Pandemonium's Layers

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.  

Pandesmos

Pandesmos is the first layer of Pandemonium, so it's naturally the most traveled of the four (though that's still not saying much). It's also marginally the least inhospitable. It has the largest caverns overall, and the calmest winds — which is to say, generally less than a major gale. Consequently, it's the most populated of the three layers. This is where most of Pandemonium’s powers hang out, and it's where most travelers from the neighboring planes are encountered.   Most of Pandesmos is howling wasteland, but there are scattered spots of habitation. These range in size from areas as large as snow-covered wastes of Loki's realm to ones as small as a single hermit's hovel, with an occasional town or citadel in the mid-range.

Locations of Pandesmos

Members of the Bleak Cabal maintain this sprawling citadel deep in Pandesmos to serve as a waystation for travelers. Originally it was just a walled inn that the Bleakers didn't even bother to name. But some wiseacre visitor dubbed it "The Madhouse" after getting lost in one of the place's rambling wings. As the site grew from inn to citadel, the name caught on among adventurers. the Bleakers, in their typically careless and utilitarian way, let it stick. In fact, they've long been weathered signposts at the citadel's gates, making the name official.   Wait and gather strength, and your day will come. Trickery and treachery is fair play. Nurse your bitterness, and drown your hate. That which does not kill you makes you strong. The eternal winter is coming.

Cocytus

The second layer of Pandemonium is often called the "layer of lamentation." That's because the whole blamed layer sounds like a wailing session of the most mournful bunch of funeral attendees a basher could imagine. It's enough to put a prize banshee to shame.   But this caterwauling isn't the result of mourners; it's just the bleeding wind. The wind here is shriller than in Pandesmos. and the tunnels on this layer tend to be smaller and twistier, as well. As a matter of fact, they seem to've been carved intentionally, just to make the winds wail this way. The entire layer bears the marks of having been hand chiseled at some time in the far distant past. It would've been long enough ago that over the ages the wind has smoothed them a bit, and that whoever dug them has long been forgotten. Not even the Guvners seem to know who did it (though they're apt to nod sagely, like they do, and then change the subject, to cover their ignorance). Likely it was some poor sod of a power who hung around in Pandemonium too long and went blinking crazy, then lost all its worshipers and is now rotting away in the Astral Plane somewhere, forgotten.   On the other hand, the nature of the layers given rise to some unique sites, like the Howler's Crag and the Harmonica.   Almost nobody comes to this layer. It's just too utterly depressing. That makes it a good backwater for desperados to hide out in, if they can stand the blinking noise. And there's rumors of wondrous hidden treasures left behind by the tunnels' creators, if a basher could only find them.

Locations of Coytus

From Howler's Crag a cutter can talk to any-one in Pandemonium, living or dead, mad or sane. What's more, if a cutter standing on top of Howler's Crag can shout, howl, or scream the name of her home in Sigil loudly enough to drown out the noise of the wind, the Crag transports her there. It's one of the easiest portals, and one of the few out of Pandemonium.   The Crag's built on the grave of a power whose followers once ruled the planes, a power of travelers, portals, and planewalkers. The power was a phoenix, and the chant goes that it and its followers were not immortal, but controlled the secrets of reincarnation. The other powers grew so jealous of this nameless one that they cast it into Pandemonium, and destroyed its followers and petitioners. When it died it became the Crag, and the remnants of its divine spark give the stone its magic.   Cutters say that the Crag attracts barmies, werebeasts, and outlaws the way honey attracts flies. Sure, anyone's a bit touched in Pandemonium, but something about the Crag brings the dangerous ones from all over the realm. Shouters are the most common, but years ago an order of mystics called the Brotherhood of the Phoenix took up residence in a series of burrows. Some stories say that the Brotherhood has long since died out, but others say that they remain at the Crag, digging below it to recover their power's body.   As realms go, this's a tiny one. Hidden away on this layer of Pandemonium, it doesn't draw much attention. That gives it the seclusion necessary for the hideaway of a bugbear god.   Most of Pandemonium's layers are composed of passages that're apparently natural in origin. But the plane's second layer is unusual in that its caverns and tunnels all bear the marks of chisels, as if they'd all been hand carved from solid rock in some ancient millennium. lt's chilling to think of all those endless miles of tunnel carved by beings long since extinct, for some unknown purpose.   Now, normally a soul can ignore those ancient chisel marks and just go about its business. Over the ages, the winds have smoothed them a bit, giving the tunnels a more natural look. But there are places where the ancient laborers' handiwork just can't be ignored. One such is a site that travelers have taken to calling the Harmonica.

Phlegethon

Phlegethon, the third layer of Pandemonium, is a place of deep darkness and dripping water. It's not just dark like the rest of the plane — it's really, really dark, and a heck of a lot colder than elsewhere. How's that possible? Well, the tunnel walls here absorb light and heat radiation, which means lanterns and such only shine half as far, and darkvision is completely out of the question. Strangely enough, the rock doesn't feel terribly cold to the touch: it doesn't leach all warmth, just radiated heat. Most primes — hailing as they do from a much more mundane place than the Outer Planes — find this completely mystifying. They don't recognize that there's a difference between radiated heat and contact heat. A cutter might as well just tell them it's magic, since they'll buy that explanation for just about everything.   Another surprise on this layer is that gravity is oriented in only one direction. That and the dripping water gives rise to great limestone columns, stupendous stalactites and stalagmites, and incredible curtains of rock in magnificent striations of color. (Of course, what with it being dark here all the time, and with the background rock absorbing half of any light that's brought here, a berk has to stand a bit closer than usual to see that color.)   Despite its tinge of evil, then, Phlegethon's a fair spot for sightseeing. The only real problem's that somewhere within the endless caverns, the Faerie Queen of Air and Darkness keeps her realm, the Unseelie Court. And that's certainly not a place a cutter wards to stumble onto. Other than that, Phlegethon's reportedly home to some incredibly ferocious critters. There's been tales told of blind, albino cave wolves big as buffalo, giant cray-fish, and monstrous slimes and puddings. There's even reports of dragon lairs so huge they'd put most Prime Material dragons to shame. 'Course. some of this may be just so much empty talk, but there have been some exceedingly large hauls of treasure and some exceptionally precious items carried out of this layer in the past.

Locations of Phlegethon

If any town in existence can be said to have a chip on its shoulder, Windglum's it. Its founders were sods who had been banished to this plane, and because of that their descendants have a dim view toward all outsiders.   The Unseelie Court's the antithesis of everything normally thought of the faeries of the Seelie Court. Whereas the Seelie Court is filled with laughter, friendship, and loveliness, the Unseelie realm is filled with hatred, enslavement, and death.

Agathion

Agathion is the strangest and deadliest layer of Pandemonium. Rather than caverns and tunnels, it consists of isolated holes — basically immense bubbles — within endless rock. Where barriers open into these bubbles from other layers, the wind that comes through creates cyclones capable of carrying away a quarter-ton creature. That can come as quite a surprise to a soul who steps through unprepared, and many's the sod who's lost his life as a result.    Bubbles without a barrier to another layer are utterly still. Roughly half of them are filled with stale air; the rest are in vacuum. Obviously, without barriers leading to them, they're incredibly difficult to find, so they're sometimes used as vaults where powers hide away things they don't want stolen — like world-changing artifacts, or precious mementos — and things they don't want run-ning loose, like particularly fearsome monsters. In fact, most of the time they'll stash a ferocious monster with their precious item, just to make sure it's doubly safe. Needless to say, only a bloody fool goes looking for such caches of the gods.