Planar Populations (PWH)

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See, to understand the planes, a body has to understand infinity—and any berk who says he tumbles to the idea of true infinity is a liar, an addle-cove, or both. Anyone can grasp one simple truth, though: The planes teem with life. Folks live everywhere a planewalker will ever go—even in the most inhospitable realm a body can imagine. Sure, there're plenty of places a basher can go to grab some solitude, but the real dark is that he won't have to travel far to find some sort of civilized, intelligent life.
That said, it shouldn't take a graybeard to see that the PLANESCAPE setting provides a lot of opportunities for playing races that vary from the normal fantasy fare of elves, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes. Those folks live out on the planes too, but so do many, many other races and civilizations. 
No race can be easily categorized in a few paragraphs. Each has its heroes, villains, braggarts, fools, wise sages, and passionate givers. In short, there're an infinite number of character types within each race. With that in mind, entries below present a few possibilities for each planar PC race. As a general note, remember that all planars can detect portals if they look for them as described in the "Traveling the Multiverse" chapter. They also have the disadvantages of all planars as noted on page 8. 
Planars talk about certain groups of people being "plane-touched." A body has to understand that there're native planar races—like the eladrin, the guardinals, or even the modrons—and there're imports from the Prime, mostly in the form of clueless sods who got pulled onto the planes by accident. And then there're the plane-touched, those folks descended from planar races but not really a "race" in the strictest sense. Tieflings are plane-touched, as are aasimar and genasi. These are beings whose precise heritage is usually unknown, as they're part human and part something else.
== A Word about Planar Demihumans ==
Elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, and the like are scattered around the planes like the other races, but a canny berk'll notice a common theme most of the time, they're found only in the realms of their deities. The planes have been around since the beginning of creation, just like the Prime Material Plane. Millennia ago prime demihumans adventured to the realms of their deities, decided they liked it there, and stayed to establish homes and raise families. Communities of planar demihumans are born, live, and die in the specific areas that their gods have established as realms. Few ever leave; if a body lived in the perfect home of her god, her people's idea of heaven, would she bother to go adventuring around the planes? Probably not. Only a trivial number of planar demihumans live outside the realms of their gods.
Now, a few demihuman prime conclaves exist in rare places; take for example the village of Barnstable, a halfling burg that got sucked into Limbo by rogue magic. Those halflings now live on the planes, but they're not planar; after a generation or two, though, their kids will be planars.
Regardless, planar demihumans (elves, dwarves, gnomes, and halflings) still may not be PCs unless the DM gives specific permission for that particular character. A player considering a planar elf from Arvandor (for example) ought to offer the DM a darnd good reason why that elf's left the home of his gods. Naturally, as noted above, demihuman prime characters are allowed as usual.
* Aasimar
* Bariaur
* Genasi
** Air Genasi
** Earth Genasi
** Fire Genasi
** Water Genasi
* Githzerai
* Planar Half-Elf
* Planar Human
* Rogue Modron
* Tiefling