War-Torn
Host Plane: Limbo
War-Torn is a realm of mindless violence, a blasted expanse of muddy trenches and crater-ridden earth, where the rain never ceases and the air is choked with poisonous gas and the stench of death. Bound to the Netherworld, it is a soul trap for the fallen, a never-ending no man’s land where those who perish in battle occasionally slip between the cracks of reality, drawn to this place like iron to a lodestone. Here, they fight on, without knowing where they are, who their enemy is, or even how or when they arrived.
Above the mire, the sky is a blood-red abyss, void of sun or stars, instead darkened by a smoke screen of artillery and the writhing forms of uncountable vultures, which endlessly circle above the battlefield in search of their next feast. The mud below is slick with filth, swallowing the bodies of the slain before spitting them back out at dawn. No soldier ever stays dead. Those who fall wake up again in their bunks — sometimes on the same side, sometimes not. The trenches have no care for allegiances, only that the war goes on.
The soldiers are anachronisms, warriors of a thousand eras, armed with weapons of every age — some clad in rusting mail and pitted plate, their rune-carved blades cracked from overuse, others in stained long coats, gripping crossbows and rifles with hands that tremble from fatigue. They march through the murky, corpse-ridden muck, not remembering what they fought for in life or why’re still fighting. And so it continues, day after day, year after year, with no victor and no end.
Whether living or dead, souls who stumble into War-Torn often find themselves ensnared in its grasp like a tangled web of barbed wire, for it is nearly impossible to leave once claimed. During times of war on the Material Plane, the veil between worlds grows thinner, and the battlefield opens up like an all-devouring maw, eager for fresh recruits. But when peace reigns, War-Torn fades, its trenches swallowed by the mists of the Netherworld, as if the realm never existed at all.
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