Elemental Planes

The Elemental Planes are a specific region of the Dungeons & Dragons cosmology. In the Great Wheel, they make up their own significant portion of the Inner Planes. In fact, they're such a prominent percentage of the Inner Planes - with the others being the Astral Plane, Ethereal Plane and the Prime Material - that their Planescape sourcebook was actually called "The Inner Planes".

As their name suggests, the Elemental Planes are the origin point for all of the various forms of elemental matter in the multiverse. Traditionally, this has made them... rather visually uninteresting. The Plane of Fire, for example, is either an infinite 3-dimensional expanse of roaring flames, or else an infinite expanse of ash fields, lava pools and roaring flames beneath a "sky" of heat waves and noxious combustible gasses. The Paraelemental and Quasielemental Planes tend to have somewhat more variety, as their "margin" status gives them distinctive regions - for example, the Plane of Ice is divisible into Core Ice, the Sea of Frozen Lives (Ice/Water), the Stinging Storm (Ice/Salt), the Frigid Void (Ice/Vacuum), the Precipice (Ice/Air), the Shimmering Drifts (Ice/Lightning), and the Fog of Unyielding Frost (Ice/Steam).

Another downside to their elemental nature is that, well, the Elemental Planes are downright hazardous for anything that isn't an elemental, and sometimes even for things that are. If being roasted in the Plane of Fire or drowned in the Planes of Water and Ooze doesn't interest you, how about visiting the Glowing Dunes (Magma/Radiance), a technically infinite expanse of radioactive dust that will give you incurable and fatal radiation poisoning?

This hazardous nature to visit has also led to many DMs finding them less than interesting - even in Planescape, the Elemental Planes are considered the backwater boonies of the Great Wheel, only marginally better than the Prime.

This actually led to the decision to do away with the Elemental Planes and replace them with the Elemental Chaos in the World Axis, in hopes of creating a more interesting, more survivable, and more plot-generating form for them.

In their traditional layout, the Elemental Planes consist of six primary planes; Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Positive Energy and Negative Energy. These six planes are then bolstered by the four Paralemental Planes (convergences of two Prime Elemental Planes) and the eight Quasielemental Planes (convergences of the Prime Elemental Planes with the Energy Planes). Despite the occasional bit of idle fan speculation, there has never been any official word on what the "Paraquasielemental Planes", those meeting points of Paraelemental Plane and Energy Plane, would look like.

The Paraelemental Planes consist of Ice (Air/Water), Magma (Fire/Earth), Ooze (Water/Earth) and Smoke (Fire/Air).

The Positive Quasielemental Planes consist of Lightning (Positive/Air), Mineral (Positive/Earth), Radiance (Positive/Fire), and Steam (Positive/Water).

The Negative Quasielemental Planes consist of Ash (Negative/Fire), Dust (Negative/Earth), Salt (Negative/Water) and Vacuum (Negative/Air).