Beginner's Guide
Hellverse, in case you couldn't tell by now, is a large scale storytelling setting based in a fictional Hell. It is highly collaborative and encourages communication and brainstorming. Its mediums are far reaching and the collaborators work to engage with each other in fun and meaningful ways.
Being as open ended as it is, there are a variety of ways people can engage. While not available at the moment, there may be a forum RP community in the future and there is a Table Top RPG system in the works. Otherwise there are private roleplays and stories being made by the collaborators.
Overview
What was the inspiration?Hellverse was based on a few founding ideas. The first was raw, edgy, self indulgence. The second, and more current, driving force is the desire to explore both incredibly human and impossibly divine themes. You will see a heavy focus on characters struggling with purpose, wants, and needs paired along side some literary and theological experimentation.
Why don't you define all the lore?You will find in lore that there are a lot of things left just as "X people believe this" or "The common theory is Y". This can be frustrating for people who want the answers to everything but one of our founding principles has been "The truth doesn't matter, what matters is what people choose to believe." Beliefs and theories work much like they do in our own world. They are used to explain natural phenomenon and act as motives for people's actions. The world works the way it does and our explanations are more important to our own lives and what we do than to the universe itself. Also by limiting definitions, creators don't back themselves into corners with technicalities (we have seen it before, trust us, it isn't pretty.)
Why is it so age restricted?Because it's Hell, Susan. Okay, jokes aside, Hell is not supposed to be a nice place and while not all content isn't safe for minors, enough of it is. That being said we ask that minors do not take part in any of the content as a way to allow as much creative freedom to our creators and protect an audience who shouldn't be involved in what can often be triggering content.
The Planes
HeavenHeaven and the void are not places, rather they are the bodies of two metaphysical minds. They originally exist completely separate from Earth and Hell. Heaven is the body of the hive-mind-like Yahweh. It is energy positive in nature and moves like buzzing electrons. Heaven is also considered creative in nature, since it can produce angels. Another major component of Heaven is that it is the source of all Light Energy.
EarthEarth, for the most part, is without incident. It acts just like how you see it, covered in humans going about their daily lives without the faintest clue of the greater world. That isn't to say there aren't supernatural forces on earth. No, Earth is in fact home to many Fallen Angels, Vampires, Werewolves, Fae, and even the occasional banished demon. But with the limited energies in the air, unlike in hell, all but angels have to be careful how and when to use magic since it will not regenerate easily. Not to mention Angels regulate the planet, often choosing human prosperity over supernatural lives, as they see themselves as keepers of Earth. Since supernatural creatures are not native to earth, humans can count on most angels to keep them blissfully unaware of the looming dangers of magic.
HellHell is a much different story, as it is overflowing with magic and creatures capable of harnessing the metaphysical energies around them. Broken into seven regions, Hell is about the size of the earth. The Seven zones include the Deadlands, where dead humans arrive in hell only to starve to death or be killed, Nightside, home of the vampires who have mastered hemeomancy, the Ghostlands, a mystical realm which no one may enter without permission of its Patron who goes by the name Lady Shade, Brimstone, the volcanic wastes ruled by the dragons, Plaguelands, the infected garden of spores and poison ruled by Beelzebub, Hell Proper, the largest region which is home to billions of demons and ruled by Lucifer, and finally the sands of Nocturne, the crumbled edge of the world which serves as a reminder of the ancient threat of the Void. The biggest problem with hell, and the source of many of its other problems, is the lack of natural resources. The ground is not fertile and water is scarce. Violence was the natural response to this lack of resource.
The VoidThe Void is the opposite of Heaven, the body of the hive-mind-like entity called She'ol. It is energy negative, meaning rather than producing, it consumes. It moves like roots spreading through rocks, breaking and eating everything it touches. because of this difference, it couldn't create something like angels, the way Yahweh could. The void is also responsible for the current state of hell. Hell was once much larger and more fertile until the void invaded. Luckily its advance was brought to a stand still but now the Metaphysical will forever loom dangerously close to devouring one of the two physical planes.