Astral Plane

The Astral Plane holds a unique place in the multiverse. A place solely of the mind, everything there is a construct of the mind, composed only of mental energy. Traveling through this plane changes a cutter, maybe forever. Terrifying foes, great dangers, and fantastic treasures can be found in this mental realm. The githyanki, an ancient race of magical and mental power, remain the most infamous inhabitants, and rightfully so. No wise blood travels onto the Astral without being prepared for an encounter with these enigmatic creatures, and while they are best avoided, do they possess secrets that could send a well-lanned cutter to the dead-book?
Only a fool would ignore the other threats present on the Astral: horrible creatures such as the astral dreadnought or the terrifying mental storms known as psychic winds. Nevertheless, the dangers are worth the chance to explore the decaying, rocklike forms of the floating dead gods, or to find interesting realms such as the Swallowed City, the Living Sea, or the prison known as Pitiless.

The Space Between

Want to truly know the Astral Plane, berk? Take two thin sticks and spread them about a foot apart. Then, brings them within six inches of each other — about half the distance they previously were apart. After that, move them to half the distance again — three inches apart — and then again, and again, until they almost touch. Then imagine half the space that separates the sticks, and then half that, and again and again until the distance is virtually infinitesimally small. The sticks will r—| never actually touch, because as they move together, they must first cross half the distance, and then half the remaining space, and then half that, and so on into infinity.
See, between everything, there is a space - in some cases a space so small that it can only be imagined and never seen. The Astral Plane is somewhere within that space. How can that be? How can anything — let alone a whole infinite plane — fit into literally no space? Simple. The Astral's not a place. It has nothing to do with space at all. It's a realm of the mind. That's why even though there is no distance to measure or space to occupy, it appears that there is. It's all a matter of perspective — or rather, perception. The mind sees distance, feels space around it, and perceives what it thinks is a plane.
This is because no matter where a body goes, he's on a plane, right? Wrong. A person can leave the planes. When he's not on a plane, he's on the Astral. The Astral is not like the Beastlands or the Plane of Ooze. It's certainly not like the Prime Material. In fact, it's not really a plane at all. It's not a plane, it has no space — it is the absence of space, the absence of a plane. It is the void between all true spaces.
Many think of the Astral as a means to get from one plane to another — and they're not far off, or at least originally they weren't. If a body supposes for a moment (depending on her beliefs and faction) that an intelligent force created the multiverse, then it's safe to say that the force never actually intended for anyone to ever go to the Astral. The conduits are there for a purpose, and beyond them, there is nothing to see.
Then some berk flubbed a plane shift or some such and wound up physically traveling to the Astral Plane. Despite the fact that it had no dimensions of space (no true width, height, or depth), the berk perceived there to be such and "saw" things within the Silver Void. This describes what happened when the first basher (whoever he was) physically entered the Astral Plane. Physically? Well, that's what it's called.
What really happened was that his body was "translated" into its astral equivalent, as all matter is "translated" when it "physically" enters the plane. Something physical can't truly exist where no space exists, at least not as most people look at existing. Instead, it becomes a kind of mental energy that exhibits the same sorts of properties that normal matter does on a real plane.
At this point, however, a body should remember that until someone stumbled onto it, no one lived on the Astral. (The githyanki, the Astral's most infamous natives, aren't natives at all.) The Astral was just what the rest of the multiverse was built upon - the scaffolding of the universe, a body might say. Another might call it the mental realm of conscious foundation that forms and supports the underpinnings of concepts like space and even time. It's the backstage area that no one was ever meant to see.
Considering that the Astral connects all of the Outer Planes and the Prime Material as well, it's surprising that most planewalkers never actually go there. Sure, a planewalker will take a ride through a conduit, but a body doesn't even realize that she's on the Astral in that sort of quick trip. The long and the short of it is that even some of the most experienced bloods only know what the Astral's like on hearsay, and even those that've been there have just scooted through from one color pool to the next, without paying much heed to anything around them.
As a body enters the Astral, whether she's coming through a portal or traveling astrally using a spell or device, he'll most likely be awed by the immensity of what he sees. Ironically, it will appear as though he can see the void going on forever. The color of the plane has often been likened to the glistening shine of a dew-covered spider's web. This silvery space is occasionally punctuated by what someone (particularly someone from, the Prime) might take for large stars. These points of randomly scattered lights fill the glistening sky, which stretches above, below, and all around the traveler.
There's no gravity, no up or down, and no north or south. A body moves through space just as she moves his arm - simply by thinking about it. There's no air to breathe, but there's no need to breathe, either (or eat, for that matter) - but a body still needs to sleep, since this is a function of the mind.
The Astral is virtually always deafeningly quiet and disturbingly still. No wind, no noise, and no obvious signs of life present themselves to the newcomer. Only if a body shows up near a conduit will she see anything move. Conduits appear as long, spectral tubes winding out of sight in either direction. They vibrate, pitch, and whip about, as if responding to an unseen, unfelt wind.
Is the Astral a completely empty void? Well, almost. The aforementioned conduits wind their way through the plane. Color pools, which are tiny holes marked by two-dimensional disks of color allowing a body to pass out of (and sometimes onto) the Astral and onto (or from) another plane, also dot the place.
Strange astral energies, invisible to a normal basher's sight and beyond the comprehension of many who can see them, flow through the void - occasionally making their presence known through some strange effect. Finally, islands exist in the endless sea of Astral "space." These usually consist of chunks of rock and earth pulled in from another plane, but sometimes — just sometimes — an island is really the body of a dead god, come to its final resting place.
Creatures exist on the plane, too — monstrosities like the astral dreadnought, or passive creatures like the astral whales and streakers. The githyanki are the most prevalent and infamous creatures of the plane, and a race of more evil cutters a body'll never find.
Of course, there's always the travelers who make their way through the Astral on their way somewhere else (or even the rare berks that have made the Silver Void their home). Chances of running into any other living thing in this huge void are pretty low, but it can happen.
What a body won't find is a lot of cities (there are a few), terrain features like forests, mountains, or rivers, and berks feuding over borders and territories. The Astral is just not like that. It's not about space — there isn't any, really — and it's not about things. What it's about is mind. Thoughts, perceptions, memories, emotions, and dreams fuel the Astral's fires. Even the winds of the Silver Void blow with such things. There's one more thing a body won't find there - berks peering into the Prime or other planes like ghosts peering into the land of the living. That's the Ethereal Plane, friend, and a top-shelf planewalker won't get them confused. The Ethereal Plane has the Border Ethereal, where a body can move about the space of another plane where the two "cross over," creeping about like a noncorporeal spook. The Astral is a more esoteric place. It's a realm of the mind, not a place of ghosts.

Type

Dimensional plane

Inhabiting Species

• Githyanki