Curious about how people have thrown in variations on the planes included in the Wheel cosmology or perhaps altered the cosmology's arrangement itself.
Nothing too formal or planned (at the moment), was thinking of alternate versions for the parallel multiverses and started to think more about what the Outer Planes especially represent.
Quick thoughts on all of them:
Arcadia: Greater Good of Community
Celestia: Justice tempered with Mercy
Bytopia: Hard work pays off
Elysium: Compassion and Kindness, Sacrifice of Self for Good (guardinals)
Beastlands: Animal Innocence and Simple Pleasures
Aborea: Passions and Freedom as liberation of others
Ysgard: Glory and Legends, Valor
Limbo: Absolute Freedom without Morality
Pandemonium: Spite and Madness
Abyss: Passion and Freedom through harm of others
Carceri: Bitterness and Betrayal
Hades: Apathy and Disillusionment, Sacrifice of Self for Evil ('loths)
Gehenna: Corrupt Industry and Greed
Baator: Tyranny and Domination of Others
Acheron: Callousness and Intolerance
Mechanus: Absolute Submission to Order
I think I am missing a lot of themes each plane does or could have but my mind is blanking at the moment. Here are some random notes I had about altering the planes:
Beastlands: Mountainous Eyries with spots of forests, white desert with fruit bearing oases, underdark where Oceanus exists as underground rapids. Innocence of animals represented by the lychanthrope tribes living here, pristine beings of incredible intelligence perfected in tune with the natural cycle.
Gehenna - each layer is overly congested industrial city- more smoke-punk than steampunk.
Mechanus - fractal crystals all reverberating with various tones that together make harmony. Overseen by the lawful gonn from Spelljammer (beings that resemble gaseous planets with song based magic).
Ysgard -Moons in airy void, each an expression of people challenging themselves in art, battle, song, etc.
Limbo - Rippling golden sentient chaos matter sea, all a viscous aurum mist. Seems like calm before the storm.
Pandemonium -Giant tree containing an ever shifting mad house, petitioners switch who the wardens and inmates are as well as what maladies they will suffer.
Elysium - Three seas - silver, gold (icebergs with ancient evils trapped inside them, look like amber crystals but melt), platinum.
Celestia - Progression:
1) Swamp where you choke in your sins
2) Desert where you are weaned off your petty needs
3) Ocean where you sail through the turbulence of your thoughts
4) Tundra where you must warm yourself with self-love
5) Rainforest where you explore the diversity of existence
6) Grassland where you see all diversity enter into unity
7) Vision of Glory, transformed into an archon.
Baator - Progression of Hells:
1) Torment to break you
2) Indulgence to raise you
3) Vengeance against those who harmed you in the first layer
4) Discipline to control the anger Hell is put inside of you
5) Harden you to hurting others beyond those who hurt you
6) Hate of the fiend placed inside you
7) Temperance to control that evil within you
Lying and Scheming to better serve Hell
9) Loyalty to Hell and naught else. A "divine" vision of inverted glory. Turned into a devil.
Outlands - Mountain ranges separating valleys - Linorms, drakes, and other great monsters to slain by warriors, sphinxes giving riddles. Various communities and monasteries dedicated to Balance either implicitly or explicitly.
Carceri - Overwhelmed with biting insects and spiders and fungi.
Arcadia - An endless hive of stadium-scale cells. Light pleasantly diffuses through each cell's golden walls during the daytime hours, as petitioners tend to a variety of exotic (and carefully arranged, naturally) flora and fauna. Misbehaving intruders are quickly dealt with by buzzing, insectile archons and their fractal honeycomb golems.