. To Nowhere you will return."
And so, The Great War began. The forces of No-one were nigh infinite, fashioned from the smallest remnants of Nowhere. These beings were anathema to Everywhere, destroying everything within their path. No-one himself adorned his finest armor and blade, forged from the blackest darkness and voids of the universe.

Whaddaya got bro?

Part 2:
Even the newborn gods, empowered by the worship of mortals, were unable to hold back the endless tide. So they begged their fathers and mothers, the 4 balancing forces, for aid.
And from the primal void of Everywhere, the 4 balancing forces placed their power in artifacts, forged from primordal earth using primordal fire, in furnaces fueled with primordial air, and quenched in primordal water.
And so, the Regalia were created, and given to the gods.
But they could not use the Regalia. As beings born from Everything, they couldn't channel the primordal essences of their birth.
But 4 mortals, blessed by the balancing forces, arose to claim the Regalia. And as beings born from No-one, they were able to harness the powers within the Regalia and channel them, becoming the Champions of Everywhere.
And so the Champions fought against No-One, and were found lacking. Even the full force of Everywhere couldn't destroy No-one.
So No-one was bound, the 4 Champions making the ultimate sacrifice. The Regalia were scattered, so that their power may continue to protect and balance the universe.
But, one day, the seals will fade. The forces of No-one will awaken, and attempt to break the seal.
And if they succeed... Then Everything will become Nothing once again.

This is basically a summary of the history of the world, excluding the histories of the mortal races, as I haven't started working on that yet, mostly.

The Regalia are composed of 4 sets of 3 objects. Each set is bound to the 4 primal alignments. Each set is composed of an Orb, a Sceptre, and a Crown.

The Sceptres of Good, Law, Chaos, and Evil are the core parts of the binding of No-one. Located in the Outlands, the "centre of the Great Wheel", each staff is located at the edge of the Outlands, perfectly symmetrically balanced at the 4 corners. The Staffs are protected by incredibly powerful magic, as well as the souls of their respective Champions. If even one of these Staffs were to be removed, the seal would crack, and No-one would burst forth.

The Orbs of Good and Evil were gifted to the chosen among mortals by the god of balance, who using their power, forged mighty empires and conquered the Material Plane. The Orbs of Law and Chaos were placed in planes to balance each other and help power the Seal.
The Orb of Good, known as the Heart of Rathu'um to most mortals, is currently located at the Royal Palace, hidden away in the most secure vault. Not even the Emperor himself knows about the Heart, all memory of the great secret erased to prevent the theft of such an important and powerful artifact. It's power was sealed away, until the time when the Seal would need to be renewed, and new Champions sought out.

Wait, which are the four alignments? I'm getting a little tripped up on the no-whens and every-wheres and such, and then you start throwing no-ones and every-things in there, it gets a little confusing. From what I can tell the basic premise is the war between existence and non-existence right?

The Orb of Law is located in the heart of Mechanus, keeping the gears turning and making sure everything is in perfect order. If the Orb were to be removed, the gears would stop turning, and chaos would overtake law, plunging Everywhere into imbalance and weakening the seal, allowing a small amount of No-one's essence to escape.
The Orb of Chaos is located somewhere in Limbo, keeping the roiling elements of the plane in constant disorder. If the Orb were to be bound and removed from Limbo, then order would overtake chaos, also causing the seal to weaken.
The Orb of Evil, also known as the Eye of Alastor, was gifted to an evil spellcaster who using the Orbs power, created a wicked empire and subjugated his subjects with no mercy. The Orb is now locked away in the liches tower, where he uses it to continuously control his subjects and attempt to conquer the Empire, only stopped by the power of the Heart of Rathu'um.

The Crowns were buried with the remains of the Champions, each tomb moulded by the power of it's Crown to shape it's nature and to create a trial to prove the next Champion indeed personified their alignment, and was worthy of the Crown's power.

Basically a summary of what the Regalia are and where they are. I'm planning on basically ripping off the already existing Regalia of Good/Evil and creating the Regalia of Law and Chaos.
Ah, shit, sorry. I kinda typed this up and had everything in my head, but didn't explain it after copy-pasting it. The alignments are Good, Evil, Law and Chaos. There is no true "neutral" alignment, because neutrality is basically a "lack of alignment," aka the influence and power of Nowhere. And yeah, you basically got it, it's existence vs nothingness.

And that's basically all I have so far. I have a vague idea of what I want to do for mortal history, but nothing concrete. I still need to stat out No-one and his army, as well. My current thinking for the direction and the overarching plot is using the mind flayers and Thoon. "Thoon" is actually No-one's essence leaking from the seal and pooling in the Far Realm, where he plans to orchestrate the seal shattering. "Quintessence," as Thoon calls it, is actually the fragments of his own power stolen by the gods to create mortals. The more quintessence the flayers gather, the stronger Thoon gets, until he is able to bring one of his generals (Also named Thoon), through the seal and command him to break the seal, and bring about the end of Everywhere.

Wait so mortals are essentially void entities who are pissed off about the fact that they were drawn away from their non-home to keep the gods company, so they revolt, or is nowhere itself a singular (non)entity that's pissed off over the fact that the gods stole its essence so that they could have friends, and the mortals themselves play a smaller part in that conflict?

Shit, I confused you again. I'm sorry. Basically, you have it mostly right on the 2nd guess. Nowhere is actually the place No-one and his brothers existed before the birth of Everything, aka the universe. When Everywhere was created, only No-one was left, as his brothers No-When and Nothing died and were converted into time and space by the new universe, basically.

So, to try to simplify it as much as possible: Beforethe universe, there were 3 beings, when the universe was spontaneously created, 2 of those beings became time and space, the third one had it's heart/power removed, and when it tried to take it back and restore everything to the way it was before the birth of the universe, the entity was sealed away by basically the entire goddamn universe pooling all of it's resources and power.

OH wait I get it. No-one is differentiated from the other no-(whatever)s. So mortality is the advent of individuality?

Oh I get it now, I think.

Precisely!
Alright, good, I'm starting to simplify this. DESU, I think when I wrote this, it was designed to be super cryptic bullshit because this is how mortals understand these events. IDK, I kinda had a fever dream moment like I usually do when I get creative. I've had this idea rolling around for a week or two now, just simmering and working itself out.

Let me check:
So nowhere and no-when were easily converted into where and when, because (no)where and (no)-when don't really care about anything, being objective entities. But when the essence of no-one was stolen to create one (and I guess variations of that one), it cared because the essence of (no)-one is to care about whatever it is being subjected to. So the universe basically told no-one to shut the fuck up because who cares except you lol?, to which no-one replied it doesn't matter if you care because I do, and you don't have the right to take what's essentially me and turn it into something else?

No that's hot user it's awesome when people infuse their weird esoteric understanding of the world into their worldbuilding.

Yeah, pretty much. The loss of it's home and brethren combined with the theft of it's very essence, and the essence of mortals is to have feelings and emotions and such, basically to have a "soul", caused it to basically tell the universe "You know what? No. Not anymore. I'm taking this all back," and get BTFO and sealed up.

I mean, this is honestly something that just kinda... *poof*ed. Like, I was listening to music like I usually do when bored or trying to get to/from college and my mind's eye just kinda opened up and I could mentally see all of this. Figured I'd write it down and make something of it.

Dude, that's how the best settings are made. So many people try to imitate what's already been published as opposed to trying something new.

I also really like the complex morality involved with aspects of no-one fighting no-one itself.

Yeah, now that I think about it, that's actually pretty deep. Like, it's basically like fighting against yourself. Fighting against your inner nature to become your own unique thing, something... bigger than what you were before.

I mean, it could also have a sort of message of rebellion. Sort of like how teenagers rebel against their parents and their teachings and rules to become their own unique individuals.

... Fuck, I could make this a book series or something. or hell why not make a book series about the campaign? Modify a few details, get permission from the players... Wew.

You'd definitely have to define what you mean a little bit better to make it more comprehensible, and you'd have to put a lot of effort into it, but run with it man. There's absolutely no reason not to. If it's rejected, fuck 'em, if it isn't, that's cool. This metacosmic morality that differs from conventional morality spin that you're creating could be very interesting if you flesh it out a bit more.

W-Would you mind if I detailed a setting I invented awhile ago in a similar vein? I'd like to hear your opinions.

Yeah, it definitely is a rough draft for sure, but it does have a lot of potential...

Anyway, anyone wanna help me stat out No-one and his army? Or build the Regalia of Law/Chaos? I know what I wanna do for Thoon, basically give him the stats of a Concordant Killer, but buff them up and change them around to fit the theme, but I don't know what to do for the foot soldiers and No-one himself. Maybe I'll just go the Elder Evils route and as soon as No-one is released, the campaign as a whole ends, along with that universe.

Dude, go for it! we can collaborate a bit, share ideas.

Especially since you mentioned mind flayers and I overlooked it, I feel very compelled to!

The basic premise of my multiverse is much more dependent upon but also divergent from conventional D&D cosmology. It comes from a different standpoint from yours where instead of their being a primordial void, there is a primordial flux, which creates random chaotically lawful and lawfully chaotic entities (good and evil are self-contained within the scope of these entities, and they do properly exist, but not as a primordial force).

So basically the multiverse was created by a Far Realms entity, The Great Mother (beholder god/dess, not actually any gender but I will refer to her as female). The Far Realms actually aren't that far at all, rather the multiverse is a kind of petri dish culture that exists inside of it. The Great Mother (resembling a very, very huge beholder, larger than the multiverse, but with no eyes) began to siphon the potential around her and turn it into the six inner planes (fire, earth, water, air, positive, negative). The positive energy plane was a simulation of eternity, while the negative energy plane was a simulation of the void, both of which can never truly exist in the eternal flux of the Far Realms. Then, she took the material from these planes and dumped them into a central location, the Prime Material, creating elementals, angels, demons and other creatures capable of non-rational thought. She took these thoughts, extracted them, and used them to create the outer planes, and then whatever resulted from those outer planes was fed back to her and then combined with the inner plane material to produce more refined sentient beings of non-sentient thought with which to populate the Prime Material. The first of which were the Spectators (D&D beholderkin, analogous to humans in the real world), simulacra of the Great Mother herself so that she could observe her own creation.

Cont.

>to produce more refined sentient beings of non-rational thought

I feel like I'm reading some variation of "Who's on First".

The polarized elementals, demons, and angels, quickly moved from the Material into these new outer planes. But the spectators and other aberrations remained. She then moved onto creating humanoid creatures, a sort of hybridization of all of the outer plains, the Fey. They were not rational either, but their ambiguous morphology, when later mixed with the plains of pre-law (repeating patterns, as opposed to actual dogma), created the strangest entity yet: the Elder Brains. They attempted to reconcile the outer plains with their essentially lawful nature, and thus created logic in a multiverse where non had existed before. Meanwhile, the Great Mother was extracting the essence of these increasingly populous entities, combining them with previously non-sentient forms, and using them to create the first truly sentient races: Humans, Elves, Orcs, Trolls, Etc. They all had tiny versions of the Elder Brains inside them, which guided them throughout their lives, but were contrasted with the demands of their elemental bodies.

While all of this was going on, the Elder Brains themselves could not abide by the chaos which spawned their existence, yet was antithetical to their existence. So they learned to use their spawn to convert sentient races which already contained a fragment of their nature (rational brains) into their slaves (Illithids). This also affected the Great Mother's production of Spectators, because the increasing population of sentients also diluted the processes involved in making Spectators, creating the malformed, dual-minded Beholders which contain both the essential non-rational aspect of The Great Mother and the rational aspect of the Elder Brains.

The goal of the Elder Brains is to subvert the entire equation of the inner and outer planes, and replace them with strict logic, because they cannot tolerate their own internal conflict that's caused by being strictly rational yet created by something strictly irrational.

Cont.

>combining them with previously non-logical forms, and using them to create the first truly logical races.

So they Elder Brains and their Illithid hid underground, manipulating the evolution of the the creatures that existed above them. This, over the centuries, created the Gith, most prominent, who served as the slave race of the Illithid and were spawned from the intermarrying of elves and humans, the Dromites, who were spawned by the various "short races", such as halflings and gnomes, who were intended to be linked into a hivemind that could be controlled by the Illithid so that they could more easily control the Gith. Umber Hulks were created by experimenting upon the unintelligent races, as enforcers of the Illithids' will.

But the Dromite hivemind proved to be too strong to control, and they broke free of the Illithids' influence. They lived to free the Gith from similar corruption, and used their ancestral ingenuity to build ships which hovered above the various planets of the material plane.

The Gith, on the other hand, lived in labyrinth city-states that were walled off from the external world. They were taught false religions, where psions preached as clerics, in order to weaken the strength of the outer planes. They were incentivized into ruining their multiverse by believing that the machines that they built were being used for the greater good, rather than to replace the inner planes (and thus also suffocating the outer planes) which used to surround them. They didn't truly know why they worked, they only knew that they had to to survive, and they were rewarded currency which made them feel justified in their actions. Clerics were completely unheard of due to the complete separation of the outer planes from the material, although again, they had patsies replace them, while sorcerers were accused of mental illness for believing they had powers, and were "rehabilitated" by unknowing psions

Beneath these city-states lay the illithids themselves, who project telepathic fields which produce the feeling of normality, so that the Gith do not rebel.

So basically the PCs are Gith who see a dromite running through town, and go woah that was weird, and instead of being brainwashed into believing it didn't happen as is usual, or excluding them from their sensory data, which is even more usual, they secretly rebel and escape the city, discovering the remnants of the previous races (dwarves who have evolved luminescent skin to survive underground, human druids who fight the illithid corruption from within their hideouts, elven undead who converted themselves with a mix of positive and negative energy so that their brains are unpalatable and so that they cannot be ceremorphed, etc.)

And they also meet the Great Mother at one point, who is like "dude who cares I meant for it to happen this way lol", but they're particularly miffed by that response so they end up staging a rebellion and forcing the illithid/EBs to go back in time to their real origin point, thus actually simultaneously fulfilling but also not fulfilling the original timeline.

I just looked that up, since I've never heard that before, and yeah, I can definitely see why you'd say that. Funny sketch, btw.
Dude, that seems like something you could pick up and run with. Very nice, very nice indeed.

>told no-one to shut the fuck up
>to which no-one replied
Polyphemus is that you

This sounds like Scientology.

Bumperino