Ethereal Plane

Overview

The Ethereal Plane is coexistent with the Material Plane and often other planes as well. The Material Plane itself is visible from the Ethereal Plane, but it appears muted and indistinct; colors blur into each other and edges are fuzzy. While it is possible to see into the Material Plane from the Ethereal Plane, the latter is usually invisible to those on the Material Plane. Normally, creatures on the Ethereal Plane cannot attack creatures on the Material Plane, and vice versa. A traveler on the Ethereal Plane is invisible, insubstantial, and utterly silent to someone on the Material Plane. The twisted remnants of mortal souls comprise the vast majority of the Ethereal Plane’s inhabitants. Some souls, freed from their physical bodies by death, remain tethered to the Ethereal Plane by profound emotional distress and cannot proceed along soul currents toward The Empty until they sever the powerful emotional ties that bind them. Indeed, the longer these souls remain stalled on their afterlife journey, the closer they fall towards the Void, being tainted by Negative Energy, and the more of their memories and personalities become subsumed by raw emotional distress and psychic damage. These souls eventually manifest as incorporeal undead, frequently in the form of wraiths and spectres.

Planar Traits

• Gravity none
• Time normal
• Realm immeasurable
• Structural lasting (although there is little on this plane to alter)
• Essence mixed
• Alignment mildly neutral-aligned
• Magic normal (see Magic on the Ethereal Plane)

Denizens of the Ethereal Plane

Xills - Despite its barren emptiness, the Ethereal Plane is far from uninhabited. The most notorious of its denizens are the xills, blood-red planar marauders with the power to step into the Material Plane and abduct creatures to serve as living hosts for their eggs. These alien outsiders have a tyrannical military culture and see all other creatures as fodder for their expansion—particularly phase spiders, a race that the xills have warred against for eons.
Sahkils - Vile sahkils move through the Ethereal Plane as well, seeping out from their floating fortress of Xibalba to torment the mortal world, and while they are most at home in that demiplane, they are disturbingly common foes across the Ethereal Plane as well.
Caulborns - The eerie creatures known as caulborn have long wandered the planes searching for psychic energies and new lore to add to their collective minds. As the Ethereal Plane is rich in both, it is no surprise that the caulborn first emerged into reality. Today, the caulborn primarily dwell on the Material Plane, but their Ethereal fortress, Xevnorvex, is every bit as strange and off-putting as its creators—a vast, grublike life-form that bears obvious kinship to the caulborn, wriggling its way through the misty void. Its insides are a mix of raw brain tissue used for memory accumulation and organic chambers suitable for caulborn habitation.

Type

Plane of Existence