Pathfinder Chronicles (5/?)

(This is part of a series of posts reviewing the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting.)

The cosmology is strongly echoic of the Great Wheel: in lieu of the Inner and Outer Planes, there are the Inner Sphere (composed of the material, paramaterial, and elemental planes) and the Outer Sphere (composed of the afterlives). The latter has no fixed overall geography, but Hell still has nine layers, and Heaven seven.

The cosmology subchapter's arrangement is horrible, however. Everything within a given subsection is alphabetized, rather than being laid out in some natural internal order as the subsections themselves are. There are several points in the text where it becomes almost impossible to follow due to the collected weight of unresolved forward references. (Putting the Maelstrom before all the other Outer Sphere planes would have helped immensely in clarifying the Sphere's structure.) Worse, on the intro to the Inner Sphere on page 178, the elemental planes are named in order, "exterior to interior" — but the order given is alphabetical! (The correct order is, from the Astral inward: Fire, Earth, Water, Air. This can be inferred from the main text, and is properly depicted in the image on page 180.)

... and I'd still like to know how they're allowed to use Orcus (yes, that Orcus) and Kostchchie (note: not "Koshchei"). Of course, Orcus has been in use by NetHack for decades now, so I suppose any trademark they may have had has been let lapse. Still, I may have been a bit hasty last time: other than those two, most of the archdemons and archdevils are either new, new to me, or have always been public domain (e.g. Asmodeus, Baalzebul, Pazuzu).

Short version: the cosmology appears to have been based on "let's get as close as we can to the Great Wheel" rather than "let's make something inherently nifty". It's certainly more Wheellike than, e.g., Eberron's cosmology. Or D&D 4e's.