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I’ve Told it Once, I’ve Told it a Thousand Times
Yeah, I’m a planewalker. Sure, I’ve been around a bit. Hells, I even walked around the Great Ring once. That’s how come I know my mimir’s got the best sodding chant on the planes you can find: I recorded it. I’m sure the tale’ll become clearer as you ask more questions of my metallic friend the mimir, but I’ll say it here for the terminally Clueless:
I Have Seen the Planes
I have heard sounds that no mortal has ever dreamed of, and seen colours unknown to any but the powers themselves. I make these bold claims knowing you will not believe them, but I know in my heart that they could be the truth. You see, I can no Longer separate Reality from Possibility. This story I shall tell some day, but there are more pressing matters at hand. Your Education, for One…
The Middle of the Ring
| The Outlands. The Land. The Plane at the Centre. The Concordant Opposition. A balance of all ideas that sum to zero: that’s the contradiction of the Outlands. It’s a plane without its own identity, as the personality of its neighbours rubs deep into its fabric. Or maybe it does have its own character: both Sigil and the Hinterlands lie outside the Rings, both impossible yet strangely familiar at the same time… | ||
Planes of Chaos
| The Abyss. The Plane of Infinite Horrors. The Vilest Plane of All. So say some planewalkers, anyway. If you’ve been to to the Abyss, it’s unlikely you’d be arguing, too, cutter. It’s the home plane of the tanar’ri, possibly the cruelest and most vicious race on all the planes. Even the tanar’ri, though, pale into insignificance when you compare ’em with the nastiness of the Abyssal Lords… | ||
| Arborea. The Land of Eternal Bliss. The Plane of Passions. Arborea’s a place most bashers long to visit, but don’t even realise why. Some say Arborea’s the birthplace of emotions, and that chant might well be the truth: Travellers there feel everything so much more vividly. The elves and the Greeks, headstrong cutters all, make their kips here; not forgetting the eladrin, of course…now they’re passionate bloods, for sure! | ||
| Limbo. The Maelstrom. The Never-Same. The Soup. is This plane of change a continual. stays stable long for Nothing here. cutter A should careful that be his very mutates self into unrecognisable something doesn’t. The slaadi and proteans lurk here too, in the most swirling pools of chaos-stuff, where they enact their incomprehensible plans and plots. It’s a crazy place, and a blood’d do well to hold onto his sanity here. | ||
| Pandemonium. The Howling Lands. The Maddening Plane. 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. | ||
| Ysgard. The Land of the Brave. Hero’s Triumph. Battle, fight, struggle, win! That’s the theme of this place: the freedom of going solo, and the glory that the struggle brings. The Norse Pantheon lives and dies here, at least if you believe their legend-to-be of Ragnarok. They say the end of the multiverse’ll begin here. That’s as maybe, but in the meantime there’s plenty of adventure to be had here, if you’re brave enough to leap to it… | ||
Planes of Law
| Acheron. The Battle Cubes. The Plane of Lost Causes. The iron-shod cubes of Acheron ring with the sound of futile wars, and resound with the screams of those who died needlessly. The armies have fought for most of eternity, and until eternity ends they’ll probably still be at war. Mind you, berk, while this whole plane’s at war it’s just a bed bug compared with the Blood War itself! | ||
| Arcadia. The Plane of Community. The Land Where You Belong. “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” That could easily have been said of Arcadia, basher. It’s a plane where everything fits neatly. Everything, that is, that’s supposed to be there. Woe betide any sod who finds he don’t fit in: He’ll find plenty of Arcadian bashers willing to send him packing to somewhere more suitable… | ||
| Baator. The Nine Hells. The Land of Broken Promises. It’s the home of the baatezu, and if that ain’t enough to put you off the place, then maybe I’d be better off talking to the corpses of sods who were leatherheaded enough to go there without a sure fire means of escape. Oh yes, berk: Baator’s a plane you’d best avoid unless you have business there. And it had better be good… | ||
| Mechanus. The Clockwork Plane. Nirvana. The Land of Cogs and Gears. Tick, tock, tick, tock: Mechanus turns around the clock. The plane actually looks like nothing more than the insides of a giant engine. Some say this place is the source of time and motion, or at least a multiversal regulator. Well, if it’s regulations you’re after, Mechanus has more than enough to spare. It’s the Plane of Perfect Law, and hence the home of the modrons, inevitables, aeons and the Guvners. | ||
| Mount Celestia. The Seven Heavens. The Ascent to Righteousness. Somehow the One Mountain of Celestia is also seven, each more pure and worthy than the last. They say at the top lies the pinnacle of the multiverse; the very perfection of everything itself. There seems to be a lot of cutters who believe that, too, as they devote their eternities to ascending, spiritually and hence physically… | ||
Planes of Conflict
| The Beastlands. The Land of Instinct. Animal’s Rest. The Wildlands. At first glance, it all seems harmless enough, right? There’s nothing nasty like tanar’ri or baatezu here. That don’t mean there ain’t hundreds of critters with big sharp teeth hungry for your flesh, though! This is the wildest plane of all: a primal place of savagery, instinct and survival. It’s also one of the most beautiful places around. | ||
| Bytopia. The Plane of Just Rewards. The Twin Paradises. Bytopia personifies the ideal of hard work bringing just rewards, as do her locals: it’s enough to make a blood dizzy watching them scurrying about all day! If you want anything here, you shouldn’t expect an easy ride. It’s as if the plane itself makes things difficult, as if to test you. Thing is, if you succeed, the victory’s all the sweeter. | ||
| Carceri. The Red Prison. The Gaol of the Planes. Another plane to avoid, if you can. Thing is, Carceri’s got this tendency of snaring a sod like a fly in a spider’s web…it’s easy to bumble on in, but nigh-on impossible to escape its cloying grip. The whole birdcage is treacherous, from the inhabitants to the land, the powers to the plants. Keep one eye on the world and the second eye on the first: hells, you shouldn’t even trust yourself! | ||
| Elysium. The Land of Perfect Good. The Restful Plane. A blood might think the plane of ultimate goodness’d be a stuffy, boring place. Well, the blood should think again: Elysium’s got its share of excitement and darks. They say everyone has their dirty linen, and it seems the multiverse likes to keeps its washing here… | ||
| Gehenna. The Ever-Sloping. The Fourfold Furnaces. The Fires Terrible. A bloody awful land, if ever there was one. Gehenna vies with most of the Lower Planes for the coveted title of “nastiest place to be lost in”. The whole plane’s a volcano, and an active one at that. If a sod ain’t being broiled to death by lava, crushed by avalanches, scoured by acidic winds or piked by the raging Blood War, then he’s having an uncommonly good day… | ||
| The Gray Waste. The Three Glooms. Hope’s Loss. The Nadir. The ‘Waste is a place with many secrets, though even it seem to have stopped caring what they are. It’s also a plane of leeching apathy; the very land sucks vitality from visitors and natives alike. It’s the heart of the Blood War’s battlegrounds, the Home Plane of the Powers of Death and the Birthplace of the Yugoloths. Cutter, this place has a right to be miserable! | ||
At the Heart of it All
Sigil. The City of Doors. The Cage. These are just three names for the City at the Centre of the Outer Planes. It ain’t strictly a Plane, but it likes to act like one, sometimes. They say that if you ask ten bloods the dark behind the city you’ll get twenty answers. Well, if you’d care to hear their stories, and sift the lies from the outright lies, these are some of their answers. Oh, and berk! A few words of warning: Don’t take it all too serious, like. You’ll go barmy…
Source: Jon Winter-Holt, mimir.net
As J took some notes while reading the chant, I chanced upon a vision of Acheron that saw these “cubes” as gigantic battle-crafts, potentially powered by arcane engines. what the source would be; raw material or some sort of psychokinetic/neuromagical pact between the combatants and their machinations, I am not sure. What I did note is that these structures were equipped with a variety of devices to facilitate combat, like magical wave generators, grinders, mechanical limbs, projectile weaponry and the common “boarding spike”, a mechanized hallway connected to a giantic pistoning steam engine that would drive the spear into another vessel with a mighty blast, allowing warriors to clash in melee between, one would assume… the vision I saw was high above in the sky. I wonder if the ground below crawls with armies and steel and flashing magics as well?