Abyss (Dungeons & Dragons)

In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, the Abyss, or more fully, the Infinite Layers of the Abyss, is a chaotic evil-aligned plane of existence. It is one of a number of alignment-based Outer Planes that form part of the standard Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) cosmology, used in the Planescape and Greyhawk campaign settings. The Abyss is also the name of one of the faith-based outer planes that form part of the Forgotten Realms cosmology. While the published 3rd-Edition source books indicate that the Abyss of the standard D&D cosmology is not the same plane as the Abyss of the Forgotten Realms cosmology, they are for all practical purposes identical.

Publication history

The plane known as the 666 layers of the Abyss was mentioned for the first time by name in the article "Planes: The Concepts of Spatial, Temporal and Physical Relationships in D&D", in The Dragon #8, released July 1977. In the article Gary Gygax describes the plane as one of the "Typical lower planes". The plane was mentioned again in an appendix of the known planes of existence in the original (1st edition) AD&D Players Handbook, published in June 1978, where it was described as "The 666 layers of the Abyss of absolute chaotic evil".

The Abyss

The Abyss is a 1989 American science fiction film written and directed by James Cameron, starring Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Michael Biehn. When an American submarine sinks in the Caribbean, the US search and recovery team works with an oil platform crew, racing against Russian vessels to recover the boat. Deep in the ocean, they encounter something unexpected.

This movie released on August 8, 1989 and received positive reviews, but underperformed at box office.

Plot

In 1988, the US submarine USS Montana has an encounter with an unidentified submerged object and sinks near the Cayman Trough. With Soviet ships moving in to try to salvage the sub and a hurricane moving over the area, the US government opts to send a SEAL team to Deep Core, a privately owned experimental underwater drilling platform near the Cayman Trough to use as a base of operations. The platform's designer, Dr. Lindsey Brigman, insists on coming along with the SEAL team, despite her estranged husband Virgil "Bud" Brigman being the current foreman.

Abyss

Abyss may refer to:

Sciences

Philosophy

Literature

Movies and television dramas

In the Abyss

"In the Abyss" is a short story by H. G. Wells, first published in 1896 in Pearson's Magazine. It was included in The Plattner Story and Others, a collection of short stories by Wells first published in 1897. The story describes a journey to the ocean bed in a specially-designed metal sphere; the explorer within discovers a civilization of human-like creatures.

Historical background

The Challenger expedition, arranged by the Royal Society, was the first systematic deep-sea exploration. From 1872 to 1876, HMS Challenger surveyed and explored around the world; the physical and chemical qualities of the deep sea were investigated, and biological samples were collected by dredges. Findings of the expedition were published until 1895.

The bathysphere, a spherical deep-sea submersible which Elstead's apparatus seems to resemble, first appeared in the 1930s.

Story summary

Elstead has invented an apparatus by which a person can travel to great depths and observe the life on the sea bed. It is a steel sphere, about nine feet in diameter, intended to withstand immense pressure. Weights attached to the sphere by a cable take it to the sea bed. The explorer makes observations through the window in the sphere, oxygen inside being replaced by a fictitious "Myers apparatus". A clockwork mechanism cuts the cable after a certain time, and the buoyancy of the sphere takes it back to the surface.