Skein of Worlds:The Transitive Planes

Skein of Worlds « Cosmology and Setting « The Transitive Planes

The transitive planes are those planes that exist as fabric upon which the other planes rest, at least metaphorically speaking. The vocabulary of mortals is ill equipped to truly describe things that exist in more than three dimensions. What follows is an attempt to use this limited vocabulary to describe the various ways these various planes interconnect.

The Ethereal Planes

The simplest of the transitive planes is the Ethereal Plane. This plane exists as like a shadow behind the material plane, at least around the spheres. It seems that the Ethereal Plane doesn't extend very far into the Void. Only the closest of spheres are connected ethereally. Some planar travelers tell of the Deep Ethereal, where it extends farther and farther into the Void, at the same time getting farther and farther from the material plane. Such tales invariably involve frightening encounters with strange and dangerous creatures, although how much truth there is in these tales is unknown.

While near the material plane, the Ethereal looks very similar. Colors are muted, but the terrain is mostly the same. Moving deeper into the Ethereal is like moving though the layers of an onion, although there seems to be no center to move towards or away from. As the material plane gets further away, the terrain becomes more and more alien. Landmarks are lost, and even which way it is back to the material plane becomes harder and harder to determine. Not only do travelers through the Ethereal Plane risk getting lost, they must also deal with the difficulty of moving deeper and deeper through the layers. Most spells that don't allow travel to a specific place can only traverse a single layer at a time. The Deep Ethereal may be a means to travel between spheres, but by no means is it an easy route.

Old buildings may bleed over into the first layers Ethereal after many long years, and if such a building has been recently destroyed, it may be possible to see a ghost of the building still. Life, on the other hand, doesn't bleed through in the same way as inanimate materials do. Life only exists within a single layer, and each layer seems to have at least some life of its own.

The Astral Plane

The Astral Plane is, more than any other plane, the fabric upon which everything else rests. All places connect to the Astral Plane in some way. Being the place between places, it's a fairly strange place. Few of the normal rules apply there. Distance is especially tricky. For example, while near a sphere (or more correctly, the vortex leading to a sphere) it may appear like a grapefruit held at arms length. You can circle around it just as if it really were such a ball; however, you can't simply reach out and grab it. As you try to move closer, the ball simply gets bigger. Even once it seems to be the size of a house, it's still out of reach, but it takes longer to circle around. Eventually, you get close enough to begin to vague shape of the terrain below, until you suddenly appear on the surface of the sphere you were approaching. This isn't at all precise though, so you may end up a long way from where you thought you'd land. All this time, this one sphere is the only one you can see clearly. The other spheres in the same system are just faint dots in the distance. Other systems are completely lost in the gray of the plane.

There's more to it than that though. Any spheres connected by a portal will be connected by a thin gray thread. While the gate is open, this thread appears as a bright silver and is fairly easy to see; however, while the portal is closed, the thread is dull, fading into the background of the plane. In this state, it's quite hard to see.

Following a thread away from a sphere is fairly simple once you've spotted it, but again, nothing is ever as simple as it first seems. Since you can rarely see where a thread is going (and fairly quickly you won't be able to see where it started) you just have to follow it blindly until you eventually get somewhere. If you lose track of the thread somewhere in the middle, it is practically impossible to find it again. If you have the magic to get back to where you started, you can try again. If not, you may have to find somewhere else to settle down. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the time it takes to travel between spheres seems to have more to do with how well you know where you're going that with the distance between those spheres on the material plane. Moving between two familiar spheres might only take a day or two of travel. Traveling to an unknown destination could take several weeks.

You can also attempt to follow a thread down to the sphere it came from. Unless the portal that thread came from is out in the open and the thread is glowing, you're sure to land fairly far off the mark. If neither are true, your chances of success are very slim.

In addition to the weirdness surrounding spheres and portals, there's the rest of the plane. At all times, there are three great orbs hanging in space around you. One is a bright white. The second is a deep black. The third is a chaotic swirl of color. The relative size and orientation of these three orbs might change, but this movement seems to have little to do with any movements you might make.

These great orbs always seem very large and very far off. If, however, you leave the spheres and attempt to travel towards one of these orbs, it will slowly get bigger, while the other two will begin to shrink. Eventually you'll get to the point where the orb fills half of the area around you. You will then find yourself traveling away from a great gray orb with two small spots on it. Soon afterwards, you'll land in one of the outer planes.

There's still more to moving around the Astral Plane than this, but that will have to wait for the description of the Divine Realms.

Finally there is all of the other stuff that exists physically on the Astral Plane. Random bits of matter, ranging from dust to continents, wind up on the Astral Plane from time to time. Finding this stuff seems to be mostly a matter of luck, at least the first time. Various creatures call these places home. Some scholars believe that all life on the Astral Plane was brought there from other places at some point in the past. Some other scholars believe that while this may be true for most creatures, some may actually be native to the plane.

The Shadow Plane

If, while on the Astral Plane, you attempt to move away from everything, if you move in the right direction, somewhat inward, you might notice the dull gray light of the plane beginning to fade. Eventually you'll enter an area dominated by shadows. This is the Shadow Plane. One way of describing it is the Astral Plane's Ethereal Plane. This description may not be entirely inaccurate. While it's possible, if not easy, to reach the Ethereal Planes from the Astral Plane, it seems to be much easier from the Shadow Plane. Unfortunately, distances between places on the Shadow Plane seem to be somewhat more related to the distances on the material plane.

A sphere on the Shadow Plane is not simply a giant portal like it would be on the Astral Plane. If you get close enough, there is an actual surface to land on. The shape of the surface seems to have little to do with the shape of the sphere it's connected to. On these shadow spheres, there are occasionally pools of... something. These pools are portals to the Ethereal Planes connected to the same sphere, but not always to just the first layer.

These shadow spheres are inhabited, but these creatures don't seem to have much to do with the creatures from the connected spheres.

The Deep Places

It has already been mentioned that you can travel deeper and deeper into the Ethereal Planes, but the same is also true of the other transitive planes. On the Astral Plane, if you attempt to travel towards the gray horizon in between the three great orbs, they will eventually fade into the distance and you will be surrounded by an endless gray nothingness. This is the beginning of the Deep Astral. It is possible to get farther and farther away from everything else in the cosmos, but little is known about what, if anything, is out there.

The same is true of the Shadow Plane. Traveling deeper and deeper into the shadows, you begin to move away from the shadow spheres and all other connections to the rest of the cosmos. Here, there seems to be nothing but raw shadow. These Deep Places seems to go on forever, becoming more and more inhospitable to a traveler from the material plane, but some scholars theorize that if you were to go deep enough into any of these places you might leave the cosmos altogether. No one knows what such a place would be like, but most people who think it exists call it the Far Realms.