Infinite Elemental Planes
The Infinite Elemental Planes form one of the oldest and least understood tiers of the world’s cosmology. Existing far beyond the boundaries of the Prime Materium, these realms are shaped entirely by pure elemental essence. Though countless in number, each plane embodies some aspect of the fundamental forces that compose creation—heat, absence, storm, growth, dissolution, attraction, water, radiance... and innumerable others that defy mortal cataloguing.
Nature of the Planes
Unlike the structured realms closer to the mortal world, the Infinite Elemental Planes obey only the logic of their own essential nature. Time, distance, weight, and form are mutable, and landscapes shift according to cycles or impulses that scholars cannot reliably predict. Many such realms are utterly inhospitable without protection, while others contain fleeting pockets of serenity where life may take root.
The planes are truly infinite, each unfolding without discernible boundary or center, sustained by the pure idea of its element.
Interaction with the Mortal World
Rifts and weak points occasionally open in remote corners of the world, allowing elemental energies or creatures to slip through. Some cultures treat these breaches as omens, others as dangerous anomalies requiring immediate containment. Over the ages, certain arcanists learned to tap or traverse these planes, though such endeavors are rarely safe.
Those who return from such travels often speak only in fragments, their memories blurred by distances that do not behave like distances and skies that do not behave like skies.
Inhabitants
Each plane is home to beings shaped entirely by its essence. Some resemble the elementals commonly known across the world, while others are far stranger: living continents of crystal, storms with consciousness, rivers of molten metal that whisper in unearthly voices. Temperament varies widely, from indifferent to territorial to unfathomably alien.
It is widely believed that the deeper one travels within a plane, the more abstract, immense, and ancient its inhabitants become.
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