Astral plane

Looking out into the great expanse of space, small balls light up the sky as distant stars and planets light up the sky. The space between the different celestial bodies or planes of existence as they often are called is the Astral plane. It is mostly devoid of any life but the things that exists out in the Astral plane are able to live there for a reason, and few want to run into them.

Travel

Travelling through the Astral plane is not as simple as one would image. The space outside of planes of existence do not follow the normal conventions of movement but is non-linear in its space. Flying in a straight line towards a distant plane of existence does not guarantee that you will end up there, nor does the time for that journey stay consistent. When travelling through the astral plane, one needs a compass attuned to the plane of existence that they are travelling to in order to both ensure that they will end up where they wish to and to take a fast path.

There are two primary ways of travelling through the astral plane that is used by most creatures. The first is through giant ships, equipped with both an advanced compass system that can detect planes of existences and guide the ship along the lines of the weave for safe travel. The second is through plane shifting in which high leveled magic is used to collapse the space between to planes of existence to bypassing any real travel of the Astral plane.

Dangers of Astral plane

The creatures living in the astral plane are in some cases even older than the planes of existences and they sometimes fool travelers with their size as they can appear as distant planes of existences or small asteroids. It is unknown how they could remain alive for so long in the emptiness of the Astral plane but regardless of how they are able to survive, they have been able to thrive as their strength is almost unparallelled. Comparing them to ancient dragons is the weakest one could see them as. Although many have been documented during travel, the full extent of what is alive out in the astral plane is far from known.

While the creatures of the Astral plane are few and far between, the real threat is so called Astral winds that blow through the vast empty space. There is nothing visual or sensatory about the winds, but once they sweep through somewhere they move the entire space around them and things caught in the Astral winds risk getting ripped apart as the winds can pull a ship in two different directions simultaneously, breaking  the ship in two separate pieces several kilometers apart in a matter of seconds.