Aeaea

Hacate maintains two realms named Aeaea, reflections of her divided yet intertwined nature: one rooted in Pluton, the gray soil of Hades, and the other sunk deep within Minauros, the fetid swamps of the Nine Hells. Both serve as mirrors of her shifting moods and as fonts of her terrifying arcane authority.  

Aeaea of Pluton

In Pluton, Aeaea exists in a state of eternal, mutable night. The quality of this darkness changes with Hacate’s whims: sometimes serene beneath pale starlight, sometimes lashed by tempests and shrieking winds. When one “night” ends, the realm plunges into pitch blackness for a full hour before a waning moon rises over the eastern hills.   The land is hilly and dreamlike, threaded with roads of no origin or destination, lined with pale poplar groves. These groves are sacred to her faithful petitioners, who gather beneath the full moon to perform rites of witchcraft, divination, and transformation. Minor villages dot the hills, but they are ephemeral, appearing along the winding roads only to vanish days or weeks later, as if swallowed by the land itself.   Hacate keeps no fixed palace here, preferring a solitary lighthouse of black stone that watches over the outer fringes of her realm. Within Aeaea of Pluton, all spells function at their fullest potency. Yet no spell is cast without Hacate’s notice, for she is aware of every incantation spoken in her domain. On calm, clear nights she allows most workings to proceed as intended. On storm-wracked nights, she favors sorceries of ruin and flame, and gentle magics often fail or twist into destructive forms.  

Aeaea of Minauros

The Aeaea of Minauros is smaller and more hostile, a desolate and mist-drenched wasteland where even the surest wanderer soon becomes lost. The blackened ground is seared by rivers of fire and crowned by volcanic peaks. At the heart of one crater sits Hacate’s throne of obsidian studded with fire opals, a beacon of terrible power in the choking fog.   This realm is littered with thousands of strange arcane engines, monolithic constructs of stone, metal, and sorcerous glass that hum, howl, and shudder with unearthly light. They are fed not with coal or oil, but with souls, siphoning the essence of the dead and converting it into raw magical power. Hacate and her servants draw upon this energy to fuel their endless workings, and when supplies run low, even the lowest of her petitioners or mortal captives are cast into the machines.   Some of her priests claim that these devices are the very forges of magic itself, the true engines by which spellcraft radiates across the multiverse. Others dismiss this as dogma, though none deny the dread truth: the machines can devour more than souls. Outsiders, mortals, even lesser fiends have been dragged screaming into their gears, broken down into essence to fuel Hecate’s power.   Hecate’s Aeaea within Minauros is tolerated by Mammon, for reasons both practical and precarious. The engines of Aeaea generate sorcerous force that even Hell’s armies find useful, and Mammon covets the infernal wealth produced by her devices. Yet it is a fraught alliance, for Hecate acknowledges no authority but her own. Minauros’ swamps thus hold a unique balance: the gold-hoards of Mammon and the soul-engines of Hecate working in proximity, bound by mutual benefit and mutual suspicion.