The Abyss: Infinite or 666 layers?

[MeepoTheMighty]

I'm kinda with Dr. Z on this one. A layer isn't X miles by Y miles by Z miles, it's an entire sub-reality. Think of Earth. All of Earth. The whole shabang. Every continent, hemisphere, country, city, county, family, town, provence, religeon, climate, ecosystem.. EVERYTHING.


Now think to yourself.. that's one layer.


Now -try- to grasp the concept of twice the ammount of variety, peoples, animals, plants, minerals, formations, cultures, etc, etc. No no, I'm serious, go on and try. REALLY try. Got a good grasp of it yet?



Good. Now multiply that by SEVERAL HUNDRED TIMES. Kinda hard to do, isn't? The picture gets too big, refrence slips away and your brain tries to rationalize it down to a small, simpler form. The paradigm breaks down.


Saying the Abyss has 666 layers, or Infinate layers, in my oppinion at least, are effectivly saying the same thing. The Abyss is Sufficiently Large, such that we can't comprehend just how big it really is. Trying to categorize it down to an X or a Y is just a coping mechanism people come up with. Which, really is also pretty darn fitting with it's chaotic nature.

Except the Earth is finite in size. Imagine if the Earth were infinite, and then you had an infinite number of Earths stacked on top of each other in some sort of funky extradimensional manner. And then filled them with things that wanted to eat you.

An infinite number of things that wanted to eat you, naturally.

 

[Aaron L]

Actually, imagine the whole universe. Than imagine multiples of that.

Multiple Universes. A plane is a whole universe, don't forget that. The difference between 666 universes and infinite universes is quite staggering.

Then stack them on top of each other. Then fill them with creatures of chaos and evil. That is the Abyss.

 

[Zappo]

In my opinion, there's a big difference between 666 and infinite layers. You see, each layer of a plane usually has some distinct characteristic. That's what mostly allows them to be distinguished; since travel between layers is 95% done via portals or other insta-travel magic you usually can't actually see the boundaries between layers.

So, if there's a finite number of layers there's also a finite number of these "distinct characteristics". I think that 666 flavors of evil is a big enough number, but it isn't infinite.

 

[rounser]

If each layer of the Abyss is infinite in size, what does it matter if the number of layers themselves are infinite? Does having a limited number of layers mean there is less Abyss?

Thank you Dr. Z! I was reading this thread in boggle-eyed disbelief that so many people were oblivious to the obvious. It only took us 38 posts to get there....

 

[green slime]

My take on it is this; Nobody KNOWS.

Some hazard a guess, as some suspect that the layers themselves CHANGE their characteristics, so that between visits, it would seem as if you had visited an entirely different layer.

Others regard the inconsistency of being able to travel reliably to a certain layer constantly being due to the layers winking in and out of existence in the multiversal time flow.

Some just stand around screaming: "They're INFINITE, so THERE!!!" And then run off frothing at the mouth.

Perhaps all possibilities do exist simultaneously. Perhaps there are both only 666 layers AND an infinite number of layers in the Abyss at any given time/place. As these layers exist in parallel or within each other. Some compress entire eons into seconds and thus wink out of existance before any travellers reach them, but it is possible to time travel to them. Others are shadow realms contained with the shadows of demons roaming another layer.

Perhaps some layers are so well mirrored as to be completely impossible to tell them apart. Travelling to Layer A, you don't know and can't tell if you are on layer A or Layer B. Are you going to trust the Denizens word on this issue?

 

[Sammael99]

My school of thought is :

Why do you need to know ?

As green slime says, some think it's 666, some thinks that's a lie, some don't know, some think it's infinite, some don't care. What difference does it make to anyone apart from the demonologist who would really like to know just for knowledge's sake ?

What I like about Planescape is that there are no absolutes. I'm reading Faces of Evil : The Fiends right now and it's great just for that : theories, rumours, great ideas, do with it what you want !

And, if WW games have taught me anything, surprise your players by making them realise that what they were convinced is so is not so. That's one of the greatest funs of RPGs IMO...

 

[Erik Mona]

When I was writing ARMIES OF THE ABYSS, for Green Ronin (you do have that book, right?), I decided that the Abyss was theoretically infinite, but that explorers from the Material plane had catalogued 666 layers.

--Erik

 

[Lordnightshade]

Erik, I love that book! You did a great job on it! I would love to see more written about the Abyss and the other outer planes. It will be interesting to see what those guys over at Planewalker and PS3e are working on.

Perhaps my fascination with it all is merely because my current campaign has taken my party deep into the Abyss.

 

[Scion]

remember,

the truth is out there, and it's all a lie.

Which pretty well covers all of the abyss

 

[Squire James]

In my campaigns, I tend to make it a cardinal rule that the more unique a being is, the more powerful he is. This is one of the reasons the Archdevils are always fighting each other. If there were only one, he would be much more powerful (perhaps more powerful than the current 9 put together). This also explains things like why a group of 4-6 people can go out and destroy hundreds of villains in 2-3 years...

So, given all this, there were an infinite number of demons, they would literally be powerless. Therefore, I figure the demons would LIKE people to think their planes and their numbers are infinite, in reality neither is the case. There are probably not even 666 planes, but they change enough that it seems there are that many. I've noticed that even the demon lords themselves seem to pull out random numbers when someone asks which plane they rule...

"Well, I rule all of them of course, but my presence is particularly strong in the 50th and 53rd layers. Or is that the 6th and 503rd? Whatever. Anyway, I hold 2 planes as my personal realm... at least it was 2 last week!"