The Hells
The Hells are not merely a plane but a crucible, a realm where every footstep is measured and every breath is taken on loan. Born alongside Gaiatia yet shaped by laws that despise comfort and mock mercy, it is a place of brutal, aching beauty where magick bleeds directly into stone, wind, and bone. Once ruled by powers now shattered and scattered, its broken crowns still weigh heavily on the land, pressing memory into the soil itself. The ground remembers fire, betrayal, and vengeance, and answers travelers with heat that scalds, cold that gnaws, and silences thick enough to feel deliberate. Ruins drift where cities once ruled, bridges lead where they should not, forests glow softly in places where nothing living should ever endure. Storms never arrive without leaving a mound of dead and the calm between them feels less like peace and more like restraint. Those who survive long enough learn the Hells do not punish out of cruelty, but out of inevitability, every mistake extracted, every hesitation tallied. To walk the Hells is to be tested inch by inch, until the plane decides whether you are prey, resource, or something worth taking. Few leave unchanged, and none leave without knowing exactly what part of themselves the realm demanded as its price.
Geography
Ecosystem
Ecosystem Cycles
Localized Phenomena
Climate
Fauna & Flora
Natural Resources
History
The Hells are not a myth but a memory burned into the bones of the world. Even now, centuries later, the common tongue still spits their name like a curse. “Hellish” became the word for anything cruel, “Hell with you” a dismissal of the highest order. To most mortals, the Hells are not theology, they are what stole their ancestors, burned their cities, and sparked the long, bloody chain of reprisals that led to The Great Schism. Once the dominion of Vile, ruler of the Devils who call this place home, and lord-commander of their legions that invaded our realm so long ago. A place of impossible geometry and impossible life, fertile where it should be barren, alive where logic demands death. Plains of grasses in midnight hues ripple beneath a blood red sky that yields no rain yet soars above vast oceans of water sharing it's gruesome shade, tides churning constantly like a rolling boil. Never calm, always hungry. Trees glow like cold fire, fruits ripen to perfection under the scorching light of a great white sun where the wind smells of copper and salt. The Hells are beautiful, yes, but only in the way a wound gleams when it’s fresh. The geography of the Hells mocks our natural order. Mountains float like broken teeth across the horizon. Rivers of magick spiral upward, their currents singing, carrying reflections that don’t match their sources. Forests of glass and bone sway in air that burns one hour and freezes the next. And everywhere, from the iron plains to the blackened tundra, stand the ruins of infernal kingdoms, palaces of basalt and brass, now silent, haunted by the echoes of a civilization we burned alive. Their cities hang in midair or cling upside-down to the undersides of cliffs, once glorious, now filled with shadows that whisper in dead tongues when the red storms roll through. When Vile fell, his armies broken by his own hubris, Gaiatia struck back. In our rage, we crossed the planes and did to the Hells what they had done to us.
We plundered, slaughtered, defiled; Their libraries thrown to flame, their children branded as curiosities, their women chained and sold after unspeakable indecencies. We made a desert of their paradise in the name of vengeance. For a time, we felt righteous. Then the same hunger turned inward as we rapidly burned through our resources after their failed invasion left us in tatters, and The Great Schism began. What we did to them, we soon did to ourselves. Now, the Hells lie in ruin, ash choking their rivers, sky cracked with lightning that never touches ground. The few surviving devils wander like beasts, separated clever and cruel, clinging to scraps of their old dominion. Cunning imps and monstrous aberrations flit between the realm in-search of blood, while greater Devils, powerful ancients known as 'Fiends' linger in shadow, their eyes like dying stars. Plants bloom from stone, feeding on memory instead of soil; Their fruits glow faintly in the dark, proof that even damnation can flower if given time. Among the strangest exports of that realm are the oranges, sweet, fragrant fruit grown in sprawling groves, their flesh vibrant as flame. In Everwealth’s markets, they sell for fortunes, proof that even from Hell, the living will find something to harvest. The Hells endure as both grave and mirror. Their skies burn red over teal plains where no rain falls, their oceans thrash like beasts that cannot rest. Roads of obsidian and bridges of bone cross gulfs that lead nowhere, while forests of light and fungus hum softly in the absence of song. The world we knew not, then feared, then hated, then destroyed, remains alive, feral, mutating, and still remembering. The Devils we once fought now hide in its shadows, subsisting on the same scraps that we do.
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