The Intangible Invisible
Also known as: Deep Air
Location: Elemental Plane of Air / Core Air / The Vault of the Sky
Clap yer eye on this, cutter—a stretch of the Plane of Air so vast and empty that you’ll start to wonder whether your body is even real. The Vault of the Sky ain’t just a name—it’s a warning. Here, the Boundless Blue swallows all. A thousand thousand leagues of nothing but air, pure and primal. No earth-motes, no cloud palaces, not even a whisper of fire or water. Just wind. Endless, hungry, alive.
Air elementals here aren’t your garden-variety gusts. Out in the Intangible Invisible they’re Primal Sovereigns, formless titans so vast they could cradle whole countries in their currents. Some stretch leagues wide, their bodies rarefied into near-invisibility, while smaller elementals ride inside their drafts like raindrops in a storm. Get too close, and you’ll feel their pull—a force that’s less wind and more will, tugging at your bones like a siren’s song, willing you to evaporate, join them, and get lost.
Lost? Oh, aye. Planewalkers who stumble here vanish two ways: First, their bodies drift until they forget that down exists. Without landmarks, even seasoned navigators spiral into madness, chasing mirages of motes and fire orbs that don’t exist. Then, the mind unravels. The silence here ain’t quiet—it’s a roar of absence. Cutters start hearing voices in the wind—or worse, their own thoughts echo back, twisted. They start to resent their own solidity, and yearn to be able to mingle with the wind and blow away.
Philosophy of the Boundless Blue
The Intangible Invisible embodies the Rule Unwritten: “To mingle is to be free.” Elementals here see themselves as the plane’s purest expression—unburdened by matter, politics, or desire. They are completely free, to drift, to grow, to mingle with each other, and to dissolve in an endless dance of self-creation.
Mortal planewalkers who survive out here often adopt Sky Asceticism, shedding their gear, physical desires, even their names. “Only empty hands can hope to hold the wind.” But finding one, that’s the job of magic. There are no settlements, no homesteads, no anything.
There’s also no “economy,” unless you count bartering scent. The occasional nomadic djinn ventures out to the Boundless Blue to trade aromatic air which carries the perfume of distant planes—a whiff of Mechanus’ oil or a draft of Arborea’s blossoms. You can even buy bottled silence, a moment of stillness in a realm where the wind never sleeps. But these strange merchants don’t seek jink—there’s nothing so solid like that out here. Instead they are paid in words; for the endless breezes know more than you think. Anything they touch, they experience, and the winds are wise beyond words. You can learn a lot if you have something to trade.
Civilization? Sort Of…
The closest thing to a burg here is Zephyr’s Respite—a gaseous “village” of interlaced air elementals who’ve agreed to host travellers… for a price. Need shelter? A primal elemental might hollow out a space inside its body. You’ll find no luxury such as walls, but a place where the air is fresh and the wind somehow supports you like a cushion. You’ll need to find some way to pay—perhaps a novel scent it’s never experienced before, perhaps interesting chant from faraway places, or maybe a story.
Apart from the danger of getting lost or going barmy, there are other things to watch out for there. Some of the Primal Sovereigns are easily angered, becoming Sovereign Storms, whirlwinds hundreds of miles wide—they seek to expel anything foreign—read, solid—from the Intangible Invisible. And that probably means you, cutter. Another being to watch out for is the Voice Thief (planar air elemental [it/its] / NE) a mean-spirited breeze which will try to steal your words mid-air, leaving you mute.
Why do solid folk come here? Aside from the endless freedom—believe it or not there are treasures to be found out here, just blowing in the wind. They’re called Heaven Gems, and they are tiny transparent crystals of solidified air, which somehow form here. They’re rare, but if you have a fine-mesh net, patience, and a bit of luck, you can snatch them from the breezes. They’re magical, and will protect anyone holding one from divination magic [+2 item bonus to saving throws]. They last indefinitely on Air, but once removed from the plane they will last for a week before vanishing into a puff of wind. The current going rate for a Heaven gem is around 100 gold. The primal sovereigns don’t seem to object to cutters removing these things either—to them the gems are irritating, itchy and unwelcome.
Sources: Jon Winter-Holt and Dragon Magazine #347 p43 (Heaven gems)