From: Nick Stefanski
Last time, we looked at the early development of the planes of existence in D&D, including a deep dive into the creative origins of the Lawful side of the cosmology. This time, we’ll look at the planes of Chaos and Neutrality, heavily influenced by Greek mythology, as well as beyond the Great Ring.
For Nirvana’s opposite, Gygax chose Limbo. From the Latin term for a “liminal” state, Limbo has long existed in Christian thought as a destination of the souls of the patriarchs of the Old Testament. It was for those who were not evil and so did not deserve Hell, but who lived before Jesus, so could not technically enter Heaven. Dante also included it as the first layer of Hell in The Inferno, where Virgil himself (Dante’s guide in the story) spends his eternity as a virtuous man who was not a Christian. The neutrality of this plane makes sense, as it is a place that is neither Heaven (Good) nor Hell (Evil), but if it is supposed to be between these two Lawful extremes, then why is it on the opposite side of the great wheel? Maybe, drawing primarily on Dante as a place for pagans, Gygax decided that it belonged more with the mythological realms of the Greeks. My own interpretation is that, in contrast to a Lawful Nirvana which represents a complete oneness with the machinery of the multiverse, Limbo is the ultimate place that is outside of the normal system. It is a complete rejection of the cosmic order, not for Good or Evil, but necessarily Chaotic. In the fifth edition, Limbo has become somewhat conflated with the Elemental Chaos, which happens to be included in the Creative Commons and is fair game as an alternate term, it also bears similarity to Pathfinder’s plane of Chaos, the Maelstrom.
There are two more Chaotic planes that draw on the Judeo-Christian tradition. First, Gygax’s Chaotic Evil plane, the Abyss, can be used as a synonym for Hell, but from a Greek language root for “bottomless.” Gygax’s Abyss was not initially infinite, though it was large. Some have suggested a connection to the Sumerian deity Abzu, consort of the deity Tiamat (no, not that Tiamat) and representation of primeval waters at the beginning of time. As far as I know, most etymologists reject this connection for the word, but it’s still possible that Gygax knew of it and was inspired to use it for the Chaotic Evil plane. Or, maybe he just wanted a synonym to Hell that was less connected to the orderliness of Dante’s Inferno. In any case, the bottomless aspect is spot on for how the Abyss transformed through the editions. Pandemonium, which is just a Greek neologism meaning “all the demons,” was invented by John Milton as the capital of Hell in Paradise Lost. Between the term’s later meaning of a cacophony and the original book’s theme of rebellion, this is a fitting name for a Chaotic/Chaotic Evil plane, where Gygax placed it. In Milton it was a palace, but the Creative Commons SRD includes the comment that the “Howling winds of Pandemonium” can cause madness, so feel free to include that piece of lore.
A decent portion of the Chaotic and Neutral planes recreate the cosmology of Greek mythology. Hades, the primary Greek underworld, was used by Gygax for the Neutral Evil plane. Like many ancient underworlds, it was a dreary place, and was where the vast majority of souls were thought to be headed, not just the evil ones. The truly wicked would instead be sent to Tartarus, which Gygax eventually used for his Evil/Chaotic Evil plane. This is where the famous punishments of Sisyphus (eternally rolling a boulder up a hill) and Tantalus (taunted by water and food he could not reach) were carried out, plus the jail of the Titans, the forebears and rivals of the main Greek pantheon. In Planescape, this plane became Carceri after the imaginary prisons or carceri d’invenzione of the Italian artist Giovanni Piranesi, beautiful but dark prints that predated M.C. Escher by a century. Carceri is our last outer plane that appears in the Creative Commons as a proper noun thanks to the Warlock feature Chains of Carceri.
Elysium was originally Gygax’s Chaotic Good plane (and it remains in this spot in Pathfinder) before being shuffled into the Neutral Good spot by the Manual of the Planes in 1987. Its depiction as a place of blissful happiness is fairly true to the source, although in Greek myth, this afterlife was reserved for a heroic few. Olympus, originally the Good/Chaotic Good plane before moving a bit more towards Chaos, is of course the residence of the Greek gods, though in D&D they were made to share it with the Elves (the ultimate Chaotic and Good, even in Gygax’s original article) and it eventually got the name Arborea (like arbor, Latin for tree) with “Olympian” as an adjective.
Rounding out the Chaotic planes, we have a contender from Norse rather than Greek mythology, Gladsheim (later Ysgard, probably because Asgard is more well known from Marvel comics). In Norse mythology, Gladsheim seems to be where Odin held court, as opposed to Valhalla where he feasted with the souls of departed heroes, so Asgard (or Ysgard) probably makes more sense as a plane anyhow. The lore about heroes being resurrected every day for battle is straight out of myth, though the plane’s morphic qualities are unique to the D&D conception.
Having covered the planes from mythology, we come to the Beastlands. This plane started out as the Happy Hunting Grounds and was originally in the Good/Lawful Good spot. The Manual of the Planes moved it to the Good/Chaotic Good spot and gave it the nickname the Beastlands, while Planescape promoted the nickname to official status and other editions have continued to leave it out. The Happy Hunting Grounds is problematic at best; ostensibly a reference to a Native American afterlife (which itself assumes uniformity across Native American beliefs), the phrase was probably invented by James Fenimore Cooper, a white man, in The Last of the Mohicans. To quote The Straight Dope:
“So at least some Algonquians believed in what might accurately be called the “happy hunting grounds.” But I find no evidence that the Algonquians, or any other Indians, actually called it that before Cooper put it in his book.”
That covers the outer planes, but I wanted to quickly cover some of the other major planes in the D&D cosmology. The idea of elemental planes was invented by D&D as far as I can gather, but the idea of four elements of course goes back to antiquity and many of their unique locations (like the City of Brass) also have mythic or literary antecedents. The ethereal and astral planes draw on pop science ideas from the 70s. They were invented to explain how certain spells worked and are in the Creative Commons with the elemental planes. The para- and quasi-elemental planes are not, but they seem to have been largely dropped from the cosmology.
The Shadowfell, Feywild, and Far Realm all came to prominence starting in 4th Edition, but they existed in some form prior. The Shadowfell was initially just the Plane of Shadow, and like the ethereal and astral first existed to explain how certain spells worked, before becoming a dark mirror of the material. The Feywild, similarly, was the Plane of Faerie, an outer plane of the Seelie court that had the unique property of seeming to move around the Chaotic and Good quadrant of the Great Wheel. While both “Feywild” and “Shadowfell” appear in the Creative Commons, they are mentioned without description, so if you want to use settings like these, you’re probably better off using the more generic sound Planes of Faerie and Shadow.
The Far Realm is D&D’s answer to the Cthulhu Mythos, an all purpose plane of madness. This one is generic enough that you might as well refer to origins in “A far realm” rather than “The Far Realm.” Or, you could take the Pathfinder approach and just refer to Lovecraftian works directly. The Lovecraft mythos is only partially in the Public Domain, but it seems like most associated copyrights are not usually enforced. Personally, the next time I want to make a plane of madness I think I’ll call it Fomalhaut: used by Rob Kuntz in an unpublished dungeon, named for Lovecraft reference, it is ultimately the name of a star.
At the end of the day, the point of this article is not to limit your creativity to what is already established in D&D lore, but to open it up. The idea of planes is free to use and the original planes drew on a mishmash of beliefs. Go where your imagination takes you and it will always have a place somewhere in the planes!
Nick Stefanski has been playing RPGs since the 90s and publishing them since 2020. You can find his bestselling works on DMsGuild and his own open source planar adventure on DriveThruRPG, or hear about new releases on his site khyberia.com. He’s also on most of the socials as @TzarFenix
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