Also called Outside, the Far Realm is a plane—or perhaps a space beyond the planes—that is terrifyingly remote from the standard planar geometry. The entities that abide in the Far Realm are too inchoate, too different, and too alien for a normal mind to accept without being damaged.
Where stray illuminations from the Far Realm leak onto another plane, matter stirs at the beckoning of inexplicable urges before burning to ash. But in the Far Realm, titanic creatures swim through nothingness, preoccupied with madness. Unspeakable things whisper awful truths to those who dare listen. For mortals, knowledge of the Far Realm is a triumph of mind over the rude boundaries of matter, space, and eventually sanity.
The Far Realm is divided into an unknown number of layers. Each layer is only slightly out of phase with the next, and passing between layers requires only a thought. It's possible to stand on one layer and see dozens of others, all overlapping yet somehow distinct.
Traits
- No Gravity: Entities of the Far Realm float in dark nothingness. The only type of movement is passage between layers, which requires only thought.
- Flowing Time: A minute in the Far Realm equals no time on the Material Plane. The Far Realm is outside time, existing both before and after time's reign, if words like “before” and “after” have any meaning there.
- Infinite Size: The Far Realm contains infinite layers, though the layers themselves are not infinite.
- Highly Morphic: The layers continually evaporate, divide, spawn, and breathe at the behest of the alien entities that drift through them.
- Sporadic Elemental and Energy Traits: Conditions are always in a state of flux in the Far Realm, and it's entirely possible that a given layer could burst aflame as it gains the fire-dominant trait. Usually, changes in the elemental and energy traits of a layer are seen far off, moving from layer to layer as a storm moves across the face of a normal world. Natives are subject to the ever-changing conditions, but they know to flee or take shelter when they sense a storm coming.
- No Alignment Trait: The Far Realm has nothing to do with morals or ethics.
- Wild Magic: Casters must roll a level check (DC 15 + the level of the attempted spell). A failed check indicates a result on the Wild Magic Effects table.
- Maddening: Moving through the Far Realm is to see, hear, and think in a way that mortal brains are not designed for. Travelers might sprout eyes on their palms, relive a hundred childhoods simultaneously wherein their parents were secretly Far Realm wights, or backward speaking begin. Entry into the Far Realm requires nonnatives to succeed at a Will save (DC 20) to stave off insanity (as the Insanity spell). Visitors must make will saves when they first enter the Far Realm and every hour thereafter. Regardless of if they make their saving throw, visitors lose 1d3/1d6 sanity every hour they spend on the plane.
Links to Other Planes
- There are no known portals to the Far Realm, or at least none that are still viable. Ancient elves once pierced the boundary of eons with a vast portal to the Far Realm, but their civilization imploded in bloody terror and the portal's location is long-forgotten. But other portals might exist.
- Other methods of reaching the Far Realm include traveling to time's beginning or end or finding the true Dreamheart past the Portal of Sleep. Luckily for the Material Plane, entities of the Far Realm have just as difficult a time finding passage out of their home plane, though rare spells allow them to be summoned.
Inhabitants
Entities of the Far Realm defy ordered classification. Certainly, countless types crawl through the infinite layers. Some are like animals, others vaguely insectoid, many are sentient, and some are as powerful as deities (though whether every godlike entity of the Far Realm is sentient is difficult to assess). When confronted with Material Plane beings, or even creatures normally associated with the Inner and Outer Planes, a Far Realm entity often takes the form of a creature familiar to the viewer.
Features
- The Far Realm is composed of infinite layers, but unlike many Outer Planes, the layers are thin. A Far Realm layer can range from an inch to a mile thick, though on average each layer is separated from the other by about 10 feet.
- Travelers can see through many layers simultaneously, as if holding a stack of translucent parchment up to the light. Usually up to twenty layers can be seen to one side or the other, though each layer is blurrier than the next.
- Features and creatures of the Far Realm are multidimensional and may exist on more than one layer simultaneously. If the layers of the Far Realm are like a stack of translucent parchment, multi-layer creatures are like a single dot marked upon each parchment. Individually, the marks appear meaningless, but viewed through the stack of parchment, they coalesce into a three-dimensional object. Such is the existence of everything from the tentacled vegetation that writhes throughout the Far Realm, to the massive, drifting entities whose existence is too vast to even notice visitors who only occupy a single layer at a time.
- Visitors whose minds do not snap upon entering the plane apprehend the translucent layers fading away to either side, pierced with free-floating rivers of milk-white liquid that sometimes run along a layer's edge for a few feet before plunging into the next. Rains of blue globes descend from unseen heights. The globes burst when they strike another object, releasing ticks the size of horses that scuttle off in search of blood. Gelatinous worms wriggle from layer to layer, wending through tentacled vegetation encrusted with orange moss, all suspended above an amoebic sea. Vast multilayered shapes drift at the edge of sight through the layers, blurrily reminiscent of creatures from the deepest trenches of Material Plane seas. But each of the blurry forms is as large as a city—and those are the small shapes.