Touring nothing...
The plane of Vacuum.
******************************************************************** The Ante Primal Triad which is
NOT-GOD
Nothing is.
Nothing Becomes.
Nothing is not. --Aleister Crowley, The Book of Lies
*********************************************************************
Explaining Vacuum
Vacuum is the plane of absolute nothingness, right? It's the Lack, and the End of all that Is. So why isn't it absolutely cold there? Isn't Cold the Lack of Heat?
Well, berky-berk, you don't understand the Inner Planes yet!
See, in the Inner Planes (if not everywhere), both warmth and cold are substances, just like the elements. Cold is a characteristic of the paraelement of Ice, just as Heat is a characteristic of Fire (or, some say, Magma). In the End neither substance exists; all that remains is a lukewarm Nothing, with neither sensation detectable. What about the plane of Ash, you ask? Isn't that plane cold because all the fire's gone?
Tsk, tsk. So much to learn.
The plane of Ash is cold because it actively drains, and extinguishes, Fire. It has nothing to do with Cold: it's just anti-warmth, the negative equivalent of Hotness. The negative energy plane's neither hot nor cold, just as the positive plane isn't; one thing a frost salamander and a flame salamander can agree on is that temperature's got nothing to do with life and death.
What does this mean for Ice? Is there a negative Ice, a plane of Melting that drains Cold as much as Ash drains Heat?
What are you asking me for, berky-berk? Do I look like I know everything?
Gnarltang, the Fire Without Heat
Vacuum is the Lack. While the Inner Planes are accused by some of being the source of all things, Vacuum seems to be the source of nothing, the place where the lack of things comes from.
Gnarltang is the Lack of Heat. It resembles a vast field of flame, like something a body might encounter on the Plane of Fire, but it emits no heat. Unlike Coldfire in Ash, it emits no cold either. It's very peculiar; Fire Without Heat isn't a substance that gets used much anywhere, though I can think of some good applications for it. Why does a substance that isn't used need a source? That's one of the great mysteries of the Inner Planes.
Krikow, the Ice Without Cold is another such realm. Vast fields of Ice rise out of the void, all as lukewarm as the plane itself. Nothing lives here, and can kill you.
Rashagon, the fields of nothing are hollow reeds stretching off into infinity. Why Vacuum needs to knit itself into a semblance of substance is a mystery; apparantly specific lacks do need a source, and this is it. Rashagon is the Lack of Land. The reeds grow from nothing, drink nothing, and give nothing. Perhaps this was a demiplane that Vacuum swallowed.
This realm is free of egarus. No one knows why.
Xovjq, the forest without substance is more of the same. Are you seeing a pattern here? Xovjq has trees, animals, and even villages, but no solidity. It's a nice place for those used to something to rest in, but the realm is entirely intangible, and in fact isn't there. Most blame a god for the creation of this place, and void quasielementals occasionally come to the edges of Xovjq to chant and try and call the demiurge back. Thus far, there has been a depressing lack of response, so the spirits are stuck with the area for now. The dark of Xovjq is that, as we said earlier, it doesn't exist. The quasielementals are in fact worrying over nothing. This may seem strange to the inhabitants of other planes, but it's hard for a nonnative to understand just how important nothing really is to a vacuum quasielemental.
Jim Merrell-Wolff, who neither lives nor dies isn't alive, and as you might have guessed isn't dead either. He is a quasielemental who personifies the Lack of both. Don't misunderstand, he's not undead -- that's a state of being, and there is no Being here if the plane has anything to say about it. If you meet him, you'll see what I mean. He resembles whatever race views him, but he's not rotting, his heart isn't beating, he isn't breathing, no gases escape his not-carcass, but his physical form is clearly flesh. It's possible to destroy this form, but the quasielemental spirit always forms another one, out of pure nothingness, apparantly just in case someone on the Prime should need something that neither lives nor dies.
Jim's Goals are simple: he has none. However, he seems to be attracted to large groups of the living or dead, and has been spotted in cities on neighboring planes.
rimwalking
list o' critters
Vacuum Quasielementals A Chinese Portrait:
A Natural Phenomenon A dying world shedding its atmosphere
A Metal
Lead
An Animal
A school of puffer fish cast ashore, with their underbellies ripped open.
A color
black
A mythological Being
Erebus
A famous Human Being
Nietsche
A human activity Suffocation
A work of Art
Hyperminimalism
A weapon
A strangler's cord
An object
an empty bowl
Vacuum Quasielementals Familiarity: Vacuum quasielementals do not willingly respond to rituals, and will not grant spells or favors to shamans.
Demands: Vacuum quasielementals demand only to be left alone to their own society without having to experience outsiders.
Benefits: Vacuum quasielementals offer nothing.
History: In the dreamtime, when the gods woke all of the spirits and assigned them their duties, one group refused to come. "Come out!" cawed Raven. "Join us!"
"Come out!" sang Fate, "and find your destiny." "Fly with us!" cried the spirits of Air. "Ride the winds! Carve out canyons! Be like the invisible freedoms of the worlds' end!" Those who hung back continued to do so, sporting among themselves only. "Well then," said the gods, "If you refuse to take a place, you will get none. Spirits of Nothing you are, and your kind will always remain apart." And it was so.
Spiritual correspondences: Xenophobia, nothingness, lack.
Material correspondences: Vacuum.
Taboos: Vacuum quasielementals must avoid contact with all matter. They cannot communicate with other races, though they can and do with each other, perhaps out of desparate loneliness.
Attitude: Hostile to other races. ************************************************************************
Not all of the plane of Vacuum is of a piece. Meddlesome gods have on occasion changed even this place of nothingness. The Oeridian goddess Wenta, one of four patrons of the winds and seasons, has chosen the End for her centre of power. Wenta
the childless mother, the widow, the end of the year, the end of growth, and the west wind
Lesser Power, "the Mourner, the Bountiful"
AoC: Autumn, West Wind, Harvest, Brewing
Alignment: CG
WAL: any
Symbol: broken grain plant
Home P/R: Plane of Vacuum/the Gathering (Heart's Void)
The youngest of the seasons, Wenta was the wife of Landron of the Inner Light (Him Who Knows), the god who gave order to the wind and seasons and sometime leader of the Oeridian pantheon until Zilchus' coup. No longer burdened with the responsibilities of ruling, Landron settled down with his wife, the beloved goddess of the harvest, and made the most of his lesser role, structuring his part of the cosmic plan. Unfortunately, Landron's order conflicted with the glory of the quarrelsome god Vatun, who ended up killing the Inner Light and carrying off Wenta. Wenta insisted on serving dinner to her kidnapper, and she magically increased the potency of his mead enough to put him in a deep sleep. When Telchur rescued her, he locked Vatun away.
Wenta is said to have stopped all plants from ripening until her older sister Altroa intervened, luring her out of her cave with an erotic/ridiculous dance.
Wenta is portrayed as a mature, bosomy woman with bright yellow hair, wearing a crown of corn ears. Known as the Bountiful, she is now also known as the Mourner, and the time of dying leaves is seen also as a period of sadness. The void around her realm which before only acted as an attractant, drawing the ripeness from the harvest, now reflects the emptiness of her heart. As her home plane aligns with Oerth's northern hemisphere, the weather grows chill. The Gathering is a part of the emptyness filled with leaves and fruit siphoned from the Prime Material.
She is served by elementals of air and vacuum, and vultures. As goddess of brewing, she presides over the liver. Her bird is the vulture, and she is a protector of the dead.
(change this to Planes of Conflict realm format, or the one from Sigil and Beyond)
In Wenta's realm, two things distinguish it from the rest of the End. A chill appears in the nothing, first unnoticable but eventually extremely chill as the plane moves toward Ash. Dry leaves spiral about in vast quantities, along with stacks of ripe grain.
Gods of nothing, demipowers at best, these entities aren't widely worshipped by anything. They lurk in the emptiness of quasielemental Vacuum as if embarassed to live in a plane with a population, and to most are nothing but names in the sorts of overcomplicated theologies favored by monks without enough to keep them busy.
Eenus, The God Who Isn't There
Meenus, The God Who Might Be There
Minus, The God Who Never Was
Mough, The Vanishing God
Plakesh, The Bringer of Nothing
Saeno, The Goddess of Abstinence
Dryva, The Mother of No One Culuan, God of No Feelings (Anesthesia)
The King of Nowhere
No One's Child
Shedo, The Lack of Future
Prezius, The Lack of Wealth (n0t poverty_)
Nokob, The God of No Magic
The dark of these gods is that they're starting to stir. It seems they have a project in mind, the creation of an entire nonexistent world on the material plane. They will carefully and lovingly not bring it into existence, and laborously not create millions of worshippers to help them grow in power. Yet power they will get, power to create other such worlds, even where more conventional worlds exist now...
Tarim
Greater God
AoC: Void, Creation
Alignment: N
WAL: any
Symbol: ??
Home P/R: Vacuum/The Void
In the Beginning was the Void, and the Void was Tarim. From Tarim came Terim, the goddess of substance. But that's another story.
Tarim is the chief god of a patriarchal church in Estarcion.
There's no pressure here, of course, but the lack doesn't cause any problems to the traveler. Voyagers in elemental Water don't have the problems with pressure they would have on the Prime, either; apparantly, pressure isn't a general elemental trait.
