The Far Realm, also called Outside, is a plane—or perhaps a space beyond the planes—that is terrifyingly remote from standard planar geometry. The creatures that abide in the Far Realm are too alien for a normal mind to accept without being damaged. Where stray emanations from the Far Realm leak onto the world, matter stirs at the beckoning of inexplicable urges, then burns to ash or takes on monstrous new life.
The history of the Far Realm is one of controversy and question. This troubled discourse about its nature is well suited to the Far Realm, which exists as something fundamentally alien to any easy categorization in any cosmology. It is literally the “far” realm because it lies outside and beyond the cosmology that encompasses the world of mortals, primordials, and deities alike. The Far Realm is beyond the already-difficult-to-comprehend multiverse. It is “outside” creation, existing in the theoretical realm of timeless infinity. Knowledge of the Far Realm is a triumph of mind over the rude boundaries of matter, space, and sanity. In fact, every mortal or immortal who has attempted to comprehend the truth of the Far Realm eventually concludes that endeavor with a shattered mind at best. At worst, such people are subsumed and corrupted, becoming monsters themselves.
Those who only lightly value the cohesion of their own minds sometimes journey to those stained locations where the Far Realm has touched (or currently touches) the world. There, they seek to gaze Outside. Although the descriptions of many of the resulting visions are little more than incoherent babble, some share at least a few particulars. A thread of consistency speaks of a space inhabited by vast entities immersed in contemplations so alien that reality itself warps and changes in their presence. Lethal contradictions and toxic natural laws are born at whim only
to dissolve like vapor to make way for newer, more insane dreams.
Another ongoing theme of the visions describes the Far Realm as a solid mass of translucent, onionlike skins. The stacked layers are pierced with free-floating bone-white rivers, and seepages of blue slime that dissolve all they touch. Elsewhere, gelatinous worms wend through the folds using writhing cilia and lichenlike encrustations. No air or atmosphere exists in the Far Realm. It is one immeasurable, semisolid amoebic sea.
Vast shapes drift at the edge of sight through the realm’s substance, blurrily reminiscent of creatures from the deepest sea trenches of the mortal world. Many of the blurry forms are as large as cities—and those are the small ones.
Thankfully, this realm of madness only rarely touches the rational world. The Far Realm is not normally a place one can visit, and its terrible, insane influences are infrequent in the world. When these rare intrusions occur, the warping pressure of the Far Realm transmutes previously inert substances. This blending of realities results in horrifying corruptions, disruptions, and sometimes even the birth of squiggling aberrant monstrosities.