Buy me a coffeeThe Planes
Planes of Existence
Beyond mortal Earth lie complete realities shaped by elemental power, living thought, divine purpose, ancestral memory, moral gravity and forces older than the gods.
Each plane has its own landscapes, natural laws, peoples, histories and routes of entry. This permanent directory leads directly to the worlds, great roads and exceptional realms already established within SpiralWorlds.
Direct Plane Directory
Every destination below is an ordinary text link to a real SpiralWorlds page. The Material Plane is described here as the campaign’s physical reality; no separate destination is listed because there is no dedicated Material Plane page.
Material and Coterminous Reality
Earth and the physical universe form the Material Plane. These neighbouring realities overlap it or approach it through particular places, conditions and boundaries.
Transitive Planes and Great Routes
Connecting realities and living structures that allow movement, communication, reflection, dreaming and passage between otherwise separate worlds.
Inner Planes
The primal energies and elements from which vitality, dissolution, air, earth, fire and water enter later creation.
Flourishing and Sacred Outer Planes
Distinct realms of compassion, shared labour, merciful rest, living instinct, passionate freedom and heroic courage.
Order, Change and Conflict
Arcadia contains the great layers Abellio and Buxenus; within Buxenus lies Duat, a sovereign Pharaonic divine realm of maat, judgement and solar renewal. The neighbouring planes make absolute law, unbounded possibility, failed communication and perpetual warfare into landscape and pressure.
Tyranny, Ruin and Imprisonment
Hostile planes with separate identities: infernal dominion, volcanic exploitation, spiritual erasure, demonic appetite and cosmic imprisonment.
Exceptional and Unfathomable Realms
Dream-bound and anomalous realities whose relationships to the ordered cosmology are unstable, remote or fundamentally difficult to comprehend.
Planar Travel and Campaign Guidance
Practical guidance for crossings, expeditions, arrival pressure, native societies, survival and consequences that follow travellers home.
Explore the Greater Cosmology
These compact collection cards provide broad routes into the cosmology. The direct directory above remains the authoritative navigation list.
Transitive Planes and Great Routes
The Astral Plane is the connective expanse of thought and reflection. Oneirion, Yggdrasill and the Infinite Staircase open other forms of passage shaped by dream, ancestry, oath and creative purpose.
Elemental and Energy Planes
Air, Earth, Fire and Water are complete realities rather than simple landscapes. Positive and Negative energy sustain the older polarity of vitality, dissolution, renewal and release.
Flourishing and Sacred Realms
Shared labour, mercy, living instinct, passionate freedom and saga-law produce very different worlds. Their identities cannot be reduced to a single category of paradise.
Order, Change and Conflict
Arcadia cultivates peace through shared duty across its two great layers: Abellio, the Open Peace, and Buxenus, the Deep Ordered Kingdoms. Within Buxenus, Duat remains a sovereign Pharaonic divine realm of maat, judgement and solar renewal. The Great Mechanism makes law physically operational; Limbo yields to will, Pandemonium fractures direction and communication, and Acheron sustains war after purpose has vanished.
Tyranny, Ruin and Imprisonment
Hell, Gehenna, Abaddon (Hades), the Abyss and Carceri are separate planes with different laws and dangers. Carceri is a prison plane; the Abyss is the great wound of predatory chaos.
Planar Travel and Campaign Use
Crossing into another reality is more than movement. Travellers must survive arrival, understand local authority and preserve a route home.
Prepare for the crossing
Natural crossings may depend on season, weather, ritual, memory, bloodline or local law. Constructed gates can demand keys, names, offerings or recognised authority. Astral, dream and mythic routes follow the identity of the road itself.
- EnvironmentDetermine atmosphere, substance, pressure, gravity, time and direction before arrival.
- AuthorityIdentify who controls the destination, which laws apply and what conduct counts as trespass or sacrilege.
- CommunicationPlan for language, signs, translation and routes where speech or memory cannot be trusted.
- ReturnGuard the way home and prepare for a portal that moves, closes, changes ownership or admits the wrong traveller.
Selected Video Guides
These external guides introduce Dungeons & Dragons planar cosmology and adventure design. They provide gaming context rather than defining SpiralWorlds canon.
Exploring Dungeons and Dragons: The Planes of Existence
A broad introduction to the function and character of the major D&D planes.
Watch on YouTube
Planes: D&D Cosmology and Adventures | 5e Dungeons and Dragons
Web DM discusses what planes contribute to adventures and how a game master can make them playable.
Watch on YouTubeHistorical, Mythological and Cosmological Context
Myths of worlds beyond ordinary sight are widespread, but each tradition requires its own evidence, language and cultural setting.
Layered heavens, underworld rivers, spirit countries, cosmic oceans, world mountains, world trees, dream realms and journeys beyond mortal life appear across many distinct cultures. These traditions are not interchangeable versions of one universal cosmology. A Norse world-tree, a Pharaonic solar journey, a Hellenic underworld and a Mesopotamian descent narrative belong to different histories and systems of meaning.
SpiralWorlds uses historical and mythological material as a foundation while establishing its own campaign cosmology. Dungeons & Dragons terminology helps organise rules, travel and adventure design; historical claims require independent evidence. Mythological underworlds must not automatically be relabelled as Hell, the Abyss or Carceri, and divine realms do not lose their cultural identity merely because a game system places them within a larger planar structure.
Living religious traditions require particular care and specificity. The sources below are starting points from museums and university collections rather than proof that separate cultures described the same place. Within the campaign, routes can overlap and powers can contest one another without erasing the people, names and traditions through which those realms are understood.
Related SpiralWorlds Guides
Continue through the divine powers and creatures that inhabit, rule, defend and prey upon the wider cosmology.