Abellio

[ Arcadia ] [ Abellio | Buxenus | Nemausus ]

Abellio

Arcadia — Layer the First

The Physic Gardens of Abellio

Themes of the Layer: Pastoral Utopia, Nature Tamed and Orgnanised for the Benefit of the Community

Abellio represents the organisation of nature for the mutual benefit of society. The inhabitants work in harmony with nature and nature responds in kind. In the harmonious ecosystem even the wild beasts contribute to the common good. It is the plane of treading lightly and taking only what you need. Abellio is often called the plane of plenty—vegetation grows abundantly without pests, gardens are beautifully organised without weeds, and orchards bestow bountiful crops.

Vistas of Abellio

Gardens: Abellio is an endless stretch of orderly plains dotted with a few mountains and hills, and more than a few gardens. The Gardens of Abellio are famous across the Upper Planes for their meticulous beauty, with flowers organised into rows and always blooming. Gardens range in styles from English country garden, to the Garden of Eden, or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. There are no weeds in Arcadia; plants only grow where they are supposed to. The Physic Gardens are places where healers grow herbs with magical or medicinal properties; Arcadia is a plane of health and healing too.

Forests: Abellian forests are organised and pristine, with trees growing in straight lines at a uniform height. The wood is strong and true, and excellent for building, consequently most architecture on Abellio is wooden. There are forest of maple trees where thriae tap the trunks for their sweet nectar and orchards of abundant fruit which grows wild.

Farmland: Farms in Abellio grow lavender, vegetables, fruits, grapevines, and sunflowers in neat lines, all pollinated by and tended by thriae. Orchards grow Arcadian apples, pears, cherries, organised by colour. Vineyards of grapes of all colours grow perfect fruits. 

Waterways: Rivers in Abellio run straight like canals, criss-crossing the plane at regular intervals providing transport and irrigation. Locks occur regularly to assist river boats going against the flow.

Mazes: Labyrinths of trees, bushes, rock and plant tunnels can be found all across the layer. Whether they spring up on their own or are grown and tended by guardians, none are sure. Mazes act to confound invaders, for those who are not lawful find them considerably more difficult to navigate.

Roads: The roads of Abellio are a network of straight lines. These roads are usually bounded by steep and well-groomed hedges, partly to guide the way and partly to discourage wandering off the path. Others are tree tunnels, where the regularly-spaced trees on either side of the thoroughfare grow over the road and interlock their branches,

Beings of Abellio: Thriae, petitioners, Harmonium factioneers and refugees from Lower Planar conflict

Ruler: The de facto rulers of Arcadia are the Storm Kings, four bloods who control the weather of the whole plane. Using ancient magics, they’ve mastered the shifting vagaries of clouds and wind, rain and lightning. Each of the kings (who are called kings no matter their gender) controls one of the elements of the weather, and they work in tandem to produce startling displays. Of course, they can manifest their elements singly, but the Rain King and the Lightning King usually choose to reserve their abilities for use with Wind and Cloud. When they work singly or in pairs, the Storm Kings produce normal weather; when they work in threes of all together, they generate the storms. When it storms in one place in Arcadia, it storms across the whole plane. The Storm Kings can exempt areas from the storm, but they rarely choose to do so. 

They follow their own laws, laid down eons ago by some forgotten power. Though the weather sometimes seems as chaotic as on any prime world, the Storm Kings do have a set of rules by which they determine the weather for the plane. It’s no dark that there’s never a storm that lasts more than 24 hours, or one rotation of the Orb of Day and Night. Any storm that comes it at least three days after the last one, and they’re never separated by more than one week.

The Storm Kings live in citadels spaced evenly around the Orb of Day and Night, at what a prime would call the compass points of the plane. Each of them is infinitely far from the mountain of the Orb, yet can be reached in 3-18 days of travel. The citadels reach high into the skies – the peaks of the citadels cannot be seen, for they vanish into a mysterious haze 1,000 feet in the air. Chant’s that from the tips of the towers, the storm kings can see all the way across the infinite plane.

The Storm Kings act as watchful eyes of the plane and express their displeasure with bad weather. When the more severe storms hit the plane, the einherar become restless, and hunt all the more vigorously for the interlopers who have surely upset the perfect harmony of the Arcadian meadows.

Locations of Abellio

• Anvil of Creation (realm of Reorx)
• Bastion of Law (realm of Saint Cuthbert)
• Broumillia (citadel of the Cloud King)
• Cherry Blosson (realm of Izanagi and Izanami)
• Donnerstan (citadel of the Thunder King)
• Fujiyama (planar pathway)
• Garden of Delight (thriae burg)
• Ghetto, the (mongrelfolk burg)
• Holier than Thou (independent burg)
• Mandible (formian burg)
• Marduk (realm of Marduk)
• Ministry of Rewards, the (realm of Lu Hsing)
• Mount Clangeddin (realm of Clangeddin Silverbeard)
• Mu Eridani (independent burg)
• Nature’s Calm (independent burg)
• Orb of Day and Night (site)
• Pleuvia (citadel of the Rain King)
• Port Veracity (realm of Hakiyah)‡
• River Eridanus (planar pathway)
• Thessaly (city of Bees)
• Tlalocan (realm of Azul)
• Via Romana (planar pathway)
• Zephasia (citadel of the Wind King)

Powers of Abellio

• Azul (Aztec power of rain)
• Clangeddin Silverbeard (dwarven power of war)
• Hakiyah the Honest (Zakharan power of truth and the wind)
• Izanagi (Japanese power of creation)
• Izanami (Japanese power of creation)
• Lu Hsing (Chinese power of bureaucracy)
• Marduk (Mesopotamian power of cities)
• Reorx (dwarven power of creation)
• Rill Cleverthrush (gnomish power of invention)
• Saint Cuthbert (Oerdian power of truth)
• Vandria Gilmadrith (elven power of war)

Philosophies of Abellio

• Harmonium
• Shepherds of Arcadia

More details to follow!

Source: Jon Winter-Holt