Spelljammer Earth's Solar System 3.5

[Tom Kalbfus]

This is a version of Spelljammer I'm working on. I produced some orbital charts based on our actual Solar System, except this is a fantasy version of our Solar System. This is a crystal sphere with 8 planets, and their Moons. The Most important worlds for which there is some mythology is Venus, Earth, and Mars, since these worlds are named after Roman Gods, I have some stats for Roman gods based on the entries in Deities and Demigods, I more or less rewrote the states and changed the names to Roman Deities. The Romans believed the planets were houses of the gods, well here I take this literally, but also add some pulp mythology to the mix. Venus is a primitive world with jungles, dinosaurs, warrior women, under a perpetually overcast sky, the goddess Venus has a palace on the highest mountain on the planet, her own version of Mount Olympus if you will.

Mars is a dry desert world, with various factions at war with one another, as is fitting for a planet of a war god, Minerva also keeps a palace on this planet and the factions of Minerva and Mars are always at war with one another. Life tends to be short and brutal on this planet. Imulate simulate low gravity by giving offworlders who land here an temporary increase in their strength score by 7 points, since Mars has one third gravity, I convert the ranges of ranged weapons from feet to yards, and the damage caused by falling is now 1d6 points for every 10 yards a character falls instead of 10 feet.

The Moon is ruled by the Roman goddess Diana, and it is the home of elves, the entire world is under an illusion spell that makes it look desolate and barren, the elves like their privacy, and seek to discourage visitors from wildspace by making their world seem as uninviting and uninhabitable as possible. the desolate cratered moonscape is an illusion, if one attempts to land on it, one falls through the ground and into the Moon's atmosphere, the Moon is covered with lakes and forest. The gravity on the Moon is about the same as on Mars.

The asteroids are homes to many dwarf clans. Mercury is the home of the god of thieves and many halflings live there as well, as do the Arcane. Mercury is also the god of travellers, so creating major and minor helms is part of the religion's forte.

[Eldan]

Since you're already more than halfway there, why not go all out and make your Mars into Barsoom?

[Tom Kalbfus]

Since you're already more than halfway there, why not go all out and make your Mars into Barsoom?

There is already a creature in one of the Monster manuals that looks like a Thark. The Tri Kreen is in the Monster Manual II 3.5 so we can have some of those. The technology found there is in part attributed to the influence of Minerva, she shares the planet with Mars the God and is often at war with him. So this Mars has some tech thrown in with the magic. I'll probably need to design some Martian Spelljammer ships, too many of the standard spelljammer ships look like sea creatures and Mars doesn't have too many sea creatures. There are already flying ships on Mars, we just need to attach helms to them to make them Spelljammer ships. Mars also has canals, it has Red Martians, which I'll make a kind of elf, the Tri Kreen are the Green Martians. Throw in some futuristic pistols, some ancient artifacts, including a planar gateway to a more realistic Mars of the Mid 21st century, this is a Mars with a thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide. The gate connects to a Martian installation that is pressurized with a breathable atmosphere, and is located in one of the side caves of Marineris Valles, the giant canyon system near the equator of Mars. Maybe some astronauts from the other side may discover it while exploring the canyon system.

Fantasy Mars could use some Giant Eagles and other large flying creatures. I'm going with low gravity 0.38g precisely, to simulate this, characters used to 1g will gain a temporary strength score while they are on the planet of 7 points added to their normal score, this will affect all their strength based skills while they are on this planet. In low gravity, all ranged weapons have three times their normal range under standard conditions, so whatever their range is listed in feet, that is the number in yards instead. For falling damage one takes 1d6 points for every 10 yards fallen instead of ten feet. When using the Jump skill, either use the normal strength modifier when using yards instead of feet, or if using feet, use the Martian strength score. The Temporary Martian Strength score also determines one's carrying capacity while on Mars If your strength normally is 10 for instance, on Mars it is 17, if your strength is normally 16, in increases to 23 while on Mars. Native Martian creatures don't take this adjustment as their strength is already factored in, but if they travel to Earth or Venus, they lose 7 points of strength while they are there. Martain spelljamming ships have Martian gravity onboard instead of Earth gravity. The two Martian Moons also have Mars level gravity on their surfaces and atmospheres, and are arranged much like the Rock of Braal except for that low gravity. the Moon has Mars gravity on it.

To keep it simple, there are three levels of gravity on this Crystal Sphere, Light, Medium, and Heavy. Medium Gravity is what's on Earth and Venus, there are no adjustments to strength in this environment. Heavy gravity exists only on Jupiter, One subtracts 7 points from strength if one visits this planet. Creatures native to Jupiter gain 7 points to their strength when in Medium gravity and another 7 points when under light gravity.

I have 1 chart showing the 8 major planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
My second chart shows the Earth and it's Moon, and Mars and it's moons, the one I'm working on now shows Jupiter and it's moons out to Callisto, the second part will show Saturn and it's moons out to Titan, then I will do Uranus and Neptune and their moons, so that's a total of 4 charts to do the Spelljammer version of our Solar System - well not quite our Solar System.

I'll have to decide what to put on Earth. My current idea is a fantasy world where humans are the major race, there are me folk in the oceans that are descended from humans that originally lived on the continent of Atlantis. Sea monsters abound in the four oceans. I am using deities with the same names of the planets, basically a consolidation of the Roman and Greek mythology. Minerva is also a War goddess, as she incorporates elements of Athena as well. The gods do not typically make frequent appearances, though their influences are felt on their associated planets. Mars is a warlike place.

A major race of Venus are High Elves, The Moon has Gray Elves, they are very reclusive and don't like to be bothered by off world visitors. The various "mares" on the Moon while appearing as basaltic lava plains in space are actually seas. Underneath the illusion of an inhospitable surface is the Lunar atmosphere, and a landscape of small oceans crater lakes, forests and mountains, the gravity is the same as on Mars.

Mercury has a similar illusion, the God of tricks and deception, Mercury provides this. underneat that illusion of a desolate cratered surface is an atmosphere with a perpetual cloud cover much like Venus and a tropical climate underneath. The major races inhabiting Mercury are halflings and gnomes/ Arcane live here as well. A major industry here is the manufacture of helms for spelljammers. One must watch out when visiting here as items may be stolen. There is a black market for stolen goods here, but one must guard one's valuables very carefully when on shopping expeditions here, there are a lot of thieves here! The gravity on Mercury is the same as on Mars.

The Asteroid belt has major outposts of dwarves, humans and orcs, each asteroid has a different population of each Ceres is a major agricultural center, it is the bread basket of the asteroid belt as befitting the goddess it is named after.

[Tom Kalbfus]

Just an update. almost completed Jupiter and Saturn's charts. On Jupiter I have all the moons out to Calisto, and on Saturn's Chart I got the moons out to Titan. For both charts I think I will stop at Calisto and Titan as for what I would put on these moons, I haven't figured out yet. the Ancients didn't even know they existed so there is nothing mythological about them. I think I will want to warm up the Saturn System a bit by placing a water - Air body between Saturn and the Sun, roughly at around 42 million miles away from Saturn, this focuses the Sun's rays on Saturn and its Moons to make it more Earth normal in temperature. A lot of these moons become water bodies with rocky cores in that case, The irregular shaped moons may have rocky islands on them.

[Tom Kalbfus]

the Solar System chart is at
https://www.deviantart.com/thomasbow...0%3A1563203533

The Earth Mars chart is at
https://www.deviantart.com/thomasbow...0%3A1563204116

The Jupiter Saturn Spelljammer chart.
it is at
https://www.deviantart.com/thomasbow...0%3A1563203881

Here is the Uranus Neptune charts
https://www.deviantart.com/thomasbow...0%3A1563403229
This completes the Solar System

These charts work as follows, each chart has two seperate movement rates listed, the movement rate for spelljamming ships and the movement rate for planets and other bodies in their orbital rings. the later is listed to the right with the amount of time listed in each ring before moving a planet counter clockwise in the orbital ring. All objects in these charts move counter clockwise except for the moon Triton, which moves clockwise and I indicate this by an arrow. The planet markers are the planet's starting points. The DM can add other things to this chart if he or she wishes.

I've broken up the movement rates for spelljammer ships into three rates, there is the movement rate in the outer solar system, which is 100 million miles per day, in the inner Solar System its 20 million miles per day, and close in to the planets it is 20,000 miles per hour, Only the Earth Moon chart has spaces of 20,000 miles, for the gas giant charts its 50,000 miles so a spelljammer ship moves across those charts at a rate of 1 space every two and a half hours.