D&D General Pros and Cons of Combining Hells and the Abyss.

[SkidAce]

Over the years I have had them combined and seperate. Looking to nail it down for my homebrew continuity and looking for constructive inputs for and against.

At work, might be a while before I can post, but I can view replies.

 

[Oofta]

I keep them separate, although I don't follow standard lore exactly. For example, I think infinite planes make no sense so the planes are worlds, large but not infinite.

But I still keep them separate because I want them to have a different feel if the adventurers ever actually travel there. That and it leaves open the blood war, etc..

 

[cbwjm]

I've combined the lower planes into a single plane and have also done the same for the upper planes.

In the lower planes, fiends can be found working anywhere so a baler might be found of a lawful evil alignment working for an archfiend of the nine hells. My lower planes look like the following:

• I have one plane (no layers) with independent domains for Abyssal Lords who war amongst each other but who also direct some of their energy against the united domains of the Nine Hells, a group of fiends who have sworn oaths to the Lord of the Nine, Asmodeus.
• Other united kingdoms have arisen such as the Dominions of Sin, a group of 7 archfiends that are generally less powerful than the others but their unity makes them strong enough to hold their own against the armies of the Abyssal lords. The Nine Hells make only nominal forays into their territory, knowing they could likely conquer and absorb the territory of the 7 Sins but opting not to as a buffer against the Abyssal lords.
• Graz'zt and Gargauth are two archfiends that grew tired of seeking power within the Nine Hells and instead struck out on their own. Graz'zt has become one of the most powerful Abyssal Lords while no one really knows what became of Gargauth, only that he never conquered his own domain.

So I have two groups of united polities with the lower planes and a host of independent Abyssal lords. They all make war on each other, some call this the Blood War, though the origin of the name has been lost.

 

[Minigiant]

I have a homebrew setting where the Lower Plane is split into different demiplanes which represent different types of evil.

Basically Pandemonium, the Abyss, Tarterus, Hades, Gehenna, the Hells, and Archeron combine into one big Hell.
I've created new fiends in that setting to fill them up as well.

 

[SkidAce]

I keep them separate, although I don't follow standard lore exactly. For example, I think infinite planes make no sense so the planes are worlds, large but not infinite.

But I still keep them separate because I want them to have a different feel if the adventurers ever actually travel there. That and it leaves open the blood war, etc..

Most of my "planes" are worlds also.

ATM, the Hells are a star cluster/solar system, and the Abyss is a growing cancer of corruption spreading across systems.

 

[SkidAce]

I guess one of my concerns, and why I keep bouncing back and forth, is "how many types of fiend do you need?".

I use a lot of demons, devils, and the loths, gehlerreths, demondands. etc.

On the other hand, I could embrace my many worlds theory, and have whatever type of fiend I need in/on whatever plane/world I want them.

"Yeah, we dont work for Asmodeus, the 'selfstyled overlord', he's just a local punk."

 

[MechaTarrasque]

I tend to treat the whole of the outer planes as a more or less complete shell around the multiverse. The 9 Hells, the Grey Wastes, and the Abyss are pits in the bottom part of the shell. As new sin falls into them, the older, worn-out sin gets pushed out where it mingles with the older, worn-out sin of the neighboring pit (or the old worn-out cogs of Mechanus or the used up stuff of Limbo). This revitalizes the material, and any fiend (or resident of Mechanus or Limbo) in that is in the vicinity gets pushed along with it. More powerful types can simply go back to where they came (although agents of the gods [and sometimes the gods themselves] often try to recruit them). Anything lower than CR 3 basically gets transformed into whatever the local god wants for minions (as long as it is CR 3 or lower). The main alignment planes are too set for even gods to mess with, so they hang out in the transition zones, where the rules are a lot more flexible. Good places for PC's to find the magguffin that lets them teleport into an archdevil's palace (of course, something like that is of interest to a lot of people). Even on the upper planes, this lets you have some more intrigue-related stories (officially the Gooders are all good buddies, but maybe where they interact a lot, familarity breeds contempt, and the LG celestial might give you some information on a CG celestial who really annoys her....).

 

[MichaelSomething]

I say just pick one and don't worry too much about it. If you ever want to change your mind, have your PCs divide/combine the realms as needed for some reason or another.

 

[jgsugden]

I simplified the planar structure. Details on the rest of it in the link below, but the highlights of the Hells:

• There is one Hell Plane.
• Asmodeus' 9 Hells are at the core of it with Nessus a paradise at the core, 7 Regions surrounding Nessus, and Avernus the Battlefield of the Bloodwar that surrounds those 7 regions.
• The Blood War is fought because the Far Realms 'collided' with the core Cosmology in the center of the Hells and the Demons were corrupted from Devils. The Devils are all that stands between the Demons fighting their war to Nessus, cracking open the universe, and watching everything be consumed by the Far Realms and the nightmares that exist there.
• Asmodeus is seen in many ways - but the way he seems himself is the ruling general in a war that can't be lost, at any cost, who is incapable of lying, but will do anything to ensure he has the power to keep fighting his neverending battle. This has to be reconciled with the war being fought far from the borders of Nessus, and him spending all his time in a a place that looks more like the image that most of us hold of Mt Olympus in our heads.

More on my Cosmology: https://www.enworld.org/threads/pla...you-design-the-multiverse.640473/post-7423602

 

[EzekielRaiden]

For Jewel of the Desert, they are distinct places within a single plane....but defined by conquest, not by cosmology (well, not directly.) "Hell"--properly, Jannah--is split between devils and demons, who constantly wage war to acquire territory therein.

Spoiler: Doctrinal reasons, you can skip if you don't care that much

By agreement from all participants the party has spoken with, these factions appeared as a result of the War in Heaven, a conflict which was instantaneous from the perspective of anyone outside, and infinitely long from the perspective of anyone inside. The Servants (essentially, sapient celestial beings) were originally split into two factions: those who upheld the One's divine plan for existence and Their order to never, ever use their powers to coerce mortals; and those who wished to uphold the divine plan but broke that commandment, using their powers, as well as simple force, to make mortals behave as desired. During the course of the war, a third faction arose, from members of both the Servants (loyalists) and the Fallen. This third faction came to enjoy the violence and destruction of the War in Heaven for its own sake, reveling in the feelings, the experiences, the chaos itself.

Representatives of all three factions claim that they won the conflict. Devils, whom the Servants call the "Fallen," believe that they won the right to prove that their way of doing things actually fulfills the One's plan, and that they only had to accept the minor inconvenience of actually being self-consistent; they see themselves as being tested and the demons (the "Destroyers") as their mortal enemies. Hence, unless celestial beings interfere with a devil's activities, they are quite content to not fight angels at all, seeing them as simply self-limiting siblings rather than outright enemies. Demons, aka the "Destroyers," believe that they won the right to slake their eternal thirsts and sate their insatiable hungers for as long as they like. They welcome the opposition of both the Servants and the Fallen, because that simply makes the task more interesting, more dangerous, more thrilling.

The PCs have only ever met one proper celestial being. The rest seem to be unwilling, or perhaps unable, to interact with the mortal world currently, though they have done so in the past. Specifically, the Safiqi priesthood began, a couple of thousand years ago, from teachings given by Servants, so the mortal church acts as their closest proper representatives. According to Safiqi doctrine, the Servants won the war, albeit at great cost. The One cursed both of the other two factions with what they wanted: the Fallen are now bound by the iron chains of the very law they wish to enforce on others, and the Destroyers are now enslaved to the very desires they wished to stoke, incapable of feeling satisfied.

This means Jannah is a battleground not just of terrain but of idea and symbol. Devils reshape their part, which is often called "Hell," to be a place of perfectly orderly totalitarian law. A place for everything and everything in its place. The wheels of infernal justice grind relatively quickly, but "corruption"--so long as it does not violate the letter of the law--is rampant. Demons likewise reshape their claimed territory into something fitting them, which I guess you could call "the Abyss" but I doubt they care about naming it. "Sensory overload" would be one description, but also absolute anarchy, "you get what you can take," etc. Powerful demons have servants mostly through intimidation or beguilement, whereas devils respect the chain of command (but certainly will take any justified means to advance.)

So the whole of Jannah is...pretty screwed up. Anywhere outside of the most core territories that doesn't see massive, active warfare at least once a decade is either too barren or remote to be worth caring about, or too heavily defended by one side to be worth striking most of the time. Places that change hands frequently may have bizarre mishmashes of cobbled-together buildings and pristine paved streets, or continuous defacement, or half-finished projects piled on top of half-finished projects piled on top of....