Exploring Ancerra: Difference between revisions

This is also why some Resurrection results in a person having their personality changed, some of their memory being lost, or some other combination of unique mental/ personality challenges: a person’s Soul might have begun to dissolve, and when they are forcibly resurrected back into a body then the process might bring back their incomplete Essence or might bring other ambient Essence (perhaps Essence that was once part of a different soul and still has different memories and personality associated with it) back into the same body.

The Everwilds are an endless tangle of dramatic natural landscapes. Sprawling deserts, enormous forests full of towering trees, blizzard-scoured tundras, and impossibly deep oceans all jumble together in an illogical swirl. While towns and settlements exist in the Everwilds, it is truly the domain of nature. Each natural environment is at its most dramatic in the Everwilds.

Of all the planes outside of the Prime Material, the Everwilds has the most portals. It is easier to travel back and forth between the Prime Material and the Everwilds than any other plane, either through the use of spells or through finding numerous magical portals throughout the world. Because of this, there is quite a strong presence of fae creatures and fae humanoids in Ancerra, and humanoid settlements in the Everwilds are not very uncommon.  

The Ashyidir Conclave embodies the four prime elements - fire, water, earth, and air - along with their derivatives. Fire and water together make steam, while fire and earth make magma, for example. The Ashyidir have a variety of dispositions but are generally driven by emotion rather than deliberative thought. The natural environment around the Ashyidir Conclave morphs to emphasize the four prime elements. Islands might float in the sky, waterfalls might flow upwards, and forest fires might be more common.

Inferno’s hellscape is divided into four domains, each with distinct topology and nightmarish creatures. The Cholereth, Melaneth, Phlegmereth, and Sanguineth are the four broadest categories of fiend into which most fiends can be sorted, and these are also the names that scholars use to refer to the four regions of Inferno. Each domain also has one defining characteristic. The Exiles, having been expelled from Iztari, make their home in Inferno as well. Many of them, especially Mikhael, have risen to prominence and are capable of contesting the archfiends for dominance over Inferno’s regions.

Durlossoth, the Black City, is an endless collection of tightly packed stone buildings in various stages of decay and ruin. Occupying the whole of Melaneth, the Black City is full of nonsensical alleyways that twist between structures of no unifying architecture. Overhead, a cloudy sky is stuck in perpetual twilight. The streets seem to shift around its lost wanderers, keeping souls from ever finding their way out. Pale-skinned Melaneth fiends stalk the shadows as gaunt, hunched figures of bone and sinew with hollow eye sockets and twisting voids of blackness at their cores. They are just as likely to welcome you with disingenuous fang-toothed smiles as they are to jump upon you with hooked claws and crude weapons. The buildings themselves come in every shape and size but always contain neglected furnishings of gnarled black wood.

'''The Cathedral of Phlegm.''' While villages of stilted hovels can be found throughout Xarnoas, only one lasting structure stands at its heart. The Cathedral of Phlegm is a massive ruin of ancient stones from an unknown era now sagging into the soft earth. Thick, stinking moss threatens to swallow the cathedral whole. The Six Bishops, the rulers of Phlegmereth, meditate on the power of plague amongst a flock of infected fiends and other unfortunate beings forever cursed with maladies of every horrific imagining. These powerful archfiends are not immune to the spread of illness, instead seeing every pustule and rash as a sign of divine favor worthy of excessive meditation and reflection.

At the top of the mountain, the Celestial Council’s great hall is carved from brilliant marble. Within this hall, the Council debates over planar legislation and argues whether they should allow the Exiles to return from Inferno and rejoin the ranks of the Celestials.

The Pale is the space in between. It is the edge of creation. Whatever darkness is to light, the Pale is to reality. It is a blank canvas to the most powerful gods, and incomprehensible to most mortals. Eldritch beings lurk within the Pale as crawling things hide in the shadows. What lives in the pale could drive most intelligent beings insane by simply gazing upon it. What comes out of the pale are nightmarish, otherworldly outsiders that are hard to even keep record of. Even the words on the page crawl. Beings without powerful magic to shield their mind cannot enter the Pale.