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Elemental Pockets in Water
Anyone who’s ever been on the Inner Planes knows what an elemental pocket is. Basically, it’s an intrusion of one elemental plane into another. This can happen because of mages, entropes, powers, planar cataclysmic events or, more often, spontaneously. While the pocket is new, it is clear and resists the substance of the receiving plane. Aften many years, or perhaps even centuries, the link between the pocket and its plane of origin is weakened, leaving a pocket open to the surrounding elements. Such old pockets in the Plane of Water are either slowly eroded and dissolved (for example, pockets of Earth, Salt or Ash) or quickly “pop” in case of Air, Fire or Vacuum.
Air pockets are bubbles of clean air, bobbing in the Bottomless Deep. Planewalkers and rare marine mammals and reptiles tend to aggregate around them. When the connection to the Plane of Air is lost, the air pocket instantly breaks down into millions of bubbles. Afterwards, these bubbles are slowly dissolved, filling the water with priceless oxygen.
Earth and Mineral pockets look like rocks, suspended in the endless ocean around them. Of course, this rare solid ground is almost always colonised by many creatures, like corals and barnacles. Rarely, however, the minerals can be toxic. Earth pockets slowly erode, as currents grind them to dust.
Flaming balls of Fire and Radiance are surrounded by an aura of searing steam. In proximity, such areas are uninhabitable, although some creatures enjoy basking in warm waters (while keeping their distance).
Islands of Ice aren’t as populated as the earthbergs, but they still attract cold-loving creatures. Colder water can absorb more oxygen, and temperature differences created by the elemental Ice facilitate new currents.
The outer layer of Magma pockets tends to be partially cooled. This creates beautiful, but deadly volcanic sites. Hydrothermal vents created by these pockets attract peculiar chemotrophic creatures, especially in the Darkened Depths, where photosynthesis is unreliable at best.
Murky water and floating debris mark the intrusion of paraelemental Ooze. Aquatic animals come here to hide or to hunt. However, some Ooze pockets may be acidic—natives call such places “burnwater”.
Hot and bubbling water, born from the pockets of Smoke, is unbearable for most animals, but certain peculiar creatures actually settle in them, feeding on chemicals found in smoke.
Among the most dangerous hazards in the Plane of Water are the pockets of Lightning. In their core is boiling water, but it’s their invisible aura you should be worried about. Since water conducts electricity much better than air, coming too close to the lightning pocket guarantees an electric shock and an almost certain death.
A pocket of Steam is a foaming bank of many bubbles. From the outside it appears to be boiling, much like pockets of Fire and Lightning, but unlike those, pockets of Steam aren’t hot, at least not usually.
Like Ooze pockets, Ash pockets appear as clouds of sludge, although they are much darker and much colder. They are also often toxic or acidic, so only a few species can venture there. However, ash is also full of easily digestible chemical compounds, so dissolving pockets play an important role in the Big Tank’s ecosystem.
Depending on the strength of the current around a particular Dust pocket, it may look like a quiet island of sand or a violent storm of sandy water. In the first case, Dust pockets are preferred by ambush predators such as rays, who can hide in silky particles (smoothing influence of Water quells the abrasive power of Dust).
While too much salt is deadly, a small quantity of it is as necessary for aquatic beings as oxygen itself. Growing Salt pockets are desolate, but as they dissolve, they create large pools of saltwater that slowly mixes with freshwater around them, sustaining the plane’s salinity.
Vacuum pockets are less of a bubble and more of a gaping void in the eye of the whirlpool. Planar cracks leading to the Plane of Vacuum incessantly suck the water and everything in it into itself. Such planar vortices are very dangerous and must be avoided.
Positive energy interacts with water in strange ways. Pockets of Positive Energy are surrounded with a blob of so-called thin water—a superfluid, that is especially easy to travel through. The swimming speed of all creatures in the area is doubled. As usual, the core of the pocket is healing upon brief exposure, and deadly if lingered around.
Negative energy pockets are pretty much always the same—orbs of pitch-black nothingness that annihilate living and attract undead. Fluidstone, a paradoxical material that hardens when heated, has been seen oozing from them.
Now nitpickers will buzz your ears off talking about how the correct term for pockets of Prime, Feywild or Shadowfell is “pseudo-pockets”, but it barely changes anything. Prime pseudo-pockets form around vortices, and vortices on Prime form in places, where the elemental energy is at its most powerful. For Water there are many such places. First, there are vortices at the bottom of the oceans. On our side they are barely noticeable, but sometimes a bit of Prime Material physics seeps in together with the matter. In this case, such places become dangerous areas of armour-crushing pressure. Then there are vortices in the hearts of maelstroms and waterspouts. They frequently swallow unlucky ships, so if you see a graveyard of flotsam and jetsam, you know how it came to be. Finally, in very rare cases of extremely powerful flash floods a vortex may temporarily form on land. A good rock-hopper can guide you to more than one ruined city, swallowed by such a vortex.
Pseudo-pockets of Feywild work in the same way Prime pockets do, but they have other quirks as well. Aquatic fey creatures such as nixies and oceanids are spawned by such places, and they bring their whimsical magic with them.
A touch of Shadowfell fills the water with shadows and dims the natural illumination of the plane. Bioluminescent fish, undead and blood elementals lurk in these dark pseudo-pockets. Horrible places, all told, and best avoided.
Sources: Margarita and Jon Winter-Holt