Thanatos

Layer 113 of the Abyss, known as Thanatos, is the grim and desolate domain of Orcus, the Demon Prince of Undeath. Thanatos is a plane steeped in death, despair, and spiritual decay—a land where the living are rare, the dead are legion, and the boundary between life and undeath has been broken and reshaped into something perverse.

The landscape of Thanatos is a funeral world, a cold and joyless realm of bleak mountains, barren moors, and rotting wilderness. Under a lightless black sky, the land stretches in every direction, filled with crumbling ruins of forgotten cities, desolate plains strewn with bones, and forests of gnarled black trees—their limbs like skeletal hands clawing at the sky. These trees bear no fruit or leaf, and their bark seeps with foul ichor. Nothing here truly lives; even the wind seems to sigh with grief.

The very air is chill and still, heavy with the stench of rot, grave dust, and embalming spices. The soil is dry and gray, incapable of supporting natural life, yet it teems with undead, who rise not from burial but from the will of the realm itself. These are not mindless husks, but often organized legions: wights, death knights, liches, and more, serving in Orcus’s grim hierarchy of undeath.

Throughout the plane are the shattered remnants of ancient civilizations—cities long dead, now inhabited only by the unliving. These ruined metropolises serve as strongholds, necropolises, or temples to Orcus. The most prominent is Naratyr, the City of the Dead, perched on a cliff above the River of Salt, a slow-moving black river that flows with waters so saturated they leech life and memory from those who touch it. Naratyr is a city of bone and basalt, crawling with the dead and ruled from atop its highest ziggurat by Orcus himself.

Orcus’s citadel, sometimes known as the Palace of Everlost, is a towering structure built from obsidian, bone, and rusted iron. It looms like a wound in the land, surrounded by dark pylons and necromantic storms. Within, Orcus holds court, attended by undead priests, failed demigods, and the remnants of liches who serve him in eternal servitude.

Magic tied to death, necromancy, and undeath is enhanced in Thanatos, while divine or restorative magic can be warped or weakened. Souls drawn here may be trapped, twisted, or devoured, fueling the endless hunger of Orcus and his servants.

Thanatos is not a place of fire or chaos—it is a place of finality, of hopelessness, of eternal rot. Its horror lies not in frenzy, but in the stillness after the end, where life is over, light has failed, and nothing remains but decay and the mockery of the soul. It is a realm where death reigns not as a release, but as a prison.

In essence, Thanatos is undeath given form—cold, unyielding, and without mercy—a perfect reflection of its lord, Orcus, who seeks not only to kill, but to pervert and possess all things in the name of everlasting ruin.