Limbo

Limbo, known more formally as the Ever-Changing Chaos of Limbo, the Churning Chaos and the Altering Ambulate is an Outer Plane falling definitively into the alignment of chaotic neutral.

## Description

Unstable and unpredictable, Limbo is filled with lands ever-changing and shifting, resembling scattered islands filled with environments that transform on a whim, without stimulus or reason, the planestuff readily mutable. Throughout it all, storms of pure untapped energy spark and echo, rippling in waves that seep through, shattering floating pools of clear water as if it were glass, shredding stone as if it was parchment, and all the while empowering life and threatening it in the same instance. The Wandering World is inhabited by but a few races, key amongst them being the slaadi and the githzerai, although only the former can be considered truly native.

## Research

### Completed by Rinn Zelnolar

It is often cited by scholars that the entirety of the Altering Ambulate is unfettered and uncontrolled, and while the latter may be true, the former is not strictly correct. While this is certainly true within proximity of the numerous foci scattered throughout, close to which land and creature alike bubble and burl into and out of existence in a blink of an eye, throughout instead a vast stretches where things are less so dramatic, but arguably no less changeable. Forests might transform into vast cave networks, the canopy overhead becoming stone, the roots and branches stalagmites and stalactites, while a passing storm might flit between winds filled with freezing cold and slashing sand unpredictably. Nonetheless, the presence of land, islands floating about in the void of churning change, remain constant, and it is upon these that life might desperately cling. Just as the lands may change, some creatures of the Plane have become likewise mutable, shifting their form, their traits with their surroundings. Comparable perhaps to the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to butterfly, or the changing fur of a fox with the seasons, the creatures of Limbo take this a step further, and yet at their core remain similar enough - simply sprouting feathers, slime, scales or hair when demanded. While the slaadi develop and change through life, the flesh of their form shifting with time and experience, they fundamentally do not change as other residents do, but they are not untouched by the Plane's influence. Greatest of their settlements, the city of Assent, may be filled with towers of bone and stone one day, while the structures shift to become vast hollow trees the next. Such changes appear heralded by changes in the culture that has seized, or is soon destine to seize, control of the city, but the layout remains constant nonetheless. Plotting these changes is in itself futile, both by nature of their frequency, but equally so the shifting forces of control amongst the slaadi are indeed mutable and erratic, ultimately determined by the whims of the Spawning Stone.

Distinction is ultimately necessary between the chaos of LImbo and the chaos of other places within and beyond the Wandering Worlds. Unlike the Realms Far outside of comprehension, or the imagination-fueled unpredictability of the Plane of Dreams, is a noteworthy confinement and limitation. As discussed, the lands and very essence of the Churning Chaos is ever-changing, but in doing so it changes in matters plausible. Terrain will become another form of terrain, energy another form of energy. While the timber from a forest may change into pillars of crystal upon touch, in the moment before it is wood, the moment after quartz or zircon. Things are as they seem, but unlikely to stay as they seem - instead changing into something else similarly tangible. If crushed by a cave in while exploring a tunnel in one of the floating islands, it would the weight of stone that pinned or killed the individual, not the blanching of their mind by an assailing psychic force that made them believe they were being crushed.

Those few with some peculiar reason to travel to, or by some misfortune finding themselves transported into the Wandering World will no doubt find the pervasive properties of the Plane of particular challenge. Most notable amongst this is the inability to keep a constant rhythm or repetition of any kind, forcing behaviours to have be changed consciously or subconsciously with each passing bout of seconds. Individuals find themselves unable to stand still, constantly moving, unable to repeat a task recently enacted. Subsequently, progress towards a singular goal of any kind is nigh impossible, achieving several individuals to cycle in and out of involvement. Further complicating this is that any sustained time spent in the essence of the Plane is liable to change details pertaining to the individual, while it may be as minor as the colour of the fur on their collar changing, but might instead reach further, shifting physical and mental traits too - most notably commented on by Kevmorn Milltall following the expeditions that would eventually lead to his creation of firearms, during which his apprentice Orulin Gummen returned with different coloured eyes, hair long enough that he could bind it at his waist, a Bournish accent in place of his native Mol Borammian and, most curiously, a burning hatred for the taste of his favourite drink, Hophammer Ale.