Codex of the Planes & Beksinski

In working on the Codex of the Planes, I found this picture to be one of the most awe inspiring. It is a painting by the Polish artist AdZislaw Beksinski. It, along with alot of his art, captured the mood for the planes.

Here is a small excerpt:

"Gating into the Abyss is a step into madness for the gate lies before a multitude of gates whose number the sages affix at six hundred and sixty-six, but this is only a truth that they understand. The true number is indefinable. Stepping through the gate one comes to the Wearisome Path, there to walk through ether that takes one through a world of colors that fill the nostrils with the scent of dead flowers and tastes much like terror feels in the gut as one falls from a high cliff. But the path ends so that one looks upon a vast field of monoliths, each a thousand feet high of jagged stone. These are the Mansions of the Thrall and they are like fingers of bone thrust form the earth. The sky is dark orange with streaks of white light that burns the eye with a physical hunger for food. The light catches objects here and there on the pillars, casting it back in images that flitter now and again across the sky like a giant canvas. The top of each escarpment, each pillar, range from flat to jagged. Some seem to move, to grow and shed as they do. Here and there lights spring up in the orange dark, small, distant flickering lights. Some clinging to pillar sides, others atop them, others still in the canyon like gulfs below. These are Travelers, or reapers, demons or some such creatures that haunt the fringes of the Abyss but seek the comfort of light in the glooms of this place."

                                                                ~ Codex of the Planes