Frank had thoughts on the matter and a couple of ideas for Celestia and Bytopia, which I'll reprint here:
I thought that was pretty cool. I wonder what we can make of the others?FrankTrollman wrote:Yeah, there's really no sense of what "The Good" represents to any of the various "good" factions. We know that they are down on Mind Flayers, but that's really not much of a courageous or contentious moral stance. Yeah, you don't like your friends and family being enslaved and having their fucking brains eaten. Good for you.
But once you actually got down to brass tacks of what people believed other than "Destroy World [Y/N]?" you'd get to some genuine disagreement. And that would make them actually matter. Maybe the Bitopians believe in peaceful racial separatism because they are reciprocal altruism tribalists. So you can pretty much dress them in white hats when there is an unjust war going on (they oppose it), but their position becomes murkier when halflings or bugbears are already second class citizens in your society (they oppose integration or affirmative action on the grounds that bugbears should do their own thing and not be part of the hobgoblin economy at all). Maybe the Celestians believe that universal law exists and should be followed. They get the white hats out when there are destructive rampaging monsters on the loose, but their position gets murkier when questions of home rule or even social progress come to the fore.
The Beastlands
"For the greater good!"
The Beastlands are a strange place. For one thing, they are, depending on what Planescape literature you're reading, mostly inhabited by animals and not sapient creatures. But there is one common thread among the beastlands: it's supposed to be a representation of nature, and everyone is a willing participant.
That means that when the antelope is getting chased by the lion, he's not trying to be eaten but he's totally okay with actually being eaten. He's a willing participant in this chase. On a more abstract scale, this is a statement about the greater good. Everything that happens in the Beastlands happens for the greater good. If one guy from the Beastlands has to die to save a hundred other guys, that guy is not even going to hesitate -- he is going to step right up and die the instant he is needed and absolutely no later. Sometimes this can get a little extreme and maybe a little wacky -- the antelope is willing to sacrifice itself to stop a family of lions from going hungry. This might seem extreme, and it is, but that's what makes the Beastlands into the Beastlands -- everyone there is willing to sacrifice whatever it takes for the good of someone else, even if it's hard to quantify that good as "greater".
The Beastlands are not the guys you turn to when you need someone to stand up against Grindelwald imprisoning people "for the greater good".
Elysium
"We can please everyone."
There's an old adage that states that if you try to please everyone, you'll fail. Nobody in Elysium has ever heard of this adage.
Elysium is a plane that actively tries to make all of its inhabitants happy, and it does this without sacrificing the happiness of anyone else. The question of "how" is a philosophically puzzling one -- maybe it's just planar magic that it can do it, or maybe it really is hurting someone else's happiness to please someone else -- it's a question for the moral thinkers. Elysium is a place for all who seek simple happiness and fulfillment.
Arborea
"You can get married here."
Ultimate acceptance. At its core, that is what the plane of Arborea represents. If you want to fit in with a group but are wildly different, Arborea is the place.
In a way, it's the opposite of Bytopia -- instead of altruistic and voluntary separation of cultures, Arborea represents the complete blending and mix.