Xoriat
The touch of Xoriat will warp your flesh and corrupt your mind. The inhabitants of this alien realm seek to transform or destroy all that is natural, and even the slightest contact with it is dangerous.
At least, that’s the popular opinion—but it’s not entirely true. The plane’s title, “Realm of Madness,” is a label applied by the people of Eberron based on the perception that close interaction with Xoriat can interfere with your ability to process reality. But illithids call Xoriat the Realm of Revelations...and this may be more accurate. Where Lamannia embodies the natural world, Xoriat instead embodies the unnatural. It’s a window into the workings of reality that mortals normally don’t see, ones they’re ill-equipped to handle. It suggests that time and space, order and chaos, war and peace—all of these are inventions. They’re the foundations mortal lives are built on...but what lies under those foundations? What was there before the house was built, and what will come after? Xoriat holds the answers to those questions, and infinitely more as well.
Though the fact is often overlooked, all mortals have a connection to Xoriat. Mortals dream in Dal Quor. Shavarath sparks mortal anger. Mabar feeds mortal shadows, while Irian holds their spark of light. When mortals die, their souls are drawn to Dolurrh. Mortals are influenced by all of the planes, and the influence of Xoriat drives the desire to question reality. It can be a source of inspiration, especially for artists; it helps people challenge their assumptions and see things in an entirely new way. But Xoriat’s also the sun that melts the wings of any who draw too close. From a distance, its influence can be a positive force, but mortals who gaze too deeply into Xoriat can lose touch with their native reality, losing the ability to navigate the natural world. So Xoriat is a deeply dangerous place, but the plane itself isn’t evil or destructive. It’s part of the universal balance, as important as any of the other concepts of the planes. Irian brings life, Lamannia is the blueprint for nature, Daanvi provides guiding order. Xoriat is a glimpse at what lies behind and beyond, of the other ways reality could have been—and of the unseen ways it is.
Geography
Xoriat is a void lacking not only matter, but also space and time, and a mortal creature that enters it effectively ceases to exist. But there are powers in this void, and the layers of Xoriat reflect their thoughts. Each of the daelkyr dwells in a layer, the place that spawned that daelkyr; this layer usually reflects the daelkyr in tone, and it can use its lair actions anywhere in its layer. However, not all of Xoriat’s layers can support mortal life; there’s a layer where intense gravity crushes any physical creature, and a layer where all matter is transformed into pure thought.
Adventurers need to find portals to move from layer to layer. Portals are unique based on the layer’s properties of each layer, and using a portal always has a price. Sometimes the price is paid in memories; the DM sets the emotional tone of the memory (joy, sorrow, anger), then each player describes the memory their character has lost. With other portals, the price may be knowledge, but this isn’t taken from the adventurers—rather, when they pass through the portal, they learn a secret they might have rather not known.
Ecosystem
Xoriat and the Maze of Reality
There’s a logic to the structure of the planes. Irian is the beginning, where new seeds are born. Mabar is the end, consuming all things. Time sometimes moves at different rates in different planes, but it always moves forward...except in Xoriat. Imagine time as a maze and the Material Plane as a rat moving through it, with the other planes worn as a crown. This is how the Draconic Prophecy works. It doesn’t tell you what will happen, because that hasn’t been decided yet. It’s a roadmap to the maze, revealing that if you take a left turn at "Queen Aurala is assassinated” and then turn right at “Breland becomes a democracy,” you’ll reach “Sul Khatesh is released from her prison.” The Prophecy shows the path you need to take to achieve the outcome you desire—a map to the many possibilities of the future. But Xoriat isn’t bound to the rat. It hovers above the maze. And adventurers could return to the wrong time when they leave it, falling farther back in the maze. They could find themselves in the Empire of Dhakaan, or in the midst of the War of the Mark. And in the process, they could change the future. Perhaps they help Halas Tarkanan win the War of the Mark; the dragonmarked houses are broken and scattered before they ever achieve their current glory, and people with aberrant dragonmarks thrive. With these changes, modern Khorvaire would be a very different place. In doing this, the adventurers have dropped a new rat in the maze. This new rat becomes the Prime Material Plane. It snatches the old rat’s crown of planes, becoming the reality where all the planes converge and where time moves forward. But the other rat is still out there—forgotten and lost, huddled in a corner, but still alive. And it’s possible that if the adventurers return to Xoriat, they could change their mind; they could find their way back to that original rat, returning it to its role as the Prime Material Plane. So Xoriat gives the possibility for dramatic change—but it’s always possible to restore a forgotten past. This view is critical to understanding the daelkyr. They stand above the maze, but they can also descend into it. They experiment on the rat, changing it. What happens if they make too many changes? It’s possible the rat might crawl into a corner to die and a new rat be released: perhaps the old Prime is lost and a new world moves forward. This is what the gith believe happened with their world, as described in the section on Kythri. The gith lived on a world that was once the Prime Material Plane. Now it may just be another rat lost and forgotten in the maze. Should the daelkyr rise and complete their work, it’s possible the current Eberron could be torn away from the planes; it would still exist, but as a forgotten shadow of the new central reality that takes its place. If this doesn’t entirely make sense, that’s appropriate. Most scholars in Khorvaire would call this theory madness, and so Xoriat receives its name. But others might say that this is in keeping with the myth of theProgenitors. Irian is the beginning, Mabar is the end—and Xoriat could be the point that stands above the journey, the high perch from which the Progenitors could study their work. Xoriat isn’t bound by the laws that bind the rest of the planes, and it holds all the ideas that were discarded. Perhaps the Sovereigns didn’t entirely build reality, but rather, they sculpted it—chipping things away and dropping them into Xoriat. This is a metaphysical discussion that most adventurers will never need to worry about. There are three things to take away from it. Xoriat is a point from which history and reality itself can be changed. The daelkyr have changed it an unknown number of times. And from Xoriat, it’s possible for adventurers to either change it themselves—or to undo damage they might have done.Localized Phenomena
To mortal eyes, Xoriat may seem more chaotic than Kythri. However, it’s not defined by the idea of chaos; rather, mortals don’t understand the logic that guides its changes. Additionally, Kythri’s constant change is still always natural: fire and lightning, stone and water. On the other hand, in Xoriat, a tornado might be composed of ink. Each grain in a sandstorm could be a miniature bust of Queen Aurala of Aundair, or a tiny beating heart. It’s not simply chaotic; it’s unnatural.
Unpredictable Magic. Immediately after a creature casts a spell of 1st level or higher, roll on the Wild Magic Surge.
Dangerous Revelations. Whenever a creature finishes a short or long rest, or is reduced to 0 hit points, it must make a DC 14 Charisma saving throw. On a failed save, it’s afflicted with a random form of short-term madness. If it later fails this saving throw an additional time, its previous madness effect is replaced with a new one.
Time is an Illusion. More than any other plane, time is unreliable in Xoriat. Adventurers could be trapped in the Realm of Madness for what feels like a lifetime, then find only a moment has passed on Eberron. It’s even possible for them to return to Eberron before they left, potentially becoming stranded in another time.
Strange Reality. The things adventurers rely on—gravity, time, their identity itself—aren’t always reliable in Xoriat. The properties of the plane are always in flux, and these properties manifest in bizarre and incomprehensible ways.
Fauna & Flora
In Xoriat, there are masses of swirling colors, hues never seen on Eberron. There are ripples in space that disrupt time in their wake. There are bursts of powerful emotion that drift across layers. These may well be alive in some way—but there’s no way to communicate with them. While the plane might hold other forces that could be considered alive, their thought processes would almost certainly be fundamentally inhuman, and they wouldn’t recognize organic beings as life.
The Daelkyr
The daelkyr came to Eberron to corrupt it and transform its people, and they crippled the Dhakaani Empire before being bound in Khyber. Six are known by name, but there are surely others. They remain trapped in Khyber to this day, waiting for the chance to rise and finish the work they began...and perhaps to pave the way for a new reality. There are no known accounts of mortals traveling to Xoriat—at least, none who returned—so adventurers who do so are likely undertaking a historic journey. And in that journey, they may make a shocking discovery—though the daelkyr may be bound in Khyber, they are also still in Xoriat. Dyrrn the Corruptor, Valaara, Belashyrra—each dwells in a domain in Xoriat, attended by their servants and their armies. This ties to Xoriat’s uncanny relationship with time. The daelkyr may be in Xoriat because they haven’t left yet, or they might’ve already been released from their prisons and returned to Xoriat. Again, if time is a maze, the daelkyr stand above it looking down—but at the same time, they are also running in the maze. They can’t return to Eberron now, because they’re already there; but this may be why they seem unconcerned with their long imprisonment, because they’re also watching it all unfold from above. So adventurers could interact with any of the daelkyr in Xoriat, but fighting them there won’t impact their actions on Eberron. However, it could help adventurers learn about the weaknesses of the daelkyr, or perhaps obtain tools or weapons to use against them in the future.Aberrations
The natural inhabitants of the plane are often so alien that mortals don’t even recognize them as living things. Most of the aberrations that people are familiar with on Eberron aren’t creations of Xoriat itself. Rather, the daelkyr, powers designed to interact with the Material Plane and its with mortals, created these aberrations as their servants, soldiers, and mementos of past conquests. In Eberron, most daelkyr have mixed forces; mind flayers could be found serving any of the great lords. In Xoriat, they’re more segregated; beholders dwell in the domain of Belashyrra, and mind flayers in the realm of Dyrrn. What other terrors do the daelkyr have in Xoriat that they’ve never unleashed in Eberron? This depends in part on how many other realities the daelkyr have transformed; the mind flayers are relics of the destruction of the gith, just as the dolgrims and dolgaunts are souvenirs of the downfall of Dhakaan. While aberrations created by the daelkyr are usually dangerous, there are also aberrations generated by the layers themselves. These planar creatures are alien and disturbing, but aren’t threatening unless provoked.Powers of the Void
The daelkyr aren’t the most powerful forces in Xoriat. There are greater powers in the void, spirits so vast and alien that they can only be perceived by the ripples they create in reality. Both the Unseen Citadel and Belashyrra are ideas in the mind of something greater. Do these powers slumber? Do they consciously adjust the rules of their layers? Or are they simply ideas cast aside by the Progenitors, models of reality that were ultimately abandoned? If Xoriat is the realm of discarded concepts, this could be the drive behind the daelkyr’s endless quest to disfigure—or perfect—reality.History
The seals of the Gatekeepers block travel to Xoriat, but there are still many ways the Realm of Madness can affect the world.
Manifest Zones
Manifest zones tied to Xoriat are common in the Shadow Marches, but rare elsewhere. The effects of a Xorian manifest zone are rarely as dramatic as the alien attributes of the plane itself. However, manifest zones may convey one or more of the universal properties of the plane. The most common is the Dangerous Revelations property. People who linger in a Xorian zone often find alien concepts creeping into their brains, instilling strange beliefs, or twisting their sense of reality. These zones can easily produce cults of the Dragon Below; in the Shadow Marches, the Gatekeepers struggle to keep people out of these zones, while Marcher cultists consider them to be sacred sites. Unpredictable Magic is another common property; such zones often have unnatural flora or fauna, but these effects are unreliable and change with each generation. The properties of Time Is an Illusion and Strange Reality are rare in manifest zones, and may not be active all the time; these effects might only become active when Lharvion is full, or when disturbing rituals are performed.Coterminus & Remote
The last time Xoriat was coterminous, the daelkyr brought their armies through the walls of reality and laid waste to the Empire of Dhakaan. The seals crafted long ago by the Gatekeeper druids keep the daelkyr bound in Khyber, but they also keep Xoriat from becoming coterminous. Xoriat’s remote phases have no known effect, and like Kythri, they’re unpredictable, though the phases tend to come and go far more slowly than Kythri’s do. There are no recorded instances of citizens of the Five Nations visiting Xoriat; most scholars believe that the Gatekeeper seals prevent all planar travel...though someone may have secretly built an eldritch machine in a manifest zone, perhaps incorporating illithid brains or the position of the moon Lharvion.Xorian Artifacts
The most common artifacts of Xoriat are the symbiont items created by the daelkyr. However, adventurers could stumble on artifacts brought to Eberron by the daelkyr in their great incursion—or relics even more ancient. One effect of Xorian items could be to twist time. On a minor level, this could explain the powers of a cloak of displacement; it always shows you a few seconds ahead of your current position. A more powerful artifact could allow travel through time, or reset time in a small region. Does the time tunnel allow a return trip, or are those who use it trapped on the other side? Xoriat is also known for granting maddening knowledge and physical transformation. Either of these effects could be reflected by supernatural gifts.- The character’s blood is replaced with a sentient protoplasm that whispers to them while they sleep. It grants the benefits of a blessing of wound closure.
- The character gains the blessing of understanding, but they also learn that any time they cast a spell, something dies. When they cast a cantrip, it might be a rodent or a bird. The more powerful the spell, the more significant the death. The caster will likely never see this effect occur, but they know that someone somewhere is paying the price for their magic...and worse, this might be true of all spellcasters.
- The character gains the blessing of Valhalla. The spirit warriors it summons are friends of the caster, plucked from the future; the character may not have met all of them yet, but they’re people who the character knows or will know. They’re returned to the future in an hour or when they drop to 0 hit points...in which case they may die upon being returned to their own time.
Alternative Name(s)
The Realm of Madness
Type
Plane of Existence
Included Locations
Included Organizations
