Planar Guide

This material world, our world, is only the threshold of the vast cosmos that surrounds us. Hidden in plain sight, laid abreast of us and yet unfelt and unknown are innumerable spheres of reality whose compositions are both familiar and radical to our world’s natural design. These spheres, often referred to by scholars as the Planes, are deeply interconnected links forming a cosmic band that holds all of creation in its curvature.   How many Planes and their sub-domains exist is a question that only a handful of the Endless could begin to answer with any certainty, however there are paramount Planes whose existence and positions are known to us. These greater Planes are divided into inner and outer layers.   The closer a Plane exists to our own, which is to say those which are part of the innermost layer, are Planes that the material world draws upon for sustenance and natural law. The most well known are the Elemental Planes (Fire, Air, Water and Earth) from which our world draws its most tantamount processes, but coexisting in similarly close positions are Planes which closely resemble our own, existing either as dark reflections (such as the Shadowfell) or as mirror dimensions whose natural laws are skewed in subtle ways to the benefit of their denizens (such as the Hunting Grounds or the Feywild).   The Planes that encompass the outer circuit of reality are dimensions from which our material world gains its noble ideals (Truth, Love, Hatred, Lust) and intangible powers (such as the mysteries of magic). The denizens of these Planes are often cosmic in power and rarely traverse the barriers that separate our world from theirs. Traveling to these dimensions requires incredible means and the journey is often more dangerous than the Plane upon which one arrives. Examples of such crossings are the animated dead who are driven to destroy mortal kind when summoned and their spectral counterparts. The Outer Planes contain such dimensions as Elysium (the realms of heaven), Hades (the realms of hell) and Apocrypha (the realm of knowledge and magic).