Life on the elemental planes

I find it easier to keep track of my ideas if I take the time to sit down and write them. As I mentioned in a very old post, I prefer to reimagine the elemental planes as interesting places to visit. They have geography, wildlife and civilizations just like the material plane does.

Proper names

All four of the elemental planes have proper names. The plane of air is Cloud Cuckoo Land, the plane of fire is Muspelheim, the plane of earth is Underland, and the plane of water is Niflheim. Or something like that. The elemental chaos is called the Flux.

The Elemental Chaos

Geography

The elemental planes have continents, skies, waterways and suns. These are composed of manifestations of that element. The plane of water has seas of water, skies of vapor, continents of exotic high temperature ice, and suns of steam. The plane of fire has seas of magma and liquid metal, skies of smoke, continents of burning coals, and suns of fire. The plane of air has seas of breathable liquid air, skies of endless blue, continents of semi-solid cloud stuff, and suns of lightning. The plane of earth has seas of silt and shale, skies of sandstorms, continents of mountains and caverns, and suns of shining gemstone.

Forget all you heard about para- and quasi-elemental planes. They are no longer necessary.

Cloudscapes on the Plane of Air

Overlap

The elemental planes overlap with the material plane in those locations where the geography is the same, allowing for easy travel and avoiding stupid redundancy. The material plane shares the ocean with the plane of water, the sky with the plane of air, the underworld with the plane of earth, and the volcanic wastelands with the plane of fire. You can literally visit them by walking, swimming or climbing a beanstalk.

Furthermore, the elemental planes move around and interpenetrate the material plane and the elementals use this opportunity to travel and make disturbances. This causes the various weather phenomena and natural disasters that occur in the material plane.

In fact, calling the material plane the "material" plane may be inaccurate if the elemental planes are also material. Whatever, I guess?

Beanstalk to the Plane of Air

Wildlife

The elemental planes are inhabited not by amorphous animate masses of matter, but by plants, animals and people. They are just as inherent to the elemental planes as they are to the material planes.

The plane of fire has obsidian trees, the plane of air has multi-colored trees, the plane of water has forests of seawood and coral on land, and the plane of earth has fungal forests and giant thorns.

 The plane of fire has fire whales, oil sharks, fire crabs and so forth. The plane of air has giant spiders that build their webs suspended in midair. The plane of earth has giant sandworms. The plane of water has flying seafood on land.

The generic elementals in the MM are just leftover detritus that are summoned by wizards to do their dirty work. They are the elemental equivalent of oozes and plants, and just as unmemorable.

Life in the Sea of Fire

People

The elemental planes also have their own races of humanoids and giants and so forth. Many of them resemble pallette-swapped versions of traditional races, like the azer fire dwarfs or the gnomide earth dwarfs, or winged versions of traditional races, like the aellar winged elves and the kestral winged halflings, the salamanders being elemental dragonspawn, or the genies being generic elemental humanoids and giants. They build their societies and thriving economies.

The nominal sovereigns of the elemental planes are the elemental lords, one for each of the four elements. They hold court in a nexus plane at the center of the elemental planes where all elements interact, surrounded by nobility, courtiers and petitioners.

Elemental rangers

Adventures

One of the criticisms of D&D is that it has awesome looking art for elemental adventures that are not actually supported by the rules. Screw that! I think it should be totally possible to have adventures on the elemental planes starting from level one without any special means. The four classical planes are pretty much like the material plane, except cooler (i.e. I treat 5e's "border planes" as the default, not a silly workaround to keep the original planes of pointlessness). Between them you have a wilderness where the elements meld and create breathtaking environments (the 4e elemental chaos), and beyond that you have a hostile, unmemorable morass (the 5e elemental chaos).

Sure, most of the time it will be exactly like a campaign on the material plane. The exotic environments make it feel fresh and new even if it is not. In any event, that is way more interesting than high level characters wearing survival gear in order to travel through infinite expanses of pointlessness. Seriously, does anybody ever explore the land outside the City of Brass? I did not think so.