The Gray
In the second edition AD&D version of Dark Sun, the Gray was described as a buffer zone on Athas that acts as a barrier between Athas's Prime Material Plane and its Ethereal and Astral Planes. It is much weaker on the Ethereal side where it is easier to breach. On the Astral side it is almost impenetrable. Spellcasters seeking access to these planes (or the outer and inner planes beyond) must attempt to breach The Gray.
The dead of Athas end up here after they die and are caught in an eddy and gradually fade away to nothing. When someone asks the spirits of the dead dwelling in the Gray where they are they reply "nowhere" and when asked who they are they reply "no one." They can however prolong their existence by dedicating themselves to a cause which is greater than themselves.
The Thri-Kreen of Athas supplement states that the Thri-Kreen instead have a heaven in the Beastlands (Happy Hunting Grounds) and a cold hell in Baator (the nine hells), which are both traditional D&D outer planes.
Read more about this topic: Dark Sun
Famous quotes containing the word gray:
“I knew the stars, the flowers, and the birds,
The gray and wintry sides of many glens,
And did but half remember human words,
In converse with the mountains, moors, and fens.”
—J.M. (John Millington)
“The lore of our fathers is a fabric of sentences. In our hands it develops and changes, through more or less arbitrary and deliberate revisions and additions of our own, more or less directly occasioned by the continuing stimulation of our sense organs. It is a pale gray lore, black with fact and white with convention. But I have found no substantial reasons for concluding that there are any quite black threads in it, or any white ones.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)