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My players may soon find themselves in the Astral Sea. I don't know much about the area, but if that's where the adventure goes, so be it. Only problem is I find the 4e Manual of the Planes to be woefully uninformative. Are there any published adventures or modules that take place in the Astral Sea? Even if they aren't appropriate for my game, reading one would probably give me a better ideas of what I can do to the players out there.

I'm running 4e and would prefer 4e material if it's available. But I'm open to reading adventures set in the Astral Plane from earlier editions as well if that's the best that's out there.

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Tagging note. There's no Astral Sea in pre-4e D&D—it was the astral plane before and I gather that it's quite different. If you want details about the astral plane to poach for merging into the Astral Sea, keep the tags as-is: there are a lot of pre-4e resources. Otherwise add the [dnd-4e] tag to limit answers to material relevant to the 4e Astral Sea. –  SevenSidedDie May 9 '11 at 17:36
@Seven, TY. That terminology change hadn't occurred to me. I'm mostly in it for poaching ideas/flavor though, so older material is all good. –  valadil May 9 '11 at 17:45
@valadil Heh, 'terminology change' isn't the half of it. Back before 4th edition, the Astral Plane was an endless silver void with no up or down, navigated by thought alone. Through it twisted the conduits by which divine power and dead souls passed between the Prime Material to the various afterlives... As well as those planeswalkers brave enough to risk the proboscis vampires and astral marauders. Occasionally, one might find a stray arrow fired in a century long gone, still flying straight and true with no friction or gravity to slow it down... –  GMJoe May 25 '12 at 5:44

4 Answers 4

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The Plane Above is the 4E sourcebook for the Astral Sea, and includes a paragon-tier "mini adventure" set in the Astral Sea, as well as other adventure hooks. The book is about 150 pages, and the adventure is only a half dozen of those, give or take. The Manual of the Planes also spends about 30 pp on the Astral Sea, but there are no adventures. I believe there may be some hooks.

There are sourcebooks from previous editions that cover the astral plane, most notably 2E's Planescape's A Guide to the Astral Plane (which does not contain any premade adventures). The cosmology of 4E differs drastically from that of previous editions, however, and the Astral Sea of 4E is quite different from the Astral Plane of the 1-3E "Great Wheel" cosmology.

To the best of my knowledge and research, there are no adventure modules published by Wizards or TSR that were set in the astral anything.

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The Plane Above was perfect. Just what I was looking for. I hope they publish more setting material with that kind of depth. –  valadil May 10 '11 at 1:58

I don't know of any 4th Ed or even 3rd Ed adventures in the Astral Plane. However there were at least two excellent adventure modules for 2nd Edition Planescape that partially took place on the Astral Plane:

  • Dead Gods - The Astral Plane is where God Corpses end up floating around, and the adventure climax involves the players stopping the resurrection of Tenebrous the "dead god" in question.
  • Tales from The Infinite Staircase - This adventure has the PCs wandering around a staircase full of portals trying to stop a curse that has spread to a bunch of planar locales. One of the locations is in the Astral Plane.

There are probably a few more scattered around, but those two are the only ones I've read myself. Both are excellent modules and might make for good inspiration. Also, as mentioned above Guide to the Astral Plane is worth checking out.

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This 3rd edition adventure isn't set on the Astral Plane per se, but it describes an invasion of the Prime Material that originates on the Astral. There are a lot of cool details about Githyanki society in these issues of Dungeon and Dragon magazine, including a poster-sized map of Tu’narath.

Wyatt, James. "Incursion: A World Under Siege." Dragon #309 (Paizo Publishing, 2003)

Perkins, Christopher. "The Lich-Queen's Beloved." Dungeon #100 (Paizo Publishing, 2003)

Perkins, Christopher. "Tu'narath City Guide PDF."

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There are a couple Companion and Master level BECMI D&D modules that involve astral planar travel; I've not run them, and don't have them, but flipped through some at a friend's place years ago. They're rare, now, tho'.

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