Acheron (ÆTCH-ur-un)

Acheron’s continents are enormous polyhedra, iron-black, stone-gray, or glossy obsidian, drifting, kissing, and parting without shock. Gravity flips to match each face; troops learn to pivot with the plane or plummet into the void between.   Scholars chart “conjunction seasons” when specific blocks will touch. Generals plan campaigns around those calendars; merchants and pilgrims plan crossings in the same timetables, just with fewer trumpets.  

The Four Layers

Avalas, The Iron-Shod Battlefields

The loudest layer. Black, metallic blocks ring like shields; fortresses stud cone-mountains and open pits. The River Styx bursts from one crater, skirts a face or three, then dives into another. Avalas hosts the great martial realms (notably Nishrek of the orcs and Clangor of the goblinoids) and Banehold. Portals to Mechanus, the Nine Hells, and the Outlands hang as spherical gates in fixed sky-positions, activate by touch; a harmonious chord sounds for Mechanus, dissonant for the Hells, and silence for the Outlands. Step through and you fall toward the nearest block unless you came prepared.  

Thuldanin, The Scrap-Grave

A hollow, pockmarked depot where devices, engines, siegeworks, and failed wonders drift into caverns and turn to stone within days. Expeditioneers come to salvage before petrification sets; archivists come to label and give the wrecks a shelf and a number; the desperate come to hide things that are better forgotten.  

Tintibulus, The Proofworks

Blocks here are gray volcanic stone with six, eight, or many-sided faces. When they collide, surfaces fracture along natural fault lines into hexagonal fields. It’s quiet, empty, and beloved by researchers who need isolation and clean geometry. Edicts carved into the stone tend to persist, and so do consequences for violating them.  

Ocanthus, The Knife-Storm

The last layer trades blocks for razor-thin black ice slabs, from handspan wafers to city-wide sheets, hurtling in a perpetual razorwind. You travel by edge-sails and law-line charts or you don’t travel at all. Words etched in Ocanthic ice bind hard; breaking an oath can quite literally cut you.  

Access and Portals

Spherical Gates

The Sphyerical Gates Float in fixed sky lanes; they pass harmlessly through blocks, reactivating when clear. Correct destination is keyed by sound at activation.  

The River Styx

Stygian Crossings occur whenever the Styx surfaces; ferrymen ply predictable stretches between pits.  

Block Hops

Most crossings are planned during conjunction windows. Miss your window? Enjoy the void until grapnels or tethers catch a passing face.  

Inhabitants

Acheron’s most visible “natives” are the spirit legions, the fallen of countless wars whose identities blurred into cause. They rally by banner, memory, or mere habit, form nations on block-faces, seize a block, then combine to seize the next when orbits bring it close. Loss isn’t defeat here; soldiers cut down in formation reform with the next muster. Officers and quartermasters matter as much as champions.   Beyond the legions, there can be many Fiendish envoys and Infernal quartermasters, espacially near Avalas Portals, working hunting grounds and treaties. Moreever, Construct guilds and Inevitables on temporary commissions to standardize corssing, arbitrate oaths or catalog Thuldanin salvage. There are also researchers and oath-clerics in Tintibulus proving theorems, registering charters and carving edicts that bite back and finally, there are pilots, chart-makers and archive crews braving Ocanthus to keep vectors, ledgers and names intact.  

Petitioners

Souls who lived by obedience without compassion, war as vocation, or ideology as identity often drift here. Petitioners are pressed into Companies, not always martial, but always regimented. Some are fused into fortifications, others become quartermasters of memory, and a rare few are promoted to Standard-Bearers, embodiments of a unit’s collective will. Mercy is scarce; purpose is plentiful.

Oaths, orders, and marching chants spoken in unison carry farther and grant brief advantages to coordination , but break down if the formation falters.   In addition, there are many more Phenomena:

• Collision Resonance

  When bodies strike, shockwaves travel the metal and can deafen, stun, or knock creatures prone for great distances.

• Doctrine Pressure

  Prolonged stays impose subtle compulsions—form ranks, keep ledgers, announce intent—growing stronger nearer command-sites.

• Treaty Geasa

  Oaths sworn on certain altars bind with planar force. Breaking them inflicts cumulative penalties (fatigue, disorientation, spell failure) until penance or absolution is rendered.