What's in the nearby ethereal plane?

[BaconAwesome]

What's in the nearby ethereal planes?

- If my Waterdeep players cast see invisibility, they should probably find some local ghosts, but are there also ethereal fish or oozses or bugs just floating around?

- If you cast the Leomund's Chest spell, is your chest secrure, or is there a chance some ethereal beastie gets it (and what chance)? Is the chance different if you hide your chest in a haunted area?

[Tvtyrant]

There are lots of things in the ether, you could look out to see an Ethergaunt scrying on you, or an Ethereal filcher or defiler hunting smallet organisms, or even a wizard tower built there for privacy.

The spell used to have a chance of being looted, but I think that got removed as essentially removing the spells' utility.

[Unoriginal]

There is nothing in the Ether aside from a few ghosts and monsters

[Particle_Man]

Other being travelling ethereally?

Also, is this a "what would I see statistically and realistically?" question or a "what would be cool/relevant to a party of adventuring PCs?" question?

[Millstone85]

I imagine the Ethereal would be a popular place to banish creatures to. For a transitive plane, it is actually pretty locked up.

The Material has fey and shadow crossings (DMG p50-51). Places like the heart of a volcano or the depths of the ocean sometimes link to matching elemental planes (DMG p45). The Astral has color pools leading to various planes (DMG p47).

But ethereal curtains only connect the Deep Ethereal with the Border Ethereal (DMG p48-49). You could travel from a region where you can see the Material to a region where you can see the Feywild, but you couldn't touch either. Without planeshifting abilities of your own, you are screwed.

Of course, Carceri is the prison plane. But it is harder to find an attuned fork for (DMG p46).

[BaconAwesome]

Other being travelling ethereally?

Also, is this a "what would I see statistically and realistically?" question or a "what would be cool/relevant to a party of adventuring PCs?" question?

Very specifically, it's "If the wizard in a Dragon Heist (Waterdeep) campaign I'm running learns and casts See Invisibility, should I dress up what he sees with little ethereal creepy crawly fauna or is the border ethereal basically empty when there isn't someone specifically going there, and also I'm curious how safe Leomund's Chest is."

Thanks!

[Particle_Man]

Well, I would make Leomund's Secret Chest fairly safe or why would people cast the spell at all?

As for fauna, yeah, might as well put something in there, for colour if nothing else. But that is up to you.

[Unoriginal]

Very specifically, it's "If the wizard in a Dragon Heist (Waterdeep) campaign I'm running learns and casts See Invisibility, should I dress up what he sees with little ethereal creepy crawly fauna or is the border ethereal basically empty when there isn't someone specifically going there, and also I'm curious how safe Leomund's Chest is."

Thanks!

There is no creepy fauna in the Ethereal, most of the time. There are a few very noticeable ghosts and monsters, but they're few and far between in most cases. So "is the border ethereal basically empty when there isn't someone specifically going there" is the correct one.

Pretty sure the point of Leomund's Chest is to be basically 100% secure. if as a DM you decide to change that, tell the person who consider taking the spell.