Ethereal Plane

The **Ethereal Plane** is one of the standard planes in D&D, and a version of it exists on Aerb, sometimes referred to simply as **the ethereal** or the **ethereal realm**.

## Description

As in D&D, a person or being in the Ethereal Plane can still see the analogous location on Aerb (and presumably vice versa), but they're intangible to things on Aerb. For this reason, it has historically been mainly used for spying. This ability to see each other is because, cosmologically, it is the closest plane to the Prime Material.

Unlike in D&D, there's no air there, creating an environment somewhat akin to hard vaccuum. Since there's no air resistance, acceleration can be extreme. Juniper was able to function there by holding his breath, however (although he was hopped up on Still Magic at the time, so maybe that protected him.)

The plane is "badly out of sync" with Aerb, which makes it more difficult to access. For example, there might be a mountain in the way (making access impossible), or a valley where there isn't one on Aerb (meaning you'll fall - unlike in D&D, there's gravity). Pallida seemed to think that a person shifting their whole body into the ethereal would invariably "fall through the floor, then down into the rocks, and then probably die of starvation or dehydration unless you had a clever trick", although she may have been exaggerating or simply unaware of the existence of ethereal geography (she also omitted to mention the lack of air.)

An entire ecology of ethereal life exists on the plane, including two sapient Mortal Species. Like other planes, it seemingly has it's own equivalent of the exclusion zones on Aerb, which excluded beings can potentially access but cannot leave to contaminate the rest of the plane.

## Methods of Access

### Star Magic

Star Mages are generally the only ones who can reach the Ethereal Plane, which requires holding the correct Star Magic pattern in your head.

#### Entads

Juniper was given an entad by Pallida Sade - the ring of partial incorporeality - which could make a single part of his body incorporeal, including his entire body.Full House It functioned by moving the affected body part into the ethereal plane.

During the assault on Fel Seed, Bethel had another entad inside her which allowed her to shift herself into the ethereal.

#### Dragonfire

Juniper speculated that dragonfire might be capable of burning etheral things, but this was never confirmed.

#### Beings With No Limits

Although he initially failed to harm Juniper when he went intangible, Shia LaBeouf quickly proved capable of affecting targets in the Ethereal if he wished. He seemingly "copied" the intangibility of his targets, moving back to reality when they did even if that would be to his detriment.

Similarly, Fel Seed had some unspecified way into the ethereal, which he used to fill the ethereal plane overlapping his Exclusion Zone with mysterious floating white orbs that spat lightning at intruders and ghostly green creatures capable of flight.==References==

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 There was an equivalent to the Ethereal Plane, but it was badly out of sync with Aerb, and you could only get there if you were a star mage. - Chapter 128: An Open Book
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Just before the leading shockwaves reached us, she transitioned into the ethereal realm, attempting to avoid them entirely.

In D&D, the ethereal plane mostly coexisted with the Prime Material Plane, existing as a place of ghosts and spirits, allowing anyone who went into it to move straight through solid objects, flying without gravity. My ring of partial incorporeality had used the ethereal plane, and I missed it dearly, but it had been eaten by the Cannibal, or at least lost somewhere in Anglecynn and had never recovered. On Aerb, the ethereal realm worked a little bit differently, in that it had gravity, no air, and a geography of its own. Sometimes the ethereal was inaccessible thanks to a giant mountain in the way, or other times, the ground was lower in the ethereal, causing you to drop down. - Chapter 229: The Road
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 We were inside Bethel, who had so many entads at her disposal that a more foolish person might have thought that there would be no way to defeat her. The only way that *we* knew to defeat her was a full-entad ward, or one that had been set up specifically for her. She could move at three times the speed of sound, teleport, portal, warp space and time, shift into the ethereal realm, become invisible to almost every sense, control almost every one of Aerb’s twenty-eight elements, and make frighteningly accurate predictions of the near future, so long as they didn’t involve anything with a soul. - Chapter 229: The Road
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 I don’t know why I was at all surprised, given that it figured, and given that Amaryllis’ FSP explicitly stated it, but the ethereal realm inside Fel Seed’s exclusion zone was entirely taken over by him. There were no rocks moving toward us at extreme velocities though. Instead, there were white orbs, each the size of a car, floating around at irregular spacing. Almost as soon as we were into the ethereal they began to glow, not just around us, but over a mile away as well. The first lightning bolt shot out not that long after, slowed down, in my view, slow enough that I could see the stepped leaders coming in, trying to find us. - Chapter 229: The Road
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 I wasn’t confident that incorporeality would actually protect me, because it worked through interaction with the ethereal plane, not just by making me intangible. Could dragonfire extend into the ethereal? I had no idea. [...] I stopped stilling myself and began to drop, which happened really *really* fast given that there was no air in the ethereal plane (I was holding my breath), and no friction to slow me. Tommul went into a dive, and as fast as I was dropping, like a stone in a vacuum, he was moving faster. - Chapter 194: Coda II
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 She went weapons free as she spun around with us inside her, lancing out at the ethereal white blobs, popping a few of them where she focused her fire. There were too many of them though, and up from the ground there were other things rising, ghostly green creatures. It was possible to see into the material plane from the ethereal, and the walls of rock that had been approaching us at incredible speeds were smashing into each other, right where we had been. - Chapter 229: The Road
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 The Ethereal Plane, typically accessed by star magic, is the plane most directly adjacent to the Prime Material Plane. The Prime Material Plane is clearly visible from the Ethereal Plane, making it historically useful for spying. The world of the Ethereal Plane doesn’t fully map to that of the Prime Material, namely, the geographical features are distinct, making it difficult or dangerous to enter the Ethereal Plane in all but a few locations. Ethereal ecology is distinct from that of the Prime Material plane, with the ethereal having a number of magical creatures, flora and fauna, and two of their own mortal species. - Worth the Candle: A Brief Description of Aerb
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 I let us drop, completely incorporeal. Without drag, there was no terminal velocity, just pure acceleration, and in a matter of seconds, as he ate my arm, we were going really fucking fast. I waited until we were perilously close to the ground, flung out the tendrils of Gardner’s Plate to help put him facing the ground, then put us back to corporeality. We slammed into a wall of air, which dislodged him, and I pushed still magic as hard as I could. He lost his grip and fell to the ground at speed, surprising me with a crack of bones as he hit. But he wasn’t there for more than half a second before he got up and limped away with the same intense determination that he’d shown before.

Quite a bit of my right hand was missing, much of the meat around my wrist completely gone, and my fingers only staying on by a little bit. The Ring of Incorporeality was missing. - Chapter 194: Coda II
9. ↑ I wasn’t able to make it more than perhaps a hundred feet in the air before the air resistance and generally poor aerodynamics of my body robbed me of my momentum. I wished that I had the Ring of Incorporeality, which had been lost during a scuffle in Anglecynn, presumably eaten by the Cannibal. - Chapter 210: Push and Pull
10. ↑ “What happens if I go full incorporeal?” I asked.

“Oh,” said Pallida, looking up. “Don’t do that. You’d fall through the floor, then down into the rocks, and then probably die of starvation or dehydration unless you had a clever trick.” - Chapter 127: Full House
11. ↑ It breaks exclusion, which you’re probably wondering about, but that’s because exclusion zones have their own interactions with the other planes. Our star mages figured that out forty years ago, but it was another twenty before we could actually put it into practice. We’re excluded on the elemental plane of blood too, but we’ve got our own exclusion zone there. It was just a matter of finding it. - Chapter 204: Open Veins
12. ↑ Chapter 202: Star Pupil
13. ↑ I used the Ring of Partial Incorporeality, part of the new set of gear, and made my whole leg incorporeal, which lost him his grip and made the punch whiff. He began falling again, and I wondered whether that was a legitimate weakness, whether he *actually* couldn’t fly.

[...]

I kept myself fully incorporeal and prayed that it would be enough.

For a moment, I really thought that it would be. The Cannibal went straight through me, but when he wasn’t overlapping me anymore, he grabbed me by the wrist. - Chapter 194: Coda II