Chasm is inhospitable, not not uninhabitable. Like other Pandemoniacs, the inhabitants are mostly Banished and tend toward mental instability. The specific insanity here is a particularly insidious sort - they are the ones who believe themselves sane, who deny their madness, and do whatever it takes to cling to the edge. They are paranoids, megalomaniacs, and sociopaths rolled into one, but they don't act it - until they crack. Unique in Pandemonium, this layer also houses those who are not insane, but maliciously playful. The cow-tippers and stair-greasers of the multiverse consider all this a paradise. The king of these is the Trickster.
The local settlements tend to be limited by their environment. Those that somehow cling to the wall are tiny hamlets. A burg just can't exist here without a reason; it may be proximity to a gate, to water, or to a vein of ore or ice. The Wire, the Narrows, and so-called Paradise have the luxury of a floor, and accordingly support a larger population.
The chief means of support is vertical farming. Most burgs supplement their income, and some their diet, by trapping whatever might fly by in the wind. Trade is also practiced, as ledges run along most of the walls. To get to some areas, though - notably down the Valley of Death - one will have to find a way to fly that is stronger than the wind. Unfortunately there are only two known entities that can do this: the Cynosure (detailed in module Dead Gods) and the Camp. Neither will willingly go near the web that bars the Valley.
Character. You are at the edge of a cliff. No-one cares if you fall: not the wind, not the walls, and not your fellow man. The cause may be hopeless, but so is any other. Continue the struggle against the wind, the walls, and your neighbours, and you will live to fight another day. Give up, and die.
Description. This miserable little settlement clings to the wall not far from the gate from Cocytus. (Come to that, there's a burg like this not far from any passage from the three "well-traveled" layers of Pandemonium: Cocytus, Pandesmos, and Phlegethon.) It hosts fugitives so paranoid they could not handle it in the known multiverse. Narrow ledges, ropes, and ladders somehow rivetted into the wall connect a series of alcoves. The alcoves lead to narrow, unstable caves, in which the citizens pray the walls will not collapse on them.
The people here earn their living mostly through trapping and trade. The warehouses here are very well-guarded; plus there are too few people in Chasm to live comfortably as bandits, and the gate to Cocytus is always watched. Their primary import from Cocytus is water.
When danger threatens, they shutter the alcoves and fire ballistae from cover. As a last resort they pack up and move through the gate. They've been running a long-term war against the floating crooks of the Camp in particular. They are starting to win out against them, though, and have been diverting some of their energies into fighting off some of the other local threats, like vrocks.
Character. Protecting the multiverse from the Night Spider.
Description. Rooted to the wall is a mammoth, web-encrusted thorn-bush, devoid of leaf and fruit. Its population consists of refugee phanaton from Thorne. They are climbers by nature and do not struggle against the elements here as hard as do some other mortal races. They alternate between fighting the spiders, resecuring the roots, and harvesting their silk for trade elsewhere.
Not far from here, a patch of the wall is covered by a web. The web does contain gaps, but one must beware treacherous illusion magicks, for this is a home and larder to evil spellcasters. Its denizens are planar spiders and aranea, servitors of the Night Spider of Mystara and Thorne. There are doubtless other spidery nasties here, not limited to bebelith, retrievers, and darkweavers.
On the other side of the web, there is a canyon crosswise to this one, along the ceiling, sealed by a vast, translucent, corpse-white membrane. That canyon is...
Character. None. Nothing lives here...
Description. ...because this is the vale of the Tower of Night.
Long ago, some powers of Death got together with other powers of entropy and evil and formed a clique, which they called the "Sphere of Death". This cabal concentrated on the Prime Material worlds connected with Mystara, aiming to destroy them. In one of their plots, they kidnapped the world's two most powerful emperors and brought them into the Isle of Night, a prison they'd carved out of the Negative Energy Plane. To reach that island, they opened a gate to this backwater layer of Pandemonium. They did this by first tossing a permanent gravity spell into a canyon - squeezing the walls and crushing everything and everyone between them - and then erecting a mile-high tower on the faultline in the wall of the adjacent canyon. Sure enough, the negative energy pent up in that sealed canyon erupted through the funnel of the Tower, and tore a hole through Chasm's reality to the Isle of Night. As for the Tower itself, the residual effect of the gravity spell kept it upright against the pull of its canyon's "floor".
The fault exudes powerful twin fields of time-expansion and necrosis throughout the Valley, up to the membrane. The former field ensures that time flows more quickly here; a day spent outside is like a hundred days inside (M5 p. 36). The membrane also keeps out Chasm's weather (except for the wind) and earthquakes. But mortals needn't worry about starvation, thirst, or insanity (unless they bring it with them). Every twelve hours a living mortal spends here, one HD of life is converted into an HD of undeath.
Characters over 9th level can resist the effects longer. For every five levels above the 9th (always rounding up), the character effectively has one additional hit die. Thus a 30th level character would have an additional 5 HD. The physical effects of conversion do not become apparent until the 9th or lower hit die is converted. At that time, the character begins to look, feel, and smell undead.
A Character who becomes aware of the conversion may attempt to resist it by making Constitution ability checks. Succeeding in a check prevents the change from occurring. [For that HD, in that 12-hour period. - ed.]
Once the conversion begins, the character is vulnerable to the control of other undead (see Undead Lieges and Pawns...) The character's remaining unconverted hit dice represent the resistance to control as follows:
HD Effective Pawn Type 1-2 zombie 3 ghoul 4 wight 5 wraith 6 mummy 7 spectre 8-9 7-8 HD vampire 10-11 9 HD vampire 12 phantom 13 haunt 14 spirit In the [Valley of Death], healing spells only restore 1 hp per die.
- M5 p. 38
Haunts are ghosts in Mentzer-D&D; for phantoms and spirits, choose an undead type immediately before and after ghosts, respectively. It is said there are artifacts that counteract the necrotic field (although not the time-expansion field), in particular the Mystaran Periapt of Peace.
The Tower exits to a ledge that crosses maybe five miles (give or take a gap or two) to a gate to the demiplane of Thorne. Thorne is mostly outside the scope of this page, and is not a large plane, but it hosts one of the few entries to Mystara.
It is not known where the bottom of this chasm leads.
Character. Trust the Wire. The gods built this haven for a reason. Trust the Wire. It keeps the careful from danger. Trust the Wire, but do not rock the Baskets.
Description. Some unknowable being of immense power strung a thick cable across the canyon here. Long ago, the local petitioners found and commandeered it. From it now dangle a series of colossal steel baskets, each attached by a triad of cables, swinging in the perpetual wind. Each basket contains a house, a farm, or a mixture of both.
Getting from one basket to another is quite an exercise. Each pair of baskets share a conveyor cable with man-sized baskets attached. When someone wants to go from one basket to the other, he gets into the conveyor-basket, and there will (hopefully) be someone to pull him across. If the conveyor breaks down, the person must climb the cables to the main cable, and then crawl across to the others.
Unfortunately for the families here, the wind is as maliciously unpredictable here as elsewhere. On occasion the baskets have been known to swing too far to the side. Their inhabitants have preparations for such events: for example, they screw heavy objects like tables to the floor, and append hooks to lighter objects like bowls. Still it is not uncommon for a household's centents to swing into the abyss.
Character. A mad mind can of itself make a hell of heaven; here, our force of will has made a heaven of hell.
Ruler. Sirenkof the Mage is a petitioner, but not of this plane. In life, he performed one too many gravitational experiments, and sucked his world into a black hole. That world's gods - before their own death - condemned him to an eternity of punishment that rivalled that of the most famous sinners of the multiverse. But he escaped...
Now Sirenkof hides here, a fugitive to the justice of no less than three devil archdukes; for they had signed the standard we-get-the-baddies deal with the gods of that world, and are now short of their Blood War quota thanks to him. He also avoids two demon princes who had been trying to gain a foothold in the same world. This impressive list of enemies doesn't even include the Olympians; Zeus strongly suspects the mage had gotten much of his data from Coeus the Titan, who specialises in mass and weight (he's right). Sirenkof loves his work, though, and on arrival he soon learnt of the Tower of Night. Now he is back to his old habits.
He reasoned that if he could turn a floor into a wall in this place, as he saw was done at the Tower, he could make himself a king. (Better to rule in Chasm than to burn in Hell, one might say.) So far he has succeeded in shifting gravity to a one-mile-radius bubble around his tower, and the grateful people have flocked to his banner.
Unfortunately, he's been less fortunate in keeping the gravity waves from escaping the bubble, and the opposite wall is slowly but steadily closing in - just like the fault below the Tower. He reasons, as he always has, that he has time to work out the bugs later.
Description. A 100' high tower, 50' wide at the base, rears atop a circular community one mile in radius. Somehow these houses look absolutely normal, except for two details: first, they tend to multiple stories; and second, they are built sideways as if the wall was a floor. In fact, the wall IS a floor.
The people believe in their lord Sirenkof and support him unconditionally. They have totally bought into his thesis that "the mind is its own place". A more closed-minded community would be hard to find.
Character. The walls are good for one thing - collecting prey and holding them there. We are the spiders of this rocky web. We float above where they fear of falling.
Description. This is a motley collection of shacks clustered on a few small shards of floating rock. Its citizens make their living through piracy. They have not been able to raid Paradise, the Edge of Sanity is wising to their tactics, and they avoid the spider-web, the Little Abyss, and Chaos. Accordingly their livelihood is pretty meagre, even by bandit standards.
It was not always like this. Once there was a mighty floating tower that ruled almost all Chasm. But its lord Uynchar deBebos received followers of the Trickster in his hall, and grew more and more enamoured of their antics. Eventually he declared his following the "Cynosure", a floating circus. Those who wished to remain pirates attempted a coup, and in their failure broke off parts of the tower's base. The Camp has been obsessed with regaining the Cynosure ever since.
Character. I got mine. Let those below worry about theirs.
Description. This short (1000' long) chasm is one of the narrowest in the layer, only a few dozen feet wide on average. As a result people have chiseled huge numbers of bars and ropes between the walls, and built houses on those 'foundations'.
The Narrows live by a strict caste system. Along the top of the chasm live the rulers and priests of the community. Far to the bottom, under a rain of waste and garbage, live the farmers and trappers. Between them the remainder live under slick, diagonal roofs that shelter them from the trash of their upwardly mobile neighbours.
This is not a very hygienic place.
Character. let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out
Ruler. Enesidaones (or Ruau-Moko), the unborn god of earthquake, was the last of the Titans to be born, and the first to be imprisoned - through no fault of his own. While he was still at mother Gaia's breast, she became estranged from her husband Uranus. At one point she rolled away from him, and did not turn back. This action reinterred her newborn back in her womb.
Some say that when Uranus is freed, Gaia will turn back and once more free her son. Others - including his older brothers, many fear - are trying to liberate this child in advance. However it is done, the results are likely to be catastrophic for any sentients on the Prime's magma-cored planets.
Enesidaones is unborn in body and thus undeveloped in mind, but by reputation he has already acquired a taste for the blood of sentients. Poseidon Mountain-Shaker has largely taken over his followers.
Description. As with the rest of Pandemonium, the landscape is subject to change without warning. In Chasm, change can be deadly, and nowhere is this more true than in the "Clashing Rocks". The entrance to this realm breaks open and shut without warning. The few who have been in and out tell of colossal earthquakes that nearly tossed them off the ledge, and gouts of searing mud and lava.
At the bottom, Enesidaones's realm glows redly with fire and magma. As one gets closer, his growls and sobs can be distinctly heard, causing earthquakes and eruptions (respectively). In the worst earthquakes the canyon walls slide alarmingly close together.
Character.
Description. Small settlement around a gash in the wall that exudes ice. Not a lucky place; winds come here frequently laden with ice.
What they don't know is that they are chipping into the gate of the Trickster.
Character. What do you call six adventurers drowned in a lake? A pool party! How many climbers does it take to fall off a ledge? Three - one to trip, and the other two to hold the rope!
Ruler. The Trickster is believed to be behind every ill chance, every sad irony, and every bad joke of the multiverse. When this one is fooled, the Trickster has smiled; when that one evades justice, the scofflaw has "given them the laugh". His biggest joke on Creation was perhaps his false palace in Pandesmos, Winter's Hall, where he takes the name "Loki" and plays his pranks on the Norse pantheon. He also claims joint credit over a number of colossal follies that litter the planes. Those cultures that do not know the Devil know the Trickster.
But even now his pranks might not entirely lack merit. Supporters often point to the Cynosure as his doing, one of the few bright spots in the entire bleak plane. 'Course, there are others who wonder whether he had ulterior motives, or is just setting the Cynosure up for a pratfall. One never knows with the Trickster.
Description. The walls here are said to be made of ice. Otherwise it is much like the domain of the decoy Trickster in Pandesmos.
One chasm, called the "Little Abyss", drops right into the fourth layer of the Big Hole itself ("The Grand Abyss"). Its walls are studded with corroded bronze bars and iron manacles. Swarms of vrocks and nabassu rest between flights on the former and crucify living captives on the latter. This plane causes madness, and Chasm is unknown to most, making this an ideal place for discreet psychological torture. Once the demons even got a Titan up there, which apart from amusement provided them with free food for centuries. Eventually, however, a mortal hero freed the Titan, and the Olympians pardoned the hapless immortal to boot, but the vrocks found replacements. Besides they were getting tired of liver.
Another canyon, called simply "Chaos", is a whirling and dangerous maelstrom. On the plus side, where other storms seem to show up at the worst possible moment for good-aligned beings, the storm here is pretty much equal-opportunity in its victims. A roving whirlpool to and from Limbo bounces about from wall to wall, but don't bother trying to predict where it will bounce to next, nor on when it will stop disgorging matter out and will finally accept a party in.
A Pandemonium layer (barring Agathion) is typically more a means to an end than an end in itself. Chasm's main service to the multiverse is its route to Mystara. But there are possible events that can take place independently...
The Tower of Night is not native to this plane and will eventually need to be removed. The Trickster views undead to be a grand jest on the bodies and souls of mortals, and on the afterlives of the powers.
Lolth may have learnt of the spider-web above Silkthorne, and may take an interest in the Night Spider at Thorne. She could set up a Demonweb gate in the web here, and send missionaries to both sides of spider in Thorne... and possibly Mystara. This event is of limited interest to other non-Prime factions.
Jailbreaks from the Little Abyss. This will annoy one high-up tanar'ri in particular, but other tanar'ri, baatezu, yugoloths etc. not likely to care (or they'll even support the PC's for political reasons). Trickster will be for the PC's.
The baatezu and tanar'ri may indirectly inveigle the PC's to investigate the tower of Paradise. Trickster will oppose PC's.
Preventing a jailbreak; Enesidaones from the Unquiet Womb. The Trickster and/or Titans may be involved, and must be stopped. The baatezu and yugoloths will be for the PC's, but the tanar'ri will split on the issue.
Next time the Cynosure comes to Chasm, the Camp may launch an assault on it, with tanar'ric aid. Any other faction may involve itself, on either side or none.
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zimriel@sbcglobal.netThis page was created 15 March 2002. 22 March, it got everything to do with the Trickster, and also additions to Sirenkof's Paradise. 23 March, filled out the Narrows and the Trickster, created Adventure Hooks, & made other fixes. 24 March, put all information on inhabitants into the intro to "Locations", and added the Cynosure to Chasm's history and culture (as the Camp's tower). 27 March, finally figured out Chasm's architecture. 31 March, added Enesidaones the real mountain-shaker, and split the page. 1 April, Silkthorne's description.
The main difference between Master's Set theogony (used in Mentzer-D&D) and that of the Manual of the Planes (AD&D, and 3rd edition D&D) is that the Master's Set relied on five Spheres and the MotP on alignment-keyed planes. Even within MS it was always unclear whether the Sphere of Death, say, was a unique, deadly place one could reach by Gate (in CM2, Death's Ride) or a sphere of influence exerted by varying degrees on numerous, survivable planes. The MS associated undeath with that Sphere, where the MotP associates it with the Negative Energy Plane. Finally, the MS housed demons in the Sphere of Death; the MotP scatters entities of evil throughout the underworld, and even had them fighting Blood War on each other in Planescape.
But MS and MotP also have much in common. Both have an infinite variety of Prime Material planes and demiplanes. In fact, Monte Cook's module Dead Gods seems to owe much to the latter part of M5: squirrelly ratatosk / phanatons, branchy Yggdrasil / Thorne, and a passage through a dark, windy, lonely underworld to the final, quiet home of evil, where the necrotic prize awaits adventurers to retrieve it.
Since the Isle of Night turns out not to be so evil, just dead, I ruled that "Sphere of Death" here meant primarily Negative Energy. That still allows for a demon like Alphaks to use the Negative Energy for his own ends. I also paid attention to the many parallels between Chasm and Pandemonium; even if Chasm isn't the fifth level, it is certainly tied to it. Then I had to seal off the necrotic part of Chasm which Mystarans see from the Pandemoniac parts in which a petitioner might live. That meant borrowing Thorne's worse element to seal the entrance, and adding weather to the outside.
Sirenkof is a corruption of Cerenkov, as in Cerenkov radiation from black holes.
In Knossos there is a Linear B tablet that points to a cult of Enesidaones in Amnisos, 1500 BCE. Enesidaones the "Shaker" is now an epithet of Poseidon, but there is no evidence that this was the case among pre-classical Cretans. The Maori in New Zealand have retained a god of earthquake for its own sake: his name is Ruau-Moko. I have accordingly borrowed Creation - The Turning of Papatuanuku for Enesidaones. That would make Enesidaones a Titan son of Uranus. I feel this is only fitting, as the Titans are by definition the gods who are buried beneath the Earth, and were replaced by Olympians.
"The Book of Inverted Darkness" is a fictional book of lower-planar legends that first appeared in the "Hellbound" and "Planes of Conflict" boxed sets by Monte Cook; the Cynosure derives from Dead Gods, also Monte. The architecture of the "Pandemonium" listed here derives from the first edition Dungeon Master's Guide and the Manual of the Planes derived from it, by Gary Gygax and Jeff Grubb, respectively. And Paul Jaquays invented Chasm and everything within what I call the Valley of Death. Thanks to all the above.
Also thanks to Tim Martin who asked questions about the Wire, trapping, and Paradise.
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