Color Pools (GAP)

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: "What's a color pool?"
: "It's a means of getting from the Astral Plane to any of the planes that it borders."
: "No, that's a conduit."
: "No, a conduit is a connection through the Astral from the Prime Material to an Outer Plane. A color pool is more like a doorway."
: "You mean it's a portal."
: "No, not really. Portals exist in a bounded space — like an arch. They mostly lead to and from Sigil, although there's a bunch of them throughout the planes."
: "So what're you saying?" A color pool is more natural - like just a way to slip from the Astral to somewhere else. No key, no arch ... "
: "Isn't that a path, like Oceanus or Mount Olympus?"
: "No, not like that. It's .. . um. Oh, just shut up."
: — Cecil and Toin, performing nightly at the Singing Vortex, in Sigil's Market Ward
A feature unique to the Astral Plane is the existence of color pools. A planewalker once referred to the pools as "coalescing basins of spacetime around pinprick holes in reality that allow a tiny bit of the true world into the Silver Void." The description's not far off. Holes riddle the Astral Plane, taking the form of color pools which lead to the planes that it borders - the Prime Material and Outer Planes. These holes assume the form of two-dimensional, shimmering pools of color, visible only from one side. They seem to be composed of some mixture of astral energies and stuff which can only be described as "liquid reality." This is literally a diluted form of physical space and time intruding into the mental realm of the Astral. This combination allows passage between the Astral and the more physical (or terrestrial) planes.
Perhaps not coincidentally, color pools resemble the gateways found on Mount Olympus and the World Ash, Yggdrasil, which can take a body from one plane to another in a heartbeat. These gateways along the great paths are really just extensions of the paths' transplanar power, resembling color pools without actually being color pools as astral scholars understand them. Astral color pools are a uniquely astral phenomenon, utilizing both the strange energies and the absence of space and time to function. While the color pools of the Astral can take a body from the Astral to another plane, canny folks have managed to figure out there's more to them than even that.