The TRUTH about Planar Travel - D&D

this is going to be the beginning of a long string of videos focused on planner travel on taking mysterious portals and ending in places beyond your understanding we're going to talk about hails and heavens different planes of reality alien species and more for that we're going to be dedicating a video to every single one of those topics for example there are currently two transitory planes the ethereal and the astral there are 17 outer planes and then a very complicated number of inner planes though for now we will talk about four of them this video in particular will be focused on the bird's eye view of it all before i can get in deep i need to make sure that we're on the same page as to what we're talking about and how it all works this video is brought to you by stibbles codex of companions we finally got it guys it's here so look sdm i love my crazy monsters i love my dodges and my traps but you know what my players actually want they want to pet the damn dog at the entrance of the dungeon they want to take that dog home and then love it the problem is that there isn't any rules that specifically designed for pets indonesian dragons it is a part of dnd that is completely neglected familiars are easy to deal with because you summon them through magic and they are magically engineered to obey you but that's not how pets or companions are or should be if you're not a beast master ranger how are you supposed to tame a boar or an elephant in dnd soda dragons are supposed to be the go-to wizard companion yet nobody tames them because there are no rules for it other than maybe being a warlock and then simply dominate them here is stibble's codex of companions with over 110 pages just filled to the brim with cool creatures that you can possibly tame and make your companion cool oozes dragons fey and fiends each creature comes with lore stats a rarity number how difficult it is to tame and the environments where it can appear the book has a robust set of rules on how and where these monsters appear and how would one go about taming them there is a level up system where you increase your bond with the pet the higher it is the more abilities you can get and the more it can help you while you play further there are a bunch of feats that you can give to your pet when you level it up and extra abilities that one can choose if you wish to make your pet combat worthy the book is filled with support for this playstyle too with tons of new spells designed with pets in mind there are magical items to help you for example mount and fight alongside some of the pets and even a cool duel system where you can pit your pet against other players pets pokemon style check out stables codex of companions in the link below you will not regret it now back to the show dancing dragons has a near infinite number of worlds the world that i create will be very different from the world that you create or from the world that wizards of the coast creates but every single one of these worlds is supposed to exist within the multiverse of the game theoretically speaking i could have my players jump from my world to your world since both are supposed to exist within the same multiverse this is what we call the prime material world the prime material world holds an uncountable number of planets and solar systems each of these worlds is encased in a massive crystal shell these crystal shells with worlds inside flowed in an ocean of rainbow colored fluids called the phlogiston if you wanted to hub from your world to my world you would have to have your players leave the crystal shell that envelops your solar system and then find a way to traverse the logistic until you reach my world's crystal shell and then we'll find a way to enter it some crystal shales are only the size of the planet that they hold inside while others are the sizes of entire galaxies every world that uses the using dragons theoretically speaking should exist within this frameworld in this multiverse the locations of the crystal shales in respect to one another hasn't really been officially marked for the most part but we do know for example that the forgotten realms crystal shell and the shell of the dragonlance setting and the shell of the greyhawk setting form a triangle between each other and it is relatively easy to travel to these worlds from one another if you're interested in learning more about this or how it all works including how to traverse space then i recommend watching this video of mine where we talked about how it all functions in any case that is the prime material world a near infinite sea of crystal shells with worlds now when you hear talk about the inner and outer planes if they are talking about a completely different set of realms that exist outside of the prime the inner planes are the realms of the elements primarily fire earth water and air these realms exist sort of tangential to the prime and in a lot of ways they feed the prime with elemental energies now even though they are metaphysically speaking very close to the prime you can't quite get to these inner planes let alone see them that is because there is something in between the prime and the inner planes and that is the ethereal realm many people don't know this but the ethereal realm is actually what separates these two and it sits very cozy right in the middle the ethereal realm physically touches the prime material realm and can be readily accessed if you have the magic to do it the ethereal realm is what one would call a transitory plane typically speaking most would consider it more like a road than an actual location even though there are plenty of things that live and thrive in it to most players that get to experience whatsoever the ethereal it'll seem today as merely a foggy translucent version of the prime imagine how the world looked to frodo when he put on the one ring that suddenly it was as if he existed beyond what most people saw and he appeared then invisible to everyone else that is what most dm's would do if a player moved into the ethereal this is how they would envision it when they used a nighthag's ability to become ethereal however that is actually what you would call the border ethereal in reality there are two types of ethereal the border ethereal and the deep ethereal and they're meant to describe how far into the realm you currently are in the border ethereal you see directly into the prime you can investigate it you can pass through walls and possibly even be attacked by certain magics from the prime this is what most people think when they think about the ethereal realm that you're kind of like a ghost not many people get to experience the deep ethereal because there aren't really easy ways to get there in the deep ethereal you are simply lost in the fog instead of walking or flying and seeing where you're going you instead move through thought you simply think about where you want to go and then the ethereal will theoretically take you there but if you don't know where to go or where you even are you could actually get lost in there forever now generally speaking you use this to travel and you would be very surprised to know that the ethereal is actually full of interesting places in fact you probably didn't know but this is where the me planes are see let me set this straight extra dimensional spaces and demi planes are two completely different things the former is meant to be merely a pocket in reality a hole that exists only for as long as magic keeps it open the latter is a permanent creation a demiplane is a plane a place if you created the plane you have created a world because extra-dimensional places are just momentary glitches in the world they simply exist directly where they are but demi planes need to physically exist somewhere because they are permanent demiplanes exist in the ethereal realm every single time a wizard creates a new demiplane a new piece of land gets created in the ethereal these pieces of land can be found by explorers of the ethereal if they are lucky or if they know where to look an example of this was the dimmi plane of shadow something that started as a small demiplane that then grew and grew and grew until certain gods decided to combine that demiplane in the ethereal realm with certain other inner planes and then from that they created the shadowfell so just like that there are many demiplanes that are just floating in the ethereal that are basically entire locations some probably fantastical and some probably terrifying so keep in mind that when you cast the banishment spell or when you cast the may spell what you're really doing is sending someone to a pre-made realm in the ethereal also keep in mind that the border ethereal is generally where spirits and goes would be found if you are looking to talk to a spirit that you know is there typically moving into the border ethereal would allow you to see it another way of interacting with those in the border ethereal would be to cast either true sight or see invisibility any of those too would allow you to see someone floating in the border ethereal you however would not be able to see someone in the deep ethereal from the prime even with true sight they are far too deep at that point now you can get to the inner planes from the ethereal realm in fact that would be the normal way of doing it the other way would be to find what one would call elemental vortices in the prime these are shortcuts that one can use to instantly travel from the prime directly into your desired elemental plane though these are typically very much out of the way and in dangerous areas since for a vortice to appear there has to be an extremely concentrated version of the element which the vortex will lead to for example an elemental vortice that opens a portal to the elemental plane of fire would probably be found in the caldera of a massive volcano a vortice that opens to the plane of water would probably be found at the very bottom of the ocean perhaps at the end of a whirlpool and so on these can be used as shortcuts if you want to avoid going through the ethereal plane the positive side though is that even though they can be very dangerous to get into they are for the most part very stable these elemental vortices are generally always open and generally always at around the same locations now inner planes are actually quite straightforward the planes are infinite they literally stretch till infinity and they are a complete representation of the elements that they hold the plane of water is just water there is no up there is no down there is no east or west and there is no end just water as far as you can see moats of different elements sometimes coalesce in the plane this happens because the inner planes actually touch one another in certain areas you can see that here the plane of water touches the plane of earth so every once in a while a mode of earth will form and float in the plane of water creating an island of swords that inhabitants of the plane can then use if they wish to form castles or homes from these modes are rare but they do exist and are used for these purposes keep in mind though once again that there is no water line in the plane of water the demotes of earth float under the water since there is no above water it's all just infinite water to no end and this is also the case for the plane of earth which is basically just a few tunnels the whole thing is literally just ground just earth everywhere ironically the planet of earth is the least inhabitable inner plane for a humanoid since there is no food and there is no air at least in the plane of water one could eat fish and one could use spells like water breathing to exist but that is not the case in the plane of earth where if you don't have the ability to eat minerals you ain't living there alongside the plane of water the plane of air is probably the most hospitable for humanoids in fact one can even say that it is probably the only plane where one could have a relatively normal life in the whole place is as you guessed it just air now the interesting bit is that the rules of gravity here are different as in gravity is subjective now what do i mean by that if you think that you're gonna fall you fall if you understand mentally that there is no down or up or sides then you don't fall now i say that as if it is a concept that any character could truly grasp when in reality it is not supposed to be that easy in general this rule is meant to apply mostly to objects if you throw a ball in the plane of air the ball will continue its momentum for a while until it will eventually come to a stop then it'll just float there this is the case for modes of earth that float in the plane modes of fire items objects clothes what have you these items cannot think and such don't fall since gravity is objective they don't think they're gonna fall so they don't fall a person on the other hand if they truly believe that op is their down and they stop flapping their wings for example they will fall up or they will fall to the side if they believe that that is their down on the other hand a monk who has become one with their inner self and truly realizes that there is no spoon they will probably not fall anywhere but that is a very difficult thing to grasp now this objective gravitism works on both the plane of air and earth however in the plane of earth instead of gravity being a personal defying thing it becomes a collective thing in the plane of earth everyone must share the same gravity so if there's ever a disagreement of where is up and where is down within a group the collective who believe that they are in the right the hardest will win and then everyone else will fall now the plane of fire is supposed to look just like a normal place except that everything is on fire imagine a cute vista with mountains and forests and a river except that it is all literally just on fire this is the only inner plane with actual normal gravity as you can imagine it is the most immediately dangerous plane of them all if you don't have immunity to fire you literally just cannot exist here now keep in mind that none of these planes actually have air or breathable air even except of course for the plane of air so you can't actually breathe in any of them because of this many spells have been created to allow primers to exist within these planes there are trade hubs in the plane of air or in the plane of water that could trade you scrolls or magic items that allow you to breathe in the plane of earth or fire essentially just how there is a water breathing spell there actually is an earth breeding spell and a fire breathing spell how about that now that's the ethereal realm and the inner planes though there are technically more inner planes there like you can see here where the main inner planes meet they can form different versions of those planes like in here you can see that there is a plate of ice between the plane of air and water these we would call the quasi elemental planes but you get the general gist of what is an inner plane so now let's move on to the astral plane the astral plane is a transitory plane between the prime and the outer planes it is a little bit more well understood because it is somewhat easier to navigate or at least more people do unlike the inner planes which are generally just inhospitable to primers the outer planes which are also the realms of the gods are not just very much hospitable but they're also very enticing also i say it is easier to navigate because the deep ethereal is really just a sea of never-ending fog you legit can barely see anything whereas the astral plane is actually quite open streams of silver as far as you can see if there is something far in the distance you can probably see it another reason the asteroid is more popular has a lot to do with the fact that there is a popular spell that allows you entrance to this plane whereas wizards have actually struggled for years to come up with a decent spell that would allow you entrance into the deep ethereal getting into the deep ethereal it's actually really tough like i don't know if there's a spell that would allow you to do that now the astral plane is infinite and it is the main road to all of the outer planes it is a mostly barren wasteland of silvery nothingness most things that you find in here are either locations that have been banished here for one reason or another things lost to time and space or enormous dead gods that have been kicked out of their own planes when they perished now even though it is mostly empty there are things in here that live and thrive most notably the popular git yankee this race of humanoids are known as astral pirates who are the strongest raced in the astral and who constantly raid worlds on the prime through here now time technically does pass in the astral but extremely slowly to the point where a thousand years in the astral would feel like a day anywhere else because of this nobody ages here and you very rarely go hungry now in the astral floating in the very silvery void you can find what can only be described as color pools these are portals that take you to different locations in the outer plains if these would actually be the main reason why you as a character would want to go into the astral to find these pools since these are the doors that would lead you into your actual destination like i said before the astral is also more like a road than an actual location theoretically the pools all have different colors and these colors are meant to correspond with different destinations a gold colored pool for example should drop you somewhere on mount celestia whereas a jet black collar pool should drop you somewhere on limbo there are pools for the ethereal plane for the inner planes for the prime for everywhere is it really just a matter of knowing which one to jump into you don't want to end up somewhere completely different than the place that you expect it to be something that is entirely possible because these pools are only visible from one of their sides meaning you could easily end up passing through the invisible side of a collar pool and then end up just being teleported somewhere else it is believed that you can go anywhere as long as you know which color pool to jump into the only exceptions would be places specifically created by the gods to never be reached like for example sinoshore which is the meeting hall of the gods the place where they would go to when they need to convene or places like the fugue plane which is where all the souls of the dead go to in order to be judged you cannot go into either of these places through any color pool you also can only go to the first layer of any realm using a pool so if you for example take the ruby pool in order to go into the nine hills you would be spawned on the first layer of hell avernus and not any of the other eight layers now doing all of this would be what most planar travelers would consider walking or the scenic route so to speak you're essentially taking the long route to go anywhere like many things however and as we discussed previously with the ethereal realm there are always shortcuts that one could take if one knows where to find them in this case well there are two one could cast a spell plane shift though the spell requires a tuning fork that has been attuned to the place that you're trying to go to without that fork you cannot plane shift the other way would be to find what they call an astral conduit an astral conduit is like a superhighway that connects a location of the premature realm with the location in the outer planes these locations look like arteries that pass through the astral realm one that takes these shortcuts could travel through the astral plane in one second what would take a normal person floating there a thousand years these astral conduits would look invisible to someone born in the prime material realm whereas someone born in the outer planes would see the shimmering portal right in front of them if you take these portals from the prime you would appear at your destination in the outer planes in mere seconds skipping having to travel through the astral at all in any case we're finally here at the outer planes this here is a representation of how they look the great ring as they call it there are 16 planes with an extra one right in the middle of the ring now these are the realms of the gods the angels and fiends and of course of many planner travelers whereas the inner planes are supposed to represent their corresponding element to the extreme the outer planes are supposed to represent their corresponding alignment to the extreme the planes above the wheel are good the ones below are evil the ones to the left are lawful and the ones to the right are chaotic so as you can see here you have your lawful evil plane in the form of the nine hells and your neutral evil plane as hades then jagina here being evil but a middle ground between lawful and neutral so you have planes that are their most extreme examples of an alignment and then planes that fall right in the middle and then of course right at the center of the great ring you have the plane called the outlands or the concordant opposition the one true neutral realm that connects to all other realms now traveling from realm to realm here is a little bit tricky from the astral plane all you have to do is just find the right color pool and you're taken there but from the outer planes you would have to physically go to the right border the reason why the other planes are seen as a ring is because the borders between these planes are actually as shown here that being mechanism for example borders both arcadia and akron and then akron borders both mechanus and the nine hells every single one of these planes have three gates one that leads to the plane to the left one that leads to their plane to the right and then one that leads to the outlands walking from one of these gates to the other would take a whole lifetime of walking every single one of these planes is basically infinite and the separation between those gates are sometimes eternities away there are also layers within the planes and sometimes it can also take an eternity to find the next layer within that plane though sometimes layers can also be as small as a single room the nine hells for example is well known for having well nine layers and getting through them doesn't really take that long that is if you can survive the inhabitants of those layers on the other hand mount silesia is known to have seven layers or seven mountains the seven heavens of mount silesia are notoriously impossible to travel because you have to climb the mountain in order to reach the next layer and the mountains were designed to be sort of like tests of character only the most enlightened and the most virtuous and the most regimented could even hope to climb the seven mountains then you also have the abyss which has an infinite number of layers and some layers can be as small as a single dungeon now as always there are shortcuts that one can take shortcuts that many planet travelers do take in order to trade between the planes many of the upper planes are connected via the river oceanis which starts in elysium passes through many of its layers and then flows through the beast lands then arborea and then if the currents are favorable it finally passes through parts of isguard the river however was tricky to follow since it forked in many directions and sometimes float in impossible ways like sometimes you would feel like you're teleporting more than you're simply just floating in a particular direction many towns and cities were formed alongside the river and many traders and adventurers use the river as the fastest way to travel through the plains in a similar fashion you also have the river sticks which is his equivalent in the lower plains which unlike oceana's actually does pass through every single plane in the lower plains all of the evil planes down here have a portion of the river sticks passing through them however its path is much more unpredictable even if you follow the exact same stream you will typically end up in a different place the second time around hence you always want to pay up the river stakes boatman to get you to places other than this reverse you also have yggdrasil which is an impossibly large tree that grows from isguard and has branches that connect to many places and worlds no one has been able to map the totality of its branches and the places they reach but it has roots that grow all the way down to the great waste and pandemonium branches that stretch to the astral plane and many others that stretch even into the prime it is said that it has branches whose tips touch hundreds of worlds where the norse gods are revered or remembered lastly you have mount olympus which rises from arboria and can connect to jahina the grey waste and curseri these planes are reachable by entering through the twisting caverns inside of the mountain it also connects to many worlds in the prime who have stories of this mountain unlike in brazil mount olympus has no connections to the upper plains other than its base and its tunnels and connections are very well mapped and discovered now the last true important note to hit is the outlands the very center of the outer planes the plane of true neutrality the outlands has portals to each of the 16 other planes which makes it the most favorable place for our planet travelers to pick when choosing to explore the outer planes each of the gates to the 16 planes has a very populated settlement in it a settlement that very closely mirrors what one would expect from the plane on the other side for example the settlement of automata is a perfectly ordered city that lies directly on the gate to mechanus the plane of pure law another example is sylvania a town that constantly parties with music and dance where the gate of arboria can be located the most important location in the outlands however is sigil known as the city of doors sigil looks like an enormous ring on top of the tallest mountain in outlands the city simply floats on top of the mountain like a floating crown the ring is however enclosed within itself so if you are inside you cannot see the outside instead if you were to look up you would simply see part of the inside of the city it is honestly very difficult to explain but thankfully we actually do have a lot of official art to show sigil is actually a very popular city within dnd so we have a lot of art for it which is fantastic now this city is interesting and very popular for three major universe shattering reasons one reason is that sigil is and i mean quite literally the very center of the multiverse some philosophers in sigil would probably disagree some gods would disagree but realistically speaking it is basically the middle of the universe second sigil is known as a city of doors because there are possibly millions of portals inside of the city that lead anywhere in the multiverse the doors of course are hidden and invisible and require very specifically attuned to keys to make them function but they are there if you have the right key and you know where the door is then you could literally travel anywhere the third reason why this city is interesting is because it is the literal only place in the outer plains where gods cannot enter gods are banned from sigil they cannot get in instead sigil is governed by a mysterious godlike figure known as the lady of pain which we know absolutely nothing about like we actually know virtually nothing of her we don't really know where she came from who she really is or how powerful she even is what we do know is that she has access to any portal to anywhere she wants and this power is one that every god wants if asmodius for example got access to this power he could simply use the door that would lead his armies right into the bathroom of whatever god he wanted to kill very powerful stuff [Music] so hopefully this all gives you an idea of how the multiverse of those dragons is connected and where everything is finding this information on your own can be very daunting and overwhelming because this is all scattered throughout multiple different books in this channel we cover the forgotten realm setting which is essentially the planet of toro i cover it because i feel like it is the most relevant planet for now it is where basically all of the fifth edition books are set and it is where the video games are set so if you play baldur's gate or the neverwinter games then know that they are said on that planet with the lore that i talk about if you're interested in knowing what happens if you teleport to the moon or cast fly and simply fly right into space or if you played baldur's gate 3 and you want to know more about the mind players and why they have these cool flying ships then you want to read up on spell jammer which covers everything from traveling in space to how to escape your crystal shell and check out other planets and worlds this is particularly good if you want to for example jump from your planet to critical roles planet or any of the magic the gathering worlds if you want to basically become a planeswalker like in magic the gathering that's the book that's the setting that you want to read on if you're interested in checking out the inner planes like the plane of water or the outer planes and then walk in sigil the city of doors then you want to read up on planescape the campaign setting for planner travelers even though these are all different campaign settings do know that they are designed to work together and especially so with the forgotten realms for example ed greenwood the creator of the forgotten realms also worked on the spell jammer setting which means spell jammers are canon within the world of the forgotten realms that's why you can find spell jammers and flying mind flayers in 5th edition in any case we're going to be talking about every single plane and each of them will get its own video our next video will be about a series of interesting things you probably didn't know about how the universe works in dnd but then after that we're going to start going one by one through each of the planes we will start with the ethereal realm and make a full video about it and then we will hit the plane of fire and we will take it from there so if you have any art that you made yourself that you would like to send over to see on our next video feel free to send it over to rexart gmail.com the link is in the description i'll be accepting art for the ethereal plane so please do not send me anything else anything that relates to demiplanes to the ethereal realm and the monsters that might dwell there i will be accepting make sure to give me your name or your pen name so that i can give you credit on the video as well now that being said i would like to personally thank my patreon supporters barry maskant 5e magic shop morgan johnson rusty rayne biotechnofrag daniel luna doc feeder brad salazar walker motley terry kolp the great codini omega scales ozol steven alex cookson falkey951 thomas hunt prince daylight morning crown sabine kurshab solarensis or dorick nathan mccomb silent chapa bushido burrito werewolves and games soulless rider roleplay with advantage staleya lost crusader tython tribe909 olaf klepp garrett minnick jd green famine 52 george fotland trevor hess suffering mind larian's folly drag logia 5 gorham fracker whose store zirin king and the living guild pact for supporting me on patreon at the 25 level if you would like to support me as well then please head on over to patreon.comrex to support all right guys long video but it needed to be done just to set up everything before we actually start talking about each of the planes individually so once again if you guys uh are artists if you want to make cool art or if you happen to have cool art for the ethereal plane that you have made yourself it's very important you have to have made it yourself then uh please send it over to rexart gmail.com with your pen name or whatever name you want me to use and hopefully we can have it added into the next video that would help out a lot because this is hard to find uh sometimes official art that is good but thank you guys for watching thank you guys for being here and of course as always i'll see you all next time bye

Channel: MrRhexx

Views: 177,784

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Id: XTrk7t7b0LQ

Length: 30min 8sec (1808 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 03 2021