Who ever heard of a clockwork orange? Then I read
a malenky bit out loud in a sort of very high type
preaching goloss: "The attempt to impose upon man,
a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze
juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to
attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions
appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this
I raise my sword-pen."
The real strong have no need to prove to the phonies.
There were moments when [Dorian Gray] looked on evil
simply as a mode
through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.
The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street,
pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull
the trigger, into the crowd.
The best way I can describe them is to think of the worst imaginable person
stripped of every impulse to do good. Some of them seemed to be able to tell
others what to do, but I had no sense of any structure of hierarchy
in an organizational sense. They didn't appear to be controlled
or directed by anyone. Basically they were a mob of beings
totally driven by unbridled cruelty and passions.
Help yourself to my Planescape Character Generator
for MS-DOS.
In some liturgies, worshippers renounce, or reaffirm their renunciation of,
"the glamour of evil." On the Abyss, the glamour of evil is
an utter rejection of both common sense and common
kindness.
In our own world, some people think this is what they really want.
Medieval Europe, the culture on which much of AD&D is based,
depicted the spiritual powers of evil as ugly and dangerous, like
human misbehavior, but also vulnerable and ignorant.
Li Po and I believe that this mirrors real life.
When we see how repulsive evil is, most people will make the
right choices most of the time. So long as we live,
we can try to find the grace to live better.
Gary Gygax
chose the name "Abyss"
for the realm of Chaotic Evil, and suggested it might have 666
(the New Testament "number of the beast") layers. "Abyss" is Greek
for "no bottom"; the term appears in the last book of the Christian Bible
as "the bottomless pit".
The Abyss consists of many different kinds of
universes, all of the most disgusting evil, full of
meaninglessness, greed, bickering, despair, tedium, and idiotic
hate. The most furious, raging evil is found here. The locals
have as their goal destruction of all that is good
or even natural.
Many of the things that they enjoy most are probably better left undescribed.
All are
ready to betray anybody whenever it is in their
self-interest. Faith communities dedicated to chaotic evil
are easier to find in the abyss than on the prime plane, where they tend to remain
hidden. But there as here, the faithful unite around one charismatic
individual with some grandiose, unspeakably wicked vision. The leaders
and their cults hate one another.
This is the spiritual home of
the most atrocious and imaginative criminals, of those who
destroyed for sheer fun or "creative self expression", and of the
most disorganized evil creatures.
The spiritual powers here seek power by means of wanton
destruction, and seek to corrupt souls through hatred of all
authority and reason. They offer sexual, pseudo-mystical, and
magical temptations.
Those who sample these pleasures may well discover
that they have become addicted, and cannot be happy without doing
things that hurt those around them.
This is the only plane where
inhabitants actually boast of their villainies.
But even in the Abyss, open-faced evil is poor
politics when one is dealing with outsiders.
The locals usually present themselves as champions
of individual creativity and excellence, who have made
tremendous sacrifices in order to become "fulfilled individuals".
Expect to hear a lot of rhetoric
identical to what you have already heard from our own world's Far Left.
And on this plane where evil is so strong and disorganized,
their ideology drives them to commit the most extreme, imaginative atrocities
both against visitors and against each other.
Even if you profess chaotic-evil alignment, please respect TSR's
copyrights. Although the residents of the Abyss boast
of their evils, misappropriating the works of
individual creative artists
takes neither brains nor courage. Here is no place to show
yourself to be a weak loser.
In the Abyss, any un-repented crimes that visitors may
have committed are public knowledge. Misbehavior
will probably result in transformation of the perpetrator.
All pure things, unless they
are specially sanctified, become corrupted.
Primitives will find the most degenerate of their kind.
Mottos are unprintable. Public portals between the layers and to
remote planes may take any form. Portals to "Pandemonium" are
typically activated by jumping off a cliff into the wind (be sure
you have good information before trying this). Portals to
"Carceri" are caves. Other gateways exist between and within
planes, some of them activated by killing the guardian. Dirty
yellow pools to the astral
appear at random here, and can be moved freely.
There are innumerable, unending slum, slave, and prison riots.
The locals find the idea that real altruism exists to be laughably
naive. They are convinced that anyone claiming to be of good
alignment is merely using it to mask some secret agenda of selfish cruelty.
Because evil is so powerful here, the locals lack even the
ordinary loves of our world -- family, friendship, romance.
These instead become ways in which a stronger being preys on
a weaker being.
The locals will talk a lot about cruelty as a way of "building character."
The residents of the Abyss find the whole
idea of unselfish love to be utterly disgusting.
The uppermost layer is a wasteland, from which the evil creatures
project to other worlds. Cities in the wasteland are copies of
the worst parts of all the universe's towns. Prices are
preposterously high. The city of Gallowsgate is ruled by an
ambitious snake-creature and is popular with the Doomguard.
Styros is a barracks town. The plane between contains holes,
mostly filled with unpleasant liquids of various kinds, which
lead to deeper layers. The town of Broken Reach, governed by a
succubus, contains the portal to the Outlands. Combat is
forbidden inside the city walls. There is also a massive forge.
The planes below are tremendously varied. There are deserts of
weird colored sand. There are the "Iron Waste" glaciers of weird
colored ice in perpetual night, the spiritual homes of a few
evil frost giants. There are worlds of nothing but air, without
gravity. There are maelstroms, like other chaotic universes, but
that do not respond to normal sentience. There are rocky
universes of volcanic lava. There are universes of solid rock,
with caves and tunnels. There are ocean-bottom worlds, including
"Gaping Maw", the home of Demogorgon's cult which caters to
the most bizarre and depraved members of every race ("the lowest
of the low", "the bottom feeders"). There are vacuum
universes where ordinary visitors explode. There are universes
of delusion that appear wholesome, but where all features
will try to kill visitors. There are private homes where
visitors are not welcome. There are realms full of undead,
including icy "Thanatos, the Belly of Death", formerly the realm
of Orcus, now taken over by a dark elf cult centered in the town
of Naratyr, where the central palace has walls of flesh and
carpets of hair. All creatures take a penalty of -2 on
constitution here, and any creature dying in Thanatos becomes
undead. Somewhere in Thanatos is the Book of Lies, where all the
lies ever uttered by any being are listed, but not in context.
("No, I don't think you're too fat.") There are universes of
extreme evil -- good creatures cannot enter, neutrals are
imprisoned, and evils become bodaks (there are warnings). There
are lost planes, from which no captive can escape, and where a
"gate" merely open to another point on the same plane. "Woeful
Escarand" is a place of judgment for dead sinners.
Gnoll
heaven ("Yeenoghu's realm" of saw-grass savannah and bones) and
dark elf heaven ("The Demonweb Pits") are both here. The dark elves
hold the philosophy that in the end, everybody is spider food,
so live accordingly, without respect for life or kindness or
rules, finding meaning in depravity and caprice and in savoring
the suffering of others.
Troglodyte
heaven ("Rotting Plain") is a festering swamp ruled by a
gigantic, hungry lizard. The motherland of the evil beholders is
the "Realm of a Million Eyes". The "Phantom Plane" is a realm of
evil lizard folk indifferent to the politics of the rest of the
abyss.
"Twelve-trees" is a realm in which twelve of the holy
angels were supposedly caught and crucified, and where weapons
against other unholy creatures are forged. "Blood Tor" is the
realm of Beshaba's cult, and bad luck follows its visitors.
The
"Slime Pits" are a morass of sludge, home to the Juiblex and
Zuggtmoy cults. "Sulfanorum" is a realm of low-burning fires and
massive amounts of smoke. The "Worm Realm" of twisting tunnels
is home to the evil gnome "Urdlen" cult, and visitors get
malignancies or fungal infections in 2d6 months. The insane
dwarf Diinkarazan is imprisoned in a whirling realm of distorted
distances, and becomes sane and effective (but not nice) for one
day every fifty years. The "Caverns of the Skull" is home to the
Kali cult, where the evil dead kill one another and are
reincarnated immediately after. "Azzagrat" is the three planes
of an evil tyrant-illusionist, which keeps the appearance of an
orderly, cosmopolitan, decorous police state. In one of these,
fire is cold and ice is hot. "The Plains of Gallenshu" is a
realm of centaur fiends, gangs on eternal forced march. The
ground here is made entirely of rotten body parts, and the air is
a "stinking cloud". Everything except metal and material of
Abyssal origin rots within a month. The town of Blackmane is
neutral territory for the centaur fiends. The town of Oxblood
produces cavalry fiends. "Torremor" is a realm of pillars and
perches, with gravity (which changes from time to time) but no
ground, where flying creatures and perpetual freefall are the
norm. Falling water produces beautiful rainbows, and falling
guano and corpses are nuisances, while a cult strings razor wire.
It is breeding territory for fly fiends. Portals to the Outlands, Pandemonium
or Tarterus in the uppermost layer are holes in the ground.
Spell alterations in
the Abyss: All magic draws the locals' attention in the Abyss,
and usually that isn't what you want. Alteration spells always
produce a result that is more or less nasty. If it's an
alteration that really changes a creature, a prime requisite
check by the caster is required or it will be very nasty and
permanent. Conjuration-summoning have a 10% chance per level of
bringing a hostile foul fiend. Divinations directed at a foul
fiend invite counter-spells of similar kind (visual, auditory,
etc.), up to two spell-levels per level of the spell cast. ESP
on a foul fiend requires a saving throw; if successful, the
caster is feebleminded for 2d6 hours, otherwise insanity develops
and some spell slots are permanently lost (1-8 levels, depending
on the creature probed). Illusion-phantasms are extra-effective.
Created undead will be animated by hostile lost souls, and they
will attack their creator. Wild magic surges require two rolls,
and the worse of the two affects the caster. Elemental spells
must be keyed. Spells that protect from the elements require a
check vs. the caster's prime requisite or they will fail at the
worst time. Destructive elemental spells produce +1 point of
damage per die. It seems likely that spell keys can overcome
at least some of these problesm.
Wizardly spell keys are
blood and/or money and/or defiling something pure.
Power keys given to clergy are often miniature skulls.
Third edition "Manual of the Planes" focuses primarily on simplifying
and encouraging individual campaign creativity. Ideas include:
I respectfully suggest that the Abyss be regarded as thoroughly evil and thoroughly chaotic. These effects would be cumulative
The Fourth Edition has moved the Abyss itself to the realms below.
Kalandurren is a realm in the astral sea, surrounded by "a flickering color
veil of pale gray." Those who enter will find it taken over by demons
and by the remnants of the Doomguard, whose ideology is now
"destroying anything that attempts to impose its order on the cosmos,
be it deity, devil, domain, or natural
law." Perhaps visitors would get bonuses or penalties
to intelligence, wisdom, and charisma-based skill checks
depending on how much their behavior has been in keeping with the ideals
of the locals.
In keeping with the flexibility of the third and fourth editions and the
backgrounds of many players, perhaps the Abyss is essentially a world
where like-minded spirits meet. It looks and works like our own world,
except that it is dominated by weird cults of hate and senseless cruelty.
Most disturbing, it might not be much different, at first glance,
from much of our earth.
NPC attitudes are typically "hostile".
The demons of the Abyss are a fiendish non-human (or formerly human) race devoted to promoting the community's
ideals
among the living by encouragement and subtlety, rather than by force.
The dead find communities matching their own ideals and interests,
and continue to live much as they did on earth, though no longer able to visit the
Prime Plane. Instead of the "gods" of polytheism, each living Chaotic Evil divine spellcaster is
sponsored (and monitored)
by a prayer fellowship with similar interests based on the Abyss.
For the fourth edition, I suggest no penalties for divine spellcasters from elsewhere. For earlier editions, I respectfully suggest that the only penalty for such a cleric
on a differently-aligned outer plane is the loss of one spell
of the highest available level for each plane removed, with the Outlands two planes from Mechanus, Elysium, Limbo, and the Gray Waste. When one level
is depleted, spells of the next highest level are lost. Thus a cleric
sponsored from the Abyss would lose one spell on Pandemonium or Carceri,
and eight spells in Mt. Celestia. Moving to the Outlands loses four spells.
A world where love is non-existent and replaced by wanton
destructiveness would be as horrible
as any rules-intensive world ever visited by adventurers.
Referees might not want players to realize that they have
entered the Abyss. Depending on the site of arrival,
visitors might believe they are in a post-holocaust world
dominated by weird, cruel cults. Ideologies presented by the
clergy are unprintable.
In our world, professing chaotic evil alignment is bad politics.
Even the worst people claim moral high ground, citing
present or historic injustices, needs for personal freedom
and expression, and so forth.
Here are how some persons who may be of chaotic evil alignment
have presented themselves. Follow the links, and you'll see
through the bunk.
"Welcome!" repeated the fiend-worshippers, in one cry of despair and triumph.
The
Plane of Hell --
full of abusive egomaniacs. "With a feeling of sick familiarity,
I recognized here my own thinking."
Howard Storm
records a near-death experience.
Hordes of the Abyss -- D&D hardback devoted to these planes.
Primarily rules options for the worst horror and depravity, and how
good adventurers can resist and combat it -- sometimes by
direct confrontation, sometimes by bold fidelity to goodness and love.
It is not primarily a literary work, as "Planescape" was.
Still, a central theme is that it is human misbehavior that gives
spiritual evil its footholds in our own world. And the evil
of the demons themselves is as stupid and banal as most of our world's, as well.
Unity of the Rings -- comic book art
Gamers for Christ --
news group
Men are not in hell because God is angry with them. They are in wrath
and darkness because they have done to the light, which infinitely
flows forth from God, as that man does to the light of the sun who puts out
his own eyes.
-- William Law
-- Anthony Burgess, "A Clockwork Orange", 1962
Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends.-- Charles Manson
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown"
-- Oscar Wilde
-- Second Surrealist Manifesto
Howard Storm's experience is
described here.
-1 on all intelligence, wisdom, and charisma checks for all non-good, non-evil creatures
-2 on all intelligence, wisdom, and charisma checks for all good creatures
-1 on all intelligence, wisdom, and charisma checks for all non-lawful, non-chaotic creatures
-2 on all intelligence, wisdom, and charisma checks for all lawful creatures
Good-based spells simply fail.
Evil-based (non-lawful) spells work as if caster were 4 levels higher.
Law-based spells simply fail.
Chaos-based (non-good) spells work as if caster were 4 levels higher.
Marquis de Sade
"Lo! there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and
solemn tone, almost sad, with its despairing awfulness, as if his
once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race. "Depending upon
one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all
a dream. Now are ye undeceived! Evil is the nature of mankind.
Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome, again, my children,
to the communion of your race!"
Don Brubaker --
"You'll first experience hell", God said evenly, with a tone
of complete control, "to prove to you the reality of evil.
You've only believed that there was goodness.
You must see for yourself that hell is real." Link is now down.
Near Death
Experiences -- including accounts of hell.
Hell's Dominion -- a near-death experience
[Storm describes himself as a selfish man who not only didn't believe but detested
those who did.] I thought of how cold-hearted and cruel and manipulative
I was. I felt where I had ended up was where I belonged,
and that the people who had come and picked me up and taken me to this place were
people who had lived lives like mine. We were people who hadn't loved God
and hadn't loved fellow human beings. Now in this place, there was nothing left but to
tear and gnaw on one another, which was essentially what we had done on earth.
I was also aware that this was just the beginning, and that it was going to get worse.
Much, much worse. I knew the only way to survive in this place was to be crueller than
the people who were around you. There was no kindness, no compassion, no hope.
Acheron -- Lawful, Evil Tendencies
Arborea -- Chaotic Good
Arcadia -- Lawful, Good Tendencies
Baator -- Lawful Evil
The Beastlands -- Good, Chaotic Tendencies
Bytopia -- Good, Lawful Tendencies
Carceri -- Evil, Chaotic Tendencies
Elysium -- Neutral Good
Gehenna -- Evil, Lawful Tendencies
The Gray Waste -- Neutral Evil
Limbo -- Chaotic Neutral
Mechanus -- Lawful Neutral
Mount Celestia -- Lawful Good
The Outlands -- True Neutral
Pandemonium -- Chaotic, Evil Tendencies
Ysgard -- Chaotic, Good Tendencies
The Inner Planes
What "Planescape" could be
AD&D and the Religious Right
Li Po's Hermitage (character generators, more)
Background by Ed
Ed's character generators:
More good
Less extreme
More law
Fourth Edition
Third edition: DD3.5, d20 Modern, Dragonlance, Eberron, Forgotten Realms, lots more.
AD&D2 Generic Character Generator for MS-DOS.
AD&D2 for very limited machines for MS-DOS.
Alternity Science Fiction Character Generator for MS-DOS.
Birthright Character Generator for MS-DOS.
Dark Sun 2 Character Generator and
documentation for MS-DOS.
Jakandor Character Generator
Lankhmar Character Generator
Planescape Character Generator for MS-DOS.
Psionics Character Generator for MS-DOS.
Red Death Character Generator for MS-DOS.
Skills & Powers Character Generator for MS-DOS.
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