Astral Plane
The Astral Plane, also known as the Silver Void, is the plane connecting the Prime Material Plane to the Outer Planes.
Physical Conditions
Not technically a true plane, the Astral is more accurately described as the space between space. It's a largely mental realm, and those that travel within it are merely translations of their physical bodies into the mental realm of the Astral, their minds interpreting the things they see as normal width, height, and depth.
As a consequence of this, within the Astral, space and time don't truly exist. While on the Astral, people don't grow hungry or thirsty, they don't grow tired, they don't even age; although, upon leaving the plane, the time they skipped out on catches up to them in an instant. Travel through the Astral is accomplished entirely by force of will, and if a fellow wants to reach somewhere, eventually they will, even if the travel time is largely arbitrary and unrelated to any true concept of distance.
In this plane, physical capabilities are largely supplanted by mental ones. (Intelligence serves the role of Strength while on this plane, and Wisdom serves the role of Dexterity.) A berk's physical acuity here is based purely on his ability to think, since his body's really nothing more than a projection of his mind while within the Void.
A further result of this is the different mechanics of motion on the Astral. As mentioned earlier, to travel from one place to another, one need only think, and they will begin drifting. Objects with no mind can only move when urged on by another; when thrown, or pushed, or pulled. But once they begin moving, they won't stop until forcefully stopped, making missile combat quite the potential hazard for others traveling through the plane. Unfortunately, this property does not work for things that do possess their own mind, as stray thoughts, daydreams, and (if sleeping) full dreams act as a mental drag force, slowing them down to an eventual stop.
The strange mental nature of the plane also has its effect on the senses. Though a dull grey light suffuses the whole of the plane, preventing any sort of shadowy areas in most locations for potential hiding, things are utterly silent unless special effort is made to make noise, rendering attempts at moving silently near-perfect success. Visual ranges are limited on the Astral through some unknown mechanism, however, to a hard limit of 200 yards. This limit varies somewhat unpredictably from time to time; vision works normally when standing on the rare bit of ground in the plane, and for large such islands, they may be occasionally visible at ranges greater than this. But in most cases, no person can be seen at a distance greater than that value.
Magical Conditions
Given that the Astral Plane is a mental realm, it should come as no surprise that overall, magic is much more potent here, with some simple exceptions. First off, given that the Astral is without dimension or physicality, spells relating to these concepts fail to function. No extradimensional spells or effects are active on the Astral, and magic dealing purely with physical matter (such as disintegrate or a sphere of annihilation) is inert. The same goes for spells relating to space or time: there/not there, time stop, reverse time, and other such related spells are also inert.
The lack of any sort of solid ground also prevents the manifestation of certain types of spells on purely logical grounds: Evard's black tentacles, move earth, Tenser's floating disc, and other spells relying on the presence of a solid surface underfoot.
The Astral also poses its own hazards for spellcasters who ply their trade here, thanks to this enhanced potency. Two ailments are commonly linked to the Astral Plane: magical addiction and magical psychosis.
A further unique feature of the Astral is the existence of spellshadows; the remnant energies of cast spells drifting through the void. Any spell cast on the Prime or the Outer Planes leaves a spellshadow on the Astral, if you know where to look for it. With the proper training or the proper magics, facts, qualities, and characteristics of the spell and its caster can be obtained through the analysis of a spellshadow; Gherthrom Shadowchaser is a well-known example of someone using such a fact to their own advantage.
| Abjuration | No change |
| Alteration | Change to matter-, space-, or time-related spells as mentioned above |
| Conjuration/Summoning | Summoning spells cast here can draw creatures from the Prime or any of the Outer Planes, though they have a 25% chance of failing entirely on casting. Elemental summons utterly fail to work. |
| Divination | No change |
| Enchantment/Charm | No change |
| Illusion/Phantasm | There is a 30% chance of the seed of an illusion being taken over by a local floating thought, changing the nature of the illusion entirely, but leaving it in the caster's control. |
| Invocation/Evocation | No change |
| Necromancy | No change |
| Wild Magic | Functions as if cast at +1 to caster level, and victims gain -1 to their saving throws against wild magic. |
| Elemental | Being not only a mental realm, but entirely cut off from the Inner Planes, no pure matter can manifest here, nor can any elementals. Elemental effects, such as fireball, are still possible however. |
Spell Keys
Mental exercises or states of mind. For a given spell key to function, the caster must clear their mind and focus in a specific manner before or while casting.
Power Keys
As the Astral has almost no living gods within it, the Astral has few to no power keys.
Powers
- Oerthian Pantheon
- Celestian - Stars, Travelers, Wanderers
- No Pantheon
- Guardian of the Dead Gods - Godcorpses
