Talk:Layers of the Abyss

Reference
I'll just leave this here

Fiendish Codex I, Part 2 The Lost Annals 

Doonval ti bekk&#39;har (talk) 02:55, September 15, 2013 (UTC)


 * Is that 4th edition? How much, if any, of that is canon to the Forgotten Realms? &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 03:47, September 15, 2013 (UTC)

Its 3.5e. I would assume it is as canon as the rest of the fiendish codex as it is a web supplement by the original authors. The fiendish codex seems to be the main source on abyssal layers so i would argue that anything not contested by "official" Forgotten realms data is canon Doonval ti bekk&#39;har (talk) 04:20, September 15, 2013 (UTC)


 * That sounds good to me. They seem to have embraced a lot of stuff from the Book of Vile Darkness and the Book of Exalted Deeds, so why not the Fiendish Codex? &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 04:47, September 15, 2013 (UTC)

Layers
hey guys I was just browsing through and noticed this page is being worked on. The first edition module The Throne of Bloodstone adds a lot of information about some of the not so well known layers. – User:Snorogh


 * Nice find! Some of these layers are very obscure indeed. -- Sirwhiteout (talk) 02:13, September 20, 2017 (UTC)

Cleanup report
Ok, so the easy part is done: the deeper layers (Azzagrat and below) have been cleaned up, and a bunch of information from different sources has been added (thanks, Moviesign, Daranios and Snorogh for pointing out additional ones). There is still a bit left for a few layers, which will be put on as I go through the sources one more time.

But before that, the real problem with this page: the upper layers. It turns out that whoever did this revision simply copy-pasted all the information about layers that had been posted on this forum, about 4 years earlier. So definitely plagiarism, but probably not of the source mentioned on the top of the page, although there is a lot of redundancy there as well. And even worse: all the original forum posts were made by an anonymous poster and are unsourced (obviously), mentioning layers that I have only seen there. So, except for the more famous layers, I am inclined to think that this is homebrewed content.

So here is what I am going to do going forward: on my next edit I will delete all the text that is identical to that forum in bulk, and repopulate it with data from the sources that I have been using so far. If someone finds if those posts are backed up by any published material, then it should be easy to add it back. -- Sirwhiteout (talk) 03:04, September 21, 2017 (UTC)

…And done! All unsourced/plagiarized information has been purged from the page and replaced only with referenced information exhaustively typed in. There is probably a lot more information out there, but now at least the page can be built upon like a normal article on the wiki. Moderators are now welcome to remove the plagiarism marker from the top of the page. :-) -- Sirwhiteout (talk) 22:39, September 21, 2017 (UTC)


 * Excellent work, Sir Whiteout! — BadCatMan (talk) 13:08, September 22, 2017 (UTC)

Abysm
I just discovered that Stormwrack, a 3e sourcebook dedicated to ocean-adventuring, mentions oceans of the planes as well, and Abysm is given as the 88 layer of the Abyss. It also has this cool image:

I'm not sure how the information and/or image could be integrated here, but I'll leave that to someone else. (Abysm probably needs its own article.)

~ Lhynard (talk) 18:45, May 15, 2018 (UTC)


 * That's a cool picture! Abysm is in fact located in the 88 layer of the Abyss (Gaping Maw), but itn't the layer itself, as is noted in many sources that specifically mention it, such as Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss (p.140), Dungeon Master's Guide 5th edition (p.62), Out of the Abyss (p.236) etc. In fact, I'd even consider swapping this picture to represent the layer and the current illustration as the main image in a page dedicated to Abysm. Thoughts? &mdash; Sirwhiteout (talk) 19:12, May 15, 2018 (UTC)


 * Works for me; you are the expert on the Abyss. :) ~ Lhynard (talk) 19:17, May 15, 2018 (UTC)

Good Article status

 * Correct: yes
 * Referenced: yes
 * Formatted: yes
 * Clean: yes
 * Nearly complete: yes
 * Policy-adherent/Demonstrative: yes

TOC Suggestion
I think this page is thoroughly impressive, except that I am not a fan of the massively long table of contents. What do you all think about breaking it down into categories "Layers 1 Through 100", "Layers 101 through 200", etc.? ~ Lhynard (talk) 04:41, July 9, 2019 (UTC)


 * Interesting suggestion. But how would that work? By making subsubsections? Wouldn't that still keep all entries in the TOC, while also adding lines to it? If we remove the individual layer sections, that might break several links from other pages that point to specific layers here. Is there a way to customize the appearance of an article's TOC? ― Sirwhiteout (talk) 14:18, July 24, 2019 (UTC)


 * I think one possible solution would be to change the format of the layer headers from
 * ===Layer no.: Name===
 * to
 * ;Layer no.: Name
 * Like this the layer names would be bolded, but not considered headings. It would not be the same format, though.
 * Wait, that would still break the external links, so maybe it's not a great solution.
 * As an alternative suggstion: Is it possible to make the TOC hidden as a standard setting, instead of showing? This way it would not take the huge amount of space it does now, but would be there, accessible and useable by anyone who needs it - like me, most of the time. Daranios (talk) 14:44, July 24, 2019 (UTC)

Adventure Outcome and Cosmology
Hello guys I was wondering: in Dungeon #116 the adventure Asylum, which is the last adventure in the Shackled City Adventure Path, suggests that Adimarchus, Prince of Madness and former ruler of Occipitus (507th layer), currently imprisoned in Carceri, should manage to get free whether the players actively free him or even because of their "inaction" (pag. 61, "Graz'zt's Rage"). Looks like if that adventure is played and one of the PCs have passed the Test of the Smoking Eye (Dungeon #107), Adimarchus would manage to escape Skullrot and try to return to Occipitus, and if the PCs kill Adimarchus on Carceri, he would eventually reform in Occipitus ("Adimarchus' return, pag. 59-60). The only way to get rid of him at this point would be for the PCs to go back to Occipitus and kill him there. But which is the official position about adventures? Canon goes on like PCs have won the adventures, or like they have failed? Or it depends on what successive official material states? I mean, Gareth Dragonsbane killing Orcus was originally an adventure module, but Canon went on as if he succeeded.

Side-question: since the adventure takes place in 3.5 timeline, but Carceri does not belong to 3.5 Forgotten Realms cosmology, is it possible that the Shackled City Adventure Path only applies to Greyhawk setting and that, while in GH cosmology Adimarchus may have been freed, in FR cosmology he's not because he's not even present anymore? I've always wondered if GH Abyss is still the same as FR abyss after the cosmology's change but I suppose it's not... NPC Stories (talk) 12:49, July 24, 2019 (UTC)


 * I think the policy is to only consider events that are mentioned in subsequent material as certain, so possible outcomes of a module or video game are stated from a "could have happened" perspective.


 * About your cosmology question: As I understand it, the adventure path is not Greyhawk-specific, but some generic world. Also, even though people in FR were using the World Tree cosmology at the time, it doesn't mean that the events didn't happen, especially if they had later consequences to the FR. Moreover, now that 5 edition went back to adopting a unified cosmology and enforces a common multiverse, there is even more reason to consider that these events did happen somewhere. So, unless an FR-specific source explicitly states that they didn't, we should assume they did. ― Sirwhiteout (talk) 14:18, July 24, 2019 (UTC)