The Ethereal Plane

The Ethereal Plane is coexistent with the Material Plane and often other planes as well. It’s a misty, fog-bound dimension, filled with snow-like dust that floats in space, and is colorless, having only black, white, and grey tones.

The Ethereal touches the Prime Material through what is called the Border Ethereal and connects it to the Inner planes The non-border region is called the Deep Ethereal. The Deep Ethereal swirls with large blobs of protomatter which can form a demiplane when a critical size was reached.

The Ethereal Plane has a normal atmosphere, and inhabitants breathe normally. However, there is no food or water other than what travelers bring with them. Travel in the Ethereal and Border Ethereal is accomplished by force of will—you wish to go somewhere and you do, at your normal rate of movement. There is a sense of up and down but no real gravity exists.

When travelers cross into the Border Ethereal, they and all their possessions are converted to their Ethereal equivalents, allowing free movement through the solid matter of the adjacent plane. Since everything ispermeated with ethereality, an air-breathing creature could breathe air and could not drown in a lake nor be crushed by a rock.

The Material Plane itself is visible from the Ethereal Plane, but it appears muted and indistinct, its colors blurring into each other and its edges turning fuzzy. Ethereal denizens watch the Material Plane as though viewing it through distorted and frosted glass. While it is possible to see into the Material Plane from the Ethereal Plane, the Ethereal Plane is usually invisible to those on the Material Plane.

A traveler on the Ethereal Plane is invisible, incorporeal, and utterly silent to someone on the Material Plane, and ethereal listeners only hear Material Plane sounds that originate up to 60 feet away. The Ethereal plane emits its own diffuse light, so ethereal observers do not need torches to see onto the Material Plane, even if it's pitch-black. This makes the Ethereal Plane very useful for reconnaissance, spying on opponents, and other occasions when it's handy to move around without being detected.

The plane has its own inhabitants; some of these are other ethereal travelers, but the ghosts found here pose a particular peril to those who walk the fog. Magical beasts such as the ethereal marauder, phase spider, and ethereal filcher use the Ethereal Plane to hunt prey.

Portals from other planes may open onto the Ethereal Plane, rather than the corresponding point on the Material Plane, and appear as curtains of shimming colors. To get to another plane, one had to pass through a curtain of vaporous color into the Deep Ethereal, then traverse that region until reaching the curtain that demarcated the Border Ethereal of the destination plane. When one passes through a curtain into the Deep Ethereal, time slows down to one tenth the rate it flows in the Border Ethereal and the plane that it borders.