I'm going to run the game so that sorcerers (and wizards) often make their own unique spells, like in Ars Magica or Hârnmaster's Shek-Pvar. The essense planes therefore are mostly a source of power to be exploited, not a place where the knowledge and power of every spell is stored.
As for my portrayal of tapping. I find the arrogant hubris of the western wizards and sorcerers intriquing, and I think my approach of the sorcerers, in particular, exploiting the essense planes will cause nice tensions in the game.
Basically I'm going with the monotheistic "Only the true believers have souls, everything else is just matter and energy to be exploited as we wish" attitude.
Of course the essense planes do regenerate, but they do so like forests do. Destroy enough over a long enough time, and it there will be trouble. I think there is a balanse in the West. New things and structures are manifesting into the essense planes as the old things are used up.
And yes, my vision of the essense planes differs quite a bit from the HQ version, but that's because I find the HQ approach very boring and lacking sense-of-wonder. The dreamland analogue comes from Sandman, and to a lesser extent from the E-space is David Brin's Startide novels.
And when I wrote about the sorcerer "knowing" all the denizens are really illusions and nothing more than swirls of essense I just meant that the sorcerer doesn't consider them real because they aren't humans with a soul in his opinion. I'm not saying I agree with the sorcerer.
This was inspired by Robin Laws at a pre-Hero-Wars Convulsion where he talked about a sorcerer encoutering a minor Storm God. The Storm God proclaims to be Hedkoranth, a God of Storm, but the sorcerer insists that it's just a powerful consentration of storm-magic (essense). And if the sorcerer wins the challenge, then to him Hedkoranth is just that, and while the sorcerer lives Hedkoranth is going to be a bit sick, because of the sorcerer tapping his strength to power his magic.
-Adept
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