Carceri

“With all our boasted reforms, our great social changes, and our far-reaching discoveries, human beings continue to be sent to the worst of hells, wherein they are outraged, degraded, and tortured, that society may be "protected" from the phantoms of its own making.”

“Prison, a social protection? What monstrous mind ever conceived such an idea? Just as well say that health can be promoted by a widespread contagion.”
~Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays

The Multiverse is full of extradimensional pocket realms cut off from planar travel, magically-warded buildings containing fell monsters, and gems of great necromantic power brimming with hordes of mortal souls. That an entire plane is dedicated to the imprisonment of evil souls should be no surprise to those learned in the history of the Great Wheel.

Carceri is the kind of place that most people don’t choose to live in. The higher-ranking Demodands and Nerull’s favored minions get rewarded with power, privilege, and creature comforts, but the vast majority of inhabitants and petitioners live a terrible existence: the average settlement is a walled frontier town surrounded by inhospitable terrain, where a loaf of bread is seen as a luxury and one meal a day is fine dining. Even the Demodands don’t get much beyond a glorified “prison guard” status: the lower-ranking ones don’t get much in the way of equipment, and betrayal and treachery from one’s peers is a huge problem. Despite this wretched existence, there is not much desire for most petitioners to willingly leave the plane. Upon entry into Carceri, prisoners (both petitioners and people given over to the Demodands) have memories of their life erased and altered. They believe that the entire Multiverse is a hellish, desolate landscape full of famine, war, and crime, while the propaganda tells them that other Planes are much worse. Without knowledge of the outside world, less people are inclined to leave if they believe that Carceri is the king of the crap pile.

And when the propaganda fails and prisoners strive for better treatment, they’re encouraged to become part of the system and work with the Demodands for choice privileges. When you’re starving, naked, and isolated from human contact, becoming a prison snitch doesn’t seem so bad if you get to live in a posh cell.

The Dark Shield Project

One simply doesn’t Plane Shift into Carceri, or pass through it via the Styx. Despite its position and alignment on the Great Wheel, travel is strictly regulated and monitored. The Demodands can’t have spellcasters, fiendish soldiers in the Blood War, and saboteurs entering and exiting the plane at their leisure. Such permissiveness would throw the entire security of Carceri into ruin and compromise its reputation as a planar prison. Enter the Dark Shield Project.

The Dark Shield Project is an amazing endeavor of magical power and knowledge on a Planes-wide scale. It’s capable of detecting all but the most dedicated of intruders, and can neutralize their planar travel abilities once they get in. The Project requires a massive amount of resources to maintain, although it has more than enough due to unanimous support from the council of Demodand leaders and the deity Nerull. Carceri’s movers and shakers are aware that many people are as interested as breaking into their plane as they are of breaking out of it.

The Effects: Anybody who attempts to enter or leave Carceri without the proper authorization from a high-ranking Demodand is blocked. Casting a spell of planar travel must succeed on a Caster Level check (DC 30) in order to work, while unauthorized passengers on the River Styx are redirected to a random tributary on their current plane. Even if an unauthorized person gains access to Carceri or is on the verge of leaving, several Contingency spells go off: first the person is hit with a Dimensional Lock spell, then a Greater Scrying Spell is cast upon them (the scryer is a crystal ball construct located in a Demodand watchtower). All magical effects function at Caster Level 20. If the scrying is successful, the attendant Demodands at the watchtower will be able to discern the intruder’s location in regards to region and layer, possible magical effects active on their person, and their plane of origin from which they went into Carceri in 1d4 rounds. 2d6 rounds after that, a strike force of Demodand will converge on the area to capture or kill the intruders or escapees.

The Revolutionary League

One might find it odd that an anarchist faction has a major presence in Carceri (and an unofficial headquarters, even!). It actually makes perfect sense if you’re an anarchist. Basically, the system of Carceri is an oppressive and corrupt form of hierarchal government. Whether the anarchist is Good, Evil, or Neutral, Carceri represents the logical extremes of tyranny run amok, taking away one’s right to self-determination and liberty. “What happens in the Lower Planes can one day happen to all of us,” is a favorite cautionary saying of the League.

The faction’s efforts in Carceri relate to freeing unjustly held prisoners, encouraging petitioners and vindictive Demodands to turn on their superiors, and finding a permanent solution to dismantling the Dark Shield Project. The League doesn’t want to just destroy the system: they want to thoroughly ravage it so that no other powerful group can reclaim it for themselves.

PCs interested in traveling to Carceri are encouraged to contact the Revolutionary League. They know of several backdoors which bypass the Dark Shield Project, but such opportunities are temporary as the Demodands maneuver to close up any gaps in their security. The journey itself is still fraught with risk, as groups loyal to Carceri’s leaders infiltrate the League and pose as members to set traps for people trying to break into their plane.

The Revolutionary League’s cells in Carceri are spread out among the frontier towns and markets, working to earn the reputation and support of communities to help the upcoming insurrection. They also have sympathetic allies among the Upper Planes Celestials and the Slaadi, all of whom have their own reasons for subverting the existing power structure of Carceri.

Injustice in the System: The Innocents of Carceri

A lot of times somebody needs someone to disappear from the face of the Great Wheel, or be put somewhere where almost nobody can reach them. Sometimes an anti-magic prison cell located in an extradimensional space is not enough. Sometimes a person needs a staff of highly-trained, unscrupulous guards and a jail so dire and feared that none of his opponents will move against him once the offending party is made an example of. The Demodands don’t care much for guilt and justice, and accept princely sums of money in exchange for adding extra souls to the plane. Carceri may be well-known and notorious, but the place is so big that actually trying to find specific prisoners is incredibly difficult. The trafficking of souls is a major source of income for the Demodands and their Dark Shield Project, making Carceri a for-profit prison in every sense of the word.

This is the primary reason so many people try to break into Carceri. Lots of these “vanished” people were important figures on their home planes, or where at the verge of completing some important task before they got captured. It’s also one of the most common adventure hooks for PCs. Carceri isn’t ordered like a typical cell block with a top-down administration. It’s got several territories and layers, each ruled over by different council members of the Demodands and a legion of sadistic wardens. The Sand Tombs of Payratheon are used for “preserving” prisoners in a corpse-like near-death state. The citadel of Nerull has rows of alters carved out of onyx gems, each holding thousands of souls. Frontier towns on the layer of Colothys may serve as prisons in among themselves, located on top of mesas with all airborne travel controlled by winged throngs of Demodands. Whenever you plan adventures in Carceri, keep in mind that the entire land is a prison and get creative in designing inhospitable terrain!

Adventure Hooks in Carceri:
• The PCs all wake up in tombs. They’re being held in the dank depths of a ship. They still have their equipment and possessions, but the locals are hostile and believe them to be harbingers of the apocalypse. Once they reach the ship’s surface, they’ll find themselves in a large ocean. The water is acidic and contains the memory-stealing properties of Styx, while an army of Demodand by the shore has orders to destroy anybody who tries to escape the ship. The PCs find extraplanar travel nearly impossible. If they hope to escape, a fellow prisoner on the ship tells them that they must find a hidden cache of magical items believed to be planted by a Revolutionary League member. The PCs must act quickly, for the ship is moving of its own accord to land and certain doom.
• A powerful planar faction has pulled some strings and called in favors for the release of a Titan in Carceri for their own use. The PCs are entrusted with the task of traveling to the plane to oversee the prisoner exchange. Unfortunately, the Demodands are aware of the power of the Titan and have no plans on releasing him (or allowing the PCs to leave). The PCs can fight their way out, but they’ll be wanted men as the warden promises a month off of hard labor to any prisoner that catches or kills them.
• Nerull promised to create a legion of undead minions for a major villain in your campaign. The PCs must sneak into his lair on the innermost layer of Carceri and sabotage the production of undead. In addition to their own destructive capabilities, the PCs receive several scrolls of disintegrate to use on the black onyx towers containing the most powerful undead souls. Through creative use of metamagic and positive energy, the scrolls will utterly destroy the structural integrity of the towers and the undead beings inside. This is the perfect excuse to introduce the Load-Bearing Boss or Collapsing Lair tropes to your action-packed adventure of mayhem and destruction!