Philosophy of the Outer Planes

[Xefas]

Completely disregarding alignment, and just taking into account the specifics of the Plane itself (pretending that any 'alignment' affiliation doesn't exist), what would be a good single (or two/three maybe) sentence to sum up the philosophy of each individual Outer Plane?

So, for Bytopia, you might have "An honest day's hard work is its own reward.", and for Arcadia, you might have "If a man may make a right choice, or a wrong choice, then you invite him to do ill by giving him a choice at all. Take away the possibility of choosing to do evil, and you have utopia."

Anyone else have some ideas? I'm interested to see what other people come up with.

For reference: the wikipedia page listing the Outer Planes.

[Zaydos]

The Grey Wastes: "Life is futile. Everything is futile. Why even bother anymore."

[Tequila Sunrise]

Pandemonium: "Why so serious?"

[SurlySeraph]

Ysgard: "To cover oneself in glory is the entirety of the law."

Acheron: "March, kill, repeat."

Limbo: "WHEEEEEEEE!"

[Lost Wanderer]

Limbo: "WHEEEEEEEE!"

Feh. More like "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously".

[hamishspence]

The easydamus site:

http://easydamus.com/alignment.html

does discuss philosophies held by each alignment- these might apply to some of the planes.

Celestia, for example, might be this:

The Philosophy of Lawful Good
Lawful good is the philosophy that goodness is best achieved through law and order. It is a philosophy of altruistic collectivism. This philosophy holds that people should behave altruistically and put the needs of the group ahead of individual desires. Lawful good can also be associated with rule utilitarianism and ethical altruism.

Lawful good philosophers generally maintain that there is metaphysical order in the multiverse and thus may support doctrines of hard determinism, predeterminism, fatalism, predestination, and/or necessitarianism. They may believe in fate or destiny. They tend to be moral objectivists, holding that values exist in the external world independently of and external to our comprehension of them; that they can be found and known; and that they must be used as principles for human judgments and conduct.

[SillySymphonies]

Arcadia: perfection
Celestia: path to enlightenment/transcendence
Bytopia: ?
Elysium: bliss
Beastlands: ?
Arborea: passion, hedonism
Ysgard: "That which doesn't kill you, makes you stronger."*
Limbo: Chaos
Pandemonium: transcendence into madness
Abyss: "(...) And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you."
Carceri: treachery || imprisonment
Gray Waste: hopelessness
Gehenna: ?
Baator: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." [Baator is basically 'Inferno' from Dante's Divine Comedy]
Acheron: extreme conformism*
Mechanus: ?
Outlands: ?

*Both Ysgard and Acheron are about war and fighting, but Ysgard is about the individual's (physical) struggle and Acheron is about clashing armies (whose soldiers are hardly individuals any more).

[Zaydos]

Mount Celestia: "Ex celsior" "Always upwards, always moving. Only by devotion to others can self-enlightenment be obtained."

Carceri: "There is no escape. We cannot get out. We're trapped."

Beastlands: "Nature is beautiful. Tread carefully."

Edit: I messed up bad... calling Carceri, Gehenna is just... /facedesk worthy.

[SITB]

Planescape to the rescue! Although it has a short paragraph rather than 2-3 sentences.

[hamishspence]

Is good. Especially the contradictions to the arguments of everybody- including the Neutral.

[Lord Raziere]

The Far Realms: Lovecraft was right. Start running.

[Zaydos]

Mechanus: "Existence is a clock. Everything has its time and its purpose and moves accordingly."

Baator: "Deceive, gain power, repeat."

[Kobold-Bard]

These may not be what you're looking for but I offer to you:

9 Hells: "You'll be fine as long as you filled in all the paperwork. You did sign form #79542-A, didn't you?"

Abyss: "I made a belt out of your oesophagus!!"

Elysium: "Your reward for a lifetime of Good? All year tan baby

[Calmar]

Baator: "It is better to reign in hell, then to serve in hell."

[Devils_Advocate]

So, for Bytopia, you might have "An honest day's hard work is its own reward."

I think that the old adage about teaching a man to fish would be more appropriate, although I'm not sure that that quite fits either.

for Arcadia, you might have "If a man may make a right choice, or a wrong choice, then you invite him to do ill by giving him a choice at all. Take away the possibility of choosing to do evil, and you have utopia."

Niiiiiiiice. That works really well.

Elysium: "I could be martyred for my religion. Love is my religion — I could die for that." (- John Keats)

The Outlands: "Welp, that's my good deed for the day. Time to go kick some puppies!" (- Faye)

Acheron: "To crush your enemies, and see them fall at your feet - to take their horses and belongings, and to hear the lamentation of their women. That is the best life." (- Ghengis Khan)

Limbo: "The world has almost completely fallen into order. It's up to us to restore chaos." (- The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy)

The Abyss: "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for I am the baddest mother****er in the valley." ; "I know violence isn’t the answer - I get it wrong on purpose"

Carceri: "Do unto others before they can do unto you."

Baator: "There is one crime, and it is disobedience to one's superior. This is to be punished without mercy. Beyond that, take all that you want."

The Beastlands: "[O]n the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars, and so on--while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man--for precisely the same reasons." (- The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy)

The Far Realms: Lovecraft was right. Start running.

Not an outer plane. (Not that you said it was, but I thought I'd mention.) The whole point to the Far Realms is that they're so fundamentally different from everywhere else in the multiverse, so alien, that the division is Far Realms / not the Far Realms. Thus you get things like something picking up and eating a negative number of apples; or, say, the flip side to the coin on which good and evil are but one side (to borrow from Discworld). Not necessarily anything that's disorganized or insane on its own terms; just things that are utterly unreal by our standards.

[Halae]

The Far Realms: Lovecraft was right. Start running.

You know, I remember a quote from a guy named calling himself Urnsk. He said:

"The existence of an infinite number of iterations available for accomplishing a given task does not necessitate that any one can possibly succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times, and it is never going to come up waffles."

But in the Far Realm he is WRONG. It will come up waffles eventually.

[Xefas]

I'm really liking all the ideas. Plus the link to that Planescape page was a very interesting read.

I do feel like:

You know, I remember a quote from a guy named calling himself Urnsk. He said:

"The existence of an infinite number of iterations available for accomplishing a given task does not necessitate that any one can possibly succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times, and it is never going to come up waffles."

But in the Far Realm he is WRONG. It will come up waffles eventually.

-may merit further discussion, though.

That sort of thing, I would expect of Limbo, rather than the Far Realm. True, most of my gaming group's vision of the Far Realm seems to be "Limbo but with more tentacles", but I like to think of the Far Realm having perfectly defined laws of physics and causality, just that those laws are completely different from the rest of the multiverse.

So, you might get Waffles by flipping a coin, but that's because on a two-sided coin, the results are always heads, waffles, or Beauregard, and no one from our Multiverse is capable of comprehending just how that third result shows up.

What does everyone else think?

[Gensh]

That sort of thing, I would expect of Limbo, rather than the Far Realm. True, most of my gaming group's vision of the Far Realm seems to be "Limbo but with more tentacles", but I like to think of the Far Realm having perfectly defined laws of physics and causality, just that those laws are completely different from the rest of the multiverse.

What I get out of Lovecraft is that while the Old Ones and the rest of the cosmos do follow rules that are wholly different from the ones that we know, the Old Ones themselves are also completely insane, with the possible exception of Nyarlathotep (though it's more likely to be a clarity of true madness thing). Since the varying authors and editors of WotC seem to only rarely do the research on these things, I'd say that Limbo most likely represents calculated change (table of random results), while the Far Realm is "tentacles for teh lulz" (almost no description at all; the description that is actually given can also apply to a petri dish.)

[Eldan]

Well, I'll see what I can come up with for those I find something good.

Arcadia: In a just system, the greatest possible amount of people achieves the greatest possible good.

Abyss: Get to the top of the heap, and keep everyone else away.

Ysgard: What is best in life? To charge your enemy in glorious battle, to see them fall before you, and hear the exultation of their women. Then party all night long (yes, that was three sentences. Screw the rules if the result is better this way.)

Carceri: Everyone is out to get you, get them first, then get out. Alternatively: "Only the insane have the strength to prosper. Only those who prosper may truly judge what is sane."

Gehenna: Mercy is for the Weak.

Limbo: The World is your Plaything, shape it as you desire.

Acheron: Either this song, or "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength". Edit: As with my comment below, this actually fits Baator better. Along with "Imagine a boot, stomping on a face, forever." Which was used in Planescape.

Celestia: "The Truly Strong defend the Weak".


Edit:
If I may...

Acheron: "To crush your enemies, and see them fall at your feet - to take their horses and belongings, and to hear the lamentation of their women. That is the best life." (- Ghengis Khan)

This quote does, in my opinion, not fit with Acheron. The reason why I changed it and then used it for Ysgard was that Acheron, in many aspects, is Ysgard's opposite. In Ysgard, combat is glorious, and what people strive for. It is honourable, and there is sweet victory. In Acheron, it is hopeless, senseless, eternal. You can't stop fighting because neither will your enemy. You fight because you always fought, and always will.
Ghenghis Khan may not fit with Ysgard, because his tactics seem, at least today, perhaps too cruel for a good-aligned plane, but that quote also doesn't make him an Ysgardian. In Acheron, War is Hell.

Which reminds me:
"War does not determine who is right. Only who is left." Only in Acheron, that decision will have to wait a few more aeons, perhaps. Go shoot this infinite number of guys in the meantime.

[Aroka]

This quote does, in my opinion, not fit with Acheron. The reason why I changed it and then used it for Ysgard was that Acheron, in many aspects, is Ysgard's opposite. In Ysgard, combat is glorious, and what people strive for. It is honourable, and there is sweet victory. In Acheron, it is hopeless, senseless, eternal. You can't stop fighting because neither will your enemy. You fight because you always fought, and always will.
Ghenghis Khan may not fit with Ysgard, because his tactics seem, at least today, perhaps too cruel for a good-aligned plane, but that quote also doesn't make him an Ysgardian. In Acheron, War is Hell.

So Acheron is WWI flanderised, ergo you must go to Siegfried Sassoon.

Spoiler

Show

O my brave brown companions, when your souls
Flock silently away, and the eyeless dead
Shame the wild beast of battle on the ridge,
Death will stand grieving in that field of war
Since your unvanquished hardihood is spent.
And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass
Battalions and battalions, scarred from hell;
The unreturning army that was youth;
The legions who have suffered and are dust.

[Devils_Advocate]

This quote does, in my opinion, not fit with Acheron.

True. Partly because it speaks of triumph, as you say, but also partly because it applies to individual victory, whereas Acheron is far more group-oriented. On the other hand, its obvious association with warfare makes it dubious for the more individualistic planes. It also doesn't quite fit Ysgard because the focus is on the enemy's defeat rather than on one's own success.

I think that we can both admit that we kind of shoehorned it in because it's a nice quote, and it's hard to find a really appropriate quote for each plane.

For Acheron, what I'd really like is a saying that embodies chauvinism: militant partiality to one's own group. But I can't seem to come up with a good one. I was going to say "My nation, right or wrong", but that seems insufficiently violently antagonistic. And something like Redcloak's "Of course life is a competition!" (paraphrased) doesn't quite work because, again, it also applies on an individual level.

Upon reflection, "You're either with us or you're against us" probably fits. Everyone who isn't your ally can be assumed to be your enemy in Acheron, pretty much.

What does everyone else think?

Limbo is random and unpredictable; the Far Realm is impossible. If a coin "coming up waffles" means the coin turning into waffles, or waffles showing on the up-facing side, then that's something that can happen in Limbo, sure. The point is that in the Far Realm, e.g. a category might doorknob the square root of aquamarine in order to fixate some gallop. That sentence makes no sense, and we can't conceive of it being true; thus, witnessing that actually happening can drive a human being insane, because our minds aren't designed to cope with anything like that.

And Far Realm "beings" seem "insane" because their "minds" aren't made to comprehend things that makes sense to us. (The scare quotes used here because they don't describe how things really are, just vague analogues based on how our linear, four-dimensional brains inaccurately perceive the incomprehensible unreality of etc. etc.)

Limbo embodies infinite possibility but also impermanence; someone with enough skill can shape almost anything imaginable out of its raw potential, but everything dissolves back into the chaos unless sustained by continual force of will.