Endless Planes - Community Project

[Xathan]

Inspired by the old Thousand Isles thread, this is a community World Building project. The idea remains the same - create a world where anything goes. Instead of islands, however, this time its planes.

Rules are simple. Write a description (a few sentences or a few paragraphs, as long as you want to get) about a plane, a planar transport method, a planar city, or a person that ties into the loose theme of "different planes." We should probably avoid "elemental plane of -blank-" type planes, just because those have been fairly well done already, but if you have a unique idea, go for it. Feel free to play with fundamental laws of the universe while doing so.

As far as magic and technology, anything goes, but as a general guideline Renaissance level technology is about as high as it should go without magic to bump it further up. Planes can be infinitely large or as small as a house, so long as it's interesting and there's a reason for people to visit. Multi-planar empires are fine, so long as they are not the ultimate anything - with infinite possible worlds, there's really no way to say what is "best."

As a fun option, add the short description - one or two sentences - about some planes that "border" the one you posted. You can expand upon that later, or if someone else wants to expand on that one, they should feel free.

I'll start:
[ic=The Lost City of Rysu]
The Lost City of Rysu has a slightly misleading name, as it was recently found. Located at a planar crossroads - as well as a literal crossroads - Rysu was once a nexus city and hub of planar travelers in ages past. When two great empires, the Elsewhere Republic and The Synchronized Hegemon, went to war, Rysu was cut off from the Astral Pathway for a millennium.

Fifty years ago it was discovered by the Nomads Guild and quickly became a hub of trade and visitors again.Rysu stands out among nexus cities for its layout. Located in the center of a mile-wide plain that comprises the entire plane, it is a tower that extends fifty miles into the air and another fifty  beneath the surface. Pathways ranging from literal roads to skybridges into the upper levels to tunnels into the stories below crisscross the plane and extend past the planar boundary, leading to whatever city they connect to.

Although it has been reopened and re explored for half a century now, one mystery remains; although it was once a hub city and boasted over 50 million inhabitants at the time it was severed, no trace of any of those who were sealed within has been found, save for the ominous message scrawled on some walls in darkened rooms: "Watch the Clouds." Its meaning remains unknown.

Rysu borders:

The Golden Halls: A castle-plane coated in false gold, patrolled by the servants of a mad god.

The Tranquil Battlefield: A plane of endless battle where those slain rise the next dawn, unharmed and back in their barracks.[/ic]

Feel free to add your own or expand on any of the concepts I barely brushed on.

[Ghostman]

[ic=The Wild]
The Wild is a world where technology fails, civilization falters, and rational knowledge is forgotten. The very earth of this land finds such concepts anathema, rejecting them as things that do not belong. Planar travelers from elsewhere soon find that the tools they've brought with them begin to malfunction, eventually breaking apart. Everything they build in the Wild crumbles to ruin. Their sorceries backfire or fizzle, letters fall off the pages of their books, and even their minds can no longer contain knowledge of sophisticated subject matter.

Those who linger too long in this world of primitive chaos will inevitably degenerate into ignorant savages, warped by the ineffable atavistic power of the plane. They lose their grasp of complex social organization and mores, reverting to a near-bestial state of small roaming packs with pecking orders based on personal strength and awe. Their language reverts to a cacophony of simplistic croaks and grunts, capable only of communicating the most base of concepts such as "eat", "shelter" and "mate". These throwbacks will then disperse across the uncharted pastures and pristine forests of the Wild, hunting and gathering for their sustenance until death in one form or another finds them.

The wild borders: --
[/ic]

[sparkletwist]

[ic=The Mysterious Emporium of Mr. Higgins]
Any one of a dozen different portals scattered through the planar expanse leads one to a busy cobblestone street, full of gentlemen in hats and well-dressed ladies going to and fro, along with the clomping of horse-drawn carriages and a seemingly incessant light drizzle. In every way, this lane resembles a busy thoroughfare of Vershire or one of the numerous shopping streets of central Thycia, save for the fact that should one proceed too far and turn down a side street, the road always invariably leads back to the same place-- the front of a small and seemingly unremarkable shop.

The inside of the shop seems much larger than the outside, but still quite cramped, full of narrow rows of shelf after shelf packed with various dusty antiques, curios, memorabilia, gimcracks, gewgaws, tchotchkes, old books, and other oddities gathered from throughout the myriad planes. Some shelves show a definite, if odd organization-- one devoted exclusively to alchemical reagents, another to scrolls offering tutelage in the dubious art of obscenomancy, another with archaic but still quite functional firearms from the long-dead Xier'a Heth Empire-- but still others seem to be a random assortment, their organizational scheme known only to the shop's proprietor, an odd fellow by the name of Mr. Higgins.

Who or what exactly Mr. Higgins is is unclear. While the creature clearly identifies as male, it's not quite clear one way or the other, as it's rather difficult to determine a species, let alone a gender. He looks something like an odd beardless dwarf, yet has the pointed ears and snarling face of a goblinoid, and tends to dress in an eclectic mix of the fashions of any number of different prestigious empires-- but, regardless of his attire, unfailingly carries an elegant walking stick topped with gold. His appearance is of one who is early in his elderly years, yet, he has maintained this appearance for what would seem to be centuries (if not longer) so his true age and nature remain a secret-- a secret about which he himself proffers no definite answers. If asked his age, he will give an answer, but that answer will tend to vary from day to day, and each day he will insist is the truth.

Otherwise, he is always good-natured and nearly unflappable, possessing a somewhat odd sense of humor. He seems to have a good rapport with most of his clientele, be they arcane researchers, mad scientists, theurges-in-training, demonic lords from truly foul realms, or, of course, wandering adventurers-- the "locals" who wander the street outside incessantly never seem to enter the shop, though. He seems to have at least one language in common with nearly everyone who walks into his shop, so he can give each customer personal attention, inquiring as to their needs and selecting the perfect merchandise from his seemingly endless stocks. While he would never willfully sell an item to someone whom it could do harm, he also tends to evaluate the risk of any item in terms of the risk to him; being a seemingly immortal cosmic entity of indeterminate species, other visitors may have remarkably different results. Caveat emptor.
[/ic]

[Ghostman]

[ic=Evermount]
The sole landform on this strange plane seems to be the singular, impossibly tall mountain that gives it it's name. The summit of the Evermount is perpetually obscured in a swirling cloud, and is a place where boundaries between worlds break apart - a dimensional hub that connects to several different mountaintops on various other planes. Downward from this peak extend the Evermount's slopes, streching past layers upon layers of clouds. No matter how far one descends there is no sign of an end to the mountain's height, no hint of a level ground below. If there is a base upon which the Evermount stands, no explorer has found it.

Many towns and villages have been built on the slopes - perched on ledges or carved into the rock of the cliffside. Cereals and vegetables are cultivated on stepped terraces that catch water from rainfall and the streams cascading down the mountain. Llamas and mountain-goats are reared for their milk, hides and meat. Roads have been built where the terrain permits it, but most travel is via footpaths and through the occasional tunnel.
[/ic]

[Humabout]

[ic=The Abyssal Chasm]The world itself bubbled up and cracked.  While the resulting bulge is amazingly round, the most interesting feature of this planetary pimple is the circumscribed crack in the crust itself.  Nearly a perfect circle, the crack plummets so far into the planet's interior that the air pressure is nearly twice that of at the lip, causing a number of alien effects.  It is very humid within the crack, especially at Great Chasm's floor, but more mysteriously are the clouds formed halfway up the Chasm's walls by the interplay of temperature, pressure, and humidity.  Moreover, the increased pressure has made typical terrestrial lifeforms nonexistent, allowing a strange and voracious family of ambulatory plants to reign supreme.  Their collective consciousness transmitted via sprawling networks of vines and tendrils connect their incubatory seeds, cephalic nodes, and more mobile members in chasm-wide hivemind capable of reacting to intrusion collective concert.  Many surfacers who have braved the descent into this abyssal chasm have mistaken these strange and alien denizens for a demonic incursion, and a few unfortunate souls have become slave to its will, as well.[/ic]

[Elven Doritos]

[ic=The Sorrow, a City on the Edge of Never]Nobody is quite sure what it is that lay on the outskirts of the Sorrow, but they know what it is called: Terminus. Debates rage as to whether it is a terminus or The Terminus, but those who venture into it never return. The citizens of the Sorrow eke out their bleak existence on the edge of this unthinkable nothingness, indulging the curiosities of travelers and cosmic tourists. Some of the Sorrow's denizens, organized loosely into a fraternity known as the Psychopomps' Society, make it their business to bilk foreigners of their physical possessions—some say their bodies themselves—by escorting them to the edge of Terminus, only to return, alone, from the event horizon.

All of the Sorrow's inhabitants are exiles, be they inhabitants of long-forgotten worlds or simply too strange or dangerous to thrive elsewhere. There is a grey melancholy that hangs about the Sorrow's streets and corners, and even the brightest lights seem dim and dreary. The longer one stays in proximity to Terminus, the more they lose of themselves—mind, body, and soul—and many of the Sorrow's people are little more than formless ghosts, clinging to whatever secret drove them to the edge of oblivion.

The Sorrow borders:

Terminus, the Ending, either of everything or of nothing, through which destruction or rebirth is possible.

The Tomorrow Road, seemingly endless, which winds and twists anew with each successive dawn.[/ic]

[SA]

[ic=Beautiful Augisgoppa and Serpent-Minded Arinhhangueananu]Her name is Augisoppa, most beautiful, bloodlipped, roseeyed. She was singing in the meadow when angel Brakchi-yosulka rode out of heaven and caught her between his fingers, laughing. He took her up to the sea beyond seas, which is vaster than the sky.

King Augisfalkid went to Arinhhangueananu: "I must kill you one day, at the end of days; but today retrieve for me my Augisoppa and that meeting shall be forestalled."

Arinhhangueananu took his armies into heaven, shattered the great pearl pillars, brought down the tallcapped sages from their meditations and burned out their eyes. He strangled Rainbow God, drew out her entrails and strung them across the sky. Brakchi-yosulka fled higher and yet higher with tearful Augisoppa, but Arinhhangueananu was faster and he split the angel lengthways with his fangs. Brakchi-yosulka's clear clean blood still falls here and there at times and nourishes the world.

King Augisfalkid went to Arinhhangueananu: "Return to me my Augisoppa." But that serpent-minded devil laughed and cradled close his prize and slithered down into Hell. Battlescarred heaven and wayward humankind have little love for each other but they both hate traitorous Arinhhangueananu and his raving, fox-faced army.

Arinhhangueananu
All demons of this cosmos are the miscarriages of faraway dimensions. Because of this they have no allegiance, no kindness even for themselves. In some other universe there was a woman who could not conceive for her husband until she petitioned her ancestral spirits and they blessed her. Her husband was affronted. He said: "Those are not our gods, so this will not be our child!" And he beat her until the infant died inside her. Now, in this universe, that infant becomes Arinhhangueananu. He has a child's face and the body of a leviathan that can encircle mountains. He loathes mothers most of all, and their organs of creation, but he does not know why because he exists inside this tale and cannot see what I have written. It is tempting to say that he loves Augisoppa, who is as graceful and as glorious as any living child, but she will blossom in time like all children must, and what will he make of her then?

Augisoppa
She sings and dances and feigns delight because she is in the clutches of a demon and, though young, full understands the dangers in his displeasure. A million years from now she shall become a woman. If this sounds like a very long time it is because you are not a god and because your doom is not called Arinhhangueananu.

Thabbachiha
A mercenary demon army. There are four generals: Fulmen, Fusill, Sabeteuch and Raisalkangut, all from foreign realities, deceived into the serpent's service and bound by infernal oaths. Their soldiers have the bodies of crows and the faces of dogs; they are lowly but cunning demons. When they go to war they consume their enemies entirely. Even their cities and their histories.[/ic]

[beejazz]

[ic=Ag]Ag is a small room that can only be reached by one of several extremely specific deaths. Known routes include drowning in vinegar or starving to death under a beehive.

When entered, the room has a mucus-sheathed deer-headed creature that promises omniscience to any who will listen to a long speech that is mostly comprised of gibberish. The only way to escape the room is to eat this creature. So far, only two people have seen this room and returned. Both described the room, the creature, and the gibberish Each of them got hungry, ate the creature, and found themselves somewhere else. Little else is known of Ag.[/ic]

[SA]

That sounds right at home in your webcomic. It is also very welcome here.

[beejazz]

That sounds right at home in your webcomic. It is also very welcome here.

Thanks. Though I've got to admit I pilfered the basis for this particular idea out of another comic I've been a fan of for some years.

[SA]

Thanks. Though I've got to admit I pilfered the basis for this particular idea out of another comic I've been a fan of for some years.

Woah. Woahhh. I thought those guys quit making A Lesson Is Learned a long time ago, but the most recent one is from November of last year. Life is beautiful again.

[beejazz]

Woah. Woahhh. I thought those guys quit making A Lesson Is Learned a long time ago, but the most recent one is from November of last year. Life is beautiful again.

Yep. They put out two after the years long hiatus, and Fancy Bread is still updating now and again as well.

More on topic:
[ic=Lox Shienn]
There are small, artificial, hard to access planes with about the purposes you'd expect of artificial planes. Some were developed for transit, as shortcuts or as abstract vehicles. Some as tools to manufacture other things. Some as weapons, as entertainment, as food sources, or as ways of observing far off places. Lox Shienn is one of the oldest artificial planes ever discovered, and many copies have been found since it fell to earth. Its purpose is the creation of new artificial planes.

Entrances to Lox Shienn or its copies can be found in rocks fallen from the sky. The entrances are typically the size of a needle's eye, and the planes no larger than a man's fist. If the creators of the first Lox Shienn were sized to use these planes, they are currently unknown. Some conjecture that the creators may have been larger and simply used small tools to access and manipulate the planes.

One Lox Shienn copy was found with a door that a human could crawl through, and an interior the size of a small hut. Its whereabouts have been unknown since the city that housed it was burned to the ground. Accounts claim that it was activated three times, though details vary on what researchers attempted to build with it.
[/ic]