The Astral Plane

The Astral Plane, also known as the Astral Sea, is the transitive plane connecting the Prime Material Plane to the Outer Planes within the same Reality Sphere.

It is an open expanse of deep silvery-blue light with no conventional ground or horizon. Distant stars, broad clouds, drifting fragments of matter, and luminous color pools provide some of its few recognizable landmarks.

The Eternal Archive, shared divine realm of Io and Ao, exists within the Astral Plane. The Mythal can also become perceptible from the Astral where travelers approach the planar boundary surrounding Eldareth.

Structure and Environment

The Astral Plane has no conventional surface.

Silvery-blue light extends in every direction, broken by distant points of light and immense clouds ranging from pale wisps to dense formations resembling suspended thunderheads. Some stretch across great distances, while others form long columns, funnels, or slowly shifting banks.

Fragments of solid matter also drift through the plane. Some are little more than isolated pieces of stone or debris, while larger masses can support structures, outposts, or permanent settlements.

Gravity is absent throughout most of the Astral. Objects retain their mass and momentum but do not naturally fall in any particular direction, leaving no universal distinction between above and below.

The plane is closely associated with thought. Intention and mental focus influence movement, allowing travelers to cross the Astral without relying on conventional ground, wings, or currents.

Movement and Travel

Creatures within the Astral Plane can move by directing themselves through thought.

By concentrating on a direction, a traveler can propel themselves through the surrounding expanse. Creatures accustomed to the plane learn to alter speed and direction through changes in focus rather than physical movement.

Physical objects can still be pushed, thrown, carried, or propelled by other means. Without gravity to alter their course, they continue moving until another force acts upon them.

Distance is difficult to judge. A structure that appears nearby may remain distant for a considerable time, while planar routes do not always correspond neatly to measurements used on the Material Plane.

Experienced travelers navigate using color pools, permanent structures, known routes, magical guidance, and other recognizable features.

Ships and other vessels can also cross the Astral Sea. These are particularly useful for transporting large groups, cargo, or travelers who cannot reliably navigate the plane through thought alone.

Connections to Other Planes

The Astral Plane provides the principal transitive route between the Prime Material Plane and the Outer Planes.

Its natural network of color pools and planar conduits connects destinations within the same Reality Sphere. The nine Outer Planes can be reached through these routes, making the Astral an important passage for planar travelers, celestials, fiends, divine servants, and others moving between Eldareth and the wider Outer Planes.

The Elemental Planes, Feywild, and Shadowfell are instead connected to the Material Plane primarily through the Ethereal Plane.

The Positive and Negative Energy Planes do not belong to either ordinary transitive network and are generally reached through direct planar magic, established portals, or other controlled crossings.

Powerful magic and deliberately constructed portals can sometimes bypass these usual relationships, but such passages are separate from the Astral Plane's natural network.

The Astral Plane does not provide passage between Reality Spheres. No amount of ordinary Astral travel leads into another universe. Multiversal travel requires leaving the Reality Sphere and crossing Driftspace through methods capable of surviving and navigating it.

The Mythal

The Mythal is the divine barrier established at the end of the Age of Divinity following the Last War of the Gods.

It is not a single gateway or structure located somewhere within the Astral Plane. Created by Ao after the Prime Deities agreed that the greatest divine powers should no longer freely manifest within Eldareth, the Mythal extends across the planar boundary surrounding the mortal world. It becomes most apparent from the Astral when that boundary is approached.

Accounts of its appearance differ. Some travelers describe immense lattices of divine energy, others see unsupported arches extending beyond sight, while still others report overlapping geometric patterns that do not follow ordinary distance or direction.

For most travelers, the Mythal presents little or no obstruction. Mortals and many celestials, fiends, spirits, and other extraplanar beings can cross the boundary normally.

Its resistance increases with divine power.

Greater Deities cannot pass through the Mythal and manifest fully within Eldareth. The restriction cannot be bypassed simply by placing a comparable amount of divine power within an incarnation or other vessel.

Demigods fall below this threshold and can cross normally. Feonar is the sole known Greater Deity exempt from the restriction, an exception written into the Mythal from its creation.

The Mythal limits divine presence rather than divine influence. Prayer, divine magic, dreams, visions, omens, and communication with mortal servants continue to cross the boundary.

During the Upheaval, the Mythal fractured but did not collapse. Its principal restriction remains functional. The fracture was accompanied by much wider instability in Eldareth's planar boundaries, contributing to the phenomenon now known as the Planar Drift.

Time

Time continues to pass within the Astral Plane, but many biological effects associated with its passage are suspended.

Creatures wholly within the Astral do not normally age and have no ordinary need to eat, drink, or breathe while they remain there.

For this reason, the Astral Plane is sometimes described as timeless, though the term can be misleading. Events still occur normally. Travelers can move, fight, converse, study, and experience the passage of days or years even while their bodies remain physically unchanged.

This creates unusual conditions for communities that remain within the Astral for long periods. Children do not mature normally while they remain there, and adults do not grow older.

Those who wish to grow or age must spend time on a plane where ordinary biological processes resume.

Astral Projection

Some forms of planar travel allow a creature to enter the Astral Plane without physically transporting their body there.

The best known is astral projection.

During astral projection, the traveler's physical body remains behind in suspended animation while an astral form enters the Astral Plane. A silver cord maintains the connection between the two.

The cord is extraordinarily difficult to damage and is unaffected by most ordinary weapons or environmental hazards. Only unusual magical effects and exceptionally powerful forces are known to threaten it.

If the cord is severed, the connection between the astral form and the physical body is lost.

An astral traveler can move through the plane and use its color pools to reach connected destinations. It is also possible to enter the Astral physically through planar magic or other crossings. A creature entering in this manner brings its actual body and has no silver cord.

Physical entry carries greater risk because injuries suffered within the Astral affect the traveler directly.

Color Pools

Color pools are among the most important features of Astral travel.

Despite their name, they do not resemble flat pools or simple circular portals. They appear as broad nebulae of colored light suspended within the Astral Sea, sometimes stretching across great distances. Their outer edges may be faint and diffuse, while color and luminosity become more concentrated toward the passage at their center.

Different destinations produce distinct colors, patterns, and other visual qualities. Experienced travelers can identify many established routes by these characteristics.

Entering a color pool means passing into the luminous cloud and moving toward its concentrated interior. As the surrounding color deepens, the Astral gradually gives way to the connected plane. In some stable pools, travelers can perceive indistinct signs of the destination before completing the crossing.

Color pools do not remain equally stable. Some persist for centuries, while others expand, contract, shift, fade, or disappear.

Changes associated with the Planar Drift have made some established pools increasingly unpredictable. Routes toward particular Outer Planes can become broader and easier to locate, while others weaken or become difficult to reach. These changes reflect instability in the relationship between planes rather than physical movement through the Astral Sea.

Other planar conduits also exist. Some connect fixed locations more directly than ordinary color pools, though such passages may be artificial, unstable, guarded, or difficult to locate.

Inhabitants

The Astral Plane contains both native creatures and inhabitants who arrived from elsewhere.

Astral whales are among its largest known native creatures and travel through the open expanse over enormous distances. Astral dragons and smaller related creatures have also been recorded, while astral dreadnoughts are among the plane's most dangerous predators.

Other forms of life have adapted specifically to the unusual conditions of the Astral Sea, particularly its lack of gravity and dependence on thought-directed movement. Knowledge of many of these creatures remains incomplete because the plane is too large to survey reliably.

Celestials, fiends, and other extraplanar beings frequently use the Astral as a route between Eldareth and the Outer Planes. Mortal and other material civilizations can also establish ships, outposts, or settlements within it.

Residence within the Astral does not necessarily indicate Astral origin. Peoples encountered there may descend from civilizations elsewhere in the Reality Sphere and simply possess the knowledge or technology required for sustained planar travel.

Natural Hazards

The Astral Plane is not immediately hostile to mortal life, but travel through it carries significant risks.

Becoming lost is among the most common. The open environment provides few reliable landmarks, and travelers unfamiliar with established routes may move far from any useful color pool or settlement.

Psychic disturbances can also move through the plane. These can interfere with concentration, disrupt thought-directed movement, scatter groups of travelers, or force creatures away from their intended course.

Astral dreadnoughts and other predators present a more direct danger.

Unfamiliar color pools are another risk. Entering an unidentified route may carry travelers into an Outer Plane whose environment is immediately hostile or into territory controlled by inhabitants unwilling to receive them.

Drifting debris, abandoned structures, and wrecked vessels can conceal creatures, unstable magic, or other hazards.

Routes passing near areas where the Mythal's fracture is most apparent can be especially difficult to predict. The barrier remains functional, but the wider planar instability associated with the Upheaval has altered some routes and crossings in ways that remain poorly understood.

Survival

The Astral Plane is physically easier to survive in than many of the planes it connects.

Travelers wholly within it do not normally require air, food, or water and do not age. The absence of gravity also removes many ordinary environmental dangers.

Navigation remains the greater problem. Travelers must understand thought-directed movement, identify reliable landmarks, and know which color pools provide safe routes toward their destination.

Physically entering the Astral carries greater personal risk than astral projection because the traveler's actual body accompanies them.

Permanent settlements tend to form around stable structures, dependable color pools, or other landmarks capable of providing reliable reference points within the surrounding expanse.

The Eternal Archive

The Eternal Archive is the shared divine realm of Io and Ao.

It exists within the Astral Plane and serves as their principal seat beyond Eldareth.

Io is associated with time, fate, foresight, progression, and the study of possible futures. Ao is associated with space, boundaries, planar order, and the relationships between places.

Together, they are credited with the creation of the Weave.

The Eternal Archive contains records and knowledge associated with history, planar study, magic, and the observation of events across time and space. Its position within the Astral places it among the principal routes between Eldareth and the Outer Planes, though reaching the Archive is not simply a matter of traveling in the correct direction.

Those who reach it generally do so through established routes, divine guidance, or magic capable of locating the realm.

Ao's connection to the Mythal has also made the Archive an important source of knowledge concerning the barrier and Eldareth's planar boundaries. How much information concerning the Mythal's current condition can be found there remains uncertain.