The Great Wheel: Positioning Gehenna and Tarterus/Carceri

[Savage Wombat]

But you see, petitioners don't want to live on these planes.

The plane is a mirror of everything they believe the universe to be all along.

If you think the universe is a fair and just place, where hard work and helping others benefits you as well as them - guess what, you get to climb Mt. Celestia. If you think the universe is a battle of all-against-all and only the strongest, most ruthless berk survives - good luck in the Abyss. (Boy, the bottom of the heap is a lot lower than it was as a human, huh?)

Is the universe an uncaring system of physical law, and morality is an illusion? Mechanus for you. Is the universe random and pointless? Off to Limbo.

Come to think of it, I wouldn't want to be someone like Nietzsche under this system.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

As much as I love PS in broad strokes, it's inspired and weighed down by quite a bit of legacy concepts that don't all make much sense together. Additionally, I know from personal experience how creatively exhausting it is to write nine distinct yet thematic outer planes -- I can only imagine that, even with an entire design team, writing seventeen outer planes was a herculean task, and that quite a bit of creative corner-cutting and hand waving resulted.

So by all means, rearrange the details as you wish, I say!

 

[I'm A Banana]

I would agree that these people you're describing would be NE(C), but the question remains: do all NE(C) characters necessarily have persecution complexes? There is a logic to the equivalency of CN(E) and psychosis, even if I don't necessarily agree with it, but I'm not sure I see the same logic joining NE(C) and institutional paranoia.

I'd say all NE(C) people rankle at being controlled, but aren't really committed to independence. They don't like having to bow to someone else's authority. And when your main concern is in convincing others to loosen the bonds of authority on you, playing the victim is a useful gambit -- and can even be sincerely internalized.

"Everyone else is trying to stop me from being the awesome, exceptional person I know I am. They're all jealous. They're all peons. I'm a special important person who doesn't need to conform to their 'rules' -- rules that are only there for useless altruism and empty ego-padding! I'm being repressed because I can't just do whatever I want!"

 

[Shemeska]

Had I been able to post a reply earlier before other folks jumped in, I'd have dropped a page or two on how I view both planes with respect to their alignments, but since I'm late to the party I'll provide someone else's words on the subject:

I've always been a fan of much of Pathguy/LiPo's take on the philosophy of why the various outer planes are the way they are:

Gehenna http://www.pathguy.com/gehenna.htm

Carceri http://www.pathguy.com/carceri.htm

 

[DMZ2112]

Had I been able to post a reply earlier before other folks jumped in, I'd have dropped a page or two on how I view both planes with respect to their alignments, but since I'm late to the party I'll provide someone else's words on the subject:

Nonsense, Sheska, it's not a Planescape thread without you weighing in.

 

[gyor]

Who says that Carcari functioning as a prison plane is natural? Perhaps it was like other lower planes once, filled with evil neutral choatic petitioners, until the Gods decided to dump the evil titans there, and turned it into a prison.

Also note the domains of the Gods of the plane are likely not as unpleasant as the rest of the plane, islands of dark paradise in a prison of torment.

 

[(un)reason]

Who says that Carcari functioning as a prison plane is natural? Perhaps it was like other lower planes once, filled with evil neutral choatic petitioners, until the Gods decided to dump the evil titans there, and turned it into a prison.

Yeah, this is actually the canon answer. If you look at the behaviour of the petitioners, the original theme of the plane is Betrayal. They got there because they betrayed someone or something, forming a relationship with them, then ing them over. (This also includes betraying yourself, like people who lie, cheat, steal, and generally screw people over because they themselves are slaves to some kind of addiction.) The forming of superficial relationships is what distinguishes them from the abyssal inhabitants, who are more likely to just try and kill, eat, or exploit you straight away, without forming any bond to be betrayed in the first place.

The plane was then repurposed as one of imprisonment as well by the greek gods because the constant betrayal makes it near impossible to get people to work together and accomplish any long-term goal there, which definitely makes escape much harder.

 

[Samloyal23]

Every Outer Plane seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy, no?

 

[DMZ2112]

Gyor necro'd this thread after four years, so I feel justified in re-necroing it after only six months. It is apparently still serving its purpose.

Yeah, this is actually the canon answer.
...
The plane was then repurposed as one of imprisonment as well by the greek gods because the constant betrayal makes it near impossible to get people to work together and accomplish any long-term goal there, which definitely makes escape much harder.

I feel like, by Planescape's own rules, if the Greek gods did this and were successful, Carceri and Gehenna would flip, or at least Carceri would move to the opposite side of the Grey Wastes. We see this phenomenon initated by mortals -- in Mechanus' Arcadian domains, transplanted accidentally by the Harmonium, and in the succession of Plague-Morts (Plagues-Mort?) on the first level of the Abyss. Surely a concerted effort like this on the part of the Olympians could shift a whole plane in the wheel?

This is the sort of neat stuff that I'm nervous about Planescape 5 possibly handwaving away as irrelevant. Get rid of magic weapon plus-loss across planar boundaries, sure. Same with clerics losing levels. You could even make a compelling argument for spell keys requiring too much bookkeeping for the amount of fun they bring to the table. But a Planescape that isn't rooted in 'belief as geography' just doesn't feel like Planescape.

 

[(un)reason]

I feel like, by Planescape's own rules, if the Greek gods did this and were successful, Carceri and Gehenna would flip, or at least Carceri would move to the opposite side of the Grey Wastes. We see this phenomenon initated by mortals -- in Mechanus' Arcadian domains, transplanted accidentally by the Harmonium, and in the succession of Plague-Morts (Plagues-Mort?) on the first level of the Abyss. Surely a concerted effort like this on the part of the Olympians could shift a whole plane in the wheel?

This is the sort of neat stuff that I'm nervous about Planescape 5 possibly handwaving away as irrelevant. Get rid of magic weapon plus-loss across planar boundaries, sure. Same with clerics losing levels. You could even make a compelling argument for spell keys requiring too much bookkeeping for the amount of fun they bring to the table. But a Planescape that isn't rooted in 'belief as geography' just doesn't feel like Planescape.

It all depends on ratios of prisoners to jailers.

As long as the vast majority of the people there are unrepentant scumbags, it'll stay where it is. If the number of political prisoners who aren't actually bad people sent there increases, or the mercykillers get too hands-on and tip the overall balance towards lawful with too many guards per prisoner, there's a danger of it shifting.

But at the moment, they're mostly just thrown in to rot with the petitioners and other natives, with none of the opportunities for reform or parole a properly designed justice system would offer. The olympian pantheon is pretty chaotic itself, and not known for consistent or proportional enforcement of rules, as even a brief perusal of their myths will show.