u/Lonewolf2300

So, Dungeon Dad did a video about the Xixchil species, originally from Spelljammer.

Long story short, they're a species of mantis-folk with fine, scalpel-like manipulators at the end of their forelimbs, giving them great skill in fine crafts, but also in actual surgery. They are, in fact, masters of the art of surgery and body modification, but on themselves and on non-xixchil.

Naturally, this sounds like it would great with Eberron, adding to the "Magical Cyberpunk" feel of the setting, with Xixchil body modification surgery being slowly introduced into Khorvaire from Xixchil immigrants, before House Jorasco starts to look into the concept.

I'm thinking they might be Xendrik natives, although I'm also thinking they might have spawned in Khyber, or from one of the planes.

So, this is a concept that came to me while I was at work. Why would the Progenitor Dragons create the Plane of Madness? What was Xoriat's purpose in the mechanism that is the Orrery of Planes that surround Eberron?

Then I thought about the nature of Aberrations in general, as things that are disturbing to any normal Material creatures, as if they should not be.

And then it hit me. The Plane of Xoriat, the origin of Aberrations, is the Plane of Impossibilities. The Plane of Things That Should Not Be, and Maybe Never Were.

When the Progenitor Dragons came together to form the Eberron Cosmology, they gathered and shaped all sorts of concepts: Fire, Ice, Order, Chaos, Life, Death, etc. They built a mini-multiverse full of a near infinity of concepts.

And everything that didn't fit in these concepts ended up in Xoriat.

It's why nothing makes sense in Xoriat. There, sources of light instead create darkness, fire feels wet and water burns, and creatures with impossible anatomy abound.

Eberron and the other Twelve Planes are the planes that make sense. Xoriat is the plane of everything that doesn't make sense. It's a realm of things that don't belong in a sensible reality. And the Daelkyr invaded Eberron to make it more like Xoriat, so they would belong there.