In the Astral Plane, Thor shows Durkon and Minrah the graveyard of the uncountable worlds they have created which have all been eaten by the Snarl.
Cast[]
- Durkon Thundershield (as spirit) ◀ ▶
- Minrah Shaleshoe (as spirit) ◀ ▶
- Thor ◀ ▶
Transcript[]
- Panel 1, Page 1
Thor: We're here! This is just a little barrier we put up to keep out anyone who finds their way here by accident.
Thor: Not likely on an infinite plane, but better safe than sorry.
- Panel 2, Page 1
Thor points to a gravestone
Thor: There, do you see it? That's what I wanted to show you.
Durkon: Wha is it?
Thor: A monument that no one can know about.
Thor: A blank gravestone for a planet.
- Panel 3, Page 1
Thor: The first world the pantheons made was destroyed—and every soul devoured—by the Snarl.
Thor: A being of pure divine anger and frustration that we created by accident with our stupid petty squabbles.
- Panel 4, Page 1
Thor: After it attacked, we retreated here. We built this to remind ourselves of our failure.
Thor: We had a ceremony and everything.
Thor: Marduk cried. Tears streaming out of all four eyes.
- Panel 5, Page 1
Thor: So many existences lost forever.
Thor: Because we couldn't play nice.
- Panel 6, Page 1
Durkon: Tha's why ye haf so many rules b'tween tha gods now, aye? Ta prevent yer disagreements from formin' a second Snarl.
Thor: That's right. As much as I'd love to just ignore them outright, the risk is too high.
- Panel 7, Page 1
Thor: Anyway, after the first world was lost, we got together to make a second world.
Thor: One that would serve both as a home for mortals as well as a dimensional prision for the Snarl, which was still rampaging around empty space.
- Panel 8, Page 1
Thor: We put that world's gravestone over there.
Thor points to a second identical gravestone
- Panel 1, Page 2
Durkon: Lord Thor, I dinnae unnerstand. That second world...is tha not our world? Whar me an' Minrah grew up?
Thor: No.
- Panel 2, Page 2
Thor: The second world lasted four years before rifts formed in the fabric of the plane and the Snarl escaped, eating all of the mortals again.
Thor: But we learned a lot from our mistakes and made a third world, which was stronger.
- Panel 3, Page 2
Thor: That's its marker, over there.
Thor points to a third identical gravestone
- Panel 4, Page 2
Minrah: How many...how many worlds have the gods made?
Thor: Well, it's like my Dad says: We gods may have a lot of bad qualities—
- Panel 5, Page 2
Below them are countless identical gravestones, filling the bottom half of the page entirely.
Thor: —but we sure ain't quitters.
D&D Context[]
- Some sources posit that the Astral Plane is infinitesimal, rather than infinite, and that space and time have no meaning there. The D&D 3.5 SRD describes it as a "great endless sphere", suggesting it is indeed infinite in vanilla D&D 3.5.
Trivia[]
- The destruction of the first world and the creation of the second are described in The Crayons of Time series of strips.