The Atomic Wastelands of Hades

Atomic Wastelands of Hades

It an endless glassy plain of evil.
It is the spring of eternal apathy and despair.
It is the result of the Blood War.
Hades sits at the nadir of the Lower Planes, in the center of the Blood War. The eternal battles of the Blood War have turned its grey plains white with atomic fire many times. Streams of blood from the great battles between demons and devils run across its plains, through massive craters and destroyed terrain. Hades is the defining nature of true evil.
In the Atomic Wastelands, the pure evil of the plane acts as a powerful force, dragging creatures down to the glassy soil. Even the everburning rage of the Abyss and the terrible plots of Baator are secondary to the eternal hopelessness of the glassy, radioactive plains. The despair of Hades slowly kills the soul inside of a visitor, just as its radioactive wastes slowly kill their bodies. If they survive the radioactivity and the eternal battles, a visitor will simply give up on its life, forgetting everything and becoming a hopeless petitioner.

HADES TRAITS
-Normal Gravity
-Normal Time
-Infinite Size: The glassy wastelands of Hades extend forever, though its well-known realms are finitely bordered.
-Divinely Morphic
-Radioactive: The endless battles of the Blood War have left their mark. Any living creature in Hades without some kind of protection takes 2d6 points of Constitution damage every day (Fort saving throw against DC 24 halves the damage)
-Strongly Evil-Aligned: See MoTP
-Entrapping: See MoTP

HADES LINKS
The radioactive, sludge-filled River Styx flows through the uppermost layer of Hades, and a few shrunken tributaries reach deeper into the plane. Not many of the ferrymen of old still ply its length, but there are a few willing to ferry travelers... for a price.
Portals to other planes are mainly found on the first layer, Uranos. Portals usually appear as glowing, gunmetal bullets. Portals can be found leading to Carcieri, Gehenna, the Outlands, or the Astral Plane.

HADES INHABITANTS
Permanent, non-petitioner inhabitants are uncommon on Hades, as its original yugoloth inhabitants are long gone, most to Gehenna. However, demons, devils, slaadi, formians and even the occasional deva or celestial can be found battling others on the planes (or in the skies above), or deserting from their units.

Hades Petitioners
Petitioners in Hades are those who were apathetic to the suffering of others, living without caring.
Petitioner Immunities: Radioactivity, cold
Petitioner Resistances: Fire 20, acid 20, electricity 20.

HADES FEATURES
The three layers of the Atomic Wastelands are bleak, glassy plains, occasionally illuminated by an atomic explosion or the battles of the various creatures across the plains. There is nothing but dry, grey clouds and fiendish planes in the skies above.
The featureless wastes cause visitors to lose all happiness, laughter being swallowed up by the endless despair.

Uranos

The first layer of Hades is the most irradiated of the three. Eternal conflict between the many factions of the planes has turned the rivers red and the plains glassy. Thousands of fiendish tanks blitz across the plains, massive artillery emplacements continually bombard the ground without regard for targeting, terrible aircraft fight in the sky, and horrible fiendish infantry march across irradiated ground, capturing some minor outpost or fort. The ground itself is terribly scarred, with glassy soil or massive craters dominating the landscape. The sounds of explosions and of thousands of guns chattering can be heard across the entire plain.

Khin-Oin Biological Warfare Laboratories: The tower once known as the Wasting Tower is now a massive modern biowarfare laboratory, boasting of hardware any Material Plane terrorist would drool over. From the outside, it looks like a glittering spinal column, every so often erupting in sparks or sludge as some disease or weapon is "tested". It is filled with thousands of yugoloth researchers, and their various thralls and slaves, all answering to the oinoloth on the Siege Malicious. Any disease found on any plane, magical or artificial, as well as many crafted by the researchers in the tower, can be found in its many stockpiles or vats.
The current oinoloth, the an ultraloth prince called Lirandacius, defeated the previous oinoloth, the prince Mydinarchlarus, only 50 years previously, and many of the slaves in the tower once were yugoloths who opposed his rise to power. The current oinoloth is especially interested in the Ebola virus, and is continually fascinated by its powerful effects on most creatures. His test chambers are filled with the dying moans of celestials, fiends and mortals alike, each of them affected by some strange variant of Ebola.

Hadetto: A massive slum-city-township, Hadetto is filled with those who ignored the evils of apartheid or segregation in life. Those within its walls are used as slaves for yugoloth war factories, churning out the machines used to devastate the Lower Planes. The petitioners of Hadetto are more solid than those outside its grey, concrete barriers, and are always accompanied by a yugoloth slavedriver. Any conceivable weapon, magical or not, modern or not, may be found within the arms markets of Hadetto, for a price.

Stiflheim

The second layer of Hades is a misty, dead forest. It is far less war-torn and irradiated than the first, mainly because of the poisonous mists rising from the ground. Anyone in Stiflheim must make a Fort save (DC 20) every hour or take 1d6 points of Con damage, partially from the mild radioactivity and partially from the banks of poisonous gas. Visible-spectrum vision on this plane is limited to 60ft, and other forms are limited to 100ft, due to the everswelling mists.
The main inhabitants of this layer are fiendish mutated creatures, immune to the deadly gases. Anyone with reason to stay on this layer for any length of time must be careful of the deadly wildlife and plants.

Ft. Innocence Lost: The largest concentration of non-petitioners living on the layer is the survivalist bunker of Ft. Innocence Lost. Visible from the surface only by a small hut and the ruins of an ancient town, the bunker is inhabited by approximately 5,000 mortals who have abandoned what they see as the 'hopeless' Prime Material Plane. The bunker is about 200 meters below the ground, and the rooms are cramped. Due to the efforts of their wizards and engineers, the radiation, gases and entrapping dangers of the plane above are negated inside the Fort. Those within the bunker are always quiet, unless they are stirred; in which case they are angry, loud and deadly. Planewalkers with reason to enter the bunker generally complete their business quickly and leave, to avoid insulting their hosts.
The mortals within the town do sometimes have to replenish their supplies, and leave to find food, fuel and supplies on the surface of Stiflheim. They may be recognized by their dark green survival suits and their logo, a red crosshairs on a blue background.

Testing Station 117: Testing Station 117 is a special punishment reserved for those scientists and weapon-makers who, in life, developed new weapons, especially the chemical kind, and then didn't care how they were used or who used them. The petitioners are eternally subjected to "tests" of various fiendish poisons, delightedly administered by the yugoloths who maintain the station, who are always pursuing the 'perfect poison'.

The Roots of Yggdrasil: The Roots of Yddgrasil touch down into the realm of Hel, the Norse of god of dishonorable death. They are twisted and bent by the poisons that fill the plane. Hel lives in her massive, terrible palace, where thousands of petitioners and mortal servants continually work to stock up her arsenals and prepare for the battles of Ragnorak. The center of her palace is a massive nuclear silo, filled with thousands of nuclear weapons, as well as a few Negabombs and terronuclear weapons.

Pluton

The final layer of Hades is an eternal park of dying trees, shriveled flowers and grey-brown grasses. It has not changed much in generations, for the layer is simply apathy's physical form. The Blood War rarely reaches to these depths, though a few elite squads of fiends may travel down to retrieve a particularly important soul from the depths of the Underworld.

The Underworld: Contained within massive marble walls, the Underworld is the final resting place of all petitioners of Hades, as well as many other souls somehow snatched up by the darkness of the Underworld. Its only entry is a massive, tarnished bronze gate, guarded by Canarianas, a gargantuan three-headed dog, welded together from the bodies of petitioners. Within the gates, the Underworld is similar to Pluton outside, except for the writhing petitioners, slowly being sucked dry of emotion and consumed by the darkness. If a wrongfully taken soul is rescued, it may be returned to the plane that it should have traveled to in the first place. Many travelers to Hades come here to free a trapped loved one from the Underworld. Also, fiends of all sorts roam the Underworld, looking for suitable souls for one diabolic purpose or another.

The Base of Olympus: The foot of the great mountain still reaches down into Hades, with the magnificent palaces of Hades the god covering its lower slopes. Many petitioners here are stolen from the Underworld, eternally drifting through the massive black halls, devoid of caring and emotion. Hades himself often wanders the corridors in contemplation, appearing as a tall, handsome, dark man. The palace itself has changed little in its three thousand years of existence, though instead of tridents and spears, any warriors within the walls carry AK-47s and wear night-vision goggles.