Skein of Worlds:The Inner Planes

Skein of Worlds « Cosmology and Setting « The Inner Planes

The three great orbs hanging in the gray of the Astral Plane are all portals to great planes of energy. The spheres of the material plane are all intricately linked to one of these three planes.

The Positive Energy Plane

The suns of the material plane are all giant vortices to this place, the source of all light and, for most creatures, life energy. While most people might guess that such a place would be a paradise, it can be dangerous. Following one of the vortices on a sun, you would first arrive on a surface much like the one you just left. The most immediate difference would be the change from standing on a blindingly bright surface under a pitch black sky, to a dull white surface under a blindingly bright sky.

While in this place, a normal creature is surrounded by life energy. While this feels great, and wounds heal very quickly, it is not always a good thing. In places of especially high concentrations of life energy a normal creature can absorb enough energy to actually explode. As a last, desperate resort, you can injure yourself to bleed off some of this energy, but as quickly as wounds heal, this is only a temporary measure.

In a plane so full of life energy, it should come as no surprise that it is also quite full of life. In fact, most, if not all, of the life that exists on the suns of the material plane is made up of visitors, either temporary or permanent, from the Positive Energy Plane.

Like in many other planes, it is possible to move in more than 3 directions. You can attempt to move towards the source of the light that permeates the plane. While this is similar to the Deep Shadow, it's usually not called one of the Deep Places. That title is usually reserved for the depths of the transitive planes. What you would find if you ever reached the source of the light remains unknown.

The Negative Energy Plane

By traveling to the great black orb in the Astral Plane, you'll find yourself in the place where all black holes go. The Shadow Plane may be dark, but this place is different. The Positive Energy Plane is the source of all light and life; this place is the end of it. It's not that there's no light here. Light pours into this place from all of the black holes and from the Astral Plane, but light here fades very quickly. The result is that things in the distance fade from view quickly. In addition to that, the Negative Energy Plane leeches the life out of everything within it. This ebbing life energy causes living things to glow faintly, at least until their life energy runs out.

Normally this drain on ones life energy is just slow enough to be countered by strong magic, but in places the negative energy becomes concentrated enough that you can feel years of your life being pulled away.

The Elemental Tempest

The third of the great orbs leads to the Elemental Tempest, the source of all four elements. This place exists as a foam, with each bubble containing a different mix of elements. These bubbles are larger the closer you are to the Astral Plane. Some are large enough to hold entire civilizations. The bubbles aren't entirely stable though. Fortunately, for those living there, the older and larger a bubble is, the less likely it is to change, at least nearer to the center.

To clarify, I say that the bubbles are bigger near the Astral Plane, but like most other planes, this one isn't limited to three dimensions. On other planes, like the Astral Plane or the Positive Energy Plane, there isn't much in the way of traveling deeper into the plane. This place is more similar to the Ethereal Planes in that it seems to exist as a series of layers. In the Elemental Tempest, all of the bubbles on the first layer are equally close to the Astral Plane, which can always be seen as a gray orb in the distance. To travel deeper into the plane requires finding a vortex from near the center of one bubble to another, deeper bubble. The vortices, like the bubbles themselves are not stable. They often appear much like the elemental vortices on the material plane.

These bubbles rarely consist of a single, pure element; however, most do have a dominant element. Which element is dominant has a major influence on how the bubble looks inside. Most bubbles contain at least some solid ground. These chunks of terrain can take any number of forms though. The dominant element has a major influence on this as well.

Fire

In a fire-dominant area, everything burns, even when there isn't really anything to be burning.

Air exists normally, but can easily be hot enough to cause burns itself.

Earth can exist in any number of forms here. In the largest fire bubbles, it might even exist much like a very small planet on the material plane. More often, it exists as several large, irregularly shaped chunks of hot rock, sand and magma.

Water is the least present of the elements in a fire-dominant bubble. What little does exist is usually in the form of steam, although it might also appear as boiling pools or bubbling pools of mud if mixed with earth.

Earth

An earth-dominant bubble is often completely full of dirt and rock, though most of the time, there are tunnels of various sizes winding through it.

Water exists fairly normally here. Small pockets of clean water can often be found scattered throughout the rock, although, more often, it is murky if not muddy.

Fire also exists here, mainly as the background temperature. The rock, dirt and tunnels through them are rarely cold, though maybe not as warm as the surface of an ordinary planet. Occasionally there will be pockets of magma or other manifestations of fire scattered throughout the bubble.

Air does exist here, although it is often thin and dusty. Pockets of air are sometimes found within the rock, but most of the air exists in the tunnels.

Water

A water-dominant area is much like the oceans and lakes of the material plane. Some of these bubbles are composed of fresh water. Others are salty.

Earth here often exists as free floating chunks of rock, or sometimes as great webs of rock. Sometimes there are pockets of mud floating within the water.

Air here is mostly of the kind useful to fish, although sometimes it can collect against a piece of rock forming bubbles big enough to be useful to others.

Fire is the least present element here and a water-dominant bubble is often quite cold. Sometimes it does exist in concentrations great enough to create pockets of boiling water, but it is rarely in any other form.

Air

An air-dominant bubble is much like the sky on the material plane.

Water here exists mainly in the form of rain, although its motion is nothing like that of normal rain. Instead it swirls around with the ever present winds. The clouds that exist here often contain a good deal of moisture too.

Fire here exists as hot winds and lightning. Other forms are quite rare.

Earth is notably scarce here. Large chunks of ground are almost unknown. Smaller chunks sometimes exist, but it is mostly just grit and gravel carried around on the winds.

Chaos

As you travel deeper and deeper into the Elemental Tempest, the bubbles become smaller and smaller, and change more and more rapidly. At some point the bubbles will only be about the size of a house. Bubbles this small change rapidly, dividing themselves and merging with their neighbors within an hour or less. At this point it can be very hard to find a vortex leading deeper, but if you do, you'll come to a place where the bubbles are small enough to be hard to distinguish. This place is the true tempest of the Elemental Tempest.

Change here is rapid and chaotic; however, this place of primal chaos can be controlled by a strong mind. Such a person can direct the constant change within the tempest to produce anything they can imagine short of life itself. While it requires a strong will to stabilize anything, making that change permanent requires an even stronger will. If someone permanently stabilizes a large enough volume of the chaos, or if enough permanently stabilized chaos is brought together, it may bubble up to the next layer, taking them with it. There, the person can continue to exert their will, but only to prevent the bubble from collapsing. (This may help to explain why the large, colonized bubbles rarely, if ever, collapse.)