Nature Abhors A Vacuum
Nature, Like A Cat, Abhors A Vacuum
Which Kind Of Sucks (Pun Intended) Given What I’ve Just Realized
So, I’m in the library, doing some light reading of the 1E Manual Of The Planes, when a thought occurs to me.
All of the elemental planes are composed almost entirely of a single element, spotted, here and there, with islands of other elements, so that there are motes of Earth and Air in the infinite ocean of the Plane of Water, and so on.
While these motes may seem large, locally, they are nothing compared to the infinity of ‘pure’ substance that fills the plane. After all, as Douglas Adams noted, anything over infinity is so close to zero as makes no odds, which is why there is no intelligent life in the universe.
Now, all along, we’ve been told, from our earliest days, that we live in the Prime Material Plane, the very center of the multiverse, the heart of reality. This lie — and it is a lie! — has been part of every system of religion and philosophy ever recorded, except perhaps in obscure third party sourcebooks. But even a moment’s thought — once one is freed from the shackles of propaganda and conditioning — reveals the truth. What is the dominant substance in our universe?
Vacuum is overwhelmingly more common than anything else, even hydrogen.
As we all know, the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Vacuum lies where the Plane Of Air intersects the Negative Material Plane…. very far from the “center of the multiverse”. It is universally derided as one of the most boring and useless of all planes, whose inhabitants have barely been cataloged, as they rarely interact with anything interesting.
That’s us. That’s where we live — pathetic organic motes clinging to the tiny blobs of not-vacuum that are effectively non-existent when ratioed against the infinite nothingness that truly comprises our plane.
I have completed the great work Galileo began. First, Earth was not the center of the universe; then, we learned our star was one of billions in our galaxy; then, we learned our galaxy was one of trillions in the universe; and now, I have revealed our ‘universe’ is merely extraplanar pollution in the purity of the Quasi Elemental Plane Of Vacuum! The deception that we lived in the Prime Material has been revealed, the curtain has been pulled back, and behind it is… nothing. Infinite nothing! Our home, the plane of emptiness, the final borderland beyond which lies only anti-life itself, the Negative Material!
Removing the Prime Material does clean up all of those messy cosmology maps. I’m also fond of the idea that world jumping just means going to a different world where space is made up of something else. Welcome to this habitable pocket in the plane of fire… the skies are constantly lit up with flames but otherwise there you go.
Are there cosmologies that have an Earthlike PMP, with space and stars and stuff? I thought everyone ran into “Wait, what happens when we apply Walls of Force to deorbiting space debris?” and rapidly fluffed things up.
Besides, I like the alternate explanation that the Prime Material Plane is like the other planes. It’s endless, too; it’s flat, and like in Minecraft, you can walk (or swim, or climb mountains as necessary) in any direction, and find more PMP, with (eventually) more people, more adventures, and giant swathes of ruined or burnt-out areas haunted by plagues or undead or sun-tolerant continent-sized green slime colonies.
And I don’t think the Elemental Plane of Vacuum has interstellar hydrogen or background microwave radiation. So nyah.