Plane of Air

Plane of Air

(Plane)

N

Air

Subjective Gravity

Titles

The Endless Sky
Endless Expanse
The Firmament

Sphere

Inner Sphere

Gravity

Subjective

Time

Normal

Realm

Immeasurable

Structure

Lasting

Essence

Air

Alignment

Mildly neutral

Magic

Enhanced or impeded

Denizens

Jaathoom, air elementals, white and silver dragons, air veelas, elemental scamps

Divinities

Hshurha and other elemental lords of air

Description

Eternal open sky, dotted with occasional cloudbanks, floating palaces, and vast unknowable iron spheres

Images of Plane of Air

Source: Planar Adventures, pg(s). 124–129

The Plane of Air, the Endless Sky, is an elemental plane of the Inner Sphere, which in metaphysical terms is the closest to the Universe. It is a realm of unending skies, towering clouds and fierce storms.

Ruler

The religious symbol of Hshurha.

The ruler of the Elemental Plane of Air is Hshurha, Duchess of All Winds. The Jaathoom Empire also stretches across the majority of the Plane of Air giving them great political reach and clout across the entirety of the plane.

Geography

The Elemental Plane of Air is a nearly unimaginably large expanse of open skies, filled with churning air current, drifting clouds, and towering thunderheads. Near the borders of the Plane of Water, tremendous storms of rain and snow lash massive globules of water hanging suspended like floating oceans. Solid matter is rare in this realm, much of it consisting of ice, magically solidified clouds or conjured rock.

Despite the Plane of Air being dominated by vast expanses of open sky, several notable settlements exist within it. These include Armun Kelisk, the floating capital of the Jaathoom Empire; the Verglas Precessional, the nearly invisible palace of the elemental lord Hshurha; the smuggler haven of Port Eclipse; and the ice scamp kingdom of the Sparkling Principality of Hautansia.

The spheres

One of the strangest occurrences of solid matter on the Elemental Plane of Air are the metal spheres. Hundreds or thousands of feet in diameter, these obviously ancient bronze or steel spheres were left ages ago by their unknown creators. They have been there so long, in fact, that numerous peoples from the Universe have colonized them, building entire communities there, though all such settlements have since vanished completely.

Covered in unknown symbols or runes, the spheres are obviously hollow, but for ages nobody had determined how or when any could be opened, until at least one spontaneously cracked open at some point between 4718 AR and 4723 AR. The orb contained residences and kizidhars, typically native to the Plane of Wood, which had coincidentally reappeared alongside the Plane of Metal. The plane's native jaathooms strenuously avoid the spheres.

Fire orbs

The plane is illuminated by fire orbs, distant spheres of intense light and heat that sit at fixed points far from the centre of the plane and are stationary enough that its inhabitants use them to navigate by. Some have speculated that these orbs must contain some sort of link to the Plane of Fire but no evidence has ever been found of this.

Inhabitants

The Plane of Air is the least populated of the four elemental planes, with only a small fraction of the inhabitants of its neighbors. Some believe that this is due to the extreme scarcity of solid land, which takes the form of large chunks of ice or magically created earth or rock. It is, nevertheless, home to the jaathooms who have built enormous floating cities, air, dust and ice scamps, belkers, mihstus, air and lightning elementals, and an eternally feuding population of silver and white dragons that was once thought to be the only draconic presence on the plane, until the discovery of the native cloud dragons disproved this belief. The nephlei, or cloud nymphs, lead solitary lives in homes built within cloud formations. Phades also inhabit the Plane of Air, serving jaathooms as scouts and assassins. Settlers from other planes, such as sylphs and thriae, can also be found where solid land is present.

References

Paizo published chapters about the Plane of Air in Planes of Power and Rage of Elements.

For additional as-yet unincorporated sources about this subject, see the Meta page.