Overview of the Arturian Realm:
Administered by the Third Level Society, founded in the year 1243, the Arturian Realm is an interplanetary realm spanning multiple star systems, each hosting multiple gas giant systems, each of which are home to multiple planets. Each planet contains a Terraworld, Divineworld, Dungeonworld, and Underworld.
Typical Underworld:
A typical Underworld on a particular planet in the Arturian Realm is accessible through specific Temples in the Terraworld or Dungeonworld as well as through natural chasms in a Dungeonworld on said planet. While the surface of a planet's Terraworld faces out into the cosmos, the surface of its Underworld faces inward toward the center of the planet. An Underworld's landscape consists usually of continents of barren stone and rock separated by lakes and oceans of fiery magma. Meanwhile, a Ball of Fire in the center of the planet, "above" the Underworld landscape, casts a constant reddish-orange hue of fiery light. And around this Ball of Fire orbits four small rocky netherworld globes, each of which being home to a deity-equivalent stronghold.
The weather of an Underworld is fundamentally different from that of its Terraworld counterpart in that it is fire-based rather than water-based. The said Ball of Fire in the center will occasionally send out flares which lash the Underworld landscape with torrents of fire and magma, which will eventually pour into the fiery lakes and oceans. The said fiery lakes and oceans also send out similar but smaller flares.
Meanwhile, the Underworld landscape consists of villages, cities, city-states, nations, and empires. And these entities, along with nomadic entities, travel by land as well as by boats of metal and stone across the fiery lakes and oceans to either trade with each other or compete against each other, similar to the dynamics of the Terraworld.
The difference here, however, is that avatar beings native to the Underworld are immortal and spiritual. They can gain power more easily but can also be destroyed, or unmade easily, despite being immortal. These beings do not need to eat or metabolize. And the spiritual forms in which they exist consist of varying degrees, ranging from shapeless clouds to semi-physical bodily forms.
Again, while these beings are immortal, their forms can be destroyed, and are often destroyed in battles and conflicts. Daemons cast by avatars here are lost forever, and have to be remade by Underworld avatars. For the avatars, themselves, if they are unmade, their spirits are sent to one of the four netherworlds where special Underworld priests remake them, often at the cost of either Arturian credits, or, in some cases, an unusual demand such as the sacrifice of a particular spirit.
Most avatars enter the Underworld as an alternative to resurrection whenever the said avatar dies in the Terraworld. The lure with the Underworld option is, obviously, the immortality as well as how easy it is to gain power. That, of course, makes things more competitive in some Underworlds. But nonetheless, many Society Members pursue this option.
The Usurping of a Particular Underworld:
Sometimes an avatar, or even a daemon, will be powerful enough to cast some sort of influence over a particular Underworld and succeed in rendering it to display wildly abnormal characteristics. Though this is rare, it has happened a few times throughout the history of the Third Level Society.
One particular example was in the year 1281. A figure by the name of the White Baroness had managed to alter the Underworld of Prestia Minor CCL so that it became a world completely void of heat and fire, and completely filled with snow, ice, and glass. Not only that, but the White Baroness also managed to subject numerous Underworlds across numerous star systems in the same fashion. This became such an issue that many Society Members at the time began speculating that some individual was behind the casting of the White Baroness and was doing so in order to infiltrate the Society. Such a theory was bolstered by the fact that the White Baroness was nowhere to be found in the Society Member-Avatar Roster.
A prominent Society Member by the name of Meona Bell was able to pinpoint the cause behind the White Baroness ordeal, discovering that, in fact, no one person was actually behind the casting of the White Baroness, but that the White Baroness was, in fact, a fourth-generation daemon cast by a class of daemons cast by another class of daemons left over by a former Member who left years previously. In other words, it was an anomaly. To note, daemons are avatars formed by Member-backed avatars. Daemons are designed to carry out certain tasks but also to interact with their environment in an independent way. The conscience and moral decision-making mechanisms of a daemon are based on dymensional plane algorithms which operate with a precarious balance of bias versus randomness. Therefore, there is always a small risk that a Realm-altering anomaly may emerge requiring intervention from a dymensional plane Administrator. The White Baroness is a perfect example.
And it is important to assess this risk on a regular basis because any effect on a dymensional plane needing reversal cannot simply be done by a "reset." Administrators must reverse the effects of an anomaly through processes natural to the world of the dymensional plane. For example, once the White Baroness was made to no longer exist, Administrators had to investing time and resources by having Contributors cast powerful avatars to thaw the frozen Underworlds and then to reignite the fires.
The Underworld Structure of Planet Arturia:
The structure of the Underworld of the original Planet Arturia is fundamentally different from the structure of a typical Underworld, in that its traversable surface is contained solely upon Five Great Netherworlds floating around an Underworld Void. Each Netherworld here is home to a Deity of one of the Five Nations, imprisoned after the Uprising of the Common People, a matter to be discussed in a later article.
There is no Ball of Fire here, nor are there lakes and oceans of fire. Rather, there are globular strands of infernal plasma floating around the Underworld Void, bearing resemblance to a lava lamp. The Netherworlds themselves are barren rocky landscapes with villages, cities, and city-states. Political and trade dynamics here are just like said dynamics in the other Underworlds. Though that is the only similarity.