1920s Psychology and the Planes of Eberron

As many people already know, Eberron draws a lot of influence from the American 1920s; Art Deco, Noir, and many other features of the setting specifically evoke aesthetics from a hundred years ago. Eberron's worldbuilding features a theory of the mind deeply rooted in 1920s psychology, embodied in the world by three planes: Thelanis, Dal Quor, and Xoriat. This analytic underpinning to the setting shapes not just the themes of the planes but of the associated lore - in this post I focus on the goblinoids and the Empire of Dhakaan, but other aspects of the setting are also open to analysis under this framework.

Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious: Thelanis and Dal Quor

For those familiar with the fey and faerie tales, Thelanis may seem a bit odd; it's not strictly a separate, magical world governed by strange rules, especially around hospitality. Instead of being a world apart, Thelanis is a realm of stories.

The reason Thelanis feels a bit off compared to the more classical depiction of the fey found in official WotC content like Wild Beyond the Witchlight is that Thelanis is a view of they filtered through Jungian psychoanalysis. Stories do not describe a separate, fantastic world; they describe us, representing manifest truths embedded in our psyche as embodied by fundamental archetypes. While Keith uses more fantastic names, like the Mother of Invention, these characters are not fey in the traditional sense - there is no Oberon running around Thelanis - they are manifestations of Jungian archetypes.

This isn't an indictment of Thelanis, for the record - it's a recontextualization that clarifies how Thelanis supports Eberron's worldbuilding. In both traditional faerie tales and more modern stories like Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz, faeries are associated with a separate, magical world that contrasts the mundane. In Eberron, Thelanis reinforces the themes of the 1920s aesthetic by accepting that the world is already full of magic and fantasy - instead, Thelanis is about psychological desires and framing.

All but one of Eberron's planes has a matched pair, with Dolurrh the realm of the dead being the exception. For Thelanis, it's Dal Quor, the plane of dreams. Joseph Campbell, an author Keith is certainly familiar with and whose work was deeply influenced by Jung, once said that "Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths." Stories have an inherent logic and structure, while dreams are far more chaotic - but both deal with the imagination and the attempt to understand the world around us.

Enter the goblins. The Uul Dhakaan is a work of epic spellcraft by the bard Jhazaal Dhakaan that created a permanent dreamscape for the goblins to share.

This is explicitly a theory of the mind rooted in the work of Jung and to a lesser extent Freud; there is no sense that the mind is a purely rational decider, nor is there a sense that the mind is a function of neurobiology. Jhazaal reshaped the collective unconscious of the Dar, enabling millennia of stable rule until the interference of the Daelkyr (more on them later). This is a framing of history and psychology that only makes sense through the lens of Jungian psychology; the very concept of subconscious inspiration and instict, let alone a mass reshaping of it, relies on the legacy of Jung & Freud.

However, this does leave a gap; while Dal Quor is part of the collective unconscious in Eberron's worldbuilding, the goblins have not truly been integrated with Thelanis. The most we have is the sense that a dar would perceive an archfey differently; in Keith Baker's threshold game, the goblin in the party perceived the King Under the Mountain as another goblinoid. We also know that the Dhakaani Empire came into conflict with the various feyspires of Khorvaire; the modern Darguul are in conflict with Shae Joridal.

Moving into more speculative, rather than kanon-analytical territory, there's something new that WotC has introduced — fey goblins. Baseline, these fey goblins are more rooted in a traditional understanding of the fey, as creatures from a separate, magical world. This was a good choice for baseline D&D, but doesn't fit great into Eberron because the history of goblins is deeply rooted in the Material Plane. However, canon and even kanon doesn't have to limit us. We know of interactions between the material and Thelanis; Eladrin were transformed into Elves by the ancient giants, while the gnomes went into Pylas Pyrial and were transformed by its powers.

What I'm suggesting is that the goblins, as an extension of the Dream of Dhakaan, further sought to conquer and solidify the empire's hold in the collective unconscious. Jhazaal's epic magic was able to create a stable, permanent region within Dal Quor, but that in part was possible because Dal Quor is fundamentally malleable. The sea of dreams was susceptible to being shaped, and unlike Kythri it is not fundamental to the plane for it to resist change. The chot'uul monks still have to maintain the work, but the point is that it was doable. By contrast, Thelanis is much more manifest... and accessible. Furthermore, as the "rationalists" they are, the Dhakaani may have sought to further conquer the subconscious and unconscious by any means necessary - leading them to seek to invade and conquer Thelanis itself. This of course ultimately failed (the details of the conflict are left up to the DM and what fits their game), but provides a route for fey goblinoids as the reminder of that conflict, whether it was an attempt to adapt to the plane to better control it or a consequence of Dhakaani forces being co-opted by the powers of Thelanis.

There's other places within the setting to examine the interplay of Thelanis and Dal Quor, such as Taer Lian Doresh or the Cul'sir Empire, but that's beyond the scope of this post.

Horror and Dreams: Thelanis and Xoriat

Another connection between these three planes is the topic of dreams, which was the original question that prompted this post; on Keith's patreon, a patron asked

Keith's answer was that

In a response, I highlighted how this connects to 1920s psychology, to which Keith said

Something from this that I think could use more elaboration is the aesthetic parallels of Folk Horror (which in Eberron is often tied to Thelanis) and Cosmic Horror (which is most often tied to Xoriat). Both feature creepy cults just beneath the surface of seemingly ordinary life; the difference between Midsommar and the Shadow over Innsmouth is that in Folk Horror, the ultimate horror is uncanny - it is familiar but disturbing - while the horror in cosmic horror is alien.

Horror of these genres play to the insecurities of the early 20th century - the idea that all scientific progress has done is reveal how little we truly know. Advancements in physics, such as Einstein's Theory of General Relativity (1916) had a huge pop culture impact in parallel with the psychology of Freud and Jung. Early cosmic horror authors like H.P. Lovecraft played to these ideas in the cultural consciousness with their stories about the ultimate failure of scientific rationalism.

To elaborate, I'm going to use the Greenhaunt, a forest in northern Breland that used to be connected to its adjacent woods before human deforestation. A part who wanders into town and finds a mysterious cult worshipping something ancient in the forest that is only sated with blood sacrifices, lest the woods consume the town entirely. One cult could be disciples of Avassh, the Twister of Roots. The other could be greensinger druids who serve the Forest Queen. Both entities are powerful planar forces who claim dominion over the woods; the differences between folk and cosmic horror at this point is the familiarity with which the revelations are portrayed - is the entity being placated a familiar but primeval force like the Forest Queen, or an alien force like Avassh?

If you wanted to do a campaign about this in Eberron, I'd suggest having the party be Templars of the Silver Flame, sent to investigate mysteries and protect people from the supernatural; the tone of your game decides whether this is x-files, supernatural, or a series of outright horror movies. Integrating this with the original question posed to Keith, strange dreams can provide clues, revelations, or guide party members down dangerous paths.

Even if you're not interested in horror and mystery, the aesthetics of both folk and cosmic horror make for good pulp adventures. Instead of whatever entity being terrifying and beyond the mortal ken, a bag of holding full of blast disks down the gullet while the hero swings away on a rope is a pulp staple; the third act of Guillermo del Toro's first Hellboy movie is a great example of how pulp frequently borrows from the aesthetics of cosmic horror.

As a sidebar, there's something to be said here about how colonialism plays a role in these two genres - the turn of the 20th century was a high time of the British looting its colonies for cultural artifacts - but I'm not familiar enough with the history there to articulate anything intelligent.

Mind-Body Dualism, Lamannia, and the orcs

The last bit here gets back to core Eberron lore, namely the conflict that felled the Dhakaani empire. The Daelkyr invaded, the Kapaa'vola destroyed the goblin's connection to the Uul Dhakaan, and it was ultimately the Gatekeeper orcs that bound the Daelkyr within Khyberian demiplanes. However, I think there's a new angle to explore here, which is Lamannia's relationship with the three planes that define Eberron's theory of the mind.

Keith posits that

Specifically, Lamannia is a rejection of psychology that states that world is defined by subconscious imagery; there's no need for metaphors or stories, it just is. While Keith in 2017 framed the differences between Goblins and Orcs as the conflict between law and chaos, this was before Exploring Eberron elaborated on the setting's theory of the mind. A more current interpretation would be to distinguish the two ancestries by their relationship with the mind. Goblins seek to control the unconscious, to subjugate it. Orcs reject the mind in favor of the body. What this suggests is that orcs might have what we consider to be a more modern theory of the mind, that the mind is the result of physiological processes. You're angry because you're hungry; you're annoyed because you're sick. This would also suggest that the orcs have a tradition of alchemy, in a medicinal approach to the mind.

A complicating factor here is the Cults of the Dragon Below tied to Xoriat, which are repeatedly emphasized as popular in the Shadow Marches. However, I don't think upsets things too much; as Lamannia's counterpart, Xoriat is a realm of the unnatural in body as well as the unnatural in mind. Furthermore, Xoriat succeeding in corrupting a culture doesn't change orc's baseline rejection of the unconscious as an influence of their lives.