Geography
The Astral Plane consists of a massive sea with floating islands, consisting of a special stone-like material that floats in Astral solution. Like icebergs, larger islands are cliff-edged, and tower into the sky, while smaller islands ride much lower. Huge disasters occur when an island rolls over due to the massiver earthquakes they deal with (due to structural instability). These quakes can cause astral stone to break free, showering down on the earth.
The Astral Sea is filled with beautiful shining lights, which are the stars on the material plane. These lights were created by the titans. The Astral Sea is nearly opaque, which is why the giant islands high in the sky are not visible. The Astral Plane is lit up from above by Aurus, the White Sun, which illuminates all souls on the Astral Plane, but cannot penetrate down to the material plane through the Astral Sea.
No maps chart these lands, as the islands, as their locations are constantly changing.
Massive cities are built in these islands.
The Astral Sea
The mountainous underbelly of the ethereal plane can sometimes be seen from the material realm below. The entire underbelly is covered in colossal mountains which undergo mountain shaking earthquakes every millennia or so. The rocks that break free and plummet to the material realm during these earthquakes provide the astral stones used for intercontinental travel, due to their strange buoyancy in the Astral Sea.
The Soul
The soul is slightly influenced by astral currents in the astral sea, and good ship captains can sense them to navigate astral currents well.
The Astral Plane is illuminated by Aurus, the White Sun (counterpart to Nydus, the Black Sun). Souls are illuminated in its light.
All souls of the living go to the Astral Plane upon death. The Astral Plane is composed of a vast sea, dotted with millions of islands, populated with thousands and thousands of the souls of the dead.
These drifting soul-husks are ghosts. A ghost is the bare soul that outlived its body, a strand of Aurus-light without will or purpose, and it is not the person who died. The person was the spirit, and the spirit has already faded toward Celestia. What is left rides the astral currents and fills the island cities, milling in crowds that never thin and never disperse. No one rules them. A will-less soul answers no command and needs no keeping, so the soul-cities take their shape and shift on their own. This is the reverse of the shadow-dead below in Malstaris, who are sorted and kept because a shadow still holds secrets worth keeping.
The Dreaming of Lyzaria
The very fabric of the Astral Sea is woven from the essence of Lyzaria, the first titan to die. When she chose death 23.5 million years ago, her soul spread across the Astral Plane, becoming the foundational substrate that all later souls settle into. Every soul that enters the Astral Sea flows through traces of her essence.
The Dreaming of Lyzaria is not a region—it is the Astral Sea itself. Her memories are diffused throughout the waters. Those who sail far enough from the known islands sometimes report strange visions: glimpses of the titan age, echoes of thoughts that are not their own, the faint sense that something vast and ancient is watching. In the deepest waters, it is said that the boundary between your memories and Lyzaria's becomes thin. Travelers who linger too long may forget who they are and remember someone else instead.
Lyzaria's presence also makes the Astral Plane a repository for souls—she carved the grooves that allow the dead to persist here rather than simply dissipating. Without her sacrifice, there would be no afterlife as mortals understand it.
The channel she carved—soul to the Astral Plane upon death—was the first strand of what became mortality itself, and it predated the Ezz Rift entirely. Her death also defined the second strand: shadow to Malstaris. Together these two channels constituted the original death, the two-strand structure that every mortal death followed for millions of years before Ezz existed in Alaria. When the Ezz Rift flooded the world, it threaded a third strand into the framework Lyzaria had built: spirit to Celestia. That addition was made possible because the channels were already there. She had made the road; the Rift opened a third lane.
Fauna
Astral Sentinels
In the Astral Plane, massive ethereal creatures known as Astral Sentinels roam the islands. These creatures, remnants of forgotten celestial battles, are attracted to disturbances in psychic energy. They serve as both protectors and dangers to astral travelers.
Symbiots
Some inhabitants of the Astral Plane have developed a symbiotic relationship with astral creatures. These beings, known as Astral Weavers, use the threads of psychic energy to weave protective barriers or manipulate the weakened free will of other astral entities.