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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

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Adventures | Articles | Deities | Domains | Languages | Planes

Dimensions | Inner Sphere Planes | Outer Sphere Planes | Transitive Planes

Planes

Source GM Core pg. 172 2.0
Past the world of Golarion and the void of space lie the vast planes of existence referred to as the Great Beyond. Often alien and dangerous, most of these planes embody some foundational aspect of reality—one of the chief elements that make up the rest of the multiverse or a kind of fundamental energy. Each plane is a reality unto itself, with its own laws of existence and its own native inhabitants who might visit, grant benefits to residents of, or cause havoc on the face of Golarion.

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Dimensions

Existing in the metaphorical space between the Transitive Planes and smaller, finite demiplanes, dimensions are a category unto themselves, defying the neat categorization of planar scholars and adventurers. Seemingly infinite in scale, not necessarily spatial in the same way as a plane, and overlaying every other plane at once—including one another—dimensions and planes are most significantly differentiated in how each of them breaks the commonly held rules of the other. Although some scholars include other extraplanar realms within the ranks of dimensions, only two such realms are uniformly agreed upon and classified as such. The Dreamlands are readily accessed by mortal dreamers, while the Dimension of Time is notorious for the near impossibility of accessing it as well as the bizarre, often deadly restrictions upon travel to and within its bounds.

Dimension of TimeDimension

Erratic Static 
Source GM Core pg. 181 2.0
Category Dimensions
Divinities unknown
Native Inhabitants shades (the unbound)
Among the most obscure planes of existence, the Dimension of Time is virtually impossible to access by conventional methods of planar travel. Instead, travelers must perform complex and difficult rituals described within the pages of monstrously rare tomes. Compounding the plane’s obscurity, each traveler’s experience seems to be unique, and most who attempt the journey never return. Every manner of magic that interacts with the plane invariably draws the attention of creatures native to the dimension. The proper flow and continuity of time seems to self-correct for any attempted meddling, often with violence.

Those few who have gained entry and returned describe the plane as a swirling storm of blurred images, the composite of millions of interwoven timelines around their own, with a single doorway allowing access to one’s own past. Travelers appear as transparent images of themselves, but the plane seems averse to any attempt to alter the past, no matter the means or the intention. Such attempts often end in the offending individual erased from existence or trapped within closed time loops to limit the damage they inflict upon the overall flow of time.

Supposedly, like an eye in a storm, at the dimension’s heart is a legendary realm. Tales of this realm speak only of a great city, a vast green meadow, and the rushing sound of an ocean emptying over an immense and terrible waterfall.

DreamlandsDimension

Flowing 
Source GM Core pg. 181 2.0
Category Dimensions
Divinities unknown
Native Inhabitants animate dreams, shades (dreamers)
Created and sustained by the collective dreams of sleeping mortals, the Dreamlands (also called the Dimension of Dreams) overlays the Ethereal Plane. When a creature dreams, regardless of the location of their physical body, they interact directly with the Dreamlands. Sleeping creatures cast themselves into the plane in idealized avatars known as lucid bodies, and their dreamscapes are immune to outside entry by standard magic, such as interplanar teleport, requiring obscure, more specialized spells to access. The dreamers of each mortal world generate a cluster of dreamscapes, like drifting bubbles atop a deeper ocean of permanent dreams formed from the collective mass of slumbering desires, dreams of especially powerful dreamers, and the dreams of ancient, obscure entities.

While most dreamscapes are safe, travelers in the deep, permanent Dreamlands face living, animate dreams and the predation of hags from the Ethereal Plane as well as stranger beings spawned within the core itself. Some scholars postulate a distinct region within the dimension for nightmares, much as the more stable inner portions of the dimension exist separately from the transient, ever-forming and evaporating mortal dreamscapes at its edges.

The Harrow CourtPlane

Legacy Content

N Finite 
Source Pathfinder #190: The Choosing pg. 71
Category Dimensions
Divinities none
Native Inhabitants simulacra
The Harrow Court appears as an idyllic region that could have been plucked from the heart of Avistan. At the demiplane's center, a fortress known as Harrowheart sits atop a hill, which is in turn surrounded by a village and farmlands. To the north, the farmlands give way to barren deserts, while to the south they decline into a swamp. A vast lake lies to the east, and a dense forest grows in the west, while all around, towering mountains surround the realm, giving it the appearance of being nestled in a single vast valley. The sun rises in the east every morning at 6:00 am and sets in the west every evening at 6:00 pm, splitting time into equal periods of twelve hour days and nights. The sky above appears normal (complete with moon and stars at night) but has an impassible barrier—the edge of the demiplane—at an altitude of 3 miles.