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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nifft" data-source="post: 3324467" data-attributes="member: 6562">Here's something from my setting. Maybe not quite as bleak as you want, but has some nice dark implications. It requires that there are multiple consistent views of the Cosmos.Here are the multiple views that I use:- River of Worlds- Tree of LifeThe River Oceanus and the River Styx are the same river. From Celestia's ocean, the river flows through (... good realms ...) to Ysgard, and from there into Faerie (which is what I use for CN). After leaving Faerie, the river ventures underground, through dark and windy caverns, until it reaches a poisoned plain of menhirs, pockmarked with gaping pits and fissures that lead into the various layers of the Abyss. From there, it travels on through (evil planes), finally ending in the Pit of the Adversary.What's so dark about that? The river always flows "down", from LG to CN to CE to LE. (LE is "worse" that CE in my game.) So it's easy to get into a bad place, and hard to get out, if you travel by river.You could also think of the River as the flow of cosmic energy in some way. The "flow" is actually the Adversary gaining power through the evil of Mankind, or whatever, if you like the outer planes being created by philosophy.The Great Tree, Yggdrasil. At the center of the Elemental Planes there is the Plane of Wood. It's not widely known to be the center, but all know that it "touches" all four of the typical Elemental planes. In fact, the heart of Yggdrasil touches all places. (This is why Druids have access to plane shift in my game.)The foul creatures of the Hells nibble at the great tree's roots, and poison its sap. This is why Paladins must venture into Hell: to trim back the parasites on the foundations of reality. This is also why so many oracles are found in the Hells: ancient non-evil creatures have always made their homes among the foundations. Only the ignorant call these oracles "fallen".Why is this dark? Because Evil has the roots, and therefore has the universe by its short hairs. Evil actions in Hell could have effects on any number of Prime worlds.Why is this cool? Because PCs finding secluded natural gates (far from civilization by definition) and then walking across giant tree limbs is cool. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" />Cheers, -- N</blockquote>

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