Elemental sub-plane of salt
The Elemental Plane of Salt is a harsh and desolate sub-plane of the Elemental plane of water , where the seas have turned to endless stretches of crystalline salt flats, jagged salt formations, and briny, hypersaline waters that strip the moisture from anything that enters. It is a place of extremes—where preservation and decay intertwine, where water is both omnipresent and completely absent, locked away in vast mineral deposits that stretch for miles.
Though lifeless at first glance, the Plane of Salt harbors strange elemental beings, lost sailors frozen in crystalline tombs, and salt-plated leviathans that roam its suffocating brine pools. Those who seek refuge here rarely leave, as even the most resilient wanderers find themselves slowly desiccated by the plane’s relentless thirst.
Geography and Landscape
The Elemental Plane of Salt is a place of contradictions—both dry and wet, barren and teeming with hidden life. Its landscape is dominated by three major regions:
1. The Shimmering Expanse
An endless salt flat that glows under the strange, refracted light of the plane. Here, towering salt spires jut from the surface like frozen waves, and crystalline mirages deceive travelers, leading them deeper into the wasteland.
The Salt Tombs – Ancient shipwrecks and drowned cities from the Plane of Water, preserved perfectly in crystalline salt, their inhabitants locked in eternal stillness.
The Mirror Plains – A deceptive region where the salt crust is thin, covering vast pools of super-saturated brine. Anything stepping on the surface plunges into the dense liquid below, never to resurface.
2. The Brine Seas
Unlike the flowing waters of the Plane of Water, the Brine Seas are thick, suffocating pools of hypersaline liquid that move sluggishly, trapping anything that enters.
The Drowned Abyss – A trench where the Brine Seas are deepest, said to hold ancient Salt Elementals and lost treasures from forgotten civilizations.
The Leviathan’s Wake – A region patrolled by salt-encrusted sea beasts, their forms adapted to survive in an environment where most would perish from dehydration.
3. The Hollow Reefs
A network of salt-formed caverns where moisture is a scarce commodity, home to creatures that hoard water as a treasure. The Hollow Reefs are ruled by powerful Salt Lords, who control ancient wells of freshwater hidden deep within the plane.
Inhabitants
Life in the Plane of Salt is rare but resilient, adapted to an environment where moisture is a precious resource.
Salt Elementals
Unlike the fluid forms of Water Elementals, Salt Elementals appear as jagged, shifting masses of crystal, constantly forming and reforming their bodies from the mineral-rich landscape.
Brineborn
Humanoids who have adapted to the extreme conditions of the plane, their bodies partially crystallized but still capable of movement. Many serve the Salt Lords, exchanging servitude for access to water.
Salt-Plated Leviathans
Massive, armored sea creatures covered in layers of hardened salt, drifting through the Brine Seas in search of prey.
The Salt Lords
Mysterious and reclusive, the Salt Lords are beings of both water and salt, their forms shimmering between liquid and solid states. They are ancient entities who control access to fresh water, demanding offerings from those who seek to drink.
Dangers of the Plane
The Plane of Salt is hostile to outsiders, its very environment designed to consume moisture from anything that enters.
Desiccation – The air itself pulls moisture from living beings, forcing visitors to carry magical hydration sources or risk turning to dust.
Encroaching Crystallization – Prolonged exposure causes bodies and objects to slowly calcify, transforming into salt statues over time.
Salt Storms – Blinding whirlwinds of razor-sharp salt shards tear through the landscape, shredding flesh and eroding even enchanted armor.
False Water Pools – Mirages of freshwater lakes lure the desperate, only to reveal deadly brine pits that trap and dissolve victims.
Notable Locations
The Everthirst Well
A bottomless freshwater well controlled by the Salt Lords, fiercely guarded as one of the only natural water sources in the plane.
The Crystal Labyrinth
A shifting maze of translucent salt walls, where lost souls wander endlessly, unable to distinguish reality from illusion.
The Sunken Vault
A buried fortress containing relics of an ancient civilization that once thrived in the Plane of Water, now entombed in salt.
Connection to the Elemental Plane of Water
The Plane of Salt exists within and alongside the Elemental Plane of Water, forming a strange paradoxical balance.
Some scholars believe it was once a part of the Water Plane, dried out over millennia into its current state.
Others theorize that the Plane of Water actively resists the expansion of Salt, preventing it from overtaking more of the realm.
The two planes interact in strange ways—water that enters the Plane of Salt becomes briny and undrinkable, while moisture that escapes often carries traces of its desiccating influence into the larger Plane of Water.
The Elemental Plane of Salt is a realm of preservation, decay, and paradox, where water is both abundant and absent. It is a land of endless hunger, draining moisture from all who enter, leaving behind only brittle remnants of what once was.
Few willingly travel here, and fewer still return. For in the Plane of Salt, even time itself dries out and crumbles away.
"The thirst will claim you before the salt does." – Inscription found on a crystallized skeleton near the Everthirst Well.
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