The Abyss
Madness Incarnate
To cling to order is to cling to madness.
Abandon all you know an embrace the true world unshackled.
At the bottom of the Infernal Realm and the entire Cosmic Hourglass lies a sea of chaos. The Abyss is the birthplace of all Demons, the Crawling Chaos’s cage, and the domain of the Great Overlord. A realm that knows no law except the one of a lawless world.
Bottom of the World
The Abyss is a lawless landscape where rules come to die. Everything changes at a moment’s notice, barely held together by any consistency. What is up becomes down. Temperatures drop low and rise high at a moment’s notice. Even the ground beneath cannot be trusted.
These rapid changes in the environment make traversal difficult, if not downright impossible. All journeys into the realm ended in either death, loss of contact or utter madness, many being changed by what they witnessed at the bottom of the world. Some even end up enlightened by it, seeing the true unravelling of the known world into complete chaos.
Exploring the Chaos
Chaos Made Manifest
The Land is home to fiends born from the purest of chaos. Malformed, incomprehensible and rambling messes whose form are as malleable as the land itself. Creatures that are a living paradox, born only to bring disorder.
On rare occasions do they crawl out of the depths to become a champion of the Crawling Chaos. All they do then is wreak havoc upon the other worlds, bringing with them destruction and madness unlike any other Demon of the Infernal Realm.
Avatar of Chaos
Ruling over the Abyss is the Great Overlord, the avatar of the Crawling Chaos and leader of the Infernal Realm. Within the bowels of the universe, he serves the ancient being.
Though its rule over the upper layers is limited after the Aspects took over, many fiends still fear the great Demon, for they still wield the purity of chaos. Nowadays, they lurk within the realm’s depths, conjuring forth horrors to bring the end of order to the cosmos by any means necessary.
The Embodiment of Chaos
At the bottom of the realm lies the Crawling Chaos, the entity that spawned all of Demonkind. A malicious embodiment of chaos, twisted by its hatred for all that represents order.
Shackled by the might of four worlds, its existence is only there to rival that of the Great Will, to eradicate it and bring disorder to the cosmos. But as it is unable to escape its prison, its power can only leak into the upper layers, hoping to corrode the fabric that keeps reality together.
Magic Gone Haywire
The chaotic existence of the Abyss makes any cosmic law fall apart at the seams, including magic itself. Without any coherent order, spells and arcane abilities falter, collapsing into themselves and twisting the outcomes of an incantation into anything imaginable.
It is one of the many reasons why the plane is poorly explored by other worlds, as not even magic can help one navigate it. The few that do come back never come back the same. Twisted either physically or mentally by the madness of the Abyss, or even both..
Part of or below it?
It is unclear whether the Abyss is one of the layers of the Infernal Realm, or exists as a plane of its own. Despite the disconnect between it and the realms above it, there are still direct routes that dive into its depths without the need for a dimensional gate.
The problems come with that these routes change over time. The plane’s borders shift constantly without pattern, causing tears from the Abyss to appear out of nowhere.
Such irregularity and inconsistent appearances make getting into the Abyss difficult, if not to get out as well.
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