Physical Conditions - Vacuum (TIP)

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The Quasielemental Plane of Vacuum lacks light, air, or water. It is completely without heat and has so little matter that it might as well be a blank slate. Its beauty lies in its simplicity.
==Getting Here==
Almost no one seeks the quasiplane of Vacuum. After all, there isn't a whole lot here for a body to see, and even fewer resources to exploit.
Chant is that very few portals to the quasi plane of Vacuum are to be found even in Sigil. Other than the one that vanished with our now-lost Armory, most berks can't think of even one.
A small portal called the Howling Gate links the barmy realms of Pandemonium with the quasiplane of Vacuum. The key to its use is simply contact with air. As the winds of Pandemonium whip around it, the gate remains forever open and a steady draft of air rushes into the emptiness of Vacuum beyond the gate. This wind gusts with the force of a summer's gale, threatening to yank a careless traveler through into the suffocating abyss beyond.
It is believed that vortices to the quasi plane of Vacuum may hang in the emptiness between prime-material worlds. Certainly such conduits might be a hazard to those spelljammers who ply such spaces, but they are hardly likely to be encountered by average folk. (Speaking of spelljammers, those cutters often rattle their bone-boxes about something called the phlogiston-that's fine, but phlogiston isn't vacuum and vice versa.)
==Hazards==
The emptiness of the quasiplane of Vacuum defies most imaginations. It's so absolute that until a body's been here himself, it's near impossible to convey. Some graybeards sputter on about the dangers of a vacuum-that the lack of atmosphere doesn't allow a transmission of temperature and that without air, the lack of pressure'll cause a sod's own body to burst. Tums out, that's all screed. While the plane is marked by the complete lack of air, there is still pressure and constant temperature. To be sure, the former is slight and the latter cool, but it could be so much worse. That's just the way it is. Sometimes the graybeards are wrong.
===Breathing And Senses===
There's no air (or matter to convert to air) here, so spells akin to airy element or breathe element do not work. Neither do magical items that draw on the Elemental Air school. A body'll survive only for as long as he can hold his breath, unless he can cast no breath and do without air altogether.
This lack of air is deadly to certain forms of elemental creature. Gaseous elemental creatures like smoke paraelementals lose 1 Hit Die or level per round of exposure to quasielemental Vacuum.
Without any air to get in the way, one would think that a body could see an awfully long way. And, indeed, this is true enough, if he has his own light source. There's no natural illumination here, and no air for things like lanterns or torches. Any other light source, including magical spells, illuminates twice the normal range.
Infravision works well enough in the quasiplane of Vacuum. The same increase in range applies to this sight as well, so a creature whose infravision normally allows it to see as far as 90 feet would be able to see heat sources at a distance of 180 feet.
===Vaccume Welding===
The nature of Vacuum has a terrible effect on inanimate things as well, which becomes most apparent in the case of articulated mechanisms. Vacuum welding affects anything from the joints in a suit of plate armor to the mechanical limbs of a clockwork horror.
For each hour that an articulated mechanism of any complexity spends in the quasiplane of Vacuum, a saving throw vs. acid is required. If the device is simple (like the knee-joint on a suit of armor), a +4 bonus is applied to the roll. Complex devices such as clockwork mechanisms suffer a -4 penalty to the roll. Other adjustments may be substituted or added as desired by the DM. Failure at this saving throw indicates that the object in question has frozen up and is no longer able to move. Repairs are possible, but only after the object is removed to a place with a breathable atmosphere.
==Moving About==
A body in the quasiplane of Vacuum can travel from place to place just as he might in the Elemental Plane of Air. Thus, he need only choose a direction as "down" and begin to fall that way.
Creatures who use wings or other such means to fly find themselves unable to get about in the quasiplane of Vacuum. After all, such things function only when there is air (or some related medium) for them to beat upon.
Magical means of propulsion function well enough. A fly spell, for example, permits a body to travel at a fair speed. Magical items like a broom of flying or a flying carpet function as well. However, magical items that mimic wings do not operate.