Spoilers: So. What information is there on the Netherworld?

So. The Netherworld. What is it exactly in the City of Heroes Multiverse?

In Champions, the Netherworld contains all the Hells ever thought up. Its counterpart is Elysium, which contains all the Heavens ever thought up.

In D&D the Netherworld is like the Negative Energy Plane or maybe even a spiritual plane of some sort.

So. What the heck is it in City of Heroes?

The gas tank that fuels all Dark-affiliated powersets, to be honest.

There is no significant information on it. It's dark (literally shadowy), and the energy found there causes fear, weakness and dissolution here. It appears strongly related to the undead, as they often wield powers found in Dark * powersets.

Personally, I prefer it as abstract as it is. That leaves a lot of what it really is open to interpretation.

Kinda frustrates me that they never really did make up a blueprint for the CoX multiverse. It makes it difficult(atleast for me) when there is no core rules on dimensions and stuff.

So most people treat the Netherworld as some sort of void plane that is filled with creatures that can shatter your sanity and is the "gas tank" for negative energy?

In essence, going back to the Champions setting, the Netherworld is the Qliphothic Realm? Basically the old worlds that are dying, where gods go to die, where the antithesis of life exists.

It's vague and left open to interpretation so that the devs don't say "Hey, you have dark powers? Then it has to come from this for this reason!"

It might be intentional. Like UberGuy mentioned, it leaves things up to interpretation. Then we make up the rules and the devs don't have to retcon anything (yet). If you're RPing or grouping with others that keep relative concepts, whoever in the group can decide the /rules/ and no body can get all butthert about another group's rules.

To me, the Netherworld is just the inverse-universe where matter and energy is reversed...and all realities linked to us have a similar inverse version in the Neatherworld. Where heat, light and energy brings life in our reality the reverse is true in the Neatherworld (heat, light and energy brings death while cold, darkness and void is what makes up creatures there). Furthermore, any other planes like 'Heaven' or 'Hell' linked here have a reverse version in the Netherworld.

...or that's my interpretation of it. Where unstable apparitions are considered undead here, they're 'alive' there and creatures that are considered living here are 'dead' there.

An inverse universe.. I like that idea! I'm writing that down in my concepts and ideas book.


On another note, but the same vein. I read that Mot and all the Banished Pantheon were banished to the Spiritual Plane. (Check the in-game timeline at paragon wiki). Could the Spiritual Plane be... What? The realms of all the afterlives? Though it wouldn't make sense to put soul devouring gods on the same plane as the afterlives. So..

Gah! I think my brain just turned in on itself.

It's a revolving door except when the writers don't want it to be.

Don't go in there... it's dark.

I also think that its left deliberately vague.

That's the best way to do it in a game that encompasses many genres, the main one of which (superhero comics) is known for armoured genius inventors fighting alongside Norse gods and other such juxtapositions.

Its part of the patchwork way an MMO like this should work. If you want your particular character to interpret it as a Kabalic Qlipoth, Niflheim, an inverted anti-matter universe or black orgone dimension you can do so, without being told you're wrong by a game manual.

Is the Shadow World a suburb of the Netherworld?

I've always viewed it as such.

Milwaukee.

The Netherworld (at least in my interpretation) is The Darkness - the echoes, remnants, etc of life. That which originally was, and will always be alongside the living worlds.

It features heavily in the backstory of my dark/psi defender, Andrea Blake - and for her, the Darkness is sentient. Her darkness powers come from the Netherworld after she died and came back to life, and the more powerful she becomes, the more she becomes an Avatar of the Netherworld. In the end, she becomes an Incarnate of the Netherworld ("an", not "THE").

And every time she's died and come back since that first time, she's left more of an echo of herself there... which someone else finds.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Well one thing a badge tells us is that there are sentient creatures in there:

Regal Badge (Boomtown): King Mihenra, a self-proclaimed warlord from the Netherworld, attempted to seize control of Paragon City, only to be defeated by Positron on this very spot.

I can't help it...

'I use Magic Missile!'

'On what? There's nobody in the room?'

'I cast it...on the darkness!'

*nerdy giggles ensue*



S.

Do a search on the Wiki for "Netherworld." It's basically a 'negative energy' dimension that is Hell. CoT demons come from there. Souls of the damned reside their. It is the source of negative energy for Dark Powers and demons and vampyrs.

Just like Christmas is Winter Holiday in CoH. Hell is the Netherworld. A religiously sanitized word despite the fact that demons and damned souls reside there (damned by whom?).