Pandemonium, The Howling Land

Given the unusual troubles that face travelers in Pandemonium, it's surprising that anyone ever comes here. But Pandemonium is home to a fair number of beings, and it sees its share of travelers as well.

So, what are the troubles the plane presents? Well, they're three-fold (following the Rule of Threes): deafness, madness, and blindness.

The most noticeable thing about the plane of Pandemonium is the noise. 'Course, that's something like saying that the most noticeable thing about fire is that it's hot. Pandemonium creates noise the way fire creates heat. Winds blow through the plane's twisty maze of caverns eternally, incessantly, and - in most places - deafeningly. There are spots where it drops to nothing more than a nervewracking moaning, but that's about the best of it. For every one such "safe" place, there's a dozen where it blows with hurricane force or worse.

Naturally, the locals have learned all the quietest, safest routes and stick to them. Unfortunately, that doesn't solve their problems entirely. See, the noise isn't just deafening; it's also maddening. The constant howling is enough to drive a basher batty after a while. As a matter of fact, everyone who hangs around the plane long enough eventually goes crazy. The trick is keeping that madness from crimping a cutter's style. Anyone who's been to the plane for any length of time knows the dark of what that means. For those that haven't been here, it isn't much use explaining. They'll either figure it out and survive when the time comes, or they' ll lose control and die. That's Nature's way.

There's another condition to Pandemonium that's every bit as pervasive as the noise - the plane is dark. Pandemonium is utterly and completely without light sources. The only light anywhere on the plane is that maintained by beings living here. And with the raging wind, keeping most lights alive is pretty tricky business. Flames are out of the question except indoors, behind tightly sealed walls. That leaves magical light as a traveler's only alternative, and even that has its problems. For one thing, some parts of the plane soak light up like some sort of sponge. For another, carrying a light makes a body extremely visible to anything lurking in the darkness. Finally, between the wind and the plane's magical nature, casting even a simple continual light spell can be tricky.

Funny thing is, a soul would think that a traveler would notice that darkness first thing off. Given that most folks rely on sight as their number one sense, it would seem that blindness would rate right up there as the number one concern. But that just goes to show just how thoroughly noisy Pandemonium is. The howling wind is such an immediate problem that even blindness takes a back seat in terms of immediate impact.

For the plane that's supposedly the least populated of all the Outer Planes, there's a surprisingly high number of folks dwelling here, and they're of just about every imaginable race. Many of them are bashers who were banished here by one-powerful enemy or another, and for one reasoh or another never managed to leave. There are whoie cities full of these sorts. Some are fairly open to travelers; others are wary or even downright hostile to outsiders. Add wind madness to that mix, and it can be troublesome to figure out how to deal with people encountered on the plane. Cutters are best to keep an open mind:an open eye, a civil tongue, and one hand on a sword everywhere they go on the plane.

The plane also sees a lot of travelers from the Abyss and Limbo. Quite often, creatures who don't want to be seen stepping from one of those planes into the Outlands, take a little side trip through Pandemonium, especially given that the portals and such on this plane are usually unguarded. (Powers this plane just aren't much interested in fighting over possession of it. They have their own little hidey-hole realms, and that's about as much as they care for.) 'Course, the Bleakers travel here quite a lot as well, to see madness up close and personal.

The Harmonica

Most of Pandemonium's layers are composed of passages that're apparently natural in origin. But the plane's second layer is unusual in that its caverns and tunnels all bear the marks of chisels, as if they'd all been hand carved from solid rock in some ancient millennium. It's chilling to think of all those endless miles of tunnel carved by beings long since extinct, for some unknown purpose.

Now, normally a soul can ignore those ancient chisel marks and just go about its business. Over the ages, the winds have smoothed them a bit, giving the tunnels a more natural look. But there are places where the ancient laborers handiwork just can't be ignored. One such is a site that travelers have taken to calling the Harmonica.

There've been a lot of theories put forth as to the original purpose of the enormous cavern called the Harmonica. Some souls believe that it's a sort of amphitheater, built for demigods to look down on arena competitions on the floors far below. Others think it's nothing more than an artwork done on a stupendous scale. Still others believe it to be a place for invoking dark powers. A few believe it to be Pandemonium's physical heart, driving the constant winds throughout the plane like lifeblood through monumental arteries of stone.

There are all sorts of rumors as to the site's magical powers. There are those who believe that a cutter who finds its very center will receive immortality. Others say that it can grant a soul's fondest desires. But for every story of the site granting a boon, there's at least one dark legend of harm it gives. Curses, lycanthropy, disintegration, disease, mutation, and having one's spirit torn to pieces and eaten by dark powers, all these have been attributed to the site at one time or another.

Basically, the site is a huge, spherical cavern about ten miles in diameter, fi lled with hundreds upon hundreds of stupendous columns. But given the site's size and the plane's darkness, it's virtually impossible for a cutter to see enough of the cavern to truly appreciate its gargantuan scale.

Keep in mind that gravity is toward the walls on this layer of the plane, which means that a cutter can walk completely around the sphere in any direction. Between the columns, the walls are pierced by multiple hundreds of tunnel entrances, which means the site can be accessed from all sides. It also means that the site is a meeting place for winds from all corners of Cocytus. (It reverberates with a sound so powerful, the vibrations can be felt in tunnels up to 20 miles away, like the tremors of an earthquake.)

Stairways spiral upward around each of the columns in the cavern, ostensibly to provide for climbing. There are several problems with this, however.

For one thing, the stairsteps are all waist-high on a human, which makes for exhausting climbing, especially considering that the columns are each literally miles high. For another thing, the columns are also pierced with holes of all sizes, and the wind filling the cavern rushes through them unexpectedly, making any perch treacherous, to say the least. The wailing set up by the wind rushing through these holes runs from one end of the scale to the other, and beyond. At the lowest end, the sound reverberates below the threshold of human hearing, setting up a painful vibration in a being's bones, and making the rocky steps seem slippery from their shivering. But it rises from there discordantly, eventually to reach tones so shrill they shatter glass and crystal and make the brain feel as if it were afire. Few souls have ever made their way more than partway up a column before either giving up and turning back or being blown off and dashed against a cavern wall. But some who have made it to the top of a column have learned a final cruel jest of the site's designers: Apparently only a very few of the columns actually reach to the center of the cavern. The vast majority peter out less than halfway there. Unfortunately, given the scale of the site and the darkness, there's no good way to tell if a column reaches all the way, other than climbing it.

Anyone hoping to visit the Harmonica and climb to the center of the site should be advised that, because of the wind, it's virtually impossible to cast any spell that uses somatic or material components.

Depicted here is one of the spires of the Harmonica on the second layer of Cocytus. The site draws travelers to discover its mysterious origin and unknown purpose. Thus far, none has succeeded and returned to tell the tale.

The Scaly Dog Inn

On the third layer of Pandemonium - called Phlegethon by most - there's a little town called Windglum, which serves as a common meeting ground and outfitting place for travelers. That's despite the fact that its citizens are, by and large, some of the most suspicious and unfriendly souls on all the Outer Planes. See, they have a real chip on their shoulders toward outsiders - they're all here because they were banished to the plane by one enemy or another.

The meeting place most frequented by travelers in this paranoid little town is a hostel known as the Scaly Dog Inn. It's the one place in town where a plane-walking cutter can sit down and feel at home among like souls.

The Scaly Dog has been around for a long time, and it's always been a place the locals sent visitors to for lodging. Until recently, it's had a pretty unsavory reputation. Just a little over a year ago, however, a new fellow named Hagus Gimcrack was banished to the plane, found his way to the town of Windglum, applied for citizenship, and bought the Scaly Dog with jewelry he was carrying on him at the time. He set about expanding the place (by buying neighboring bits of real estate) and repairing its reputation (by cracking the heads of troublemakers who came to visit). Before long, word got out that the Scaly Dog was under new management, and the number of customers began to increase. As a result, the inn continues to expand.

Hagus Gimcrack is an outgoing cutter, friendly as long as it's business, but not much interested in anything else. Like most everyone else on Pandemonium, he's a bit touched with madness, but he doesn't let it show as often as most. Maybe that's why he's so devoted to the inn, because it gives him a concrete center to focus on, keeping the madness at bay.

Because most of Windglum's citizens don't want to have a lot to do with outsiders, Gimcrack has to staff the inn with people who are just passing through. That precludes a listing of staff members in this account.

The Scaly Dog is a pretty unusually laid out place, due to the strange way in which it has grown. It occupies parts of three buildings located at the intersection of Barker Street and Bent Axle Road, plus a set of rooms upstairs, built over the intersection itself.

Originally, the inn only occupied the area now known as the Common Room. What's now the private dining room served as a kitchen, and customers slept on pallets along the walls. Right after buying the place, Gimcrack picked up an upstairs apartment across the street (the right half of what's now the second floor), and had a stairway built in the alley just beyond the downstairs privies, to give access to that set of rooms.

Putting the guest rooms upstairs meant that the common room could stay open to serve food and drink later hours, which certainly didn't hurt business at all. In fact, just three months later, Gimcrack was able to pick up the other half of the upstairs, plus the storeroom downstairs behind the bar. Only problem was, the little kitchen couldn't keep up with the increased business, so he turned it into a private dining room and bought the corner storefront across the street to make a bigger kitchen. The paired stairs were built at that time, so that food could be carried up, across, and down rather than through the street itself.

Acquisition of the building that now serves as owner's quarters, servants' quarters, and secondary storeroom happened just months ago; Gimcrack plans another set of stairs leading from those quarters to the upstairs hallway in order to completely connect the inn.

Services found here are the usual for an inn. In addition, a lot of travelers find the place handy as a sort of hiring hall for adventurers. If nothing else, it's a relatively safe haven against the constant winds.

The Dispossessed

(Exiles, Chippers)

Sect Philosophy

In order to understand the fellowship that calls itself the Dispossessed, a basher first has to understand its unofficial parent group, the Banished.

Pandemonium and Carceri are the two most common planes for beings to find themselves exiled to when they offend some significant ruler, wizard, or power. Pandemonium in particular has so many of these exiles who have taken up permanent residence that planar travelers have come to refer to them specifically as the Banished. But the Banished aren't really organized into any official sort of group, any more than peasants are, or hermits. It's just a convenient term for referring to beings of a particular origin, most of whom have a similar grudge against the rest of creation. By and large. Pandemonium's Banished clump together in insular little communities that view all outsiders with at least some measure of hostility.

However, there are some members of the Banished who take their chip-on-the-shoulder attitude out across the planes, seeking to prove that their worth against whatever the multiverse can throw their way. Many of them belong to a sort of loose fellowship, with secret handshakes, passwords, and other recognition signals. They call their order the Dispossessed, an obvious reference to the Banished, which they consider a derogatory term.

From the point of view of the Dispossessed, life has cast them aside, treating them as if they weren't worthy to play with the big rollers. Their major motivation is to show the rest of creation that it was wrong in treating them with contempt, that they are each a force to be reckoned with. So they wander about the planes, ruffling feathers and picking fights to prove their mettle. Eventually, most make a point of looking up the individuals who originally exiled them and getting revenge.

Primary Plane of Influence

Not surprisingly, this sect is strongest in Pandemonium, where it took its start. Its members also frequent Carceri, where exiles are often even more in need of a helping hand. Finally, because Cagers make such a big deal of their town's importance, quite a few Dispossessed are finding their way to Sigil just looking for trouble as a chance to prove that its citizens ain't such hot stuff.

Allies and Enemies

Given their antagonistic attitude, the Dispossessed don't really have any allies. They won't admit to ever needing anybody else's help, and most everybody finds their constant posturing annoying. Nonetheless, members of the Fated, Indeps, Anarchists, and Signers often find something to admire in this sect's take-on-the-world attitude. The Harmonium, on the other hand, finds them particularly antagonizing.

Eligibility

Anyone who has been exiled is eligible for membership in the Dispossessed. Current members of the sect are always on the lookout for newly banished bashers, ready to offer a helping hand and an earful of bitter gall to get a newcomer started on a life of vengeance and one-upmanship. But woe to those exiles who refuse the message. They are scorned by the Dispossessed as milksops too weak to stand up and face a hostile universe, and as such are fit only to be kicked aside like dogs.

Benefits

Due to their hard-headedness, members of the Dispossessed receive a bonus of +1 to saving throws versus all mental attacks. In addition, when rolling for hit points, Dispossessed roll twice and take the better roll.

Restrictions

Outside their own sect, Dispossessed suffer a -2 penalty to persuasion because of their antagonistic manner.

Agathion

It's been pointed out many times that Pandemonium is hardly the most well visited of planes. That's especially true of the plane's lower layers. In particular. Agathion - the fourth layer - is so inhospitable that virtually no one goes here. No power holds a stronghold here; no races or species call it home; no tanar'ri covets it.

So where do descriptions of it come from? Well, there are two primary sources. The first is sacred texts from various different worlds (and who knows where they got their information from). The second are rare and consequently renowned - expeditions. Both describe Agathion as a layer of bubbles in solid rock, infrequently connected by passages. The sacred texts go on to speak of the layer as a place the gods stash their most precious treasures, and most hideous monsters. And again, the legendary expeditions bear witness in agreement. One such example is the legend of Shekelor.

According to tales, more than ten thousand years ago. Shekelor was the greatest mage in Sigil. But he wanted more; he wanted to replace the Lady of Pain as that city's mystical ruler. Having seen the sorry fates of others who had tried to overthrow her, Shekelor searched arcane texts for some secret that could reveal a vulnerability to exploit in the Lady. Finally, in some scroll long since lost, he round a hint that a wizard of even more ancient times had nearly brought her down. But ultimately the Lady of Pain had prevailed, and she allegedly bound the old wizard's unquenchable spirit in an orb, then hid it away. Further searching led Shekelor to believe that she had, secreted the orb in Agathion, and eventually he pieced together clues leading him to believe he could find the location. So Shekelor quietly gathered a band of mighty beings and left Sigil to search Agathion for the orb.

Nothing more was heard of Shekelor for fully half a century. In his absence, his servitors went through the motions of daily business, keeping his abode in readiness for his return, and attempting to disguise the fact that he was gone. Eventually, however, whispers of his absence began to circulate. People spoke here and there in hushed voices, speculating as to what his fate had been.

Then one day, unexpectedly, a portal opened into the middle of a public hall of the City Courts, and Shekelor himself stumbled out, ragged, bloodied, wild-eyed, and shedding light through his skin as if his internal organs were flaming in an inferno. He loosed two fistfuls of glittering gems upon the ground, and two words escaped his lips, "The spiders!" Then the internal names burst through his skin, and Shekelor was no more.

Is it any wonder that few challenge the Lady of Pain, and few trespass into Agathion?