Planemorph: Air - revisited

In a previous post, Planemorph: Air, a comment was left about my take on the Elemental Plane of Air. John said: "Why would you need geomorphs for the Plane of Air? Wouldn't it be all open?"

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This is a valid point, and I overlooked one source that gives examples of what each plane looks like - in much greater detail than The Manual of The Planes (no matter the edition). Planescape.

This Blog's focus is 1E gaming. While I could simply ignore Planescape justifying that 2E will not be mentioned here, I'd be doing you the reader a disservice. See, I use the 2E Monstrous Compendium and like everyone in our gaming group, The Foaming Flagons, the Compendium is universally adored and revered. This I know not to be the consensus amongst most people that are familiar with that collection.

So, considering this forgotten source, I need to re-examine the Air node.

I searched through my Planescape books and was hoping to find a source that would describe the Elemental Plane of Air clearly, and lo and behold in the Planescape Campaign set we have the following:

Imagine being tens of thousands of feet up in the air - so high up the ground’s out of sight. That’s what the plane of Air’s like: nothing but air. It’s a world of brilliant blue, like the sky viewed from the highest mountaintop. It’s not featureless, though. Creatures fly through the great vault of endless sky, and other things - chunks of matter from other planes mostly - drift aimlessly about. Winds rise from gentle breezes to raging gales in mere seconds, and then die down as quickly as they came. Most fearsome of all are the storms blown in from other planes - fearsome lightning, giant hail, scorching heat, choking dust, and whirling maelstroms that are ringlike tornados, eating their own tails. 

Beings on the plane of Air divide into two classes. There are the natives - djinn and air elementals of all types - who stay to the sky, seldom or never setting foot on the pockets of other stuff that drift by. Then, because the plane’s not hostile (and is even beautiful to some), there’s a fair number of extraplanar sods here, too, visiting or setting up outposts. Those who ain’t natural flyers or elementals from other planes tend to cling to stony, floating islands in the endless sky. Djinn sometimes build palaces and cities on these, too. The greatest of these is the Citadel of Ice and Steel. Not far from it is a vortex called the Waterspout, which leads to the plane of Water. Other places of note include Borealis and Taifun, the Palace of Tempests.

It seems we have official Canon that helps support my concept, and helps to define it more than I realized with the lines:

chunks of matter from other planes mostly - drift aimlessly about.. and... cling to stony, floating islands in the endless sky covers my design vision.

I will need to go through and alter the material that defines the pathways for sure.

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My thanks to John for reminding me about this Campaign Setting, I can breathe a little deeper knowing my vision of the Elemental Plane of Air isn't completely filled with hot air. 8)

Cheers,