Thirteen Planets

The Known World is just a fraction of the heavenly sphere upon which we dwell, drifting haphazardly about Sol and circled in turn by dancing, shimmering Lune. And that sphere is just one of thirteen which it shares the day with. Though the machinations of magi, the telescopes of scholars, the secret wisdom of potent daimons, and much else besides, we have tentatively grown to understand our neighbors, and found a most disconcerting truth.

They are all worse than here.

Be they stunted and primitive, living short and brutish lives of misery, or decadent and crumbling, the endlessly-prolonged last gasp of a dying race, all other worlds bear life, but it is inferior in fecundity, in power, in health, in wholesomeness, or some combination thereof. While powerful sorcery or magnificent artifice may allow one to reach these worlds, and in the eras before the end of rational history it was known to occur, the perils within and the difficulty of the journey stymies any attempt to spread our reach across the heavenly spheres, though in truth this is perhaps for the best. There is wickedness out between the stars, and it is thought that those civilizations which were nothing but ruins now once were those who held that very same ambition of conquering the grandest expanse. No Primeval Sinners or great magi were they, but Worldly folk, if perhaps somewhat learned in Gnosis as well, who built unfathomable tools and great engines to explore the void, and were destroyed by what they found.

For all that our home has been ruined, it is a point of light among guttered candles, suspended in an unending night. 

We must strive to keep it lit.

 

 
Mahrabis 

The cragged planet, scorching and wrinkled with great crevasses that run miles deep. That which dwells here almost resembles living stone, creeping along on tiny black-slick jointed legs or tendrils that pull along the earth; not native life, but kin to those which creep along the Outer Black, masked as asteroid and comet. As the turtle nests upon the shore to lay its young, so too does Mahrabis act as a nursery for the living stone of the void above, and is similarly preyed upon by itinerant hunters.

Jetai

Burning jungles of yellow vines and quick skittering things and bloated, shapeless masses which soar through the air via the expulsion of gas. The air is bad and the water is worse. No thinking beings which we have found dwell here, only the hateful, brutish life which stifles efforts at exploration. Most notable of Jetai's features is that if their flora or fauna are brought to our world, they are greatly invigorated, their speed and strength multiplying by the vitamins in the earth and air. However, this vitality sees them burn out with swiftness, and so they cannot overtake our native life, blessedly. It also makes them deeply useful as weapons, if they can be transported here alive.

Raphtel 

A planet of endless ruins, like great castles of curving architecture which mirror eerily the buttresses and spires of our own, but as if some cruel god had half-melted them. Squirming vermin and strange life dwell here, but the makers yet persist. Frail and inbred, lords all, attended to by alien homunculi and golems of glass. They are like us in basic shape, but their swollen heads and tendril digits assure us that they are no kin to men, their shape mere coincidence. Some magi trade with them for foreign Gnosis in exchange for the riches of our world, and for the most part they are content to feud and bicker with one another. Rarely a lord of Raphtel will muster its forces and seek to claim a piece of our own world, and some yet live, exiles from a dying earth.

Anlil

Our own world, a writhing morass of life and power. Why is this so, when all other worlds we know of are in ruins? It seems the fate of the heavenly spheres is to host life in modest number and configuration and either remain trapped in primitive isolation or to erupt into great civilizations that then collapse, taking their world with it and leaving only dregs behind. It is thought that Primeval Sin is more than mere taboo. Whatever natural cycle, the typical pattern of life which most of Creation abides by, was broken by the act of men consuming divine flesh. A rare, perhaps new form of being was created that day, a cycle of life which endlessly devoured and renewed itself. Thus, the world of El-Anlil persists, in islands of utopia and nadirs of abject horror, its inhabitants too powerful to fade away, but too mad and fractured to grow beyond their own skies. Considering what we have seen dwelling in the Outer Black, this may be for the best.

Lune 

The guardian of our night skies, shimmering Lune with its forests of crystal and pale winding roots which reach out and up as much as down. It hosts a mix of Anlil's life, transplanted by miracle or chance upon its surface, and its own strange natives of opalescent fur or flapping membrane. Strange Oneirians dance on the tips of crystal towers and ride light down to enact their mad glamours upon human folk, and stranger things besides are sometimes carried upon astral currents to plague, bemuse, or delight onlookers.

Dyur 

Purpled Dyur, the gentle land. Well, not truly so, but it is notable for the ripeness of its soil, the forests and plains of faded lilac and deep purple, the shades of things which are like the grasses and trees of Anlil but more like to fungus than not. The sky is brownish and cloudy, which visitors from Anlil are often discomforted by, but the rare places where the clouds clear change the earth from the fated and muted tones to a vibrant scene which cannot be found on earth. Its inhabitants are fleshy, chitinous things which fight with weapons of bronze and Gnosis of their own, and sing ululating calls to one another across miles. Their priest kings treat with visitors from other worlds directly, and they fear the Outer Black as much as we do and fear we of Anlil even more, with good reason. They are much like us in mind, but without our knowledge. Man as we might have been had there never been Pagan Gods, never been Titans, never been Sin, never been progress.

Hanrod

The first great giant of gas, green and blue and with pallid yellow rings. Its great winds, true of all the gas giants, along with the lack of ground, have prevented much exploration of the world save by spiritual presences, be they unliving or the projected souls of magi. Hanrod is primarily known for its giants, gelatinous leviathans to which the gasses of the world are like oceans of water, but on a far greater scale. Indeed, so light are they that they sail across the Outer Black with ease as surely as they do the air, and so it is thought they are not a native life, but another itinerant as the living stone of Mahrabis is to that world. What is also known is that rarely they drift to Anlil, collapsing often in deserts, and their bodies cause eruptions of life and scavengers to proliferate atop it.

Ishar 

Ishar is a world of barren gray-green stone and swirling vapor, seemingly dead. But this not so. The world is riddled with acid-etched tunnels and underground lakes, bubbling with sickly acids. Within swim unwholesome creatures of clicking beaks and many legs and flaring scales and spinesome fins, their most terrible denizens scrabbling out of pools that reach the surface to assault whatever comes near, such is their hunger and vivacity. What ruins of this world remain are eaten away by the erosion of its burning rain, their features lost to time. In addition, the germs and eggs of the whole of their web of life are contained within every drop of fluid. Even a smallest sample, if fed the right reagents, can be nurtured into a lake containing all of Ishar which may dwell within. It's great weakness is water, a great boon for we who have cause to fear the growth of Ishar's life on our own world. Sufficient water dissolves the fluids they rely on and thus all within is rendered infertile.  

Bal 

Bal, it is thought, was once a world like our own. Even through these unfathomable stretches of time, there are the ruins of great cities, of immense roads, places where there must have been villages and sprawling fields, all under red and baleful skies. They built their homes in hexagonal shapes, like the formations of magma which surround sometimes the volcanoes of Anlil. We do not know what the people of Bal looked like. We do not know their histories. But we know that they fell of their own doing, consumed by a horror like what we name Chthon. They too nurtured a festering cancer in the heart of their world, and unlike we, who had the power of Heaven and even that of Primeval Sin to contest it, they did not. So it is a devil-haunted land, their perdition smoldering embers, having already burnt the bulk of itself out. But those embers remain, and may flare to life should it seem that new fuel can be found. It is a most perilous place, and left alone for good reason.

Suryana

A massive boreal world, of immense mountains and screaming winds, of deep blue skies and clouds which tower miles tall, of things like lichen forming both carpet of spongy green and towering tree-spires, clustered at the equator into a strip of humid temperate rainforest. Sleet, snow, and frost abound, but volcanic flame provides islands of warmth and insulation everywhere. All which dwells here is shaggy and many-limbs and many-eyed, and of them there are some which seem intelligent, draped in rags and carrying clubs, bows, and spears hewn from the spire-trees. There are something like the Pagan Gods of Anlil here, but more powerful, more primal, and wholly without mercy. It is said that some pagan cults have turned to them rather than the hidden remnants of Anlil's own ancient gods, and grown all the more terrible for it.

Kuhad

A gas giant of pinks, reds, and oranges, lurid and garish. Spores and trailing webs of silky fibers form ever-moving dispersed forests above the swirling depths, and nets of impossible lightness form the foundations of the castle-cities of Kuhad, torn apart by some ancient cataclysm. The remnants of Kuhad's people, who are known to be things like flowers or anenomes, are potent sorcerers and yet preserve some of their civilization, from what we can see. But unlike the remnants of Raphtel, their ways and minds are wholly alien to us. All attempts at dialogue have failed. We understand they are not monsters. They do not prey on us, they seem to have children and families, or something like them, but such is the extent of our differences that even the simplest concepts like what is harm, what is aid, what means friendliness or aggression are near impossible to reconcile. The one thing we both understand about the other is the application of violence. As a result, the people of Kuhad are paranoid to the extreme, if that is the right word for it, and those who would plumb the depths of their ruins should do so with caution.

Immancon 

Incandescent and vaporous, the greatest giant of gas trailed by a corona of mist like an immense comet. White, soft yellow, and pale brown bands form rings across its form and golden storm-eyes dot its face. In lands which worship the alignment of the spheres and the fates which it is said they bring, Immancon is seen as the holiest of all, for does it not resemble the very angels of Heaven on its splendor? But this is a trick. Immancon's holy visage is cosmic chance, but the beings that dwell there are more than willing to play the part of angels. It is thought that through Gnosis they may project illusions to superficially resemble them, hiding their spindly forms, ragged wings, and slavering mandibles.

Gurine

A cratered and blasted land, without water or air, its sole landmark a staggeringly immense silver streak on its northern half. It is an impossible city of surpassing Noesis, the blending of sorcery and Worldly artifice. Unsouled constructs of such complexity that they cannot be replicated by Anlil's greatest scholars exist there, even in the form of entire buildings that seem to exist solely to serve their masters. Ornate structures some say are temples exist, and indeed there is debate as to if the people of Gurine were destroyed by a cosmic disaster or found Heaven themselves and managed to bring it to their world, ending their civilization at its peak. There may never be an answer, but it is known for certain that its city is watched endlessly by those automatons scripted towards its maintenance, and few can brave the silver metropolis of Gurine and return intact. 

Yors

Yors, the planet of graves. The race that dwelled here was something like ourselves. Two eyes and a mouth, seven fingers and toes arranged in fanlike configuration. Its skeleton was also like ours, but was on the outside. We know this because of the uncountable numbers of them that are housed in immense tomb-cities strewn across the planet, the flesh long since gnawed away by squirming white worms. Whatever ended the civilizations of Yors was evidently a slow one, for evidence indicates they were a long time in dying, though if any living custodians remain we have yet to find them. Though what few explorers have ventured into Yors speak of ghoulish things of muscle and membrane half-bursting through exterior skeleton, thought to be something like the cadaver-eaters of our own world. And of course, there are the uncountable hordes of restless dead. Some are even said to be intelligent, masters of Death's Theurgy who stalk emptied halls, pursuing plans we cannot fathom.

The Outer Black

Between all of this is the Outer Black, the unending night in which swarms uncountable alien terrors and keening astral winds which carry them. Translucent swarms of squirming animalcules and writhing flesh drift along invisible currents, and the flapping and jetting things which prey upon them and each other, and great leviathans that prey upon them. Everything native to the Outer Black is dark, weathered, gaunt, stretched, or diaphanous, translucent, shimmering, or slick, coiling, burrowed into stones and corpses. Living Death is rampant here, and indeed many kinds of beast which dwell here naturally transition into unliving forms. In places where the astral radiation of the dark renders places of a world haunted, creatures from the Outer Black will come down to feed and cavort under Worldly skies.

Astral ships plied by the thinking dead, oneirian lords and holds of mortals to fuel their hunger, magi in floating castles crewed by golems, and empty hulks drifting from beyond the thirteen worlds, all may be found making lonely circuits between the spheres. Make no mistake, these are rare, fantastical things, but they are the sum total of thirteen worlds and more. Enough exist that a kind of culture forms, enough that those who know of them may petition them for passage. But it is perilous, long, and strange to journey in the final night, and the captains you ride under are just as such. They are a fantasy to most, a passing rumor. But to those who seek them out, they can bring one to troves of alien riches. The trouble is finding your way back.

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I have long liked the idea of incorporating the worlds of the solar system into a fantasy setting, but balk at the idea of turning it into sci-fantasy or turning the scope into a space opera, but inexplicably focused on some primitive backwater with the implication that far grander epics of far greater significance happen elsewhere (If I wanted that I would have built the setting for it!). I hope I have found a balance here. Anlil is special and relevant in ways other worlds or not. Most planets are stifled, stagnant, mundane, or dying. The totality of their diversity is truncated because that is just how most things in this universe are. Anlil's biological and supernatural diversity, its flourishing life and powerful magic, is an anomaly. Most interesting things are here. If another world on par with Anlil's depth exists out there in the cosmos, it is likely in the same boat; an isolated point of light, alone in a hostile abyss. This world is all we have. The planets exist not to give the sense of a wider story beyond the skies of the Known World, but to reinforce the importance of the one that exists. There is nothing out there but high-level megadungeons or exotic merchants and questgivers. Even those which dwell out there would rather stay in their ruined homes or venture to Anlil rather than go elsewhere. Venture beyond sane skies at your peril.