The Elemental Planes

The Source

The Elemental Planes are the eight planes of pure elemental force — the source of all elemental magic, the home of the Elementals beings, and the planes that Dragons are born masters of.

The Eight Planes

Poison and Venom — and Why They Are Not the Same

The Plane of Poison and the Plane of Venom are two planes, not two moods of one plane, and the distinction is not decoration. Poison is the element of decay — the patient force that takes things apart: rot, corrosion, the slow argument that everything given will be returned. Poison does not chase. It waits, and it wins by arithmetic. Its elementals do not attack; they set the terms, and the terms are already losing. Venom, by contrast, is the element of delivery — the strike that carries the wound, the fang, the dart, the thing that means the poison has an address. Venom is poison that has learned to aim. A poison elemental makes the water bad; a venom elemental decides who drinks.

The dragon lines keep the split clean: Scorpion of the Poison line poisons the ground itself, and nothing that walks it is safe for long; Venomfury of the Venom line carries the wound in the tail and in the tooth, and the wound goes where the hunter points it. Mages who blur the two — who cast a venom as if it were poison, or a poison as if it could bite — are the first to die to it, because one of the planes pulls and the other one does not.

How Casting Works

Casting is not summoning. A mage does not call power out of the air and spend it. A mage applies tension to the Veil, and the plane on the other side of the tension pulls back, and the spell is what the two of them agree on. The sequence, in the order it is taught at the The Scriptorium and in the field:

1. Intent — the shape of the thing to be done, held exactly. Vague intent makes vague magic, and vague magic is the second most dangerous thing a mage can do. The first most dangerous is precise magic aimed at the wrong plane.
2. Pull — the mage takes the thread of the Veil and draws. The plane answers with its own weight. Every pull is felt by the plane; every pull is remembered by the plane.
3. Exchange — the mage gives the tension somewhere. Into a reagent, into a gesture, into a breath, into blood if the spell is larger than the mage. The exchange is never optional and never free; the spell costs exactly as much as the spell is.
4. Release — the thread is let go in the shape the intent held. Release badly and the spell keeps the tension and the tension looks for a new shape. Unreleased tension is a wild spell, and wild spells do not have intentions.

In the old world the Veil was thick enough that this sequence could be learned in a year and trusted in a war. In the The Unknown Universe the Veil sits under a different kind of tension — the camp's oldest argument is about exactly what that tension is, and what it is for. Magic works here. The rules are different. The difference is Wreckreate's whole second notebook, and the reason the six argue about it every night by the fire: in the new world the pull comes back shaped, and the shape is not the one the mage sent, and the camp has not yet agreed whether that is a flaw in the world or a message from it.

"In the old world, a spell was a question you asked and an answer you accepted. Here, the answer comes back in a language you have not learned, and the language is not wrong. It is just not yours. That is the whole of the new world's magic in one sentence, and it is the sentence I do not want to finish." — Uaellaen

The Veil

The Veil is the membrane between the elemental planes and the material world. It is not a wall — it is a tension. Magic is what happens when the tension is applied: when a mage pulls on the Veil, the plane on the other side pulls back, and the result is a spell.

• Thin Veil: In places where the Veil is thin (the Threshold, ley lines, elemental hotspots), magic is easy and dangerous.
• Thick Veil: In places where the Veil is thick, magic is hard and controlled.
• Torn Veil: Where the Veil is torn, elementals can cross. This is the most dangerous state. A torn Veil is not a doorway. It is a wound.

Elemental Hierarchy

• Wisp: A flicker of intent. The lowest form of elemental manifestation.
• Mighty: A formed elemental with a single drive.
• Avatar: A plane's voice. Uaellaen's conjurations reach this tier.
• Primordial: A being from before the current cosmic order. Not to be discussed.

Elemental Fusion

Elemental Fusion is the technique of combining two or more elements into a hybrid force. It is the signature technique of Uaellaen and the reason his power is classified as Apex. Fusion is not addition — it is transmutation. Fire and Water do not make steam in fusion. They make something that has no name yet, because no one has survived the making of it long enough to name it.

Blood-Pact Binding

The only known method of binding an Avatar-class elemental is the blood-pact — a binding that costs the caster something permanent. Uaellaen's Court of Ash is bound this way. Each member of the Court cost him something. He does not discuss what.

Divine Domains

The Elemental Planes are the source of raw power, but the twelve gods of the current universe each hold a domain — what mortals do with that power. A domain is independent of elemental affinity: a dark-elf necromant still draws from the Plane of Dark, but his alignment is death or shadow. The planes give the power; the gods give it a direction.

The old world had its own gods, outside this circle — the most infamous being Morthane, the Lord of Fear. See The Old World.

"The planes are not tools. They are not resources. They are the oldest things in existence, older than gods, older than magic, older than the idea of using. When you pull on the Veil, you are not casting a spell. You are asking a question of something that has been asking questions of itself for longer than your universe has existed. Be precise. Be humble. Or be Uaellaen, and accept the cost." — Uaellaen