Paths and Pools (PWH)

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Probably the rarest form of planar travel, paths nevertheless sometimes prove to be the most convenient. Mount Olympus, Yggdrasil, and the rivers Styx and Oceanus are the four best-known paths (see the previous chapter). Paths usually lead to many different planes, but they also require some period of actual physical travel, so they're not instantaneous like portals, or nearly so like conduits and vortices. 
Paths are also the most difficult means of travel to understand. In many cases, they shift and change as a traveler moves along them, so that one minute a cutter's on one plane and the next he's on another with no idea when the changeover occurred. Even if a canny basher can ascertain at which point he switched to a new plane on the path, there's no guarantee that it'll be the same point the next time. The Styx and Oceanus work this way, although some barmies claim to be able to understand and predict their unfathomable, always-changing routes. 
Yggdrasil and Mount Olympus are slightly different. These have colorful, circular gates along their lengths that mark the doorways to other planes. These keyless, always-functioning gates remain opaque, so that a body can't see through them to the destination plane. Since they are two-way portals, however, a body can stick his head through for a quick peek and pull it back to his side if he so wishes. Yggdrasil's branches and roots lead right through these gates. 
One might say that Mount Olympus and Yggdrasil aren't true paths, but just a series of gates like the Great Road, or the gate-towns of the Outlands. Olympus and the World Ash are more expedient than either of those other options, however, since there's less travel time between the gates. No matter how a body looks at it, they are nonetheless considered two of the nine great planar paths. 
The Astral and Ethereal Planes are modes of interplanar transport in and of themselves. The Astral Plane is filled with color pools, which appear and function identically to the gates found on Yggdrasil and Mount Olympus. These open to all of the Outer Planes and the Prime Material—assuming a body knows where to find them and can determine where they lead. The Ethereal, mean-while, connects and filters through all of the Inner Planes and the Prime Material. Anyone with the ability to become ethereal can travel through the Deep Ethereal and into any of the Inner Planes. Within the Inner Planes, things are a bit more complicated. Since few standard portals exist, planewalkers depend on the crossover points between the Elemental Planes—the "leaks" or "cracks" where elemental matter of one plane seeps through into another plane. Unfortunately, like the aforementioned paths, there's no set point where one opens into the other. A traveler just moves along and the next thing he knows, he's somewhere else. It's a much easier means of travel than an inter-elemental vortex (a gentle path rather than a violent one), so it's worth the extra time it may take to find the seepage point.