I begin at the Ends of the Earth, a vast cliff face where elemental Earth ends and the negative energies start to take over. It feels like I can see the whole plane from here. Certainly none can surprise me.
I dive.
I sink through the cool expanse of crumbling reality, feeling free as I never did in the Anvil.
I love the dust. Let me show you around.
Dust remembers.
The Sandmen have neither written nor oral tradition; on their native plane, all memory is stored within the spiralling motes of the plane itself. Reading the script of Dust requires a Intelligence-based non-weapon proficiency; true masters can read signs in all the terrain around them, memories of all that was and is no more. That's what they claim, anyway.
Dust remembers.
The dust of ages contains bits of lost aeons, everything that ever was preserved in the memory of matter that used to be. Dust is everywhere, has been everywhere, and still believes itself whole.
The Dust of Creation:
The Dust of Creation is an anomaly in the crumbling Quasi-Elemental Plane of Dust, a place as much of beginnings as of endings. The entity responsible is Odaiel, an honest-to-goodness Power worshipped as god of creation and destruction amongst a desert-dwelling Prime civilization. Odaiel tells his flock that he created them from dust, and returns them to such when their allotted time is through; petitioners whirl through the Dust of Creation as faint dusty clouds, available as raw fuel for future created souls. The disintegrating nature of the plane is not countered in the Creating Lands, but instead of being lost completely victims remain in petitioner-form and have the hope of being reincarnated on the Prime. Dust Devas are proxies of Odaiel, and are actually ordinary asuras, but they feed on Dust of Creation instead of the Positive Energy Plane, and their wings are made of coruscating dust instead of flame. The Dark of Odaiel: Odaiel is plotting destruction on worshippers of Zenith, a god of the plane of Vacuum who is also popular on Odaiel's favored Prime world. Zenith, a god of beginnings, endings, and middles, has killed Odaiel's mortal son Shahel. The Dark on the Dust of Creation: Within the destructive nature of the realm lies positive energy, which can be tapped by those with the appropriate spell key: the holy symbol of Odaiel. Tapping the energy cancels the disintegration effect, while in the realm. This doesn't require an actual spell, just a Spellcraft proficiency and instructions from a benevolent local.
Dustbowl God
The Dustbowl God is a vast sentience formed of trillions of tiny dust motes; both god and realm, Dustbowl conspires amongst itself to control activities within its substance. On other planes, especially the Prime, the God considers itself to be Lord of All Happenings, and endeavors to ultimately control all events as surely as it does on its home plane. Ministers of Coincidence Control are proxies of the Dustbowl God. Like the Rilmani, from whose stock Dustbowl might have derived them, the Ministers believe themselves to be in ultimate control of every conspiracy and event that occurs under their ministry. Ordinarily, the Ministers remain in ethereal form, manipulating events through their psionic powers. The Dark of The Dustbowl God: The Lord of All Happenings is responsible for many events and conspiracies on the Prime; exactly how much or how little is of course up to the individual DM. It's possible that the God is an evolved dust elemental or even an Athasian-style Advanced Being, or something even stranger.
Dust Tyrant
The Tyrant of Dust is an enormous beholder, claiming to be a recent-generation descendent of the Great Mother herself. An Elder Orb (not kin), He of the Dust is constantly shrouded in a telekinetically-induced fog of dust. He is extremely fond of disintegrating anything that moves (usually only possible with non-native objects). No less than seven tribes of sandmen and fourteen mephit swarms, and a dao (!) are the Tyrant's charmed slaves. The Tyrant of Dust is extremely happy with his lot because there are no other beholders on his plane, or indeed any nearby competition at all. He will fight furiously to keep it that way. The Dark of the Tyrant: The Tyrant is quite mad by beholder standards, and has actually fallen in love with a mephit. He will do anything for his beloved, even cede his territory and minions to a rival.
Thanat-am-Suel, home of refugees. Okies are poverty-stricken bands of refugees driven from their homelands. The Plane of Dust has an inordinate amount of Okies, mainly from the Plane of Earth, caught too near the Tumbling Rocks region and falling in. Occasionally whole elemental kingdoms have crumbled to Dust, leaving their inhabitants stranded. Okie Suel are refugees from the Rain of Colorless Fire on the world of Oerth, over a thousand years ago. The majority of witnesses to this world-shattering calamaty were lucky and died as the vast Suloise Imperium crumbled to dust and ash. A few unfortunates were caught in desperate countermagicks or mythal-like magic fluctuations and transformed into okie genasi in the quasielemental planes. To this day, travelers in the Wasting Place are accosted and normally executed by the xenophobic Suel descendents, paranoid peoples certain that their ancient Baklunish foes are still plotting to finish them off. These Okies prove their man- or womanhood by long solo walkabouts through the planes of Dust or Ash, coming back with the still-pulsing hearts of powerful quasielemental creatures, preserved in specially treated skins. The two genders are treated fairly equally, and anyone of the appropriate bloodlines can become a shaman. The Dark of Thanat-am-Suel: The Okie Suel worship an amoeboid entity they call the Dust Mother. The Dust Mother could be related to the Dhour, the Cold Woman of Nehwon, or even quasielementals. It feeds on hate and sacrifice, and seems to remind its "children" of something their ancestors used long ago, at home.
Dust Wraiths are wraiths, who along with spectres, wights, slow shadows, nightshades, etc. roam the borders of Dust and the Bottom of the Multiverse, dipping in and out of the Storm of Annihilation on either side.
Dust Gorgons are a variation on the gorgons of Elemental Earth; their breath causes disintegration as well as petrification. Maedar, cockatrices, and medusae are unknown in Dust, although there are rumors of basilisks who rob their victims of all form. Parallelists are happy as pudding here.
Remhoraz and meenlocks have both been spotted in the realms of Dust.
Dust Mites come in all sizes on the Quasiplane, from ordinary too-tiny-to-be-noticed to monstrous carnivores with the clout to force even Dune Stalkers to flee. Animental mites don't seem to exist here, although some have been reported by dilegent Guvners on the planes of Ooze and Fire; perhaps whoever is in charge of such things thought they would be redundant.
Although there exist a few animental hares and rabbits, the jocularly named dust bunnies are something else altogether. Dust bunnies are mobile clumps of paraelemental cobweb (see the Inner Planes sourcebook) infused with a vague and deadly sentience. Dust bunnies have a MV of 8 on their home plane and creep toward sources of heat and movement. The dark of Dust Bunnies: No one knows how they come to be. Some claim they've merged with quasielemental spirits, and others think that they're meshes of petioners and the remnants of slain mephits, although the latter are just borrowing from stories about the mortai of the Beastlands.
Destruction Giants are humans warped by the energy of pure destruction. See Dragon Magazine #256.
Enton LaFarge is a dustwalker of great repute. A Prime emigree, Enton makes his jink trading with the dustmen and mephits for the magic dust they collect. For those looking for dust of disappearance, cocaine, and similar substances, Enton is a reliable source. Enton's Dark: Enton LaFarge isn't on the Plane of Dust by choice; he was once a master thief who broke into the manor of a famous wizard in hopes of liberating her daughter, who had pledged her love to him months before. Unfortunately for him, he was caught by a guardian (a dust quasielemental) the wizard had bonded to his love's door, and in the messy process of dispatching it his love was disintegrated by the beast. In rage and grief, the master mage banished him to the plane of Dust, there to suffer an ironic death.
To his great surprise, Enton did not die. Instead, he was picked up by a dao slaving expedition and managed to escape, leaving with some very useful survival equipment.
Dao Equipment: Dao slavers on the Plane of Dust take special measures to ensure that they can exploit the natives and treat sentient beings as chattel in comfort and style.
First, they have their slaves spray a synthetic membrane along the roads they build that stabilizes them for great lengths of time, allowing for constant routes to be maintained.
A special foaming agent has proven effective in removing airborne dust from dao tents and pavillions. Crop dusters are constructs built by dao artificers and clockwork magi. Also constructed by the djinn under the name of ornithopters, these artifacts of technomagical ingenuity resemble mechanical birds with rotating wings, capable of bearing their masters at great speeds.
A gate to the Plane of Water, maintained in exchange for prize slaves delivered to certain marid, is capable of making large areas temporarily dust-free if channeled by the proper magicks. A misty waterfall near a dao encampment could be the key to their continued tolerance of the region, and their downfall if successfully dispelled.
If nothing else is available, simple goggles, masks, and scarves will have to do, or mortal-made homunculi (see PSMCIII).
Scintner is an exiled dao with eyes like hollow caverns and a lower body and beard constantly struggling to maintain its integrity as it blows about with djinn-like mistiness.
Scintner lives in a modest villa built into an earth pocket three hundred cubic acres in volume, attended to by tasked genie servants and slaves from the Prime. Most entities avoid him, but he is occasionally approached by those hoping he will leak secrets that can be used against his former colleagues. Scintner's Dark: A deal went sour in the Great Dismal Delve: a coup against a minor noble by a consortium of merchants who felt they weren't getting their due. After a Russian nesting doll-like sequence of schemes within schemes revealed the plot before it could properly gestate, Scintner was among those sent to the genie tribunal on a platter to placate the noble's wrath. The Deeper Dismal Dark: Despite everything, Scintner is still a true believer in dao society; his exile has only reinforced his admiration for his people's cleverness and fitness to rule. In fact, he will give bad chant to those who go to him for advice, in the hope that his outsider's aid will redeem him in the eyes of the dao, and allow him to regain his power. Though he has doomed four parties, it has not been enough.
The Great Vortex is a channel leading to the Plane of Vacuum, two planes over. Dust spirals into the End, creating a hazard for passing traffic.
Hazards of Dust
Watch that you don't get wounded here, cutters. First, studies by the Fraternity of Law have shown that cornstarch powder on surgical and examination gloves -- medicine's deadly dust -- can cause complications, including sterility, infertility, blindness, tumor-like cysts, intestinal blockage, and even death. Second, latex allergy has reached epidemic proportions in the last decade, particularly among those consigned to Dust. Cornstarch powder has been incriminated as the primary source of life-threatening allergic reactions in these individuals, who are continually exposed to latex in the workplace.
The City of One and Five is maintained on the boundary between the planes of Fire, Ash, Dust, Earth, and Magma. The city is five-sided and walled, with the respective planes existing as wedges beyond the city's appropriate wards. Canals of inner planar matter flow under the complex streets. Natives of the five planes live in the wards resembling their respective ancestral homes, but mingle in the city's center and on business; remarkably little conflict exists here, for the city's motto is One Within the Five, and Five Within the One. The mephits, sandmen, salamanders, genasi, humans and demihumans, elmarin, drakes, azer, pech, shad, magmen, lava children, xorn, and ruvoka living here actually seem to appreciate and follow this policy, Powers know why. The Fire Ward is the manufacturing center of the city. Earthen paths over the flame are tolerable to unfiery visitors. The Fire Ward is also the area with the most churches. The Dust Ward is the seat of government in the City. The Hall of Sages recruits scholars from all races. Eater of Dust is the most commonly seen of the Sages of One and Five. Chant has it that he was once the ruler of a prime material kingdom, but lost it to an invasion. The Eater has managed to build a niche for himself here, and often leads the sages into compromises. The Magma Ward is the city's entertainment district. Like the Fire Ward, this district's paths are insulated enough to be used by visitors. Blocks of bars, taverns, theatres, gymnasiums, spas, and bordellos bring character to the place. The Earth Ward is the retail district, and those looking for equipment to survive one of the surrounding planes would be wisest to go here.
The Ash Ward is best known for Asherat's Sterile Hospital, a good place to go if you're looking for a leech or barber. Pigpen is a tout in the City of One and Five, looking like a human boy constantly surrounded by an aura of dust. The educated believe him to be some sort of genasi.
The Dark of the City: Although a minority of the Primal sect lives here and meets in darkened halls and hidden temples, the city itself is a creation of the entropes, who ate a border between five planes that shouldn't naturally share one. The entropes have been tamed and harnessed by a body of very progressive sages (some say, affiliated with the Harmonium, though their presence in the city is miminal) and are housed in warrens deep below the city proper. Every so often, they are brought out to expand and stabilize the pocket, but some fear the havoc that might ensue should their pets get out of control. Doomguard from the planes of Ash and Dust are quietly disposed of by the sages' private team of assassins.
Smoke Powder collects in an explosive realm near the borders of Ash, Dust, and Fire.
Hippo-like creatures called the Giff seem to believe these regions are a fabled lost paradise the souls of their faithful travel to after death, and so it is true. This is the Inner Planes, of course, so this doesn't change the realm's shape or form, but exactly what a utopia is is as subjective here as it is anywhere else.
Travelers have reported spider-like forms entering and leaving this realm in great numbers.
A pantheon of Dust
The planes form gods, and the gods define the planes. The mighty realms the powers that be construct in the multifold levels of existence leave some of the most lasting impressions of the places, and together help reveal to us the natures of the planes.
The Dust Pantheon is worshipped by those who crumble, whose lives are falling apart. Nostalgists, shattered people, moody remnants of dying races, and Sinkers give homage to these depressing entities.
Anzu
Demipower, "the Dreambreaker"
AoC: broken dreams
Alignment: CE
WAL: CE
Symbol: Spilled dust, lying on a pillow.
Home P/R: Plane of Dust/Dreaming's End
Some say the Prime Material Plane is made of the dreams of the elemental folk, just as the Outer Planes are formed from the beliefs and delusions of the Prime. Every ripple, breeze and rockslide comes from the subconscious flowing of the inner planar denizens.
Anzu was once a major planar power of elemental earth, a high-up tugglemonkey like few others. He attempted to control the dreaming of an earthen kingdom in order to shape and form vast regions of the world of the flesh-folk, and thus establish a foothold on the Outer Ring.
He found a stone that concentrated the dreams of spirits.
He failed; Grumbar himself wrenched the upstart apart, and all of Anzu's dreams crumbled to dust.
In Dust he remained, and his portfolio changed: Anzu now represents all whose dreams shatter and fall away. He takes these souls to his crumbling throne, kisses their heads, and brings company to their misery. Those desiring success sacrifice to the god to ward him off, while the depressed and despondant embrace him. The guardians of the worlds' dooms love him.
Anzu plots still. He plots against Grumbar and the archomentals. He plots against the gods of dreams and nightmares. He plots against all those who dream and believe in their visions.
He always strives to rein the Ethereal islands of dream into his devouring embrace, to destroy what he cannot control.
Anzu's realm resembles a Prime Planar terrain (dissolving on the edges) filled with empty, despondant humanoids, fading or undead dreamspawn and dream-eaters. Images and phantasma fade sadly just beyond the range of vision, and spells of those schools are useless.
Paradyn, god of fallen ideals.
Demipower, "Gray Son"
AoC: the abandonment of ideals
Alignment: CG
WAL: any
Symbol: a holy book, finely ground, usually kept in a sack
Home P/R: Dust/Doomglory
Paradyn was never idealistic, never a champion of anything. His two older brothers were, and died for it, killed by a lord of the Abyss (older stories say they died in battle against a rival tribe). Paradyn donned his own suit of armor and went to the road to convince people to never die fighting for foolish ideals and creeds. "Stay home," was his motto, "and live." Ultimately, Paradyn found his own petty divinity in this philosophy, and a small group of loyal followers.
The Gray Son is the enemy of nearly everyone in the Outer Planes; only his isolated location and lack of great power and influence keeps him safe. He is aware of the paradox of his quest to end all quests, but considers it to be the only cause worth having, if the plane will let him keep it.
Paradyn's realm contains many crumbling churches and recruitment centers, filled with rot and corruption. Its highlight, however, is a long, seemingly endless graveyard. Row after row, column after column of gravestones poke out of the dust. Each stone memorializes someone who died fighting for a cause. Even fiendish veterans of the Blood war get a section, and Paradyn grieves over this one as well. The stones are the only memorial many will ever have.
Paradyn's proxy is an elderly baku, a former member of the Harmonium who was disgusted by their activities in Arcadia. Paradyn sends the baku all over the multiverse, where its anti-philosophy keeps it on the run.
Alu-Akkad, god of broken systems.
Demipower, "The Monkey in the Works"
AoC: the disintegration of social institutions
Alignment: CN
WAL: any chaotic
Symbol: a torn hat
Home P/R: Quasielemental plane of Dust/Everything's a Mess
You know what inertia is, don't you? Inertia is when things continue the way they always have. The squirrels eat the fish, the fish eat the lettuce, and the lettuce eats the squirrels. Why should things change?
Alu-Akkad is one reason.
The Monkey in the Works delights in watching complex patterns of behavior among entities in the inner and prime planes break down, degenerate, or become lost and forgotten. His proxies, often modified alu-fiends, encourage ignorance and destruction. Paradyn is a nominal ally, but the two aren't close.
The realm of Alu-Akkad contains numerous large buildings: banks, ministries, palaces, and churches half-buried in dust beneath a dusty sky. Those who enter it are spared from the disintegrating effects of the plane, but the effects on their mind are much greater. Every subjective hour spent in Everything's A Mess, everyone must make a save vs. spell or risk losing a random social proficiency: this can even include language skills. Lost proficiencies can usually be remembered within a few weeks, with a little training.
For those actively seeking to hurt a society, Everything's A Mess isn't a bad place to go. Beware, however, Alu-Akkad's aid can be a double-edged club.
Adrammelech, the fading of future generations.
*********************************
Cosmic Dust is a realm in the Storm of Annihilation, on the border with Negative Energy. Cosmic Dust is the ground-up remains of fallen stars; I have no idea how they arrive here, but some assert that Cosmic Dust is actually the source for the phenomena in our own skies, for the ability of stars to ever crumble. Siegfried (Px/male monitor/F11/LG)is the Herald of Cosmic Dust. He is a Monitor, a creature looking like a winged centaur with silvery skin, and has taken it upon himself to greet travelers with his mournful calls. Rukhi (Px/female astereater/CN) is the Second Herald. She and Zumuzst are great rivals. Rukhi is a sometime lover of Anzu of the Dust Pantheon.
Drum Murti are twelve mysterious statues near an abandoned city in Core Dust. They continually thrum with a vivid beat, pounding along with the dance of matter's destruction. Wild-eyed and pot-bellied, they seem to shine with the ghastly radiance of a lich. Occasionally quasielementals will come and dance along. While dancing, the spirits do not pay attention to their surroundings, and can be ambushed. The murti don't seem to mind this, and may have been built with this in mind. Perhaps they fuel themselves with the elementals' dying screams. Alternatively, they are relics of a quasielemental city and are built with a purpose. Perhaps some day, when they gain enough of Dust's essence, they will come to life, and rebuild an empire on a plane that resists empires.
Glyphs of Blooddust are a series of runes carved on miraculously intact islands of stone throughout the plane. Those who might know better'n me say that they can act as valuable guides, if you know their dark. Those who might know better'n them claim that any meaning they might've had is long gone, dispersed into greater dust. Now they're just meaningless symbols, white noise on the informational landscape.
Red Dust is vivid oxidized dust near the Tumbling Rocks. Red Dust is stinging and painful, inflicting 1d2 damage per unprotected turn. The quasielementals here are infused with the essence of war and raid neighboring regions in parties as large as practical. Local sandmen carry iron swords that they get from the corpses of pech, and they are fairly famed in their proficiency (+1 to attack).
Psionic dust echoes in regions of Core Dust near the Storm of Annihilation, where even the borders between minds begin to break down. In such areas, it's impossible to keep one's thoughts private; they leak at varying volumes to everyone in the vicinity. Psionic attacks in the regions affect everyone, including their originators. Psionic defenses benefit everyone, too, so that can be a benefit. Plistit is a mind flayer who a tiny tribe of sandmen discovered, mindwiped beside its victim. They have kept it as a mascot, and they catch brains for it. Although the illithid hasn't moved for several years, except to eat in an automatic sort of way, some wonder exactly who serves who.
Occasionally, a demiplane will collide or intersect with a larger plane. The demiplane of Electromagnatism is in this way slowly being drained of its possibilities by the quasielemental plane of Lightning, but occasionally a halfworld will be stable enough to grab a little bit of infinity for itself, and continue on. Shadowdust is the border region between the quasielemental plane of Dust and the demiplane of Shadow; it's a place of shifting illusions, where the difference between truth and reality, light and darkness, crumbles into the swirling substance of lies. Creatures of Dust and Shadow alike lurk here, squabbling amongst themselves and hatching ambiguous schemes. Zumuzst claims to be the the Master of Shadowdust, though others call him anything from a mephit to a shade to a hapless pawn of the Yikaria. What he is really, or even if it's possible to truly be one thing or another in this realm, is as obscured as everything else.
Ragmen are humanoids covered in torn and decaying cloth; this seems to be quite the fashion among some sandmen and ruvoka tribes, although the dark creepers of the plane of Shadow are demanding royalties. True Ragmen are elementals of textile; some claim they're refugees from the so-called Demiplane of Wood where it borders on Dust (this is actually called Sawdust -- ed.), others claim Earth, or the Demiplane of Flowers and Other Green Things. Apparantly most sages are unable to accept the concept of a plane or demiplane made entirely of cloth, though I've seen stranger things. Some name them Raggamoffyn, Adherers, or even Death Linen (Drag 252).
Uh... to avoid disappointing people, what about elemental arts? The D&D Companion box said that elementals "have art forms for all six senses." I can imagine azer smellbands and hydrax psiplayers. Sandman tastepainters. Ooze sprite tonechefs. Elemental art bands.
Paraelemental Dryness is the Consumption, the border region between Dust and Salt, opposing Parelemental Moisture in the plane of water, or so the opposers say.
Slow things in the wake of fast things.
The Castle of Sand is a site the dust quasielementals return to time and again; a stern fortress crafted of compressed quasielemental matter. Though the borders of Ooze lap against it and it at times it wears away almost to nothing, the slaves of the quasielementals continually build it up again as the first bastion against an invasion of ooze sprites or mephits. The Dark of the Castle: The races of Ooze have no interest in the plane of Dust, and the castle has only been useful once in its history, against a Goop Dragon disoriented by a particularly mood-altering region of the quasi-elemental plane. The judges and warlords of Dust are apparantly laboring in vain, unless you listen to the rattlers who say that the Castle is actually built not for defense but for invasion.
The Centrafuge is a device built by some Guvner associates of mine that is supposed to filter out particularly useful dusts from the rest of the plane. So far, we haven't had much in the way of results, though we've occasionally caught an angry quasielemental or silt weird. Dark on this: It's powered by mephit slaves. They are angry. The real danger, however, are the quasielementals, who mislike this sort of interference greatly. Still, my associates believe the potential reward is worth the risk.
the Roadrunner: a fast hurtling object seen as a retreating cloud.
Dust Quasielementals A Chinese Portrait:
A Natural Phenomenon Erosion.
A Metal
Rust
An Animal
An aging elephant, limping into the savanna on a broken leg.
A color
Gray and other pastel earth tones.
A mythological Being
Chronos
A famous Human Being Nimrod of Babel
A human activity Destroying a great palace.
A work of Art
Deconstructionism.
A weapon
A battering ram.
An object
A rotten, moth-eaten wedding dress.
Dust Quasielementals Familiarity: To summon a dust quasielemental, an valuable object must be ritually destroyed. Crumble spirits like those unattatched to material things, and vandals.Demands: In return for continued aid, dust quasielementals ask for rare minerals, art objects, and gemstones.
Benefits: Who wouldn't want a dust quasielemental for a friend? A friendly dust quasielemental won't kill you right away, for one thing. There are even stories of shamans and sha'irs and dust priests being supplied by them with destructive spells.
History: If the mineral quasielementals build the lattices of the worlds, dust quasielementals take them apart so they can be built again. It's thought that the spirits of Dust are the older of the two, and that they selected their duty themselves.
Spiritual correspondences: Crumbling, decaying, falling apart, destruction, disintegration, aging, and time.
Material correspondences: Dust, sand, dry rot, mulch.
Taboos: Dust quasielementals can never create anything themselves.
Attitude: They are hostile to most everyone.
Seek the Brazier of Dust, to see if it
exists. It is believed to be on the
Mound of Lions and guarded by a legion
of zombies. Watch out for Pyrmea.
Then travel to the place beyond the
West Wind, where we can use it. Wield
it against a hideous witch. You will
surely gain glory and reknown!
