Headcannon: Placing Eberron in My Universe

Headcannon: Placing Eberron In My Universe

Eberron has been my favorite setting for a long, long time, ever since I fell in love with Xendrik playing Dungeons and Dragons Online many years ago.  The more I looked into the lore of the place, the more I liked how it was put together.  Lately, though, I’ve been playing the more science fiction Starfinder. I’ve wanted to place Eberron somewhere in the universe I am playing in for the players to stumble across.

For the longest time, I wasn’t sure how to go about it, but after Keith Baker’s blog post on reaching the stars from Eberron, the ideas started forming. My ideas approach it from the outside-in rather than the inside-out.  Seeing as I have not-a-single-thing to do with Wizards, all of this is just my headcanon for how Eberron fits in a larger universe.  With that said, I am going to try to present it all without contradicting the established lore.

So, the first question:

Where is Eberron?

It’s already established that Eberron is a material plane of just that one solar system, with one planet, one sun, and 12 moons. If I am going to both keep that intact and also add it to another universe that has its own already established material plane with tons of planets and solar systems, then they have to be separated somehow. My solution for this is to take a page from the Oathbound setting.

Oathbound is another realm separated from the rest of the universe because it was specifically designed to trap and hold a deity.

The Eberron system is removed from the normal material universe because it’s progenitors were building a separate material universe for themselves. We all know what went down between them, but after that, what had been a joint project between 3 gods became a prison for the “survivors” despite that not being the place’s original intention. As the Realm of the Forge in Oathbound, the Eberron material plane is a god-trap.

So, basically, it’s nowhere.

How do you reach Eberron?

It is impossible to reach Eberron from the normal material plane. Reaching it requires using a starship’s plane-shifting engine during a coterminous event at a location that has a star pattern matching at least one of Eberron’s constellations. The reason this works is that the “Drift” engines in Starfinder pull a bit of the universe into the “drift,” Starfinder’s Hyperspace. A coterminous event is already pulling part of the universe into another, though.   So using the engine during one reverses the process, pulling something into the material universe, at least for the duration of the coterminous event.

By doing that at an alignment of stars that match the pattern of Eberron’s boundary stars, it pulls one of those boundary markers from Eberron into the normal material universe. The starship performing this maneuver can then board the boundary marker and be pulled into Ebberon’s space when the event ends and the boundary star returns.

Note that the “Boundary Stars” of Eberron aren’t suns like stars in the normal material universe are. They are unknown objects that mark the limits of Eberron’s material universe. The ritual I made up and detailed above simply uses one of them as a sort of ferry.

What are the Boundary Stars?

The Frontier from the movie
The Last Starfighter

Each Boundary Star exists both in its spot in the Eberron universe and also in a place outside/between all universes. It draws power from The-Place-Between. Together they delineate the boundaries of the material universe of Eberron inside that place between universes. Each is basically an automated space station though, a techno-arcane marvel made by the hands of 3 gods, the ones whose bodies now liter this material realm. If someone could access them from the Eberron side, they could use them to transfer out of the Eberron realm into the normal material universe nearly at will. Each is massive and could house numerous starships docked internally. They are covered in draconic runes that change and shift as the remains of the three progenitor dragons tumble around the space. Since no one has ever been to see them, no one knows what they say.

The stations not only act as boundary markers but as mentioned before, they draw power from the place between universes. Not just to power themselves, but they act like lenses, focusing that power into the center of the plane. The power itself comes from the energy released when a universe collapses and returns to the between state. 

Arrah, the Sun

The point where each Star-station focuses that power is Arrah, Eberron’s sun. Each station is programmed to reduce the output of its power transmission when anything lies between it and its focal point, the sun. That prevents any of the star stations from burning Eberron’s surface to ash and is why the stars are dim on the night side. Meanwhile, on the dayside, the focal point is so bright, you cannot make out the star stations themselves, only the focal point, the Sun.

Arrah is formed by the focal point of all the stars in Eberron’s sky, focusing together on its location. They focus power transmitted from the place between universes, which comes from the energy released from collapsing universes. It is essentially the burning ashes of dead universes. Fire is fire though, and can provide warmth or destruction regardless of its source. That process results in an extremely stable sun that can nevertheless dim and brighten depending on the number of things intervening between it and the star stations creating it.

The Planes

Since Eberron’s entire cosmology was formed artificially by the progenitor dragons but was essentially unfinished, it evolved from its original state to where it is now. The planes surrounding Eberron’s material plane form a framework out of tension and counter-tension between planar forces, which help prevent it from collapsing on its own. The planes each pull certain dominant forces into themselves and collect them together. That not only determines what they are made up of, but it creates a vacuum that leaves certain other planes devoid of those things. Irian and Mabar are classic examples of this. One formed from the light of Arrah, the other from the vacuum of its absence.

Of course, the Astral, Ethereal, and Shadow planes have a different nature entirely. They are essentially the framework that holds the cosmology both together and apart. However, even the Ethereal and Shadow planes exhibit the same opposing tension between them.

Now each plane was also constructed by one of the progenitor dragons and reflects that origin. However, they originally never were meant to be any more than the paints used to create the material universe. Each filled with its own colors. The progenitors fell to their fates before that could ever be realized. Instead, each has evolved in the ages since the progenitors fell into what it is today.

The Moons

That brings us to the nature of the moons. Like everything else in the Eberron system, they are not normal moons. Have you ever played with colored lights? Shining them onto the same space changes the colors you see. The moons of Eberron have a relationship to the planes like the lenses projecting the colored lights. Only the place they project them is onto Eberron. This combination of projected forces is why Eberron’s dominant planar influences are constantly shifting. Why conterminous events occur. It might take centuries of study to understand how they work fully, but they are responsible for why Eberron sustains life despite otherwise just being a dead husk.

The Sybaris Ring

The rings formed from Sybaris’ body are not merely the source of magic in 

Eberron. If the moons are lenses projecting planar energies from the planes, the rings act sort of like a graphics engine combining the projected images smoothly into the orderly pattern familiar to the mortals of Eberron. That prevents harsh projections from the moons from causing drastic and unpredictable changes to the world as they orbit. That is the vestiges of Sybaris’s will and care for the Eberron system it was making with its fellows. The magic produced by the ring is a byproduct of this process.

The residents of the rings are sentient living spells that have formed entire civilizations. If there are other residents, they are either very well hidden or long dead. That strange civilization is a post for another time, though.

What is Eberron like now?

Eberron itself and Khyber beneath it will have changed in the centuries between the last war and any scifi setting it became part of. Here in my headcanon, to make life easier for me, all the major political powers are still in place. What has changed, is that after the space race Keith described in his blog, the residents of this small system began learning more about their home. 

Eventually, through a journey of innumerable conflicts, and the guidance of the Gatekeeper druidic circle, most of the planes of Eberron are part of a shaky multidimensional alliance trying to figure out a way to escape the confines of the prison the progenitors made. This coalition is lead by a strange alliance between the Pit Fiends of Shavrath and House Deneith. Their primary competitors for power is a tense partnership between The Twelve, Houses Cannith and Orien, and the Quori of Dal Quor. Droaam is working directly with the Gatekeepers and Houses Kundarak and Ghallanda to help secure the whole of the planet against the forces that refused to join this alliance. 

Belashyrra, The Delkyr Lord of Eyes

The opposition has four major components.  The forces of Mabar whose hatred for life seeks to consume everything. The Delkyr of Xoriat have never relinquished their goal to remake the world in their image. Khyber and its Overlords who still seek to dominate everything and are unwilling to let any of Eberron’s residents slip through their grasp. Surprisingly the fourth is Daanvi who believes escaping the delineated boundaries of Eberron’s universe would constitute a violation of the whole of the natural order. 

That’s what I have for now. I still have a lot of holes to fill in and questions to answer. If you were considering using this, what questions would you want me to answer next?

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