The Silver Void (PWH)

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The Astral Plane is a place of seeming nothingness—but things are often deceptive on the planes. There's plenty to see on the Astral if a body knows where to look. Like the Ethereal, the Astral fills the space between the planes it connects. It's dotted with color pools that serve as gates to all these planes, and thus can be used as a means of travel between them. Further, it's crisscrossed with astral conduits that connect the Prime with the Outer Planes. Cutters on the Astral see these conduits as snaky tubes running through the plane. A planewalker can tell when a conduit's occupied by planar travelers, because it thrashes about even more wildly than normal.
For the most part, however, the Astral is a big empty space. Planewalkers can make their way through it by merely thinking about moving. There's no gravity, no real directions, and no real physical difficulties like lack of air or temperature extremes. Solid ground mostly consists of the giant husks of former powers that float here—such is the fate of powers that lose their worshipers or otherwise fall from their lofty positions. Some native monsters, like astral dreadnoughts and foo creatures, can prove hazardous to travelers, but in general they're nothing compared to the githyanki.
The githyanki adopted this as their home plane, and no one knows it like they do. Githyanki sail the Astral in thought-powered ships as though it were a vast sea. They live in fortresses built upon chunks of matter brought in from other planes, or even upon the bodies of the long-inert powers (which're sometimes called the dead gods). These evil, ruthless cutters would just as soon put a basher in the dead-book as listen to why they shouldn't.
A prime using the astral spell (or the psionic devotion "astral projection") for planar travel has a silver cord running through the Astral that connects her with the Prime. If her astral body's killed, she'll head home in a big hurry—whether she wants to or not. But if the silver cord is severed, both her astral body and her real one die.
Planewalkers can find various bits of left-over weapons and equipment from Astral battles, as well as banished sods and magical items thought to be a threat wherever they originated. This stuff just floats through the plane, and is usually best left alone. If someone else didn't want it, a body can figure that he doesn't either. Sometimes valuable things can be uncovered this way, though.
Tarsheva Recommends: Some of the lifeless god-isles have plants growing on them; these bits of foliage are said to have vast curative properties, absorbed from the "ground" they're rooted in. It's a long shot at best, but if there's no other cure for a disease or poison, a basher might gather some leaves, brew an elixir, and hope for the best.