Celestia Lawful Good |
Bytopia Lawful & Neutral Good |
Elysium Neutral Good |
Beastlands Neutral & Chaotic Good |
Arborea Chaotic Good |
Arcadia Lawful Good & Neutral |
↑Good↑ | Ysgard Chaotic Good & Neutral |
||
Mechanus Lawful Neutral |
←Lawful | Outlands True Neutral |
Chaotic→ | Limbo Chaotic Neutral |
Acheron Lawful Neutral & Evil |
↓Evil↓ | Pandemonium Chaotic Neutral & Evil |
||
Baator Lawful Evil |
Gehenna Lawful & Neutral Evil |
Gray Waste Neutral Evil |
Carceri Neutral & Chaotic Evil |
Abyss Chaotic Evil |
An outer plane is one of a number of general types of planes of existence. They can also be referred to as godly planes, spiritual planes or divine planes. The Outer Planes are home to beings such as deities and otherworldly creatures such as demons, celestials and devils, and they are the standard afterlife of mortal souls. Each Outer Plane is usually the physical manifestation of a particular moral and ethical alignment and the entities that dwell there often embody the traits related to that alignment.
The intangible and esoteric Outer Planes—the realms of ideals, philosophies, and gods—stand in contrast to the Inner Planes, which compose the material building blocks of reality and the realms of energy and matter.
All Outer Planes are spatially infinite but are composed of features and locations of finite scope. Many of these planes are often split in to a collection of further infinites called layers, which are essentially sub-planes that represent one particular facet or theme of the plane. In addition, each layer may also contain a number of realms. Each realm is the home to an individual deity, or occasionally a collection of deities.
Structure
The first layers of each of the Outer Planes touch the Astral Plane. The Outer Planes are connected to the Prime Material Plane via Astral conduits, which are described as great silvery tubes or whirlwinds used by souls to travel to and from the afterlife. On the Material Plane, they are invisible to mortal sight. They are often watched over by mysterious spiritual guardians.
The various realms and layers of the Outer Planes are connected to one another via planar conduits, similar to the Astral conduits except they knit the Outer Planes to one another instead of to the mortal plane. They are also connected by a network of portals of varying appearance known as the Great Road. Many of these portals are surrounded by gate-towns or fortresses; these settlements are subject to sliding into the neighboring plane if their philosophical outlook changes too greatly, and planar entities and factions often compete to make this happen or to prevent it.
Finally, there are the planar paths, such as the Infinite Staircase, Mount Olympus, Yggdrasil, the River Oceanus, and the River Styx, which cross from one plane to another without a need for portals or conduits.