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Kicking this off for some collective brainstorming. These could be anything, from stars and planets to comets and meteors to space stations and generation ships.
1. A red dwarf star with its own planet that orbits close to an earth-like planet and causes problems for the denizens.
2. A comet that has a powerful ice elemental demigod trapped inside of it.
3. A massive cylindrical spaceship is on a course through the solar system. No telling what alien wonders await inside.
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8. A planet without oceans, instead all the water is collected in massive funnels that spiral into the atmosphere before raining back down onto the planet, creating an eternal downpour that creates sky rivers that slowly feed back into the funnels, thus beginning the cycle anew.
EDIT: Bumped to 8, Damn you Lucky7! *shakes fist*
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13. An eternally cold and snow frozen planet that has peroidic "hot spots" pop up every few months or years that turn the afflicted areas into tropical paradises for a time. As such the areas are highly valuable to the inhabitants and are warred over constantly. Could even have alternating sects of Druids who wish to protect these areas from misuse / view them as abominations that need to be refrozen.
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16. An asteroid belt or moon which hides an elven fleet listening post, where they keep tabs on their "de-technologised" colonies on the surface of Golarion-like planets.
(Who says elves have to be native to Castrovel? That could have been the system's starter colony for them, and they just spread from there to Golarion.)
Which then brings up the point of why the elves have started these "primitive" colonies. Is there something of interest to them on one or more of the planets? Are they trying to side-step the rules laid down by some interstellar pact? Or ...?
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These sound really cool. I'm digging it.
17. Twin planets that have almost the same length of orbit. When they get close, the planets pull each others oceans into each other, forming a water bridge where people can sail to the other planet.
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18. A planet covered in a vast ocean. The primitive inhabitants live on the backs of giant turtle-like creatures whom they worship as gods. These creatures range from adolescents the size of small tropical islands to elders who near the size of Iceland and can support forests, mountains, lakes, and rivers.
19. A barren planet that is actually an ancient mollusk-like creature. Eons ago the creature was only a few inches long, but countless eons have allowed it's shell to grow to its current planetary size. The creature is pacifistic, telepathic, and can divulge ancient secrets about the origins of the universe.
20. A comet that flies across the night sky once every 100 years actually is an icy prison for a terrible infernal duke. Few know when he was imprisoned, but seers fear any cultist that tries to free him.
22: The system is actually a huge Dyson sphere, and the domains of the gods are located in specific constellations devoted to them on the sphere.
23) the substance of ether found only in interplanetary space, speeds vessels that travel between worlds.
24) The rings around a planet radiate massive levels of magic-nulling radiance and light that kills anything living or unloving attempting to infiltrate from space, and block attempts at teleporting past them.
25) The planet is a cemetery world, wiped of life by the passing of an undead Great March millennia ago. The seas are dry, the air is still, and only one great undead leader remains, tending to the great statues of daemons and servants of death that arise every square mile across the planet. The other undead are long gone, passed through great arches a mile high on their way to other worlds to annihilate in the name of death forever.
26) The planet is a liveworld, where plants have taken the place of animals at all levels, and is hostile to them.
27) The planet is a green hiveworld, home to multiple, eternally warring species of intelligent insectoids that dominate the air and ground over the entire planet, and do battle with one another ceaselessly.
28) The moon is bright white and pail, dominated by alkali sands infused with corrosive powers that cover the ruins of the civilizations that once dwelt there ages ago.
29) Holding the asteroid belt together is an actual belt of asteroids, each no more then five miles in size, linked together by force bridges less then a mile long each. Around this impossibly long 'belt' rotate the system's asteroids.
30) Meteor Showers of odd hues are almost inevitably various Heralds of the Black Dominion. Or Flumph colonizers come to warn of them.
31) The planet has been overrun by forces of primal Law, and looks like something out of Tron.
32) That's not a nebula. That's where the souls of those who deny the gods go to burn in the fires of creation forever, screaming.
33) The moon is empty and lifeless on the outside, but fly down the one glowing volcanic crater, and you emerge into a Hollow World with a molten sun overhead and life surrounding you on the inside of the world.
34) The Auroras are actually the endpoints of streamer-tunnels of light that connect the various worlds together in a form of high-speed interplanetary transit.
35) That brightness in the dark void ahead of you is the flare pattern of an oncoming solar storm.
36) The stars are actually great burning beetles of various colors crawling slowly across the ages on the inside of a solar shell.
37) Phlogiston!
38) A world is actually three spinning gears at various angles to one another. IF they are part of a greater mechanism yet, it is not apparent.
39) The Stars are actually the eyes of creatures beyond Creation staring in at the mortal realm.
40) An ocean-sized stream of water moving between planets/moons actually holds an emigrating aquatic civilization on its way to another world.
42) Twin planets, each locked in orbit with the other around a greater body, (star, gas giant, etc...) one split open to the core. This core houses a Fire Elemental with powers so great as to rival Demon princes. It's goal to gain access to the molten cores of every planet it can. The other planet, the densely inhabited world that thought it was safe...
43) A planet on an elliptical orbit with a severe tilt. Intense seasons!
44) A planet that is actually a Dyson Sphere around a small star. The star powers the biomechanical trees on the surface. The races there are forbidden to go into the caves (heat vents) by a religion formed by their progenitors.
45) A blue gas giant that houses life. Creatures that look like silver octohedrons float through the aether and eat the diamonds that rain down.
46) A neutron star that is caught in the Sun's orbit. Lifeforms made of gravity and radiation live on the star's surface and feeds off of radiation.
47) A planet covered in an ocean. But, that ocean is actually a massive single celled organism that surrounds the planet.
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50) This cube shaped planet has 6 climate zones. The edges are apparently mountain ranges occupied by Dwarves, Drow, and similar subterranean races that profit from the toll roads they control.
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I approve of this thread!
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Most excellent Mr. Sutter. You should throw some ideas here too :D
51) A planet that consists of its core and has continents and oceans that orbit the core in a series of nested shells. The continent closest to the stars has higher technology and a superiority complex compared to the continents closer to the core.
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52) This world appears normal enough when you are on it's surface, although it has two vast continent sized forests of feather-like 'trees.' From far enough out, it is visibly a fetal humanoid figure, of vast size, and the 'feather forests' are the wings of this beyond-colossal celestial being.
This celestial body is, in fact, a celestial body.
53. Erm... Halo?
The Halo things are effectively Ringworlds, fyi.
54: A small moon totally covered by a single city, or the debris thereof (an ecumenopolis). 'Wild' areas are nothing more then parks set inside the city. Parts of it have devolved into savagery, and parts of it are shining examples of civilization in progress.
55: This independent settlement is set inside the hollowed-out skull or shell of a deceased lifeform at least as large as a small moon. (Yeah, I saw Guardians of the Galaxy last night). The corpse generates and sustains its own atmosphere and warmth.
56: A small moon, shaped suspiciously like an egg, with an even more suspicious, burning crack starting to extend down it...
57: An area of asteroids, caught in the grip of a massive plant-like growth extending from one to another across the gaps, forming a huge living net in space. Many, many ships are visible having crashed into the plant life and remained stuck.
This is actually a Sargasso in space that nullifies most higher technology and magic, generated by the plant life, which also supplies breathable air and heat in a large area. The crashed ships were caught in the Sargasso and becalmed, dying for lack of food and water.
58: A ring of mile-high obelisks, 12 of them in all, rune-carved and evenly spaced around the planet/star. Timers, observations instruments, containment vessels, or something else?
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57: An area of asteroids, caught in the grip of a massive plant-like growth extending from one to another across the gaps, forming a huge living net in space. Many, many ships are visible having crashed into the plant life and remained stuck.
This is actually a Sargasso in space that nullifies most higher technology and magic, generated by the plant life, which also supplies breathable air and heat in a large area. The crashed ships were caught in the Sargasso and becalmed, dying for lack of food and water.
*sudden Savage Tide flashback*
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4. A planet whose rotation is locked, resulting in one side scarred and burnt over and the other frozen and dark.
Asimov did this in Foundation. Life occurred along the narrow band. Anyhow, the orbit doesn't have to locked, the revolutions of the planet could just be perfectly in phase with the rotation about it's star to create the illusion of a locked orbit. an alternate:
60) A planet whose revolutions are counterbalanced by it's rotation in such a way as the narrow habitable band separating the burnt side from the frozen side shifts slowly. Every 107 years, the entire population must relocate. From space, this looks like a 1 degree translation of the Band (which is itself, ironically, a year-round veritable paradise). Over millennia, multiple Rings of civilizations long past remain, to the north on the burnt hemisphere (The Scar), to the south on the frozen hemisphere (The Dark). The planet is completing it's 900th 38,520-year cycle this current epoch, and that means...
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4. A planet whose rotation is locked, resulting in one side scarred and burnt over and the other frozen and dark.Asimov did this in Foundation. Life occurred along the narrow band. Anyhow, the orbit doesn't have to locked, the revolutions of the planet could just be perfectly in phase with the rotation about it's star to create the illusion of a locked orbit. an alternate:
60) A planet whose revolutions are counterbalanced by it's rotation in such a way as the narrow habitable band separating the burnt side from the frozen side shifts slowly. Every 107 years, the entire population must relocate. From space, this looks like a 1 degree translation of the Band (which is itself, ironically, a year-round veritable paradise). Over millennia, multiple Rings of civilizations long past remain, to the north on the burnt hemisphere (The Scar), to the south on the frozen hemisphere (The Dark). The planet is completing it's 900th 38,520-year cycle this current epoch, and that means...
Oh cool, I'll have to check that one out.
dot
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They did the 'narrow band' in the Worlds of Golarion book about the solar system, and back in Wildspace for Spell jammer, as well. It's an old and loved spaceworld trope, like Ringworlds and Dyson Spheres.
61: You know that old wives tale that the planet rests above a glowing bowl, carried by four elephants who stand atop the back of a great tortoise that swims through and endless ocean of stars? COmplete hogwash.
There are FIVE elephants.
==Aelryinth
Asimov wrote in the 60's - i count him among the major influences of Gygax (1e psionics anyone?) - not that i knew either of them personally...
62) The closest planet to the sun is an iron rich planet, complete with molten iron seas and strange black bodied lifeforms that feed off of radiation.
63) An asteroid field that seems to have come from a living planet. Are these droppings or eggs...?
53. Erm... Halo?The Halo things are effectively Ringworlds, fyi.
Ah, I'd known that, but hadn't noticed anyone mention a RingWorld yet.
And although effectively the same, a RingWorld is more planet sized and a Halo-construct is more moon sized.
63) An asteroid field that seems to have come from a living planet. Are these droppings or eggs...?
ACK! Tyranids!
64&65. A pair of planets who rotate around each other on the same orbit around a sun. Sort of like a thrown bolas. Could cause interesting day/night cycles if they rotate the right way.
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66. Turtles, all the way down.
This water world has thousands of oval islands, a few as large as small continents, many bearing cultures that have been around for millennia.
They're all ginormous aspidochelone and anyone capable of travelling to the depths of these seas will find that the submerged crust of this 'planet' is composed entirely of cast off aspidochelone shells, some larger even than the current crop of 'continents,' and bearing the ruins of even greater civilizations that sank with them (and aquatic humanoids still living in some of these ruins, worshipping squamous and unmentionable things).
67. A world populated entirely by synthetic or partially-synthetic life. The entire planet is saturated with nanomachines which control every aspect of the environment. A race of angelic machines rules over the synthetic populace at the behest of a god-like A.I. All of the natural flora and fauna have been incorporated with cybernetic portions, curtesy of the nanomachines.
68: Jotunworld. Everything is at least three times normal size, the characters are technically smaller then halflings in relation to the wildlife. Ogres are the new halflings, and Huge giants are the 'humans' of the setting. Wild and plantlife similarly oversized. A paradise world for giant kind, ruled over by brawling Titan kings.
69) The normal mortal inhabitants of this moon are all lycanthropes. The First world has a strong presence here and there is almost no divine worship.
==Aelryinth
66. Turtles, all the way down.
This water world has thousands of oval islands, a few as large as small continents, many bearing cultures that have been around for millennia.
They're all ginormous aspidochelone and anyone capable of travelling to the depths of these seas will find that the submerged crust of this 'planet' is composed entirely of cast off aspidochelone shells, some larger even than the current crop of 'continents,' and bearing the ruins of even greater civilizations that sank with them (and aquatic humanoids still living in some of these ruins, worshipping squamous and unmentionable things).
I think I love this...
67. A world populated entirely by synthetic or partially-synthetic life. The entire planet is saturated with nanomachines which control every aspect of the environment. A race of angelic machines rules over the synthetic populace at the behest of a god-like A.I. All of the natural flora and fauna have been incorporated with cybernetic portions, curtesy of the nanomachines.
Sort of like Mirrodin from MtG?
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Damnation, somebody already beat me to nightplanets (way back in #4).
71. This crystal-covered world has an extremely long orbit; what the locals would consider one year, the humans of the local system would consider a millennium. (...the reference is Rykros from Phantasy Star IV.)
72. This seemingly abandoned space station is most definitely artificial, there's no doubt about that. Judging by the multitude of scaffolds, unusual tools, and half-finished superstructures, something caused the inhabitants to flee in a hurry. But what?
73. "Hello, thing in space. Consider us the Void Dwellers." A small planet capable of transit through the void? A supermassive and most unusual bio-organic ship? The technology, and possibly the magic, is nothing like anything seen on our world, but the locals seem (near-)human (and friendly) enough.
74. According to the stories of our ancestors, this gray world has no name-- merely a catalog number. A magnificent mansion is the only structure visible, and its owner seems pleased to consider himself the only person in the omniverse to own his own planet.