Avalas

Avalas’ blocks collide on schedule, as often as Asira, sending ringing shockwaves through the iron-dark air. Impacts don’t shatter things at random; the plane’s lawfulness shows up in the clean, perpendicular fracture lines that grid each face. Over ages, large, younger blocks chip into smaller, older cubes, canyoning surfaces and collapsing tunnel networks in tidy, right-angled ruin.   New blocks appear featureless, blank stone, no cover, no forage, so veteran nations avoid them until they’ve picked up scars, soil, and places to hide when the next collision season hits.   The River Styx threads Avalas in brutal, bureaucratic loops: it boils out of a crater on one block, runs a few leagues, then drops through another, sometimes as a city-killing cataract. On bad days it changes course and drowns an entire campaign plan along with everyone’s memories.  

Notable Locations

Muster at Rigus-Gate

Avalas’ great portal-bastion, where contracts are inked, banners inspected, and a brittle neutrality is enforced under the watch of auditors.  

Archive of Surrenders

A treaty-vault etched around a cube’s equator; oaths sworn here cannot be quietly broken, for Avalas itself enforces them.  

Tower of the Measured Truce

A neutral court at a tri-border where ceasefires are forged, not to end wars, but to redirect them elsewhere.  

Clockwork Redoubt

A Mechanus hinge-citadel that meshes two drifting cubes on a strict schedule; those who miss their crossing risk being crushed.  

Anvil Chasm

A collision cleft rich in salvaged war-ore, ideal for forging arms and armor bound by oath.  

Rule-Lines

Runes carved into Avalas’ surface that enforce etiquette; duels pause for parley, and even enemies are compelled to listen.  

The Blue Cube

A cobalt-veined block whose vaults once hosted a notorious azure tyrant. Its interior still holds storm-charged galleries and traps tuned to lightning and pride.  

Reizmis

Parked tragically near a Styx entry point, the entire cube sits beneath a perpetual waterfall. Its rusting iron seams have soaked up a trace of the Styx’s amnesia; ore mined here can be forged into weapons and wards that drink memories on a telling blow.  

Wreychtmirk

A navigator’s gem. The Styx exits each face to a different Lower Plane and the cube’s faces mimic those planes’ traits. Read the face, read the destination, planar piloting made (relatively) sane.  

Travel and Collisions

Crossing Avalas’ void requires chain-bridges, winch-lines, or ferries attuned to oath-bonds; leaping unaided is little more than suicide. Barracks are hewn into the lee-sides of cubes, each one marked by watch-gongs that sound every two hours. To sleep through a gong is to invite Avalas to invent a new discipline, often in the form of punishing weather. Etiquette is law: every traveler must declare whom they serve, why they are here, and under what orders they act. On many faces, failing to do so is considered a legal act of war.  

Block Hops

Armies chart conjunction windows and build temporary causeways or tether bridges. Miss your window and you’re drifting.  

Stygian Routes

Ferries ride scheduled eruptions between pit and pit. In flood years, whole districts relocate two faces “downstream.”  

Portals

Fixed spherical gates to Mechanus, the Nine Hells, and the Outlands hang in known sky lanes. Touch to activate: a harmonious chord to reach Mechanus, dissonant to reach Hell, and silence to reach the Outlands. Step through and expect to fall toward the nearest block unless you came with feather fall, wings, or a very good plan.

Collisions between Avalas’ iron cubes send resonant shockwaves through the metal for leagues, stunning those unprepared, extinguishing lanterns, and toppling siege engines. The very atmosphere enforces its own discipline: long exposure builds compulsions to form ranks, declare intent, and keep a tally of one’s deeds. Those who resist find their thoughts fragmented and their words faltering until they speak their objective aloud. Oaths sworn at Avalas’ consecrated altars bind with planar geasa; breaking them inflicts fatigue, disorientation, and sputtering magic until the offender makes penance or gains absolution. The air itself turns hostile when the engines grind, filling with filings and metal grit that scour eyes and lungs first. Gravity proves equally treacherous, leaping from one cube-face to another without a tether risks a sudden shift in orientation, and memorials across the layer stand in honor of those who misjudged their descent.   Avalas favors magic that bears the lawful descriptor, abjurations tied to oaths, and divinations that trace chains of command. Chaotic spells falter here, as do summons without clear orders or illusions that contradict a declared objective. Veterans of the plane carry field kits that include magnetized boots, anchor-pikes, coil-rope, ear-baffles, and flare-bells that echo orders across the din. Most important is the Doctrine Card, a written declaration of one’s unit, mission, and authority. To display one often cools tempers more swiftly than a drawn blade.