Storminator
First Post
What is a star?
I look up at night and I see stars. Some are planets, some are satellites, and some are galaxies. But to my naked eye, all are small points of light in the night sky. They pinwheel about thru the seasons - in ways both arcane and predictable.
But in D&D I can throw out the physics. I can throw out the vast distances and unimaginable time scales. I can rewrite the sky. So how should I?
I have the Astral Sea, the home of the gods. Is a demesne a star? A constellation? A smear of brightness in the night – a density in the Astral Sea? What of the gods themselves? In our world the planets were considered gods, wanderers that traversed the heavens on their whims. Should gods be stars? What of great heroes? At 31st level do you literally ascend into the heavens? If so, what of heroes before you? Are they up there too?
And what is a meteor shower? Brief, transients that scream across the heavens and disappear… are they epic heroes not yet ascended? Is that a party of adventurers on an epic quest? If it is, how did they get there? Can you fly to the stars? Why? Why not?
If gods and heroes are stars, from where do Starlocks get their powers? Gods? Heroes? Some emergent property of stellar interaction? From reading the conjunctions and the movements of stars? Or are there other things in the sky? Are there fixed, older stars that Starlocks query? If so, what are they? Not gods, not heroes, not places in the Astral Sea… Could they be holes in the crystal sphere? Is there something outside looking in? What happens when that something reaches in?
In the real world, the stars wheel around the sky dictated by Earth’s orbit (with planetary motion more complex). That needn’t be so in D&D. Is the earth round? Does it orbit the sun? Or does the sun pass over a flat sheet? Is it something else entirely? If the physics of the world is rewritten, what do the stars do? Parade from left to right, returning to the beginning on some divine schedule? Do they move at all? Do they move without set pattern? If they move arbitrarily, how does one know which is which?
I’ve never given the night sky much thought in my games. I always assumed it was more or less just like ours. I’ve never made star charts or considered constellations or had comets be omens. But now I am thinking of all those things…
PS
I look up at night and I see stars. Some are planets, some are satellites, and some are galaxies. But to my naked eye, all are small points of light in the night sky. They pinwheel about thru the seasons - in ways both arcane and predictable.
But in D&D I can throw out the physics. I can throw out the vast distances and unimaginable time scales. I can rewrite the sky. So how should I?
I have the Astral Sea, the home of the gods. Is a demesne a star? A constellation? A smear of brightness in the night – a density in the Astral Sea? What of the gods themselves? In our world the planets were considered gods, wanderers that traversed the heavens on their whims. Should gods be stars? What of great heroes? At 31st level do you literally ascend into the heavens? If so, what of heroes before you? Are they up there too?
And what is a meteor shower? Brief, transients that scream across the heavens and disappear… are they epic heroes not yet ascended? Is that a party of adventurers on an epic quest? If it is, how did they get there? Can you fly to the stars? Why? Why not?
If gods and heroes are stars, from where do Starlocks get their powers? Gods? Heroes? Some emergent property of stellar interaction? From reading the conjunctions and the movements of stars? Or are there other things in the sky? Are there fixed, older stars that Starlocks query? If so, what are they? Not gods, not heroes, not places in the Astral Sea… Could they be holes in the crystal sphere? Is there something outside looking in? What happens when that something reaches in?
In the real world, the stars wheel around the sky dictated by Earth’s orbit (with planetary motion more complex). That needn’t be so in D&D. Is the earth round? Does it orbit the sun? Or does the sun pass over a flat sheet? Is it something else entirely? If the physics of the world is rewritten, what do the stars do? Parade from left to right, returning to the beginning on some divine schedule? Do they move at all? Do they move without set pattern? If they move arbitrarily, how does one know which is which?
I’ve never given the night sky much thought in my games. I always assumed it was more or less just like ours. I’ve never made star charts or considered constellations or had comets be omens. But now I am thinking of all those things…
PS
