Physical Conditions - Negative Energy (TIP)

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You've heard of the dead-book. This is it. The plane of death. Life-sucking, soul-destroying, wish-you-were-anywhere-else plane of Death. Everything that is contrary, antithetical to life, anti-existence, or just plain destructive ultimately comes from here. You can
save the philosophical discussions for the Outer Planes. This isn't a matter of good or evil. It doesn't reflect the realms of order or chaos. It's a matter of life vs. death. Existence vs. annihilation. Being vs. nonbeing. If a body accepts that things exist (and yes, I know there're some whose philosophy claims that nothing does, but let that lie for the nonce), she's sure to understand that whatever creative force brought them into being has an opposite number. That's the Negative Energy Plane. The Doomguard love this place.
The plane itself is a limitless (one assumes, for how do you place limits on nothingness?) expanse of destructive, annihilating energy. Some folks think of it even as non-energy, or the absence of energy (a mathematical negative effect becoming a constant, hungering void). Whatever the case, a cutter here throws herself into the heart of oblivion. In this plane, a creature-any creature-is a shining beacon of life in an infinity of nonlife. The absence of life is so strong that a sod's own life-force drains right out of her body. 
==Getting Here==
Like the Positive, the Negative Energy Plane's been blocked off in as many ways as possible to keep folks away. Magical items allowing planar travel often fail to offer access here.
However, because undead sustain a strong link to the plane, portals leading to the plane spring into being more often than most top-shelf bloods would like. Assume that each and every undead wandering the Prime Material Plane (and the Ethereal, and anywhere else they're found) has a tether that extends to the Negative Plane. Now imagine those tethers slowly wearing away at the fabric of reality until they create a hole, and you can see how portals and paths leading to the plane come about.
Further, undead beings often wield great power. Liches, demiliches, dracoliches, powerful spellslinging vampires, death knights, and others use this power to create temporary or permanent gates leading from their homes to Negative Energy. Usually, the intention of such a portal's not to allow physical travel (although sometimes that's possible and intended too), but to allow negative energy to flow toward the creator and his minions in a more efficient manner, thus granting them greater power.
==Hazards==
The soul-rending energy of the plane is hazard enough for anyone, in my opinion. Each round that a living creature spends in this plane, she suffers physical damage as the plane leeches away her life. Living beings suffer 2d6 points of damage per round while exposed to the Negative Energy Plane until they reach 0 hit points-at which time they wither and die, only to be instantly transformed into a random sort of undead creature (wraiths and spectres being the most common kinds). Matter conjured here crumbles to nothingness in 1 round.
Alternately, a DM may choose to reflect the life-draining nature of the plane of Negative Energy by having living travelers lose levels much in the same way that undead creatures linked with this plane drain them. This obviously presents an even harsher threat to the well-being of travelers that dare come to the plane, which may or may not be a desirable effect. With this option, an unprotected planewalker must make a saving throw vs. death magic each round she spends in the plane. If this saving throw fails, the poor sod loses one level. Loss of all experience levels results in the victim becoming an undead creature.
Whatever the effect of the draining of life energy, planewalkers can avoid such losses by means of a negative plane protection spell.
===Breathing And Senses===
A body'll find breathing negative energy as difficult as breathing stone. Canny travelers bring an air supply along. Personally, I never leave my case without my bottled breath, but not everyone's fortunate enough to own such utilitarian equipment. Spells like no breath are virtual necessities since there's no matter to transform into breathable air like an airy earth spell does in the plane of Earth.
Negative energy's not very generous to a traveler's senses, either. In fact, the blackness of this plane's blacker than the deepest pit in Baator... at night...within a spell of darkness... well, you get the idea. It's dark. Moreover, the negative energy's so thick that it prevents most sound from traveling far. Even a cutter's sense of touch grows numb in this life-draining plane. Assume that an outsider's vision is completely negated, and that hearing and touch function only half as well as normal. Trouble is, there's not much the traveler can do about these setbacks. Some spells increase a body's senses, and those might help, but nothing banishes the darkness here. Light spells disappear in a fraction of a moment, the plane greedily consuming them like a desert steals moisture.
==Moving About==
Assuming a cutter survives long enough to try, she'll find that movement around the plane of Negative Energy's not terribly difficult, although not as easy as in the Positive Plane. A planewalker can physically move through the plane by sheer force of will alone, at a speed equal to her normal movement rate averaged with her Wisdom score.