Gehenna (outer plane)

A part of the Lower Planes of Existence [placeholder], a place of punishment, created by the sacrifice of thousands of children in the Valley of Gehinnom outside of Jerusalem, beginning some ten thousand years ago. As the children died upon burning pyres and began to enter the underworld, then no more than a place of dust, a shelf of icy rock was made manifest against the side of a mountain, amidst a great ocean, under an open sky, and there the dead children were left to wait, their feet frozen into a cake of ice that stretched out into the water. But this place had no name, not as yet.

Within the second millenia BC, the mountain above Gehenna began to grow upwards to the clouds, until the top of the mountain was lost forever ... and for seven times seventy years thereafter, others began to arrive at the mountain's shore, carried by upon a boat that was sent by the angel Arsiel, who came to call the land around the bottom of the mountain Gehenna. Arseil then sat upon a throne there, calling himself the Prince of Gehenna, and thereafter it was he who judged the dead who came there. The people who descended from the boats were Hebrews from the Fertile Crescent. They looked upon the suffering children there and wept, but could not help them, for they were take by demons to the other side of the mountain, where there were fires waiting.

These Hebrews were kept in the fires for a year, then they, too, were allowed to climb the mountain.

Some Hebrews were set aside, however, and told to climb the mountain, to the place where they would find Eden. And these Hebrews went and still the children remained.

But it came to pass that after 490 years, Moses landed upon the shore of Gehenna, having passed away upon the banks of the river Jordan. Arseil was waiting for Moses and said to him, "These children are ready to be led up the mountain." And so Moses broke the ice from around their feet and led the children to Eden.

Gehenna grew, until Christians began to arrive, whose thoughts had changed the mountain above them. Now there were tiers upon the mountain, which was now called Purgatory [placeholder] ... and now to climb the mountain required penance and suffering, as the soul within the dead was burned clear before they could climb to Eden, and from Eden thence to Paradise [placeholder]. The Christians, however, were left upon a different beach ~ and it is said that while some Christians wait in Gehenna, which they call "ante-Purgatory", for 30 times the length of their lives spent in the Prime Material Plane, still the Hebrews wait only a year before they begin to climb.

Still there is a shelf of ice that reaches out from Gehenna ~ and those that will cross it may find there a place where the Abyss yawns before them, the edge of the eternal pit. Upon the edge of the pit dwells the serpent-angel Apollyon, or Abaddon, who is the keyholder of the Abyss and the guardian of Tartarus. Among the dead who are brought to Gehenna are those who have committed an act of great sin in the moment of death, who may or may not be honest despite this act. These are ordered by Arseil to present themselves to Abaddon, who will judge them; and those who are judged good may be allowed to pay the price by climbing Purgatory; others who are judged malevolent will be cast into the Abyss.

See Mythology