Carceri

Carceri, known also as the Tarterian Depths, the Plane of Unbreaking Despair and the Prison Worlds, is an Outer Plane most commonly falling somewhere between the alignments of chaotic evil and neutral evil.

## Description

No simple description exists for the lands of the Plane of Carceri, for as per many of the Lower Planes, they vary wildly from location to location, layer to layer. Nonetheless unified in their nature, the layers of Carceri are filled with misery in all their forms. Othrys is a land of bogs and marshes, Cathrys a deadly jungle of overgrown and vicious plantlife while Minethys is instead a barren and windswept desert. Further still is that of Colothys, filled with crags and jagged mountains, Porphatys a corrosive shallow ocean, and Agathys vast stretches of hungering ice.

Home to demodands, as much prisoners to the planes as those that they serve as cruel wardens for, the layers are scattered across countless pearl-like orbs that hang in a vast swirling chain off beyond further than any mortal eye could hope to see.

## Research

### Completed by Rinn Zelnolar

There is surely a maddening nature to the lands of Carceri, although it stands apart from the other planes sometimes heralded in the same manner. In Gehenna, the plane itself exists at an angle, so that one must climb with each and every step. The innate chaos of the Plane of Limbo garners madness in its own manner, while the deranged violence ever-present within the Abyss and the Hells can readily break a mortal mind. The Shadowfell, one of the Echoes of the Material Plane is filled with a depressing despair that grinds down with ennui into naught. The Plane of Unbreaking Despair is so named for it too is a place of desolation and despair, but one that does not magically garner it to its residents. In truth, the demodands, the most numerous amongst the residents, delight in their presence there, despite being as much trapped by the plane as all others. Therein lies the true maddening nature of the Prison Worlds - one may readily enter the Plane, but escape is nigh impossible, save a few particular routes unknown to all but the most devious and manipulative of foes. Surrounded by deadly environs and with naught but which they happened to have on them upon arrival, all, whether friends, families, the most orderly of armies, or bands of vagabonds will in turn find themselves compelled to backstab and betray as desperation grows, and methods of survival threaten to fail.

The obviousness of this despair varies from layer to layer. Some, such as Cathrys and Porphatys outwardly might look manageable, if not alien and otherworldly in their scope. With dense forests of the formrer from which to harvest and hunt, or the beaches and oceans of the latter upon which to bathe and fish, desperation may be delayed in its onset, springing into consciousness when every tree weeps acid capable of melting armour in minutes, the ferns ravage legs and bellies with razor-like leaves, the waters corrosive and liable to peel skin from flesh and bone upon exposure. The other layers were more obviously dangerous, threatening death by a thousand cuts, whether by stones, thorns, sand or likewise. Even death does not serve to provide escape, as any that spend time examining the totems scattered throughout bear witness to. Whether by fetid mud, winding vines, sandblasted glass, uneven stone, swirling brackish water or pillars of ice, those that fall within the Prison World are incarcerated interminably at the moment just before death, their last breath on their lips. Not even those fiends that have found their way into the Plane by means of the Styx as it winds from layer to layer are spared such a fate, and the totems are particularly dense at its banks, obscuring the crimson waters from view in many places.

The bars that encase the Wandering World are steadfast, unyielding to physical force and arcane might alike, and in the rare occasion that something or something pries the parts wide enough to pass through, they will in time return to their form, stronger than ever before - and woe unto any that find themselves having followed curiosity believing they know a passage to escape. To this purpose, the Plane of Carceri has been used, and continues to be used to confine all manner of individuals, corporeal and incorporeal, mortal and immortal. Fiends readily inflict the punishment upon their own when demotion by reconstitution into a lesser form does not take their fancy, while fallen angels, corrupted souls and all other manner of folk have been cast there - usually by other denizens of the Wandering Worlds. Some few journeys from the Material Plane are ill-fated and short-lived, such as when explorers were sent to the Tarterian Depths in an attempt to learn the magics of the plane for matters of warding around the prisons and dungeons utilised by the Astedian Empire on the Material Plane, promptly finding themselves trapped. Although the Astedians would subsequently toy with the idea of sending criminals directly to the Plane through the magic of Wayfinder Stones, cases deemed serious enough to warrant such punishment were few and far between, and thus rarely enacted, and has not been pursued any further since the fall of the Empire during the Manifestation.

For those that have suffered such a fate however, they find themselves both at mercy of the Plane itself, but also its primary inhabitants, the Demodands. Legends state that they were once a type of fiend, or perhaps even a proto-fiend, that was cast into the Plane as punishment and have instead embraced their surroundings, serving as its wardens as much as they are its prisoners too. In place of despair, they find joy in the Prison Plane by terrorising and tormenting fellow prisoners and planar travellers alike, enacting brutal acts in a twisted game of one-upmanship between their peers, interjecting their depravity with enough small gestures of generosity and reward to give reference to the depths of their wickedness. The Demodands have developed a trio of castes, the Farastu, Kelubar and Shators, serving as menial labourers, bureaucratic intermediaries and malign overlords respectively, working together to enact vast plots to ensure any that enter the Plane eventually find themselves back within it, their plots spanning across the generations if necessary.