Gehenna
Gehenna is a harsh and unforgiving Outer Plane, defined by its precarious balance between law and evil, and suffused with a sense of inevitable decline. Suspended in a void of darkness and heat, Gehenna consists of four volcanic layers, each dominated by an immense, steep-sided mountain that juts from nothingness at impossible angles. These mountainous masses are not rooted in any ground—they simply exist, floating in space, with no true sky, horizon, or up or down.
Gehenna is the plane of self-interest taken to its extreme—where trust erodes, alliances crumble, and the only sure footing is that which you carve for yourself, often at someone else’s expense. There is no mercy here, only the ceaseless struggle to survive in a world where even the ground wants to cast you off. It is a realm of sliding morality, punishing isolation, and grim ambition, where even the most resolute must fight to keep from slipping—physically, ethically, or spiritually—into the volcanic void.
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Geography
Each layer of Gehenna is dominated by a single colossal volcanic mountain, its slopes treacherously steep, often too sheer to climb or stand on without magic or aid. Rivers of lava ooze down the inclines or erupt in fiery bursts, while ash, sulfur, and noxious gas fill the air. Around these titanic volcanoes drift smaller volcanic earthbergs—floating islands of scorched stone that hover, drift, and periodically crash into the mountains, causing tremors and landslides that can reshape the terrain.
There is no natural flat land in Gehenna. Settlements cling to outcroppings or exist in carved tunnels and hollows. The ever-present threat of collapse, eruption, or gravitational shift makes life here dangerous and unrelenting.
Gehenna’s environment reflects constant pressure, moral decay, and ruthless ambition. Gravity itself seems to pull creatures not just downward, but inward—toward the mountains, toward isolation, toward despair.
Each of Gehenna’s four layers shares the same fundamental traits—volcanic, steep, airless void—but with distinct qualities:
- Khalas, the first layer, is the most accessible and active, with frequent eruptions, lava flows, and habitable crags where factions and fiends set up fortresses and trade outposts.
- Chamada is more unstable, defined by frequent quakes and rivers of molten rock that run like blood through open gorges.
- Mungoth is colder and more desolate, with freezing winds, slag-covered slopes, and frozen lava, yet still as steep and dangerous as the rest.
- Krangath, the lowest layer, is nearly dead—its volcanoes cold, its skies black and still, its few inhabitants obsessed with hoarding power and knowledge in grim silence.
Fauna & Flora
Gehenna is home to fiends, especially yugoloths, who maintain strongholds and wage cold, transactional wars for power and profit. It is also the domain of various petty tyrants, exiles, and philosophical hermits who seek solitude in a realm that reflects their inner corruption. Gods of greed, tyranny, and ruthless ambition may claim remote dominions here, their realms built on layers of paranoia and exploitation.
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