The Blessed Fields of Elysium
Elysium is home to creatures of unfettered kindness and compassion, and a welcome refuge for planar travelers seeking a safe haven. The plane’s bucolic landscapes glimmer with life and beauty in their prime. Tranquility seeps into the bones and souls of those who enter the plane. It is the heaven of well-earned rest, a place where tears of joy glisten on many a cheek.
Elysium is the most strongly good-aligned plane of The Planes of Existence, a place of good untrammeled by issues of law or chaos. On this plane doing well by others is more highly valued than any other ideal. The first layer of the plane is a riot of color. Visitors marvel at brilliant green meadows dotted with starburst flowers, pools as deep blue as a jay's plumage, and silver clouds drifting against a perfect sky. The plane itself seems to vibrate with its own sense of life and intensity. It is usually a peaceful place, and tranquility seems to seep into the bones and souls of those that cross it.
Elysium consists of four layers strung together by the myriad courses of the River Oceanus. The first layer is most like the Material Plane, with sweet-smelling pines and flowering trees along its banks giving way to open meadows and rolling fields. The second layer is rougher and more mountainous, and rapids and falls are common along the channels of the river. The third layer is a great marsh awash with life. The deepest layer is the sea itself and the headwaters of the great river, dotted with islands where veteran heroes of good relax for eternity. The size of the River Oceanus varies from a braid of smaller side channels to a mighty flow that tops its banks and floods the surrounding area. Along the river ate islands, low gravel bars, and rocky promontories, which are often the homes of petitioners and other more powerful denizens.
Elysium borders the neighboring Outer Planes of The Twin Paradises of Bytopia and The Wilderness of The Beastlands. Natural portals exist between these locations, and the shifting borders between Elysium and its neighbors mean that travelers may find themselves on another good-aligned plane without realizing it. Portals from Elysium to other planes often take the form of caverns. Elysium has four layers, each with a radically different type of terrain. Inhabitants move between layers through a portal, or by following the River Oceanus—probably the easiest method. The River Oceanus originates in the deepest layer of Elysium and flows through all four layers, emptying from the first layer, Amoria, into the Beastlands. There are rapids at the border where the river crosses the boundary between layers, but no serious waterfalls or other perils. Most of the activity on Elysium takes place along the borders of the great river.
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