The Ethereal Plane is a realm of misty, dreamlike landscapes, where the very fabric of reality is twisted and distorted. The air is filled with a swirling mist that seems to take on a life of its own, coalescing into strange and fantastical shapes that dance and writhe in the flickering light. The mist is made up of tiny, shimmering particles that seem to be drawn to the emotions and thoughts of those who enter the plane. It's as if the mist is alive, and it's feeding off the energy of the plane's inhabitants.
As you move through the mist, you begin to notice that it's not just a random collection of particles. It's actually a complex network of interconnected threads that seem to be weaving together to create a vast, three-dimensional tapestry. Each thread is imbued with a memory, a strong emotional echo, and as you touch one thread, you can feel that echo, feel that emotional weight, the massing of ethereal mist into physical substance is not like, it manifests into wood and stone, flesh and bone, its more like, the weight of memory and emotion becomes too dense to pass through it, and that resistance mimcs the property of a solid object.
The Ethereal Plane is also home to a variety of strange and exotic phenomena. There are areas where the mist seems to take on a life of its own, swirling and eddying in patterns that defy explanation. There are also areas where the scenery seems to be shifting and flowing like a liquid, creating strange and fantastical shapes that seem to be alive. Great storms can form in the mist and erupt in a maelstrom, hurling ethereal travelers along with it, or far from it, often throwing them into a random area of border ethereal, or even right out of the plane entirely, emerging suddenly from the border ethereal, lost and disoriented. Such great storms are a bit of a mystery, there may be many causes for them, they might be created by the emotions of godlike beings, or simply build up from the natural flows, just like weather patterns and cyclones on Earth.
he Ethereal Plane is divided into two main regions: the Border Ethereal and the Deep Ethereal. I had to laugh at the description on the D&DBeyond website, they describe the border ethereal as an empty echo of the material plane. EMPTY! I assure you, that is highly misleading.
So settle back, grab yourself a tasty beverage, its time to get deeply nerdy.
The Border Ethereal is the region closest to the Material Plane, and is characterized by having structures and relatable distances, a sense of up and down, reflections of the objects and landscapes in the material plane it is connected to, these objects, landscapes, buildings, are often no more than manifested memory, the building may look perfectly intact in the border ethereal, only to reveal an old ruin when returning to the material plane, ghosts are very much a kind of undead which embody this aspect of the plane, they are more like persistant echoes, often repeating the behavior those spirits had in life, or repeating some great trauma, endlessly in the reflection of their former life, until one day, they fade away, or something else within the plane consumes or destroys them. That's the dangerous part of descibing the border ethereal as empty, it is a home to a great many creatures, not to mention beings with the ability to see into the border ethereal plane, via Truesight and other means. Do not forget that the Ethereal plane is where all the summoned spirits pass through on their way back to their domains and demi planes, this is an opportunity for all sorts of ambush predators, like phase spiders and Xil and all sorts of horrors to feed on unwary travelers. Much like the feywild, some zones of the border ethereal are like a story you become trapped in, much like the ghosts, apparitions, wraithes and other undead common to such zones, you may find yourself thinking you are following a logical course of action under your own free will, but in fact, to the spirits within that zone, you appear as a figure from their past, repeating the actions and walking right into a horrific scene where those spirits exact their revenge or replay the rage and torment that locks them into that zone, unable to leave. The Deep Ethereal plane is also home to entire civilisations, the Lamasu, the peoples of the Radiant Citadel, such hub locations are numerous and the populations are mind blowingly vast, but, they are simply dwarfed by the plane that represents and personifies boundless space, no matter how many locations and peoples fill the deep ethereal, they will always seem rare and scattered over vast distances within the infinite mists.
So, The Deep Ethereal, on the other hand, is a place of darker, more foreboding scenery. The mist here is even thicker, and it can be a place of twisted, nightmarish visions, where the unwary traveler can become lost in the labyrinthine tunnels of their own mind. The Ethereal Plane is a place of great power and magic, where the boundaries between reality and fantasy are blurred. This is the realm where the magical domains of powerful wizards and gods exist, Demi-planes, they can be created many different ways and their properties are often quite specific, a choice made by whatever created them, influencing any who enter them. Demiplanes don't always wink out of existence the moment the creator of force that generated them is removed from existence, they may linger for eons, slowly dwindling. Other realms are not so cut off and self contained, the domains of the Llamazu and many other ancient multiversal civilisations are massive, world sized magical structures that stagger the imagination, so, I say once more, do not believe any sage who tells you there are no permanent settlements in the deep Ethereal other than the recent addition of the Radiant Citadel, that is a flat out lie.
For example, by saying something like that, they are also removing the explanation for the fall of one of the ancient creator races on Toril, because it was a massive army of Llamasu who appeared suddenly on the planet from the their home in the Ethereal, demolishing whole cities. It's worse than lazy scholarship, its the equivalent to burning books of history and claiming they never existed!
OK, I have numerous videos on my channel detailing the ethereal plane, I could talk about it all day, but I wanted to talk about another Ooze creature, one specific to this fantastic environment, that may kill you, or possibly one day save your life.
The Ethereal Ooze is a fascinating and mysterious creature. It is a massive, amorphous entity that seems to be made of a thick, gelatinous substance that can stretch and flow like a liquid. Despite its amorphous nature, the Ethereal Ooze is a surprisingly complex and sophisticated organism, with a unique ecology that is closely tied to the Ethereal Plane itself.
Each entrance and exit to the Border Ethereal Plane has a "plane curtain," or a layer that keeps the deep separate. These function as gateways to the multiverse and each curtain is a different color and can be identified fairly easily. Passing through these curtains has a slowdown effect, with time slowing to a tenth of what it would be normally. Of course, often a creature will be blown right through one of the curtains if send hurling through the void by an Ethereal storm, and its common for the zone around a curtain to be inhabited by such creatures as an Ethereal Ooze.
Ethereal Oozes don't track creatures in the material plane, they ambush and consume physical beings who venture into the ethereal plane, to do so they shift from an incorporeal state into a solid state and engulf their victim, transforming them into ethereal substance and then fading back into the ethereal mists again, often with a victim still being consumed by them, making escape particularly tricky. The game restricts us to calling this a form of Acid attack, but rather than breaking up solid matter and releasing gas, the solid matter eventually breaks down completely and becomes ethereal substance, part of the whole mass of the Ooze. Physical attacks are largely useless against the Ethereal oozes, magic weapons, spells or attacks that are themselves ethereal in form will work well though, but forget about trying to poison them, force them into different forms with magic or trying to stun, paralyze or otherwise knock them senseless, they just don't work that way, being mindless organisms. On the rare occasions they are manifested into the material plane, they are spooky things to deal with, they are silent as the grave, move through solid objects, including shields and armor, though magical fields of force work well at keeping them out, they don't remain in physical objects, despite mostly existing in the ethereal plane even when moving around and visible on the material plane, much like Wraiths and other intangible entities, remaining inside a solid physical object is painfully damaging if they linger within one, I mean, you can move through water just fine, but try staying there for very long and you are going to be in a world of trouble pretty fast, same thing with the Ethereal ooze, except its more immediate and a lot more painful for them.
Now, if you just had the thought "But what about hiding in the ethereal objects within the border ethereal plane? Does that hurt them the same way?" and my hat off to you, that is a question that will save your life. No, it poses no difficulty for them to hide within ethereal objects, so, as always, keep your wits about you and never relax for a moment when in the border ethereal... empty! HA!
When an Ethereal ooze shifts to a solid form, they tend to become a more cubic shape, much like the Gelatinous cube, though a more irregular, sometimes clustered bunch of shapes, like a weird crystal formation, the facets shifting and sliding around and within each other as it moves around, not really fluid-like at all, quite unlike your regular sort of ooze. They have a few abilities you won't see in many ooze types, such as the ability to constrict their victims. The original stats can be found in the third edition Fiend Folio, but I have a full challenge rating ten stat block conversion for 5th edition on my Patreon page and in my discord server channel and patreon members section. I can discuss the features here though.
Ethereal oozes may have originated from the divine ichor spilled within the Ethereal Plane. Ichor, in Greek mythology, is the ethereal fluid that is the blood of the gods and immortals. It is said to retain the qualities of the immortals' food and drink, ambrosia and nectar. If this ichor were to be spilled within the Ethereal Plane, it could potentially give rise to creatures such as the ethereal ooze.
The ethereal ooze's ability to engulf and digest creatures on the Ethereal Plane could be seen as a manifestation of the toxic properties of ichor. The fact that an ethereal ooze can only be harmed by magical attacks and has a high resistance to damage from non-magical attacks could also be seen as a reflection of the divine properties of ichor, but then, it also reflects the difficulty of physically destroying a substance that can become intangible so easily. The jury is still out debating this topic, but its an interesting one. For those of you playing game in the Magic the Gathering Theros setting, divine ichor may be something quite important for your world building, a source of pure mana, but a dangerous and toxic substance, capable of spontaneously generating random monstrous creatures.
Can you imagine an enterprising adventurer painstakingly collecting ethereal ooze ichor, thinking it must be a highly valued material for spellcasters, alchemists and the like, only to discover the moment any of it touches soil in the material plane, it sprouts tremendously dangerous, toxic carnivorous plant monsters!
This is Dungeons and Dragons, stranger things have happened.
If divine ichor is the source of these oozes, they are very likely to be immortal unless destroyed, and may not have any form of reproduction, each merely growing and perhaps dividing into clones if a sufficiently huge mass of it gets split into parts large enough to sustain themselves. The geometric blobs of the ooze are typically flesh-colored with red and pulpy streaks within them if they have fed on living, material beings recently, the still digesting result of their acids reducing a victim to a revolting slurry.
Or Chum, if you happen to be a rather grim and jaded Githyanki adventurer describing the remains of a former team mate, well, as much of the remains she could fit into a metallic urn when she returned to the material plane and sought out a way to restore them to life. But thats a story for another time.
Oh yes, the fact the Ooze can shift between the border and material plane so easily, even with a victim engulfed within, means that, in 1378 DR two individuals, Cavatina Xarrann and Leliana Vrinn actually got transported back to the material plane by being engulfed by an Ethereal ooze, attacking it from the inside once it de-etherealized them when it crossed over to the material plane in its instinctual behavior of retreating to the border or material plane to digest its prey in peace. Something to keep in mind, but, not a method I would recommend if stranded in the ethereal plane with no other means to return.
Ethereal oozes are not sapient, not intelligent and have a neutral alignment, they exist to feed, that's about all they do, as such they are both a pest and a resource to many beings found in the ethereal plane. Ethereal slayers are very nasty looking monsters that will tend to seek out magical auras and locations where material realm entities make frequent crossings through the border of the planes and into the Ethereal. A slayer will suddenly emerge from hiding and use Dimensional anchor to prevent escape before attacking, but what's worse is the damn things will Plane Shift to actually pursue their prey into the material realm if they still manage to escape. You can find them in the second monster manual for 3rd edition.
The Ken-zai, otherwise known as Etherguants have been engaged in a vast interdimensional war for eons and while they are now considered native to the ethereal plane, this is just because they have remained there for a very long time now, but they were once material plane creatures, members of a robust and powerful civilisation that dominated a lot of the material plane. They have been returning to the material plane gradually for the last ten thousand years, reacting with violent and vicious xenophobia to all living inhabitants of the material plane. I am not sure what happened to them, or if something happened to the entire material plane when they originally departed, but to look at the unmasked face of an Etherguant is to invite gibbering madness on yourself, they find us equally horrific, and curiously, they also see all emotions as a form of madness and strive to eliminate all traces of it from themselves, resulting in a rigid and strictly regulated society that operates as a caste system, every etherguant has its role and purpose. They most certainly made use of the Ethereal oozes, not only employing the creatures in matters of warfare, but also making use of the substanc of the ooozes to fuel their own weird technologies, much of which is unknown to material realm beings and very difficult to defend against or detect.
I once read an account in a scroll written by a Wu Gen of Kara Tur that a victim of an ethereal spirit known as a Gendruwo, a type of Memedi spirit, dragged a victim into the ethereal plane, and later, when a rescue was attempted, they say it was feeding on an ethereal mist taken from an Ooze creature that was digesting the victim, so, some sort of weird symbiosis was happening there I have not seen any other evidence of, but it was a highly credible source I am told. You can read more about the Gendruwo in the first edition Kara-tur sourcebook, or 2nd edition's Monster Compendium volume six, the Kara-tur appendix.
Oh, thinking of the Etherguants, sometimes creatures migrate from the ethereal plane to the material plane, a perfect example is the Ghosteater. Naturally incorporeal, they have evolved to spend most of their time manifested in the Material Plane. There they hunt ghosts and other ectoplasmic beings. They resemble phantom fungi made of blue or grey ectoplasm. Ghosteaters are intelligent creatures and communicate with each other, but choose not to engage with other species. They attack ghosts with enthusiasm, draining their wisdom by means of a tentacle touch attack. Once a ghost has all of its wisdom drained, the ghosteater absorbs its body into one of its fleshy sacs where it is digested over the course of a few days. They most likely see the Ethereal ooze as a pest for the most part, but, like the Gendruwo, maybe they can also feed on the ethereal substance of the ooze in a similar way, seeing it as a large bowl of jello, except the jello can fight back.
That's just a bare few examples, I assure you, the ethereal plane is not empty my friends, nor is the radiant citadel particularly noteworthy in the endless vast, there are far older, far larger and far more important locations to explore, far more species for me to detail in the pages of my journals and bring to you in these little video chats.
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