Beyond Destination

A reality is a stack of planes, like sheets of paper. Every sheet is made of the three core planes; the balance between them is what changes from sheet to sheet.

The Prime Material Plane is the most central sheet, usually the most balanced. Everything else is described relative to it.

Push the balance past the middle toward any one core plane and physics changes drastically. A being whose footing is strong in the other core planes struggles to keep existing there — possibly to the point of ending.

Lesser planes — every sheet other than the core three — can be physically travelled to. You can exist in more than one at a time, because the core planes run through all of them.

Every plane also has its own conceptual order. Powers that match the plane's concept get easier there; powers that directly oppose it get much harder.

Planes with little connection to the Physical tend to be incoherent: time and distance hold less firmly. Spend an hour there and you may return to find far more or far less time has passed — in either direction, unpredictably.

Realities are usually built almost the same. So a plane in one reality will show up in others in some shape or form, unless it is stated to exist in only one. Realities also interfere with each other; what varies is how much.

Natural pathways between realities exist. They are passable and highly lethal — close to a death sentence for anyone not very well prepared. They often run through extremely hostile planes that seem to connect to their counterparts in other realities.

Interference between realities can be natural, like waves on a beach or, rarely, a tsunami. Causing it deliberately needs a power that does not depend on being inside a universe.

Some powers need a universe to work. Outside the structure that holds the realities, those powers get no response at all. Which powers need a universe and which do not is something a character can learn.

Places between other places are common, and many things live there. A creature can be native to one specific threshold, or to thresholds in general.

The somatic planes hold the forces of feeling and thinking beings: emotions, will, courage, virtues and sins, lawful and orderly concepts, and the opposites of all of them. They follow the same pattern as the elements, but are more abstract and less physical.

Each plane holds its whole family. Hate and anger belong to the plane of wrath; there is no separate plane of hate.

The name comes from the reality. The same plane may be called Wrath in one reality, Fury in the next, and the sin of Ire in a third.

The look comes from the people. What a somatic plane looks like is shaped by the shared beliefs and feelings of its reality.

The Spiritual core plane is what will runs on. The somatic planes are where will as a concept lives.