Arborea

A plane of joy as well as sorrow, Arborea is the home of the dreamers, a seemingly delicate sylvan realm of astounding heartiness and deep-seated enchantment. Its beauty is almost overwhelming, the landscape embodying the lovely and peaceful, and the passionate and wild, all at the same time.

Arborea is first and foremost a land of emotions, running high, deep, and far. These are not all positive emotions; Arborea is a place of powerful love and hate, where rage and joy are equally common and equally honored. Like Limbo, it could be considered the opposite of Mechanus, not in the sense that it countered rigid order with formless chaos, but in that its deep-seated feelings are the antithesis of Nirvana's mechanical logic.

Arborea is most accurately described as "boisterous", favoring melodrama as opposed to stoicism. Vibrant energy fills the plane, the air tingling with excitement and constant anticipation in the literally emotionally charged atmosphere. It is not merely a place where the emotional gathers, but a place that made those present short-tempered, passionate, and, at times, hammy. It is a larger than life realm of huge appetites that change as quickly as the heart, where the violent moods and whims are backed by steel and the fervent affections and passions blaze bright before burning out.

Greed, envy, lust, and wrath are strong on Arborea, and emotions could be released with dangerous consequences, but that is not to say that the plane is an evil one. Arborea is as much a plane of good as it is one of chaos, disavowing the notions of those who saw chaos as destructive disharmony or a tumultuous maelstrom. Rather, the Olympian Glades are a realm of individuality and independence, a good-natured place of celebrations and strong desires where personal freedom is paramount. As strong as the vices are, charity, justice, love, and kindness are equally rampant on Arborea.

Despite their rowdy and chaotic nature, Arboreans are bound by superstitions, ancient tradition, codes of conduct, and systems of respect that no one would dare violate. All Arborea is permeated by a supernatural power of oath-binding, more concentrated in some places than others, that prevent others from going back on their word lest they suffer horrible consequences, the worst of which could include a painful death.

One of Arborea's more subtle aspects is its addictive quality. The longer one stays, the more likely one will never want to leave, and after about a month would possibly need to be dragged back home by well-meaning friends. Just because they left Arborea however, doesn't mean they had escaped its pull; they will need to be confined until the intense yearning subsides and its influence has waned.

Inhabitants

The Abyssal layers are said to be sentient, though unintelligent and dormant, each with their own primal urges and hungers (other layers not precluded from their tastes). Likewise, Arborea itself is determined to remain true to itself, wild and pure. Though most visitors to Arborea are unaware of it, the very land is alive with nature spirits. Some of these are the better known sylvan guardians such as dryads, sylphs, and sprites, but the actual spirits of the land itself are far greater. Every forest, glade, mountain, stream, and cloud has a guardian, and carving through virgin lands before polluting the environment is sure to provoke a reaction.

Exactly what that reaction would be varies from place to place, but the less tame the terrain, the more severe the results will typically be. A river might flow backwards or simply vanish and an angered spirit of a grove might move all the landmarks around while the offender sleeps. Spirits were immortal unless one planned to destroy the entire land they were protecting, but luckily such things aren't likely to be needed. Though they tolerate no infringement, the nature spirits are typically either too shy or too benevolent to actually be dangerous, and could instead be reasoned with. Most of them will create a shape to communicate through resembling the other party, a forest for example taking on a humanoid form with leafy hair, twigs for fingers and eyes of sap.

Geography

Compared to its depraved counterpart in the Abyss, which has, if not literally then effectively, an infinite number of foul layers, Arborea could seem small since it possessed only three. However, while the Abyss is a chaotic cluster of miniature realms, its individual, warring worlds each horrific and harsh in their own unique ways, the comparative cohesiveness of Arborea's layers is not to be mistaken for a lack of diversity.

In truth, Arborea is a fantastically patchwork plane, a crazy quilt of thriving climates and environments with endless abundance. Though named after its endless, rolling forests, that is a mere fraction of the plane. Settled landscapes are pleasant and pastoral, with gently rolling hills, meadows, vineyards, fruit orchards, and fields of oats, barley, wheat, and millet, all passing by in quaint succession.

However, in the hinterlands between settlements, Arborea's wilderness could be almost impassable, increasing in hostility the deeper in one went and not just because of prowling predators. Normally even the Arborean winter is mild, but the weather of the plane is as whimsical and unpredictable as the inhabitants. The plane lacks the serenity of its lawful counterpart Mount Celestia, its pleasant breezes turning to violent storms in an instant and death on the plane coming mostly from lightning and hail. Still, one normally has to go looking for trouble in Arborea to find it, and even the weather at its most extreme doesn't soil the overpowering and bewildering beauty of the plane.

Arborea's larger than life aspect is both figurative and literal, the big emotions reflecting the big plane. The sheer extravagant size of everything simply can't be understated: every craggy mountain is stupendous, every ravine unbelievably deep, every lush forest filled with monstrously huge trees, every ocean unimaginably deep, every river mighty, and every plain a wild stretch. Never doing small, Arborea's immensity makes it difficult to traverse due to steepness and distance. Realms aside from those of common knowledge potentially laid hidden, ruled over by unknown beings.

Shape and size

Three infinite layers

Gravity

Normal

Time

Normal

Morphic trait

Divinely

Alignment

Chaotic Good Reactive

Magic

Normal with special cases

Layers

• Arvandor
• Aquallor
• Mithardir

Type

Dimensional plane

Included Locations

• Niðavellir