The Astral to a Newcomer (GAP)

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Considering that the Astral connects all of the Outer Planes and the Prime Material as well, it's surprising that most planewalkers never actually go there. Sure, a planewalker will take a ride through a conduit, but a body doesn't even realize that she's on the Astral in that sort of quick trip. The long and the short of it is that even some of the most experienced bloods only know what the Astral's like on hearsay, and even those that've been there have just scooted through from one color pool to the next, without paying much heed to anything around them.
As a body enters the Astral, whether she's coming through a portal or traveling astrally using a spell or device, he'll most likely be awed by the immensity of what he sees. Ironically, it will appear as though he can see the void going on forever. The color of the plane has often been likened to the glistening shine of a dew-covered spider's web. This silvery space is occasionally punctuated by what someone (particularly someone from, the Prime) might take for large stars. These points of randomly scattered lights fill the glistening sky, which stretches above, below, and all around the traveler.
There's no gravity, no up or down, and no north or south. A body moves through space just as she moves his arm - simply by thinking about it (see the chapter called "Racing Through Nothing: Astral Movement"). There's no air to breathe, but there's no need to breathe, either (or eat, for that matter) - but a body still needs to sleep, since this is a function of the mind.
The Astral is virtually always deafeningly quiet and disturbingly still. No wind, no noise, and no obvious signs of life present themselves to the newcomer. Only if a body shows up near a conduit will she see anything move. Conduits appear as long, spectral tubes winding out of sight in either direction. They vibrate, pitch, and whip about, as if responding to an unseen, unfelt wind.
==What is not here==
Is the Astral a completely empty void? Well, almost. The aforementioned conduits wind their way through the plane. Color pools, which are tiny holes marked by two-dimensional disks of color allowing a body to pass out of (and sometimes onto) the Astral and onto (or from) another plane, also dot the place. Strange astral energies, invisible to a normal basher's sight and beyond the comprehension of many who can see them, flow through the void occasionally making their presence known through some strange effect. Finally, islands exist in the endless sea of Astral "space." These usually consist of chunks of rock and earth pulled in from another plane, but sometimes — just sometimes — an island is really the body of a dead god, come to its final resting place.
Creatures exist on the plane, too — monstrosities like the astral dreadnought, or passive creatures like the astral whales and streakers. The githyanki are the most prevalent and infamous creatures of the plane, and a race of more evil cutters a body'll never find. 'Course, there's always the travelers who make their way through the Astral on their way somewhere else (or even the rare berks that have made the Silver Void their home). Chances of running into any other living thing in this huge void are pretty low, but it can happen.
What a body won't find is a lot of cities (there are a few), terrain features like forests, mountains, or rivers, and berks feuding over borders and territories. The Astral's just not like that. It's not about space — there isn't any, really — and it's not about things. What it's about is mind. Thoughts, perceptions, memories, emotions, and dreams fuel the Astral's fires. Even the winds of the Silver Void blow with such things.
There's one more thing a body won't find there - berks peering into the Prime or other planes like ghosts peering into the land of the living. That's the Ethereal Plane, friend, and a top-shelf planewalker won't get them confused. The Ethereal Plane has the Border Ethereal, where a body can move about the space of another plane where the two "cross over," creeping about like a noncorporeal spook. The Astral is a more esoteric place. It's a realm of the mind, not a place of ghosts.