The most harrowing experience I have ever experienced was stepping through that portal into the plane of Vacuum. As they say, the first step is a doosey.

Discovery

When the first wizard figured out how to access the plane of vacuum it was thought to be a great discovery. Think what wonders might exist, think what we can learn from nothingness! We thought ourselves prepared: we had tanks of air strapped to our backs attached to sealed glass helmets around our heads to breath. Our wizard cast magical lights on each of our suits in case it was dark on the other side. We packaged a weeks worth of food and water. But when we first stepped through the portal, nothing could prepare us for what happened. There was no ground! Initially, panicked I saw my teammates and realized that we were floating, weightless. I let go of my worry somewhat. For one not used to floating, it can be rather challenging to rotate your body. After a few moments I turned to say something. And realized they couldn’t hear me. Sound travels on air and because we were separated, my friends couldn’t hear me! I noticed that Darkan was slowly drifting away from us. He was out of arms reach, and I couldn’t figure out how to move towards him. I tried swimming through the vacuum, but couldn’t get any closer.

While flailing around, I realized that through complex arm rotations, I could rotate my whole body. Upon rotating around, I noticed that while Darkan was drifting away from the rest of us, we were all drifting away from the gate. You’d think we would’ve realized this could happen. First things first, I turned back to Darkan (I couldn’t quite stop the rotation so I managed a few seconds of eye contact with him before I continued rotating around again. I could see the panic in his eyes. He was already 20 feet from the rest of us. I felt the wizard grab my arm. I brought out my rope and hurled one end at him. It flew initially as I expected, but I started rotating rather quickly and it was a bad throw. The wizard and our fighter managed to stabilize me fairly well. After fixing my boot onto the end of the rope, I managed to get a good throw in (with those two holding me fairly steady). Darkan grabbed onto the shoe and pulled himself towards us.

By this time, we had drifted some 40 feet from the gate we came through. This worried me, but we knew the gate would close before we had a chance to explore this realm anyway. With all of us together (most importantly the wizard with his gate scroll) we started looking around more carefully. We all tied ourselves together with the rope so we couldn’t drift apart again. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, actually, I wouldn’t call it darkness, I mean it was definitely darkness, but it somehow felt more like the absence of light. I started to see things moving, they were far away and it may have just been wishful thinking I’m not even sure I can say that I saw them, as much as I felt them. Were they creatures living here? Or was it something else? It seemed that there wasn’t much to see, I took out a bottle that I had and scooped some “vacuum” inside it. Maybe it would have some interesting properties when we got back to Material. I started to feel a sense of dread. This vast openness, this feeling of weightlessness, it wasn’t right. I realized that I had no sense of dizziness from my earlier spinning session, which was surprising. As I tugged on the rope and turned around I saw a ball of blackness floating towards us. Or maybe we were floating towards it. It was somehow darker than the vacuum. The normal space in vacuum seemed emotionless and empty, but this seemed hungry. I tried to warn the Fighter who was looking my way; he turned around just in time to see the orb. It looked like it would just pass by, but the edge touched his shoulder as he twisted to avoid it. We all watched in horror as he was sucked inside and vanished into nothingness.

The wizard pulled out his scroll of gate that he had prepared earlier and I could see his lips chanting frantically. After a minute or so, the gate opened in front of us and the three remaining members drifted through the gate and arrived back at the college in Material.

Survival

The plane itself has no matter as normally found in Material or other elemental planes. There is no earth, fire, or water.

Breathing:

The first hazard one must surpass is the lack of air. Despite being a plane associated with air, the “air” there is actually nothingness. Any creature that breathes needs a source of air to sustain itself or it will quickly die. One traversing this plane must bring everything necessary for survival along.

Eating, drinking, and heat loss

There is no naturally occurring food or water. While the plane itself isn’t hot or cold, the heat from one’s body slowly radiates away. Warm-blooded creatures can slowly adapt and deal with this, but normally expeditions will bring warm clothes to slow the heat loss.

Travel

Travel in this plane is very difficult. There is no gravity, but no ground, water, or air to propel oneself. The only means of locomotion comes from mass projection (like throwing a shoe in the direction opposite the intended travel direction), or magical spells which exude some sort of physical force.

Magic

Magic in the Vacuum plane is typically less effective than in other planes. Spells that use the primary elements are quickly dispersed by the vacuum and while they can be cast, dissipate beyond the range of a few inches and after less than a second. The weave is still present, and it’s possible to cast any spell, one could normally. If one’s mouth is not inside a pocket of air, any vocal components of spells will fail, as no sound is produced.

Weather

The only thing roughly similar to weather in Vacuum are objects floating through the Vacuum. The only thing intrinsic to the plane itself are spheres of annihilation that pop into and out of existence, but remain fixed in space until they vanish spontaneously. They are very rare to encounter and many explorers of the plane don’t believe they are present. Travelers may encounter any number of other things floating through the Vacuum, but those were originally brought here from another plane.

The Locals

It seems that there are no locals native to the plane of vacuum. Some who live there blame strange occurrences on the “vacuum elemental”, but the existence of the vacuum elemental has never been proven. In the centuries following the discovery, various groups have moved to Vacuum and built small settlements and even a few cities. Due to the nature of the vacuum plane, one’s city can be moving constantly and the lack of landmarks makes traveling from one city to another very difficult without the aid of a magical compass (or similar effect).

Most of the settlements are a single structure built around immovable rods. This allows the settlement to remain fixed in place, but makes it relatively easy to relocate when it become necessary. Usually inside a giant dome with an airlock, or a magical barrier to keep the air inside, these cities must be completely self-contained. Usually, they cannot produce enough (typically any) food on their own, and so require constant trips to the Material (or other) plane.

The nature of life in Vacuum means that only those who want to remain hidden live here. The first known settlement was a domed castle build by a secret society of assassins. They had several powerful mages and through a long and complex ritual managed to gate the entire thing to Vacuum after construction in in Material. They fixed the castle in place with a series of immovable rods and used it as a hidden base, making trips to their main base in Material to take jobs and trade for food (see Mysteries for more details.

Several other groups have followed suit after the fact, but it is not known how many similar settlements currently exist there. There have been no known instances in the vacuum plane of settlements interacting with each other, but some have constructed battlements and cannons, as well as large magical propulsion systems for that eventuality. Occasionally, a resident may see a light in the distance; it could be another settlement or perhaps something else entirely.

Mysteries

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Settlements:

Vacuum Vampires

One settlement currently in Vacuum is the residence of the Sharptooth family. They are an old family of vampires living in a gothic mansion anchored in Vacuum. Being undead, they can survive without issue in vacuum. A few hundred years ago their entire family household was transported to vacuum to avoid the constant raids of vampire hunters. The Sharptooths will send a scout to Material to locate new harvesting grounds. They seek to continue their operation in secret and only take enough blood from each victim to cause minor effects the following day.

They will harvest from a town for typically one week before moving on to the next. The scout finds a promising victim (or several) and the powerful mages of the Sharptooth family will open a gate between the mansion and the victim’s sleeping chambers. Blood is harvested, and the harvesters are gone as quickly as they appeared.

They’ve grown to prefer living in Vacuum and most family members consider it offensive to have to travel back to the Material plane. They have a few other undead thralls who work as servants and those are the ones they send to Material as scouts. The house has several staff of zombies (or whatever undead you prefer) to take care of things like cooking, cleaning, dressing the family members, etc. Basically any task that might be beneath the rich Sharptooths, they have zombies to work for them. Even some zombies are there for entertainment, like playing the piano while the family dances. These servants are not very good at their jobs and often fail badly enough that the family members will eject them into vacuum.

Starting the adventure: The party can be conscripted by a member of a town currently being fed upon by the Sharptooth family. If sufficiently stealthy, the party can follow back through the gate to the Sharptooth home. The Sharptooth family will have one chamber with oxygen stored for the rare occasion they need to kidnap a living creature. Alternatively, the party can happen upon a member of the family (or more likely an undead servant) who was ejected and tossed into Vacuum to drift for an eternity.

Space Pirates

Not literally space pirates, but rather vacuum pirates. A band of pirates came across an artifact that generates directional force on an object up to once per second. Initially, they try to use this on their ship at sea, but the resistance from the water means that it has little effect beyond slightly increasing their maximum cruising speed. After some discussion, the cook offers up the idea of using it to fly around the mystical Vacuum plane. They heard tale of rich secret organizations that move their headquarters to the Vacuum plane. Using this device, they suspect they could sail from one settlement to another and rob them blind.

Using up all the treasure they had, they rig up their ship with a magical force barrier to keep in air and commission a powerful artifact to detect animals within 200 miles (sort of globe shaped compass; points to nearest creature in said range. Needs to be calibrated to ignore those on the ship. This causes occasional issues).

The pirates may have missed a few things and don’t actually have a way to get back. Their oxygen (and food/water) will only last for about 3 months of travel. The DM can decide if they are initially teleported close enough to detect creatures other than themselves. Due to this oversight (which was quickly realized), the pirates will do whatever they can to get back to Material. First and foremost, they’ll try this by conquering/dominating anyone they come across. But if it becomes clear that the other party has a stronger hand, the pirates will parley for a means to increase their odds of survival.

Due to the mass of the ship and the power of the artifact (which is now permanently bound to the ship and cannot target anything else), the ship can change its movement speed/direction by 10ft each 1 second. This means that it has no maximum speed, but one must consider early on if a change in direction is required.

Starting the encounter The PCs can teleport near the vessel and find it themselves, they can be with another group who is assaulted by the pirates, they can be on a mission to find/kill/rescue the pirates. Alternatively, they can be conscripted by the pirates (or stowaway on the vessel) before the ship is transported to Vacuum.

Assassins' Guild

“The Vanished” are perhaps the oldest guild of assassins in the known world. They reached fame in prehistory and eventually faded into legend. The main reason that they faded into legend is that they were the first to move their headquarters to Vacuum nearly 1000 years ago. Consisting mainly of high elves, this assassin’s guild has maintained almost complete secrecy since they left Material. Many believe they have died out. The Vanished will set up temporary houses in Material under varying other names, but typically their employers do not seek them out. The Vanished keep their spies listening and when there is a particularly spectacular assassination needed (or one with considerable money behind it), they seek out the potential employer and bid for the contact. Typically, this is done by appearing before the potential employer when the employer is at home completely alone and utterly helpless.

The Vanished are the best in the business and maintain secrecy, as no other guild is able. They have a medium sized castle that is fortified with cannons (in the unlikely event that another city floats by). And otherwise surrounded inside a glass dome. There is a permanent gate connected to the dungeons of the castle and the top of an isolated mountain in material. This allows for transport of oxygen into the castle. The castle itself has several sections that can be sealed off in case of a breach in the glass dome.

Having lived here for many generations, the grounds (about 50 feet of dirt on which the castle originally stood was transported) have a beautiful garden and grazing animals. The guild itself has roughly 100 members and part of the training for assassination is to have taken on every role in caring for the castle (grounds-keeper, cook, craftsman, etc). This allows for a nearly autonomous city, as well as making sure that the assassins maintain their ability to blend in with any occupation in Material.

Normally, the assassination is planned in advance, and the assassins have a window of 30 seconds when the gate will be open (in a specified location) to return to Vacuum. If they miss the time window, they are abandoned, and are duty-bound to commit suicide. If one flees instead, The Vanished send a group of assassins to hunt the renegade down and kill him/her in the most tortuous way imaginable.

Starting the encounter The PCs can start this adventure by being sought out as a potential new assassin, stumbling the gate for a successful assassin, or by finding an assassin who is fleeing after failing his assignment. Also, they can stumble upon the castle itself if floating through Vaccum.

Random Encounters

1. The party notices a dead body floating through vacuum. It turns out to be:
   • a wizard who was thrown into Vacuum as punishment for violating the vows of an evil band of wizards (has a magical ring or other item that the other wizards might have overlooked)
   • A dwarven zombie butler (see the “vacuum vampires” section) with the Sharptooth family crest and a broom/dustpan. He’s still sweeping as he drifts through the Vacuum
   • The body of an early exporer of Vacuum who was separated from his party. Dwarven fighter with a salvageable weapon as well as a helmet/airtank that is empty. Has a diary of roughly 2 days of drifting through vacuum as he slowly went insane.
2. Annihilating Sphere. The party will see light sort of reflecting off a sphere that heads towards them. It should look even more dark then the vacuum itself. If they throw something at it, it vanishes immediately. If the party gets sucked in, DM can treat it as a wormhole, but it’s really designed to remove them from existence.

3. Panic sets in. The absence of gravity and the broad openness of the plane itself has caused one PC to freak out. Pass a piece of paper to the PC detailing some hallucination that he/she sees

   • “You feel a prickle on your neck and as you turn around, you see a behemoth behind you. Nearly 100 feet tall, this dark creature (think cthulu old ones) drifts towards you.” It should look menacing and threatening, but can’t actually do the PC any damage.
   • “you suddenly notice a small girl hurtling orthogonally past you roughly 30 feet away. She is clearly screaming as she her entire body writhes in agony as she drifts through space”. The PC cannot physically touch her, but may be convinced that he/she’s grabbed her arm, before he/she discovers the illusion.
   • “you see a shimmer on the horizon. As you drift closer, you realize that it is a physical island with people on it. The disk of rock is only about 3 feet thick, but there is a pool of water that looks crystal clear and an apple tree with fresh apples growing on it. There are also bees flying around. It appears that there is a magical forcefield holding fresh air surrounding it”.
   • “You realize that gravity has taken hold of you and you are no longer floating but in freefall”. Up to the DM to decide if the PC doesn’t notice his friends, or if they appear to be “falling” as well.
   • “You notice that your one of your companions has your favorite trinket in his hand, and you don’t have it anymore”

4. You drift through Vacuum without incident.

5. PCs see a far off light for a few seconds before it vanishes. Can be any settlement, NPC in Vacuum, or nothing. It should take a day or so to travel there.

6. There is a problem with whatever mechanism you have to supply you with air. Some relevant DC checks should take place.

Politics/Religion

As mentioned, there are only small floating cities, and each has it’s own government, but they are typically all consisting of a small group of people with similar ideals who all wish to remain hidden. For each city, one can define a different set of politics. The gods pay little, if any, attention to the Vacuum plane. As such it’s a good place to go for those who seek sanctuary from a god. Typically, those who live in Vacuum have no dealings with gods, but may often have some sort of cult/religion that they wish to keep hidden from the rest of the world.

Cult of the Atheists:

Originally founded by several worshippers of Bahamut who stole from the temple and fled with their riches. They used those riches to buy passage to Vacuum and set up a completely enclosed all glass city. They’ve since expanded to take in those who wish to escape their gods. They will turn away those who are actively being pursued by the gods, but will gladly help those fleeing from the followers of a particular god.

They believe in the existence of all gods, but choose to ignore them. There are a few oathbreakers as well as Clerics who decided to abandon their gods (or were abandoned by them). The city has a permanent gate connected to a hidden cave in Material.

Travel

Getting to Vacuum:

There is no widely known gate to vacuum, but the various locations I've set up all have means to travel there. If accidental travel is desired, one can happen upon the constant gate at the top of a secluded mountain which leads to the dungeons of the assassins, the gate hidden in a cave leading to the Cult of the Atheists. One can also stumble upon the temporary gates used by the Sharptooth vampires for blood harvesting, or the escape gate for an assassin of the Vanished. PCs can also be conscripted by the assassins or the pirates. If they seek to abandon their gods, they may search out the cult of the Atheists.

Alternatively, well-to-do PCs may either gate there themselves, or pay a high-level spellcaster to gate them there.

optional mechanism:

An alternative option is to treat any Sphere of annihilation as a wormhole. Whenever one is created, another end appears in Vacuum and allows for travel. From the perspective of most, this results in the death and destruction of the "annihilated", but it allows for an alternative transport to Vacuum.

Getting around in Vacuum:

Travel is simple (but not easy) in Vacuum. You propel yourself in the direction you want to go and wait. The problem is figuring out which way to go. Some cities have turned themselves into floating ships that can fly through the plane, but navigation without magical aid is absolutely impossible (and still non-trivial with magic). One can use spells to propel oneself and an immovable rod is the Vacuum travelers best friend (allows for locomotion and stopping with ease). Because of one’s ability to float, it is possible to maintain travel for 24 hours a day and even while sleeping.

Toolkit

Survival timers

Without oxygen a PC uses the standard breath holding rules for your current edition.

Follow the normal food/water rules for your edition.

Due to the absence of heat in vacuum, creatures that need warmth take 2 cold damage per hour after the first 8 hours. This is mitigated by warm clothing or if near a radiating heat source. It is also mitigated in any settlement supplied with air.

Travel rules.
If pushing off something very large, the PCs movement speed is equal to any value less than their dash speed, but cannot be stopped without interacting with another massive body.

The PC can also throw an object to travel/change directions. The change in speed is equal to

 str*30*(object_weight)/(PC_weight) 

And finally, the PC can use spells to propel themselves. Normally, I'd be a bit stingy on which spells can propel them through the plane, but if they've got nothing else to use, I could justify any spell that does some sort of explosive damage (most fire spells). Even mage hand could probably add a little velocity. But I'd leave it up to the PCs to try something and make a judgement call as the DM.

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