Planar Renovation Project: Gehenna

It occurs to me that Gehenna could be a plane of treasure hunting, a la 40's pulp (or, for a more modern interpretation, Indiana Jones). You get alliances that form for the mutual benefit of all involved, but inevitably they end up backstabbing and betraying one another once the treasure is seen. Bits and pieces of locations and landscapes, stolen away from other planes and worlds, potentially filled with treasure and artifacts. Plus, on the more active mountains there would be a direct threat of losing these treasures forever, as the lava flows would overcome the different sites, so the time pressure would be always be on.

Additionally, in those pulp stories, you could touch on all of the truly savage wilderness stuff. Animals acting like monsters for no reason other than that's what the story called for. That would be opposed to the Beastlands where the animals act like animals, not monsters.

Edit: All of this starts adding up in my mind to paint a really fascinating picture of Gehenna. Scattered cities and settlements, here and there, housing troops on the march to the front lines of the Blood War, each run by a "mob family". Scattered ruins filled with the rumors of treasure and forgotten secrets, each wrenched from some other place across the multiverse. Savage frontiers, filled with avalanches, floods and streaming rivers of lava. This vision also sets up a nice contrast against Bytopia.

A plane of scoundrels. This is the place where heists are planned. The occasional Blood War battlefront that breaks out on the plane might seem like a chance occurance, but more likely than not, it was carefully coordinated as a cover or feint for some other nefarious activity. This is a plane of stage magicians and legerdemain and slight of hand, keeping your eyes distracted while the trick is performed elsewhere.

This is the plane of illusion, bright light, glitz and glamor. Entertainment of all sorts, from across the planes can be experienced here. Petitioners toil in mines and foundries, earning their pittance in store credit, only to waste it every night gambling or drinking or carousing. Overindulgence is the rule, not the exception.

This is a plane of rumor and secrets. Forget trying to make your way to some obscure, remote spot in the depths of a hostile plane to procure some bit of forgotten knowledge. Just hop over to Gehenna and ask around. Be sure to keep your wits about you though, and do try not to be obvious about it. The fiends of Gehenna take offense to bluntness and those who fail to show the proper social graces often wind up penned in the dead book.

A break-away sect of the Guvners known as the Contract Breakers keeps up a presence on Gehenna, to help out poor sods who've found themselves bound to a fiendish, and occasionally a celestial, contract. They're quite good at what they do, but understandably they're a peery lot.

Realizing that I completely didn't respond to this, even though I love it when these things get resurrected.

I like the idea of a blasted landscape on top of all of the other stuff. I think of the Fallout games and other apocalypse stories that I've come across and how all of the interesting stuff happens in the civilized areas, whereas the wilderness was the place to go to find/scavenge resources. It plays interestingly with pulp stories too. I'm not sure that you need to include "radiation" areas though, as the landscape itself does a pretty good job of presenting environmental hazards for wandering across the plane. Like Palomides, I think that fallout from ancient magical wars is probably better suited to Acheron, though I'd be all ears to hear how that sort of theme could be developed.

I always thought of Gehenna as the "gangster" plane, being an organized crime type of thing, as opposed to Acheron's military machine and Baator's tyrannical bureaucracy.

I like the idea of it being a "corrupt society", a vice city kind of thing opposing the Beastlands pristine wilderness.

Also contrasted with a few of the other planes... Bytopia, where people value hard work and community, in Gehenna people look for getting by easy and tricking others, even though there is a pretense of organization.

Contrast with Carceri's imprisonment theme, chaos being repressed, while Gehenna is corruption, lawfulness and structured being allowed to slide.