User:Spanambula/Elegy (3.5e Campaign Setting)/Cosmology

=The Planes of El:=

INSERT IMAGE: PLANAR COSMOLOGY

=El – The Prime – The Material Plane= This is the world of humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes and others. No gods live on the plane.

=Plane of Shadow= A shadowy duplicate of the Material Plane.

=The Void= The Void is all that remains of several planes destroyed in the Illydaean War. Efforts were made to repair the realm, but there was too much devastation, and it became easier to use the essence of the debris in the Void to repair the other, less damaged planes. The Void is home to a few races, especially close to the more stable areas around the Elemental Void, but largely the Void is an empty ruin with scattered fragments of former worlds floating in a sea of gray nothingness. The Void can be thought of as a ring of three concentric bands around the Prime.

The Ethereal Void:
Most parts of the void exist concurrently with the Prime, allowing for ethereal spells to work. The bounds of the plane expand outward past the Prime, until the Etheral Void becomes the Astral Void.

The Astral Void:
A few parts of the Astral Void are concurrent with the Prime. Those are the realms where dreams are made manifest, and travel there is precarious. The Astral Void is the largest part of the Void, comprising over 70% of its area. Islands of landmasses are more scarce in the inner void, but those that do exist tend to be larger, some even capable of supporting large cities. Towards the outer edge of the Astral Void are more numerous smaller islands, most no more than a mile across. Beyond those lie the Elemental Void.

The Elemental Void:
When the Primals attempted to restore the Void, they first began with vast storehouses of raw material in the form of the basic elements of creation: Water, Earth, Fire, Air, Aërope (Positive Essence) and Mok (Negative Essence). Each of the six storehouses were vast enough that they seemed like small worlds in and of themselves. When the restoration failed, the Primals left them the way they were, as they balanced out the new cosmic wheel nicely. While technically each element is a demi-plane within the greater plane of the Void, most planar scholars refer to each element as having its own plane.

=The Outer Planes:= There are eight outer primary planes where most of the gods exist, divided by their alignment with respect to Good and Evil, Law and Chaos. These also serve as a repository for the souls of the dead. They are Celestus (NG), Eridan (LG), Iton (CG), Juris (LN), Kythos (CN), Balus (LE), Malefis (NE), and Nox (CE).

=Other Planes:= A few planes fall outside the cosmic wheel, or are otherwise difficult to place accurately.

The Outer Darkness:
Also called Oblivion. This is the space outside known space. It is known to exist, but none have traveled there and returned.

The Realm of Death:
Death's domain is everywhere and nowhere. However, there is a gate through which all the souls of the dead pass to enter their afterlife, after traversing the ethereal and astral plane. It is where those with the dubious fortune of finding the throne of Death find themselves. This gate is commonly thought to be at the center of all things.

Pax:
The realm of those who are truly neutral. This plane is technically one of the inner planes, and is almost completely concurrent with the Prime, though separate from it at the same time. The gods here come closest to being the exception to the no-gods-on-the-Prime rule, since they care nothing for worship or influence, and care only for the natural world and the balance of life and death. Worshippers of these gods tend to be reincarnated back into the world when they die.

Terminus:
The Prime is the center of all things, the balancing point of creation. Terminus is what the Prime balances on. It is a wild, ungoverned plane under the mastery of neither chaos nor order, good nor evil. It is a conflux of reality where all lines of power converge. Some say this was the place through which the One departed creation, and the place where someday the Primals, too shall leave. At its center is a massive city, also known as Terminus. It is also the dwelling place of the Neutral Deities who are unaligned but care nothing for nature.