Arborea

Arborea, also known as the Glades of Arborea, is the Outer Plane of individuality and independence, a good-natured place of celebrations and strong desires where personal freedom is paramount. A plane of joy as well as sorrow, Arborea is the home of the dreamers, a seemingly delicate sylvan realm of astounding heartiness and deep-seated enchantment. Its beauty is almost overwhelming, the landscape embodying the lovely and peaceful, and the passionate and wild, all at the same time. Arborea also hosts the Emerald Wilds, the divine realm of Yssarel, the Wildmother.

Arborea is a fantastically patchwork plane, a crazy quilt of thriving climates and environments with endless abundance. Settled landscapes are pleasant and pastoral, with gently rolling hills, meadows, vineyards, fruit orchards, and fields of oats, barley, wheat, and millet, all passing by in quaint succession. However, in the hinterlands between settlements, Arborea's wilderness can be almost impassable, increasing in hostility the deeper in one goes and not just because of prowling predators.

Arborea's larger than life aspect is both figurative and literal, the big emotions reflecting the big plane. The sheer extravagant size of everything simply cannot be understated: every craggy mountain is stupendous, every ravine unbelievably deep, every lush forest filled with monstrously huge trees, every ocean unimaginably deep, every river mighty, and every plain a wild stretch. Never doing small, Arborea's immensity makes it difficult to traverse due to steepness and distance.

All natural creatures and their giant versions from the Prime Material Plane, including mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and invertebrates, excluding enchanted creatures and monsters, are represented here, and they call Arborea their home.

Though most visitors to Arborea are unaware of it, the very land is alive with nature spirits. Some of these are the better known sylvan guardians such as dryads, sylphs, and sprites, but the actual spirits of the land itself are far greater. Every forest, glade, mountain, stream, and cloud has a guardian, and carving through virgin lands before polluting the environment is sure to provoke a reaction.

The day and night cycle of Arborea mimicks that of the Material Plane, a crystal blue sky with a golden sun above the trees in the day and a white moon amongst a river of stars on the warm nights.

Normally even the Arborean winter is mild, but the weather of the plane is as whimsical and unpredictable as the inhabitants Arborea's unpredictable weather might manifest as sudden squalls beating the paths with heavy winds, leaving sunny arcs of warm light filtering down from above minutes after it passes. There is seemingly always the faint sound music in the distance, as often the playing of instruments as the tune of wind curling through the holes in the trees. Even the weather at its most extreme doesn't soil the overpowering and bewildering beauty of the plane.

Arvandor, the first layer, contains the great forests for which Arborea is known, towering assortments of monstrous maple, birch, oak, lindens, and other deciduous, broadleaf trees rivaling the redwoods of the Material Plane in height.The height of the trees leave the forest floor relatively bereft of brush, the rolling land beneath the canopies a great open space of velvet moss and ferns. Clear glades are as common as briar patches and tangles, but paths snake through what undergrowth exist, and even without it one can climb and brachiate through the trees without touching the ground.

Flowers bloom and bear fruit simultaneously, and even in the wildest regions plentiful food can be found if one is clever. Generally even an urbanite can live off the land so long as they can pluck fruit from the bushes (which are almost invariably edible) and summon the will to climb trees.

Where the forests break away are open glades of wildflowers, naturally neat rows fruit trees, fields of swaying, wild wheat and barley, and untended orchards heavy with bounty. The naturally fertile climate gives Arborea its reputation for first-quality foodstuffs, hence the plane's moniker as the "breadbasket" of the planes.

The second layer of Arborea is an endless, emerald ocean known by many names; Aquallor, the Endless River, and the Green or Abiding Sea. However, unlike the Plane of Water, it has a surface and a bottom, which is ironically shallow for a plane of otherwise great size. The shallow seabed is occasionally broken by cavernous trenches that open up in random places, and the lower depths of the plane are pitch-black. Vortices in the depths connect the layer to locations in the Elemental Plane of Water and to Thalasia in Elysium.

It is disputed whether or not the plane has any land above surface, whether in the form of scattered islands or coastlines. The weather changes in Aquallor are as quick as those in Arvandor, taking the form of titanic storms that wrack the surface of the mighty sea, as well as great undersea currents that throw travelers miles off course.

Aquallor is considered to be the mouth of the river Oceanus, its last stop after running its course through the Upper planes from Thalasia. However, there are maelstroms near the bottom of the layer that are capable of transporting travelers back to the river's headwaters. This cyclic nature has led some sages to believe that the river infinitely loops back on itself.