The Elemental Plane of Air is an empty plane, consisting of sky above and sky below. Occasional chunks of land float aimlessly throughout the expanse. Clouds billow up in bank after bank, swelling into grand thunderheads and dissipating into wisps like cotton candy. The wind pulls and tugs around the traveler, and rainbows glimmer in the distance.
The Elemental plane of Air is the most comfortable and survivable of the Inner Planes, and it is the home of all manner of airborne creatures. Indeed, flying creatures find themselves at a great advantage on this plane. While travelers without flight can survive easily here, they are at a disadvantage.
Natural vortices connect the Elemental Plane of Air and the Material Plane, usually on high mountaintops or in the middle of severe weather conditions (such as the eye of a hurricane).
Traits
- Subjective Directional Gravity: Inhabitants of the plane determine their own “down” direction. Objects not under the motive force of others do not move.
- Normal Time.
- Infinite Size.
- Alterable Morphic.
- Air-Dominant.
- Enhanced Magic: Spells and spell-like abilities that use, manipulate, or create air (including those of the Air domain) are both empowered and enlarged (as if the Empower Spell and Enlarge Spell had been used on them, but the spells don't require higher-level slots). A cloudkill spell would thus have its range doubled and its damage (to those it did not kill outright) increased by half. Spells and spell-like abilities that are already empowered or enlarged are unaffected by this benefit.
- Impeded Magic: Spells and spell-like abilities that use or create earth (including the summoning of earth elementals or creatures with the earth subtype) are impeded. This includes spells of the Earth domain. These spells and spell-like abilities can still be used, but a successful Spellcraft check (DC 15 + level of the spell) must be made to do so.
Inhabitants
- Most of the life on the Elemental Plane of Air is on the wing, and it is a realm where the swift and the maneuverable survive.
- Most common on the plane are the elementals that have emerged from the winds and weather of the plane itself. These generally free-willed beings include air elementals and half-elemental analogs of many Material Plane creatures. Ice and smoke paraelementals dwell in the more extreme parts of the plane, in vast clouds of ash and among storms of ice and hail. Such beings consider the Elemental Plane of Air their own and do not hesitate to harass (at best) or destroy (at worst) travelers from elsewhere.
- A small number of outsiders make the Elemental Plane of Air their home; the best-known are the djinn. The scavenging arrowhawks and omnipresent dust, air, and ice mephits can be found here as well.
- Creatures from the Material Plane can be found here, especially if they have wings. But the plane's lack of obvious ground tends to disorient and confuse many natives of the Material Plane, making them easy prey for more powerful Elemental Plane of Air natives. Material Plane creatures encountered on the Elemental Plane of Air include hippogriffs, pegasi, beholders, sphinxes, and sprites. Common birds and unintelligent fliers do not survive long on this plane.
- The native language of the Elemental Plane of Air is Auran, a breathy, leisurely tongue that sounds like a long, slow exhalation. When other languages are needed, the Common language of the Material Plane is often used, and Celestial is sometimes used as well.
Features
- For travelers arriving on the Elemental Plane of Air for the first time, the greatest danger is the panic of finding themselves in midair without even the sight of ground beneath you. Setting the wrong direction as “down” can be fatal in such cases if there's a solid object along the path of descent (and if you fall far enough, there always is).
- Other than falling, the Elemental Plane of Air offers no inherent danger. There are regions of extreme weather, but they are a danger to natives as well as visitors. Spells such as avoid planar effects that provide planar protection do not help against such storms.
- On a long-term basis, obtaining food and water is a problem. Rainfall can provide water, but food is always scarce. Elemental creatures, made of the substance of the plane itself, tend to dissipate when slain, and real food is hard to come by. The djinn are welcome allies to many travelers from elsewhere, because they can create food, water, and wine.
- Barring clouds, fog banks, rain, and other impediments to sight, vision on the Elemental Plane of Air is unaffected, as is darkvision. The entire plane is limned with a pearly radiance of no definite source, as if the base matter of the plane held its own inherent radiation.