Elemental Chaos - Summary

At the foundation of the world, the Elemental Chaos churns like an ever-changing tempest of clashing elements - fire and lightning, earth and water, whirlwinds and living thunder. Just as the gods originated in the Astral Sea, the first inhabitants of the Elemental Chaos were the primordials, creatures of raw elemental power. They shaped the world from the raw material of the Elemental Chaos, and if they had their way, the world would be torn back down and returned to raw materials. The gods have given the world permanence utterly alien to the primordials’ nature.
The Elemental Chaos approximates a level plane on which travelers can move, but the landscape is broken up by rivers of lightning, seas of fire, floating earthbergs, ice mountains, and other formations of raw elemental forces. However, it is possible to make one’s way slowly down into lower layers of the Elemental Chaos. At its bottom, it turns into a swirling maelstrom that grows darker and deadlier as it descends.
At the bottom of that maelstrom is the Abyss, the home of demons. Tharizdun, the Chained God, planted a shard of pure evil in the heart of the Elemental Chaos before the world was finished, and the gods imprisoned him for this act of blasphemy. The Abyss is as entropic as the Elemental Chaos where it was planted, but it is actively malevolent, where the rest of the Elemental Chaos is simply untamed.