The Quasi-Elemental Plane of Steam

Of that which is written.

Of that which will be:

Defining Elemental Planes

The definition of the elemental planes is a touchy subject. Touchy enough that wars have been fought over it. Touchy enough that we might read "wars" and imagine a few tens of thousands of soldiers tussling on a battlefield instead of tectonic, mytho-poetic, biospherical struggles that crush planets between them like eggs between colliding eighteen-wheelers.

The big four, fire, earth, air, and water, they're not actually essential, but they are nigh-unassailable establishment, the big swinging dicks of the material cosmos. You don't create a world without cutting them in on the action, not unless you want to end up on the wrong end of an apocalyptic protection racket.

Then there's your semi-, demi-, quasi-, pseudo-, etc. planes. The little guys who have to fight over scraps. Get yourself classified as a para-elemental plane in some hip new grimoire, and suddenly you've got more wizards passing through, more gods breathing life into your raw matter - you're in business. You've also made enemies - chances are a few others were eyeing that spot, and chances are you had to kick another plane down to get it.

The Quasi-Elemental Plane of Steam

So: the quasi-elemental plane of steam. It's the para-elemental plane between the planes of fire and water - except that it's been decided that para-elemental plane shouldn't exist. Therefore it's the quasi-elemental combination of the planes of water and positive energy, and a disturbing number of people who claim otherwise end up drowned or burned alive.

Even calling it the plane of steam is controversial. You see, the plane's got two poles: one hot, one cold. It's the hot end that got the name established. The cold end wants it renamed to the plane of mist. There's fence-sitters who hope to get everyone to compromise and call it the plane of vapour, but nobody really likes them.

Life on the plane - actual, flesh and blood life - was probably tracked in on some cosmonaut's boot hundreds of millions of years ago. The founder species were a few species of plankton and mollusc. The plane of steam is relatively conducive to biological life - outside the extreme temperatures at the "poles", you're not going to die just for existing in it unprotected.

The main issue for life is getting energy. Light comes through rifts to the positive energy plane (the jury's still out on whether the material plane's sun is itself a gigantic rift to the same), but can't reach far through all the fog, and the rifts themselves are often unstable - photosynthesis is either localized or situational. Autotrophs on the plane of steam have instead evolved to take advantage of the temperature differential between its poles, or the mechanical motion of the steam itself.

The latter strategy is the much more modern of the two. Natural growth isn't very good at making turbines. Instead of growing turbines themselves, the mechanotrophs of the plane of steam utilize parts that have fallen through from Mechanus, where rotors and blades quite literally grow on trees, cyborganically integrating these parts into their bodies not totally unlike a hermit crab moving into a tin can. While originally mechanotrophs were dependent on parts that randomly ended up on the plane, in ages past envoys from Mechanus began dumping parts into the plane to encourage the spread of mechanotrophs, believing this would in turn spread their Order of Orders. The familiarity of the mechanotroph ecosystem attracted Mechanite immigrants to the plane of steam, who continue to supply the ecosystem with parts to this day, in a self-reinforcing loop.

The Accretion Disk

Even if it's not immediately lethal, the plane of steam is still largely an environment alien to terrestrial life, being an allegedly-infinite expanse of vapour. However, of vital importance to its status are the places that can attract terrestrial visitors.

The largest of these places is a continent-sized disk of matter at the midway point between the plane's poles, accreted from particles over eons and stuck together by the "roots" of autotrophs growing on it (most macroscopic species of autotroph of the plane are descended from molluscs, so the roots are really closer to absorbent tentacles).

Due to its placement and its solidity, the Accretion Disk is a sort of big Berlin Wall for the steam elementals (of the hot pole) and the mist elementals (of the cold pole). They hate each other, but open war would scare off visitors and end up making the plane a bumpkin backwater - perhaps even demoted to demi-plane. Instead, they make their animosity known through furious spying and sabotage - though at the same time, the closeness and clamp-down on violence also leads to clandestine trade and forbidden love affairs.

War's also inhibited by the native life of the Accretion Disk. Like how swamp-plants tend to evolve carnivory to deal with the scarcity of resources, so too do many of the Disk's autotrophs have a tendency to eat unwary explorers. Particularly feared is the Frondtree, which in its adult stage is a harmless filter-feeder, but its larvae are ravenous swarms of air-swimming squidlings.

The slow-moving and humid air around the Disk can carry a great many particles for a long time. For this reason much of the Disk's life has also evolved the ability to release spores, pheromones, and other such materials, many of which have psychoactive properties. Bohemian communities on the Disk have taken to "fishing" for clouds of these vapourous drugs with gas-impermeable bags attached to kites.

The Cloudminds

Of great importance to the jostling of the elemental planes is the question of infinities. The core planes are claimed to be truly infinite, with the others being merely vast finitudes, or, if one's feeling generous, lesser infinities. The existence of the cloudminds points to the plane of steam being the latter.

They're creatures of incalculable improbability, Boltzmann brains formed from atmospheric fluctuations, whose thoughts are hurricanes.

It's unknown how many cloudminds there might really be out there. Natural philosophers posit that most are so far removed from mortal concerns that their actions are indistinguishable from the plane's ordinary weather. There are a handful who meddle in the affairs of fleshy things though. Among their number are:

• Cloud Ninety-Nine: A self-proclaimed philanthropist who pities mortals for their mayfly lives and idiocy. It says it can translate the minds of mortals into its own vapourous substance, where they can enjoy a blissful eternity. Cloud Ninety-Nine is served by a cult that wears fluffy white robes, and who insist that all others be absorbed into their master before they can graciously follow suite.
  
• Pneumos: Claims to be the god of gods, the prime mover of the multiverse who breathed life into all things. Its proof is dubious, but it manages a cartel that controls the supply of Vital Breath, magically-potent steam that can animate anything that inhales or otherwise contains it.
  
• Cumulatus: Unsatisfied with its merely titanic intellect, Cumulatus wants to make itself supreme. It's formed an alliance with a Mechanite enclave ensconced in the roots of the Accretion Disk - adherents of the Taskmaster Error, who believe that they can best promote the Order of Orders by dominating non-Ordered beings and forcing them to do their proper bidding - getting them to construct a machine-body for it that would accelerate its gaseous thinking tremendously. The Mechanites are, of course, attempting to trick Cumulatus into becoming their lobotomized computer, though Cumulatus is no fool. It's assassinated a few of the more treacherous engineers where it could, but despite its intelligence it's simply too big to act on the scale it needs to, and so is looking for mortal agents to keep the Mechanites honest.

Rust Hulk Pirates

The stifling humidity of the plane of steam makes caring for metal a nightmare. There's a brisk trade between the Mechanites of the Accretion Disk and the cold pole - which dips closest to the plane of water and its cluster - for oils and ungents that inhibit rust. On the Mechanite side, this trade is conducted by massive, atmospherically-sealed, propeller-driven cargo ships, some of which are large enough to contain entire towns.

These ships are tempting targets for pirates, and cost enough upkeep on their own that an unsuccessful voyage can lead to its owners scuttling it. Raiders from the plane of water will take these abandoned ships, plug up the holes, fill the hull with water, and use them as mobile bases of operation for further piracy. As they often lack the knowledge to fully repair or operate the ships, they'll supplement their engines by leashing them to some steam-dwelling leviathans to help pull them along. Battles between pirate hulks and merchant ships are full of explosive de- and re-pressurization as gutted hulls spill fluid and punctured boarding crew suits fill with freezing fog.

Often, these raiders are covertly sponsored by the plane's steam elementals to disrupt the operations of their misty brethren.

When rust hulks aren't taken over by raiders, they tend to become the lairs of dangerous creatures or secretive cults, floating in the semi-liquid slush at the plane's "bottom".

The Orthopraxical Organ

Outsiders are, as a rule, immortal. They can work on time horizons that shadow the histories of mortal civilizations.

The Mechanites in the plane of steam, the ones who haven't deviated into Error, have been occupied with a mega-project here practically since their arrival.

They are making a muscial instrument. They are making the entire plane into a musical instrument. This instrument they call "The Orthopraxical Organ". It contains a great many very large tubes.

When it's complete the Mechanites believe the Organ will conclusively reveal the Order of music, and all the cosmos will have no choice but to march in lockstep with its tune.

The Organ's development has been anything but orderly. The Mechanites have been forced to cooperate with musicians, composers - many of the same bohemians who spend their days fishing for clouds of drugs. They make this compromise because the Organ must be absolutely comprehensive of music. This drive gets them taken advantage of, and their collaborators - if they're able to prove their musical talent - can live like rockstar-kings in their care.