Editing Planescape (section)

===== The Positive and Negative Energy Planes =====
These are the most Outer-like of the Inner Planes, as each is dedicated not to a coarse substance but something akin to an aspect of reality itself.  However, Outsiders may find these planes more understandable but much more hostile than any of the other Inner Planes, as you will see below.

The '''Positive Material Plane''' is a boundless, bottomless, and overwhelming source of energy.  Vital energy, motive energy, power, initiative, gumption, puissance... if wizards tap into the plane of Fire to create pyrotechnics, priests tap into this plane for their healing miracles.  Just stepping in is enough to supercharge your body to heal itself immediately, and you will feel yourself becoming more powerful, more solid, which is good because the place is so brilliant you would be struck permanently blind if your eyes weren't regenerating from the local effects.  Stay too long, and your body will become more powerful than your mere mortal (or even immortal!) frame can contain, and you will detonate.  Any witnesses to your demise will attest it was beautiful, shortly before they explode too.

The '''Negative Material Plane''' is a boundless, bottomless, and overwhelming drain on energy.  Death, entropy, void, draining cold, disintegration... every undead creature is linked to this plane, motivated to either steal life to feed the endless gnawing emptiness inside themselves, or to destroy life as it is abhorrent to the Negative Material that animates them.  There is no light here, no heat, and any substance left here will disintegrate -- not erode like a Doomspeaker's ideal entropy, but waste away into nothingness.  This includes anything material, magical or spiritual -- visiting here puts your very soul at risk!

The only life witnessed as native to these planes are the Xag-Ya and Xeg-Yi, which appear as balls of supernaturally hot or cold plasma.  They seem to be sentient, since they react to language, but do not communicate themselves.  If they meet each other, they will immediately rush to meet and mutually annihilate. 

Strangely, in a rare display of non-symmetry, only the Negative Energy Plane has anything approaching a patron Power, in the form of the Hindu deity Siva. Fortunately, he's not an evil berk, and mostly just sits there contemplating how to fulfill his pantheon's destined role for him as the annihilator who cleanses the universe and leaves behind a blank slate for it to be remade.

Yeah, this does get kind of messy when you take into account that there's a huge array of other pantheons around, from fantastical ones from worlds like [[Greyhawk]] and the [[Forgotten Realms]] to non-human racial pantheons to other real-world pantheons like the Greco-Roman Dodekatheon and the Chinese Celestial Bureaucracy. That's one of those "love it or hate it" aspects of Planescape.

Obviously, the Energy Planes are comprised of nothing but pure energy. There's not even any real solid material here, because the effects of the Planes on mere matter is totally destructive. This makes them super-hard to navigate in, although fortunately gravity's subjective, so you can just will yourself along as you see fit.