The Negative Energy Plane
“Kansmaath may think that the Positive Energy Plane is bad, but he’s a clueless addlecove if he thinks it’s worse than its opposite number. The Negative Energy Plane is the most terrible place there is, bar none. Don’t give me “Baator,” don’t give me “the Abyss.” Even the fiends won't come here, my friend—’cause they're afraid.
Me? My name is Tarsheva Longreach. But who Iam doesn’t matter. Convincing you to avoid this most terrible place does. Don’t worry. It won’t take me long.”
-Tarsheva Longreach,
You've heard of the dead-book. This is it. The plane of death. Life-sucking, soul- destroying, wish-you-were-anywhere-else plane of Death. Everything that is contrary, antithetical to life, antiexistence, or just plain destructive ultimately comes from here. You can save the philosophical discussions for the Outer Planes. This isn’t a matter of good or evil. It doesn’t reflect the realms of order or chaos.
It’s a matter of life vs. death. Existence vs. annihilation. Being vs. nonbeing. If a body accepts that things exist (and yes, I know there're some whose philosophy claims that nothing does, but let that lie for the nonce}, she’s sure to understand that whatever creative force brought them into being has an oppo- site number. That’s the Negative Energy Plane. The Doomguard love this place. The plane itself is a limitless (one assumes, for how do you place limits on nothingness?) expanse of destructive, annihilating energy. Some folks think of it even as non-energy, or the absence of energy (a mathematical negative effect becoming a constant, hungering void). Whatever the case, a cutter here throws herself into the heart of oblivion. In this plane, a creature—any creature—is a shining beacon of life in an infinity of nonlife. The absence of life is so strong that a sod’s own life-force drains right out of her body.
The Powerful and Mighty
Even the powers devoted to death and destruction harbor a good, healthy fear of this plane’s all-consuming power. A few come occasionally to renew their link with the forces of ravenous destruction, death, and undeath. Thus, these aren't good deities we're discussing here.
Only one power calls this plane home, and he’s not one a sod can expect to visit.
Siva.
The force of destruction incarnate, Siva is not considered evil by his worshipers or the rest of his pantheon. He's merely the avatar of ultimate annihilation who seeks to destroy the multiverse to make way for a vision of perfect nothingness. Within his realm, the Vortex, Siva meditates upon the best way to accomplish his goals and occasionally acts to protect the multiverse as it now exists—for any extreme change might disturb his own plan.
Anything that enters the Vortex is utterly destroyed, and therefore no accurate account of his domain exists. Many Doomguard revere this power, but even they don’t tempt their own obliteration by seeking him out.
Creatures & Denizens
How's this for a grand planar irony: There're more types of creatures “living” in the plane of Negative Energy than in the Positive. Since many of the inhabitants’re actually undead, however, it all seems more easily reconciled.
ENERGY BEINGS
Like their positive counterparts, the xeg-yi probably come as close to a “negative energy elemental” as a body’s ever going to find. These mysterious creatures roam the plane, only occasionally leaving and always attacking anything they come across (perhaps more out of curiosity than malice, but who can tell?).
Adventurers report having recently seen negative elemen- tals and fundamentals, but the dark is that they're just creatures shaped from negative energy by powerful magic—sort of energy golems, really. However, beings truly native to the Negative Energy Plane include nightshades and blackhalls. These creatures, as near as anyone can tell, exist only to spread death and destruction when off the plane and revel in the barren antilife environment of negative energy while in the plane—if such humanlike emotions or motives can be attributed to them at all.
UNDEAD
Undead creatures, particularly those of the noncorporeal type (spectres, wraiths, ghosts, apparitions, and so on), thrive amid the life-hungering energies of the Negative Energy Plane. Many in fact owe their existence, at least in part, to the essence of the plane. Lesser undead such as skeletons and zombies react to the abundance of negative energy in the same way as living beings in the plane of Positive Energy: They can’t take the overwhelming surge of energy and explode.
Occasionally, vampires, liches, and other undead creatures can be found here, either in secret magical fortresses or as temporary visitors. If any undead creature comes upon a living being in this plane somehow surviving the onslaught of the plane’s natural attacks, they savagely assail the living interloper as an abomination. Undead utterly ignore xeg-yi and other natives of the plane.
Hazards and Phenomena
The soul-rending energy of the plane is hazard enough for anyone, in my opinion. Each round that a living creature spends in this plane, she suffers physical damage as the plane leeches away her life. Living beings suffer 2d6 points of damage per round while exposed to the Nega- tive Energy Plane until they reach 0 hit points—at which time they wither and die, only to be instantly went transformed into a random sort of undead creature (wraiths and spectres pe being the most common kinds). Matter conjured here crumbles to nothingness in 1 round.
Alternately, a DM may choose to reflect the life-draining nature of the plane of Negative Energy by having living travelers lose levels much in the same way that undead creatures linked with this plane drain them. This obviously presents an even harsher threat to the well-being of travelers that dare come to the plane, which may or may not be a desirable effect. With this option, an unprotected planewalker must make a saving throw vs. death magic each round she spends in the plane. If this saving throw fails, the poor sod loses one level. Loss of all experience levels results in the victim becoming an undead creature. Whatever the effect of the draining of life energy, planewalkers can avoid such losses by means of a negative plane protection spell.
BREATHING AND SENSES
A body'll find breathing negative energy as difficult as breathing stone. Canny travelers bring an air supply along. Personally, I never leave my case without my bottled breath, but not everyone's fortunate enough to own such utilitarian equipment. Spells like no breath are virtual necessities since there’s no matter to transform into breathable air like an airy earth spell does in the plane of Earth.
Negative energy’s not very generous to a traveler’s senses, either. In fact, the blackness of this plane’s blacker than the deepest pit in Baator...at night...within a spell of darkness...well, you get the idea. It’s dark. Moreover, the negative energy’s so thick that it prevents most sound from traveling far. Even a cutter’s sense of touch grows numb in this life-draining plane. Assume that an outsider’s vision is com- pletely negated, and that hearing and touch function only half as well as normal. Trouble is, there’s not much the traveler can do about these setbacks. Some spells increase a body’s senses, and those might help, but nothing banishes the darkness here. Light spells disappear in a fraction of a moment, the plane greedily consuming them like a desert steals moisture.
Mysterious Sites & Treasures
Chant has it that various wizards, as they escape the deadbook and become undead (mostly in the form of liches), become enthralled with the plane of Negative Energy. Lots of wizards get fairly barmy in life, so it’s not terribly surprising that they go well past that in death.
It’s thanks to these twisted creatures that there’re a few places scattered about the dark, unyielding void. A few undead spellslingers've set up a base of operations or link to their real kips, probably located on the Prime or perhaps in a demiplane. Chant has it wizards with names like Acererak and Vecna have or once had such secreted, magical foci in this plane. They also say that Tenebrous, a powerful entity that may or may not be an undead god—and who may or may not have once been the Abyssal lord Orcus—hid a tiny fortress here that he called Teian Sumere. -
DEATHHEART (OF THE VOID)
Once called the Heart of the Void, this secluded settlement’s now just called Deathheart. It’s reputedly a failed attempt at some barmy’s idea of a colony he wanted to establish in the Negative Energy Plane. A metal sphere approximately 1 mile in diameter, Deathheart holds a Prime-type city within its rounded interior. This orb, which contains towers, buildings, fountains, squares, and streets, serves now as home to a host of undead.
Chant has it that Deathheart’s home to many of the most foul creatures of the multiverse, each with its own agenda and dark secrets. Whatever the truth, Deathheart’s a nexus of evil and undeath. Although the plane’s energy does not reach inside the city, even the Dustmen and the Doom- guard fear this place and never explore the sphere.
FORTRESS OF THE SOUL
The recent war on the streets of Sigil brought about many changes within the city, but folks in the Inner Planes don’t care about such things. What do faction conflicts and upheavals have to do with them? Not much, unless they happen to belong to one of those groups. And the Dustmen faction, less passionate about faction politics to begin with, simply accepted the Lady of Pain’s edict with a shrug and went on as usual, (See Faction War [TSR 2629] for more information.)
With great effort, the Dustmen maintain a citadel here, at the focal point of all that they hold dear. As their philos- ophy surrounds the potency and value of True Death, the Negative Energy Plane exemplifies their most holy of places. A trip to the fortress is one of the greatest rewards a Dust- man can imagine. The citadel’s mostly empty except for the ascetic accommodations provided for the Dead who come here to contemplate, well, death.
The Fortress of the Soul serves as a place of quiet con- templation for about fifty Dustmen at a time, although more have taken refuge here now after the faction war. They’re nominally lead by Komosahl Trevant (Pl/¢ human/M12/ Dustmen/NE), a former Dustmen factor who’s making plans in anticipation of the day when the faction can return to the City of Doors.
The Dustmen in the Fortress of the Soul are surpris- ingly helpful to those bashers lost in the plane and in need of shelter. However, rather than harboring visitors for long, the Dead send them through a portal to Sigil. This portal only opens once a week and exits in what was once the Hall of Speakers.
Lay of the Land
The plane of Negative Energy is an everhungering maw that seeks to quench the fires of life wher- ever they burn. It gives power to the ranks of the undead and other such mockeries of life, but the place is anathema to all normal creatures.
Survival in the Negative Energy Plane is difficult indeed. A visitor must deal with the complete absence of matter, including air, as well as the plane’s natural life-draining properties.
Cycle of Time
Time exists here but it isn't marked by solar activity.
Surviving
I still haven’t convinced you? Fine. If you must go, here’s what you need to know. Listen up, I’m only saying this once. I know better than to waste too much time talking to a berk who’s already lost.
There’s more in the way of shelter here than a basher might think at first. Canny folks find it quick if they want to survive. Sometimes, even laying low in,a hive of evil like Deathheart's preferable to wading through the soul-drinking energy that comprises the plane. There’re spells and such that make a cutter invisible to undead, or make her look Hke one. These can help. Wise priests won't go waving their holy symbols around trying to drive off the undead. That only serves to draw them—believe me, I've seen it.
Despite all the dangers, negative energy can actually be a valuable commodity. If a blood can tumble to a way to contain and transport it, many’s the cutter who'll pay good jink for it. Necromancers and other magical researchers need it as part of experiments, operations, or item creation. Of course, some folks might have moral or ethical objections to selling such a dangerous substance to such bashers, but even a few well-intentioned souls seek samples of the energy to determine how to overcome it. Remember, though, negative energy’s not in and of itself evil—destruction and death are as much part of the multiverse as creation and life, even if we don’t like to admit it.
A last dark: Spells that cause damage cause the maxi- mum possible harm in this plane, but healing spells always function as poorly as they can. No known spell keys exist to correct this, but top-shelf spellslingers're working on it.
Getting There
Like the Positive, the Negative Energy Plane’s been blocked off in as many ways as possible to keep folks away. Magical items allowing planar travel often fail to offer access here.
However, because undead sustain a strong link to the plane, portals leading to the plane spring into being more often than most top-shelf bloods would like. Assume that each and every undead wandering the Prime Material Plane {and the Ethereal, and anywhere else they’re found) has a tether that extends to the Negative Plane. Now imagine those tethers slowly wearing away at the fabric of reality until they create a hole, and you can see how portals and paths leading to the plane come about. Further, undead beings often wield great power. Liches, demiliches, dracoliches, powerful spellslinging vampires, death knights, and others use this power to create temporary or permanent gates leading from their homes to Negative Energy. Usually, the intention of such a portal’s not to allow physical travel (although sometimes that's possible and intended too), but to allow negative energy to flow toward the creator and his minions in a more efficient manner, thus granting them greater power.
Traveling Around
Assuming a cutter survives long enough to try, she’ll find that movement around the plane of Negative Energy’s not terribly difficult, although not as easy as in the Positive Plane. A planewalker can physi- cally move through the plane by sheer force of will alone, at a speed equal to her normal movement rate averaged with her Wisdom score.
Comments