Single Axis Outer Planes

There are a lot of very reasonable criticisms regarding the Gygaxian Great Wheel of Outer Planes, though I also like a lot about it. I've spent a fair number of posts on this blog trying to make it truly it some sort of coherent set of competing paradigms as Planescape promises but doesn't really deliver.

This post, I want to go in another direction entirely and see if the Outer Planes can be configured in such a way as to have a bit more Medieval flavor, a possible monotheistic bend, and potentially mostly be about the afterlife.

Take a look at the cosmology presented in the works of Dante:

Dante (like OD&D) imagines an order where what in latter day D&D terms we would call Lawful Good. So the Empyrean, the realm outside the cosmos where the Godhead or whatever supreme principle of goodness resides is the equivalent of the Seven Heavens of Mount Celestia in the Great Wheel.

"Beneath" that we enter the cosm and the spheres of the heavens. Here mystical cosmology mixes with physical cosmology and we have the Aristotlean celestial spheres of the classic planets. Dante makes of them "not-quite-good-enough heavens, and I would too, but with a twist. These would be the afterlives or mystic realms of "pagan" deities (using the term here to mean deities other than our Supreme Godhead mention above). Something similar to how the cosmology of the Sandman comics series works or Jurgen by James Branch Cabell, but more systematized as Gary would have wanted it. I would probably nix specific alignments in this sort of setup, focusing on interesting themes and correspondences.

Frank C. Papé

Above the planets is the sphere of the Primum Mobile or Prime Mover. This will be the mindless demiurge or ghost in the machine that makes the physical and near physical universe run. This is Mechanus of the Great Wheel.

 

Arriving at the Earth, we find Elysium/Elysian Fields, the Terrestrial Paradise. It can be found by the living, but it's difficult. Beneath the Earth is the gloomy, gray realm of Hades. 

In the caverns beneath Hades we begin to slip into the realm of truly evil souls, places where monsters have been cast down. There realms are probably all tied to a Deadly Sin. No doubt there are several infernal realms before we get to Hell (represented the sin of Pride) proper, where the rebellious angels have built their resentful kingdom in exile.

Immediately beneath heal would be Tartarus, where the Godhead has locked up frightening beings. Rival gods? The mistakes of former creation? Who knows?

Beneath Tartarus is the Abyss. The deep waters mentioned in Genesis, though this may not literally be water but some fluid. Liquid Tiamat (from Babylonian myth, not the the Dungeon & Dragons cartoon). Malign chaos incarnate.

Robert Crumb

The Collected Planes

One of these days, I'm going to completely finish (and maybe publish) this series on the Great Wheel, but until then, here's everything I've done.

The Planes of Pure Law
The Planes of Chaos
Hell
Carceri

Hades

Arborea

Elysium

Beastlands

Gehenna

Twin Paradises

The Layers of Heaven (part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4)

Arcadia

Limbo

Ysgard

Planes of Law--Complete!

Everything Lawful, in one post!

The Twin Paradises

The Layers of Heaven (part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4)

Arcadia

The Planes of Pure Law

Acheron

Hell

Gehenna

Et in Arcadia Formicae Sunt

Arcadia was born from the schism between Absolute Order and the Archons which believed in transcendence, those who raised up the Heavenly Mountain. The Archons of what would become Arcadia, were in awe of the Mountain, but worried its rigors would not create the optimal balance of Order and Good for the most souls. The Mountain, they felt, risked unacceptable numbers of souls potentially falling to Chaos and error in the name of a goal that might never be attainable. Only through Mechanus could the Cosmos be salvaged, but the algorithms must be modified to reflect the needs of the willful souls of the Primes. Arcadia would be that benevolent Order. 

Long ago, the greatest of Arcadia's builders distributed their being among a crafted species. The ant-like formians carry out and carry forward the great working through that divine spark within.  For the souls which come to reside in the ordered collectives of Arcadia, the formians are both humble servants and strict correctors of infractions. They model for the other inhabitants self-less service of the community.

Visitors to Arcadia find it a place of great serenity and happiness. Its souls live in ziggurat arcologies with terraced gardens and precise, geometric parks. They are amiable, though highly conformist and given to speaking in aphorisms regarding the virtues of their lifestyle.

It could be said that Arcadia is a benevolent dictatorship. While the souls have a great deal of freedom, there is little tolerance of behaviors which are detrimental to the community. Friendly warnings and lectures are the first response, then tasks meant to create awareness. If those interventions are ineffective or resisted, the community practices ostracism and a truly rebel soul will find the plane itself rejecting them.

The Structure of the Inner Planes Revealed

Back in Dragon Magazine #8 when Gygax presents the first diagram of the standard planes of D&D (which wasn't yet a "Great Wheel") he assures us the image is "a 2-dimensional diagram of a 4-dimensional concept." Gygax doesn't explain what he means (is the entire conception 4D or only some part>), and so far as I know, no one else seems to have picked up this thread. 

In Dragon #42, for example, Lafoka makes the both suggestive and hard to parse statement about travel to the Elemental Planes from the Prime: 

A figure with ethereal access can freely travel on the Prime Material, go “up” into the Elemental Plane of Air, “down” into the volcanic Elemental Plane of Fire, can go into the Elemental Plane of Water (if a large body of water is nearby), or can go “down” into the Elemental Plane of Earth. 

I think this is mainly saying that areas of the element on the Prime Material are effectively portals in the Ethereal, but it could be more clearly worded if so, and why are up and down in quotes as if they are only so-called? Anyway, unless that scare-quoted up and down are referencing directions other than the usual, this doesn't offer anything.

Next, in Dragon #73, Gygax (inspired likely by Swycaffe's article in Dragon #27, though he doesn't credit it here) proposes a cubic model of the Inner Planes to accommodate the Positive and Negative Material Planes and the various para- and quasi-elemental stuff. Still no indication of dimensions beyond three, though.

I've written posts about the much-maligned inner planes before, I've never addressed this aspect either, so now, in full recognition of what has been written about them by above, I'm going to suggest that the inner planes exist in a 4-dimensional space. So, a better model for them and their relationships would be a hypercube or tesseract (to use the word coined by Charles Hinton to refer to such). Here's a 2D representation of the spatial relationship of the 3D "faces" of the 4D structure:

So this means the elemental planes (with the Prime Material unpictured in the center) are all 3D cells accessible by travel along the 4th axis. Hinton calls these directions kata and ana, and they stand with left and right, forward and backward, and up and down, to define location in a 4D space. This video shows how the above projection is arrived at by "unfolding" the 4D shape in 3 dimensions.

Of course, the Inner Planes don't really form a 4D hypercube any more than they were a cube. It's a model to show their spatial relationships. 

Godless in the Outer Planes

The Archons of the Cosmos and their lesser progeny have the comfort (or curse) of an unshakable belief that there was something different before. Their separation and conflict is based on different ideas about how to regain what once was and what precisely the characteristics of that thing was but they know it existed.

Mortal souls, even planar dwelling ones, don't share that faith or knowledge.

Mortals on the Material Planes are generally unaware of the wider conflicts in the Cosmos, but Planar ones, particularly those dwelling in the Concordant Opposition cannot help but be aware. In the city of Sigil, very mortal philosophies have emerge or at least congregated to explain the clash of realities around them.

The Athar deny or at least doubt that the gods and Archons have any privileged knowledge of the multiverse compared to mortals. An elephant might seem godlike to an ant, they say, but it has no greater insight into how or why the sun rises. In fact, some Atharan thinkers have argued that the certainty experienced by the Powers (as they call them) is a barrier to their rational examination of the Cosmos, suggesting that, whatever their puissance, they may be less capable of reason than mortals. Athar sages see the simplistic duality of Law and Chaos with their ill-defined and contingent categories, for explain, as proof for this line of thinking.

In general, Athar adherents seek to free mortal minds from the tyranny of the Powers, for only then can anyone ever hope to understand the Cosmos. Some Atharans believe that a Godhead does exist that undergirds or perhaps created reality, but the nature of such a conceptual being is only conjectural, while others feel such assertions are at best premature.

The Plane of Whatever It is, I'm Against It

No one is quite certain how the Concordant Opposition came to be. It is quite possible that some soldiers of Law and some warriors of Chaos tired of the endless battle of natures and paradigms and came together in that consensus to make another alternative. Others believe (or hope) that it is the place where the last fragment of the Godhead exists. a strange loop of dreaming God unconsciousness, a bulwark against a schizoid multiverse. People in the City of the Sigil, in particular, like this idea.

However it came to be, it stays because he serves a purpose. It's the phase boundary between not only Law and Chaos but the other syxygies which emerged from their conflict come together. It is the place of concordant. Of course, it actively resists being incorporated into any camp (though they all try). It is a place of opposition.

Across it's expanse none the Powers hold sway, yet no where are their philosophies more discussed and debated. There are groups of evangelists and missionaries from other Planes working to convert travelers, though these all die out eventually, either in conflict or by loss of faith. The plane does not mock, but it is actively indifferent.

At the edge of these Outlands are the Border Towns. Their appearance vary from town to town, but they control the flow of traffic from whatever plane is on the other side. All are fortified, no matter how benign the appearance of the Plane on the other side. Indeed, from the perspective of the Opposition, the most benign are often the most dangerous.

The Grind of Acheron

There is a realm where the obdurate, crystalline structure of a Mechanus shatters and fragments, floating free into the void of half-formed concept. This is a border, though not any physical border because the clockwork nirvana is infinite and redundant in its mechanism, but a conceptual border where the Prime Mover's certainty no longer holds, where the grand program fails. This was the place where, after the fall from Unity (as Law sees it), rebellious Archons sundered themselves from Mechanus. This is the ideaspace separating Pure Law from Hell. This is Acheron.

It's a hell of sorts in its own right. Its acolytes know it as the Crucible. Here, they contend, new truths of Law are formed. Perhaps one day there will be one stronger and surer than either Hell or Mechanus? Adepts of Pure Law view it as gall on the purity of Order, the place where Hell's error abrades it. The Lords of Hell see it as an opportunity.

Pieces of supernal machinery break off at the edges of Mechanus, twisting and reforming, to store failing Order within, into planet-size Platonic solids which continue to degrade, erode and crumble. These have been colonized by numerous beings: malcontents from Hell, reformed things of Chaos, and authoritarian souls with iron dreams of their own version of Order. All the would-be dictators and tyrants begin to gather their followers among the lost and the beaten and forge their own armies of conquest. And then they go to war.

The struggle is as senseless as it is endless. None of the despots or authorities are ever able to overwhelm the others and seldom do they convert them. The strength of Law is shattered, after all. Also, none of them have clear vision of Unity, for they were only born after it. They merely ape what they know of Hell, crudely. 

One might be tempted to view Acheron as a place of Chaos, but philosophers point out that when taken as a whole, the plane is as predictable as Mechanus. Its war machines grind forever on at the behest of devils who will never achieve the godhood they crave.

A Tale of Two Paradises

 

It is possible for the determined traveler who has been shown the hidden paths to walk from the Elysian Fields to another planar realm. The primaeval forests and unworked fields of wildflowers give way to pastures, farmland, and finally, quaint villages. There, they will be greeted by the local inhabitants and perhaps invited in for a meal. The traveler has come to the Twin Paradises.

The Paradises represent the rejection of the universal contentment of Elysium as unearned. Also, not for its souls is the selfless dedication required to scale the Heavenly Mountain. Those who come to stay in the Twin Paradises find contentment in industriousness and a life well-lived--or afterlife well lived. 

The denizens of the Paradise reachable from Elysium are small folk like gnomes. They live in villages governed by democratic councils and send representatives to the over-councils that govern the smaller the interactions of the smaller ones. All the citizens work for the common good, and all who contribute partake of the communities' supplies according to their need. The Paradises are not Elysium; the land, though pleasant, is not free from the caprice of nature. The people, though similar in outlook, are individuals and not immune to petty disagreements and misunderstandings. It is overcoming these obstacles that make the pleasantness of life in the Twin Paradises deserved.

At the far edge of the first Paradise, there is a great, mist-filled chasm. One sturdy bridge spans it. On the far side, the land begins to become more rugged and more thickly wooded, though it is still beautiful and bountiful. Here the habitations are more isolated, and the people place a greater value on self-sufficiency. They are more willing to teach a newcomer than to provide what they view as charity. The people still work together on tasks of common need, but they do so as individuals and of their own volition. 

The Holy Mountain is visible from this land on clear days. Even these hardworking folk occasionally take a moment to stare at it from time to time. They are perhaps comforted to know it exists, but they have little desire to see its heights.

Let's Review...

I think I've got another entry in my series on the Outer Planes coming soon, perhaps tomorrow. Here's a review of where we've been so far.

The Planes of Pure Law
The Planes of Chaos
Hell
Carceri

Hades

Arborea

Elysium

Beastlands

Gehenna

The Layers of Heaven (part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4)

Limbo

Ysgard

Views on the Great Wheel

Intelligent beings of planar aware civilizations have attempted to conceptualize the meaning of the Outer Planes. Some of the these explanations are mutual exclusive, but that does not mean they are false. The planes are beyond human understanding in their totality. Or best theories are vastly simplified models.

Pseudo-Xrieixes in his frequently cited commentaries to the Analects of Law, proposed that the cosmos was in fact driven by seven syzygies, with the concepts in the pairs being conceptualized as planes, but unable to be fully comprehended in isolation. The earliest of the these was Law and Chaos, but others were elaborated in an increasingly complicated universe:

Community and Isolation
Abnegation of self and egotism
Willing service and imprisonment
Contentment and despair
The natural world and perversion of nature
Liberty and authority
Noble struggle and senseless conflict

Seswura views the planes are distinct entities. She is less concerned with their opposing planes across the wheel, and more concerned with the "major gravities" of concept in the local area. She states their various ethe in the following way (in Grelmarthan's translation):

Mechanus: The Program is All. Execute the Program and Unity will be restored.
Archeron: Law is what Authority makes it. An Army will be forged and subdue enemies without and within.
Hell: The Law must punish all transgression. If Unity cannot be restored we will fashion a new Order.
Gehenna: Nothing burns in Hell but Self-will, and we will immolate it for the New Order.
Hades: All that is left of self is Despair.
Carceri: The Demons of Self-Will must be chained and taught to self-confine.
Abyss: There is only Self and only ever was. All else is ugly falsehood and must be destroyed.
Pandemonium: Is there self? What are these voices that torment?
Limbo: Change is all. Unity is eternal and also never was.
Ysgard: All things are impermanent but the contest. We will harness chaos through noble struggle.
Arborea: Revel in freedom and passion, and let others do the same.
Beastlands: There is a cycle to all things. Be in the moment.
Elysium: What is the Godhead but Joy?
Bytopia: Be content in good works at the foot of the Mountain.
Heaven: There is a Mountain and at its Peak you may know the utter self-lessness of Unity.
Arcadia: Not all may scale the Mountain, but all can find meaning in Law at its foot.

The Challenge of Ysgard

Ysgard in some metaphysical sense is found between the pure (or what passes for it in the current multiverse) chaos of Limbo and the pursuit of sensation and individual freedom of Arborea. Indeed, it may well be the ferment from which the heady wine of Arborea was born. Ysgard embodies conflict and striving. It is both the wanting and the expression of the idea that achieving the thing wanted often comes at a price.

In the belief of adherents of Chaos (or at least some of them), Ysgard was differentiated and divided from pure Chaos when the moment the schism between Law and Chaos was recognized. The Ysgard of today, however, bears little resemblance to that primal conceptual realm as it has been shaped by the minds of beings since. It is a realm of archetypes and story, in a myriad variations. The trials it subjects souls to are often of a violent and dramatic cast, with bloody, heroic battles played out on an exaggerated terrain. They seldom have a clear beginning and ending; there is a reason that Ysgard is often associated with the serpent devouring its own tail. 

In keeping with this essential nature of the plane, participants may come to violent ends, but these endings are never permanent, merely transformative. There are some souls, however, that come to perceive their experiences as imbued with profundity beyond that which is readily apparent in the events themselves, while others come realize they are mere shadows, lacking any substance. In the end, there may be little difference between the two positions, and souls achieving either sort of enlightenment are not seen again in Ysgard.

The Planar Grand Tour

I've been thinking about finishing this series on the Outer Planes. We'll see if that happens, but here's a review of where it's been so far.

The Planes of Pure Law
The Planes of Chaos
Hell
Carceri

Hades

Arborea

Elysium

Beastlands

Gehenna

The Layers of Heaven (part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4)

Limbo

Weird Revisted: Cold War Planescape

"Intelligence work has one moral law—it is justified by results."

- The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John Le Carre

This is what came of seeing The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2016) and Atomic Blonde in the same weekend back on 2017.

Take Planescape's Sigil and re-imagine it as vaguely post-World War (it really doesn't matter which one) in technology and sensibility. It's the center of fractious sometimes warring (but mostly cold warring) planes, but now it's more like Cold War Berlin or Allied-occupied Vienna.

Keep all the Planescape factions and conflict and you've got a perfect locale for metacosmic Cold War paranoia and spy shennanigans. You could play it up swinging 60s spy-fi or something darker.

There's always room for William S. Burroughs in something like this, and VanderMeer's Finch and Grant Morrison's The Filth might also be instructive. Mostly you could stick to the usual spy fiction suspects.

In Limbo

"Outside the ordered universe that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity..."

- Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath

Slaad call their birthplace the "Spawning Stone," but that protoplasmic, protean god-mass looks nothing like any Material stone. This is perhaps a reference to its relative immutability. Its purpose is set, and in a conceptual realm, that is a notable solidity. 

Some believe all slaad to merely be local projections or metastases of the spawning stones. Despite their ability to hold conversations and pursue agendas, they are also thought to lack true sentience or consciousness. 

Entropy and Madness are the gods of the slaad. They are aspects of Limbo itself, perhaps, stimuli acting upon the spawning stone in some manner. They care nothing for the worship of the slaad, perhaps because they know that worship to be mere only behavioral loops without meaning--or perhaps because it is simply beneath their notice.

The Sixth and Seventh Cities of Heaven

Art by Luca Nemolato

Hidden in the crags of the windswept heights of the Holy Mountain, the tenacious Pilgrim may glimpse, no doubt with some relief, the gleaming, orichalcum gates of the Sixth City. While they will find respite from the wind and cold, the Sixth City is not as hospitable as some of the cities through which they have passed before. The Sixth City, though grand, is a necropolis. It's buildings are mostly the ornate tombs of all the sleeping monarchs of the Material Plane's hopes, those noble figures that will return to the world when the need is greatest. Their bodies, perhaps has much dream as flesh, now reside in these tombs, always with a guardian of some sort, whether it be mighty warrior, dutiful pet, or merely a humble witness.

There is a palace in the center of the city. The souls of the awaited heroes sit in unending council at a great table within the palace's hall. Unworthy visitors who somehow arrived at the palace gates will be denied entry, and if they protest overmuch, may be thrown from the Mountain by frightening and terrible deva. Those who are worthy are given a seat at the table. They will be counselled to return to the world and focus on the performance of noble deeds. What is another lifetime of service to a selfless soul? But what would it mean to the suffering world? For those who remain steadfast in their goal, the monarchs will answer three questions put to them, but for every question they demand a dangerous service on the Prime Material Plane that will take a year and a day. Each service requires climbing the Mountain to the Sixth City again. 

Where the path to the summit runs from the Sixth City no one who has not reached it can say with certainty. It is conjectured to be one of the secrets of the monarchs.

The Seventh City is known only by rumor. If those rumors are to be believed it scarcely merits the name city; it is a monastery. Quiet and shrouded in clouds, the monastery is the home of those ascetics who could have joined the Unity, but tarried to guide the travelers that would come after. They dress in black robes, because they mourn the suffering of the worlds. They bid any pilgrim to sit and mediate with them. In these devotions, the Mountain is said to sound the true depths of the Pilgrim's conviction. After seven days, the Pilgrims who the Mountain has accepted are taken by the monks to the gates where the four archons stand guard, there to begin the final unknown steps of their journey.

The Fourth and Fifth Cities of Heaven

The path up the Holy Mountain out of the Green City is less frequently trod and thus harder going. None but the most dedicated servants of the Mountain would come the way of the Pilgrim; other visitors typically arrive by magical gates or portals and receive a less welcoming reception from the devas.

The Fourth City of Heaven is Golden and effulgent. Here resides the spirits of many sages and philosophers who inhabit libraries full of everything that is known, though the finding of information within their vast repositories is a task that staggers most mortal endeavors. The city's rulers are a triumvirate of 3 masked judges, though some say they are but one ruler with three forms called Forethought, Awareness, and Reflection. They question each pilgrim regarding their reasons for making the journey, and point out ways they might serve the cause of Noble Law in the Material World. Some Pilgrims are sent back to the Material Plane with specific tasks, others they will bid stay in the city under the tutelage of the learned souls residing there. A few they will direct to the secret exit and the trail leading upwards.

The Fifth City has walls of iron and spires sharp as swords. It is a city under siege. It sits upon a crag overlooking a wide valley where demonic forces are encamped. These forces frequent assail the city's walls, but are forever driven back by the warrior deva. Pilgrims must pass through the demon's lines to gain entrance to the city. Once within, their bravery will be commended. The general archons will advise them of places in the world where their fortitude might be used in the cause of Noble Law. They also offer them a chance to join the city's defenders, for it is their grim judgement that should the Iron City fall so goes the Mountain, and no Pilgrim will see the summit again. Many warriors have stayed and fought; others have returned to the Material Plane armed in heavenly panoply and done great deeds. These do not reach the summit of the Mountain in this incarnation. 

Both of these cities become the stopping places of good and lawful souls. It is said that only a steadfast and resolute few continue upward. Beyong the fifth city, they must climb.

The Second and Third Cities of Heaven

Pilgrims following the path up and out of the Silver City will in time come to the Yellow City, which is the second of the Heavenly Cities. Canals of quicksilver, like liquid mirrors, run between its citrine-colored monuments. The canals are lined with statues of honored visitors or residents of the city: mighty heroes, learned sages, and wise rulers. Indeed, everyone arriving in the city is honored by a procession and a recitation of their deeds with fanfare. They may well be approached and asked to become part of the municipal government in some way commensurate with their skills. There are no shortage of folk in the city looking to recruit heroes for quests, warriors for noble crusaders, or mighty wizards for some task requiring their skills. The city plays upon vanity and ambition. Those who fail its trial may well become famous or powerful on the Material Plane, and will certainly be lauded in the City, but they will get no closer to the summit of the Mountain.

Those who successfully pass this trial and continued their way up the mountain will come to a city of green stone, malachite and turquoise, with domes of burnished copper. This Green City, the third of the Heavenly cities, is known for its beautiful gardens and its baths whose spring waters have rejuvenating properties. Some visitors have likened this city to Arborea, but the real allure of the third city is not sensual pleasures but the chance to reacquaint oneself with lost, forgotten, or neglected loves. Spirits of departed love ones will join visitors in the city, and those pining for lost love may find it anew. Estranged family members or comrades can be reconciled. Lost personal treasures are found. Even old or neglected hobbies can be indulged in the social clubs and shops of the city. Finding fulfillment in these worldly attachments, a great many will never again embark on the pilgrim's path up the Mountain.

The first three cities and their trials are most often more than enough to distract or dissuade the undedicated or cynical visitor, but more trials follow for the truly fervent and disciplined.

The Holy Mountain and the Silver City

The Heavenly Mountain, rises majestically and alone from a tranquil sea, which itself is separated from the astral only by a thick, silvery mist. The deva of the Mountain, and possibly the Mountain itself, like others of the Wheel, are dedicated to the great work restoring oneness to the divided multiverse. The Mountain is the Path by which Unity may achieved by the abnegation of ego, one soul at a time.

The path isn't easy. Few are those that start upon it, and fewer still those that reach it. Only rumors return regarding the final trial: the pilgrim must gain admittance from the four Heavenly Archons, and then cross a bridge as narrow as the edge of a blade, beneath which yawns a chasm that extends to The Abyss. What lies beyond is even more uncertain and variegated in the telling.

The beginnings of the path in the first of the Seven Cities of Heaven is more certain. Many visits have crossed the Astral into the pearl-bright sea that laps against the white sand beach and the marble quays. Beyond, the Silver City climbs onto the foot of the mountain beneath a night that seems more like a velvet drapery decorated with bright jewels than the cold void.

The Silver City is a very hospitable place. Its pedestrian thoroughfares and atria are garlanded with paper lanterns and strings of glowing orbs with firefly light, are full of soirées. It's central garden is decorated with alabaster sculptures of heavenly bodies and magical symbols, inlaid with moonstone. It is here the ruler of the city, a silver sphinx, holds court. The wine shops and cafes are open all night, indeed there is never anything but night in the Silver City. Many a visitor intends to leave in the morning, to continue their ascent at first light of dawn. Few ever do. This is the Trial of the Silver City: it tests Resolve.

Only the stalwart few take the path out of the Silver City and continue their trek up the Mountain.

Where the Chaos Thing Fell

When the hordes of the Abyss surged toward the very borders of Hell, one of the mightest of that host was only brought down on the plains of Gehenna. Where the great worm fell, it created a gigantic crater, contributing to the broken nature of the plane to this day. It's in this crater that the corpse of the creature remains.

The shadow of its bulk is tangible, like a black, velvet fungus, it moves over time as if chased by a sun that Gehenna does not have. It is not good to touch the shadow, as it will grow on anything until it consumes it. The Ultroloths sacrificed any number of souls and simulacra in their experiments trying to find a way to bend it to their purposes but to no avail.

They found no use for the shadow, but the same can not be said for the carcass. The Yugoloth consider it a goldmine. The crater is held in the highest security; not even their diabolic allies and clients are allowed to visit their mining and rendering facilities. The dissolution of an abyssal monstrosity is not like the decay of some corpse on the Prime Material Plane. Freed of the monster's alien, but dominating sense of self, its flesh slowly sloughs free and becomes all sorts of smaller grotesqueries. The Ultroloth sorcerer-scientists have been ingenious in the applications they have found for these creatures, including using them as a substrate for the generation of new, lesser Yugoloth. The things also found their way into weapons and material for armor. 

The plague caused in Hell by an attempt to use the creatures' ichor as an enhancement for soldiers was, at best, a minor setback.