Why You Should Be Afraid of the Deep Ethereal - D&D

you swiftly craft a crude map of the cosmos in the air with your hands as you speak the words of the spell creating glowing orally of threats of magic to materialize out of the air you strike a tuning fork against this construct and hold it close to the place among the planes you wish to go you tilt the singing piece of metal seeking the perfect note for your destination and when it is closed you encourage your companions to prepare themselves oh man i love describes the scriptures they are so cool though there is something even cooler and that is our sponsor for today's video this video is brought to you by reroll once again because i love them so much i want to bring them back for you all reroll functions as a character sheet app where you can create your characters in there and set up all of the normal stats that you would on any sheet app hp stats skills items really everything that you would expect however the twist is that you can reflect how your character actually looks like through those items you can create the physical look of your character and then design the look of the weapons and armor that he collects in the game there are a large variety of options in here for you to choose from making your character completely unique from most others especially because every single piece can be colored individually it is here is rex the bronze dragonborn paladin got himself a cool sweet dragon style shield a long sword and his trusty pet ghost uh the white dragon baby i added in the watery background because i'm still currently dming ghost of salt marsh so that's where my mind is at but yeah you can create your character in here alongside a highly customizable character creator but this is also cool too because you can grab this image and very easily exported out so that you can then drop the image on roll 20 or fantasy grounds or use it as a profile pic wherever you want the app is great definitely check it out it is on the google store on the app store and on pc as well you can access it through the browser like i have been so just go over to reroll.co that is reroll.co to check this out so now let's get back into the video so in our last episode we talked about the border ethereal and the barrier that separates the border and the deep ethereal well today we're going in deep very deep we'll talk about what's out there in this infinite plane of possibilities what worlds can be found floating in the ether and what dangers one might befall if you but stray too far quote streamers of vapor emerge from nothingness swirling masses of mist first blue then aquamarine then emerald squirreled with crimson all in continuous and ever-changing patterns shroud a body's vision worlds of fog and shadowy shapes of varying solidity flowed in and out of view a few blobs of solid ether lazily sail end over end some gaining density and others losing it clear windows open onto scenes both familiar and alien before losing resolution in the slow chaotic boil of the ethereal plane and the quote a person that enters the deep as they call it would see a world of fog of various colors behind them they would see the color wall which is the door so to speak to the world they just left the wall would look like the aurora borealis with near infinite looking length and size but no discernible death looking forward again they would notice that they can only look so far as the fog is everywhere the fog is of course unrealized matter space and time to be the building block of the multiverse the stuff of creation or at least what comes before matter is molded you would notice immediately that you can breathe it quote the ethereal plane is filled with ethereal particles that have bled off the inner planes these particles combine to form the ethereal fog minuscule packets of possibility a body breathing the fog automatically translates possibility into reality the mist becomes a nourishing gas appropriate to the breather end quote however since the fog is composed of the elements of the inner plane you can find yourself in contact with bad ethereal fog that being fog that might have a little bit too much of the inner plane of fire or too much of the inner plane of smoke breathing particles like such that have too much of an element can be of course indeed very deadly but for the most part most of the plane is perfectly breathable which is really cool in any case though this same process actually applies to sustenance where you can use the ethereal fog for food but it is much more complicated just eating the fog is not gonna quite do the trick i'm sorry to say instead you must develop a form of bond with the plane and then slowly over time sort of acclimate yourself enough to be able to eat it or absorb it depending on how you do it it might take a few years of course but with enough acclimation eventually your body would start adapting to the fog as a form of sustenance that being said that is not really necessary actually you can just bring your food and drink over into the ethereal without any issues and it works just fine and tastes just the same actually it doesn't taste quite as good but it works as far as vision is concerned you can typically see up to 300 feet in front of you before things start to get muffled up by the fog and even though the shades and darkness and light work just the same in the ethereal a darkness is typically never a problem since the particles in the ethereal fog illuminate around them the massive amounts of illumination coming from everywhere does not cause warmth however temperatures in here are actually meaningless you don't feel them at all a warm area does not radiate any heat neither would you feel cold by just being floating out here in this space as far as other senses are concerned hearing increases in the ethereal as sound travels twice as far in the thick possibility laid in the medium though smelling becomes more difficult the lack of definite boundaries prevents odors from permeating a space and so tracking in this way is extremely hard in here lastly though and in general your touching senses sort of lose some of their sharpness food doesn't quite taste as good and it feels funny in your mouth and objects feel somewhat pliant and rubbery in your hands quote for this reason some cutters carry spices that are so devastating that they are banned on all but the lower plains the spices including devil worked green and even mythos sweat are damaging when eaten by most blood on other planes but perfect to add flavor to food made bland by the ethereal end quote now all of this can be very overwhelming for people and i mean lots of folk out there get seasick while out in the sea and others literally can't handle putting on a vr headset without needing to sit down and rest hell i know a person who can't play games with motion blur on or he gets sick so you can easily imagine how traumatizing your first experience in the deep can be well this type of cygnus has a name and it is called ether sickness when you lose all sense of space and float freely into the mists being hit and buffeted by the winds and vapors you can very easily get disoriented and become ether sick this is considered to be a severe disability a person who gets this would basically just get disadvantaged on everything they do for as long as they are on the ethereal as they basically just get violently ill you can't quite get over it until you go back to the normal plane and then return and try again but the positive here is that if you do manage to find your inner self once in a particular try then you will typically never have to suffer from it again so alright so now you have made it into the deep ethereal you have experienced sight hearing taste and either sickness you have a place where you want to go let's say that you want to go to the plane of air so what happens now so in the ethereal there is no op there is no down no direction whatsoever just fog everywhere and to make matters worse there is no constellation that you can look up to for guidance or a piece of land that you can use as a guide though whether you believe it or not that actually doesn't even matter we mentioned this before on the last video but things are not relative to other things in this plane now that sounds a bit confusing but what do i mean there are no distances anywhere this is a land where time and space is uh unconventional traveling for one hour in a direction and then traveling back to that same direction you just came from for the same amount of time will not put you in the same spot location and existence in this plane can sometimes be more of a state of being than it is literal and so it is movement this creates a couple of really interesting situations quote observers watching an ethereal combat often report that two clashing ethereal figures resemble waves coming together in a prime ocean sometimes the waves pass through each other with little harm and sometimes they crash onto each other with destructive force lessening portions of themselves end quote a movement in this plane is radical and might look to you like something more akin to the way wizards fight in harry potter when they are just flying as shadows in the air crashing onto each other or maybe something akin to an anime where the entities move so fast that you literally cannot see them and when you strike one another your blood and limbs that are cut off are then absorbed by the ethereal realm movement in this place is just wild in any case going back to our example of how to reach the inner plane of air all you would have to do is basically just will yourself to go there because the plane of air is not in any particular direction or doesn't take any particular place in space you really can't go wrong with where you go as long as you're willing yourself to be taken to the plane you will basically just start moving towards the plane though again think of the process of travel to be less about moving towards a location and perhaps rather as a video game loading bar the more that you travel as you wield yourself to the plane the more the loading bar fails but if you ever stop your trajectory choose a different place to go and then start moving somewhere else you basically delete your previous loading bar and create a new one essentially eliminating any progress that you made on your travel to the previous location like i said there are no distances in this plane even if you feel like you've traveled for one entire year in a direction and only diverted for six hours you still need to redo the whole trip space is not relative to other spaces in here now as far as how long it would take traveling in this fashion well it depends on where you want to go finding a free-floating location on the ethereal realm is actually faster than finding a demi plane which is also faster than finding an inner plane or finding the prime material realm it takes on average about 50 hours to find a free-floating location about 100 hours to find a demiplane and about 500 hours to get to any inner plane or to the prime material realm traveling in the deep ethereal is a long process so be extremely careful if you ever leave the border ethereal and go into the deep even if you do that for just a few minutes stay close to the collar wall that leads to your prime world because if you venture out into the deep away from your color wall for even just a few minutes you will have to then spend over 500 hours or more to get back now that being said you can of course rest and everything or explore a location that you found while on your way to the destination without actually losing your progress on your way to that destination you just have to be careful to not wield yourself to a different place and start travel somewhere else or that will effectively reset your travel to wherever you were going to before it is also important to know as obvious as it might sound that you must know where you're going in order to actually go there if traveling to a place that you do know could take as much as a thousand hours then traveling to a place you don't know could take entire lifetimes if even that so to rephrase that it is actually impossible to ever get to a place that you don't actually know you can't just simply sit on the ethereal and say oh i want to go to the coolest demi plane and then and then just try and will yourself to go there you actually need to at least know what the place is if it has a name and sort of have an understanding of what it is as long as you can visualize the place you can typically will yourself to it so all right now that you have experienced the deep and are currently in the midst of your very long voyage to get to the inner plane what can you find on your way what kind of creatures could you meet what's actually out there in the deep ethereal and because this place is well infinite we're going to have this other sides a bit smaller and cover just some of the more interesting sights that one can find in here otherwise we will literally be here forever and i would be forced to make a third video on the ethereal which i guess you it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world but anyways there are tons of demi planes that one can find in here in the deep ethereal like i said before this is where demi planes are created whenever you cast a spell that makes one or whenever one gets created for whatever reason there are a couple of these that are universally well known like for example ravenloft so this one is a little bit confusing because there is actually a difference between say curses stride and loft curses strat is set in a land called barovia which was a small valley somewhere in a forgotten world in the prime material realm this land was taken from that planet snatched and then put into the shadowfell by the dark powers this is a process that can happen really to any place and happens every so often on the prime for example there is actually an example of this in the tomb of annihilation even though the book didn't actually tell you that but art december gets stuck in a demi plain of dread similar to that of course the strat in this location here in trolt there was a druid in there who turned evil and just how strat did sort of curse the land and formed it into a demiplane of dread in any case this is something that happens every so often and those lands get taken and brought into the shadowfell raven loft on the other hand is different even different than cursed stride raven loft was a campaign setting inspired by the original curses triad this campaign setting is set in the demi plane of tread which is supposed to float in the ethereal realm so now that we have a new book coming out which appears to be a campaign setting for ravenloft whatever the place that gets described there should be found in the ethereal realm i say should because i don't know if they're basically going to be red cunning things or changing things for the great wheel cosmology model i suppose that we will have to see you never know what changes they decide to make but that being said these places are linked to the shadowfell at least in the sense that demigods and gods can connect themselves to demiplanes in the ethereal realm even from other places in the multiverse not that any of this matters much locations and time and space they're all relative here you can walk into a domain of dread in the shadowfell and technically now be in a demi plane in the ethereal plane or you can enter the ethereal realm from the prime so it's all a little bit just kind of up in the air to be honest regardless if these domains of dread had a time and a place in the multiverse they would be in the ethereal and you could directly float to them in the ethereal realm man this is kind of confusing though this is also a good time to explain that even though the deep ethereal itself has a lot of rules those only apply to the plane itself and not to any of the demi planes that reside within endemic planes have their own rules and laws as dictated by the nature of their creation some dummy planes might have gravity some might not some might have different physics than others some might bar you entrance in one way or another or even prevent you from leaving the demi plains of dread are a good example of a demi plane that will prevent you from being able to leave once you enter it whereas atheist is a good example of a place that would bar you entrance aethus is a planet in the premature world the setting for the dark sun campaign setting if you try to materialize unto aethus from the deep ethereal a world of ash and death you will automatically fail atheist does not have a border ethereal and if you try and get in you will be instead trapped in what is known as the grey a dreary metaphysical haze that prevents entry onto the planet another example of this would be the world of crin from the dragon lands setting the border ethereal of the realm appears blocked and haunted by ether gaps which are essentially like black holes in the ethereal realm and there's also supposed to be tons of creatures born of chaos in this place and that prevents you from entering the concept of what's possible and what you can find in the ethereal realm is honestly beyond scope there is a demi plane in here called the demi plane that lives if you enter it you will find yourself inside a collection of organs like like if you were instead of a body except that if you explore it you would realize that the body would have to be the size of continents and many of its organs are just nonsensical these living organs have a sentience however which calls itself neth and as a being it seeks to understand the nature of his existence for it itself doesn't even know how it was made this entity can also produce child looking avatars imbued with its sentience that constantly scour the ethereal realm looking for answers about how it was born i mean things in here can get so wild there's a demiplane in here called warmscape quote wormscape is literally a solid three-dimensional mass of living writhing worms the extent of the demi plane remains unmapped however there can be no doubt that his expanse is vast the slick riding worms vary in length between 1 inch and 10 feet thankfully the border ethereal does indeed touch the semiplane so a body knows what she is about to enter once a body moves into the dummy plane she's surrounded by worms the literally billions of worms that comprise this demiplane make an almost subsonic slithering noise as they weave their way in and out of each other's slime covered bodies this noise penetrates the ear at some level no matter what precautions a body uses even magical ones the origin true nature and meaning of wormscape remains dark one story has it that wormscape is merely the outer skin of a hideous entity that exists at its core if this is true then wormskate might actually be the rot of a truly gargantuan being that died long ago or it might be the byproduct of this creature's ghastly nature and quote i just wanted to make sure that you guys were aware of wormscape it was important to me that you would be told of this place you're welcome another demi plane that is of great importance is the prison of thyris dune known also as the elder elemental evil so atari is doing was a god that attempted to destroy everything that is and in fact it was he who ended up creating the abyss as we know it today the gods basically banded together in order to imprison him creating a universe that was completely overtaken by the abyss as a form of poetic justice they basically wanted to imprison him in a place that would echo that which he wanted to bring well this universe or location whatever it is is rumored to exist within the ethereal plane is supposed to be a demi plane now for some context this is actually the actual bad guy behind the events that transpired in princes of the apocalypse the one who manipulated the elder elemental archons into invading prime material worlds and destroying them all he can do from this prison is basically whisper sweet nothings into cultists and others in hopes of accomplishing his agenda quote lore places this power of evil insanity and destruction in a hidden demiplane supposedly locked away from the rest of the multiverse by other deities fearful of its infinite rage end quote now those are all just examples of the sorts of demiplanes you can find in the ethereal and there is a lot of interesting stuff but i just can't go through each of them now remember demi planes are typically created by people or gods using vast amounts of magic one can gather the forces that be in the plane of possibility and then make the impossible well possible however you don't always need to have a creator for these things to happen like i said again in a plane of possibility well anything is possible the ether itself that floats in the realm is creation incarnate quote the myths of the deep ethereal contain small amounts of existence itself these tendrils of possibility swirl about the plane touching and surrounding everything sometimes the latent power within the ethereal fog manifests itself as solid either also called protomatter or prima matera by graveyards this substance is concentrated ethereal mist some cutters like to say that solid ether is just a possibility that has moved towards actuality but it is more than just a philosophical concept see a body can touch and hold protomatter in their hand depending on its density and stability this substance can be as fluffy and fleeting as a snowball in a desert or as oppressive and dangerous as a rock fall in close quarters usually concentrated ether compacts into a solid or semi-solid substance this substance is generally white tinged with bluish highlights if significant amounts of proton matter accumulate the chance exists for natural demiplane formation larger fluctuations in ethereal density cause longer lasting and denser forms of solid ether such fluctuations usually come about through natural stresses caused by the flexing of the curtain of vaporous color ether cyclones vortex fronts and other energetic features found on the ethereal end quote there are three types of prima matera or protomatter and the types correspond to how stable or unstable the matter is the first one is what we call ephemeral this is what happens if your character simply grabs a part of the ethereal fog and then i don't know just squeezes it together in their hands it will coalesce together into a form of actual material then it would quickly just vanish back into the fog after a second or so 99 of protomatter that is formed in this realm is this type of matter ephemeral because it is not stable enough to remain in a predetermined shape in your hand this type of matter will feel like a fluffy snowflake though without being wet or cold if you then would try and take this into an actual plane or world it would then simply disappear and disperse the next stage of protomatter is what we call quintessential quintessential matter is rarely formed out of ephemeral protomatter typically only one percent of any ephemeral matter created will turn into quintessential but what it means is that it is a bit more stable and will last longer generally we're talking about a range of about 100 hours to 1000 hours of lasting power now this type of matter would feel to a character like a cork a relatively dense material that can be squeezed and manipulated if you were to have a decent grip mostly this will be formed into the shape of pellets around areas where the ether is being forced together by natural forces within the realm though if the circumstances are appropriate you might even see protomatter like this formed in enormous ways like big enough to form plates of 1000 feet or more this material can be worked on like any other in order to form buildings weapons objects and what have you but again anything that you create with it will basically deform in just 100 to 1 000 hours much like shadow magic though you can actually magically sculpt this essence into actual shapes using illusion magic illusion magic is powerful in the ethereal realm since the nature of the plane here is flush with possibility and resists the imposition of a single and limiting form certain spells and effects are empowered while others are limited for example spells like disintegrate which is meant to break down a body from its stable form is more powerful here magics that deal with creation are also much more effective here and that would include illusion illusion magic in the ethereal realm is so good but also very dangerous when you create a new version of a monster using your illusion magic the particles of possibility in the ether can grant it a semblance of life that a caster might not be accustomed to as the ether flushes the illusion with creation juice you will notice that your creation juice that sounds weird anyways you will notice that if you don't hold any form of concentration on the spell you can still hold the spell further there is a small chance that the illusion that you created will absorb too much of the ether within it and then become sentient becoming an actual creature at that point beyond your control this can be dangerous because whatever your intentions might have been for the personality of the illusory creature it might just act differently many an illusionist have been slain by its own creations while others have inadvertently created long-lasting real friendships with their illusions made real this however is not to be taken lightly the most dreadful and powerful monster in the ethereal realm the actual last boss of the ethereal realm is in fact one created by such an illusionist who made a terrible grave mistake a spellcaster named hasten of mageclift once crafted a phantasmal killer on the ethereal realm and then paid the prize you probably already see where this is going fantastical killer creates an illusion in the minds of your target where the illusion manifests as the target's greatest fear then the fear haunts and hurts you well the phantasmal killer gained sentience in the ethereal and with the sentience it gained new powers now the created sentient monster takes on the greatest fear of any that it meets and as it was created to do it then kills them now what is an adventurer's greatest fear you might ask well what about a monster that one shots you if it touches you what about a monster who is immune to physical and magical attacks well the fair as it is called cannot be harmed by weapons and is invulnerable to magic and if it touches you it kills you out of pure fright in one hit the creature can also pass through most barriers and cannot be stopped they say that the only way to kill this creature would be to lure it out of the ethereal into the prematerial realm or any other realm where its protomatter essence would then quickly disintegrate into nothingness as most of this matter does but how cool is that now there are other spells that also work interestingly and different here in the ethereal realm like for example polymorph polymorph has a 25 chance of misfiring and changing the target into a random shape spheres of annihilation create massive ether gaps which are like massive black holes in the ethereal realm you also cannot conjure any monster from the astral or from the outer planes in here elemental water spells are easier to cast while elemental earth is harder to cast divination spells also do not work in the ethereal plane quote divinatory spells seek to foretell future events thus locking in what will happen since the ethereal myths are probability incarnate the act of determining future events and nearby limiting possibilities contradicts the fundamental nature of the entire plane if a body casts a divinatory spell on the ethereal it fails end quote this same logic follows abduration spells quote spells of the school are less effective on the ethereal plane and due to the opposition between the school's focus and the nature of the plane see abduration spells try to recant repudiate or limit an object or effect but the very medium of the ethereal plane is fraught with possibilities so that nothing is ever really beyond the body's reach spells that deny possibility have a limited power when cast ethereally thus all spells from this cool function at one level lower than normal in addition it is impossible to cast fourth level or higher spells from the adoration school on the ethereal plane end quote now going back to quintessential protomatter illusion magic can actually sculpt this ethereal matter into real shapes that then retain their form at least again for the 100 to 1000 hours that it will last anything that shapes or creates in this realm is just so so much more powerful quintessential matter however whether sculpt or not will also disintegrate if ever brought outside of the ethereal realm which again also incorporates any creature created by illusion magic now the last type of matter that you can find here is what we call stable matter which as the name implies it means that the protomatter will simply retain its form virtually forever or until manually destroyed these formations will keep on very slowly attracting other formations of matter into it making these islands bigger and bigger these islands of stable protomatter float in the ethereal becoming places where one might rest or form communities in it is believed that if these islands become big enough they would eventually form into a real plane though nobody has actually ever seen this happen and some communities even have attempted to make their floating islands of stable protomatter as big as possible in hopes of achieving this end but currently unfortunately with no positive results stable protomatter however can be indeed brought outside of the ethereal plane but at that point it is then reduced to its quintessential form and would then only last for 100 to 1000 hours outside now to finish up the video let's talk a little bit about gods and some gods do take particular interest of course in this realm since they have the special ability of creating expansive demiplanes that break the foundations of reality and then connect those realms over to their planes in the outer planes for example you have the lady of pain the ruler of the mighty city of sigil she has a dimmie plane in here called the demiplane of maces which is where she sends those who misbehave on sigil a prison demi plain meant to castigate those she deems worthy of punishment the gods of the forgotten realms also possess them in playing here the plane of sino-shore and this is where they meet whenever they need to speak to one another in a neutral zone if there was ever a dispute between the gods basically it would be resolved here even though the dummy plane exists within the ethereal realm the only way to actually access it would be through portals on the outer plane portals that could only be activated by the gods themselves lastly it is also here in the ethereal realm where you could find pata or taopath the traveler god now you might have not heard of this one because it is mostly a spelljammer god but the essence of it is that this is a god that travels through worlds or generally just travels through the cosmos he's considered to be one of the only gods in existence that is actually approachable especially considering how powerful he is basically you can just randomly find him just roaming in the ethereal end and then at that point you're able to just strike up a conversation with him though if he finds you boring he will teleport you out of his sight but there you have it this will be the end of our videos for the ethereal realm with this you should now be able to understand the ethereal and how it all works i didn't really feel the need to go over all the monsters that you can find in here or all of the ethereal unique spells that you can find i maybe i'll see about putting someone here on the screen for you to see but but yeah the main purpose of this video here was to give you an idea of how it all works and some of the really cool stuff that you can find and do for our next video we'll be covering the inner planes specifically we will be doing the plane of fire so if you have any art that you would like to submit for the plane of fire then make sure to send it over to rexart gmail.com anyways i would like to personally thank my patreon supporters barry maskant 5e magic shop morgan johnson rusty rayne biotechnofrag doc feeder brat salazar walker motley terry kolp the great kodini omega scales ozol alex cookson stephen faulkie 951 benjamin bosters thomas hunt prince daylight morning crown sabine kurshab man my body is giving out oh boy solarensis or doric nathan mccomb silent chapa bushido burrito werewolven games soulless rider roleblade with advantage mr salty stalia lost crusader tython treb909 garrett minik jd green tony rc famine 52 george fotlin olaf cleb trevor hess sovereign mine drag logia husteur zirin king the living guild pack michael walker and streblow for supporting me on patreon at the 25 level if you'd like to support me as well then please please head on over to patreon.comrex to support all right guys that's it for this thank you so much for watching thank you so much for being here i will see you next time on the inner plane of fire

Channel: MrRhexx

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Id: IZbrcW4_7dg

Length: 33min 25sec (2005 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 01 2021