Windswept Depths of Pandemonium

## Description

It is a place of howling, screaming winds. It is an underground realm of stygian darkness. It is where sanity is besieged by unending madness. Pandemonium is a great mess of matter pierced by innumerable tunnels carved by the howling winds of the plane. It is windy, noisy and dark, having no natural source of light. The wind quickly extinguishes normal fires, and lights that last longer draw the attention of wights driven insane by the constant howling wind.

Every word, scream or shout is caught by the wind and flung through all the layers of the plane. Conversation is accomplished by shouting, and even then words are spirited away by the winds after 10 feet (2 squares).

The stale wind of Pandemonium is cold, and it steals the heat from travelers unprotected from its endless gale that buffets each inhabitant, blowing sand and dirt into eyes, snuffing torches and carrying away loose items. In some places, the wind can howl so fiercely that it lifts creatures off their feet and carries them for miles before dashing their forms to lifeless pulps against some dark, unseen cliff face.

In a few relatively sheltered places, the wind dies down to just a breeze carrying haunting echoes from distant parts of the plane, though they are so distorted that they sound like cries of torment.

Erythnul, the Lord of Slaughter, makes his terrible domain on Pandemonium. This plane has four layers: Pandesmos, Cocytus, Phlegethon and Agathion.

## Pandemonium Traits

* **Objective Directional Gravity**
* **Normal Time**
* **Infinite Size**
* **Divinely Morphic**
* **No Elemental or Energy Traits**
* **Mildly Chaos-Aligned**
* **Normal Magic**
* **No Special Traits**

## Pandemonium Links

Permanent portals exist between various planes and Pandemonium. Several tunnels blow in from or out to the Elemental Plane of Air. Also, the headwaters of the Styx well up from Pandesmos, Pandemonium's topmost layer.

## Movement and Combat

Locomotion on Pandemonium feels like it does on the Material Planes, where tunnels are long and winds are strong. But when winds gust up, movement can be very difficult. Windstorms have a 1 in 10 chance of occurring each day, at a random time (roll 1d12 for hour and 1d4 for AM(1, 2)/PM(3, 4) and last 1d4-2 (minimum 1) rounds. See table below for details.

Combat functions normally, but all ranged weapons take a -2 to attack rolls due to the constant winds. Travelers are deafened very quickly, though ear plugs can negate this effect.

## Pandemonium Inhabitants

### Planars

Pandemonium is probably the least inhabited of all the Outer Planes. It is arguably the least hospitable, even though there are hotter planes, colder ones and planes with crueler denizens. But no plane is more mind-numbingly exhausting. The constant screeching of the winds eventually brings low both the loftiest celestial and the foulest fiend.

Besides the occasional fiendish nest, the only natives of note are small rag-tag groups of mortals, generally called the Banished. A long forgotten creature, spellcaster or deity sentenced their distant ancestors to this plane, and their descendants have yet to find a way to leave. The Banished of various species are responsible for the sad little cities that have managed to survive this plane.

### Petitioners

Of course, Pandemonium has many petitioners. Most of them are swallowed by the screaming wind immediately upon arrival. But some linger, appearing much as they did in life, though they are bonier, and the winds somehow don't affect them as much. Also, most of them are completely, utterly insane. Pandemonium's petitioners have the following traits.

* **Additional Immunities:** Lightning, Sonic
* **Resistances:** Cold 20, Acid 20
* **Other Special Qualities:** None

### Proxies

No proxies significant enough to list reside here, though one would imagine the deities that live here have several proxies in their realms.

## Layers and Locations

### **Pandesmos**

The first layer has the largest caverns, with some big enough to hold entire nations. Large or small, most caverns are desolate and abandoned to the winds. Several of these caverns have streams of frigid water, almost always tributaries of the Styx. These streams sometimes end up coursing through the air, as the objective directional gravity of the winds cancel each other out in odd places.

#### Madhouse

A group of outsiders known as the Bleak Cabal maintain a citadel here that serves as a way station for travelers. The Madhouse is a sprawling edifice of haphazardly organized buildings divided by circular stone walls. The citadel is so large it fills an entire cavern, covering every surface, and it is easily the most populated area of Pandemonium. The place is rife with travelers, petitioners, and natives. Available services include lodging and most other services one would expect in a town. However, a high percentage of the inhabitants here are insane, deaf or both.

#### Winter's Hall

This region of Pandemonium is snowy and blizzard-ridden. Visibility, even when light can be had, is only a few squares. The snow never rests; the wind constantly whips it up so it coats tunnels and creatures with a uniform layer of ice. Frost giants and winter wolves prowl the cold waste. These creatures serve a particularly cruel entity called many names but most often venerated as the Trickster.

### **Cocytus**

The tunnels of Cocytus tend to be smaller than those of Pandesmos, which means they funnel the winds more strongly. The resulting wails have earned this layer the nickname "the layer of lamentation." Strangely, the tunnels of this layer bear the marks of having been hand-chiseled, but such an undertaking must have occurred so long ago that years are an insufficient measure.

#### Howler's Crag

A jagged spike of stone stands at the center of this layer. The Crag is a jumbled pile of stones, boulders and worked stone, as if a giant's palace had collapsed in on itself many eons ago. The Crag's top is mostly a level platform about eight feet in diameter, with a low wall surrounding it. The platform and those on it glow with an ephemeral blue radiance. The lower reaches are riddled with small burrows. Some are merely dead ends, but others connect. The wall of every burrow is covered with lost alphabets that supposedly spell out strange psalms, liturgies and strings of numerals or formulas.

Natives of Pandemonium say that anything yelled aloud from the top of the Crag finds the ears of the intended recipient, no matter where the recipient is on the Great Wheel. The words of the message are borne on a shrieking, frightening wind. Tanar'ri have long learned that travelers often come here, and often ambush unsuspecting visitors.

#### Harmonica

Legend tells of a site on this layer where the winds whip through a cavern with tubes and tunnels whiseled into gigantic rock columns, creating a noise worse than anywhere else on this plane. Somewhere within this mazelike realm of tortured cacophony lies the true secret of planewalking, the art of traveling the planes without a portal, spell or device of any kind. In all likelihood, this legend has no basis in fact, but that does not stop the occasional seeking from finding, then dying among, the columns of Harmonica.

### **Phlegethon**

The unrelenting noise of water dripping meshes with the howling winds of Phlegethonm's narrow, twisting tunnels. The rock itself absorbs light and heat, whether magical or nonmagical. All light sources shine to only half their distance. Unlike other layers, normal gravity applies here, giving rise to intricate stalagmite and stalactite formations, which in turn are constantly weathered by the brutal wind.

#### Windglum

Windglum is a city of Banished in a cavern several miles wide and long, with enormous natural columns that hold up the cavern's ceiling. Hundreds of ever-burning globes provide light for the city, illuminating a disordered sprawl of individual homes. The homes in turn surround a fortification known locally as the Citadel of Lords.

Windglum is characterized by an aura of suspicion. The locals are unlikely to trust strangers, and many of the residents are mentally unstable. However, one inn in Windglum welcomes strangers. Called the Scaly Dog, it's a place where a planar traveler can meet other wayfarers, hire mercenaries, gather information and seek employment.

#### Citadel of Slaughter

Called "the Many," the intermediate deity Erythnul is lord of envy, malice, panic, ugliness and slaughter. Erythnul is a brutal deity who makes his home in what appears to be a tumbled ruin of some vast citadel. In fact, its torturous passages channel cold winds on which can always be heard the sound of terrible battle. Battle-mad petitioners of all races infest the passages, and they desire nothing other than to hunt and slay each other in cold blood.

At the center of the pile is Erythnul himself, usually engaged in the slaughter of an endless stream of petitioners as well as the occasional mortal captive. In battle, the deity's features change between human, gnoll, bugbear, ogre and troll. If ever his blood is spilled, it transforms into an allied creature of whatever form Erythnul currently wears. No one goes to the Citadel of Slaughter on purpose. Unless they serve Erythnul and seek to join in his eternal slaughter.

### **Agathion**

In the fourth layer, the narrowing tunnels finally constrict down to nothing, leaving behind an infinite number of closed-off spaces filled with stale air or vacuum surrounded by solid stone. The portals that connect Agathion to the rest of Pandemonium open into otherwise unreachable bubbles but the act of stepping through a portal always sets off a windstorm.

Unless you know where the portal is, the clsoed-off spaces of Agathion are almost impossible to find. For this reason, forgotten spaces have been use dby deities as vaults where items are hidden away. Such items may include uncontrollable artifacts, precious mementos, lost languages, unborn cosmologies and monsters of such cataclysmic power that they couldn't be slain or otherwise neutralized.

## Pandemonium Encounters

Roll once per hour, on a 98 roll on this encounter table.

## References

1. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 96
2. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 97
3. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 97
4. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 97
5. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 97
6. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 97
7. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 97-98
8. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 98
9. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 97
10. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 97
11. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 97
12. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 98
13. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 98
14. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 98
15. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 98
16. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 99
17. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 99
18. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 99
19. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 99
20. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 99
21. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 99
22. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 99
23. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 99
24. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 99
25. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 99
26. ↑ Manual of the Planes, Third Edition, Wizards of the Coast, Renton, 2002, p. 99