Arborea, also known as the Glades of Arborea, is the plane of Chaotic Good among the Outer Planes.

Its societies place great value on freedom, vitality, and lives shaped by personal choice. Across the plane, wilderness and settled land exist alongside art, cultivation, celebration, and adventure, with no single structure governing them as a whole.

Life flourishes throughout Arborea on an extraordinary scale. Forests can extend across vast regions, animal migrations may involve thousands of creatures, and mountains or seas can encompass areas comparable to entire countries.

Arborea has two known layers: Arvandor and Aquallor. The Emerald Wilds, divine realm of Yssarel, the Wildmother, extend across one of the natural passages between them.

Structure and Environment

Arvandor forms the terrestrial layer of Arborea, while Aquallor is dominated by its immense sea. Both support extensive ecosystems and settled regions shaped by natural processes operating on a scale far greater than those familiar in Eldareth.

Change is constant throughout the plane. Rivers shift their courses, forests spread and recede, animal populations follow changing conditions, and storms or fire can reshape entire regions before new growth takes hold. These processes give Arborea much of its restless character.

Its scale can also make distances difficult to judge. A forest may take days longer to cross than expected, while mountains visible on the horizon can lie much farther away than they first appear.

Freedom and Passion

Arborean settlements vary widely in government and custom. Authority usually depends on local tradition, continued trust, or the ability to meet a community's needs, and those who hold power are expected to give people reason to accept it.

Life in Arborea is often experienced intensely. Celebration, grief, affection, competition, physical effort, and creative work can all feel unusually immediate, making sustained indifference difficult even though the plane imposes no particular emotion on those within it.

Challenge and Adventure

Many Arborean cultures value difficult experiences undertaken by choice, whether through travel, competition, exploration, craft, performance, or physical challenge. Success matters, but so do the skill gained and the stories created through taking part.

This attitude extends into the wilderness. Large regions remain difficult to cross, and many inhabitants willingly travel beyond familiar territory for the experience of seeing what lies there.

Movement and Travel

Arborea can be crossed by conventional means, though its scale makes long journeys demanding. Roads and paths connect many settled parts of Arvandor, while travel beyond them can involve immense forests, broad rivers, deserts, or mountain systems extending across great distances.

The geography remains stable enough for ordinary navigation, though travelers can easily underestimate the true size or distance of major landmarks.

Travel through Aquallor depends on ships, swimming, flight, or other means suited to the sea. Coastal routes and island chains provide dependable stopping points, while open-water voyages may cross long stretches with little shelter.

Connections to Other Planes

Arborea can be reached through the Astral Plane and through established planar portals.

The River Oceanus provides one of its most important connections to Elysium. After passing through that plane, the river reaches Aquallor and merges into its wider waters.

Other permanent crossings are found near major settlements and divine realms, while rarer portals provide access to more distant planes.

Day, Night, and Weather

Arvandor experiences a recognizable cycle of day and night, with bright days followed by warm nights beneath dense fields of stars.

Weather develops rapidly across its enormous landscapes. Storms form around mountain systems, heavy rain moves through valleys, and seasonal winds influence migration and plant growth across wide regions.

Aquallor experiences equally active weather, with currents and seasonal changes shaping life both above and beneath the sea.

Inhabitants

Arborea supports an enormous variety of mortal, celestial, and planar life. Familiar animals have counterparts throughout the plane, though many grow larger, live longer, or possess traits uncommon in Eldareth.

Nature spirits are widespread and may be bound to a particular creature, territory, or natural feature. Their power varies considerably, from spirits closely tied to a small region to ancient beings that have guarded the same lands for centuries.

Fey also live and travel within Arborea, including communities established there over long periods of time.

Animal Lords

Animal Lords are rare and ancient celestial beings associated with broad kinds of animal life.

Each is a singular being representing a particular kind of creature and qualities closely connected to its way of life. A Wolf Lord, for example, is associated with wolves collectively rather than with a single pack or territory.

Their forms vary from immense idealized animals to humanoid or partially bestial shapes. Their personalities and movements are equally varied, often reflecting migrations, seasons, territories, or other patterns associated with the creatures they represent.

Animal Lords possess celestial power but no divine rank or authority over mortal worshippers. Animal spirits may still recognize or seek out the Animal Lord associated with their kind, though no common hierarchy binds these beings together.

Many traditions connect the Animal Lords with the first great flourishing of life under Yssarel. Some cultures call them Yssarel's First Beasts or the Great Children of Yssarel, reflecting that ancient association while preserving their independence.

Animal Lords are ageless but can be slain. Those destroyed may eventually reform within Arborea, though such a return can take many years.

Natural Hazards

Arborea is hospitable to mortal life, but its enormous natural systems can still be dangerous. Powerful wildlife, severe weather, wildfire, flooding, and difficult terrain can threaten travelers who enter unfamiliar regions without adequate preparation.

Nature spirits and Animal Lords may also defend territories or populations threatened by deliberate destruction. Many serious problems begin when travelers underestimate the scale or conditions of the region they are crossing.

Survival

Food and fresh water are widely available throughout much of Arvandor, allowing experienced travelers to survive for long periods away from settlements. Difficult terrain, great distances, and powerful wildlife still make some regions demanding to cross.

Aquallor requires different planning because journeys may involve long periods at sea, where navigation, weather, currents, and the distance between safe stopping points become especially important.

Arvandor

Arvandor is the terrestrial layer of Arborea, a vast expanse of forests, grasslands, mountains, river valleys, cultivated country, and wilderness.

Ancient forests cover large portions of the layer, with canopies sometimes rising hundreds of feet above relatively open ground crossed by streams and scattered glades. Beyond them lie broad grasslands followed by migrating herds, fertile valleys supporting farms and vineyards, and mountain regions shared by settled communities and wild creatures.

Food grows readily across much of Arvandor, and local communities generally manage hunting, agriculture, and gathering with the continued health of nearby ecosystems in mind. Settlements range from isolated homesteads to large cities, reflecting the varied cultures and landscapes found across the layer.

Great Migrations

Animal migrations are among the most dramatic natural events in Arvandor. Great herds can cross entire regions as seasons, rainfall, breeding cycles, and available food draw them onward, with predators and other animals following the same movements.

Communities along established migration routes often design roads and fields around them, allowing the animals to continue passing through the region.

Animal Lords are occasionally seen among these migrations, particularly those associated with species that travel great distances.

Mithardir, the White Desert

Mithardir is a vast desert region of Arvandor, shaped by pale dunes, chalk-white stone, salt flats, dry valleys, and distant mountain ridges.

Life is less immediately visible there than in Arborea's forests or grasslands but remains well established. Hardy vegetation clusters around seasonal waterways and isolated springs, while desert creatures occupy regions that may initially appear empty.

Rainfall is rare and can transform the landscape quickly when it arrives. Dormant plants emerge, temporary pools form, and broad stretches of desert may flower before dry conditions return.

Ancient ruins survive in some parts of Mithardir, though little reliable information remains about the people who built them. Crossing the region demands careful preparation because of its heat, immense distances, limited water, and sparse permanent settlement.

Aquallor

Aquallor is the maritime layer of Arborea, an immense green-blue sea scattered with islands and reefs above deep ocean regions.

The layer has a clear surface and seabed, with tides, weather, and distinct marine ecosystems. Shallow waters support broad reefs and kelp forests, while trenches descend into regions where natural light disappears and different forms of life become dominant.

Life of Aquallor

Aquallor supports enormous populations of marine life. Great schools move across the sea, while whales and other large creatures follow migration routes spanning vast distances.

Marine Animal Lords also inhabit the layer, with their lives and territories shaped by currents, reefs, spawning grounds, migration routes, and the open sea. Their movements may carry them across immense regions over the course of a season or longer.

Permanent communities exist above and beneath the water, especially around islands, reefs, protected coasts, and dependable sections of Oceanus.

Storms and Voyages

Weather is one of Aquallor's greatest hazards, with powerful storms capable of producing immense waves and currents that carry vessels far from their intended routes.

Long voyages remain common, and many Aqualloran cultures value journeys undertaken for exploration, competition, fishing, or the experience of crossing unfamiliar waters. Such voyages occupy much the same place in local tradition that difficult journeys through the wilderness do in Arvandor.

Oceanus

The River Oceanus reaches Arborea through Aquallor after passing through Elysium. Its waters gradually merge with the surrounding sea while retaining currents and other subtle qualities recognizable to experienced navigators.

Those signs allow travelers to follow Oceanus back toward Elysium, making it one of the most dependable routes between the two Upper Planes.

The Emerald Wilds

The Emerald Wilds are the divine realm of Yssarel, the Wildmother, extending across one of the natural passages between Arvandor and Aquallor.

The realm begins amid the forests, grasslands, rivers, and cultivated regions of Arvandor, then gradually shifts as waterways widen toward the coast and continue through islands, reefs, kelp forests, and open sea. Travelers following these routes can move naturally from one layer into the other.

Life follows its ordinary cycles throughout the Wilds. Predation, migration, competition, growth, decay, and the effects of storms all continue freely, while Yssarel's followers focus on preventing exploitation or destruction severe enough to stop an environment from recovering.

Hunting, cultivation, fishing, and harvesting are accepted when the surrounding ecosystem can sustain what is taken. Animal Lords and lesser nature spirits also enter the realm freely and retain their independence while there.

Since Yssarel ceased speaking following Lyrael's death, those who seek her guidance within the Emerald Wilds watch the natural world for signs of her attention.