The psychic thing in terms of the far realm...I think it is rather straight forward. The only things that can survive there have the ability to interact with reality with their consciousness, rather than their physical body. If you can't enforce you will on the world around you that world will twist you into little knots. They need the ability to keep themselves stable, to keep the changes the far realm will force on you within some tolerance you can deal with. Having their spleen try to be a kidney may equate to noon for them and making it be a spleen again or keep it from being anything but a spleen is a necessity.
I once played a game where my character was actually a Far Realm creature in a human form that just wanted to understand what all this material existence stuff is all about, the entire game he was slowing becoming more understanding of humanoids and slowly why its not okay to just eat people, when the rest of the parties back is turned. He eventually became lawful good paladin and shortly after died. Well kinda died its more that human body he made died and he just went back to being a horrific space monster very far away that would psychically talk to players in there dreams after that.
@@matthewbennett1972 (Later that evening in the realms of madness) Azathoth: Hey Nyar me and Shub-Niggurath are bored... you feel like tormenting humanity today? Nyarlathotep: Naw I have this new thing I was trying out.... Shub: Oh yea what is it? Nyarlathotep: Being good Azathoth: Good? What's that? Do I get to eat people with it? Nyarlathotep: NO actually the opposite.... You help them.... Shub: Sounds lame..... But what the hell we still have infinite time on our hands so why not.
Well, Nyarlahotep would know. It was seemingly the only one of the Pantheon of alien gods who had an understanding of the human mind. This seemingly why it liked playing with us. Both our hope and our despair are the greatest gift to it and it went out of its way to invoke these things. And the most horrifying thing about that state of affairs is when this stops being entertaining is when Nyarlahotep will allow the forces of the uncaring universe to destroy us. We never can beat any of them. It is completely beyond us. It is the selfishness of an alien god that delights in our human dramas that keeps us alive and sane.
Powerful alien creatures from beyond time and space that are resistant to energy that would destroy anything material in seconds, still dies as easy as any beast when you shove a sharp bit of steel into it.
To be fair, what organism would ever be able to consistently survive sudden and uncontrollable ruptures? Something like that can and will exist at some point, and there's no reason for the Far Realm to _not_ have such creatures.
@@nullpoint3346 the Hunters in Halo are colonial hivemind worms the size of large snakes that inhabit mechanized armor suits, they could probably handle punctures pretty well.
I like to think of far realm as where every other reality touches the border of our own, and that these creatures all come from different realities. Which is why the abominations are all so different not only from us, but from each other as well. Edit: I also like to consider them non-carbon based life, which is why we cannot digest them. In the event that the creatures biology is based on a radioactive element, it causes mutation. Imagine what would happen if you ate a steak from a plutonium based life form.
Something I always thought would be an interesting idea for an aberration monster is what I'm calling "the husk hulk." Essentially it's a huge sized appearing as a fat headless somewhat humanoid monster with mouths on the palms of it's hands that spells are cast from. The hands do not provide verbal or somatic components, the mouths just open and spells come out. What these things actually are is bio-mechanical meck suits created out of far realm matter for powerful prime material plain wizards to explore and learn from the far realm, (think of what mind flayers do to humanoid bodies to reproduce but reversed.) These hollowed out bodies protect the wizard inside from the maddening effects of the far realm but when they return the prime material plain they're still considered mad because a strange wizard in a strange flesh suit ranting about how everything's changed. In reality they've returned to a random alternate prime material plain.
+MisterTutor2010 aside from the flimsy barriers set up by the jealous entities the D&D mortals call Gods, the prime material is just another realm, albeit an energy starved, cold, and weak dimension, populated with frail life forms, highly specialised to take advantage of whatever fuel sources they can.
The thing that makes the prime material plane distinct is that made chiefly out of nothing since it has very little matter and energy. From the point of view of creatures from planes that are relatively abundant with matter and/or energy such as the elemental and energy planes, the fact that life is even possible is amazing.
I hope you read this comment AJ and wondered about your opinion on this: Not long ago I started reading Al Ewing's comic book runs in Marvel. He's done a lot of really good stuff that deals with the cosmic especially Defenders Beyond and Immortal Hulk. He also introduced in his run on the Ultimates that even when each new multiverse ends, what happens is that the cosmos moves on to the mystery of the far shore. At one point the first firmament, the first reality, wanted to become the dominant reality again. This gave me inspiration. What if the Far Realm is the void outside of the multiverse and everytime the multiverse ends the carcass, corpse, pieces, or remains of that multiverse sink into the Far Realm. But unlike a living being, a cosmos never fully dies and ends. What if the far realm incursions are caused by living parts of those former multiverses trying to come back? What if the Far Realm entities are in fact the remains of powerful beings like gods and monsters fused, mutated, and altered? What if the reason the Far Realm has so many different rules that conflict and change so often is because several different pieces of several different multiverses are jigsawed into a hodgepodge pseudo-verse? Please let me know. I'd love to hear your thoughts and anyone else here.
It could be that each universe is just a singularity at the center of a probability field, and eventually these singularities also collapse into each other, so the closely sandwhiched nature of the Far Realm is just the end of reality itself.
Oooh. Temporal displacer beast! It’s not 5ft from its true location it’s 5 seconds (1 round). Always catches you flat footed because it already attacked, its time is just catching up with you.
Interesting stuff. I really like that last image of the video. I always found beholders fascinating with how they can float in the air and be so large as well.
+Stronghold Crafter Kev I could imagine a Beholder coming through a rift between the planes, and chunks of rock and various detritus from it's home dimension just floats up into the sky.. because everything is buoyant where it comes from.
Thanks for the awesome video AJ. Look forward to seeing the PDF. Just wondering if you could do a video on the Astral plane, what sort of creatures you could find dwelling there, the colour portals and psychic storms, etc. My players have found a way to get themselves there and other than the Gith, I am sort of at a loss. Your videos are easily the most informative source of D&D material I've been able to find online, so thank you very much. :D
Since the physics of the far realm/realms are so different I'm sure it's not just the great wheel but also the other parts of the far realm that is the far realm to those creatures
I like your view of the Far Realm as alternate Primes where the environment is totally different. Back in the day, I played the Far Realm as the universe that existed before this universe. It was experiencing a Big Crunch as it contracted to a point of singularity. So the physical laws were breaking down and life was evolved to exist in that reality. The fact that the Far Realm existed in a prevoius time line made travel to and from almost impossible. How do you travel back in time to before there was time. Creatures from the Far Realm just needed to survive the Big Crunch and wait to reach our (D&D) world.
2:20 Ethanol is drinking alcohol, and it can actually be used as a reversal agent for wood alcohol (methanol), rubbing alcohol (isopropanol) or automobile antifreeze (ethylene glycol or 1,2-ethanediol), any of which can cause blindness when ingested. It isn’t modern medical practice to do that, but it used to be a common medical indication to administer alcohol (that is, drinking alcohol aka ethanol) to a patient.
what are the creatures with the white hats? they look like priests of one of the elder gods. looking forward to the new selection of extraplanar monsters on the pdf.
+trenton maloney Those are beings from Pyrexia in the Magic the Gathering game universe/setting.. I love the look of those things, in fact Pyrexia is by far the most alien, freaky and horrific realm of the planeswalkers.
+AJ Pickett (The Mighty Gluestick) Some of the phyrexians fit the look of aberrations, but if you really want Magic the Gathering creatures that look like they're from the Far Realm, check out the Eldrazi.
Hey AJ, could you let me know when your aberration pdf is finished if you haven't finished it yet, and where to find it if you have finished it or when you do finish it?
sounds like a riot on the dance floor ... excellent intro. have you ever checked out Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris" ...? he's a fascinating guy with a crazy personal history. Solaris was his attempt to show that if humans ever did brush up against an alien sentient species chances are it would be so alien that the humans would never figure out they had encountered anything. i'm not sure either of the movies managed to pull that basic premise off ... movie-makers often seem to "default" into trying to get their audience to understand what's happening. really super-excited about the upcoming PDF. have i asked you before (i meant to ask you) if you've got an "author's page" somewhere that lists a bibliography of the writing projects you've worked on? i remember seeing your recent-ish post about Rifts and your credits there. just curious how much other stuff is out there.
Their atoms are the still the same, carbon is carbon, hydrogen is hydrogen, but they react differently than our atoms because their reality functions differently than ours in a way that requires the atoms to act differently. Your body still recognizes it as the same atoms and molecules that it’s used to and tries to use them as they would normal atoms and molecules, but these atoms act differently than ours, superimposing their reality over ours, causing mutations in the creatures or objects that incorporate these foreign particles. Think of it like Isotopes, but instead of a change in the charge of the atom, it’s a change in the fundamental rules of what an atom does. Toril uses “Carbon-T” and the Far Realm uses “Carbon-F”. Things that use Carbon can use either, but what they do or become with that Carbon changes depending on the type. On Toril, Carbon-T is stable and has dependable reactions, whereas Carbon-F is unstable and has fairly random reactions. It’s probably also safe to assume the opposite is true when in the Far Realm.
Carcosa and Lake Hali are good examples of location in the far realms. Carcosa is described as being made of smooth, cyclopian architecture befitting of giants. It sits on the edge of Lake Hali, an impossibly vast lake made with mist covering it so densely it appears to made of mist. But it has been mentioned that when the lake is seen, it is jet black. It describes the sky as being the brightest of whites with the blackest of stars and twin black suns that set "in lake Hali". this could mean at the horizon of Lake Hali, or actually in it. Doesn't have to make sense, and the lake has to be big enough for Hastur's true form to be in it as well as the occasional invasion of the Star Spawn of Cthullu.
Perhaps we should hear in games how ugly and repulsive we are to them. Did you see that human? It only had 2 weak arms and 2 weak legs, and stood completely exposed. And Mxl'Plax actually tried eating one earlier. He's been sick for a week straight. They have strange beliefs too. One worships a zombie that came back to life after 3 days of torturous death. And it had prayers of cannibalistic symbolism to it's food? Effing humans.
fun fact: the reason lovecraft slapped tentacles on all his monsters is because he had a cephalopod allergy. Just think about that. If it were shellfish he was allergic to then all the far realm denizens would have exoskeletons and pincers instead.
When i think of the wheel of the planes in D and D i think of a 2 dimensional abstracted space; lawfulness and good. Now when i hear 'far realm' i think of the infinite number of possible infinite other dimensions (with our multiverse existing within it), chosen randomly you would expect things to be extremely weird. Thus associating the far realm with alien things with foreign geometries that drive you mad. Yet... If one could control where in the far realm a portal leads, one could have an expectation that the metaphysical controls used would relate to the destination plane. Think of it this way; 'good' and 'lawfullness' are a simple thoughts. Whatever diety created the multiverse used these two concepts to anchor the reality in the infinite possibility space (which is the 'far realm'). More complicated thoughts by a diety or powerful magic could create a new anchor.
So.. The Far Realm is basically some Lovecraftian dimension where eldritch horrors lurk in the unfathomable void, and are biding their time waiting for some mad occult priest to unleash them onto the mortal plane and erase us from reality... Gotcha.
i once played in a campaign where the far-realm was just a big joke...and in actuality,contrary to the stories it was just Soviet Russia,ruled by a wimpy version of Chuck Norris
I ran an nWoD Mage game were the players hubris unleashed a silicon based virus 🦠 that converted crystalline structured silicon to dust ‘viral spores’. Glass to dust, that dust lands on glass the glass turns to more dust (spores). Plays hell in a big city like London. The other memorable encounter was the 60th minute of 5am (so 5:58 > 5:59 > 5:60 > 6:00 > 6:01 etc) and the absolute hell it caused to all computers and anything that needs time to functional, also it was localised so only within a mile radius where clocks and people loosing a minute per day... I didn’t initially tell them what the had done but dropped hints over the sessions. It was 2 months in game before they really clicked something was really really wrong
If Lovecraftian type creatures come from the Far Realm, then how does Jubilex come into play? Would it be considered a demon god that came from the Far Realm to migrate to the Abyss? Also, would the Slaadi and creatures of Limbo come from the Far Realm?
They are Aberrations, we don't know where they originated, I have a theory that they and several other Aberration species evolved inside a gigantic living realm, so, they have traits kind of like a Neural Parasite.
the monster manual says that aboleths are older than the gods themselves and that is from a quote from the far realm, real yet unreal. also, it says they live in the elemental plane of water and underground lakes but it does not say that is comes from the elemental plane of water
Yo AJ, found your content yesterday on youtube. Thanks. I went to dmsguild but couldn't find The Endless Wish or AJs dirty dozen. I would love some source material for new abberation beasts from the far realms. Where can I find your content?
+blank blank Certainly, although it may well be made entirely out of anti-matter and the moment it steps foot in the prime material plane, there is a massive explosion of radiation that kills everything for miles in every direction... there are endless possibilities.
AJ Pickett I was thinking more along the lines of a shape shifting tentacle monster that pretends to be one of the mortal races so it can interact with them and helps defend them from other weird creatures from the far realm.Maybe it feels bad for the poor humans that a colony of mind flayers is about to enslave/eat the brains of and decides to defend them.Maybe its really intelligent and the mind flayers don't even know how to handle it.I just think it would be a cool story. It could even be the benefactor of the party.Maybe there is a king or queen that never ages and is immortal and he or she rules the land in rather chaotic but benevolent ways.Maybe it tells people oh yeah I'm a powerful wizard or something I totally attained immortality through arcane means...No don't worry don't pay attention to the tentacles. That is umm...A spell I learned.........Yeah...
My theory/explanation for the far realm is that it is the border between all-that-is, and all-that-is-not. That border would therefore naturally be made of all-that-could-be. A border of pure thought, and idea. This is why psionics is a fundamental expression of this part of reality and even the stray thoughts of tiny mortals hold such wieght here. This also explains why there are no gods here and why they avoid it, as beings of mainly thought and idea it would be like a man swimming in a sea of randomlly flowing and growing flesh bones and body fluids.
Have you made many of your videos private recently? I really liked so many and saved them to playlists, but they now say "private video." Do you get access to them if you become a patreon?
@@SSSyndrome214 Oh I will get around to making a "Shitty old videos I remade" playlist at some point, the only special access content I have is me reading horror stories for Patreon supporters, there is no D&D content behind any sort of Pay Wall.
Its a very old video, your best bet is to screenshot the images, feed them into Google Image search and it will find the original links to the pictures for you.
1:45 so there is a real example of this- TL;DR a molecule’s physical shape determines their function, and they have left and right handed versions. But in the same way your left hand wont work in a right hand glove, some biological molecules have different effects from other-handed version. heres the video; th-cam.com/video/SKhcan8pk2w/w-d-xo.htmlsi=In7e24P5bqc9-vby
Checked the guide pdf and those are Meenlock in name only. They tried passing off mutant fey as aberrations and totally changed how they reproduce. Disappointing.
In the beginning, there was nothing. Yet even in nothing, possibility and probability still holds true. And thus everything that CAN exist, exists in the Far Realm, and in infinite number. The only constant is the relative probability of things. Simple structures are more probable than complex structures, and thus, even though there is an infinite amount of each, one is more likely to encounter a simple structure than a complex one. When talking about "alternate realities", these are simply different but similar possibilities being expressed. Time and space do not exist per se there, rather they are "embedded" features of whatever possibility manifests itself. The Prime Material Plane is simply one manifestation out of infinitely many. A human being manifested in the Far Realm, outside a supporting structure (a "universe") would simply be frozen in time forever. Aboleths, due to their unique physiology, are able to project copies of themselves out from the originator point into other structure, where they then experience the flow of time. This is why Aboleths share a common memory, because in fact there is only one real Aboleth, the rest are just projections in time and space. According to this idea, there would be infinitely many "originator" Aboleths, but you can assume only one is capable / interested in visitng the material plane the party is in (or maybe there could be several, and thus several distinct memory "groups").
Give them a hefty dose of Cackle Fever and explain in great detail how they pee vinegar for a week and get green seepage from their mucus membranes for a few days.
Lol thanks, it was funny how it happened though, because my players were in a city ruin and one jumped on the chuuls back and actually missed her attack but still managed to hold on and crack it's head open and they ate it for dinner that night😂
@@AJPickett I think you'll find it an interesting monster, but from what I can remember, there likely wouldn't be enough information about it for a video. But look it up, see what you think of it.
@@AJPickett Oh! LOL I thought it was short for something D&D related. I've heard some other D&D TH-camrs say it as well and never thought it just meant a pdf file. Thanks for the answer and sorry my brain haz teh dumb!
Jryll'hazan, it is delusional to think these beings can be explained by your your cosmogeny, for as numerous Eand beyond reasoning as their physical vagaries are, their motivations and intents are at best incomprehensible to all but the most powerful psychics, Sages, priestsand Gods.
I did have a blog that was paid for be a web site, where I wrote tables and resources for 4th edition D&D, but the URL got sold to a leather goods manufacturing company and my blog posts all got deleted. I have a couple of web sites from back in the days that I was a fan of the Palladium RPG settings, and I had an article printed in the Rifter magazine (#23 if I recall) called "The Blade Mage". I have written a piece for Nerdarchy's web site, and probably some others, I wrote a couple of source books for my own home games, where I meshed warhammer 40K and 4th edition D&D together (called DragonHammer), and an adaption of the Heroes Unlimited RPG to the Tick cartoon universe setting.. but I don't have anything very polished to share with anyone at the moment, the writing on the God Forge is progressing slowly and I think will be worth the wait, once it gets published.
man... I really can't wait for it. Wish you a lot of luck. I planing on using a lot of monsters from the far realm in my coming up campaign and I have no idea how to work these monsters. I'm looking for to your pdf and you will have my support.
AJ Pickett Yeah! I was so excited and then so very, very disappointed... All joking aside, the far realm has such incredible, endless possibilities and there is almost nothing out there about what the place is really like! That thing about clouds coming down and crawling around was amazing, for example. PLEASE post an update and give us a link when its finished! I would gladly give you my money for such a thing!
AJ Pickett I take it your PDF never eventuated? Love your vids! Great inspiration for my game! Am dm’ing curse of strahd which I am changing where barovia is a barrier plugging a crack in reality between the D&D multiverse and the far realm. Mayhem ensues when a celestial representing uncompromising lawful good, trapped in raven loft sets about to destroy barovia and purge its evil. The players (which are all good aligned including a cleric and a paladin) need to work with strahd to stop barovia and the forgotten realms being sucked into the far realm (all the while strahd is trying to use the players so he can escape his prison of barovia). I am playing the far realm as having totally different physics and laws of reality so when far realm creatures enter our reality they are crushed and twisted into forms compatible with our universe. Similarly anything for our universe which enters the far realm would be changed beyond comprehension, shaped by the forces governing that reality. Would be great to see your imagining of far realm beasties for more inspiration!
Because they don’t eat the brains for the proteins or calories, they eat the brains in order to absorb the memories and experiences that the brain contained along with the emotions that those memories evoke, so in a way they don’t eat food like we do for calories so that our bodies can gain energy, they eat food so they can absorb psionic energy
The psychic thing in terms of the far realm...I think it is rather straight forward. The only things that can survive there have the ability to interact with reality with their consciousness, rather than their physical body. If you can't enforce you will on the world around you that world will twist you into little knots. They need the ability to keep themselves stable, to keep the changes the far realm will force on you within some tolerance you can deal with. Having their spleen try to be a kidney may equate to noon for them and making it be a spleen again or keep it from being anything but a spleen is a necessity.
I once played a game where my character was actually a Far Realm creature in a human form that just wanted to understand what all this material existence stuff is all about, the entire game he was slowing becoming more understanding of humanoids and slowly why its not okay to just eat people, when the rest of the parties back is turned. He eventually became lawful good paladin and shortly after died. Well kinda died its more that human body he made died and he just went back to being a horrific space monster very far away that would psychically talk to players in there dreams after that.
probably even more alien since it is a 'horrific space monster' that can understand material lifeform motivations to an extent.
I like it. The part of Sir Percival will be played by Nyarlathotep.
@@matthewbennett1972 (Later that evening in the realms of madness)
Azathoth: Hey Nyar me and Shub-Niggurath are bored... you feel like tormenting humanity today?
Nyarlathotep: Naw I have this new thing I was trying out....
Shub: Oh yea what is it?
Nyarlathotep: Being good
Azathoth: Good? What's that? Do I get to eat people with it?
Nyarlathotep: NO actually the opposite.... You help them....
Shub: Sounds lame..... But what the hell we still have infinite time on our hands so why not.
well technically they wouldn't know what being evil is either. or lawful, or chaotic. They're just that alien.
Well, Nyarlahotep would know. It was seemingly the only one of the Pantheon of alien gods who had an understanding of the human mind. This seemingly why it liked playing with us. Both our hope and our despair are the greatest gift to it and it went out of its way to invoke these things. And the most horrifying thing about that state of affairs is when this stops being entertaining is when Nyarlahotep will allow the forces of the uncaring universe to destroy us. We never can beat any of them. It is completely beyond us. It is the selfishness of an alien god that delights in our human dramas that keeps us alive and sane.
Powerful alien creatures from beyond time and space that are resistant to energy that would destroy anything material in seconds, still dies as easy as any beast when you shove a sharp bit of steel into it.
Good old cold iron. *slaps it on the hood*
To be fair, what organism would ever be able to consistently survive sudden and uncontrollable ruptures?
Something like that can and will exist at some point, and there's no reason for the Far Realm to _not_ have such creatures.
@@nullpoint3346 the Hunters in Halo are colonial hivemind worms the size of large snakes that inhabit mechanized armor suits, they could probably handle punctures pretty well.
@@kingmasterlord good thing we also have slashing and bludgeoning damage then.
@@dynestis2875 If stabbing it until it dies doesn't work, kick it until it dies!
I like the idea of us being just as alien to them as they are to us.
"Wait, you guys are pretty much made of salt? That stuff is poison to us!"
It must be hard for a predator that feeds on bio electricity to live hear considering humans only have a meager 100 watts.
@@ianyoder2537 right it would be starving.
Just think..To the far realms, the DnD cosmology is the home of cosmic horrors, aberrations and unfathomable monstrosities.
Every setting has cosmic horror if you delve deep enough into the dark corners of it's lore. Just like finding real cosmic horrors.
I like to think of far realm as where every other reality touches the border of our own, and that these creatures all come from different realities. Which is why the abominations are all so different not only from us, but from each other as well.
Edit: I also like to consider them non-carbon based life, which is why we cannot digest them. In the event that the creatures biology is based on a radioactive element, it causes mutation. Imagine what would happen if you ate a steak from a plutonium based life form.
I like the idea of a nice aberration hurting people on accident panicking trying to help but only making things worse
"ARE YOU MY MUMMY?"
The far realm is technicly not just one plane, but rather a collective tearm for all multiverses outside our own multiverse.
yep
Something I always thought would be an interesting idea for an aberration monster is what I'm calling "the husk hulk." Essentially it's a huge sized appearing as a fat headless somewhat humanoid monster with mouths on the palms of it's hands that spells are cast from. The hands do not provide verbal or somatic components, the mouths just open and spells come out. What these things actually are is bio-mechanical meck suits created out of far realm matter for powerful prime material plain wizards to explore and learn from the far realm, (think of what mind flayers do to humanoid bodies to reproduce but reversed.) These hollowed out bodies protect the wizard inside from the maddening effects of the far realm but when they return the prime material plain they're still considered mad because a strange wizard in a strange flesh suit ranting about how everything's changed. In reality they've returned to a random alternate prime material plain.
That sounds like Y'golanac from Lovecraftian lore
@@geoffreydunsmore1561 That was indeed the inspiration.
Ethanol is our drinking alcohol btw. What you mean would be methanol.
Its Shas slug back a shot of isopropl
Why would I do that? I disinfect my tools at work with a 55% solution.
Its Shas Isopropanol causes blindess.
Jackbho I was looking for this exact comment
From the point of view of these alien creatures, ours is the Far Realm :)
+MisterTutor2010 aside from the flimsy barriers set up by the jealous entities the D&D mortals call Gods, the prime material is just another realm, albeit an energy starved, cold, and weak dimension, populated with frail life forms, highly specialised to take advantage of whatever fuel sources they can.
The thing that makes the prime material plane distinct is that made chiefly out of nothing since it has very little matter and energy. From the point of view of creatures from planes that are relatively abundant with matter and/or energy such as the elemental and energy planes, the fact that life is even possible is amazing.
then they are lost!
(sorry,i could not help but make that joke)
@@dakotastein9499 So,who has the high ground?
Mike Oxlong “high” as a concept does not exist in the far realm, so probably the prime material plane creatures
I hope you read this comment AJ and wondered about your opinion on this:
Not long ago I started reading Al Ewing's comic book runs in Marvel. He's done a lot of really good stuff that deals with the cosmic especially Defenders Beyond and Immortal Hulk. He also introduced in his run on the Ultimates that even when each new multiverse ends, what happens is that the cosmos moves on to the mystery of the far shore. At one point the first firmament, the first reality, wanted to become the dominant reality again. This gave me inspiration.
What if the Far Realm is the void outside of the multiverse and everytime the multiverse ends the carcass, corpse, pieces, or remains of that multiverse sink into the Far Realm. But unlike a living being, a cosmos never fully dies and ends. What if the far realm incursions are caused by living parts of those former multiverses trying to come back? What if the Far Realm entities are in fact the remains of powerful beings like gods and monsters fused, mutated, and altered? What if the reason the Far Realm has so many different rules that conflict and change so often is because several different pieces of several different multiverses are jigsawed into a hodgepodge pseudo-verse? Please let me know. I'd love to hear your thoughts and anyone else here.
It could be that each universe is just a singularity at the center of a probability field, and eventually these singularities also collapse into each other, so the closely sandwhiched nature of the Far Realm is just the end of reality itself.
Oooh. Temporal displacer beast! It’s not 5ft from its true location it’s 5 seconds (1 round). Always catches you flat footed because it already attacked, its time is just catching up with you.
My favorite monsters/aberations. Gratitude for doing this.
+DMT Tabletop Gaming Most welcome Troy!
This audio sounds like a tape that was discovered in a destroyed research facility.
Thank you for the feedback, please check some of my more recent videos and tell me if the sound has improved :)
@@AJPickett Oh no, the sound quality is all well and good. I was just commenting on how it really fits the subject matter.
Interesting stuff. I really like that last image of the video. I always found beholders fascinating with how they can float in the air and be so large as well.
+Stronghold Crafter Kev I could imagine a Beholder coming through a rift between the planes, and chunks of rock and various detritus from it's home dimension just floats up into the sky.. because everything is buoyant where it comes from.
My creative juices are flowing now. I need some good aberrations for this weekend.
Thanks for the awesome video AJ. Look forward to seeing the PDF.
Just wondering if you could do a video on the Astral plane, what sort of creatures you could find dwelling there, the colour portals and psychic storms, etc. My players have found a way to get themselves there and other than the Gith, I am sort of at a loss.
Your videos are easily the most informative source of D&D material I've been able to find online, so thank you very much. :D
+Braydon Fiveash Well that confirms the next Environment video on my to do list :)
Since the physics of the far realm/realms are so different I'm sure it's not just the great wheel but also the other parts of the far realm that is the far realm to those creatures
I like your view of the Far Realm as alternate Primes where the environment is totally different. Back in the day, I played the Far Realm as the universe that existed before this universe. It was experiencing a Big Crunch as it contracted to a point of singularity. So the physical laws were breaking down and life was evolved to exist in that reality. The fact that the Far Realm existed in a prevoius time line made travel to and from almost impossible. How do you travel back in time to before there was time. Creatures from the Far Realm just needed to survive the Big Crunch and wait to reach our (D&D) world.
So Obyrith
2:20 Ethanol is drinking alcohol, and it can actually be used as a reversal agent for wood alcohol (methanol), rubbing alcohol (isopropanol) or automobile antifreeze (ethylene glycol or 1,2-ethanediol), any of which can cause blindness when ingested. It isn’t modern medical practice to do that, but it used to be a common medical indication to administer alcohol (that is, drinking alcohol aka ethanol) to a patient.
The Doctor Strange Movie did a good job with the concept of time being used against an eldritch being. "Time? Time?! The fuck is time?!!!!"
what are the creatures with the white hats? they look like priests of one of the elder gods. looking forward to the new selection of extraplanar monsters on the pdf.
+trenton maloney Those are beings from Pyrexia in the Magic the Gathering game universe/setting.. I love the look of those things, in fact Pyrexia is by far the most alien, freaky and horrific realm of the planeswalkers.
+AJ Pickett (The Mighty Gluestick) Some of the phyrexians fit the look of aberrations, but if you really want Magic the Gathering creatures that look like they're from the Far Realm, check out the Eldrazi.
trenton maloney specifically, that is Elesh Norn.
AJ Pickett pyrexian dreadnought
Phrexian Negator
can't wait to see your new monsters and plane! great work as always, I love your vids!
A big recommendation improve the mic, although I do notice this video is old so I suppose your new vids have better audio
They sure do, but thanks for the feedback, it's what helps me constantly improve.
Love this video- nice work!
Thank you!
Hey AJ, could you let me know when your aberration pdf is finished if you haven't finished it yet, and where to find it if you have finished it or when you do finish it?
well my monk just got sent there....good job he doesn't need food anymore
Love this video. Will you update it at some point in the future?
I kinda have been talking about the far realm for several years :)
sounds like a riot on the dance floor ... excellent intro. have you ever checked out Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris" ...? he's a fascinating guy with a crazy personal history. Solaris was his attempt to show that if humans ever did brush up against an alien sentient species chances are it would be so alien that the humans would never figure out they had encountered anything. i'm not sure either of the movies managed to pull that basic premise off ... movie-makers often seem to "default" into trying to get their audience to understand what's happening.
really super-excited about the upcoming PDF. have i asked you before (i meant to ask you) if you've got an "author's page" somewhere that lists a bibliography of the writing projects you've worked on? i remember seeing your recent-ish post about Rifts and your credits there. just curious how much other stuff is out there.
1:50 Are you saying a Strange Matter Universe?
I'm saying the heat death of the universe.
Their atoms are the still the same, carbon is carbon, hydrogen is hydrogen, but they react differently than our atoms because their reality functions differently than ours in a way that requires the atoms to act differently. Your body still recognizes it as the same atoms and molecules that it’s used to and tries to use them as they would normal atoms and molecules, but these atoms act differently than ours, superimposing their reality over ours, causing mutations in the creatures or objects that incorporate these foreign particles.
Think of it like Isotopes, but instead of a change in the charge of the atom, it’s a change in the fundamental rules of what an atom does.
Toril uses “Carbon-T” and the Far Realm uses “Carbon-F”. Things that use Carbon can use either, but what they do or become with that Carbon changes depending on the type. On Toril, Carbon-T is stable and has dependable reactions, whereas Carbon-F is unstable and has fairly random reactions.
It’s probably also safe to assume the opposite is true when in the Far Realm.
You need to update this
agreed
Carcosa and Lake Hali are good examples of location in the far realms. Carcosa is described as being made of smooth, cyclopian architecture befitting of giants. It sits on the edge of Lake Hali, an impossibly vast lake made with mist covering it so densely it appears to made of mist. But it has been mentioned that when the lake is seen, it is jet black. It describes the sky as being the brightest of whites with the blackest of stars and twin black suns that set "in lake Hali". this could mean at the horizon of Lake Hali, or actually in it. Doesn't have to make sense, and the lake has to be big enough for Hastur's true form to be in it as well as the occasional invasion of the Star Spawn of Cthullu.
And now, Rick’s reaction to being on a planet where everything is on a cob makes a little more sense.
A changeling could potentially handle the far realm
If they survive, they may become like Kaorti-ish.
forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Kaorti
Perhaps we should hear in games how ugly and repulsive we are to them.
Did you see that human? It only had 2 weak arms and 2 weak legs, and stood completely exposed. And Mxl'Plax actually tried eating one earlier. He's been sick for a week straight. They have strange beliefs too. One worships a zombie that came back to life after 3 days of torturous death. And it had prayers of cannibalistic symbolism to it's food? Effing humans.
Might be time to remaster this one, AJ.
agreed
fun fact: the reason lovecraft slapped tentacles on all his monsters is because he had a cephalopod allergy. Just think about that. If it were shellfish he was allergic to then all the far realm denizens would have exoskeletons and pincers instead.
This is the first I have heard about any food allergies, so, I am going to have to verify that info.
Very interesting subject, I'd love to see some Pathfinder stats on your PDF. But will be willing to self convert what I need to.
It's very easy to convert from 5th edition to Pathfinder and vice versa.
I'd LOVE to see a Baldurs Gate 3 DLC about the Far Realms.
Considering the scene with the gnolls, I think they would do it justice.
When i think of the wheel of the planes in D and D i think of a 2 dimensional abstracted space; lawfulness and good. Now when i hear 'far realm' i think of the infinite number of possible infinite other dimensions (with our multiverse existing within it), chosen randomly you would expect things to be extremely weird. Thus associating the far realm with alien things with foreign geometries that drive you mad. Yet... If one could control where in the far realm a portal leads, one could have an expectation that the metaphysical controls used would relate to the destination plane.
Think of it this way; 'good' and 'lawfullness' are a simple thoughts. Whatever diety created the multiverse used these two concepts to anchor the reality in the infinite possibility space (which is the 'far realm'). More complicated thoughts by a diety or powerful magic could create a new anchor.
The Far Realm sounds like a bad acid trip.
So.. The Far Realm is basically some Lovecraftian dimension where eldritch horrors lurk in the unfathomable void, and are biding their time waiting for some mad occult priest to unleash them onto the mortal plane and erase us from reality... Gotcha.
The far realm is countless dimensions, but it helps to think of it as a zone where dimensional rules and barriers go haywire.
@@AJPickett Thanks for the info. Do you listen to Manowar while playing DnD? It's a great experience, trust me...
Did this book or PDF ever come out? I am really interested in this and can not find any products written.
for me The Far Realm is very hard to researcher , cause there not much lore on it , Or lest the books I collected. :-) ,So Thanks !
"Great big thing crawling all over me... Great big thing crawling all over me... Great big thing crawling all over me..."
i once played in a campaign where the far-realm was just a big joke...and in actuality,contrary to the stories it was just Soviet Russia,ruled by a wimpy version of Chuck Norris
🥱
I ran an nWoD Mage game were the players hubris unleashed a silicon based virus 🦠 that converted crystalline structured silicon to dust ‘viral spores’. Glass to dust, that dust lands on glass the glass turns to more dust (spores). Plays hell in a big city like London.
The other memorable encounter was the 60th minute of 5am (so 5:58 > 5:59 > 5:60 > 6:00 > 6:01 etc) and the absolute hell it caused to all computers and anything that needs time to functional, also it was localised so only within a mile radius where clocks and people loosing a minute per day... I didn’t initially tell them what the had done but dropped hints over the sessions. It was 2 months in game before they really clicked something was really really wrong
Currently planning a personal family campaign that is based around the Far Realm and Stranger Things. 😊.
If Lovecraftian type creatures come from the Far Realm, then how does Jubilex come into play? Would it be considered a demon god that came from the Far Realm to migrate to the Abyss? Also, would the Slaadi and creatures of Limbo come from the Far Realm?
Good luck with this project. I do love chaotic weird monsters.
I thought aboleths were primordial? Not aberrations because they are from the plane of water right?
They are Aberrations, we don't know where they originated, I have a theory that they and several other Aberration species evolved inside a gigantic living realm, so, they have traits kind of like a Neural Parasite.
Thanks for clearing that out for me!
the monster manual says that aboleths are older than the gods themselves and that is from a quote from the far realm, real yet unreal. also, it says they live in the elemental plane of water and underground lakes but it does not say that is comes from the elemental plane of water
Did the pdf get published somewhere? I’d love to pick it up!
I know this is four yrs old but where can I find the PDF you were talking about at the end?
Hey there AJ, has anyone ever done a workup on the aberration from John Carpenter's The Thing? That would definitely be awesome to see in game!
Yo AJ, found your content yesterday on youtube. Thanks. I went to dmsguild but couldn't find The Endless Wish or AJs dirty dozen. I would love some source material for new abberation beasts from the far realms. Where can I find your content?
Turns out I am much better at writing youtube scripts :)
Thank you AJ. Very helpful.
One of my favourites of your videos.
The far realms are my favourites in DnD
Did you ever end up putting out the Endless Flesh? If so, where can I find it?
Could there be a benevolent creature from the far realm?I imagine it would have to be chaotic good if it was going to be good.
+blank blank Certainly, although it may well be made entirely out of anti-matter and the moment it steps foot in the prime material plane, there is a massive explosion of radiation that kills everything for miles in every direction... there are endless possibilities.
AJ Pickett I was thinking more along the lines of a shape shifting tentacle monster that pretends to be one of the mortal races so it can interact with them and helps defend them from other weird creatures from the far realm.Maybe it feels bad for the poor humans that a colony of mind flayers is about to enslave/eat the brains of and decides to defend them.Maybe its really intelligent and the mind flayers don't even know how to handle it.I just think it would be a cool story.
It could even be the benefactor of the party.Maybe there is a king or queen that never ages and is immortal and he or she rules the land in rather chaotic but benevolent ways.Maybe it tells people oh yeah I'm a powerful wizard or something I totally attained immortality through arcane means...No don't worry don't pay attention to the tentacles. That is umm...A spell I learned.........Yeah...
It wouldn’t necessarily be Chaotic Good, it could very well be Lawful Good, but from the limited way we see its actions it might *seem* Chaotic.
Please do an ecology on Ragnora
We can’t eat them but they can eat us :|
My theory/explanation for the far realm is that it is the border between all-that-is, and all-that-is-not. That border would therefore naturally be made of all-that-could-be. A border of pure thought, and idea. This is why psionics is a fundamental expression of this part of reality and even the stray thoughts of tiny mortals hold such wieght here. This also explains why there are no gods here and why they avoid it, as beings of mainly thought and idea it would be like a man swimming in a sea of randomlly flowing and growing flesh bones and body fluids.
Sounds to me like the astral plane is a small pocket of somewhat tamed far realm.
@@TheDigitalWatcher yeah we want to seperate parts of reality from one another but that seperation/segregation is an illusion
Anyone know the name of the creature appearing at 2:38?
The old intro was so funky
That PDF land anywhere? DM's guild? Patrion?
I'm surprised nobody made any Warhammer related comments :)
So dnd uses the Minecraft world generation?
Have you made many of your videos private recently? I really liked so many and saved them to playlists, but they now say "private video." Do you get access to them if you become a patreon?
The only vids I have moved to my archive are the ones I have remastered, the exception being the Eberron video.
@@AJPickett How does one access this archive?
@@SSSyndrome214 Oh I will get around to making a "Shitty old videos I remade" playlist at some point, the only special access content I have is me reading horror stories for Patreon supporters, there is no D&D content behind any sort of Pay Wall.
@@AJPickett Gotcha. Well then, I look forward to the release of said playlist! Thanks for making such neat content.
Could you link the sources for the pictures in this video? Maybe the actual dnd ones?
Its a very old video, your best bet is to screenshot the images, feed them into Google Image search and it will find the original links to the pictures for you.
1:45 so there is a real example of this-
TL;DR
a molecule’s physical shape determines their function, and they have left and right handed versions.
But in the same way your left hand wont work in a right hand glove, some biological molecules have different effects from other-handed version.
heres the video; th-cam.com/video/SKhcan8pk2w/w-d-xo.htmlsi=In7e24P5bqc9-vby
So. Where can the PDF be found?
This reminds me... did meenlocks make it into the new editions?
They have indeed, page 170 of Volo's Guide to Monsters.
Do they delve deeper into the ecology? Aberrant moss that turns things into aberrations could be so useful if used the way illithids use tadpoles ^_^
Checked the guide pdf and those are Meenlock in name only. They tried passing off mutant fey as aberrations and totally changed how they reproduce. Disappointing.
I think I will present the original version and the new version in an ecology vid, so people can choose which one suits their campaign better.
where can i find that pdf of yours at?
Never make promises in youtube videos.
@@AJPickett understandable. Have a nice day
In the beginning, there was nothing. Yet even in nothing, possibility and probability still holds true. And thus everything that CAN exist, exists in the Far Realm, and in infinite number. The only constant is the relative probability of things. Simple structures are more probable than complex structures, and thus, even though there is an infinite amount of each, one is more likely to encounter a simple structure than a complex one. When talking about "alternate realities", these are simply different but similar possibilities being expressed. Time and space do not exist per se there, rather they are "embedded" features of whatever possibility manifests itself. The Prime Material Plane is simply one manifestation out of infinitely many. A human being manifested in the Far Realm, outside a supporting structure (a "universe") would simply be frozen in time forever. Aboleths, due to their unique physiology, are able to project copies of themselves out from the originator point into other structure, where they then experience the flow of time. This is why Aboleths share a common memory, because in fact there is only one real Aboleth, the rest are just projections in time and space. According to this idea, there would be infinitely many "originator" Aboleths, but you can assume only one is capable / interested in visitng the material plane the party is in (or maybe there could be several, and thus several distinct memory "groups").
Where can I find the PDF you mention?
That reminds me, i should get back to work on that.. some of the aberrations in it were, well, extremely creepy, so I decided to rework them a bit.
@@AJPickett I look forward to reading it when it's done then.
Hey AJ Pickett is the PDF finished?
Killer Content! 🐋
Easy way to describe the Far Realm? Read Lovecraft's From Beyond.
It’s a giant Eldridge creature
Guys my players ate a chuul, what do I doooo!
Give them a hefty dose of Cackle Fever and explain in great detail how they pee vinegar for a week and get green seepage from their mucus membranes for a few days.
Lol thanks, it was funny how it happened though, because my players were in a city ruin and one jumped on the chuuls back and actually missed her attack but still managed to hold on and crack it's head open and they ate it for dinner that night😂
Pi=3 there
Could the terrask be from the far realm?
forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Falx
Eating aberration flesh is like trying to run a mac on windows its not compatible OS
I have a question for you. In AD&D, there was a monster called a malfera that was said to be from a plane of nightmares. Could that be the Far Realm?
Sounds like it
@@AJPickett I think you'll find it an interesting monster, but from what I can remember, there likely wouldn't be enough information about it for a video. But look it up, see what you think of it.
I'm not super familiar with D&D. I heard you mention "PDF" several times. What does this stand for?
PDF is a document file type (I was probably talking about books in PDF form. PDF just means Portable Document Format.
@@AJPickett Oh! LOL I thought it was short for something D&D related. I've heard some other D&D TH-camrs say it as well and never thought it just meant a pdf file. Thanks for the answer and sorry my brain haz teh dumb!
So basicly they could just be trying to say hi to me and i would go insane?
Worse even. I once try to date one of them and gone terribly wrong.
Good video bad audio
Jryll'hazan, it is delusional to think these beings can be explained by your your cosmogeny, for as numerous
Eand beyond reasoning as their physical vagaries are, their motivations and intents are at best incomprehensible to all but the most powerful psychics, Sages, priestsand Gods.
Says you. ;)
It's more like a carpet, or should I say timey wimey.
Is it just me or does his audio crack a little at times?
My audio is notoriously bad on older videos.
AJ Pickett aaah, cool I was worried my phones speakers went bad. Lol. Great content though
Link to PDF?
PDF got shelved in favour of writing a setting for the Immersion RPG system.
AJ: I'm disappointed that the PDF will not be available. Do you have a link to any of your other work, including PDFs?
I did have a blog that was paid for be a web site, where I wrote tables and resources for 4th edition D&D, but the URL got sold to a leather goods manufacturing company and my blog posts all got deleted. I have a couple of web sites from back in the days that I was a fan of the Palladium RPG settings, and I had an article printed in the Rifter magazine (#23 if I recall) called "The Blade Mage". I have written a piece for Nerdarchy's web site, and probably some others, I wrote a couple of source books for my own home games, where I meshed warhammer 40K and 4th edition D&D together (called DragonHammer), and an adaption of the Heroes Unlimited RPG to the Tick cartoon universe setting.. but I don't have anything very polished to share with anyone at the moment, the writing on the God Forge is progressing slowly and I think will be worth the wait, once it gets published.
did the pdf ever come out?
Which reminds me, never talk about writing projects until you've finished them.
man... I really can't wait for it. Wish you a lot of luck. I planing on using a lot of monsters from the far realm in my coming up campaign and I have no idea how to work these monsters. I'm looking for to your pdf and you will have my support.
AJ Pickett Yeah! I was so excited and then so very, very disappointed... All joking aside, the far realm has such incredible, endless possibilities and there is almost nothing out there about what the place is really like! That thing about clouds coming down and crawling around was amazing, for example. PLEASE post an update and give us a link when its finished! I would gladly give you my money for such a thing!
AJ Pickett I take it your PDF never eventuated? Love your vids! Great inspiration for my game! Am dm’ing curse of strahd which I am changing where barovia is a barrier plugging a crack in reality between the D&D multiverse and the far realm. Mayhem ensues when a celestial representing uncompromising lawful good, trapped in raven loft sets about to destroy barovia and purge its evil. The players (which are all good aligned including a cleric and a paladin) need to work with strahd to stop barovia and the forgotten realms being sucked into the far realm (all the while strahd is trying to use the players so he can escape his prison of barovia). I am playing the far realm as having totally different physics and laws of reality so when far realm creatures enter our reality they are crushed and twisted into forms compatible with our universe. Similarly anything for our universe which enters the far realm would be changed beyond comprehension, shaped by the forces governing that reality. Would be great to see your imagining of far realm beasties for more inspiration!
@@AJPickett no updates on the PDF? :(
I wonder if this is were the obyriths came from.
you go boi!
:D :D :D
So if mind flayers are from the farm realm, how do they eat the brains of creatures from the prime material?
Charles Williams adaptation I suppose after all they were here for quite some time
Because they don’t eat the brains for the proteins or calories, they eat the brains in order to absorb the memories and experiences that the brain contained along with the emotions that those memories evoke, so in a way they don’t eat food like we do for calories so that our bodies can gain energy, they eat food so they can absorb psionic energy
Have u had any encounter with any creature
aditya singh .... in games? Yes, lots.
Kkkk
What's the pdf called
So... where's the pdf?
Working on it
#NewXaxox
Gumdrop, consort of LG Lolth, if you please 😉