Aeaea
| Divine Realm | |
|---|---|
| Plane: | Baator / Gray Waste |
| Layer: | Minauros / Pluton |
| Powers: | Hecate |
- Like an island in the eye of a hurricane, Aeaea conveys the feeling that the worst is always yet to come. It's the false calm before the storm breaks for real. Here the hideous spawn of magic gone awry can rise up from the earth. The realm sees beauty and terror, love and hatred intermingled.
It's always right here, though the kind of night can vary widely. It all depends on the whim of the mistress of the domain, and her mood at the time. Hecate, goddess of magic and evil, controls this stretch of the Gray Waste. She has a smaller realm on Baator with the same name, and she spends her time between the two. The folks never know when she's gone, and most swear that she never leaves - maybe the realm just vanishes without the power to cohere it.
Hecate prefers wandering her realm to remaining in a certain spot. She usually roams on the night when she decrees the dark of the moon. She doesn't hold to any real schedule, though some clain that she adheres to some ancient law governing her movements.
Hecate's realm teems with omens and portents, and nearly everything a body runs across signifies or symbolizes something else. Futures can be read in the fall of a leaf, and lives destroyed between the howls of a she-wolf. Mares and dogs frolicking can spell utter doom for one or unqualified success for another.
Roads meander over the hilly realm, leading nowhere and coming from nowhere. Small villages spring up and disappear along the roads, but few remain for long. Poplars line the roads, and groves dot the entire realm. Its said that the most devoted of Hecate's petitioners come to the groves on the nights of the full moon to perform arcane rites.
The petitioners here followed Hecate's footsteps on the Prime. Some are witches and wizards, while others are simple highwaymen, preying on those foolish enough to be abroad in the night. Whatever they are, they've all got hearts of blackest evil, and none of them are cursed with the gray oblivion that's the lot of so many others on the Gray Waste.
Sites and Cities
Hecate doesn't have a fixed palace, though she maintains a tower on the outer fringes of the realm. It's a lighthouse of ancient construction, and its beacon shines brightly through the darkness of the Waste with a rich yellow glow. This glow serves only to remind the petitioners on the rest of the plane just how badly off they are.
Minor villages lie scattered about the realm. The largest is Thalatta, near the three-headed statue at the largest crossroads in the realm. It's a collection of mud-daubed huts, in which ancient crones mutter and chant their spells. The only use they have for visitors is for spell components; that is, as the raw material for said components.