[ Pandemonium ] [ Pandesmos | Cocytus | Phlegethon | Agathion ]
Pandemonium
The Howling Lands, the Maddening Plane
Pandemonium is a good place to go mad and end it all. The labyrinthian tunnels of Pandemonium ain’t just insanely tangled and as desolate as a barmies graveyard, but they’re filled with wind like the screaming of tortured powers. You can hear all sorts of things on the wind in Pandemonium, none of it pleasant. It sort of marks a blood’s soul, does this place.
LAYER THE FIRST: PANDESMOS
Imagine an endless expanse of light-snuffing rock with tunnels twisting this way and that. Often they open out into vast caverns or bore down into narrow crawlspaces. And the wind, cutter! Sometimes a stale breeze but more often a powerful gale, the wind never sleeps. It carries the sounds of insanity; screams, cries, an incessant buzz. It’ll drive a body barmy before long too. Of the four layers of Pandemonium, Pandsmos is the least uninhabitable, and some of the larger caverns contain sparse settlements clinging on to the rock like limpets. Gravity here orientates towards the nearest wall, so a cutter can walk—or be blown—up the walls and across the ceiling. The locals are a bad-tempered bunch, driven half-mad by the winds and the other half by the darkness. This is the plane of incessant paranoia and twitching insanity.
LAYER THE SECOND: COCYTUS
Called the Layer of Lamentation by detractors and inhabitants alike, Cocytus is also a confusing mass of tunnels through rock, but these ones have been chiselled out by unseen hands. Whoever did it is long gone and were clearly quite insane, because these passageways twist, turn and overlap each other in all dimensions. They’re much more narrow here than on Pandesmos, and seem to have been carved in a way to make the unceasing wind wail and moan like a barmy banshee. Gravity here orientates towards the walls, making navigation of this place even more of a maddening challenge. This is the plane of loss and sorrow, so intense it’ll drive a cutter mad.
LAYER THE THIRD: PHLEGETHON
The tunnels of Phlegethon are ice cold and pitch dark, and even the wind has lost some of its ferocity. Once smooth walls, looking like they were bored out by some enormous tunnelling creature, the constant drip of water over the millenia have filled the ceilings with stalactites and the floors with stalagmites. Yes, gravity here is ‘normal’, meaning the mineral-rich waters drip incessantly. The rock here seems to absorb light and heat, making Phlegethon even more forlorn than the higher layers of Pandemonium, if that’s possible. This is the plane of bitter loneliness.
LAYER THE FOURTH: AGATHION
The strangest and deadliest layer of Pandemonium, Agathion is almost entirely solid, light-stealing, soul-crushing rock. Here and there are isolated pockets of space; cavern-bubbles unconnected to any other, some with air and some filled with pure void. It’s a place of sensory deprivation, except for the wind which still somehow finds its way into any place with air. This is the hiding-place of the powers; inaccessible vaults of absolute seclusion and impenetrability. This is the plane of secrets that need to be forgotten.
Powers of Pandemonium
- Anshar (Babylonian power of darkness)
- Auril (Faerûnian power of winter)
- Belinik (Cerilian power of feuds)
- Cyric (Faerûnian power of murder)
- Diirinka (derro power of magic)
- Eloéle (Cerilian power of darkness)
- Erythnul (Oerdian power of malice)
- Garagos the Reaver (Faerûnian power of destruction)
- Gorrelik (wandering power)
- Ho Masubis (Japanese power of fire)
- Hruggek (bugbear power of violence)
- Loki (Norse power of trickery)
- Talos (Faerûnian power of earthquakes)
- Tuonetar (Finnish power of the dead)
- Tuoni (Finnish power of the underworld)
- Zeboim (Krynnish power of envy)
More details to follow!
Source: Jon Winter-Holt and Alex Roberts
