The Ethereal and Nethereal planes are two thin planes that overlay all other planes within Alaria. They are counterparts to one another, and together they form the substrate through which all living beings are bound to their souls and shadows.
The thread substrate
Every living creature in Alaria possesses an astral thread and a malstaric thread, connecting their spirit to their soul and shadow respectively. These threads are literal strands of binding energy that run through the Ethereal and Nethereal planes. Astral threads pass through the Ethereal Plane, connecting spirits in the Material Plane to souls in the Astral Plane above. Malstaric threads pass through the Nethereal Plane, connecting spirits to shadows in Malstaris below.
The overlay planes are densely woven with countless threads, a vast web connecting every living being across Alaria to their astral and malstaric counterparts. This web is not static; it vibrates with the actions and experiences of the living.
Ethereal Plane
The Ethereal Plane is the lighter of the two overlay planes, suffused with faint astral energy. It is here that astral threads run from the Material Plane up toward the Astral Sea.
Echoes and divination
When significant events occur, they send vibrations through the astral threads of everyone involved. These vibrations ripple outward through the web, creating echoes, imprints that skilled diviners can perceive. The more people involved in an event, the louder and more persistent the echo. A great battle leaves reverberations that last centuries; a private murder leaves only faint traces.
Past echoes are settled vibrations: events that have fully resolved, their energy dissipating but still readable. Future glimpses are nascent tensions forming in the web, threads pulling taut before they snap, probabilities condensing into inevitabilities.
Healers and the Ethereal
Those who mend astral threads, repairing damage to the soul-binding, work through the Ethereal Plane. The mending is Deoric. The astral thread belongs to the soul-binding Azus authored when he set the order of death, and to repair it is to speak his command-language to that structure, which means the work costs life the way all Deoric does: a healer spends something of their own to restore another's. This is why soul-healing magic often feels luminous and clarifying.
Nethereal Plane
The Nethereal Plane is the darker counterpart, suffused with faint malstaric energy. It is here that malstaric threads run from the Material Plane down toward Malstaris.
Dark echoes
The Nethereal also contains echoes of events, but these tend toward the obscured, the hidden, and the violent. Secrets leave stronger imprints here than public events. Deaths resonate powerfully. The echo of a betrayal may be nearly invisible in the Ethereal but scream through the Nethereal.
Necromancy and the Nethereal
Necromancers, shadow-binders, and practitioners of death magic sever or manipulate malstaric threads, working through the Nethereal Plane. This too is Deoric. It is the same command-language Azus set over the soul-binding, turned on the malstaric strand rather than the astral one, and it exacts the same price in the worker's own life. This is why necromancy feels cold and invasive; it is literally reaching into the substrate that holds a person together and pulling at the dark threads.
Why you cannot survive there
No creature can sustain themselves within the Ethereal or Nethereal planes. To enter fully would be to stand inside the connective tissue that makes you you, like trying to exist within your own veins. Your threads would tangle, your bindings would unravel, and your spirit would come apart from its anchors.
Skilled individuals can perceive these planes through dreams, meditation, or magical sight, but true travel there is impossible for any being that relies on the thread-binding to live.
The web as a whole
The Great Web is the totality of all astral and malstaric threads running through the Ethereal and Nethereal planes, binding every living being in Alaria to Aurus and Nydus and, through those shared bindings, to one another. No mortal diviner perceives the whole of it. The strongest read local echoes and, at the limit of their craft, the loudest large-scale reverberations: a war, a plague, the death of a king. The entire structure lies beyond any living sight.
What is certain is that the Ethereal and Nethereal are not empty voids. They are dense with the filaments of life itself, humming with the vibrations of every joy, every death, every secret, and every war that has ever touched a living soul.