Planar scholars of a philosophical bent often ponder the history and origin of the cosmos. If the gods made men, goblins, elves, and dwarves, who made the gods? And what spawned that process that led to the gods’ gen-esis? While most folk are content to accept the creation stories offered by various cults, sects, and religions, many philosophers are too curi-ous and inquisitive to accept stories and myths that rely on faith, rather than facts, to answer their questions. For these seekers of knowl-edge, wormholes offer the most tantalizing, and at the same time the most frustrating, glimpse into what may have come before, and what might come after, this cosmic reality.
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If a vortex represents the empty void between the planes, wormholes honeycomb the raw pla-nar material that serves as a buffer between the planes and some other reality. Or at least, that is what most sages believe. Wormholes exhibit a number of traits that suggest they originated beyond the cosmos and could connect it to entire universes beyond even divine reckoning.
Planar researchers believe that the entire cos-mos, including the astral and ethereal planes, rests within a greater cosmic firmament, and within this layer sits other collections of planes and worlds. If the planes are islands, then the astral and ethereal planes, and the vortices that run between them, are like the ocean in which they sit. To extend the analogy further, this strange material is much like the sky that bounds them from above. Travelers could voy-age across the waters, find new islands, and move from one end of the ocean to the other without ever achieving the means to soar into the sky above. To extend the analogy, a flier could reach high enough to find entirely new oceans or, as is the case with wormholes, new pathways and patterns in the islands below
him.
Not all researchers agree that this analogy is an accurate representation of the cosmos. Instead, they see wormholes as cousins to vortices.
While a vortex is a chaotic construct infused with energy, a wormhole is much more orderly, easier to navigate, and composed of solid, physical matter. They consider vortices to be the byproduct of the energy flow that exists between the planes. Wormholes are mere pas-sages through the planar material that bounds the vortices and separates the planes. Some researchers take this a step further, theorizing that a vortex actually burrows through the pla-nar material and leaves wormholes in its wake.
Regardless of the theories and models used to understand them, wormholes serve as tunnels between the planes. Much like vortices, they allow travelers to physically walk between planes with a few days of traveling. While a vortex is chaotic and difficult to navigate, a wormhole is more stable and static. At first glance, it appears to be nothing more than a huge subterranean passage.
Wormholes are named for their shape. They are round, rough tunnels of a damp, clay-like
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CHAPTER TWO: Gates to other Worlds stance that is usually cool to the touch. They
resemble channels dug by titanic worms, hence their name. Dim, gray light radiates from the walls, providing conditions similar to very early morning or late dusk. In most areas of a wormhole network, thick, gray mist prevents travelers from seeing beyond a short distance.
The air is typically damp, and in many areas small puddles of water dot the wormhole’s floor.
Rumors abound of entire lakes or even oceans that fill the lower reaches of the wormholes, but thus far explorers have yet to confirm such tales. Many sages point to the wormholes’
shape and size as evidence of their link to vor-tices, and their seemingly random turns and twists, including frequent sharp turns up and down, lend support to this belief. In some areas, explorers are forced to employ climbing gear or spells such as fly to proceed along a wormhole, as it bends and turns up or down at a sharp angle.
Like vortices, wormholes are studded with many portals along their sides. These portals are usually connected to the wormhole via small side passages that branch off from its sides, ceiling, and floor. Most of them are gate-ways, though some minglings that function via corridors and tunnels lead into wormholes.
Like a vortex, a wormhole’s gates usually clus-ter together based on the plane or world they lead to. In any given section of these tunnels, the portals all lead to the same or closely linked worlds. Often, adventurers who stumble across a dungeon or underground portal to a worm-hole mistakenly believe they have entered some strange portion of the underworld.
Wormholes support a surprisingly large num-ber of living creatures. The ambient moisture and stable environment are conducive to life, and the relative ease with which a creature can move from a portal into a wormhole allows migrations and other large-scale intrusions to take place with relative ease. Unlike a vortex, which can drag a traveler to his doom, there is little about the wormhole’s environment that can prove deadly aside from other residents and intruders.
However, in some areas wormholes are infest-ed with strange, dangerous creatures. In areas with many portals that link to demonic or dia-bolic realms, those planes’ evil residents can be
found in great numbers. Other times, truly alien, bizarre creatures can be found shambling through the tunnels. These strange creatures, known as true outsiders, are said to originate from a realm beyond the cosmos. Sages who believe that wormholes connect to utterly for-eign realms maintain that these creatures are evidence of their theory, but other scholars posit that such monsters are merely residents of undiscovered planes and worlds.
While demons and devils are a daunting threat, they are nothing compared to rumors of the colossal monstrosities known as planar worms.
According to rumor and legend, these creatures are responsible for the formation of the worm-holes. As no direct evidence of their existence has been uncovered, most reputable sages dis-miss such claims as wild fantasies. Still, about once every decade an exploration party finds a new wormhole tunnel, or a section of tunnel caked with the crushed remnants of creatures, structures, and objects that once stood within it.
The sages claim that these are merely fluctua-tions in the planar bindings, natural events akin to the variations in a vortex’s winds and width.
A small cult of doomsday prophets known as the Heralds of the Worm maintains that the wormholes are infested with enormous, planar carrion worms that threaten to someday burst through the cosmos’s binding and bring ruin to all the worlds and planes. Some of the heralds seek to prevent access to the tunnels. They believe that activity within them angers the worms and increases the likelihood of apoca-lypse. Other members of this loose sect end-lessly patrol the tunnels, desperately hoping to meet a worm, offer it worship, and gain access to unimaginable power.
The Trade Towns
The settlements within wormholes are usually located in a section that offers easy access to multiple planes via portals. Entire trading towns have arisen in this where merchants from a variety of worlds can meet to do busi-ness. Rare spices, gems, jewels, weapons, and armor from a multitude of realms trade hands in these towns. An eclectic mix of creatures, from elves and dwarves to civilized half-fiends more interested in business and profit than the pursuit of evil, rub shoulders.
These towns usually depend on outside shipments for food and water, though in
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some cases the tepid water of the wormhole is enough to sustain them. The typical trade town features a tall, imposing wall to keep out ram-paging monsters, while platforms for archers and spellcasters serve to repel aerial attackers.
These settlements are usually managed, rather than ruled, by an alliance of merchants who want to promote and sustain trade between var-ious worlds and realms. Typically, business is too profitable for anyone to consider attacking the settlement in open warfare. After all, war is bad for business. It drives away customers, causes losses of men and material, and exposes merchants to unwanted risks. Rather than allow a war to drain resources, the competing fac-tions within a trade town rely on subterfuge, trickery, and deceit to win their way.
The merchants or overlords who control a trade town typically demand taxes on goods sold or brought into their markets. After skimming a profit off this revenue, they hire mercenaries to man the walls, build inns, taverns, and market-places for visitors, and provide a review board of disinterested judges to resolve any disputes.
Owing to this settlement’s planar origins, the review board is usually manned by lawful neu-tral creatures, such as ordinators (see Chapter 4), who can guarantee a fair and impartial judg-ment. The town guard frequently numbers golems, constructs, and mercenaries recruited from across the cosmos. These mindless or alien guards help ensure that they enforce the law without any preference to one group or fac-tion. Still, bribery and other favors can help sway the guards to one faction or the other.
Game Rules
Wormholes require few custom rules. As described above, they are fairly static, unchanging environments when compared to other types of portals. The air temperature usu-ally remains within the acceptable bounds for living creatures, though in regions of many portals that connect to hot or cold worlds,
the temperature can correspondingly rise or plummet. The wormholes’ distinctive trait is the sometimes thick, dense mist that persists within them. This mist can range from a slight haze to a dense cloud that obscures all vision.
The wormhole mist table describes several dif-ferent levels of concealment this mist can pro-vide.
Aside from the mist, a wormhole can feature several planar traits as described earlier in this chapter. You can select traits that fit with the worlds the wormhole’s portals connect to, or you can simply pick ones that fit the mood or encounters you want to present.
Wormholes can be mapped just like any other wilderness area. In addition to an overhead view of the terrain, you might want to add a cross section view to remind yourself of any elevation changes, features of the tunnel’s roof or floor, and other odd locations. Remember that a wormhole is not necessarily bound by the same restrictions as a mountain range, forest, or other outdoor environment you may map. A spellcaster or flying creature could erect a lair at the top of a tunnel, while important, heavily used portals in a region could open high on the wormhole’s sides. Stairs carved into the walls, crude elevators crafted from rope, stones, and timbers, or other conveyances may be neces-sary to allow access to the wormhole’s floor.
The portals that lead to a wormhole can take on almost any form except a malignancy.
Gateways can connect to them, and in some cases an ambitious wizard or trader could con-struct a passage to a wormhole in order to gain access to the large number of portals that stud the wormhole’s sides. Such a gateway could also allow easy access to a trade town. A vortex can offer many points of entry to a wormhole, reinforcing the theory that the two portals are somehow connected. As mentioned above, in some cases a mingling can create a powerful correspondence between a wormhole and a
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Wormhole Mist Table
Concealment Range (miss percentage)
Mist Level 1/4 (10%) 1/2 (20%) 3/4 (40%) 9/10 (50%) Total
Faint 101+ ft. — — — —
Light 61–100 ft. 101+ ft. — — —
Medium 21–40 ft. 41–80 ft. 81–150 ft. 150+ ft. —
Heavy 0–20 ft. 21–40 ft. 41–80 ft. 81–150 ft. 150+ ft.
Thick 0–4 ft. 5–20 ft. 21–40 ft. 41–60 ft. 60+ ft.
CHAPTER TWO: Gates to other Worlds world. Invariably, the passageway between
them leads through a cave or hallway that slow-ly transforms into a tunnel leading into the wormhole’s main passage.
Navigation can be tricky in a wormhole, depending on how thick the mists are in an area. A team of explorers could lose the path back to their portal home, stranding them between the planes with little hope of returning short of spells such as teleport. As an optional rule, you can require the characters to make Survival checks to keep their bearings as they wander through a wormhole. The mist’s thickness determines the DC of this check.
Wormhole Navigation Table Survival Mist Conditions Check DC
Light 5
Medium 10
Heavy 15
Thick 20
One character in the party must make this check every six hours spent trav-eling through a wormhole. Make this check in secret, as the players should not have an idea that their characters are lost based on the check result.
Other party members may attempt to aid the character making the check, as per the standard rules for assisting a skill check. Again, make any checks to assist in secret. On a successful check, the party main-tains its bearings and may continue to travel as normal. On a failed check, the group becomes lost. As the characters travel, roll 1d8 to deter-mine the actual direction they wish to move as soon as they cannot see any recognizable land-marks.
For example, the party declares that they want to head east from an outcropping on a worm-hole’s floor. You make their Survival check in secret and note that they failed it. After two hours of walking, they turn north. At that point, you roll 1d8 to determine their actual direction of travel. Use the random direction table to determine their true heading. Until the party notices they are heading in the wrong direction, they continue along their incorrect path. Each time the characters make a turn, alter their
course to account for the errors
they made in their directions. Find the direction they think they are moving on the random direction table and count up or down to the direction they want to go. Then, find the direc-tion they are actually going and count the same number of steps from there to determine their actual heading. If a result forces you off the bottom or top of the table, wrap around to the top or bottom respectively.
For example, the characters want to head south but become lost and walk west. Later, they decide to turn east. Looking at the random direction table, you see that east is two slots above south on the table. Starting at west and moving two slots above it, you determine that they are now actually moving south-east.
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Keep track of the characters’ progress on your map as normal. For every hour they are lost, allow them to make a Survival check (in secret, as described above) to determine if they notice that they are lost. Obviously, the players can also determine this for themselves if their char-acters come across a terrain feature that they know should not be along their planned route.
These rules add an element of uncertainty and danger to a trip through a wormhole. On the other hand, they can make for a boring game if the characters become lost and spend an entire game session wandering around your map.
These rules are best used for areas with plenty of encounters and sites that the characters can stumble into. Otherwise, speed up the game by telling the characters their current direction and letting them travel ahead a few hours. Do not narrate the entire trip, as that could become very boring very quickly.
Finally, while this section uses compass direc-tions, in a wormhole there is no such thing as north. Instead, use north and other directions on your maps to keep things clear and help you keep track of the players’ location. As long as you can determine the party’s direction of trav-el, the players do not have to use north, south, and other directions to describe their actions.
For example, on your map you may have a trade town “north” of a portal the characters use. If the characters want to walk from the portal to the town, you can use that direction in your own notes along with this system. If the characters turn right while traveling north, they are now going east, and so forth.
In Your Game
Wormholes offer a much safer, less vari-able method of planar travel than vor-tices. For low-level characters, a wormhole provides a convenient access point to a variety of worlds. If
you want to set the characters on planar adven-tures early in a campaign, a wormhole and the trade towns within it provide a relatively safe, controlled environment for such adventures.
The characters could find a portal to a worm-hole (or they could be tasked with exploring one) and the trade town beyond. From there, they can access many different planes and worlds, allowing you to run a planar campaign without having to explain how relatively weak characters can survive in a distant, dangerous realm.
Many fantasy campaigns feature a town and dungeon combination, giving the characters a convenient place to battle monsters, find trea-sure, and then return home to rest up, sell any treasure they found, and meet up with friendly NPCs who can provide advice, quests, and other aid.
In a similar manner, you can use a trade town as the base for a plane-hopping campaign. The characters could use a trade town as their base, meeting up with friendly NPCs who ask them to undertake missions on their behalf and encountering a broad range of intelligent crea-tures to give them a sense of a planar campaign’s scope. When it comes time to adven-t u r e ,
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the characters can travel to a nearby portal for a journey to a strange world. The actual content of the adventures can cover a wide range of possibilities limited only by your preferences and imagination.
The entire array of planes presented in Chapter 3 is available to you, as a portal from a worm-hole can lead almost anywhere. If your players prefer combat and similar challenges, they can face off against monsters that infest worlds, raid caravans to the trade town, and lurk with-in the wormhole’s with-infwith-inite pathways. For more roleplaying- or political-oriented games, the PCs can engage in all sorts of skullduggery in the trade town and the nearby realms. A thieves’ guild could arise in town, requiring skilled undercover work to defeat it. Rival trade consortiums and merchant princes fight a shadowy war to win control of trade routes or the town itself, with the PCs serving as spies, foot soldiers, and ambassadors.
A trade town gives you all the flexibility and
A trade town gives you all the flexibility and