[Creative Exercise] Worlds in a word, planes in a paragraph

Hamsterspace- Crystal sphere. The sun is an enormous rodent and the crystal sphere is an enormous hamsterball or hamster wheel. Planets rotate around centerpoint of the sphere, maintaining positions relative to each other and to the sphere, but not relative to the sun. It might be thematically appropriate to have lots of space hamsters inhabiting the sphere but this is not essential to the idea.
 

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As an aside to this topic, does anybody perchance have a saved copy of the homebrew abyssal layers thread from the old WotC forums about 15-20 years ago. I think the name of the thread was some clever variation of "1001 abyssal layers"
 


Nellisir

Hero
No, but maybe one of these will be helpful?

 

The Satan's Switchyard- Abyssal layer 6134. Domain of the abyssal lord of murderhoboes. Consists of an enormous possibly infinite tangle of train tracks traversed by never-stopping boxcar trains of seemingly infinite length. All of the boxcars' doors are open by default. When somebody closes one, it transforms into a portal to some other place, either in the abyss or the outer planes or on the astral or material plane. The destination is random and determined at the time of the door's first closing, remaining fixed thereafter, but it is always somewhere where there is adventure to be had, loot to be looted, tyrants to be toppled and replaced with anarchy, and/or innocent bystanders to be abused or collaterally damaged. The lord of this place can remotely command an unassigned door to open a portal to his current location. The switchyard's master is one of a group of archdemon adventurers known as "The Darkest Heroes" who travel the planes to topple tyrants by depopulating their lands and destroying the infrastructure of governance.

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The only issue is that I'm not sure what happens when a train derails (and it's the Abyss, so you know that's gonna happen). I'm thinking that perhaps the trains are so long, so fast, and so powerful that derailed cars get dragged along without upsetting the rest of the train, or else the trains are so dense and so close together that anything knocked off the tracks won't be able to tip past its center of gravity because the train on the adjacent track will be in the way.
 
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MarkB

Legend
Arisia
A single massive continent on a world whose oceans are dominated by predatory megafauna that make travel by sea impossible. The continent's coastlines are its only fertile regions, its central portion being dominated by a massive desert, and it is across these sands that the nations bordering the desert ply their trade, via sand-skimming sailing vessels of every description, from simple railed sleds to earth-gliding elemental craft.

The setting for a campaign I called "Pirates of the Arabian".
 

Tricksterspace
Every established deity in this crystal sphere is a rogue or trickster of some kind or another. The seasons and phases of the moon here are irregular; summer comes to the north when the god of the north steals the sun, summer comes to the south when the god of the south steals it back, and The gods of the various planets all repeatedly steal a single moon from each other under cover of darkness. There are several pornographic constellations. At least one of the sphere's planets was won by the gods in a bar bet. The powers smile on rulers who prefer spying and assassination over open war. Drinking, gambling, loud music, and prostitution play prominent roles in all societies. Animal sacrifices are offered chthonically via blood sports like dogfighting and rat baiting. Lives are wagered on sporting events like in the Aztec empire. There's a god of leather jackets, a god of switchblades, and a god of cigarrettes. Even Baator's agents in the sphere are run by Duke Ibaliclir Lord of the Underworld, an underling of Dispater in charge of organized crime.

Amoebaspace
In this crystal sphere the sun is a giant space ameoba. It's been growing for quite some time and will be ready to divode soon)



SEA Sector
A sector of Paranoia's Alpha Complex built underwater at the outskirts of the city. It's particular brand of dystopia is based on Sealab 2021. (Vital stats for Paranoia versions of the Sealab cast as follows: *Murphy- Blue rank. Communist; *Shanks- Indigo rank. Order of Neptune (which may or may not be a front for the Illuminati and/or the Servants of Cthulhu); *Virjay- Green rank. Unregistered Toxic Metabolism mutant. member of Psion; *Sparks- CPU. Yellow rank. Free Enterprise; *Quinn- R&D. Orange rank. Corpore Metal; *White Debbie- Orange rank; Humanists; *Debbie Love- HPDMC, Orange rank, Romantics; *Frenchy- Infrared rank, Sierria Club; *Stormy- Orange rank, Mystics; *Hesh- Power Services, Red rank, Death Leopards; *Prescott- CPU. Violet rank. PSION.)

Plutonic Space/Shared Underworld
Plutonic space is a subterranean connection between all planets. Contrary to what one might assume based on the size of a planet, there is actually no limit to how deeply one may dig other than the integrity of the tunnel or mineshaft. One may delve down hundreds or thousand times the diameter of the planet and never hit the other side of the planet. You may, however, eventually emerge on the surface of a completely different planet. This is because below their crust all planets connect to the same underworld. The planets might be imagined as wormholes connecting the underworld to the sky. The wormhole is spherical on both ends, which is why you can never reach the other side of the planet; Viewed from the sky a planet as a sphere of rock, viewed by someone who could somehow see through the rock of the underworld the planet would appear as a sphere of void. On the underworld end of the wormhole, the other side of the planet is on the other side of the sphere of void and by digging further you are traveling away from that side.

The upshot of all this is that a civilization that was sufficiently good at digging could travel to other planets without having to deal with space. It would be farther and longer than any normal voyage, and would not have the speed of a rocket, but it would be accomplishable without having to brave the vacuum of space.

Fancy's
(This one's not a world or a plane, just a location)
Fancy's is a training ground for devilish soul collectors, built to test their skill at manipulation and gaslighting. The location is disguised on the outside as an expensive upperclass restaurant. The first and easiest part of the test is that soul corruptor in training must disguise themself as a mortal, and lure a mortal dupe to the location under the pretense of a business lunch or a romantic dinner. When they arrive with their mark, the mortal is siezed and placed in a pillory in a pitch dark room for several hours and is then forced to consume rotting offal from diseased animals and robbed of all items on their person. The devil remains with them the whole time, talking to them. The final test for the trainee devil is to convince the mortal that the experience of being pilloried was actually enjoyable, or else to convince the mortal that they are a jerk or a philistine for not enjoying being pilloried in the dark, fed offal, and robbed blind. For full marks, this must be accomplished without the use of magical mind control.

The restaurant does not contain a full dining area. There is, in truth, only the one pillory and dining table. A barred window looks into the darkened dining room from the well lit area where the proctors and judges observe. This area is not directly acdessible from the dining room. To reach it, one must first go through a guardpost which leads into a small cluster of offices and barracks to which the observation room is attached.

In addion to the guardpost and its attached offices, the "dining room" also connects to a "kitchen" where sick animals are brought in and then left to die and to rot.

There are two entrences. The front entrence leads into a fake lobby/waiting room where a flunky playing the maitre'd turns away anyone who comes by and isn't part of the test. The rear entrence leads into a normal looking potemkin storeroom which in turn has a door which leads into the "kitchen".
 


Not planes this time, just cities

The Cyst- The cyst is a set of two warring cities set inside of each other like Russian nesting dolls. The Old City is a walled, fortified, domed, and self-sustaining enclave fully surrounded by the New City, whom it has been at war with for over a century. The New City started out as a military encampment of troops besieging the Old City, but as the days and weeks of the siege ground on into months and years it grew to become a settlement in its own right

Humanoid Farm- A former illithid settlement where the illithids were overthrown and driven off by an uprising of their thralls. However, the leaders of the uprising, knowing nothing else, now act like illithids, insy=talling themselves as the new leaders of the area and using their fellows as food and slave labor
 
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