Available everywhere fine books are sold is a heavy leather bound tome written in various versions in common, elven and draconic. On the first page is a magic mouth that speaks in the writers voice and ends when the page is turned.

"Dear reader, I Tazlin Kenlyl, arch-magi and resident genius of Elistraee's Shrine have taken it upon myself to share my vast and thoroughly informed lore in regards to dispelling the cloud of ignorance that persists over planer beings. In the pages of this tome is complied a fraction of my vast knowledge and wealth of study and for they with the short attention span pictures that are corespondent to the field guide sections entries."

Sections
1. Cosmology 101: Mapping Infinity
2. Planer beings: Truth, Lies and Banishment spells
3. A field guide to Outsiders

Section one-Mapping Infinity
Now dear reader, allow us to delve in the murky and ill understood world of the planes beyond our own. Consider if you will that this world, this prime material is tied to countless words composed of natures and forms alien and bizarre, to places where noble gods call home and where hellish things wait to steal your soul.

Let us pauses and consider the balance as the druids put and say that the great planes form a balance with our world, that we and they are tied by gods, elemental matter, beliefs and the many portals that so commonly are found on Faerun. This planer balance of forces in our mortal realm is important and when severely off kilter causes damage to the mortal realms space time paradigm.

Now allow me to lay out the planes in the most basic and broadest sense. I will use Rasheman nesting dolls as an example, if you have not seen them they are dolls with in dolls each one smaller then the last.

Prime material worlds are the very smallest and fit at the center of this Paradigm, yes there are other mortal words floating out there in the inky black of space ones that venerate strange gods and follow strange rules, but are still just mortal realms. Now there are as many prime worlds as stars in the night sky so I wont get into much more detail then this.

The next lair out is the Inner planes, the inner planes are the planes that are closest to the prime worlds, they are separated from our world by a misty gray realm called the Ethereal plane, it is with in this gray mist world that countless Demi-planes float and where paths wisk one away to the inner planes. The shadow plane is also an inner plane and co-exists with the Ethereal surrounding the prime material.

Just beyond the ethereal and shadow are the Elemental planes, realms composed elemental matter, Earth, Air, Water, Fire, positive, and negative, where two of the planes boarder and all of them do at some point they create what are known as Para-elemental planes. Demi-planes where the dominate element is a combination of two elemental planes.

The Feywild a wild and idealistic or terrible mirror of the Prime material also floats in the Ethereal and is home to the fey. It also has countless natural portals to other worlds.

It is also of note that the demi-planes known as the dreamscape and the Nightmere realm can also be reached through the Ethereal.

Locked away between the places between the stars is the Far Plane, a place of madness and thoughts alien and terrible made real, the far planes can not be entered by beings of our realm and we should be thankful they can not easily touch our world. Beware the far planes and all they hold for in them is only madness and such terror that even death can not free your mind.

Now before I move on to the Outer-planes allow me to explain that all planes are connected by the Astral plane a misty realm of white shot through with pools of swirling color, silvery threads and motes of elemental energy. This plane is akin to an ocean by witch all other planes are reached either by astral travel, planer conduits or physical travel on astral skiffs.

The Outer planes are the realms of gods, where myth and faith take on solid form. They are where the spirits of the departed call home and places where the beliefs of mortal beings become manifest in physical form. Many are the outer planes and with in each of them are smaller domains homes of different pantheons of gods and groups of planer beings. Now what exactly can be found where is a matter of religion and not one I will go into detail over, as for native species and fauna I shall discuss some on that later. All that will be said of the outer planes here is that anything and everything is possible and should you ever find yourself in them be prepared for the bizarre to become the normal.

That in brief describes cosmology, though I could go on no small detail I shall not and rather allow anyone with interest to pursue personal research into whatever planes interest them.

2. Planer beings: Truth, Lies and Banishment spells

Planer beings come in many shape, sized, function and form. First let us separate the two largest categories that separate planer beings, True Outsiders and Native Outsiders.

True Outsiders-
What makes a true outsider you might ask? Well there are several traits that are constant to all true Outsiders codified as follows.

-All are born or created on other planes.
-All posses Dark Sight to some degree.
-They need to breathe (not always air).
-They do not need to eat or sleep but may do either if they wish.
-If they die on the prime material plane they are sent back to their home plane.
-They almost never deviate from the moral and ethical views common to their species.
-They are not duel nature beings like mortals their spirit or soul is their flesh and thus only true resurrection, wish, limited wish and miracle level magics can return a truly dead true outsider to life.







Native outsiders-
This is a board term for either mortals born tainted by planer blood or radiation, mortal animals native to planer realms or beings from the prime born in the outer planes, or mortal beings who happen to live in non-prime planes.

First we will discuss Native Outsiders who are mortal beings born to or living in other planes. Many are the races who call the planes and it is simply put that some are just mortal beings who happen to live there, they eat, sleep, grow old and have lives not unlike they who call the prime home. There are far to many to list but all of the common races you know on Faerun, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome and more can be found living their lives in the planes. There of course also mortal planer beings like the Gith-races, Shadovar and Buoman. They are in effect still mortal beings who just happen to make their homes in realms you may well consider fantastic ones.



Secondly let us discuss Anarchic, Axiomatic, Fiendish and Celestial Animals, such creatures are simply animals native to the outer planes, they are very much like animals native to the prime except they can be banished while on the prime, posses personalities and appearances slightly effected by the plane they come from and small innate supernatural resistances. Their nature is not overly different and one should not expect a Celestial bear not to attack you if it feels threatened or a fiendish rat to hatch a diabolical scheme to take over the world.

Now the last Topic on Native outsiders is one that many in this region find difficult to grasp, half-bloods and plane touched.

Half-bloods- Half-Celestial or Fiends are rather powerful beings possessing great innate supernatural abilities appearances that are obviously not of this world and latent magical abilities that go beyond the keen or mere mortals. Half-blooded planers are very nearly unable to resist the pull of their planer nature and ninety nine out of one hundred times are of the same ethics and morals as their planer parent.







The Plane Touched-
The plane touched are wholly mortal beings descended from the long ago unions of mortals and planers, touched by divine blessing, profane taint or planer radiation, they are ultimately just mortal. They may have a few small features that hearken back to the planer energies that touched them and their personalities and mannerisms may lean slightly towards the planes they are tied to, but they are just as able to variate from the norm's of their kith and kin as any mortal race and they posses a duel nature of body and spirit like all mortal beings. I will detail in length the variety of such creatures in the field guide as they are somewhat common in this region due to the islands lay lines and portal abundance.

3. A field guide to Outsiders
Here is the largest section of the tome and alas I did not have time label and list all major or minor planer beings and races so I will be as concise as possable and describe the most commonly encountered and populace of such creatures. (for occ reasons I will only list a few though the actual tome would consist of countless planer beings and races)

Celestial- They are beings of good, natives to the upper planes and agents of all that is right and holy. The largest groups of Celestial are as follows.

-Angels: Servants of goodly gods Angels are winged humanoids of great beauty, they are all good but the god who created them determines if they are aligned with law, chaos or both. They are more often identified by the god they serve then anything else.

-Archons: Natives of the Seven heavens, they are ordered good incarnate. They have a rigid hierarchy and take many forms the lowest are balls of light, the middle ranked animal like and highest humanoid.

-Guardnal: Guardinals are the childern of Elysium and personify good that is neither chaotic or lawful, all Guardianals resemble anthropomorphic animals of varying types.

-Eladrin: Born of the Olympian glades of Arvundor this race of chaotic and good beings often resemble fey or elves, they are unique in that all of them have the ability to shape-change into a form composed of some kind of energy from balls of rainbow light to swirling winds of dust and snow.

Concordents-The beings that are neither truly good or evil.
-Modrons: Clockwork beings that resemble geometric shapes, personifications of order they are maintain mechanus and its infinite order.

-Inevitables: Where Modrons maintain mechanus Inevitables travel other planes enforcing the laws of the multiverse. They typically appear as terrible war like machine beings.

-Formians: Found through out the law planes they are humanoid ants who are the epitome of lawful unity sharing one hive mind and the will of the queen.

-Slaad- Appearing as humanoid toads of various size color and shape they are the natives of Limbo, beings of chaos and disorder, however it should be noted that Death Slaad often become tainted by evil, it is suspected this may be the result of the former Slaad lord Jubilex falling to the abyss or that it might be the work of Orcus.

-Rilmani- The keepers of the great balance, golden skinned beings who seem to have all and yet none of the traits of every common human race. They are a race in decline as their planer duties seem to have been co-opted and stolen by the Inevitables however when they feel cosmic balance is truly threatened this mighty force of neutrality is one to be reckoned with.

Fiends-Beings of pure evil native to the lower planes.

-Demons: The spawn of the abyss, beings of chaos and evil, every bit as cunning and dangerous as devils but not held back by rules and laws. They are legion and no two exactly alike save that they are thoroughly evil.

-Devils: Hells denizens fiends of order and evil, regimented and terrible they hunger to steal, bargain for and trick mortals into damnation. They are beings of utter wickedness and depravity but contain that evil behind laws and strict social and military structure.

-Deamons: Natives of the grey waste they are the mercenaries of the terrible blood war, beings of evil untainted by law or chaos, they are evil at its most pure and terrible. The only saving grace is they rarely seem interested in acting outside of their roles as mercenaries, though the destruction of Myth Drannor by three such beings is one of the rare and terrible exception.

Plane touched-
Aasimar-Humanoids touched by the upper planes, vary widely.
Tiefling-Humanoids touched by the lower planes, vary widely.
-Maeluth-Term for Dwarven Tieflings touched by hell.
-Wispling-Term for Hin tieflings touched by the abyss.
Chaond-Humanoids touched by Chaos planes, vary widely.
Zenythri-Humanoids touched by law planes, vary widely.
Genasi-Humanoids touched by the elemental planes, vary widely but posses elemental traits according to plane.
Mechanatrix-Humans touched by mechanus all posses some limb or body part that looks mechanical.
Shyft-Humans touched by the Ethereal plane, most are gray eyed and seem not be easily remembered or noticed.
Fey-ri- The decedents of Sun elves who procreated with demons.