Pales

The Pales were demonic planes outside of existence in the "Near Void" in the Shadow World cosmology. While not related to The Unlife per se, they were indirectly, by paralleling the chaotic aspects of our own reality. The Pales were so named by the Lords of Essaence because "all other realities paled" to their own. Not necessarily evil, Demons of the Pales were so intrinsically alien, they were uncontrollably insane and unpredictable. Thus, they were only used for force by dark mages, and were often related to the Dark Gods in their I.C.E. Age form. There were portals leading to the Pales on Lornon. The "Outer Void" had no common reference points with our own existence, and only very unusual conditions and the most powerful gates would allow access.

Demons "Beyond the Pale" were essentially demi-gods, and could not be controlled by ordinary means. Demons of the Essaence, more directly related to The Unlife, were of a fundamentally different nature. The only exception were Ordainers, who would occasionally become so chaotic and unruly, they were thrust or banished into the Void. Though "Outer Planes" such as the Black Hel could be tranquil, those merely "beyond the pale" were incomprehensible in much the same way as The Rift. Some books treated The Void as a place of The Unlife, and others as something else entirely.

While these are the valid definitions within Shadow World, they were categorized differently in Rolemaster, where Demons of the Void were souls of our world who became demonic on other planes of existence. These were re-cast as "Conformer" demons of the Outer Void for Shadow World. Within that scheme the Demons of the Pales were the "natural" denizens of other planes, and there was no category corresponding to Demons of the Essaence. There were, however, other categories. One of those classes of "non-demonic" extra-planar entities directly corresponds to most of the creatures in The Broken Lands, though these are not considered extraplanar beings for system purposes at the present time. They would be non-canonical in Shadow World.

Behind The Scenes

While the cosmology of GemStone is not especially well-defined yet, DragonRealms is the same world set thousands of years in the future. The "Planar Void" is still a concept in that context, referring to the "absence of existence" that is a wall or barrier between "planes of existence." When these planes are allowed to intersect, their energies and physical laws bleed into each other, with the ultimate extreme being total collapse such that they merge as a single universe. These effects are typically regarded as pollution. Elemental planes are described essentially the same way in GemStone. There is also another place called "The Void" in the Spiritual Plane, which is roughly the same thing as Purgatory.