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Spelljammer indicates Krynn (world of the Dragonlance setting) exists in a shared universe with the rest of D&D.

Krynnspace is a crystal sphere containing the world Krynn

Astinous (Krynn’s most revered historian) translates from the Plates of Pakafhas into the Iconochronos the beginnings of the Age of Starbirth.

The High God Awakens Out of Chaos, there comes thought and being—the High God. With celestial hands, the god draws the plans for a new realm and writes them in his divine tome, the Tobril.

The Gods are Called Into the beyond, the High God calls. Two divine beings answer; one of light, and one of darkness. The king and queen of worms, Paladine and Takhisis, seek greatness in the Chaos and abandon their twining struggles. (1996 TSR, Dragonlance 5th Age, Dusk or Dawn, Book II p.4)

Considering the possibility the High God exists in a wider D&D multiverse, who are they?

Amethyst Wizard
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2 Answers2

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On Hallowed Ground, a 2e sourcebook, lists the High God as the “over-power” of Krynnspace.¹ Note that On Hallowed Ground is 25 years old, but really every source we might look to is going to be about that old or older. Nothing since has covered crystal spheres, or how separate campaign settings exist in one multiverse, in much detail at all, nor do recent editions (4e or 5e) get into a lot of details about the different levels of divinity and what they mean.

Anyway, overdeities are the ones “over” the other deities² in their particular crystal sphere.³ They set the rules for the sphere, including who gets to be a deity, what that means, what deities have to do, and so on. Ao is an unusually active overdeity, for example, and has changed the rules in Realmspace in response to the gods’ misbehavior on a few occasions. The hypothetical overdeity of Shardspace (Eberron) has an extremely light touch, to the point we can’t be certain they exist, but assuming they do it’s likely that one rule they do have is demanding similar subtlety from the deities that operate there, since we can’t be certain they exist either.

The High God fulfills these roles in Krynn, creating (or, at least, filling out⁴) the basic sphere of Krynnspace, and calling together the gods and telling them what to do. While considerably less active than Ao, the High God is nonetheless relatively active for an overdeity: though they have not interacted with Krynn since its creation except for one solitary time during the All-Saints War, most overdeities don’t have even that one exception.

With the High God as the overdeity of Krynnspace, the various ways in which overdeities differ from other deities answer your questions. Overdeities do not require worship; deities do. Overdeities do not have divine realms in the Outer Planes; (most) deities do.⁵ Overdeities have apparently absolute power over their respective crystal spheres, but are found nowhere else; no deity comes even close to that level of power, but they can operate across many spheres and outside of any.

Applied to the High God, this implies that they can do whatever they wish within Krynn, but have no presence or influence outside of it. Astinous’s history describes only Krynn, not how the wider multiverse developed.

  1. Different books use different terminology: “overdeity,” “overgod,” and “over-power” mean the same thing. I prefer “overdeity” and use it in this answer, but On Hallowed Ground uses “over-power” so I wanted to mention it. Note that I have also argued that what 5e calls “greater deities” are also actually overdeities, and not what were called “greater deities” in previous editions, but this is very much a speculative position at the moment.

  2. Overdeities differ from other deities in so many ways that personally I find it more helpful to think of them as not actually being deities at all, in the D&D sense, but rather being something else entirely above “deity.” (They also likely wouldn’t be considered deities in-setting either, if for no other reason than that almost no one even knows they exist—most overdeities interact solely with the deities under them and no one else.)

  3. A crystal sphere is basically cognate to a campaign setting: each sphere encompasses a solar system more or less. On one of the planets therein, we find a campaign setting we recognize—Realmspace has Abeir–Toril, Greyspace has Oerth, etc. There is probably one overdeity for each sphere, though this is just an assumption we make; plenty of spheres don’t have a known overdeity. It is the differences from one sphere to the next is often seen as evidence for one acting in each.

  4. The actual origins of the spheres and their corresponding overdeities is not known to anyone in the multiverse, most likely, excepting perhaps the overdeities themselves. (You could try asking a leShay but that’s a lot of risk at extremely long odds.) So we don’t know whether the overdeities created the spheres or simply came with them, or how much of the respective sphere was done for them versus what they choose and created.

  5. Some deities have divine realms on non-Outer planes, or simply don’t have realms at all, especially deities of travel or wandering. But they still can be met in person; overdeities cannot.

KRyan
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    A well given answer - succinct and without the tangential extraneousness often seen when discussing this topic. – NFeutz Jul 31 '21 at 22:41
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    Overdeities can be met in person. Cyric and Midnight met Ao before he made them gods. They can't be sought out to meet in person. – Douglas Aug 01 '21 at 19:18
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This is very late to the party, but there's a bit in the Epilogue of Waterdeep, the final book in the Avatar Crisis.

Ao closed his eyes and blanked his mind. Soon, he fell within himself and entered the place before time, the time at the edge of the universe, where millions and millions of assignments like his began and ended.

A luminous presence greeted him, enveloping his energies within its own. It was both a warm and a cold entity, forgiving and harsh. "And how does your cosmos fare, Ao?"

The voice was at once both gentle and admonishing.

"They have restored the Balance, Master. The Realms are once again secure."

Emphasis in this little excerpt is mine. While each Sphere seems to have its own unique high god, these high gods/overgods themselves seem to answer to a Master directly, each being one of many tasked with the creation of worlds, of which Toril is referenced to Ao earlier in the same epilogue as his personal favorite.

I can't find any other references to this individual CEO of overgods, but at least one exists, and seems to actively monitor the overdeities.

TheFallen0ne
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  • I'm fairly sure Waterdeep is not on Krynn but the Forgotten Realms. Different universe! The FR setting and DL setting don't exist in each other's universe, not even as realms, they are wholly separate. As such, the Waterdeep quote is a non-starter for this - things in the DL-setting work differently than in FR. Sorry. – Trish Jan 29 '23 at 10:27
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    The question was asked in the context of "the wider D&D multiverse," and it is confirmed that there are ways for entities both mortal and otherwise to travel back and forth between the two spheres. While given the context this doesn't give us a firm hand on who "The High God" is, with Takhisis and Paladine being confirmed as manifestations/aspects of Tiamat and Bahamut, the above passage gives us insight into the fact that neither Overpower is necessarily the actual top of their food chain, identified or not. It also opens the possibility that THG is an alternate of Ao. – TheFallen0ne Jan 29 '23 at 22:19
  • 2/2 As a followup, while I'm aware MW and TH have spoken against them being the same gods, this is one of the cases where I'm on the side of D&D having officially spoken and I'm not taking the authors' side. Takhisis and Paladine have been the 5 headed dragon queen and the platinum dragon since TSR. I love them for making the universe, but cheap is cheap. If MW wants to insist they are not in fact just planar reskins, then they should've done more than just change the name. Their iconography, characteristics, and even stat blocks are identical. Reskin or plagiarism, choose one. – TheFallen0ne Jan 29 '23 at 22:29
  • They fill the same slot in the pantheon of the two worlds, but the worlds are not connected and besides those two, the pantheons and setups are not equal. Tiamat/Bahamut are part of a very active pantheon of gods, while Thaksis/Paladine are part of a pantheon that was entirely forgotten before the events of the Chronicles. I accept the reskin part, but I do not accept that anything but the two is true for the greater Dragonlance universe without you pointing to a source that indicates that the FR pantheon besides the two dragons exists. In counterpoint: Raistlin is most certainly... – Trish Jan 30 '23 at 08:32
  • ...never a FR Deity, but in Dragonlance, he's canonically a god in one timeline. The only one even. In fact, the very point that Raistlin could undo gods in some way or another contradicts that Dragonlance follows the exact same FR rules for deities. – Trish Jan 30 '23 at 08:33
  • @Trish I agree Raistlin wouldn't be a god in FR, but he's a 'single sphere' deity that only occurs in an erased timeline, if I'm remembering my lore correctly, and Ao would be able to block him from entering in any event. However, there is canon to support that the worlds have traversal between them in official material; The Wizards Three out of Dragon Magazine #185 goes on to become a running tale of Elminster and Mordenkainen meeting with each other- they discuss inviting Dalamar Argent to join them, and the series progresses along with the interaction of the eponymous Three. Ran 'til 2007. – TheFallen0ne Jan 31 '23 at 01:49
  • Elminster himself is at varying points a vessel for differing amounts of Mystra's divine spark, and "The Weave" now seems to be a multiversal concept across the campaign worlds (perhaps a consequence of him leaking her power across the planes?) I can't point to more material for the following assumption but it seems there are many indicators that gods and mortals alike can cross sphere boundaries under certain circumstances - particularly those of extreme age/power which seem more inclined to exist in multiple realms. All three lunar gods could be aspects of Mystra's various incarnations. – TheFallen0ne Jan 31 '23 at 01:51
  • Or more likely, the various dragon offspring of Io, the progenitor dragon. Gilean (the third of the greater gods in the Triumvirate also consisting of Paladine and Takhisis), could certainly be said to be Chronepsis. – TheFallen0ne Jan 31 '23 at 01:57
  • @Trish Toril and Krynn have been planets explicitly present on the same plane (albeit different spheres/star systems), much less the same multiverse, in most editions of D&D, including the latest one. In 2e their respective spheres were even specifically placed near one another (and Oerth of Greyhawk), a region of space known as “The Triad.” I’m not at all sure what to make of this quote, but “Different universe!” is not consistently—or currently—true. – KRyan Jan 31 '23 at 14:45
  • @KRyan While we're discussing interplanar access between the campaign worlds, shout-out to Lord Soth, who accidentally's into Ravenloft of all places, from Krynn- and manages to return to his home world. Achievement Unlocked; Mistwalker. Contemplating this, I believe a few characters from FR have the same achievement; perhaps that's the point of overlap that allows traversal (without a tinkergnome airship or a spelljammer)? – TheFallen0ne Feb 01 '23 at 04:44
  • @TheFallen0ne Eeeehhhh... the entire Lord-Soth-in-Ravenloft thing was a mistake. The Dragonlance folks were angry it even happened, and ultimately it was they who wrote of his escape—and they weren’t inclined to treat Ravenloft any better than Ravenloft had treated Dragonlance. It’d all been pretty well ret-conned before 5e (technically there was a period where the canon was “The Mists took Lord Soth momentarily but then immediately put him right back”), and Van Richten’s (as poor a source as it is) doesn’t mention him at all. The only Darklord to escape is Vecna. – KRyan Feb 01 '23 at 06:02