How does the intersection of the myriad planes of Azuria and Eldura work? Which planes remain connected to one another and which are closed off?
Find the answer to these questions and more in the tree-graph and explanations below.
You can also download a poster of the image above at the end of this post.
The planes of Verdigris’s story-verse are arranged in a World Tree formation, linked together by the Plane of Stars.
About the Planes
The planes of Azuria and Eldura can be broken down into three categories: the Immortal Planes, the Elemental Planes, and the Planes of Life.
For a history of the planes and how they became separated, click here.
The Immortal Planes
There are two groups of the Immortal Planes, the Positive Planes and the Negative Planes. Each of these groupings contains countless demi-planes and the realms of the gods and goddesses.
While these planes used to border directly with both one another and the planes of life, after the fall of the first age, the prime sister-goddesses (Pandora and Llewellyn) withdrew from one another and their planes retreated.
However, unlike the closed-off realms of the Elemental Planes, it remains possible, albeit unlikely, to access the Positive and Negative Planes from the three planes of life.
The Elemental Planes
There were once eight elemental planes but now, there are only six: the planes of light, darkness, water, earth, air, and fire.
In the conflict with Alessandra, at the end of the War of the Champions, the Elemental Titans withdrew to their individual planes and sealed off access to their planes from any of the others. For thousands of years, the denizens of each of the Elemental Planes have existed alone.
Those of us who are not titans must think of the Elemental Planes in two ways: They are the home to elemental beings and the true form of each of the six titans. Atamos, the Titan of Air, for instance, has an embodied form through which he appears to mortals, but Atamos is equally the Plane of Air itself. The titans withdrawing from the planes of life, from Eldura, and the titans sealing off their planes were one and the same action.
But as they had each added their essence to that of their sister Verdigris, elemental magic and power remained upon the planes of life, only in a lesser, weaker form.
The Plane of Nature and the Plane of Space
The History of Azuria details the sacrifice of Verdigris, and the full story can be found in Story Magic. In short, with the help of her lover Izadra (the Titan of Space) Verdigris (the Titan of Nature) sacrificed herself to avert war between the Positive and Negative Planes. In this way, Verdigris averted the destruction of all life across the planar-verse.
As Izadra pulled her lover tight against herself, Verdigris divided into three, creating the three planes of life. With Verdigris’s sacrifice, the Plane of Nature was no more.
The effort splintered Izadra’s power, and spread her might to the far winds. The Plane of Space burst outward to fill all gaps between the planes—in this way, she surrounds and embraces Verdigris still. Mortals remain aware of the twinkling breadth of Izadra’s domain. Their scholars refer to it as the Plane of Stars but, even more often, mortals speak of Izadra’s remnants in an embodied form of a crone goddess, Astralei.
The Planes of Life
There are three planes of life: The Fae Brightlands, the prime plane, and the Shadowlands. Fae continue to be the primary residents of both the Bright- and Shadowlands. And the shorter-lived races—humans, dwarves, elves, goblins, orcs, gnomes—walk the prime plane.
The Two Names of the prime plane: Eldura and Azuria
In earliest memory, the prime plane was called Eldura—the land that endures. But this optimistic vision and hope for the future was not to be.
Following a second devastating war and a loss to the goddess Alessandra, the world of Eldura lost its vision of its place in time. The surviving civilizations were greedy, self-centered, and destructive. Despite the warnings asking them to slow down, to reconsider, they continued to abuse the resources of the natural world, to ignore the goddesses and gods of their ancestors. They ignored the stores of natural magic all around them.
Until one day, the natural world answered. Flood waters rose. Fires eliminated the forests. Droughts and blights destroyed vast civilizations.
The waters continued, growing ever taller. They drowned the ancient cities and buried them beneath the waves. The civilizations that survived the years of the Great Flood found themselves upon a new world, one marked by an Infinite Ocean, where they remained divided from former allies and enemies alike.
They renamed their world in honor of the sparkling expanse that had pushed back their borders—Azuria, world of the waters.
PDF download, the Planes
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Background image for world tree picture from Adobe Stock, created by okalinichenko
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