Spelljammer - Tumblr Posts - Page 2
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Okay kids, strap in. Uncle Spy has some worldbuilding to lay on ya.
So the new Spelljammer 5e was announced a few months back, releasing in August (it's just turned June as I write this). Since then my friend and I have been gushing about it and planning some stuff around it, but one of the things that always struck me as disappointing about original Spelljammer was how... boring the Forgotten Realms solar system (Realmspace, where Abeir-Toril lies) was. It's much smaller than our solar system: eight planets, and only one of those is explicitly a giant planet (Coliar, said to be a "gas giant" but really more like a small ice giant). Two of them (Garden and H'Catha) aren't actually planets either, just constructs the size of dwarf planets. Two other planets are just ocean worlds, one with a sargasso sea around its equator and the other full of rocky atolls. Only two planets have any moons at all, to boot. Simply put: there's not a lot to look at, really. I'm hoping the new Spelljammer canon will retcon this and give Toril a larger, more varied solar system with more giant worlds and moon systems.
HOWEVER, there's another factor at play here. I made a character who's a space bard, directly inspired by all the filk I've been listening to lately. The problem is... a good chunk of that filk either A) uses names (planets, programs, people, etc) specific to real life space exploration and/or B) is rocketpunk instead of sailpunk like Spelljammer is intended to be. That got me thinking... I'd had a vague idea for a rocketpunk alt-Toril in the back of my mind for a while –a universe where the magical beings of the Forgotten Realms had reached the stars not through magicked-up sailing ships with atmosphere bubbles, but through magicked-up classic rockets– and this seemed like the perfect excuse to deploy that idea and start hammering it into a more coherent shape.
All of this added up to... well, something! Behold, my attempt to have my cake and eat it too: Terraspace.
This map was made using the template/assets developed by DeviantArt user slimysomething.
Terraspace is a fantasy version of our solar system within the wider Spelljammer setting where elves and dwarves and beastfolk all sing the rocketpunk blues. The Apollo Program exists as part of their history, but Apollo 13 was fine because of hasty Purify Air enchantments and some innovative abjuration. Dragons funded the Space Race. That sorta bullshit. Also, spiced up the solar system with a little idealism, as you can see; part of that was also me leaning into old Golden Age pulpy SF concepts like Jungle Venus and Pyramids of Mars. I don't thhhhhhink this counts as a new worldbuilding project,,, yet? Stay tuned I guess.
Full change log:
Mercury: No physical changes from RL. Terraspace Mercury is a major mining colony, predominantly inhabited by dwarves, earth and fire elementals, and kobolds. A settlement of firenewts have also taken up residency at the north pole, to bask in the heat of the sun.
Venus: No runaway greenhouse hell; instead Terraspace Venus is a tropical paradise world teeming with life. Though still volcanically active thanks to its two moons (not present in RL; Dione and Cupid were added to stabilize the planet's spin and tectonic cycle), this volcanism is moderate and keeps the top layers of the crust enriched for the abundant flora. Native species include aarakocra, kenku, dragons and their kin, the several kinds of batrachids (bullywugs, grippli, grung), and tortles.
Terra (and Luna): Geophysically identical to the Earth and Moon we know. The main difference here lies in its inhabitants: in addition to humanity, Terra harbors the many species of close-humanoids common to fantasy worlds (dwarves, elves, giants and their kin, gnomes, goblins and their kin, halflings, and orcs) in addition to several species of beastfolk, centaurs, merfolk, and even some dragon-kin (though dragons proper are extinct on Terra). The history of Terran civilization has understandably progressed a bit differently, but recent history shares something particular in common: the Space Age. Though it may not have been the USA and USSR that raced to the moon, there was indeed a Space Race, Apollo and all. Sure these folks have magic, but magic takes energy, and the scholars of Terra found it more economical to use enchanted rocketry than go the way of typical sky-sailing spelljammers. Luna, by the way, is heavily populated and highly industrialized by the point of deep astral travel.
Mars: Orbits a bit closer to the Sun and with a much lower eccentricity, as well as retaining geological, hydrological, and atmospheric activity (in large part thanks to its sizable moon Nerio, not present in RL). Mars is a chilly world, largely arid, but still has some flora near its seas. Funny, then, that its inhabitants are mostly reptilian in nature! Mars is inhabited by dragons and their kin, as well as various species of lizardfolk and serpentfolk. The most elusive Martians of all, however, are the mantis-like Thri-kreen, who ruled Mars long before the creator civilizations arrived in Terraspace.
Ceres: Somewhat larger and denser than the real Ceres, it has also captured Vesta as its moon. Ceres, once a mining colony, has changed hands many times and is now in the process of being transformed into a micro-terra through futurist druidcraft: the current inhabitants of Ceres seek to enclose Ceres in a worldshell made of space-tolerant vegetation, and create a paradise within. The surrounding asteroid belt is aflutter with activity, mainly mining done by dwarven and kobold clans.
Jupiter: Much the same as our own Jupiter, sans a slightly smaller orbit and the magically-fortified gas mining facilities that dot its skies. The Jovian moon system, too, is very similar, with the exception of a fifth major moon: Juno, a cold waterworld slightly smaller than Mars. Juno is natively inhabited by a modest number of aquatic sapients: Kuo-toa, Locathah, Sahuagin, and Tako. All four of the other moons also have well-established populations.
Saturn: Nearly identical to our solar system's Saturn, with the sole exception of name changes for its moons and the switching of Enceladus Hyperion and Tethys Theia. The Saturn system is also well settled, particularly its largest moon Titan Rhea.
Uranus: Renamed Minerva, because goddamn she deserves a planet. Similarly strange axial tilt, but only three major moons instead of five: Victoria = Miranda, Mnemosyne = Titania, and Themis = the other three merged into one (plus some). Well-settled, particularly the academic citadels on Mnemosyne and the megacities on Themis.
Neptune: Again, identical to RL Neptune, but it has four major moons instead of 1.5: Triton still exists, but added to its retinue are Oceanus, Tethys, and the very large Salacia. Less populated than the rest of the system, though the industrial helium and methane platforms in Neptune itself have appreciable staff counts.
Pluto: Larger than RL Pluto, and its moon Proserpina is larger than Charon. Many frontier towns scattered around both bodies, capitalizing on the thin pure nitrogen atmospheres.
Janus is a new addition to the system, a Mars-sized rocky body covered in ices that orbits just outside the Kuiper Belt, acting as the outer shepherd of KBOs. Its population is largely scientists and support staff, though a few frontier towns have sprung up around the spelljammer ports.
Haven't decided exactly what equivalent year this would be, but probably 22nd or 23rd century. They got out into space a lot quicker than we have at this point. This is pretty much all I've got so far, stay tuned for more. :)
Okay kids, strap in. Uncle Spy has some worldbuilding to lay on ya.
So the new Spelljammer 5e was announced a few months back, releasing in August (it's just turned June as I write this). Since then my friend and I have been gushing about it and planning some stuff around it, but one of the things that always struck me as disappointing about original Spelljammer was how... boring the Forgotten Realms solar system (Realmspace, where Abeir-Toril lies) was. It's much smaller than our solar system: eight planets, and only one of those is explicitly a giant planet (Coliar, said to be a "gas giant" but really more like a small ice giant). Two of them (Garden and H'Catha) aren't actually planets either, just constructs the size of dwarf planets. Two other planets are just ocean worlds, one with a sargasso sea around its equator and the other full of rocky atolls. Only two planets have any moons at all, to boot. Simply put: there's not a lot to look at, really. I'm hoping the new Spelljammer canon will retcon this and give Toril a larger, more varied solar system with more giant worlds and moon systems.
HOWEVER, there's another factor at play here. I made a character who's a space bard, directly inspired by all the filk I've been listening to lately. The problem is... a good chunk of that filk either A) uses names (planets, programs, people, etc) specific to real life space exploration and/or B) is rocketpunk instead of sailpunk like Spelljammer is intended to be. That got me thinking... I'd had a vague idea for a rocketpunk alt-Toril in the back of my mind for a while –a universe where the magical beings of the Forgotten Realms had reached the stars not through magicked-up sailing ships with atmosphere bubbles, but through magicked-up classic rockets– and this seemed like the perfect excuse to deploy that idea and start hammering it into a more coherent shape.
All of this added up to... well, something! Behold, my attempt to have my cake and eat it too: Terraspace.
This map was made using the template/assets developed by DeviantArt user slimysomething.
Terraspace is a fantasy version of our solar system within the wider Spelljammer setting where elves and dwarves and beastfolk all sing the rocketpunk blues. The Apollo Program exists as part of their history, but Apollo 13 was fine because of hasty Purify Air enchantments and some innovative abjuration. Dragons funded the Space Race. That sorta bullshit. Also, spiced up the solar system with a little idealism, as you can see; part of that was also me leaning into old Golden Age pulpy SF concepts like Jungle Venus and Pyramids of Mars. I don't thhhhhhink this counts as a new worldbuilding project,,, yet? Stay tuned I guess.
Okay well, since tumblr mangles image quality, here's the same stuff on DeviantArt.
Okay kids, strap in. Uncle Spy has some worldbuilding to lay on ya.
So the new Spelljammer 5e was announced a few months back, releasing in August (it's just turned June as I write this). Since then my friend and I have been gushing about it and planning some stuff around it, but one of the things that always struck me as disappointing about original Spelljammer was how... boring the Forgotten Realms solar system (Realmspace, where Abeir-Toril lies) was. It's much smaller than our solar system: eight planets, and only one of those is explicitly a giant planet (Coliar, said to be a "gas giant" but really more like a small ice giant). Two of them (Garden and H'Catha) aren't actually planets either, just constructs the size of dwarf planets. Two other planets are just ocean worlds, one with a sargasso sea around its equator and the other full of rocky atolls. Only two planets have any moons at all, to boot. Simply put: there's not a lot to look at, really. I'm hoping the new Spelljammer canon will retcon this and give Toril a larger, more varied solar system with more giant worlds and moon systems.
HOWEVER, there's another factor at play here. I made a character who's a space bard, directly inspired by all the filk I've been listening to lately. The problem is... a good chunk of that filk either A) uses names (planets, programs, people, etc) specific to real life space exploration and/or B) is rocketpunk instead of sailpunk like Spelljammer is intended to be. That got me thinking... I'd had a vague idea for a rocketpunk alt-Toril in the back of my mind for a while –a universe where the magical beings of the Forgotten Realms had reached the stars not through magicked-up sailing ships with atmosphere bubbles, but through magicked-up classic rockets– and this seemed like the perfect excuse to deploy that idea and start hammering it into a more coherent shape.
All of this added up to... well, something! Behold, my attempt to have my cake and eat it too: Terraspace.
This map was made using the template/assets developed by DeviantArt user slimysomething.
Terraspace is a fantasy version of our solar system within the wider Spelljammer setting where elves and dwarves and beastfolk all sing the rocketpunk blues. The Apollo Program exists as part of their history, but Apollo 13 was fine because of hasty Purify Air enchantments and some innovative abjuration. Dragons funded the Space Race. That sorta bullshit. Also, spiced up the solar system with a little idealism, as you can see; part of that was also me leaning into old Golden Age pulpy SF concepts like Jungle Venus and Pyramids of Mars. I don't thhhhhhink this counts as a new worldbuilding project,,, yet? Stay tuned I guess.
The Midnight Sea
Look, more Spelljammer stuff! SJ5E is only a few weeks away now, and the collaborative setting my friends and I have been building up in anticipation of it is really taking shape. So I'd like to share some things about the Midnight Sea!
The planar cosmography of the Midnight Sea universe is a little different than prior 5e canon. As stated in the previews for Spelljammer 5e, all wildspace systems are pockets of material plane which exist within the greater astral plane, though our homebrewing efforts have resolved to address the Feywild and Shadowfell as parallels to these material planes. The celestial and infernal planes, meanwhile, border the astral plane directly and mark the outer bounds of the known universe (the galaxy shown here), arranged in a loop to form the collective outer planes. The outer planes are represented by prominent constellations that form a sixteen-part zodiac used to navigate the astral sea. By contrast, the elemental planes exist at a lower energy state than the rest of the planar system, while the ethereal plane exists in a higher energy state than the rest of the planar system. Both function, therefore, as a sort of hyperspace and subspace pairing with normal space. Being the source of magic, the ethereal plane lends its energy to the lower planes via the Weave, which is then harnessed to fulfill the extreme energy cost of interstellar travel: the technomagical process of spelljamming.
The Midnight Sea is a galaxy, specifically our galaxy: what we would call the Milky Way. Indeed, the inhabitants of Terraspace (the fantastical version of our solar system) do call it the Milky Way! However, unlike our galaxy, it is the only galaxy in this universe, and its constituent star systems -as pockets of the material plane gestalt- possess mildly varying physical principles based on their location relative to the outer planes. At the center of this galaxy lies a supermassive black hole, the Cataract, about which swirls a vast region of distorted spacetime called the Maelstrom where the planar boundaries are weaker, strengthening the influence of interplanar magic on the local systems. Four major systems bear notable influence from one of the four primordial elements, while a fifth has a strong manifestation of the Weave and an unusual connection to the outer plane of Arvandor, and a sixth is so deep within the Maelstrom that the Material, Feywild, and Shadowfell planes blur together. The outer edge of the Maelstrom is a hub of interstellar civilization, but venturing deeper is quite dangerous.
The systems seen on the map here are all major systems; there are thousands more unseen in this representation. Many of these major systems are original creations (like Terraspace) or pulled in some way from the depths of the Spelljammer 3e fan website (like Banesun), but in the spirit of WotC's recent trend of linking their MtG settings to the DnD settings, we have included a few prominent MtG "planes" as part of bespoke systems: Theros lies in Nyxspace, Amonkhet lies in Godspace, Ravnica lies in Guildspace, and of course Dominaria lies in Gatespace. Though the map may look rather bare now, we expect to fill out the map more in time, as we sail the stars of the Midnight Sea.
Well I've done it again. The free Spelljammer demo adventure was released last week and promptly disappointed me because WotC didn't take the opportunity to make Realmspace more interesting (instead almost literally copy-and-pasting the original AD&D canon)... so I fixed it my damn self. Behold my insanity. I hope to god tumblr doesn't scromble the image quality. So tumblr scrombled the image quality, just look at it here instead.
First up, the sun. Named it Solis to differentiate it. Twin of our IRL sun; G2V yellow-white star. Big ol self-perpetuating nuclear explosion. Probably radiates magic too. Nobody lives there, it's the SUN.
1. Phomus: small airless metallic planet; probably a failed planetary core. Tidally locked to the sun; scorching hot on one side and frigid on the other. No endemic life; but the dwarves and kobolds adore the place and squabble over it endlessly.
2. Anadia: canon planet, retooled. Basically Mercury with an atmosphere. 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, so days are longer than a year here. Only habitable place is the poles, where there's abundant water. Halfling clans have set up dozens of domed arcologies in polar craters.
3. Coliar: canon planet; retooled. Small ice giant (like Uranus) with a quirk- its gravity, density, and warmth mean that life thrives here on countless islands floating in the air. Has 3 moons: Cyrretal, a jungle world; Voturna, an ocean world; and Aureline, a tundra world.
4. Toril: canon planet, untouched. Toril (or Abeir-Toril, if you like) is an Earthlike planet with one moon, Selune, and a cluster of asteroids floating in Selune's L5 Lagrange gravitational keyhole.
5. Karpri-Chandos: canon planets, retooled. Both ocean worlds with no seabed; only an ice mantle. Life thrives here, especially merfolk and fishfolk. Karpri and Chandos are basically twins so I made them a binary pair. Pair has two small airless icy moons: Synos and Andos.
The Garden, aka the Garden Belt: canon-ish. An asteroid belt overgrown with magic space trees. At its heart is Garden proper; a cluster of asteroids held together by an enormous space tree with an internal ecology. H'Catha, a (canon) discworld made by Beholders, is also here.
6. Almeron: small brown dwarf substar. So big that it fuses deuterium at its core, Almeron radiates a moderate level of heat and so has its own habitable zone. Has two small ice giants in its leading and trailing Lagrange points: Palocyne and Oranus. Also has 7 moons, almost like a mini solar system in themselves: Tavati is a volcanic world; Sidar is a warm desert world; Phylora is a warm forest world; Wylenir is a temperate Earthlike world; Merinal is a temperate ocean world; Airelyx is a cool ocean world; and Khysethris is a tundra world.
7. Sybil: small-ish ringed gas giant. Its air isn't breathable but folks go in to mine the gas anyways. Has 4 moons: Mingabwe, Nyralwe, and Lumenwe are small airless ice moons; Glyth (canon planet) is a cold Titan-like world with its own rings that has been claimed by illithids.
8. Ziris: large ice giant. Despite the freezing cold, toxic air, and high gravity, it still attracts gas miners... and kindori hunters. Has 2 moons: Kunain, a small airless rocky moon; and Thrinain, a small airless icy moon. These serve as spelljamming ports for space whalers!
9. Dunbaran: large icy world with thin air and rings. Frigid, silent, desolate- it is a relic of the system's chaotic formation. A network of tunnels below its surface holds eons-old secrets. Has 1 moon: Nuldor, a captured comet with something buried at its core.
The Shell: the outer comet cloud of the system, full of drifting iceballs, a handful of spelljamming ports, and flotsam from the astral sea.
If I may be sanctimonious for a moment- this is all facultative of what I felt was missing from SJ. Don't you want to dance a gravitational ballet among twelve shining moons over a violet sky? Don't you want to sail through the eye of a storm the size of your whole homeworld? Don't you want to watch the sun crest a crater rim, painting sharp shadows across a landscape of ancient cosmic violence? Don't you want to witness the glittering silent splendor of a glacial cliff, two billion miles from a sun, with your breath the only company in your helmet as you ponder how many eons your footprints will last?
Where's the cosmic awe? Where's the wonder?
THAT is what I want to bring to Spelljammer. The beauty in solitude and desolation and vastness. The wonder. The kinship of we who sail the endless deep is born of knowing that, out there, we are all alone together; and in a vast and awesome universe, all we have is each other.
I drew my D&D character, Rug Burn!
She’s an air Genasi Great Old One Warlock and my friend is playing her ex-husband, who is also in our party >:)
“Do you ever feel like you’re being watched?”
Poster design of my spelljammer d&d character, Rug Burn (yes that’s her name)