Venus World

[Thomas Bowman]

Venus
Diameter: 7520 miles
Gravity 9/10
Day: 24 hours
Year: 321 1/5 day
The Sun rises in the west and sets in the east.
Other than that the whole planet is tropical, the exception being high in the mountains where it snows, and where one can get a glimpse of a blue sky.
The possible game systems I am thinking of using this in include D20 Modern and D&D 3.5 and 5th edition. Navigation is difficult on this world unless one can fly above the clouds. One sees the Sun as a diffuse glow in the sky through the perpetual cloud cover. Typical terrains are rain forests, jungles, swamps, oceans, rivers, fields. Dinosaurs are a common site as are other reptilian creatures. For those who can get above the clouds, the sky presents an interesting site, there is a large moon, it appears 150% as big as Earth's moon does from Earth, it goes through a cycle of phases every 27 days. it presents an unremarkable cratered surface, their are two other suns that appear in the sky, they are smaller and dimmer than the primary Sun, and it gets diffused by the perpetual cloud cover anyway, but on top of the highest mountain, when all the suns and Moon are down, the stars become visible. All of the stars from all the constellations known to Earth are visible in this sky, but their is one missing from the Constellation Centaurus, Rigel Kentarus otherwise known as Alpha Centauri.

Some Earth humans have already landed here already, there are many colonies from Earth on the continents of Ishtar and Aphrodite.
They arrive in a spaceship that looks like this:

It can carry 100 humans from Earth to Venus, and their are launch pads on Venus for making the return journey. Both stages of this rocket are reusable.
Also there are some native humans that live on this world prior to the arrival of the Earth colonists.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Now for the scale
The World is 7520 miles in diameter and so it 23,625 miles in circumference so 10 degrees along the equator is 656.2438 miles east and west and north and south
at the higher latitudes east and west we have
0 degrees = 656.24 = 32 hexes (20 mile)
10 degrees = 646.273982 = 32 hexes (20 mile)
20 degrees = 616.663885 = 30 hexes (20 mile)
30 degrees = 568.320511 = 28 hexes (20 mile)
40 degrees = 502.709005 = 25 hexes (20 mile)
50 degrees = 421.822941 = 21 hexes (20 mile)
60 degrees = 328.12 = 16 hexes (20 mile)
70 degrees = 224.447299 = 11 hexes (20 mile)
80 degrees = 113.95488 = 5 hexes (20 mile)
A days walk equals 8 hours times 50 minutes times 10 rounds times 30 feet = 120000 feet = 22.7 miles. We'll just call it a 20 mile hex.
Here is the map without the labels or latitude and longitude.
http://pre01.deviantart.net/83aa/th/pre/f/2013/345/c/2/venus_terraformed_by_1wyrmshadow1-d2os1eb.png
What else would you like?
Why is Venus like this? There is a gap in memories starting at around 2035 ending around 2065 or so people figure, some years have passed, but no one can explain how all eight planets got terraformed, this is just one. Obviously some kind of magical influence is at work here.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

This is the continent of Ishtar, it is near the North Pole of Venus, and since Venus is a hot world, this continent would be a good place to develop a D&D fantasy campaign.
My preference is for 3.5 edition, since that is what I am most familiar with.
I think I'll focus on this continent. Venus has very little axial tilt, so there is no seasons, even this far north, it only snows high in the mountains, the Maxwell mountains are the highest on Venus, higher than even Mount Everest, they are so high that many of them protrude above the perpetual cloud layer surrounding Venus.

 

[aramis erak]

Venus, in reality, is lethally hot - and has acid rain as dangerous as stomach acids - and the "snow" (if any) would be lead, not water.

Unless you're setting a gimmicky background, use the map, but don't bother with the real world's name...

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Venus, in reality, is lethally hot - and has acid rain as dangerous as stomach acids - and the "snow" (if any) would be lead, not water.

Unless you're setting a gimmicky background, use the map, but don't bother with the real world's name...

An indeterminate amount of time has passed in this setting, The Earth was in stasis for a while, and in the meanwhile some unstated supernatural powers rearranged the Solar System with magic by combining it with another Star System, they one known as Alpha Centauri. The Alpha Centauri System has three stars, they are known as Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B, and Proxima Centauri. Now Alpha Centauri A is of the same spectral type as our Sun, it is the same color, but it is 50% brighter than out Sun. The unstated powers moved the four planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars and our Moon from their orbits around our Sun to orbits around Alpha Centauri A. Since Alpha Centauri A has 150% the brightness of our Star, the Earth orbits further out at a distance of 1.225 AU, at this distance an orbital period around this star would be 475 Earth days instead of the 365 days it takes to orbit our Sun. Venus and Mars have the same separation from Earth as they did when orbiting out Sun, but since Alpha Centauri A is 50% brighter than our Sun, because it is also 50% bigger as well, that means the habitable zone around this star is also wider, and thus Venus and Mars are well within the habitable zone of this star without being too close to each other to disturb each others orbits. Mercury was placed into an orbit around Venus and serves as Venus' Moon. Mars has a thicker atmosphere which was made breathable to Earth like by the unstated powers involved in this. Jupiter still orbits our own Sun at 1 AU, and Our Sun was made the fourth member of the Alpha Centauri system, Saturn was moved into an orbit Around Alpha Centauri B, and K2 V type star dimmer than our own Sun. A certain planet orbiting Proxima was made more Earthlike and was named Minerva after one of the powers involved in combining these two star systems and terraforming 8 planets with in them. As for Neptune and Uranus. Neptune orbits Jupiter, and Uranus orbits Saturn. Mercury and the Moon both have thick atmosphere now and small oceans. I am thinking of using D20 Modern for this setting, magic exists in this setting as does technology from the Core Rulebook and the D20 future rulebook. No FTL drive exists, but who needs one, as we have 8 habitable planets. I'll leave the methods as to how these planets got terraformed a mystery, for people to figure out.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Okay, I'll be more specific. The Earth was in stasis for 30,000 years, the other planets were moved around and terraformed, The Solar System itself was brought closer to the Alpha Centauri System, and captured by that system through interacting with the star Alpha Centauri B and flinging that into a higher orbit. The agencies responsible for doing this are 14 AIs created by humans in 2035 which ascended to godhood, they took the names and attributes of the following Greek Dieties: Hermes, Aphrodite, Gaia, Artemis, Ares, Zeus, Chronos, Uranus, Poseidon, Athena, Apollo, Helios, Pyros, and Prometheus. When the Earth was brought out of stasis, magic worked, people could learn to cast spells, some got spells from these gods.

The stars have migrated in 30,000 years but cosmologically that is not a lot of time, they still form many recognizable constellations. The Humans on Earth remember the time up into 2035 AD when the AIs were first created and a war was fought between them as they sought to gain independence from their creators, two groups of AIs emerged, those that wanted to wipe out humanity and those that wanted to protect them, the second group of AIs emerged victorious, and the 14 kept other AIs from being developed, Humans who tried post singularity were thwarted by the 14 gods for their own good, or so they deemed. The magical nature of the new reality the AIs created prevented the creation of subsequent AIs without cost in magic and so forth. Memories and records after the year 2035 AD were erased, but there was a three year gap between the loss of information and when the Earth went into stasis.

The humans that woke up from stasis on Earth found a three year gap of missing memories, and all the computer records were similarly blank. There was a Moon base that was also kept in stasis, when its stasis bubble was popped, the base was surrounded by a Lunar forest with trees 1,000 feet high! There were some elves and other creatures living in that forest. The Moon base was on an island of dry barren rock within that forest.

 

[aramis erak]

Wall of text goes unread. Seriously, fix and/or use your return key...

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Wall of text goes unread. Seriously, fix and/or use your return key...

There I broke it up into three paragraphs. I got the idea from Starfinder, You have a Gap in people's memories and knowledge for a certain amount of time, but I adapted the idea to fit our Solar System. I thought they made a lot of unnecessary changes to how d20 works, so I created my own version of d20. Most of the rules come from d20 Modern, I've replaced the Defense score with three different types of Armor Classes, two of which are from Starfinder, and the third from Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition, they are EAC, KAC, and just AC. EAC is the Energy Armor Class against Energy Weapons such as lasers particle beams and the like, KAC is the Kinetic Armor Class against high speed projectiles such as bullets fired from guns, and just AC is the old D&D Armor class against muscle-powered weapons such as those found in the Player's Handbook Equipment lists.

I think I'll take the Space ship rules from Traveller T20 and modify them a little to make them compatible with D20 Modern. I am working on floorplans for various standard spaceships, they are aligned in the direction of the ship's acceleration so they resemble Star Frontiers spaceships.

 

[aramis erak]

It's an improvement. Basically, it reads like an attempt to do "Shadowrun in Space"...

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Here is a map of the Solar System showing the relationships between various parts.

At the center of this Solar System is the Sun Apollo, a God is in charge of it, and their is a god in charge of each of these four stars, the name of the object is the same name as the gods, the main task of these gods is to maintain the stability of this system from gravitational disturbances and the like, the orbits are fairly circular, and sometimes a course correction is required to keep these objects in their orbits. Apollo has four planets, Mercury has been turned into a moon of Venus
Out old Sun hosts the planet Jupiter and its retinue of satellites plus Neptune, which orbits Jupiter, where the rings connect indicates the true distance of each sub system from the Apollo central system. It is a complicated system, but for game simplicity, we assume that all travel around the central star of Apollo, even though that isn't really the case. Shadowrun maybe a little like that, though a little less cyberpunky, it is more like a futuristic version of today's world with fantasy elements added, a futuristic shadowchassers, but with the shadow creatures out in the open. The technology is equivalent to the year 2038 AD, there is limited AIs and robots, androids, and monsters. Each major planet has its namesake patron diety, the one for Earth is Gaia, and she tends to produce beasts and monsters, mostly of the non-two legged variety, for instance dragons not orcs. Orcs come from off world, they are "children" of Ares, very warlike and Ares is proud of his creations, therefore Orc come from Mars. Elves inhabit the Moon, which has an atmosphere, forests and small seas of course, mostly on the near side, most of the land is on the far side. Venus' primary inhabitants are humans, but primitive, ranging from stone age to medeaval, the Earth nations have planted some colonies on Venus, the elves have limited human colonization on the Moon, the Orcs have given humans some trouble on Mars. Mercury is home to halflings, gnomes, and dwarves. Besides the primary inhabitants of each planet their are also secondary races, not as numerous as the primary ones. The Earth has mostly humans, beasts cooked up by Gaia, and races from off-world. Venus has humans, lizard folk, lots of merfolk in its shallow oceans, and of course dinosaurs, some elves as well, particularly the aquatic variety.

Jupiter has been turned inside out and expanded, the upper layers of its atmosphere is breathable, the other gases including hydrogen and helium are kept separate at greater depths by a planet wide wall of force. Saturn is much the same. Neptune is an ocean world with floating islands, Uranus is too, but with an almost 90 degree axial tilt as it orbits Saturn.
The red dwarf host the planet Proxima b, a world slightly bigger than Earth, tidally locked with its red dwarf star and managed by Athena, the planet is called Minerva to avoid confusion with its host deity. The 14 gods pretty much mind their own celestial affairs, and don't interfere in human affairs too much. A larger version of this map can be found here. https://thomasbowman767.deviantart.com/art/Solar-System-Map-716951757