Androlynne
Abyss — Layer the Four Hundred and Seventy First
The Seeping Woods, Savage Searing, Otaheti
The Nature of Evil: Violence—not for its own sake though, but in the artful corruption of innocence. Twisting it into an endless loop of hopelessness. Violence begets suffering by trapping the pure in a vicious cycle bound so tightly that even rescue becomes a form of torment.
Powers of Note: Pale Night (Abyssal Lord of forbidden knowledge, hybridity, mutation [she/her] / CE)
From the journals of Turpental, sensate and fool
Now cutter, getting into Androlynne ain’t like slipping through a handy portal in a back alley of the Hive, ya know? The 471st layer is down there in one of the deepest, least accessible reaches of the Abyss, right, and it guards its secrets jealously. I found my way there eventually through a portal in a crumbling archway in Sylvania. It was one of those dodgy ones that flicker in and out of existence—timing is everything you know, especially when you’re dealing with a destination that reality seems reluctant to acknowledge. The transition felt wrong, like I was pushing through a membrane that was pushing back, but when I eventually stumbled through to the other side, the first thing that struck me was how beautiful it all was.
Purple skies stretched overhead, not the roiling crimson chaos you’d expect in the Abyss mind, but delicate violet shot through with ribbons of gold. Rolling hills covered in flowers I couldn’t name—petals that shimmered with iridescent colours, forming patterns across the blue grass that grew in unlikely spirals. The air smelled of honeysuckle and something else underneath it, something copper-sweet that made my stomach lurch when I breathed too deeply. The ground was spongy-soft, yielding, and my boots kept getting stuck. It felt like the field was trying to decide whether to welcome me, or devour me.
But then I heard the screaming.
I jogged forwards automatically, cresting a gentle hillock, and below me stretched a battlefield that made the Blood War look organised. Celestials—archons, guardinals, even a few ghaele eladrin—locked in desperate combat with wave after wave of tanar’ri. But these weren’t the usual skirmishes where outsiders tear into each other to gain a few inches of territory. This one had a purpose. The celestials fought in defensive formations around groves of silver trees, and then I could see them—the children. Eladrin younglings, a few dozen of them visible from my vantage point, but with eyes much too old for their young faces, and movements too cautious for beings who should know nothing but play. This was them all right. An entire generation, trapped here since before the tanar’ri even overthrew the obyriths, they say, and still being hunted after all these millennia. They were fighting too, firing silver arrows and force barrages and whatever they could get their hands on, into the demonic fray.
I watched a solar step between a charging hezrou and a cluster of children, and then demon exploded in a column of golden light. The grass beneath the solar’s feet sprouted new flowers instantly. That’s when I tumbled to the dark of it—this layer is changing. The forces of good have been here so long, fighting so hard, that they’re literally transforming the Abyss from within. The beauty isn’t a disguise for horror like some layers, it’s both beauty and horror both at once, locked in eternal struggle.
I skirted the battle and made my way deeper, following rumours I’d heard of the Mother’s Mountain and managed to spy it through the clouds. As I’d expected, it looked deserted. Pale Night wasn’t in residence—sounds like the chant that she prefers her holdings in Baphomet’s maze these days is true after all. Just as well. I’ve heard what lies beneath that billowing white shroud she wears. It might give her a feminine shape but they say her true form beneath it is so horrific that reality itself refuses to accept it. They say that looking upon her actual body kills you instantly, as your mind simply stops. The Mother of Demons has been hunting these children for sport across eternity.
Later, I met up with a planetar near the edge of what the defenders called the Silver Marches—their name for the safe zones they’ve carved out. She had scars that festered with Abyssal taint, and eyes that had surely seen too much. I delivered the message I’d been paid to bring to her. No, berk, of course I didn’t read it, what kind of courier do you take me for. But I could resist asking her about herself and what in the Lower Planes she was doing here in the first place.
“We’ve been here for a thousands of years,” she told me. “We came to save them, and we can’t leave until we figure out how to break the contract. The moment we abandon our posts, Pale Night’s forces will slaughter every child here within days”.
“And the children?” I asked.
“They grow slowly here, but they do grow. Many are warriors now too, fighting beside us. But new children appear occasionally—strange echoes of that original sick bargain, re-manifesting like their trapped souls are bound to the layer. We think the pact is rewriting itself, creating new victims to fulfill its terms”.
Well, that pact doesn’t bind this berk, so I left through a flickering portal before the next demonic wave hit, the smell of honeysuckle and blood still clinging to my clothes.
Now here’s the thing about Androlynne that keeps me awake some nights: Pale Night’s clever trap that snared the eladrin children in the first place, well, it’s become a thorn in her side. She wanted to hunt down the innocent souls at her leisure, to savour their suffering across the ages. Instead, she’s drawn an army of the righteous into the Abyss—and they’re ain’t leaving. It seems every angel that falls is replaced by three more volunteers. Every demon that falls stays dead. The layer is slowly becoming celestial, flower by flower, hill by bloody hill. In a few more millennia, maybe it might not even be part of the Abyss anymore.
The Mother of Demons, undone by her own appetite for cruelty. I’d laugh if it weren’t for those children’s eyes—still afraid after all this time, still waiting to go home to an Arborea they’ve not seen in thousands of years.
Notable Locations on Androlynne
- Boldybingian Woods (site)
- Eddleston’s Blessing (celestial burg)
- Fen of Ill Odour (domain of the darkweaver Valastigor)
- Golmendicoria (tanar’ri burg)
- Golmendicorian War College (tactical headquarters)
- Hoppenstain Run (river)
- Lake Lambrador (site, haunted lake)
- Melantonberg (celestial burg)
- Mother’s Mountain (domain of Pale Night)
- Night’s Grasp (abandoned castle)
- Pascorel (celestial burg)
- Silver Marches (safe zone)
Turpental’s field notes, annotated
Won’t Someone Think of the Eladrin Children?
So what’s with the nippers? Millennia ago, the Abyssal Lord Pale Night orchestrated one of the most blasphemous acts in Arborean history—somehow she engineered a pact with Ascodel, an eladrin lord who sought to cleanse the Abyss of its obyrith taint. Through guile, disguise, and trickery—that frankly, nobody understands even to this day—she lured Ascodel into trusting her with an entire generation of eladrin children. Promising sanctuary and safety amidst the chaos of war, she instead bound them eternally to Androlynne through dark magic.
Boldybingian Woods
The first portals in from the Upper Planes opened here, and while they are unreliable and patchy, they haven’t closed yet. The woods themselves are towering trees, with bark that shimmers like mother-of-pearl, the canopy they create so thick it creates permanent twilight below. The trees pulse with celestial energy—if you step beneath those boughs you’ll feel your wounds start to knit closed, your despair lift slightly. Ki-rin nest in the highest branches, and I spotted what looked like a hollyphant grazing on luminescent moss near a spring that tasted of starlight. The demons won’t come here; they can’t. The layer itself rejects them within the Boldybingian borders. It’s the closest thing to sanctuary the Abyss has ever produced, which should be impossible, but here we are.
The tragedy though, is the ki-rin don’t let the eladrin younglings come here either. While it’s one of the few safe places on the layer, if one of the children found one of the portals back home, and then realised they weren’t able to go through them and escape the Abyss—well, the anguish that would create would be epic in scale. Have you even seen an eladrin wither away and die from sorrow? Cutter, it ain’t something I’d wish on anyone.
The Hoppenstain Run
A river that shouldn’t exist, with water the colour of liquid silver shot through with veins of gold. The northern bank belongs to the demons—Sneer, a jovoc warrior who’s more scars than skin, commands there alongside Vulgorger, a glabrezu who hoards the weapons of fallen celestials. The southern bank is celestial territory. The river itself is contested, which means the water runs red more often than silver. I watched the current carry bodies downstream—demon and archon tangled together, still locked in combat even as they dissolved into the Abyssal waters, which seem to be harmful to holy and profane creatures alike. Neither side controls the bridges; they’ve been destroyed and rebuilt so many times that parts of them exist in multiple states simultaneously, both standing and rubble.
Pascorel, Melantonberg and Eddleston’s Blessing
This place is the lynchpin of the celestial defense, a fortified settlement built where three hills converge. There are stone walls reinforced with prayers, and watchtowers manned by archons who never sleep, because they literally don’t need to. Inside, mortal volunteers—humans mostly, a few halflings, even some tieflings seeking redemption—drill constantly under the command of four faerie generals: Honeydip, Appelstance, Thornswallow, and Popinjay. Yes cutter, those are their actual names. I watched Thornswallow orchestrate a defensive formation that would make a Harmonium officer green with envy, all while looking like he was serving tea at a garden party. The eladrin children shelter here when the fighting gets too intense, though they chafe at being protected. Can’t say I blame them—spending millennia as the prize in someone else’s war would grate on anyone’s nerves.
The other major settlements are both positioned to reinforce Pascorel when the demons make their periodic pushes. Melantonberg is grimmer, built around a permanent gate to Mount Celestia that pumps reinforcements into the layer. Every archon that falls is replaced within days. Eddleston’s Blessing has a different character—it’s where the moon dogs congregate, and where mortal clerics maintain shrines to their various powers. I saw a priest of the Triad blessing weapons next to a druid of the Seldarine, neither one questioning the other’s theology because the children don’t care which god you pray to as long as you fight. War can makes strange allies.
Night’s Grasp
Empty. Pale Night doesn’t live here anymore, preferring her tower in Baphomet’s Endless Maze, which I think is the 600th layer, if I remember. Her horrid castle, Night’s Grasp, still stands though—a massive structure that looks like a demonic castle being grappled by a clawed hand reaching toward the purple sky, built entirely from the bones of creatures I couldn’t identify, and wouldn’t want to. Ambulatory skeletons patrol the grounds, and severed hands crawl across the walls like spiders. The place festers with the stench of obyrith magic, that particular wrongness that predates the tanar’ri, that reminds you the Abyss wasn’t always this kind to mortal comprehension. I didn’t go inside of course. Some sensations aren’t worth experiencing. They say those who wander into her domain become new guardians for it, and I’m rather attached to my current skeletal configuration.
The locals avoid it entirely, celestials and demons alike. It’s become a kind of neutral ground by default, because neither side wants to risk angering whatever defensive wards still lurk in those bone halls. Even Faerinaal, the consort of Queen Morwel who leads the defence operations, gives the castle a wide berth when he makes his rounds.
The funny thing about Androlynne though, while the actual ruler is absent, the layer itself is starting to reject its Abyssal nature. The war grinds on simply because no one can figure out how to stop it. The wicked pact that binds the eladrin children here is too complex to break, too ancient to understand fully. So the celestials keep trying, the demons keep dying, and somewhere in the Endless Maze, Pale Night sits in her Abyssal second home, watching her grand revenge that’s slowly become her greatest failure.
I’d call it poetic justice if there weren’t still children cowering behind Pascorel’s walls, waiting for freedom that might never come.
Movers and Shakers of Androlynne
- Albroghast (planar ghalzarokh tanar’ri [he/him] / CE)
- Appelstance, General (planar faerie [she/her] / CG)
- Belchander (planar bar-lgura tanar’ri [he/him] / CE)
- Brightcoat (prime elf commander [she/her] / CG)
- Brightflame, Prince Archosian (prime elf commander-general [he/him / CG)
- Faerinaal, the Prince of Dreams (planar tulani eladrin [he/they] / CG)
- Gursonswarm (planar marilith tanar’ri [she/her] / CE)
- Guskalor (planar armanite tanar’ri [they/them] / CE)
- Hallowend, Prince (prime elf commander-general [he/they] / CG)
- Honeydip, General (planar faerie [she/her] / CG)
- Illmonad (planar ciratto tanar’ri [they/them] / CE)
- Pale Night (Abyssal lord, absent)
- Popinjay, General (planar faerie commander [she/her] / CG)
- Shaichen (planar couatl [they/them] / LG)
- Sneer (planar jovoc tanar’ri [he/him] / CE)
- Thornswallow, General (planar faerie commander [they/them] / CG)
- Vulgorger (planar glabrezu tanar’ri [he/him] / CE)
Canonical References
- Dungeon Magazine #148 p57
- Fiendish Codex 1 [3e] p75,148-150 including a map
Other References:
Canonwatch: Entries are from D&D canon unless otherwise marked, although when the canon is sparse I’ve got creative with the details; † adapted from a 3rd party publication; ‡ homebrew.
Source: Jon Winter-Holt
