What is the Silver Sea?

Welcome to the world above the world of mortals, an infinite silver expanse dotted by countless small shards or land, scattered larger islands, and the dominions of the gods.

The Silver Sea is what many refer to as Heaven, others call Hell, others call it Sheol, Paradise, and others Hades. The Silver Sea is the Realm where all other Realms coincide and connect. It is the thread that ties all the universes together. As such it has no true inhabitants. Instead it is inhabited by those who were drawn into it from their former Realms. To be drawn in, means the person in question had their body destroyed in the Prime Plane. Or in other words, those who come here, have died.

The Silver Sea is a former battlefield still ravaged by the cosmic conflict known as the Great Betrayal. The deities were the original inhabitants of the Lattice of Heaven when all existence was newly created by the True God, and the mortal races had yet to find their final forms. Along with shaping and refining the creation of the worlds, the True God had grand plans for a single realm that would link all of his creations together with an all-powerful astral connection known as the Lattice of Heaven. The Silver Sea is the remnant of this Lattice.

The "silver sea" left in the wake of the destruction of the original Lattice of Heaven isn't actually a sea, but rather a fantastic version of the space beyond the world, filled with vast clouds of a luminous silver gray substance that is not fully a mist and not fully a liquid. Thousands of stars glitter in the distance, as well as the colored veils of the astral dominions, if a traveler is close enough to see them. Vast expanses of "open sea" between the drifting clouds of astral mist provide travelers with hundreds of miles of visibility. Inside even the densest astral mist, a traveler can see objects several miles away with ease, since the wispy clouds of the Astral Sea don't impede vision as much as clouds do in the world.

The Silver Sea is not wet or cold; a cool tingle on the skin is the only sensation a traveler gets. Creatures that breathe do so without trouble. Flying creatures can fly through the astral stuff as if it were air, and natural swimmers can swim through it as if it were water. Other creatures can move slowly through the Astral Sea by sheer willpower, although it is quite difficult due to it's psychological trauma.

Even though the Silver Sea is a three-dimensional void, it has a distinct horizon that forms something like the surface of an ocean. The mists below this surface are darker and denser, while the mists above the surface are brighter and more open. Most creatures and vessels slowly orient themselves toward this subtle demarcation, often without realizing it, in order to travel along the "surface" of the Silver Sea. Vessels in the Astral Sea tend to meet along this nominal surface, creating encounters that begin in a space that seems two-dimensional, though it can become three-dimensional as soon as vessels begin maneuvering for position.

The functioning divine dominions all rest along this surface horizon. A vessel approaching an astral dominion normally does so from the dominion's equivalent of sea level, or from its equator for those dominions that are shaped like globes. It's unusual, though obviously not impossible, to drop in on a dominion from a pole or the zenith of its sky.

Though the Silver Sea seems profoundly empty, this is because it is so unthinkably vast that it has room for divine dominions, shattered dominions, countless island motes, tumbling wrecks of "Great Betrayal" battlefields, and citadel islands. No one has a clear idea of everything that could be found in the deep Silver Sea.

So far as anyone knows, the only truly fixed locations in the Astral Sea are occupied by the few functioning divine dominions that still maintain some sort of connection with the skeleton of the original divine Lattice, such as The Central Plane, The Northern Plane, and The Southern Plane. The border islands that spring up around each of the functioning divine dominions don't stay in fixed positions, but each does tend to remain within the orbit of its source dominion. The rest of the islands, motes, and shattered dominions of the Silver Sea often change position slightly or drastically every year as a consequence of changes in the astral tide.