221.A disk of dark energy that keeps the star seperate from the black hole. A chaotic neutral god of chimera created this thing for his cults on the habitable worlds. Discord is one of it's many names.
Without the disk, the star would have been sucked into the black hole long ago, instead of both being in a narrow orbit in the middle of the system.
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222. a polluted planet filled to the brim with non-magical level-0 humans who lost interest in their survival as a species because they constantly argue with each other about meaningless things they have no control over. Nobody knows why because it started generations ago. The planet is called "dirt" by its natives, and no alien wants to visit. Go figures.
223. like 222 above, but a few centuries later: the skirmishes escalated up to total war, but nowhere near as technological as predicted because the people fought each other, even in the same countries. The result is a mostly empty planet, where the remaining people live grouped by the same arbitrary things they fought about.
224. a world so overcrowded that its flat surface is completely covered with humans (imagine the "pit" of a popular concert, with maximum population). The saturation is so high that they can't bend, or turn, or lie down: they are litterally pressed together, forming another layer above the surface.
Being the result from a huge melting-pot, they are all identical (and not only in height). They have also adapted to the various situation they faced, and can only reproduce by naturally cloning themselves. As soon as one dies, one of its neighbors duplicates itself. And the dead one feeds the surrounding mass.
Anything wanting to land on the surface will have to land on the sea of people, crushing those below them. As they are all empathic, harming one will cause distress to all, and the resulting cries from all these mouths makes an unparalleled sonic attack.
225. an ideal world, where everything lives in harmony. Except that everything it this galaxy is made of anti-matter (which they call "regular matter", of course). The very first moment your space-faring ship comes into contact with the planet's matter, both explode violently. Unless you find a way around that - a permanent forcefield?
226. the Dark is the place where there is nothing. Some call it the Void, or the source of all Negative Energy. But the Dark is also the name of the matter/energy remainder of the cosmological equation. When galaxies separate, the lack of gravitation greate strange (for us) physical rules. Much like the 1/x curve, after the lowest point comes the unknown, and the highest point just afterwards. Thus the Dark becomes Light, creating hydrogen so that new galaxies can form in the splits.
Because of these facts, travelling between distant galaxies is exceedingly dangerous, and unpredictable: you might find yourself travelling through time as well as space, be disintegrated, cloned, become a local god, spend eternities locked in a time loop...
227. a planet entirely made of... mayonnaise (rumor has it that it has ketchup-based neighbours). Comets made of bread or fries pass regularly nearby, their gravity deforming the culinary ocean enough that a pass over extract some of its content. The comets are then directed (via the gravitional catapult effect) to other celestial bodies, adding other supplements, and all of them finish inside a black hole called "the mouth".
The hole evaporation jets pass through worlds of water, flour, salt, and potatoes, shaking them and producing more comets, themselves cooked when passing near local stars called "oven". The few creatures living here (the Mayonnaise Elementals, mostly) call this "the circle of life".
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228.A now mostly covered with ice planet. All the natural resources were used up. There are remains of beings called Consumers. They are like humans but shaped like pac man with arms and legs. They could eat almost all plants and animals, including trees. They apparently used up the fossil fuels causing a horrendous climate change, flooding, fires, volcanos, and then a new ice age. There are a few incomplete space arcs. Sleeper ships full of dead consumers who didn't make it off planet. Thousands of ships made it off planet and are headed for systems where they suspected there are planets that support life.
Here are the 2 features in NASA's Galaxy of horrors.
229.Glass rainThis pretty blue planet has high winds full of glass shards. Any explorers suffer 10 attacks per round. The native crystalline lifeforms live deep underground.
230.3 planets that orbit a pulsar are devastated by the occasional high radiation.
231.A Greater Beyond In the middle of a stretching field of time-space is a colossal rip. Sensors and detection spells all report nothing on the other side. Then the spells are suspended till something else is scanned. If anyone goes through the rift they will realize they are now beyond all the laws of matter created by the prime mover. Behind them are a cluster of multi-verses, including the normal planes, the dark tapestry, the mythos, Some sort of crystal-verse, and others. Before them is a nothingness so void that it retreats from their gaze forming empty space. Inspiration creates it'self, then forms ideas and desires around it.
Random prime movers.
1)Erases itself
2)Starts to create a universe, by creating a vast amount of a chosen substance, that reaches a critical mass and then explodes forming a universe.
3)Attacks other's universes, trying to destroy them(like Rovagug).
4)Starts to exude utter chaos, which other gods use to form a protective shell around their worlds.
5)Calmly starts to observe and record everything. Then finds like minded entities to share knowledge.
6)Tries to build their own universe out of others discarded demiplanes, dreams, and fantasies.
At some point the characters return home. They are now eligible to take levels in the mystic class.
[b]232:A large and hot planet. The inhabitants are all crystalin regular solids. Their cities and bases on other planets are all symmetrical. They won't let you land unless it's 2 landing parties on opposite sides of the planet. Any communications are responded with "We are S'geomoeg's era eW" Their force fields are like mirrors, reflecting back energy and matter equally. They have constructed a second drift beacon on the other side of their system.
222. a polluted planet filled to the brim with non-magical level-0 humans who lost interest in their survival as a species because they constantly argue with each other about meaningless things they have no control over. Nobody knows why because it started generations ago. The planet is called "dirt" by its natives, and no alien wants to visit. Go figures.
223. like 222 above, but a few centuries later: the skirmishes escalated up to total war, but nowhere near as technological as predicted because the people fought each other, even in the same countries. The result is a mostly empty planet, where the remaining people live grouped by the same arbitrary things they fought about.
"Dirt" has Cthulhu in R'lyeh in it's plastic choked ocean.
[b]233:Vhoorl seems an average planet. The only intelligent life is squid headed, bat winged, telepathic, giants. This ancient race has domesticated all the plants and animals, solved all their problems, and now just discuss philosophy. They remember when their planet was surrounded by protostars and the great 23rd nebula. Their last great villain, the titan Cthulhu telepathically forced all intelligent creatures that weren't like him to fight each other to the death. Horrified, his relatives banished him to outer space. Since then, the planet got bigger and the protostars merged into one big sun. Now some use astral projection rituals to explore this universe and others.
234:Xoth is a green double star. On either a planet or some installation on the surface of one of the stars, Cthulhu spent some time. The creatures there are highly mutated. They remember only that his mate and children were the only ones he did not hate and telepathically forced to fight each other. Some mostly brain freaks used his own rituals to send him to a ringed planet they had seen with their radiation telescopes. Some of his children followed him, but his mate and some of his less bigoted children stayed behind, or set off exploring the cosmos.
235. An astroid that has been coated, or plated, or otherwise combined with the remnants of a massive cylindrical spaceship. The result of an unfortunate collision between a huge, technological marvel of an alien research vessel and an errant astroid roughly half the cylindrical spaceship's size. It was a one in a billion bullseye, where the rock smashed perfectly into the center of the "tube"... the astroid lodging itself dead-center of the alien O'neill cylinder with much devestation.
This aforementioned alien O'neill cylinder housed hundreds of extremely intelligent scientist, and their families... along with the ship's crew, and their families... this made for a very diverse roster ranking in the thousands. Half of which survived the impact. For better or worse. As fate would have it, the astroid was big enough, with enough spin of its own, to provide gravity for the survivors. And the swiss cheese astroid had a labyrinth of tunnels through its core, allowing the survivors to take refuge inside. Quickly the survivors salvaged atmosphere generators off the ship and made a new civilization inside the astroid. The ship and the astroid became forever combined, hurling through space as a single "living" entity.
Nearly all of the ships' robotic workers survived (in one way or another). This resulted in an almost overwhelming percentage of Android and Wyrwood amidst the surviving population. Being the only ones capable of working "outside" in the shell of the ship, they were greatly appreciated, at first. Although, there will be an attempt made to enslave the robots. The robots will eventually see themselves superior and try enslave the living. There will even be a period of weird "experiments" seeing the combination of man and machine as a way to ensure the future for both.
As time dragged on, new families formed, the next generation born... and with each new generation, the effects of solar radiation, weak gravity, cannibalism, and inbreeding started to show up more and more. The lines between the individual races start to blurr... a completely new race/species emerges, a combination of all the originals. These mutants have evolved, even incorporating technology and magic into the very fiber of their being.
The mutant aliens have diligently repaired the Android and Wyrwood population, even making a sentient hybrid race of "Wyrroids"... with which, they can breed... making even another hybrid race of wyrroids combined with mutant aliens.
All of this is just randomly hurling through space on a course determined only by the physics of the collision.
236:Aldebaran is a bright yellow star. The fifth planet orbiting the star is home to he who should not be named. He is the only living thing in a poisonous lake named hali. Most of the planet is inhabited by creatures immune or very resistant to his poison that he snatched from other worlds.
237:2 emerald suns. One of the planets, Shaggai, is a burned out cinder.
More 237. Most planets and moons in this system were colonized by the Shen when their home planet was destroyed.
239: Like 238 but it was set in motion back when the system was still mostly nebula. It's attended by robots made of ultra lite metals. They hijack captured spaceships to seek more metal.
240:Primary Life Bearing Planet. This planet is cooler than Earth. It has a narrow band of temperate climate at the equator. Its mountains are glacial and the seas are heavy with ice bergs even in the equatorial waters. The polar ice caps make up half the planet.
241: Primary Life Bearing Planet. This planet has a single mega continent, as well as a good sprinkling of islands. The coastal areas of the mega continent are green with vegetation , but mountains shield the interior, making it a massive desert. Huge, flat topped basaltic columns rise from the interior waste lands, here and there. Some are barren, but some have springs that are connected to the Elemental Plane of Water. Waterfalls cascade down the sides of these. Such columns are usually ruled by beings of great magical power.
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241: Primary Life Bearing Planet. This planet has a single mega continent, as well as a good sprinkling of islands. The coastal areas of the mega continent are green with vegetation , but mountains shield the interior, making it a massive desert. Huge, flat topped basaltic columns rise from the interior waste lands, here and there. Some are barren, but some have springs that are connected to the Elemental Plane of Water. Waterfalls cascade down the sides of these. Such columns are usually ruled by beings of great magical power.
I love the idea of mini-biomes or city-states atop tepui or mesas, high above the surrounding terrain, weather it be desert or jungle or plains, or even more magical 'oasis' lands where a culture is high in a hidden valley or located in the middle of an otherwise arctic area, but surrounding massive geothermal springs that sustain a temperate environment just around them, far north of where anyone would expect a city to be able to dwell.
'The Lost World' type stories have always been a favorite of mine, and these kinds of places are just so cool to me.
242: Tara Ferma is a class M planet that has a thriving population of dinosaurs. All the spacecraft are thousands of years old. Golorion is an ancient legend.
244: This planet might have been habitable, before the mining fleet came. One mine reached the mantle and a super volcano blew out the side of the planet. The spin and orbit are now erratic. Half the core runs through a stone tendril reaching out into space. Below the tree line there's good volcanic soil.
245: A water planet so choked with sargasso that entire continents are made of weeds. The continents are all different shades of green.
246: A red giant star is in the center of the system. Around it orbits a massive mostly crystal planet. It's so big that some natives are afraid it will explode from the high pressure liquid core. The natives have blue diamond like crystals in their bones which allow them to resist the gravity and pressure. Also they have dense flesh because of the environment. Note that natives have super human strength on normal sized planets. Yellow sunlight will energize the blue crystals giving them other mutant powers. The green crystals are toxic to them and are locked away in big lead lined buildings.
Notes: Red crystals cause temporary mutations and defects, yellow crystals remove powers, purple crystals give powers, and orange crystals have healing powers. They only radiate these effects when exposed to white or yellow light, only to natives of this planet normally, and only effect non natives who inhale the crystal dust or have long contact with the crystals or metal hardened by mixing in the crystals.
Since white crystals have no special powers, pink crystals are just diluted red crystals and give very minor powers. Note that this is not just a rip off of a popular comic book. Clear crystals are used to make cubic ioun stones that record memories.