Aeaea

Aeaea was the divine realm of Hecate, Olympian goddess of magic.

Description
Hecate was one of the few powers who maintained a realm on more than one plane. Her primary domain was the 3 layer of the Gray Wastes, Pluton, and a smaller, identically named realm was located in Baator, originally on the 4 layer of Phlegethos and later moved to the 3 layer of Minauros. She spent time in both realms, and it was completely unknown why she had two. It was speculated that she drew power from both planes to empower her worshipers, or given the residents of Plutonian Aeaea swore she never left, that without her power to cohere it the realm ceased existence until she returned.

In any case, Aeaea was a mysterious and enigmatic realm. It was a place of hatred and terror, as was to be expected of the lower planes, but intermingled with love and beauty. It teemed with omens and signs, with almost everything symbolizing something else. Fates could be read in the acts of beasts or movements of plants, and a sign of doom for one could be a portent of unearned success for another. Overall Aeaea always conveyed the feeling that its peace was false, like the calm before the storm or the stillness in the eye of a hurricane, that the worst was still yet to come.

Pluton
In Hecate's hilly, grove-dotted realm the night was ceaseless, and yet not infinite. Nights had clear beginnings and endings, indicated by a sense of closure across the realm, an approximately hour long interim of pitch blackness, and the new night visibly rising from the east. In notable contrast to the rest of the Gray Wastes, these were periods of actual night, with the possibility of stars or a moon as opposed to a constant twilight without the conclusion of dusk. The kind of night Aeaea experienced was correctly assumed by most residents to be dependent on Hecate's whims and mood, and could vary greatly. Weather ranged from clear skies, drifting warm breezes and gentle rains (rare in Hades), downpours, and raging storms with crackling, deathly thunder.

Hecate had no fixed palace in this version of her realm, but maintained a lighthouse of ancient architecture on the outer fringe. The rich, yellow glow of the beacon shined brightly through the darkness of the rest of the Wastes, serving only to remind petitioners outside the realm how worse off they were.

Minauros
The Aeaea of Minauros was a chilly and desolate place that quickly enveloped visitors in a shroud of soupy fog. The mist rendered the rest of Baator invisible, and even those with infallible senses of direction would quickly become lost there. Travelers risked bumping into the thousands of strange, sculptural devices that littered the realm, clanking and howling machines that blinked with eerie, infernal light and moved in service to some obscure purpose.

Phlegethos
The Aeaea of Phlegethos shared the layer's traditionally hellish atmosphere. It was severely hot, with charred-black terrain, rivers of fire, and several volcanos. The environment evidently changed in response to Hecate's mood, volcanos erupting to mirror her dissatisfaction and nearby flames flaring up after her sighs. In one of the volcanic craters she sat upon an obsidian throne studded with fire opals.

Cosmology
Hecate had planar conduits to reach worlds she was venerated on, at least in the version of her realm in Phlegethos. The base of Mount Olympus reached the third layer of the Wastes near where her fellow Olympian deity Hades resided.

Pluton
Hecate didn't allow for any restrictions on casting, and in her realm all magical restraints imposed by the nature of the plane were dispelled and all spells functioned at maximal efficiency. Anything one might want with magic, particularly darker magic, could be obtained for a small price. Of course "small" could be defined by the seller as anything between a fingernail to a mortal soul, although depending on the capacities of the caster the nail could be more potent.

The one exception to this magical freedom was that all spells cast in Hecate's realm pinpointed the user to her, and only she decided if it worked, a decision largely left up to her mood. Clear nights signified she was feeling gentle, during which most spells were allowed to succeed without issue, while darker, stormier nights indicated she had lost patience for softer, more introspective magic and favored flashy and destructive spells. Magic was still dangerous in Aeaea regardless, for the hideous results of its power gone wrong could arise from below the realm's surface.

Minauros
Clerics of Hecate claimed that the devices in Minauros were the source of all magic in the multiverse and that their shut down would cause all spells and magic items to cease functioning. This was just their word, but what was known for certain was that the machines could be fueled by souls, mortals, and planar entities to convert the victims into energy both sorcerous and divine for use by Hecate and her minions. Magic items were manufactured there and traded to the baatezu for souls to power the occult machines, but in lean times the lowest of her fiendish servants would do.

Inhabitants
Hecate preferred to wander her Plutonian realm rather than stay in one spot. Usually she roamed whenever she decreed the dark of the moon, but she didn't seem to hold to a real schedule, although some claimed her movements were governed by some ancient law. She went out with a pack of hell hounds at her side and often set them against those who unknowingly traveled on what she deemed to be her night.

Poplar-lined roads leading to and from nowhere meandered across Aeaea, and minor villages sprang up and disappeared along them, few remaining for long. The largest was Thalatta, a collection of mud-daubed huts near a three-headed statue at the largest crossroads in the realm, where ancient magicians to whom visitors were but material components muttered and chanted their spells.

Not all of Hecate's petitioners were witches or wizards, although the most devoted of her followers were said to conduct arcane rites at groves during the full moon. Some were simply highwaymen who preyed on those abroad at night, but all, magical or not, were extremely evil and unaffected by the malaise that other petitioners of the Wastes suffered from.

The most notable resident of Plutonian Aeaea was Circe, an old mage protege of Hecate who did her best to protect the realm and demonstrate Hecate's might with the kind of power able to effortlessly take out a small army.

In the Hells, Hecate also had a quota of devils which she sent out in organized fashion to punish particular actions that earned her ire.

History
At one point adventurers from Arabel, after finding their way to the World Serpent Inn, were brought to Hecate's realm in Phlegethos to accomplish a task for her.