#ethereal plane

[sleepdreamturnoversighnightmare]

Crash Landing in the Ethereal Plane

2:15 / Drop A

New single from my solo project, The Sonic Phenomena

[dm-moe]

💎THE RADIANT CITADEL💎

Features

Those familiar with the Radiant Citadel know the following details:

Hallmarks

The Radiant Citadel is an extraplanar refuge known for its collaborative society and ecological beauty. Local traditions of oral storytelling preserve ancestral wisdom from many worlds.

People of the Radiant Citadel

The majority of the Radiant Citadel’s populace comes from the civilizations that govern the city. This makes the population an ethnically diverse mix of humans, dragonborn, dwarves, elves, gnomes, and halflings, along with a variety of other races.

Languages

Common is widely known, along with dozens of other languages.

[daily-ynfg-worlds]

Ethereal Plane

[justavulcan]

Airmark's Guide to Planar Vegetables: Tombstone Lily

Large plants with a greyish, woody trunk topped by a milky white flower, the tombstone lily's most stunning feature other than its size is the translucent, faintly luminescent pods that grow beneath the flower. These pods are not fruit- in fact, they are the equivalent of stomachs, as the tombstone lily does not feed on water and sun.

Tombstone lilies are unique among the Ethereal Plane's fauna in that they are actively dangerous to the plane's other main inhabitants, souls in transit to their final destinations. They lure, trap, and consume these ethereal remains of the living, and slowly digest them over time for their energy.

Once a tombstone lily has consumed seven souls of suitable nutritional energy, they go to seed- forming a seed crown similar to a dandelion, with seeds that disperse on the misty currents of the Ethereal mist. Cultivating these flowers on other planes than their natural environment proves difficult for most gardeners, given their nutritional requirements; however, they can survive tolerably on the soul-infused water of the rivers Styx or Oceanus, and a constant access to either is sufficient for cultivation elsewhere.

Tombstone lilies are intelligent, and use telepathy to converse with passers-by as they digest their pods' contents. They are very aware of the ethereal conditions nearby, and can direct travelers to areas of interest if prompted. They can, however, subsist on the living, and it is dangerous to approach them if their pods are not full.

[dailycharacteroption]

Planar Tour Guide: Ethereal Plane part 4

(art by Nikolay Dikhtyarenko on Artstation)

 Adventuring

 So what does adventuring on the ethereal plane actually mean for our heroes? What does travelling to the Ghost World, or the way that it interacts with the material world, mean for them?

 The most common way for heroes to interact with the plane is of course foes from within it attacking the material plane. While this is mostly incorporeal undead (making for a very good reason to pack magic missile or other force spells, or at the very least any magic weapons or spells at all), or ethereal invaders like xill, sakhil, and the like.

Beyond that, heroes might use the ethereal plane for travel, whether it bein short bursts by exploiting the blink spell, or extended jaunts. Typically, heroes use the ethereal plane mostly to bypass obstacles. However, there are plenty of other reasons, such as entering the ghostly version of a location to glean secrets left by psychically significant events in a region, retrieving an item hidden in the ether, or exploring a fortress or dungeon hidden within the In-Between.

The Dimension of Dreams, as well as the Dreamlands and Leng, are a bit harder to reach. Certain rituals and spells, such as Dream Travel, let one enter the dimension as a lucid body, while some expecially rare ones might actually allow one to travel their bodily. One might assume that adventuring there would be fruitless, but in the dimension of dreams, the reality and unreality are not so easy to discern, and whether you’re seeking secrets from a dreamer, trying to free someone enslaved by moon-beasts, or perhaps retrieving a quasi-real memory of an artifact that no longer exists, or something stranger, such adventures can be surreal and strange, but engaging. Heck, some adventures might even be just about escaping, such as being stranged in Leng or the Harrowed Realm by planar accident.

Speaking of escape, Xibalba offers it’s own impetus to escape, being the home of Sahkils. Heroes might have to brave dungeons full of nightmarish traps and illusions which may be generalized or tailored to their psyche, teleport right to someone in need of rescue only to have to fight their way out with whatever is left of them, and so on.

Of course, there are plenty of character options that are tied to the Ethereal plane. Heck, the medium and the spiritualist classes are explicitly tied there due to their association with the spirits of the dead. Many necromancers as well as sorcerers and bloodragers with bloodlines associated with undead or ectoplasm also share a connection. Even outside of magical classes, you can find ways to find inspiration from the plane, such as the spiritual powers of certain barbarian totems, the ghostly steeds of ghost rider cavaliers, and so on.

But don’t let player options be the only inspiration you draw. Consider that your character might have encountered a ghost, or were kidnapped by ethereal attackers, which may have affected them in various ways. Or perhaps they simply caught a glimpse of the plane for whatever reason.

 There certainly are a lot of ways to have fun with the Ethereal Plane, but that will do for now. Tomorrow, we’ll make our final thoughts on the plane and the place it holds in the cosmology and the history of gaming.

[kreepdotfoto]

[manyworldspress]

Sija Hong, alternate cover illustration for Journeys through the Radiant Citadel (Wizards of the Coast, June 21, 2022).

__________________________________________________ Our shop: https://bookshop.org/shop/manyworldspress

[thegreateyeofsauron]