The Abyss

The Abyss is a realm of infinite horror and unlimite danger. Its vast rifts wind throughout the surface of the Outer Sphere, dropping away into bottomless darkness without regard for the realms above which they violate. Known to many as the Outer Rifts, these vast chasms are more common amid the lower planes, but they certainly exist elsewhere as well. Where the Outer Rifts of the Abyss open onto realms like Elysium or even Heaven, they are the sites of eternal wars against the celestial races. Here, the armies of good maintain permanent encampments along the edges of Abyssal rifts and do their best to prevent the rifts’ spread.
For spreading is the correct word. The Outer Rifts are growing, if slowly. Scholars believe that this is a sure sign of the end of all things, that nothing can stop the growing dissolution of the Outer Sphere, and that at some time in the future, the Abyss will consume it all. Worse, the Outer Rifts do not constrain themselves to the Outer Sphere—they can open elsewhere, and have done so countless times before to consume entire worlds.

Abyssal Layers

The vast rifts of the Abyss are typically all that visitors to the Outer Planes see of this realm. This fact, combined with the common definition of the plane’s name, creates the false perception that the plane consists solely of these vast canyons and rents in the Outer Sphere. In fact, these rifts are merely the entrances to the true Abyss, for they plunge deep into the underlying solidity of the Outer Sphere and into the countless realms embedded deep below. Connected by impossibly long tunnels and impossibly deep pits, these regions are known as Abyssal “layers,” and each is a plane of existence unto itself. Some are relatively small, no larger than the smallest terrestrial continents, but most are the size of entire worlds, or multiple.
The majority of the Abyssal layers are uncharted and unexplored, with the most well known being relatively near the inner surface of the Outer Sphere. The deeper these realms go, the stranger and more removed from sane reality they grow, with rulership passing from demonic masters to older races—the deformed monsters known as the qlippoth. What lies below the realms held by the qlippoth remains one of reality’s greatest mysteries.

Cataloguing the Abyss

The layers of the Abyss are difficult beasts to codify, for the Abyss itself is an ever-changing realm. When a layer is claimed by a demon lord, god, or other powerful entity, it can remain stable forever, but the majority of Abyssal layers are unclaimed. These “wild realms” are unstable places, prone to being absorbed or remade by the Abyss itself according to an unknown agenda. Some of the more stable of the wild realms have remained so for the entire span of mortal existence, but others have collapsed on themselves or been born quite recently.

Type

Dimensional plane

Included Locations

• Azzagrat
• Bloodpyre Fields
• Bottomless Pit
• Cathedral Thelemic
• Caves of Chaos
• Cerebulim
• Charnelhome
• Demonweb Pits
• Dizalakine
• Duidan
• Eternal Lists
• Final Highway
• Gaping Maw
• Iron Wastes
• Jagged Tor of Final Reckoning
• Kurnugia
• Landless Aerie
• Maldinach
• Pleroma
• Restarion
• Seeping Woods
• Seething Passage
• Shadowsea
• Soaking Canyon of Malignancy
• Sraosha
• The Festive Everlasting
• The Heaving Hills
• The Terminal Archive
• Uligor
• Undersump

Inhabiting Species

• Demon