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Arcadia — The Peaceable Kingdoms of Ordered Harmony
Arcadia is the plane where peace is cultivated, roads are kept safe, harvests are shared and promises carry weight. Its deeper layer, Buxenus, shelters sovereign divine realms including Duat, where maat, judgement and solar renewal preserve the ordered passage of gods and souls.
- Plane Type: Outer Plane
- Moral Gravity: Neutral Good and Lawful Good held in productive balance
- Great Layers: Abellio, the Open Peace; Buxenus, the Deep Ordered Kingdoms
- Common Names: Arcadia, the Peaceable Kingdoms, the Ordered Fields, the Harmonious Marches, the Orchard of Accord
- Primary Function: Ordered harmony, shared abundance, sacred animals, honest labour, safe travel, refuge, judgement, renewal and peace protected by duty
- Major Divine Realm: Duat, a sovereign Pharaonic realm of maat, judgement and solar renewal within Buxenus
- Usual Arrival: Orchard roads, white milestones, village greens, garden gates, sacred rivers, funerary thresholds, shared granaries or temple approaches beneath a clear sky
- Campaign Role: Parent-plane hub, ordered pastoral afterworld, refuge-plane, sacred animal realm, home of divine estates and moral test for heroes who mistake peace for passivity
Plane Identity
Arcadia is cultivated goodness made into land. Its peace is active, maintained through hospitality, stewardship, honest work, clear judgement, protected roads, shared stores and the daily choice to repair harm before it spreads.
Its orchards bear fruit because hands prune them. Its canals run because communities clear them. Its roads remain safe because guardians walk them. Its divine realms endure because sacred law is practised rather than merely proclaimed.
Arcadia is not a single culture enlarged into a plane. Abellio contains many peaceable communities and sacred landscapes; Buxenus contains many ordered divine kingdoms. Duat is one of its greatest realms, not a third layer and not the whole of Buxenus.
Arcadia’s central truth: order is worthy when it protects life, preserves truth, renews the world and prevents the powerful from abandoning the vulnerable.
At its best, Arcadia is the safe road, the honest neighbour, the open granary, the healer who treats the wounded first, the judge who weighs truth without favour, the sacred animal protected by old covenant and the community that refuses to leave the weak alone.
Its danger grows from the same virtues. Harmony can become afraid of dissent. Mediation can become pressure to forgive too quickly. Order can become overconfidence. A village can become so peaceful that grief is hidden, and a court can become so certain of balance that it stops listening to the heart being weighed.
Quick Rules Reference
- Peace is active: roads, homes, temples, tombs and sanctuaries must be maintained.
- Oaths and truthful records matter because trust holds communities and cosmic order together.
- Hospitality, healing, mediation, proper judgement and shared labour are sacred acts.
- Animals, petitioners, divine envoys and the honoured dead may possess recognised standing.
- Violence is judged by necessity, restraint, protection and what repair follows.
- Abellio expresses Arcadia through open communities and maintained peace.
- Buxenus expresses Arcadia through deeper law, divine estates, judgement and renewal.
- Duat is a major Pharaonic divine realm within Buxenus—not a separate plane, a third layer or the whole of Buxenus.
The Two Great Layers of Arcadia
Arcadia is one Outer Plane with two immense layers. They share the same moral gravity but express ordered goodness in different ways.
Abellio — The Open Peace
Abellio is the broad, welcoming face of Arcadia: orchards, villages, peace-roads, animal sanctuaries, shared fields, guest houses, healing gardens and watchful borders. Most travellers arrive here first.
Its laws are experienced through neighbours, bells, roads, animals, wells and communal obligations. The established pastoral map charts Abellio’s campaign-facing regions.
Buxenus — The Deep Ordered Kingdoms
Buxenus lies deeper within Arcadia. Its landscapes are shaped by enduring sacred law, divine memory, rightful judgement, celestial administration, ritual time and the maintenance of cosmic cycles.
Its realms include courts, temple roads, solar passages, archives of oaths, rivers of the honoured dead and divine territories whose order predates mortal kingdoms. Duat is a major sovereign Pharaonic divine realm within Buxenus, alongside other divine kingdoms governed by their own sacred laws.
Passage between the layers is rarely a simple descent. Travellers reach Buxenus by following a duty to its source, carrying a true judgement beyond appeal, passing a sacred gate at the correct hour, travelling with a divine procession or completing a road whose promises have all been kept.
Arcadia in the Greater Cosmology
Arcadia stands between compassionate celestial order and law stripped of mercy. Its roads and gates connect easily to realms that honour refuge, duty and truthful judgement, while becoming guarded where order serves domination rather than life.
Classification rule: Duat is located on Arcadia for the SpiralWorlds planar map, but it remains culturally and theologically Pharaonic. Placement establishes cosmological location; it does not overwrite the realm’s identity.
Regions of Arcadia
Abellio — The Open Peace
Abellio is Arcadia’s broad pastoral layer and the usual first destination for planar travellers. Its principal campaign regions are organised around cultivated abundance, safe passage, sanctuary, mediation, animal standing and peace maintained through shared duty.
The Orchard Marches
Terraced orchards, grainfields, irrigation channels, beehives, communal halls and open granaries form Arcadia’s common arrival region. A failed harvest is treated as a shared emergency rather than private misfortune.
The Peace Roads
Long white roads lined with milestones, shade trees, wells, guest houses and warning bells. A road promises safe passage; travellers who prey upon others find it lengthening, closing or guiding them toward judgement.
The Gardens of Accord
Places of mediation where harm is named, fear is heard and repair is planned. Reconciliation is honoured, but separation and restraint remain legitimate when peace cannot be restored safely.
The Animal Kingdoms
Sacred realms of animal dignity, old hunting covenants, migration rights, guardian packs, predator restraint and sovereign beasts. Their peace extends Arcadian standing beyond human communities.
The Hearth Villages
Villages of bread, wells, public tables, clean stables, shared ovens and search bells. Heroism here often means remaining after danger has passed to help rebuild what was damaged.
The Walled Gardens
Sanctuaries of healing, memory and cultivation. Their beauty can restore the exhausted, but some gardens soothe grief so completely that visitors risk losing the truth contained within sorrow.
The Bell-Tower Fields
Watchful country of mills, grazing commons, signal towers and disciplined guardians. Defence is treated as care: a shield is a roof held sideways, and a warning bell is a promise that no one faces danger alone.
The Gentle Border
Hedges, gates, quarantine gardens, guest houses and animal sentries receive refugees, cursed travellers, pursued souls and dangerous cases requiring care before welcome.
The Still Village
A warning-place where every conflict has been softened, every grief hidden and every difficult truth made harmless. It is Arcadia’s fear of harmony becoming the erasure of life.
Selected Views of Abellio
Buxenus — The Deep Ordered Kingdoms
Buxenus is Arcadia’s deeper layer: a vast order of temple roads, divine estates, courts, archives, sacred rivers and processional gates. Its laws are not uniform. Each sovereign divine kingdom preserves its own rites and authorities while sharing Buxenus’s deeper concern with rightful judgement, remembered obligation, ordered passage and the renewal of creation.
The Temple Roads
Ceremonial avenues connect divine estates, courts, archives and sacred rivers. Passage depends upon recognised purpose, proper escort or duties completed in the correct order.
The Houses of Memory
Sanctuaries preserve names, deeds, lineages, rites and the memories needed to keep a soul or divine covenant intact. Lost truths may be recovered here, but never without consequence.
The Archives of Oaths
Every serious promise carried into Buxenus leaves a record. Divine scribes, oath-keepers and recognised witnesses distinguish honest failure from deliberate betrayal.
The Courts of Judgement
Ordered courts hear disputes between souls, divine servants, petitioners and sacred powers. Their authority rests upon truthful record, rightful standing and the repair required after judgement.
The Rivers of the Honoured Dead
These rivers carry the recognised dead toward their appointed realms, processions and places of rest. Ferries, river gates and banks of remembrance divide one sacred jurisdiction from another.
The Ordered Divine Kingdoms
Sovereign realms governed by distinct gods and sacred laws occupy much of Buxenus. Their borders may be theological, ritual, seasonal or judicial rather than merely geographic.
The Processional Gates to Abellio
Great gates open for funerary companies, divine embassies, sacred animals, judges and travellers whose purpose has been recognised. They form the principal controlled passages between Arcadia’s two layers.
Duat — A Sovereign Pharaonic Divine Realm within Buxenus
Duat is a vast sovereign divine realm within Buxenus. It is the Pharaonic netherworld and nocturnal solar realm of the Pharaonic Pantheon, governed through maat: truth, justice, rightful order, proper relationship, judgement and the daily renewal of creation.
Duat contains the Nocturnal River of the Sun, guarded gates, divine courts, the Field of Reeds, tomb roads, caverns of transformation, houses of memory and dangerous regions where enemies of cosmic order gather. Ra’s nightly passage through Duat is not merely travel through death. It renews the sun, strengthens creation and returns ordered life to the world.
The realm retains its own gods, rites, sacred names and funerary geography. Osiris governs resurrection and the ordered dead. Anubis guides and protects the dead and oversees the weighing of the heart against the feather of Ma’at. A heart found true may proceed toward the ordered afterlife; a condemned heart may be given to Ammit, the devourer who waits beside the scales. Thoth records the judgement. Isis preserves and restores. Horus protects rightful succession. Divine and mortal dead approach judgement through recognisably Pharaonic roads rather than through generic Arcadian villages.
The dead do not all experience Duat alike. The justified may reach the Field of Reeds, souls whose passage is incomplete may wander the Tomb Roads or remain before guarded gates, and the condemned face final consequence in the Hall of Judgement. These are conditions and destinations within Duat, not separate planar layers.
Duat belongs within Arcadia because its deepest purpose is the maintenance of cosmic order and renewal. Its dangers are severe, but they belong to a system of passage, judgement, preservation and rebirth rather than a plane of despair. Duat remains one realm within Buxenus: neither Arcadia nor Buxenus should be reduced to Duat alone.
The Customs of the Plane
Peace Is Active
A person who sees hunger and does nothing has disturbed the peace. A village that lets a road become dangerous has failed the road. A court that knows a judgement is false has wounded order.
Hospitality Is Sacred
Honest travellers usually receive shelter. Guests must respect the host, household, animals, food, graves, temples and peace of the place. Mercy does not require a community to ignore danger.
Oaths and Records Carry Weight
Promises are remembered by gates, wells, roads, animals, witnesses and divine scribes. Arcadia forgives honest failure more readily than betrayal disguised as necessity.
Labour Is Holy
Farming, mending, teaching, healing, tending animals, clearing canals, guarding roads, copying records, preserving names, preparing the dead and sitting with the dying all carry spiritual dignity.
Judgement Must Restore Order
Arcadian judgement protects the vulnerable, names wrongdoing, prevents repetition and establishes what repair is owed. In Duat this principle becomes the weighing of the heart against the feather of Ma’at and the truthful record of a life; Ammit waits as the final consequence for a heart condemned by the scales.
Harmony Can Become a Trap
Arcadia’s failures begin as virtues. Peace can become silence, care can become control, ritual can become empty compliance and balance can become an excuse to ignore unequal harm.
Inhabitants
Petitioners
Arcadian petitioners include souls shaped by care, honest work, healing, teaching, stewardship, defence, mediation, animal kindness and responsible mercy. Abellian petitioners often resemble idealised villagers, gardeners, healers, road-keepers and animal-shaped souls.
Within Duat, petitioners retain Pharaonic forms and identities appropriate to their passage, judgement and divine affiliations. The justified dead may dwell in ordered fields, serve divine households, travel with solar or funerary processions, preserve names or maintain the sacred works that allow renewal.
Peace-Keepers
Peace-keepers are celestials, road spirits, orchard guardians, temple wardens, white hounds, bell spirits, lantern bearers and quiet figures at crossroads. Their first tools are warning, mediation, shelter, separation and restraint.
Animal Sovereigns
Animal sovereigns represent herd rights, nesting grounds, migration, predator custom, sacred species and old treaties between mortals and beasts. Their authority may extend into Pharaonic sacred animals and divine animal forms where Buxenus meets Duat.
Pharaonic Divine Servants
Duat is inhabited by divine scribes, gate guardians, funerary guides, solar barque crews, sacred animals, judges, protectors of names, defenders against Apep and other enemies of the solar passage, and beings whose offices preserve maat through the hours of night. Ammit waits beside the judgement as the devourer of condemned hearts; she is a consequence of the scales, not the sovereign of the realm.
Travel and Arrival
Arcadia is easy to navigate when a traveller acts openly and peacefully. Roads are clear, signs are honest and shelters can be trusted. A traveller who lies, steals, harms animals, violates refuge or carries concealed predation finds gates closing and roads bending toward accountability.
Reaching Buxenus
Routes to Buxenus open through completed duties, final judgements, sacred processions, divine invitations, properly kept oaths and gates that appear only at the right hour. Mortal force rarely opens them for long.
Reaching Duat
Common approaches include a consecrated tomb, a funerary text read under the proper stars, a sacred western gate, a river crossed in ritual silence, the wake of the solar barque or a passage opened by a Pharaonic deity. Entry without rite may leave travellers nameless, unrecognised or stranded between guarded hours.
Return routes often depend upon completing the appointed passage, preserving one’s true name, receiving judgement, accompanying the dawn procession or carrying an authorised sign from a god, judge or gatekeeper.
For expedition structure, return routes and consequences that follow travellers home, use the Planar Campaigns guidance.
Planar Effects
Active Peace
Violence in settled regions draws immediate attention from neighbours, animals, spirits and peace-keepers. The first response is usually protection and separation rather than punishment.
Oath-Echo
Serious promises leave a faint supernatural trace. Sensitive spirits and recognised witnesses can detect that a promise exists, although they may not know its exact wording.
Shared Labour
Characters who repair roads, heal wounds, preserve records, care for animals, help with harvests or protect funerary rites find Arcadia easier to navigate.
The Measure of Maat
Within Duat, deliberate lies, desecration, false testimony, destruction of names and betrayal of sacred duty become spiritually heavy. Truthful confession, proper repair and actions that restore rightful order lighten that burden.
Solar Renewal
Duat changes with the sun’s nightly passage. Gates, hazards and divine authorities differ by hour. Travellers who remain aligned with the procession may receive restoration at dawn; those who disrupt it can become trapped in a repeating night.
Mechanics
These are SpiralWorlds campaign rules, written for compatibility rather than as replacements for the core rules of either system.
Arcadian Planar Baseline
Gravity and Time. Gravity and time are normal in Abellio. Specific divine estates in Buxenus may follow ritual hours, but do not change resting or spell durations unless the realm entry says so.
Ordered Good. Arcadia is strongly good and gently lawful in settled regions. Alignment does not bar entry; conduct determines how the plane responds.
Sanctity of Shelter. A creature honestly seeking refuge can usually find basic food, rest and protection when it is safe to provide them. A creature that knowingly abuses shelter cannot gain Arcadian Favour until it makes meaningful repair.
Arcadian Favour
After finishing a Long Rest in Arcadia, a creature that has preserved peace, repaired harm, protected another, honoured a rite, kept a difficult promise or completed useful communal labour gains one Arcadian Favour die, a d4. A creature can hold only one such die.
After making an attack roll, ability check or saving throw directly connected to protection, healing, truth, duty or repair—but before the result is declared—the creature may roll the die and add it to the total. The die is then lost. It is also lost if the creature knowingly commits needless cruelty, oathbreaking, desecration or abuse of hospitality.
Duat Traits
Record of the Heart. A creature that knowingly commits desecration, false testimony, betrayal of sacred trust or destruction of a true name in Duat is marked until it confesses and makes appropriate restitution. Recognised judges, gatekeepers and divine servants of Duat have advantage on Wisdom (Insight) checks made against the marked creature, and the marked creature has disadvantage on Charisma (Deception) checks made against them.
Dawn Renewal. After completing a dangerous stage of the solar passage while preserving maat, a creature may complete one Short Rest in 10 minutes at the first light of the next stage. A creature can benefit from this trait once per Long Rest.
Arcadian Planar Baseline
Gravity: Normal. Time: Normal in Abellio; locally ritualised in divine estates without changing numerical durations unless stated. Realm: Immeasurable. Structure: Divinely morphic.
Alignment: Mildly good-aligned and mildly lawful-aligned in most of Abellio; strongly good- and law-aligned in principal sanctuaries, courts and regions of Buxenus.
Enhanced Magic: Spells with the good descriptor are cast at +1 caster level in healing houses, refuge villages, sacred orchards and justified regions of Duat. Spells with the lawful descriptor gain the same benefit when used to uphold truthful judgement, protect shelter, preserve a proper rite or maintain the solar passage. These bonuses do not stack.
Impeded Magic: A caster using an evil spell in a protected settlement or divine court, or a chaotic spell to violate hospitality, disrupt a sacred procession, destroy funerary records or evade rightful judgement, must succeed at a caster level check (DC 20 + spell level) or the spell fails and is lost.
Oath-Echo: A creature that knowingly breaks a serious promise made in Arcadia takes a –2 circumstance penalty on Diplomacy and Bluff checks against Arcadian spirits and recognised witnesses until the breach is repaired.
Weight of the Heart: Within Duat, a creature marked by serious desecration, false testimony or destruction of a true name takes a –2 penalty on Bluff checks and saving throws against divination effects used by Duat’s judges and gatekeepers. Truthful confession and appropriate restitution remove the mark.
Running Arcadia
Arcadia works best when it is beautiful, generous and quietly demanding. Its roads should genuinely be safer. Its villages should genuinely be kinder. Its courts should usually seek truthful repair. Its divine realms should preserve life, names, order and renewal.
The tension comes when peace faces an exception: a dangerous refugee, an honoured rite hiding an injustice, a repentant enemy who still requires restraint, a judgement supported by procedure but contradicted by truth or a community so devoted to harmony that it refuses to hear grief.
Use Duat differently from Abellio. Abellio tests hospitality, shared labour and neighbourly peace. Duat tests truth, identity, judgement, sacred duty, memory and whether the characters can preserve renewal through a dangerous night.
Adventure Hooks
- The Gate That Opens Too Easily. Refugees are welcomed into an Arcadian village before anyone knows that one carries a curse capable of harming the settlement. The party must preserve hospitality without allowing mercy to become negligence.
- The Herd That Refuses the Road. Sacred animals block a peace-road because an old hunting covenant was broken beneath it. Trade and rescue caravans cannot pass until the buried wrong is named and repaired.
- The Village Without Arguments. A settlement has eliminated hunger, crime, grief, dissent and song. A peace-keeper quietly asks the party to discover what the village surrendered to become perfectly harmonious.
- The Missing Hour of the Sun. One guarded hour of Ra’s passage has vanished from Duat. Dawn arrives weakened on Earth, divine records contradict one another and a gatekeeper insists that someone has stolen a piece of night itself.
- The Heart That Weighs Too Light. A notorious ruler passes the scales because their heart has been magically emptied of memory. The characters must recover the stolen memories without corrupting the judgement they are trying to correct.
Historical, Mythological and Cosmological Context
Ancient Arcadia was a mountainous region of the central Peloponnese with strong pastoral associations and important local cults, including the worship of Pan. The later literary idea of “Arcadia” as an ideal rural refuge is not identical to the historical region. SpiralWorlds draws on both strands while making its peaceable kingdoms a campaign invention.
Duat belongs to a distinct Pharaonic funerary and solar cosmology. Egyptian material describes the sun’s dangerous nightly passage through the netherworld, the preservation of identity, judgement before Osiris and renewal at dawn. In the judgement scene, the heart is weighed against the feather of Ma’at, while Ammit waits to devour a heart found wanting. Maat concerns truth, justice and proper cosmic order; it should not be reduced to the modern idea of simple balance.
Placing Duat within Buxenus is a SpiralWorlds campaign-cosmology decision, not a historical claim and not an assertion that Greek and Egyptian traditions described the same realm. Arcadia supplies the D&D-derived planar location; Duat retains its Pharaonic gods, rites, names, sacred geography and narrative purpose.