Sphaeraverse - Tumblr Posts
The Realms
An up-to-date overview of my 8 worldbuilding projects.
Edit: As of 2023, Diaspora [DSP] has been renamed to Astra Planeta [ASP]. As of 2022, Aedrynn [ADN] has been retired from the list, replaced by The Midnight Sea [TMS].
ASP | AV | OE | SPH | TMS | CDL | LOR | PR
In which the human species embraces its cosmic wanderlust and slowly, conscientiously, we venture out into the stars.
[ASP] The Astra Planeta universe is a hopeful exploration of humanity’s future within the local stellar group, as well as speculation on the history and ecology of nearby alien worlds, with equal parts scientific realism and social optimism. Humanity, and our extraterrestrial allies, still face hardships, of course –after all, the universe isn’t a particularly hospitable place– but the stories of Astra Planeta center on cooperating in the face of adversity and utilizing interpersonal differences as a source of strength against the unsympathetic cosmos.
In which humankind is suddenly and unceremoniously thrust into a bustling galactic super-civilization, and gradually discovers there is much more to both the past and future of our universe than we ever imagined.
[AV] The Arcverse is a fictional version of our universe that speculates on the myriad possible forms of intelligent life on other worlds, and the evolution of starfaring civilizations over vast spans of time and space. The project is strongly rooted in current scientific theory yet strives to maintain the look, feel, and tone of a soft-sci space opera, and is presented in a manner intended to inspire wonder at the vastness of our universe and the endless possibility contained within.
In which humanity, its genetic legacy splintered into millions of descendant species across the Orion Arm, seeks the grandest mysteries the universe yet holds.
[OE] Orion's Echo is primarily intended as the setting for a tabletop RPG campaign of the same name, using the Hyperlanes game system. This realm blends the scope and setting of whimsical planet-hopping science fiction with story elements of cosmic horror and mystery. It is built on a speculative vision of humanity's far future in the galaxy, both a science-fictional take on classical elements of D&D and a love letter to the Golden Age of science fiction.
In which a wide diversity of intelligent beings sharing the planet Sphaera trace their ancestry to a vast experiment enacted by an ancient and powerful civilization originally hailing from Earth itself.
[SPH] Sphaera is an Earth-like world within an universe parallel to ours, where magic is a force of nature with its own physical laws. Sphaera itself is verdant with fantastical organisms and cultures that seem pulled straight from legend. The project aims to subvert, invert, or uniquely explain many fantasy tropes with a more scientific angle; building up an expansive and diverse setting while retaining the feeling of coherent closeness typical of fantasy worlds.
In which a brave crew of explorers sails the Midnight Sea in search of danger, adventure, and most importantly fellowship -for no spacer is ever alone.
[TMS] The Midnight Sea is one of many names for the space between suns; that wondrous, endless, dark void that seems to beckon planetbound beings to reach ever further. A sea it is, in a sense: one must voyage far across it to find other islands of civilization, and strange things lurk in the starry deep. The Midnight Sea is a collaborative space fantasy tabletop game setting, derived from the Spelljammer supplements of Dungeons & Dragons in a somewhat haphazard attempt to link all of the major contemporary D&D and MtG settings together under our collective fanon.
In which the infinite potential of the multiverse is distilled into a cesspool of mixed realities, overseen by a perpetually-stoned quasi-deity and inhabited by beings beyond your wildest fever dreams.
[CRDL] Crundle is a planet-ish realm at the center of the "Crundleverse," a surreal puddle of existence that resides beneath Everything Else. The Crundleverse is formed and sustained by the mingling of magical energy that trickles down from every possible reality. As such, Crundle is a kaleidoscopic realm of non sequitur, a literal idea wastebasket; and the only way to cope with the absurdity of it all is to simply sit back and enjoy the weird.
In which a precious few intrepid, curious souls know the true nature of the ashen world they inhabit.
[LOR] Bleakworld is the working project title for the land of Lor: a barren waste inhabited by strange beasts and tenacious peoples. The project is an exercise in imagination on the part of the audience and an endeavor of meticulous ambiguity on the part of the author: everything in Bleakworld canon is worded extremely carefully to avoid giving away the true nature of the setting.
In which a group of friends discover their small town -and their whole world- is not what it seems.
[PR] Pinereach is a small town of about 500 people nestled comfortably in the Cascade Mountains of northern California, at the center of an elaborate web of unusual events that border on the supernatural. Pinereach is the setting and shared title of a weird fiction story project written by myself and four coauthors.
Flags of Sphaera
Aurian Federation
The Aurindi Héraðsríki (Provincial Federation of the Sun) takes the split solar halo seal from its predecessor, the Aurian Empire. The Seal of Aurin depicts the sun in both dawn (upper, rayed) and dusk (lower, disk) forms, symbolizing its endless trek across the sky.
Dwarven Clans
The base form of the Radh Nîu Klannr Darven (Council of the Nine Dwarven Clans) sigil is an overlapping morph of the darvic rune "Dunn," representing the dwarven species as a whole. In the Dunnic form there are eight vertices/intersections, plus the Eye of Maera in the center, coming to a total of nine points to represent the clans.
Enelese Tribal Alliance
The flags of the Allyan inh Hælei Enele (Alliance of the Enelese Tribes) depict the complex, recursive Tree of Life that represents their ancient belief in the sanctity of life and the interconnectedness of all things.
Tyrian Empire
Before the catastrophic civil war that wrought the empire to shards, the imperial seal of the Sanctus Imperium Tyra (Divine Empire of Tyra) bore the sun, both moons, and the wanderstars, revered as gods in Tyrian culture.
United Arokhan Tribes
The flag of the Oaq-in oq’Kagam ahl’Arokh (Unified Tribes of Arokha) bears a complex symbol with roots in ancient orcish culture. The black and brown circles represent fertile earth, moistened by the blue water and its tidal master: the crescent moon. Piercing the earth is a pair of crossed spears, flushed deep red with the lifeblood that binds all tribes as kin.
Gorgonic Tribunal
Flags of the Ssakaar Hhhik’chi Ssalehri (Tribunal of the Gorgon Clans) bear the sigils and colors of each of the three gorgon tribes of eastern Sikano: the seafaring Medusic tribe, the forest-dwelling Euryalic tribe, and the badlander Sthenic tribe.
Eian Empire
The seal of the Sragni Eia’al (Dominion of Eia) depicts the mythic Blood Serpent –the attested god-ancestor of the gnolls– encircling the sun, the moons, and the five wanderstars that race across Sphaera's night sky. The Serpent binds these through day and night –the Eian Empire never rests.
Mauhakan Empire
The seal of the Stynix-aox Naztok ez Mauhak (Night-blessed Nation of Mauhak) bears both moons and the five wanderstars, symbolising the blessings bestowed upon the nocturnal empire by Stynix, the patron goddess of all nightfolk.
Making an addition to this to include more info about the realms! These are the thumbnails I use to represent them:
And this is a homemade chart of the genres and methods of each:
The Realms
An up-to-date overview of my 8 worldbuilding projects.
DSP | AV | Œ | SPH | ÆDN | CRDL | LOR | PR
Keep reading
ohhhh boy Sphaera is absolutely the last reblog lmao
reimagining the standard model of quantum physics to allow for master particles that alter the properties of other particles? check.
massively convoluted speculative evolutionary history of the world to justify various iconic fantasy races? check.
magical space dinosaurs? CHECK.
I often say my favourite genres are scifi and fantasy, but more specifically, my favourite genres are actually “scifi but everything works like fantasy” and “fantasy but everything works like scifi”
Stranger in a Strange Land
A cloaked traveler approaches the western bank of the Kultainn River and pauses a moment to take in the scenery. Ahead of them, on the eastern side of the mighty river, the ancient provincial capital of Ilesi gleams in the mid-morning sun. Ilesi's great towers have stood since long before the Aurian Empire came to these lands, and the city of the Hearth will stand for ages more. The peaks of the Southern Range loom in the distance, snowy crags partially obscured by the clouds, while a skyship drifts slowly into dock.
so Artbreeder, huh? I spent some time tinkering with it again yesterday and came out with an amazing set of landscapes, of which this one was my favorite. also, feels good to finally post something from Sphaera to the blog!
apotheosis
/əˌpäTHēˈōsəs/
(noun) - the ascendance or elevation of a person to divine status.
They say I saved the world.
I have tried to tell my people that the world is not safe; that no world is safe. That no world could ever be safe, not forever. Safety is a tranquil pool through which the river of history flows. I know the truth, or at least part of it, thanks to the man I met that day. No one else knows about that man, and he may not have even been real, but I must speak of him all the same, for he taught me something I will never forget. He imparted to me, in a sense, the meaning of life.
He arrived, perhaps against his own better judgment, in a flash of light at just the right moment. And judgment it was, indeed; I had been given a choice that I could not bring myself to make, and he showed me what I had to do. He helped to fix the mistake that I had made, but he seemed so forlorn while he did so. I could not help but to ask him why: why he was helping at all, and why it made him sad. And when I did, he turned to me, and he told me a story.
Long ago, and very far from here, there was a man who lived on a small blue-green planet, under a small yellow sun, lost in the endless cosmic night. This man was gifted; his work alone accelerated the scientific advancement of his world by hundreds of years over the course of his lifetime. To his beloved people, he brought peace, health, safety, comfort, and most importantly knowledge. But it was not enough for him.
He did not seek power. He did not wish for domination, not over his fellow man or even over nature. What he sought was knowledge for its own sake -a nobler pursuit than power and control, but still dangerous. And as must always happen, one day... something went horribly wrong. He did not speak of what happened, not in detail, but in tinkering with the very fabric of reality, he became... sundered, splintered, undone, and then suddenly… remade.
He could, all at once, perceive the whole of infinity around him. He saw the great nothing at the bottom of everything, and the madness at the top. He experienced every iteration of every universe; all of time and space happening at once in an endless forest of infinitely-branching cosmic trees. He saw the space between and could channel the limitless energy from that aether to reshape reality as he pleased. He was, in an instant, more powerful than any god -truly omnipotent. He understood the meaning of existence and he knew, with omniscient certainty, that there was no meaning. There was no reason for existence at all, no purpose within being. Reality simply is. How does someone, formerly finite and mortal, cope with infinity in every direction, when there is no meaning behind that infinity?
The answer, he said, was joyfully simple.
Existence, he told me then, is a blank canvas upon which to paint meaning. And he added another revelation to help me paint my meaning: existence is not unknowing and uncaring, for we know that we exist, and we must resolve to care. We are each the universe made conscious, he said to me with humble awe in his voice, and the only thing missing from a universe without consciousness is compassion. Only that which has the ability to know and understand, can know and understand others. It was so clear to me in that moment: that consciousness exists to be the door through which meaning enters the universe, and that meaning must be kindness.
I asked him, then, why he was sad, for what he had said brought me tears of joy. He told me that every instance of an event with more than one outcome is another node in the tree, another fork splitting into new branches, each one with their own branches, unto eternity. There is no one true timeline, no one correct path. For him to create a new one through intervention was merely an infinitesimal drop in the aether, and he could see all the futures in which I had made a choice. He knew what would have happened without him -if, that is, the choice had been left to me, in my ignorance. He grieved that he could never ensure the permanent safety and happiness of a world, for that would be a task of infinity against infinity. To forge a new path for a world through kindness may not change much, he said, but it is noble.
But then he smiled, and he told me his secret: his purpose. For all his power and knowledge, for all his eternity, he confided in me that he was not infallible. The meaning he ascribes to his everlasting life, therefore, is to strive to be better, for this is a task wherein the goal is always one step further. The quest for compassion is as endless as he and the whole of existence. So, too, is his other task: to maintain the integrity of all universes -as he has seen, there are always some rare few who would seek nothing but destruction. He cares for every infinitely-branching tree of spacetime in Eternity, tends to their ills and encourages their growth.
He told me, then, that his work in this time and place was complete, for now, and wished me well as he left the same way he had come: in a flash of otherworldly light. But I have thought about him every day since then, as my world slowly heals, and I have come to appreciate who and what he really is. He did not create existence, but he bears its responsibility as though he did. He wanders the grand cosmic forest of times and spaces, sowing kindness where it must be sown and fostering compassion across the whole of existence, in hopes of watching it bloom like flowers in an endless summer sun.
I never learned his name, but I know what I will call him.
I will call him the Gardener.
FIRST WORLDEMBER ARTICLE DONE! This took me quite a while but it's nearly a third of my 10k word goal for the month.
Temoranity is the belief system of the Aurian people and one of the most prolific faiths on Sphaera.
Another big chunk of my word count: the calendar that accompanies the above mythos! (Please don't mind the header image.)
FIRST WORLDEMBER ARTICLE DONE! This took me quite a while but it's nearly a third of my 10k word goal for the month.
Temoranity is the belief system of the Aurian people and one of the most prolific faiths on Sphaera.
Thank you so much!! You're welcome to adopt any or all of the holidays as you wish, of course! But unfortunately the Sphaeran year is only 6000 hours instead of the Earth's 8760 hours, which would lead to some... complications. If you started observing the Aurian year on this past full moon, December 7th 2022 (since the Aurian calendar rolls over on the full moon prior to the winter solstice), the year would be over on August 14th 2023. If instead you ignored the astronomical standards and started the Aurian year at the exact same time as the Gregorian year on January 1st 2023, the Aurian year would be over on September 8th 2023. Such is the tragedy of different orbit and rotation rates.
FIRST WORLDEMBER ARTICLE DONE! This took me quite a while but it's nearly a third of my 10k word goal for the month.
Temoranity is the belief system of the Aurian people and one of the most prolific faiths on Sphaera.
apotheosis
/əˌpäTHēˈōsəs/
(noun) - the ascendance or elevation of a person to divine status.
They say I saved the world.
I have tried to tell my people that the world is not safe; that no world is safe. That no world could ever be safe, not forever. Safety is a tranquil pool through which the river of history flows. I know the truth, or at least part of it, thanks to the man I met that day. No one else knows about that man, and he may not have even been real, but I must speak of him all the same, for he taught me something I will never forget. He imparted to me, in a sense, the meaning of life.
He arrived, perhaps against his own better judgment, in a flash of light at just the right moment. And judgment it was, indeed; I had been given a choice that I could not bring myself to make, and he showed me what I had to do. He helped to fix the mistake that I had made, but he seemed so forlorn while he did so. I could not help but to ask him why: why he was helping at all, and why it made him sad. And when I did, he turned to me, and he told me a story.
Long ago, and very far from here, there was a man who lived on a small blue-green planet, under a small yellow sun, lost in the endless cosmic night. This man was gifted; his work alone accelerated the scientific advancement of his world by hundreds of years over the course of his lifetime. To his beloved people, he brought peace, health, safety, comfort, and most importantly knowledge. But it was not enough for him.
He did not seek power. He did not wish for domination, not over his fellow man or even over nature. What he sought was knowledge for its own sake -a nobler pursuit than power and control, but still dangerous. And as must always happen, one day... something went horribly wrong. He did not speak of what happened, not in detail, but in tinkering with the very fabric of reality, he became... sundered, splintered, undone, and then suddenly… remade.
He could, all at once, perceive the whole of infinity around him. He saw the great nothing at the bottom of everything, and the madness at the top. He experienced every iteration of every universe; all of time and space happening at once in an endless forest of infinitely-branching cosmic trees. He saw the space between and could channel the limitless energy from that aether to reshape reality as he pleased. He was, in an instant, more powerful than any god -truly omnipotent. He understood the meaning of existence and he knew, with omniscient certainty, that there was no meaning. There was no reason for existence at all, no purpose within being. Reality simply is. How does someone, formerly finite and mortal, cope with infinity in every direction, when there is no meaning behind that infinity?
The answer, he said, was joyfully simple.
Existence, he told me then, is a blank canvas upon which to paint meaning. And he added another revelation to help me paint my meaning: existence is not unknowing and uncaring, for we know that we exist, and we must resolve to care. We are each the universe made conscious, he said to me with humble awe in his voice, and the only thing missing from a universe without consciousness is compassion. Only that which has the ability to know and understand, can know and understand others. It was so clear to me in that moment: that consciousness exists to be the door through which meaning enters the universe, and that meaning must be kindness.
I asked him, then, why he was sad, for what he had said brought me tears of joy. He told me that every instance of an event with more than one outcome is another node in the tree, another fork splitting into new branches, each one with their own branches, unto eternity. There is no one true timeline, no one correct path. For him to create a new one through intervention was merely an infinitesimal drop in the aether, and he could see all the futures in which I had made a choice. He knew what would have happened without him -if, that is, the choice had been left to me, in my ignorance. He grieved that he could never ensure the permanent safety and happiness of a world, for that would be a task of infinity against infinity. To forge a new path for a world through kindness may not change much, he said, but it is noble.
But then he smiled, and he told me his secret: his purpose. For all his power and knowledge, for all his eternity, he confided in me that he was not infallible. The meaning he ascribes to his everlasting life, therefore, is to strive to be better, for this is a task wherein the goal is always one step further. The quest for compassion is as endless as he and the whole of existence. So, too, is his other task: to maintain the integrity of all universes -as he has seen, there are always some rare few who would seek nothing but destruction. He cares for every infinitely-branching tree of spacetime in Eternity, tends to their ills and encourages their growth.
He told me, then, that his work in this time and place was complete, for now, and wished me well as he left the same way he had come: in a flash of otherworldly light. But I have thought about him every day since then, as my world slowly heals, and I have come to appreciate who and what he really is. He did not create existence, but he bears its responsibility as though he did. He wanders the grand cosmic forest of times and spaces, sowing kindness where it must be sown and fostering compassion across the whole of existence, in hopes of watching it bloom like flowers in an endless summer sun.
I never learned his name, but I know what I will call him.
I will call him the Gardener.
For those of you wondering what "tor" means and why I use it: it's a fictional oath I made for Sphaera!
Watsonian explanation: "tor," often used in conjugation as "snowing tor," derives from the name of the Temoran underworld and is grammatically used equivalent to "hell." "Snowing tor" is an emphasis modifier -it could never snow in tor, thus the phrase is used primarily to express incredulity.
Doylist explanation: "tor" is derived from "torrid," since the underworld is a hot place, but it also has a more entertaining meta origin: the Rush song By-Tor and the Snow Dog! I've been a fan of Rush for a good decade now and their music has influenced the development of Sphaera -in particular its mythos. The Prince of Hell in that song is called By-Tor, so I interpreted it as a title and took the "tor" half as the name of hell.
happy birthday hon!! I love you!!
here’s a birthday ask! 💌
how are birthdays celebrated in some cultures of your worlds? any worlds, any cultures within— just whichever ones you’d like to talk about! I love to hear about the cool celebrations you come up with; I’d love to hear about how different people celebrate getting older, if you’d like to talk about it :3
THANK YOU HON! I LOVE YOU TOO!!! 💚
This is a GOOD question, and one that I don't readily have an answer to! I'll do the thing that worldbuilders do best: improvise an answer on the spot and overthink it later.
[ASP] Birthdays (or hatchdays, if you're a species which emerges from an egg/cocoon) are still a common event planetside, particularly in human cultures! But for spacers it's less meaningful –between time dilation and the wildly different year lengths of various worlds, it gets hard to keep track of. Sure, you can track it by metric time (using the rounded Earth year), but when most of your life is spent in space without the seasonal cycle of a planet, you tend to perceive time as a more continuous thing, or at least segmented in a different way.
[SPH] Birthdays are a big deal to some cultures, but utterly mundane to others. The Orniikh people treat the day with great reverence and joy: it's the anniversary of the day their principal deities chose to incarnate as you! Orniikh people generally spend their birthdays invoking jeha –that is to say, having a lot of fun!
For Aurians, particularly those of the Temoran belief system, one's birthday is a time for gratitude towards the elder spirits and one's community. You were brought into the world by the grace of the spirits, and it is with the help of your community that you have lived through another season cycle.
The dwarves, meanwhile, hail from the depths of the Southern Range, sheltered from the sky and the seasons, and thus don't really have a cultural concept of cyclical time. For them, age is a continuously progressing status rather than a number, and life stages ("youth," "adult," "elder") are gradually transitioned through rather than marked with fixed dates.
Sphaera has two moons: a larger and more distant one, which is roughly the same size, composition, and apparent size as our own moon; and a smaller and closer one, which is about the same size and composition of the asteroid Pallas and a little less than half the apparent size of the larger moon. By cosmic fortune (read: for my own personal convenience), the orbital periods of these moons are even fractions of the planet's year length, making for an unusually precise lunar calendar: the smaller moon orbits once every 5 days and the larger one orbits once every 25 days, making for 12 months of 5 weeks each.
The moons play a significant role in the various cultures and mythologies native to Sphaera!
In Temoran culture, the moons are called Kune (big) and Selene (small), and were created by the primordial forces of light (Aurin, the sun) and dark (Kas, the night) as a way to pass messages between them. Because Aurin never sleeps and Kas is forever asleep, the moons passing through their phases is said to be them moving between the waking and dreaming worlds: they start as "dreaming" (new) and pass through "waking" (waxing) to peak at "watching" (full) and then pass through "falling" (waning) to visit the dream world again.
In Orniikh culture, the moons are called Lukoh (big) and Lukah (small), or Father Tide and Mother Rain. The moons are the children of the Earth and Sky, and govern all the waters of the world. They are also the parents of the twin primary deities: Ori and Niikh, Brother Blood and Sister Breath, who chose to combine their powers and incarnate as all living things. So, in that way, the moons are seen by the Orniikh people as their spiritual parents!
In Yprist beliefs, the moons were created by Wulc, the celestial being who convinced the others of his clan to fill the world with life. He saw that many creatures were unhappy in the total darkness of the world, so he carved the two lunar cycles into the Ethyp (the cosmic pillar representing the aspect of heat and light energy). This drove Axin, a prideful trickster figure who hated being outdone, to create the sun in the same way.
While Sphaera has two natural moons, for roughly one year near the start of the Second Rise, it had a third: a large asteroid that fell into and out of low orbit on its own. Unbeknownst to the planet’s inhabitants, however, this temporary third moon was actually a wandering ark-ship inhabited by a clan of lamia (another Earth-descended civilization). The clan had noticed a biotic terrestrial world as they passed through the Aurin system and spent the year intently observing it for signs of an active industrial civilization they could trade with. When their search only turned up the remains of ancient Venusian settlements, they broke orbit and went on their way.
Though this event did not significantly affect the course of Sphaera's fledgling civilizations, it did provide an excellent global historical reference point by which all Sphaeran cultures were later able to synchronize their histories –Year Zero of the Modern era.
Sphaera has two moons: a larger and more distant one, which is roughly the same size, composition, and apparent size as our own moon; and a smaller and closer one, which is about the same size and composition of the asteroid Pallas and a little less than half the apparent size of the larger moon. By cosmic fortune (read: for my own personal convenience), the orbital periods of these moons are even fractions of the planet's year length, making for an unusually precise lunar calendar: the smaller moon orbits once every 5 days and the larger one orbits once every 25 days, making for 12 months of 5 weeks each.
The moons play a significant role in the various cultures and mythologies native to Sphaera!
In Temoran culture, the moons are called Kune (big) and Selene (small), and were created by the primordial forces of light (Aurin, the sun) and dark (Kas, the night) as a way to pass messages between them. Because Aurin never sleeps and Kas is forever asleep, the moons passing through their phases is said to be them moving between the waking and dreaming worlds: they start as "dreaming" (new) and pass through "waking" (waxing) to peak at "watching" (full) and then pass through "falling" (waning) to visit the dream world again.
In Orniikh culture, the moons are called Lukoh (big) and Lukah (small), or Father Tide and Mother Rain. The moons are the children of the Earth and Sky, and govern all the waters of the world. They are also the parents of the twin primary deities: Ori and Niikh, Brother Blood and Sister Breath, who chose to combine their powers and incarnate as all living things. So, in that way, the moons are seen by the Orniikh people as their spiritual parents!
In Yprist beliefs, the moons were created by Wulc, the celestial being who convinced the others of his clan to fill the world with life. He saw that many creatures were unhappy in the total darkness of the world, so he carved the two lunar cycles into the Ethyp (the cosmic pillar representing the aspect of heat and light energy). This drove Axin, a prideful trickster figure who hated being outdone, to create the sun in the same way.
It's the 8th anniversary of Sphaera today! I created the original map of the world that became Sphaera on 4/24/2015. In celebration of this worldiversary, here's the project's overview article on WorldAnvil!
