Na'Tak Karari's a
formidable cutter. Just back from a jaunt around the
Great Ring in under 90 days (see the reports in
S.I.G.I.S.
for more chant), he's got his own way of mapping the
planes; and a Philosophy of Everything to back it
up.
Consider
the Planes as a stack of bricks. At the base, the
so-called building blocks, the Inner
Planes. They're found in a ring of elemental
provinces, and where these overlap, Para-Elements
are born. At the centre of the Inner Ring lie the
Energy Planes, Positive and Negative, and where
these overlap with the elements the Quasi-Elements
lie.
Permeating
the Inner Planes are the shores of the Border
Ethereal, which evaporate into the Deep
Ethereal, where the elements first mingled to form
the Prime Material. There's another Border
Ethereal between the deep and the Prime, too, perhaps to
protect each from the other.
The
Prime sits at the centre of the stack, and the very
centre of the Prime is said to be the source of all life.
That's as maybe, cutter, because the centre of infinity
ain't exactly an easy thing to find!
Anyway,
the Prime Material's made up of worlds (where the
Clueless Primes come from), hanging in a void they call
Wildspace. Each chunk of wildspace has up to a few
dozen worlds, usually with a Sun to provide light and
warmth. At the edge of the wildspace is an immense
Crystal Sphere, which encases the Solar System.
There's usually stars painted on the inside, too, but
nobody really knows why. Outside the Crystal Spheres is
an uncharted place called the Phlogiston. It's a
rainbow-hued place of flammable gas, divided into streams
and oceans, and the whole place is cut off from all other
planes. There's no portals or bags of holding here,
berk!
The
Astral Plane is a grey-silver void of nothing at
all, and some say it hasn't even got volume. It touches
all the Prime worlds (and presumably all of Wildspace
too), but not the Phlogiston. Like I said, that
place is dimensionally disconnected. Anyway, the Astral's
home to conduits; wriggling wormholes connecting the
Prime to the Planes, and vice versa. Na'Tak Karari
reckons the conduits all pass through the central hole of
Sigil, the City of Doors, and that's why the place
is riddled with portals: They're simply weak points in
conduits ('course, this doesn't really explain why
portals can lead to the Inner Planes too).
The
Astral's other edge (as much as a nil-space can have
edges) touches the top layer of the Great Ring of the
Outer Planes. The rest of the Outer Planes lead
down (or up, depending on which side of the Good-Evil
divide you're on), as far as infinity, if some are to be
believed.
Well,
that's one way of looking at it.
