Talk:Hell

Merge to The Abyss

Outside of the playtest card, I don't think I can find anything referring to Hell as a plane. Conversely, Hell, The Pit, and The Abyss are used pretty interchangeably in the lore I've seen. Without official word, it seems cleanest to merge these pages and note on them the ambiguity of their naming. Happy to hear others' thoughts. RudleyDudley (talk) 03:31, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

It could also stay as a separate article, but be demoted from being a plane - status of the place noted as uncertain. I'm not sure some of those places, especially Hell or Underworld, were even meant to be separate planes (initially, anyway), instead maybe being just dimensional or metaphysical layers of some of the planes. The metaphysics of this hasn't been explored much to my knowledge (but then, my exposition to sources has holes in it).

In my own head, I've often speculated that the heavenly and the demonic may be two sides of the same metaphysical coin (or started out that way). With the oft ignored Heaven's Gate being the potential example of that other side (unless there's a down-to-earth story behind it I'm not aware of). There have also been some clues (either that, or I'm reading too much into possible plot holes) that if those places are layers of reality, they may span across the multiverse or at least multiple planes. Like in The Story of the Battlemage Ravidel, told by a Serra angel, who somehow was able to follow, watch and record Ravidel's deeds across the planes, not being a planeswalker herself. More recently, there also was that story with Elspeth bringing the Sylex to Blind Eternities and being guided by Serra, who's supposed to be dead. Someone on this wiki described it as an "echo" of Serra, which I guess is one interpretation, but maybe she was real and influenced things from the multiverse-spanning 'Beyond' after all?

Possible case against such metaphysical layers spanning across multiple planes would be that the angelic and demonic forces often reflect the feel (and the art direction) of the plane they manifest in (like the Oni Demons of Kamigawa). At least some look specific that way. Though that could be easily explained away by the other theory (the form being influenced by the plane a demon enters into for instance).

Either way, there seems to be way too much speculation for my liking in any possible theory one might choose. I don't know what to do with all of this, other than just describing the degrees of doubt about those places. Ontos (talk) 00:32, 16 October 2025 (UTC)