Hollow Moon Exploration: continued
by Sharon DornhoffMystaraspace: the hardships of space
travel
For anyone but those in spelljamming vessels --and even, at times,
for them -- travelling to Matera for the first time should be a
challenge, on par with any epic quest. What could be a greater
adventure, for groundling PCs, than a journey to the moon ... one
of the greatest IRL adventures of our own century? Once they've
done it "the hard way" once, individual DMs may opt to let players
develop ship-teleporting magics or other handy short-cuts, to cover
the distance, even if they don't wish to introduce full-fledged
spelljamming helms to a campaign; but for maximum dramatic impact,
I strongly recommend requiring PCs to do the whole 238,600 miles,
both ways, at least for the first visit.
Keeping this in mind, those 238,600-miles become the greatest
obstacle to Voidship travel between Mystara and her farthest moon.
At a maximum speed of* 327 miles per day, even the fastest airship
in the Alphatian fleet will take two years to cover those kinds of
distances! It's unlikely any voidship crew other than an all-elf
one would be willing to undertake such a long journey, even if food
and water supplies -- not to mention air-freshening spells -- can
be made to last that long. (Note that, while players will no doubt
suggest that PC clerics with the power to Create Food And Drink
eliminate the need to stock so many provisions, most NPC sailors
they recruit should be justifiably leery of relying on a single
person for supplies. Accidents at sea or on atmospheric skyships
are all too common, as every sailor knows, and the dread of losing
their only source of povender would never be far from the crew's
minds, in such nerve-wracking circumstances.) Clearly, the rules
presented in CoM were not designed for crossing such huge
distances, and many DMs who have added space travel to their
campaigns in the past have allowed voidships to move at
"Spelljammer" speeds -- 4 million miles per hour, in the open void
-- when travelling between planets.
[* -- Ship speeds and other guidelines for OD&D space travel
were taken from Marco Dalmonte's "Spelljammer And Mystara:
Conversion Rules", along with other suggestions for reconciling
Mystara with SJ. Thanks lots, Marco.]
Unfortunately, upgrading voidships to move at the SJ-rules' "warp
speed" is going over the top, for a flight to Matera! For
characters whose ships move THAT fast, the journey isn't a
challenge, it's an afterthought. If you have already introduced
spelljamming helms or equivalently-swift voidships to your
campaign, the only way to make a trip from Mystara to the visible
moon as dramatic as it deserves to be, is to temporarily disable
the vessel's capacity for accelerated movement in some way, forcing
the ship to move at its tactical speed -- a more moderate 410 miles
X SR per day -- for the entire journey. This could be accomplished
by damaging its helm in some way, or by having the ship closely
pursued by another vessel for much or all of the journey; however,
it's an option that's as likely to frustrate PCs who are
experienced space voyagers, as to impress upon them the weightiness
of their achievement.
There is, however, a third option ... one that resembles how space
travel IRL is done, and which bridges the gap between the
"technologies" of slow-moving CoM voidships and "warp speed"
spelljamming vessels. It's the "continuous acceleration" voidship:
an airship which treats its movement rating as acceleration rather
than as velocity, and increases its speed the whole time it travels
through space, just as rockets which continue to fire after they've
reached orbit will do. Such a voidship moves at 10 times its base
atmospheric speed, when it first leaves the Skyshield, but then
proceeds to pick up speed by an equal amount each day. Thus, a
voidship that travels at a speed of 327 miles/day as it first
leaves the atmosphere will have covered 490 miles after twenty-four
hours, while accelerating to 654 miles/day. Increasing its rate of
travel by 327 miles/day, for every day of travel, it'll cover 818
miles on the second day, 1145 miles on the third, and so on, for as
long as it continues to build upon its previous inertia. The one
major limitation of such a design is that -- like a real-life space
vehicle -- it must "reverse engines" and accelerate in the opposite
direction, in order to slow down or stop. Continuous-acceleration
voidships do not slow to tactical speeds when they come close to
objects, so planets, asteroids, other ships and the like can't be
used as "brakes"; navigators of such vessels must plot their
courses to allow for sufficient deceleration time, and must take
extreme care not to pilot their ship into fields of debris, where
they could easily collide with an undetected object at high (often
VERY high) speeds.
With this kind of a voidship -- perhaps an "experimental model",
fresh from the skydocks of NACE or Hollow World Alphatia -- capable
of 327 miles of acceleration/day, PCs can reach Patera (assuming
they can find it) in 18 days. From Patera to Matera is a 48-day
flight, assuming they choose to resupply themselves on the
invisible moon, rather than attempt a direct, non-stop trip. The
long haul from Mystara directly to Matera is 52 days ... not much
longer than the Patera-Matera flight, given that on those four
extra days, they'll be travelling at a top speed of 381.5 mph! A
single extra day of forward acceleration, on either of these
journeys, and a gradual turn to follow Matera around the path of
its orbit on the final day of travel, will let the
continuous-acceleration voidship catch up to the moon (it's
orbiting at 2300 miles per hour, remember!) while actually shaving
the last six days of deceleration from the journey. Feel free to
dock some experience points from players who neglect to allow for
Matera's own movement, BTW: If they start a 46-day flight by
pointing their vessel "straight at the moon", it'll be ten days
away from their position, on the other side of Mystara, when they
arrive at the spot they aimed for! (This was yet another error of
Luftkapitan Kauser's, and why the Adler, a top-of-the-line Warbird,
took fifty-eight days to land.)
Having found a compromise between standard voidships and
spelljammers -- one which, with travel times of roughly a month and
a half, makes going to Matera compare favourably with Columbus'
voyages to the New World -- the major remaining concerns for space
travellers in the Mystara-Patera-Matera planetary system are the
environmental hazards of airlessness, cold, and light. (Note that,
while conventional wisdom holds that magic is the only difference
between "reality" and the "princess/Princess Ark" version of outer
space, this simply isn't true: space in/PA is NOT a
vacuum. Hence, pressure leaks and explosive decompression pose no
dangers.) Lack of air can be coped with by air-producing magics
under the OD&D rules, by refreshing air envelopes frequently
under the SJ rules, or by a combination of the two methods (e.g.
converting SJ air-restoring spells from the Wizards' Spell
Compendium for use in OD&D), as well as by magic items such as
the personal airmasks favoured by Myoshiman tiger-riders. Cold
temperatures -- -10 to -30 degrees C, for the CoM rules; -240
degrees F, if you want to reflect my own, real-life figures for the
chill on the moon's surface -- can be overcome only with magic, due
to their extremity and to the lack of air, which might otherwise
grow warm, from body heat, beneath one's clothing (DMs who prefer
the SJ "universe" should consider such temperatures in wildspace to
be a natural quirk of Mystara's crystal sphere, the interior of
which is even colder than Krynn's). Blinding-bright, unfiltered
sunlight and direct UV-rays will be encountered anywhere outside
the atmosphere except within the shadow of a planet or moon, but
these can be kept out of vessels' hulls by tinted glass, wooden or
cloth baffles, or sealable shutters, and persons on deck may
protect themselves using thick garments, dark goggles, and/or
spells. The heavy pelts of rakasta, many lupins, and other furred
races can serve them for protection from UV for journeys through
space, although eyewear must be worn to avoid blindness, especially
for light-sensitive rakastan retinas. Non-Kogolor dwarven
spacefarers should also have a superior resistance to UV, as the
radiation-tolerance which Kagyar instilled in them -- remember
that...? -- can finally serve the purpose it was designed to! (One
presumes that the Princess Ark was enchanted with glare-deflecting
and climate-control magics at some point during its construction,
as Prince Haldemar seems to have been uncharacteristically reticent
about these potential hazards of space travel. ;-D)
Beyond these, I'm not going into any more detail about space flight
in the Mystara setting: Marco Dalmonte has done a much better job
than I could hope to, in reconciling the many contradictory rules
of SJ and CoM! I'll just remind readers that, for the Hollow Moon
setting to work, I've necessarily assumed that the SJ/AD&D
"universe" exists SOMEWHERE; whether Mystara is part of a solar
system inside a crystal sphere, or whether SJ is just another
galaxy that happens to be put together very differently from
Mystara's, or whether the two settings are in different, but
mutually-accessible dimensions, doesn't really matter. (A fourth
possibility -- that Mystara's entire galaxy resides within a REALLY
BIG crystal sphere that floats in the phlogiston -- seems not to
have made it onto the MML, yet... but that's probably the least
compatible with the HM, of the four, so never mind that one.) Only
the "reality shift" solution which Bruce Heard proposed in "Up,
Away, and Beyond" -- Sorry, Bruce! ;-) -- can't really be used for
the Hollow Moon, at least as I've imagined it.
WEIRD space: strange new ways to get there
After all that I've said about continuous-acceleration voidships
(we can call them C-AVs, for short ... although Mystara's already
bogged down in acronyms, as it is!), you might get the impression
that's the ONLY way for your PCs to travel to Matera. Far from it!
Early writers of moon-fiction devised so many bizarre forms of
spaceflight, in getting their protagonists to Luna, that their
stories make Mystara's magical skyships seem downright
run-of-the-mill. With that in mind, I've put together a list of
just about every form of literary space travel from Dr. Nicolson's
book "Voyages To The Moon" -- plus a few others we shouldn't leave
out -- and I hope it'll give you ideas for how to get adventurers
to the Hollow Moon in a way that's going to surprise them:
I. Non-supernatural methods, i.e. journeys not requiring PC
magic
1) Natural phenomena : While these kinds of "space travel" may seem
more like gimmicks than feasible forms of transport, we know that
magic plays a big part in Mystara's natural world; the good and bad
magic points in Alfheim/Aengmor or the elemental vortices which
influence climate are examples of this. Thus, it's easy to imagine
"natural" means of space travel in such a setting, and these are
particularly suitable if you want to send someone to Matera without
a warning. One of the oldest moon-flight stories was of a character
in classical myth, who was carried to Luna by warm smoke, rising
out of the volcano Mt. Etna. Perhaps a magical volcanic gas could
transport PCs beyond the atmosphere and carry them to Matera,
shielded from space by the smoke's warmth and darkness. The same
vapours might also send passengers into a trance during their
journey, in which food, water, and air are unnecessary ... a common
plot device, in early moon-fiction. Another trick that can be
borrowed from mythology is the "rainbow bridge", already used in
Mystara to connect the Sylvan Realm with other lands; maybe natural
"moonbows" can carry PCs to Matera, or summoning the Sylvan Realm's
bridge under a full moon can take them there. Yet another fictional
character was carried to the moon by a tornado, in an event
remarkably similar to Mystara's strange "tubular breaches"... or
Dorothy in The Wizard Of Oz! Even Cyrano de Bergerac claimed to
have used natural forces to reach Luna, in recounting his own
(bogus, but idea-inspiring) space travels: he gathered the morning
dew into vials and tucked them in his clothing. Because the sun --
as every Frenchman of his day knew -- "draws the dew towards
itself", the sunrise lifted the vials into the air, bringing Cyrano
with them.
2) Pure technology : Hey, it worked for 'The Beagle'! While there's
some question as to whether the Federation vessel crashed because
its technology was incompatible with Mystaran magic, or for some
other reason (check out the upcoming post, "An Outer Moon
timeline", for my own theory; yep, that's a blatant plug! ;-D), a
spaceship built ON Mystara -- even a non-magical one -- would
certainly be designed to function irregardless of magic's effect.
My own timeline has Blackmoor on the brink of breaking out into
space, at the time of its downfall (plug, plug, plug!), and other
DMs have attributed complex spaceships to the Blackmoorians. PCs
have been stumbling across old Blackmoor devices, and wandering off
with them, for decades; maybe the next piece of lost technology
your own group finds will decide to wander off with THEM, for a
change! ("Say, let's see what THIS button does, guys...!")
II. Supernatural methods, i.e. journeys using magical spells or
beings
1) Spirit escorts : One of the simpler ways for early writers to
get their protagonists to the moon was to employ angels or demons,
who could do the impossible, as porters/guides. The latter are
well-represented in the OD&D rules by the creatures of Entropy;
unfortunately, it's unlikely that many PCs would feel safe, putting
their lives into the hands of an Entropic spirit for such a trip!
The fiends of AD&D are usually depicted as easier to coerce
than those of OD&D, while the various aasimons of PS offer
angelic alternatives to either, being both trustworthy and far more
pleasant to travel with. Other common spirits to appear in this
role of escort through space are genies, i.e. djinn ... beings
which, having the power to create soft materials and assume gaseous
form, are particularly well-suited to providing their charges with
food, drink, and oxygen en route. The fourth type of spirit escort
in lunar fiction, the kindly ghost, doesn't seem as appropriate as
the others, given that undead and Entropy are virtually synonymous
in the Mystara setting. In the Know World, the fairies of the "Good
Kingdom", with their collective knack for distorting time and space
around their home, might be another possibility ... assuming PCs
can figure out where they went, after Alfheim's transformation.
2) Travel-spells : Like the Hollow World, the Hollow Moon cannot be
accessed by teleportation; however, a returning visitor to Matera
may certainly land on the outside of the moon, and enter by other
means. Teleporting to Matera shouldn't be possible without having
gone there several times previously, as the outer lunar environment
is sufficiently alien that a single visit probably won't provide
the spellcaster a clear or lasting "sense" of the area.
3) Astral projection : Many writers took this approach if they
wished to have their characters tour the moon, but not necessarily
interact with it. Astral travellers to Matera are nothing more than
observers, making this form of travel most useful for
reconnaissance and fly-by exploration. The bedrock of Matera
resists passage of astral or ethereal beings through its substance,
so an astral visitor to the Hollow Moon must enter by way of the
impact crater as Mare Orientale, or tag along with another group
which has opened a crystal passage; an astral being cannot cause
such passages to open (more about these crystal passages, and how
to access the Hollow Moon, in thread #3: "HM Planetology").
Unfortunately for the astral traveller, creatures such as basilisks
which can threaten such characters with their gaze-weapons are not
unknown in the HM setting, thanks to frequent traffic to and from
the Plane of Earth by the indigenous desert ghosts.
4) Dream projection : Another old standby of writers who wanted
their heroes to look, not touch, or who saw fit to populate Luna
with dreamers' projected bodies. For game purposes, going to the
Hollow Moon via dream projection is virtually identical to going
there astrally -- passage through bedrock is not an option, and
physical contact is impossible during one's stay. While basilisks
pose no threat to dream-travellers, certain HM races which can
influence the mind (notably, the kopru and pteryx) may be able to
mesmerise or command a dream-projected character, at the DM's
discretion. A good choice, when designing a method of dream-travel
to Matera, is Sindhi soma juice, as this vision-inducing beverage
has strong associations with the visible moon. DMs who allow
psionics in their Mystara campaigns may permit characters to
achieve the same effect with the Dream Travel discipline,
projecting themselves to Matera's surface ... or into the Hollow
Moon, itself, if they first imbibe soma juice. On the down side, PC
dream-visitors to the HM setting may have difficulty convincing
others that their experiences there weren't "just a dream".
5) Magic items : The concept of "magic items", at least as a
category of things to be found in a dungeon, is more a convention
of RPGs than of literature; and Dr. Nicolson's book doesn't mention
any items that could take people to the moon... although one letter
she cites, penned by a clergyman to deride Galileo, makes fun of
the idea that a tube with lenses could "bring the moon closer"! (An
enchanted spyglass, that makes things "look" closer by transporting
its user TO them....?) On the other hand, many stories cope with
the problem of food, water, and other amenities by assuming that
special drugs, or even the condition of weightlessness, itself (!),
would make them unnecessary. A potion that could serve this
purpose, either by eliminating the need directly, or by inducing
the fantasy equivalent of science fiction "cold sleep", would be a
welcome addition to a space traveller's gear.
III. Combination methods, i.e. journeys employing both magic and
"fantasy physics"
1) Flying chariots : Believe it or not, the first "astronaut" to
appear in English literature, and to travel into space by methods
which were neither supernatural nor a contrived freak of nature,
but a product of his own ingenuity, made his incredible journey in
a vehicle powered by ... geese. Sixty large, trained geese, that
he'd tethered to a framework in which he could sit. That's how
Domingo Gonsales -- who'd actually been trying to escape from a
desert island; it was the birds' idea, to go all the way to the
Moon! -- became the first fictional character on Luna, and that's
yet another method of moon-travel that, ridiculous as it sounds,
might truly work in Mystaraspace. We know that Myoshiman
tiger-riders can fly through space, and that OD&D space is not
a vacuum; we can therefore deduce that Mystara's solar system must
be filled with a light, non-breathable, non-toxic, chemically inert
gas of some kind. (Historical precedent dictates it ought to be
called "ether"; but given how that term's been kypped by AD&Ds
Ethereal Plane, calling it that might cause more confusion than
it's worth! Let's call it "heardium" for now ... okay, Bruce? ;-D)
Between this train of reasoning, and the long-standing rumours that
dragons can fly through the Void by means of their wings, it's
logical to conclude that ANY flying creature able to breach the
Skyshield, and to tolerate conditions in space, ought to be able to
fly there. A PC who can Charm or otherwise control a flock of large
birds or other avians so they'll fly in formation, and tether them
to a vehicle as Gonsales did (Gonsales trained his "gansas" to fly
on command without magic, but I wouldn't let PCs get away with
this: mundane birds aren't that smart!); or any PC with the
voluntary help of sentient birds, could mimic the Spanish
castaway's trick and be drawn into the air, potentially even into
space via a tubular breach. The main advantage this method has over
flying mounts and flying characters -- detailed below -- is that a
flying chariot/framework of sufficient size can be built to
generate its own gravity plane, by whichever gravity rules -- CoM
or SJ -- the DM opts to enforce in Mystaraspace. The disadvantages
of this method are its slow speed (WAY too slow for a trip to the
Hollow Moon! Oh, well...) and the fact that every single bird in
the team must be individually protected from the harsh conditions
in space, provisioned, and cared for.
2) Flying mounts : Much more common than team-drawn chariots,
individual flying mounts are fairly easy to come by, in a world
like Mystara, and require much less protective magic and
maintenance than a flock. Like the previous entry, they are
comparatively slow flyers -- barring some serious haste-magic, most
are only good for the comparatively-brief journey from Mystara to
Patera or vice versa -- and they are far too small to generate a
gravity plane in open space (great rocs and large or huge dragons
are exceptions to this rule; if you can tame or recruit one of
them, you've got all the gravity you need!). Flying in zero-G is
something most winged mounts will certainly find disturbing, their
first few times beyond the Skyshield, and steeds will be frightened
and unruly until they grow accustomed to such conditions; mounts
which fly by innate levitation, such as asperii from FR, won't be
nearly as distressed by the lack of gravity. Many ordinary actions
become real dilemmas, in zero-G -- how to keep supplies together,
how to drink liquids, how to fire arrows accurately, etc. --
although characters familiar with the AD&D Astral Plane may
find their environment quite similar to there. As with characters,
mounts must be protected from the cold, brightness, and airlessness
of space. PCs and NPCs with a very low Constitution (less than 6)
could reasonably be deemed incapable of tolerating zero-G, at the
DM's discretion.
3) Flying characters : There are a LOT of ways to grant personal
flight to PCs, in the AD&D/AD&D games; and while such
methods don't generally provide sufficient speed for the journey to
Matera or even Patera, they are well-suited to the needs of persons
who fall overboard in the Void or who are members of an "away
team", descending from their ship in orbit to explore Matera's
surface (the "heardium" gas exists there, too). Fly spells and
Polymorphing into a winged shape can provide personal mobility in
space, albeit of a limited duration; other than the delay entailed,
there's no reason why a mage can't Fly through space, hover in
zero-G while re-casting the spell, then Fly some more. Magic items
which are ridden, such as Flying Carpets or Brooms Of Flying, may
or may not work in space, depending on whether the DM rules their
magic to be powered by air elementals in some way (such beings are
unable to function in space). Wings Of Flying and similar devices
or spells, that attach themselves to the user's back or cause
physical wings to sprout, work normally in space. As a cheap and
somewhat unorthodox alternative, the gnomes of Serraine and various
loony wizards have long tried in vain to create mechanical wings by
which a person might fly within the atmosphere. Their failed models
might serve well enough for would-be flyers in space, where there
is no risk of falling and lift is unimportant (perhaps they can be
a voidship's equivalent of lifejackets!). Finally, there are over a
dozen alternate PC races -- enduks and ee'aar from the SC setting;
hsiao, woodrakes, and some fairies from "Tall Tales of the Wee
Folk"; faenare, tabi, harpies, sphinxes and pegataurs from "Top
Ballista"; werebats from "Night Howlers" ... plus whoever I've left
out! -- which possess the power of flight or can transform into a
winged shape at need. Note that phanaton PCs' gliding membranes
aren't built for powered flight, so would allow them only very
limited mobility in space (they'd be able to keep their balance in
zero-G pretty well though, using their gliding-membranes as
stabilisers).
4) Flying vessels : These are the traditional transport of choice,
for Mystaran spacefarer-PCs; it's what the CoM space rules were
written for, after all! Heldannic Warbirds and Alphatian Voidships
are the top contenders in the Mystaran "space race", although
Aeria's new skydocks are also getting in on the action. Nor should
Glantri or Thyatis -- which probably have small airship-building
programs of their own, now, to counter the reborn threat of HW
Alphatia -- be excluded from the running. Even Herath might try
getting a peek beyond the Skyshield, one of these days (they'd
certainly have plenty of silk line, for rigging!). But not all Void
vessels will necessarily be "skyships" as we know them. Oostdok's
gnomes might discover a gas even lighter than "heardium", by which
to float space-blimps big enough to carry several months'
provisions at a time (and the HKs, no doubt, will refine the
technology and proclaim their zeppelins are MUCH more efficient
;-D). Their skygnome cousins in Serraine could re-fit those
obnoxious biplanes of theirs for space ... giving us something we'd
actually WANT those Heldannic Warbirds to shoot down! Flying
vehicles have been covered so thoroughly by Mystara products
already, the only literary idea I can contribute that might be new
to readers is the one-man giant kite... a type of vehicle which,
though lacking an independent power source for movement, might
easily be developed by the Myoshiman military as a means of
air-lifting supplies to their tiger-riders, at the fringes of the
Skyshield: the OD&D equivalent of "in-flight refuelling".
5) Smoke powder : With the possible exception of Entropic escorts
or jumping into a tornado, this is the MOST dangerous method of
space travel you could ever catch your PCs attempting. Cyrano de
Bergerac mentioned it as a joke, but players who think this will
work are deluding themselves; while the SC setting is slowly
developing better and better firearms, smoke powder is still far
too little-understood for Mystara to be ready for rocketry. Not
only that, but the hideous costs involved in fuelling a vehicle
with smoke powder ensure it's quite uncostworthy, when compared to
skyships or other methods of space flight! The only people in the
Savage Baronies who might actually endorse such a plan would be
some of the Inheritors, and that's only because -- whether it works
or not -- it would require great quantities of smoke powder to be
set off at a great distance from themselves. (On the other hand, so
long as you don't kill them off outright in explosions, letting
them experiment with rockets might be one way of removing excess
smoke powder from PCs' hands, should you find you've given them far
too much of it.)
So, there's more ways than you ever wanted to know about how to
send a bunch of Mystaran PCs into space. If you can't surprise your
players with one of these methods, they've either found themselves
their own copy of Dr. Nicolson's book, or they've been reading
these HM postings behind your back. Good luck, and do be sure they
have a safe landing! ;-)