Malstaric Rivers go through the land, which can sweep your shadow away.
Malstaris lies directly below the Wastes — the underside of the material slab. Huge caverns, gray wastes, and milling crowds of shadows dominate it. There is no weather or seasons, and existence is void of nearly all emotion, as it seems that all passion and care is sucked out of everything and into the empty expanse. You do not hunger, nor thirst in Malstaris, and sleep never seems to come. Each day drags into the next, as the sun never seems to set, but never seems to have risen either.
Malstaris is the counterpart to the Nethereal Plane, and is where shadows go upon being released from the physical body of a living creature in the Material Realm. It is ruled over by Demegolas, the Lord of the Dead, where the shadows are looked after in his huge, sprawling palace.
Long periods of time spent in Malstaris can cause strange interactions, as your soul is so far away, and your shadow so close (on the other side).
Strange creatures have made Malstaris their home, including Devourers, Mind Fiends, and Voids.
High above Malstaris is Nydus, the Black Sun, spilling heavy darkness across the land.
The shadow-dead and their keepers
The milling crowds that fill Malstaris are shades. When a living creature dies and its shadow is cut loose, that shadow sinks here and stays, a husk of borrowed dark that holds what the dead person hid and nothing of who they were. The person was never the shadow. What gathers on the gray plains is the leaving, not the one who left, in numbers no one has ever counted.
Because a shade still holds secrets, it can be hoarded and traded and lost track of, which a will-less soul cannot, and so the shadow-dead are kept rather than left to drift. That keeping falls to the umbral agents: shadow that was never alive, native to Malstaris and never anyone's, which herd the shade-crowds for the powers that hold the plane. The Lord of the Dead and the Parliament of Shadows do not move the dead with their own hands. The agents do it for them.
The First Dark
When Lyzaria, the first titan to die, was split apart 23.5 million years ago, her soul rose to the Astral Plane—but her shadow sank here, to Malstaris. As the first shadow to ever enter this plane, she carried with her the first secret Malstaris had ever known: the secret of what death is.
In dying, Lyzaria defined the original two-strand death—soul to the Astral Plane, shadow to Malstaris—carving the channels that every mortal death since has followed. This was the full shape of death for millions of years before the Ezz Rift, before spirits existed at all. When the Ezz Rift flooded Alaria with Ezz, it added a third strand to the structure she had built: the spirit, made of Ezz, now traveled to Celestia. The first two channels were always hers. She is more than the first to die. She is the architect of what dying means.
That shadow became the entity known as The First Dark—the oldest and most powerful of the Shadow Lords. Unlike other shadows in Malstaris, which are echoes or remnants of the living, The First Dark is something closer to a titan in nature: ancient, vast, and terribly aware.
The First Dark rules a region of Malstaris that no other power dares challenge. Even Demegolas, the Lord of the Dead, does not extend his authority into her domain. What occurs there is unknown—shadows that enter do not return, or return changed in ways they cannot explain.
The First Dark may still long for reunion with her other half, the Dreaming of Lyzaria in the Astral Sea. By one account, the strange currents between the planes, the ways shadows sometimes seem to reach for light, are echoes of her attempt to become whole. By another, the separation has driven her to something darker: if she cannot reunite with herself, perhaps she will find other ways to bridge the gap between soul and shadow.
Breakneck Canyons
A region of treacherous cliffs within Malstaris.
Black Citadel
A tower built atop cliffs in the Breakneck Canyons. Home to a vampire lord. The dead line up outside the citadel for miles, waiting for their turn.
Parliament of Shadows
The governing body of the largest region of Malstaris. Composed of the lords of all of the comprising regions.