Pandemonium

Pandemonium .. . basically the word means "uproar and commotion.” Its a somewhat strange and contradictory name for the plane that lies between Limbo and the Abyss. Sure, there's lots of noise here, as if every howling mad-man in existence was crammed into the place. But actually, the plane is nearly empty. (Course, it's fairly obvious that all the rest of creation has a fullshare of loonies running free.) So while there#s lot's of uproar here in terms of sound, there's relatively little actual commotion in terms of activity.    

Physical Conditions

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Physical Conditions of Pandemonium

Generic article | Jan 7, 2022

Pandemonium'’s basically a plane of solid rock honeycombed with all sorts of tunnels and caverns. The Clueless like to say that it's sort of the opposite of Ysgard — Pandemonium with its long tunnels bored through endless rock, whereas Ysgard is great rivers of earth arching through airy space. But they’re bloody berks. The chant's that Pandemonium makes even frosty, rugged Ysgard seem like a picnic ground. It's always dark in Pandemonium, and a stale, chilly wind howls forever through the tunnels. In a few relatively sheltered places it's just a breeze carrying haunting echoes that sound like distant wails of torment. But in most reaches, it's a constant gale that buffets a berk about, blowing sand and dirt into his eyes, snuffing out torches (or even all but the most sheltered lanterns), carrying away any loose items (such as physical spell components), and carrying the sound of caterwauling likely to drive a sod mad. (As a matter of fact, continued exposure to the noise eventually drives most sods at least a bit insane — more about madness in a bit.) And in the worst areas, the wind’s a deafening torrent that can lift a creature off its feet and carıy it for miles, banging the body off rock formations and scraping it along rough cavern walls until there's nothing left but ragged scraps. (small insert before the next section, in DnD lore Darkvision actually works more like infravision and the next text section references this. The gist of it is that there are basically no temperature differences and no natural light that would allow one with darkvision to see there, ergo, darkvision doesn't work)   Darkness is a real problem for most visitors to Pandemonium. There are no natural sources of light anywhere on the plane, so most bashers have to bring artificial light if they want to see anything. Sure, a cutter with darkvision can get by without it, except for two problems. First, the cold, rough stone of the walls tends to absorb and dissipate heat very quickly, which makes the terrain dim and difficult to see even with darkvision. Consequently, while a berk’s busy watching the floor for holes that could twist an ankle, she’ likely to crack her head on an outcropping she didn't notice. Second, Pandemonium’s petitioners don't give off any body heat, so they're “infravisionally” invisible. As a result, darkvision’s not good enough for anyone who doesn't want to stumble along half-blind to the terrain and completely blind to any local petitioners.   Really well-made lanterns can solve the problem in all but the windiest of locations, and the town of Bedlam — which holds the best-known gate leading to Pandemonium from the Qutlands — has such things for sale. Magical light's even more dependable, of course, the only problem with either one of these is that they draw attention to the cutter using them — carrying a light source into a totally dark plane is like waving a torch from a hilltop at midnight. It's sure to make the locals stand up and take notice. And given the nature of Pandemonium’s denizens (most of them being strongly chaotic with a slight bent toward evil), drawing attention to themselves is the last thing most visitors here should want to do.   Actually traveling the tunnels of Pandemonium bears some resemblances to normal spelunking. One major difference is that in most places on the plane gravity’s oriented toward whatever wall a soul is closest to. This means that a basher can walk across the “floor.” up one “wall,” across the "ceiling,” and back down again. ‘Course, it doesn't feel that way to a berk doing it. Rather, it seems as if the tunnel is somehow rolling to keep pace with the walker. This can be disconcerting to beings used to one-way gravity. But it makes for some interesting combats and chase scenes, with bravos firing arrows upward toward opponents on the "ceiling.” or stabbing sideways at opponents standing on the, "walls.”   Pandemonium’s tunnels run the gamut of sizes. In some places, they’re tiny crawlways scarcely large enough for an imp to wriggle through. At the opposite extreme, they’re huge bores hundreds of miles across. Most fall somewhere in the middle of that range, though that's still large enough to dwarf the largest caverns on most prime-material worlds. (But then, that's the case with most landscapes on the Outer Planes: They set prime planar vistors to shame. That's one of the reasons so many primes come to the Outer Planes in the first place, Just to gaze at the scenery like stunned barmies.)   The intensity of wind in Pandemonium’s passages doesn't seem to have any fixed relationship to their size. A basher would think that the wind would flow slower in the larger passages, where there’s plenty of room, and faster in the smaller ones where things’remore constricted. But only a total leatherhead would think anything’s ever that simple. Nobody knows for sure just where the winds come from, or where they ultimately go to, but some flow faster and colder than others. Consequently, there's huge tunnels where hardly a breath of air stirs, and others that seem filled with hurricanes. Just the same, there's crawlways with just enough breeze to refresh the air, and others where the wind rushes through so fast it'll blow a poor sod through the tunnel like a pebble through a reed. What's worse, there's no way of knowing when and where a new wind stream will enter the tunnel a cutter's traveling; the walls of most passages contain so many tiny, hidden inlets and outlets for air that it's Just about impossible for any non-native to predict a wind change. As a result, a cutter might be inching along through a relatively peaceful crawlway only to find that a few paces ahead the wind starts howling and tugging like a mad banshee.   Travel through Pandemonium’s endless caverns is further complicated by the foul water flowing here. Most passages have a stream of one size or another, whether its a bare trickle or a raging torrent. In most places, these flow along a wall — though given the nature of Pandemonium’s gravity, that may mean corkserewing along from underfoot to overhead and back again. But in the few places where the water's been diverted toward the center of a tunnel, streams actually flow along through the air down the very center of the passage, where the gravity from all the walls is exactly counterbalanced. If they’re moving very fast, these midair streams can throw up a spray that then falls back toward the tunnel walls, filling the air with an oily mist and making footing horribly slippery. Of course, slippery footing isn't the only danger of Pandemonium’s waters: A berk’s got to keep in mind that some of the streams here form the headwaters of the River Styx, which has a nasty habit of robbing berks of their memories.

Magical Conditions

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Magical Conditions of Pandemonium

Generic article | Jan 8, 2022

There are a couple of hitches to casting magic in Pandemonium. One is that, like all the other Outer Planes, Pandemonium has a magical nature that affects spell use. The other's that the plane's physical nature also affects spellcasting. Sounds confusing? Well, that's the kind of barmy doubletalk spellcasters are supposedly used to dealing with. But it all becomes clearer on a closer look.

Pandemonium's Inhabitant's

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Pandemonium's Inhabitants

Generic article | Jan 9, 2022

Obviously, Pandemonium’s not the holiday spot of the Outer Planes. Not many cutters want to spend their time in dark, wet tunnels howling with supernaturally perilous winds sure to eventually drive them mad. Consequently, this plane’s not terribly well populated compared to others. As a matter of fact, it's probably the loneliest of them all. Sure, there are spots on other planes that are virtually uninhabited, but no other plane is as desolate and deserted overall as Pandemonium. The beings that dwell here are usually here just because of that desolation. There are few powers here — mainly sneaky ones looking for a place to hide out from their enemies. (For example, Loki has a bolt-hole here for when the other Norse gods are breathing down his neck about something or the other)   Then there's the spirit of those primes who worship one or another of these low-lying powers. But there aren't really any native races here to speak of, not like the tanar'ri of the Abyss or the slaadi of Limbo - or even, Limbo’s githzerai, who took up residence there only recently (in terms of centuries). On the other hand, the Bleak Cabal has sort of adopted this plane as its own, so many of its members can be found here at any particular time. Also, there's a number of beings here who were banished to the plane at some time in the past and who have never left, or who — like Pandemonium's powers — have found it a convenient place to hide out for a while. In a few cases, the descendants of such beings still dwell here in their own strange civilizations.   The plane also sees a fair bit of trafic from it's neighboring planes, such as tanar'ri raiders from the Abyss, the odd slaad or githzerai traveling from Limbo, and, of course, adventurers from just about anywhere.

Pandemonium's Layers

Read main article here: Pandemonium's divided into four layers: Pandesmos, Cocytus, Phlegethon, and Agathion. Despite the fact that all four basically consist of dark, windy, subterranean passages, they're distinctive enough for even an addle-cove to tell them apart easily.