https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Far_Realm
Opening Thoughts:
The Far Realm; D&D's homage to Lovecraft, the semi-obligatory Plane of Aberrations, and the one lasting major influence of 3rd edition on the Great Wheel. What is there to say about this plane?
A Brief Guide:
We open with a half-page of flavor text describing the Far Realm, which establishes that it lies "outside" of the known multiverse, a part of the theoretical realm of timeless infinity beyond both the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos.
Apart from this, it's mostly a condensed description that, to me at least, feels like it was taken from the expanded Far Realm planar description in Dragon #330's "Into the Far Realm" - it is described as an "amoebic sea" filled with vast, alien entities whose contemplations are so alien that reality itself warps and changes in their presence; a semi-solid mass of translucent onion-thin layers pierced by bone-white rivers of foul fluid, where blue acidic slime dissolves all it touches and viscous worms wend through writhing cilia and lichen-like encrustations. The plane is alien and strange, so much so that those who dare to try and understand it are lucky if they come away with blasted sanity, and at worst are subsumed and corrupted into monsters themselves.
Really, if you're familiar with the Far Realm from 3e, there's nothing outright new here.
Behind the Scenes: The Far Realm Comes of Age:
This sidebar claims that the Far Realm goes back to the 2nd edition module "Gates of Firestorm Peak". Having never read that module, I cannot comment on this claim. I can substantiate that it was given further prominence in 3rd edition, although, as the sidebar notes, it was never made an "official" part of the cosmology, instead always being treated at as an add-on.
In the World Axis, that has changed. The Far Realm, whilst still a strange and alien place, with much of the definition being left to individual DMs, is treated as being as much a part of the canon multiverse as the more "central" planes. The reason why? To the Scramjet team, the Far Realm offers possibilities for redesigning and strengthening various aberrations by giving them a new source of background lore to tap into, and it also gives aberrations as a whole a greater connectivity as a monster type.
This is important if you're familiar with the way that 3e repeatedly threw out new aberrations at the wall and hoped that some of them would at least stick.
The specific example given of how this might work is the aboleths, and I think this deserves a quote:
Consider aboleths. Although they have long been part of the D&D game, they’ve never enjoyed the prominence of mind flayers or beholders—they’ve long been just weird aquatic monsters. But make them Far Realm intruders in the world, and a whole new vista of story and game possibilities opens up. Imagine that the aboleths of today represent a remnant population of a failed colonization attempt during the dawn of the universe, even before the gods and primordials entered into their bitter conflict. Some are degraded monsters that creep through the dark, watery places of the world, but some yet recall why and whence they came, and one day they will try again to make the world a breeding haven for all their immeasurably large clan in the Far Realm. Indeed, they still resemble their relatives in that amoebic domain.
Aberrant Creatures:
This subtopic talks a little more about aberrations as a whole. It starts by telling us that, whilst all aberrations are ultimately connected to the Far Realm, precisely how strong this bond is varies between the species - aboleths are strongly tied to their plane of origin, whilst beholders are all but oblivious to it. Then it explains that despite this shared origin, aberrations do not automatically cooperate, and in fact some species are almost defined by their antipathy towards each other - the specific example given is of aboleths and illithids, who seek each other's mutual extermination.
From here, we are then told that aberrations often spawn spontaneously in places marked by planar bleed from the Far Realm. Such tainted spots can produce many uniquely foul species, most of which die once removed from the baleful emanations of that plane, but some of which prove strong enough to survive and propagate in a more wholesome environment. Reading between the lines, this is basically encouraging DMs to use "tainted ground" as a chance to introduce unique or otherwise "once-off" aberrations - if your players like them, then you can have them become recurring threats; otherwise, they're simply wiped out once the breach is sealed and the Far Realm driven back.
The last paragraph simply mentions that some aberrations are the result of crazed practitioners deliberately experimenting with the mutagenic energies of the Far Realm.
Aberration is Not a Type:
This short, two-paragraph subchapter discusses the reason behind splitting type and origin, explaining that the new setup allows for a recognizable creature type to gain very different traits dependant on origin. For example, it discusses the Humanoid type, citing humans as having the Natural origin, eladrin as having the Fey origin, and archons as having the Elemental origin. Then it invites you to speculate what a Humanoid with the Aberrant origin is like:
If you’re like me, perhaps you’ve just imagined a human-shaped bulk with translucent, jellylike flesh that constantly pulses and flows, etching acidic footprints into the ground behind its passage. Or maybe a mind flayer springs to mind.
It concludes by noting that the change from Type to Origin gives the Aberrations a lot more diversity than they once had, without necessarily forcing them to all adhere to a common set of traits or rules.
Mind Flayers:
The last of this chapter's subtopics, barring the associated sidebars, this is an extended flavor writeup of illithids in the World Axis.
Summarizing drastically, illithids are an aberrant species that originated from some form of Far Realm parasite, but which has drastically and successfully adapted to the mortal world - so much so that they find it more hospitable than the plane of their origin, which is the root of their enmity with aboleths (the aboleths want the Far Realm to consume reality; the illithids want to keep things as-is and take it over). In the distant past, they ruled over a massive empire that spanned across the planes and multiple worlds; mention is made of entire humanoid populations being exterminated in grotesque feeding frenzies, suns drained to power illithid interplanar conquests, and whole continents being set aside for slave races to serve as beasts of burden, military fodder, and livestock feed. But they were broken when their slaves rebelled, and reduced to a shattered remnant of their former selves. They still dream of making a come-back, and that drives everything that they do.
Mention is also made of the original Illithid sourcebook, AD&D's Illithiad, and claims that the Sargonne Prophecies introduced in that book were actually referring to the Far Realm, but were "mistakenly" taken as describing the mind flayers as time travelers. It concludes by noting that the explicit connection of illithids to the Far Realm actually doesn't change anything about who they are or how they act in practice.
Behind the Scenes: Mind Flayer Mechanics:
This sidebar talks about how illithids, for all their iconic status, were actually pretty complicated to run in previous edition, citing the psionics and the complex systems for handling the illithid ability to eat enemy brains in mid-battle. It then assures us that the 4e illithid will benefit from 4e's new monster design mechanics by being much simpler to run and easier to understand how their abilities work.
Behind the Scenes: If it Ain't Broke...
Simple and direct, this sidebar reassures us that whilst the design team did make canges in pursuit of the goal of making D&D more fun, more plaayble and more compelling, they also sought to avoid changing elements merely for the sake of changing. They cite illithids as a specific example of this; beyond unavoidable rule adaptations, illithids haven't changed at all. In fact, I think we deserve a quote here:
They still look the same: rubbery, grayish-purple humanoids with octopoid heads in gothic robes. They remain powerful telepaths, solitary masterminds who manipulate hosts of weak-willed thralls to do their bidding. The deepest portions of the Underdark still shelter horrible cities and kingdoms of mind flayers, organized around mighty disembodied intellects known as elder brains. Mind flayers still plot evil schemes to overthrow surface dwellers and, in the darkness, devour their consciousness. In other words, mind flayers are still tentacle-faced horrors that eat your brain.
How much better can you summarize it?
Closing Thoughts:
The Far Realm chapter is short and, frankly, a little underwhelming in my opinion. I'm not exactly the biggest fan of aberrations, mainly because I'm not a huge fan of Lovecraft or the stereotypical Lovecraft derived idea of "cosmic horror makes you go immediately insane when you try to understand it". So this is pretty much my least favorite chapter, though that's less because it's inherently bad and more because I'm inherently biased against it. There's nothing really new here, but it does make the plane and the aberrations fit a little better both together and into the wider cosmology, so it deserves props for that.
Final Review:
And that's the end of this first book! Wizards Presents: Worlds & Monsters was our first glimpse at the upcoming World Axis, and I personally found it incredibly tempting. I mean, I was also deeply invested in the new "core world" of 4e, and I remember deeply upset that we never got the promised Nentir Vale Gazetteer, but the cosmology spoke to me in a way that, frankly, the Great Wheel has never done.
This book is a very good teaser of things to come. It paints a tantalizing picture of the World Axis, and it shows us where it's coming from - not every single little detail, but it does show there was a reason for why the design team created it, and they weren't just trying to upset all the players of 3rd edition.
I really don't know what else to say... tune in next time and we'll cover the planar content in 4e's Dungeon Master's Guides!