How the planes are arranged with respect to physical space
I've played Dungeons and Dragons all my life, but I've never been satisfied with the Great Wheel or other cosmologies like it. I always wanted to know where the planes actually are. So, here's what I've come up with over the years:
The outer planes exist within the sun, where the vast fountain of fusion power permits the Astral Sea to form stable planes. All are spatially coextensive but ordered by their nature in proximity to the Fountains of Creation, the immaterial/conceptual side of the sun's fusing core. Mount Celestia, the plane of pure order and creation, sits nearest to the Fountains, while the Abyss, the plane of pure chaos and destruction, constitutes the deep ocean abyss of the outer planes, subsisting on the equivalent of spiritual marine snow.
Creation, destruction, order, and chaos are fundamental conceptual forces that exist in conserved balance. Main-sequence stars tilt the balance of alignment in space slightly towards creation and order, which makes life developing more favourable.
The inner planes (Air, Fire, Water, Earth, Feywilds, Shadowfell) are physically within or adjacent to the earth, by-products of planetary differentiation. Only planets with dynamic liquid cores can sustain inner planes (planets akin Venus and the gas giants could, but those like Mars and Mercury or the solar system’s larger moons could not). Planets without biospheres can only sustain elemental planes. Inner planes are physically rather smaller than their host planets, but contain more living space due to different shapes. It's not possible to travel from the inner planes of one planet to those of another by spaceship or teleportation; inner planes are only physically real or stabilised within their host planets.
Anyway, thoughts?
Posted Feb 23, 2026, 6:00 AM UTC