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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Levistus's_Leviathan" data-source="post: 9897109" data-attributes="member: 7023887">A multilayered sphere, like onions or Russian nesting dolls. The world has 15 layers, 7 heavens, 7 hells, and the place in between, where mortals live. I liked Eberron’s division into Khyber the Dragon Below, Eberron the Dragon Between, and Siberys the Dragon Above, but felt the fact that Eberron had both the Orrery planar system and the Khyber system felt a bit redundant. So I figured it could be interesting if my setting’s cosmology worked as a sort of synthesis of Eberron’s two cosmologies.The 7 Hells are the different layers of the inside of the planet. The ocean is the first hell (very Cthulhu-esque), the second is the Underdark (with spooky undead stuff), the third is the world’s mantle/Plane of Fire, and so on. Each layer of the world is ruled by an Archon, a demonic tyrant that helped create the world and is linked to one of the seven deadly sins. At the center of the earth is Yaldabaoth, the lion-faced serpent god of creation, pride, and tyranny.The 7 Heavens are the layers of the world above. The sky/realm of clouds is the first heaven, then the planet’s rings, then the Moon, then the Sun, and so on. Each is the domain of an Aeon, a distant, transcendent good god that embodies the virtues of humanity: Love, Wisdom, Individuality, Justice, Light, et cetera. The final heaven is the Astral, the domain of Abraxas, the redeemed rooster-headed, snake-legged Archon of dreams, prophecy, fate, magic, and redemption. The main religion of my setting takes heavy inspiration from Gnosticism, so I worked a lot of that into the pantheon and cosmology of my setting. Hence the Aeons, Archons, Abraxas, and Yaldabaoth. But I liked the “heavens above, hells/underworld below” cosmology that many cultures around the world have, so I merged that with planes of existence from Eberron and D&D in general that I liked.</blockquote>

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