The Far Realm
The Far Realm occupies the distorted outer fringes of Eldareth's Reality Sphere, outside the conventional arrangement of the Material, Elemental, Energy, Transitive, and Outer Planes.
It remains part of Eldareth's wider cosmology rather than Driftspace, but its structure differs sharply from that of the better understood planes. Matter, distance, gravity, time, and even perception can operate according to unfamiliar rules, sometimes changing considerably between neighboring regions.
Despite its reputation as a place of madness, the Far Realm is not an empty expanse of incomprehensible chaos. It contains landscapes, ecosystems, settlements, civilizations, and forms of life that developed under conditions very different from those known elsewhere in Eldareth's Reality Sphere.
The Far Realm is not part of the ordinary Astral or Ethereal transit networks.
Structure
The Far Realm does not possess a single, easily mapped geography.
Many known regions consist of overlapping layers or strata occupying the same apparent space. A creature, structure, or landscape may extend through several of these layers at once, while an observer perceives only the portions present within the layer they currently occupy.
Movement between layers is equally unusual. Native creatures may cross between them with little apparent effort, while outsiders often require particular locations, changes in perception, deliberate mental focus, or other methods that remain poorly understood.
The layers themselves are not always permanent. They can divide, converge, change their relationship to one another, or develop new connections.
Some regions nevertheless remain stable for long periods and support permanent ecosystems or civilizations. Their physical laws may simply differ greatly from those familiar elsewhere in Eldareth's Reality Sphere.
A condition that appears impossible to an Eldarethian traveler may therefore be entirely consistent within the region where it occurs.
Physical Conditions
Gravity, distance, and time vary throughout the Far Realm.
Some regions possess recognizable ground and a consistent downward direction. Others have several competing directions of gravity or none at all. Two locations that appear close together may require a lengthy journey to cross, while apparently distant places can sometimes be reached by passing through a particular layer or boundary.
The passage of time is similarly unreliable. Some regions appear to follow ordinary progression, while others produce discrepancies between a traveler's experience and the time that has passed elsewhere.
Movement can also differ considerably. Travelers have described open air, dense fluid-like environments, weightless expanses, and spaces where direction appears to respond partly to thought.
These conditions are often locally consistent even when they differ greatly from one region to another. Travelers who understand the rules of a particular area may learn to navigate it reliably, though that knowledge may have little value once they enter another.
Landscapes
The Far Realm contains environments that can be recognized as landscapes, though their scale and structure are often difficult for outsiders to interpret.
Accounts describe alien seas, vast organic plains, forests of tentacled growths, gelatinous masses large enough to form terrain, and regions where living tissue and mineral formations grow alongside one another.
Some travelers have reported enormous blue globes descending through open regions before rupturing and releasing parasitic creatures into the surrounding environment.
Other accounts describe distant forms comparable in scale to cities. Depending on the layer from which they are observed, these shapes may resemble marine creatures, immense organisms, moving landforms, or structures whose purpose cannot easily be determined.
Permanent settlements also exist within the Far Realm. Their inhabitants do not necessarily construct cities according to Material Plane ideas of streets, walls, or stable orientation, and portions of the same settlement may occupy several layers simultaneously.
Because of this, two accurate descriptions of the same location can appear to contradict one another.
Inhabitants
The Far Realm is home to a wide variety of life, including numerous sentient peoples and established civilizations.
Illithids, beholders, grell, neogi, and tsochars are among the better-known inhabitants encountered by Eldarethian scholars and travelers. Countless other species remain poorly documented or have never been formally classified.
These peoples do not form a single civilization or common alliance. Their societies possess their own histories, rivalries, ambitions, beliefs, and relationships with one another.
Some regard outsiders as prey or hosts. Others seek slaves, knowledge, territory, resources, or opportunities for trade and expansion. Some show little interest in Eldareth or its peoples unless disturbed.
Many inhabitants are classified by Eldarethian scholars as aberrations, though the term describes their profound difference from familiar forms of life rather than a shared culture or common allegiance.
Creatures native to the Far Realm are often adapted to conditions that outsiders find impossible, including layered space, altered gravity, unusual atmospheres, and forms of perception extending beyond ordinary sight or hearing.
The societies found there should therefore be understood individually. An illithid settlement, neogi trading enclave, beholder domain, or another Far Realm civilization may have little in common with its neighbors beyond the environment in which it developed.
Altered Life
The conditions of the Far Realm can produce lasting changes in creatures exposed to them.
Some visitors develop physical alterations after prolonged stays, particularly when living within environments whose laws differ significantly from those of the Material Plane. These changes vary widely and do not follow a predictable pattern.
Other creatures encountered there resemble familiar animals or humanoids only superficially. Their anatomy may contain additional structures, unusual symmetries, misplaced sensory organs, or forms that only become fully visible when viewed across several layers.
It is not always possible to determine whether such beings originated in that form, adapted to the Far Realm over time, or were altered after arriving there.
Exposure alone also does not produce the same result in every creature. The nature of the region, length of exposure, and individual involved can all affect what changes occur.
Effects on Visitors
Travel through the Far Realm can affect both perception and thought.
Visitors have reported missing memories, false recollections, difficulty judging distance, sensory information that continues after leaving a region, and uncertainty over whether an event was experienced directly or merely perceived through another layer.
Some travelers struggle to readjust to ordinary space after returning. Straight lines may briefly appear curved, familiar rooms may seem incorrectly proportioned, or objects may appear to occupy positions they cannot physically possess.
Others experience lingering mental effects. Memories may return in the wrong order, unfamiliar thoughts can briefly feel like their own, or perceptions formed in layered space may continue after the traveler has returned to a more familiar plane.
Longer exposure can produce more serious effects, including changes in identity, persistent intrusive perceptions, or physical alteration.
No single response is universal. Two travelers exposed to the same region may return with very different experiences.
Great Old Ones
Among the most powerful beings associated with the Far Realm are entities commonly called Great Old Ones or Elder Evils.
Some scholars collectively refer to several of these powers as the Unshaped Court, though little is known about their relationships with one another.
Their abilities rival those attributed to powerful divine beings, but whether they should truly be considered gods remains disputed. They do not necessarily possess worship, domains, or divine structures resembling those of Eldareth's deities.
The civilizations of the Far Realm should not be assumed to serve them. Some Great Old Ones possess cults, servants, or creatures shaped by their influence, while other Far Realm societies may oppose them, avoid them, exploit them, or have no meaningful relationship with them at all.
Even among those influenced by a Great Old One, the nature of that relationship can differ considerably. Service may be willing, coerced, instinctive, or the result of psychic domination. In other cases, creatures may act according to their own interests while unknowingly furthering the designs of a more powerful entity.
The influence of a Great Old One can sometimes extend beyond the Far Realm even when the entity itself cannot cross into Eldareth.
Nyxarath, the Eye Beyond the Stars, is one of the Great Old Ones best known to Eldarethian scholars.
Breaches
The Far Realm is not normally reached through the Astral or Ethereal Planes.
Contact most often occurs through breaches, specialized planar magic, or rare crossings capable of reaching beyond Eldareth's conventional planar structure.
A breach can allow far more than creatures to pass through. Foreign matter, unusual environmental conditions, psychic effects, and portions of a Far Realm landscape can intrude upon the surrounding plane while the opening remains active.
The area around a breach may therefore begin behaving according to conditions normally found on the other side. Gravity can shift, distances may become unreliable, unfamiliar growths can spread, and creatures adapted to the Far Realm may survive where they ordinarily could not.
The severity of these effects varies with the size and stability of the breach.
Most breaches are unstable and eventually collapse, though sufficiently powerful forces can hold one open or enlarge it. Some may remain small enough to allow only limited influence through, while larger openings can support the passage of vessels, armies, or extensive portions of a foreign environment.
Anything that has already crossed remains after the connection closes.
The Incursion
Eldareth's first substantial warning of the danger posed by the Far Realm came centuries after the Upheaval, when the Naerid vessel Ithis Veyra crashed near Lake Morren in the Greyspires of Vel'Nathar.
The surviving Naerids were recovered by monks from nearby Rimecliff Monastery. They described disturbances spreading through regions and planar routes their people had traveled for generations, including crossings that had become unsafe and creatures or intelligences they could not fully explain.
Their accounts extended beyond the planar structure known to Eldarethian scholars. Much of what they had encountered could only be communicated through psionic impressions, and even the Naerids did not claim to understand the full scale or origin of what was happening.
Their warning was accompanied by a more direct legacy.
With their numbers failing and little hope of survival, the Naerids transferred portions of their psionic essence and knowledge to the monks who had sheltered them. The process was dangerous, and not everyone survived. Those who did were permanently changed and became the first Venthari.
The transformation proved hereditary. Later generations preserved the Naerid knowledge that survived the crash and developed their own disciplines for understanding and controlling the psionic abilities they had inherited. These traditions eventually became the Way of the Celestine.
The Naerids also entrusted the monks of Rimecliff with the Celestine Obelisk, a crystalline structure recovered from Ithis Veyra whose complete purpose was not understood.
More than five centuries after the Upheaval, the warnings of the Naerids were realized during the Incursion.
Illithid nautiloids appeared above settlements throughout Eldareth, followed by beholders, grell, neogi, tsochars, and other aberrant forces. Some communities were conquered through open attack, while others fell under psychic domination before neighboring lands understood what had occurred.
The invading forces did not represent a single people or civilization. Illithids pursued domination and control, neogi took captives for slavery and trade, tsochars infiltrated living hosts, and other creatures followed motives of their own. Their arrival through an expanding network of breaches nevertheless transformed scattered attacks into a wider war.
The Venthari became important to the defense almost immediately. Their inherited psionic abilities and the disciplines developed through the Way of the Celestine gave them experience with forms of mental interference that most soldiers and spellcasters had never been trained to resist.
They helped identify psychic domination, protect vulnerable minds, assist those affected by mental interference, and teach others how to recognize or resist psionic attacks. The surviving Naerid records preserved at Rimecliff also provided scholars and military leaders with one of the few existing sources of information concerning the enemy.
The relationship between the Incursion and the Upheaval remains disputed.
The fracture of the Mythal had been followed by extensive planar instability throughout Eldareth, and many scholars believe those disturbances contributed to the scale of the later breaches. Some argue that the altered boundaries made large crossings from the Far Realm easier to establish. Others believe the Upheaval may also have drawn attention toward Eldareth from entities capable of detecting disturbances across extraordinary planar distances.
Both may have played a part.
No surviving evidence has established whether the invading forces deliberately followed the effects of the Upheaval, spent generations searching for their source, or discovered Eldareth through other means.
As the Incursion continued, study of the Celestine Obelisk intensified. The Venthari opened access to scholars from outside the Way, bringing arcanists, artificers, planar theorists, linguists, and specialists in psionic phenomena to Rimecliff.
Their research revealed that the Obelisk was one part of a much larger network.
Similar structures existed on distant worlds and in other realms, capable of recognizing and answering one another across extraordinary distances. Even the surviving Naerid records did not identify those who had originally constructed them, but their purpose became increasingly clear.
The Obelisks had been created to detect and resist severe disturbances associated with the Far Realm.
Individual structures could recognize disruptions along planar boundaries and pass signals through the wider network. When several responded together, they could produce a combined psionic resonance capable of disrupting Far Realm creatures and energies.
The Incursion reached its turning point when Nyxarath, the Eye Beyond the Stars, attempted to cross into Eldareth through an exceptionally large breach.
The Venthari waited until the crossing had progressed far enough for both the breach and the emerging entity to become vulnerable, then activated the Celestine Obelisk.
The relic sent its signal beyond Eldareth.
Other Obelisks answered.
How many responded or where they were located remains unknown. Their combined resonance returned through the Celestine Obelisk and spread across the breach and the surrounding battlefield.
Illithid concentration failed, psychic control weakened, and many aberrant creatures were thrown into confusion or incapacitated by the resonance.
Nyxarath was caught while only partially manifested within the Material Plane.
As the Obelisk network reached full resonance, the breach collapsed around the emerging Great Old One. The portion of Nyxarath that had crossed into Eldareth was severed from whatever remained beyond the boundary and torn apart as the opening failed.
Whether Nyxarath itself was destroyed, wounded, or merely severed from its Material manifestation remains unknown.
The collapse of the breach broke much of the invading force's momentum. Dominated soldiers and civilians regained control of their own minds, coordinated Far Realm forces fell into disorder, and Eldareth's defenders were able to begin retaking territory that had been lost during the earlier stages of the war.
The Incursion did not end in a single battle. Aberrations remained throughout Eldareth, occupied settlements still had to be reclaimed, and surviving breaches required containment or closure.
Its main advance had nevertheless been broken.
The war permanently changed Eldareth's understanding of the Far Realm. What had once existed largely at the edge of planar scholarship had demonstrated the ability to reach directly into the Material Plane, sustain civilizations of its own, and send creatures, armies, and environmental conditions across boundaries previously thought to offer far greater protection.
The Incursion also transformed the wider world's relationship with the Venthari. The knowledge preserved at Rimecliff, the disciplines of the Way of the Celestine, and the Celestine Obelisk had all proved essential in resisting a threat few others had been prepared to understand.
Knowledge of the Far Realm could no longer be dismissed as distant planar speculation.