It seems crystalline, though it's unbreakable by any method known to man or god, and it's basically black in that it can't reflect light. It can be bypassed, by portal spells or naturally-occuring portals, but can never be permanently damaged, destroyed or (presumably) created. Stars are inscribed on the inside - anything from radiant globes or never-ending flames to always-open portals in the sphere to phosphorescent towers clinging to the sphere's surface. Each solar system has its own sphere, which has different constellations and such - which is why the Krynnish constellations move when their deities start mucking around, and the Oerthians and Realmsies never notice. (One short novel reference from Weis and Hickman, and we get Big Heap Key Setting Elements in a completely different setting ten years later. Would-be world designers, take note.)
Between and beyond the crystal spheres is phlogiston, which is just as weird and mysterious as crystal spherestuff - though a lot more flammable. Please extinguish all sources of open flame before entering the phlogiston; Management is not responsible for any sudden catastrophic explosions that may result from entering the Flow.
Hope this helps!
In the Spelljammer game, each solar system is encased inside a massive "crystal sphere." The spheres themselves float in an interstellar ocean of color called the Phlogiston; and you can travel from one crystal sphere to another by navigating through the Flow.
In the original Spelljammer game, each D&D campaign world (Dragonlance, Greyhawk, etc.) was encased inside its own crystal sphere. You could travel from one campaign to the next by spelljamming across the Flow. That's probably changed now in the 3d edition, though.
There were many other crystal spheres that existed only in the Spelljammer game as well.
Pax,
KRad
The Phlogiston, or Flow, is the chaos outside Creation. It's the region the gods haven't gotten around to making yet. Some believe it's liquid sky. When this liquid phlogiston crystallizes, it forms a spherical shape, and a new crystal sphere is born.
SNIP Each solar system has its own sphere, which has different constellations and such - which is why the Krynnish constellations move when their deities start mucking around, and the Oerthians and Realmsies never notice. (One short novel reference from Weis and Hickman, and we get Big Heap Key Setting Elements in a completely different setting ten years later. Would-be world designers, take note.)
Interesting! Great summary by the way. I'm not familiar with the "Big Heap Key Setting Elements" event you ellude too, could you please explain this further?
[by Dr. J. Alsoszatia-Petheo] "Claudius Ptolemy (AD 85-165) had devised a catalog of celestial bodies and their positions throughout the year which was used to determine ones position on earth. The system assumed that the heavens, being farthest from the earth and therefore, perfect, was characterized by circular movements (the circle being the perfect shape according to Aristotle). Thus all heavenly bodies moved in a circular motion, or with additional circular variations around the earth. These circular motions were thought to result from a layer of totally transparent crystal spheres, each nested within the other, on which the heavenly bodies embedded. Each heavenly object, the sun, the moon, each planet, and the fixed stars, was embedded in a separate sphere. Each sphere moved at its own speed relative to the others, and the slight friction of these spheres against each other occasionally produced a faint sound-the 'music of the spheres.'"
[from Infoplease.com] "Phlogiston theory - hypothesis regarding combustion. The theory, advanced by J. J. Becher late in the 17th cent. and extended and popularized by G. E. Stahl, postulates that in all flammable materials there is present phlogiston, a substance without color, odor, taste, or weight that is given off in burning. 'Phlogisticated' substances are those that contain phlogiston and, on being burned, are 'dephlogisticated.' The ash of the burned material is held to be the true material. The theory received strong and wide support throughout a large part of the 18th cent. until it was refuted by the work of A. L. Lavoisier, who revealed the true nature of combustion. Joseph Priestley, however, defended the theory throughout his lifetime. Henry Cavendish remained doubtful, but most other chemists of the period, including C. L. Berthollet, rejected it."
While it's probably not Phlogiston, there is something that supports the notion that a gas of some sort surrounds galaxies:
[from Space.com] "The gas surrounds our own galaxy and appears to weave through about three dozen others that make up what’s called the Local Group of galaxies. The hot, intergalactic fog is thought to be a relic of the early universe, material that did not fall into galaxies back when the first great structures formed more than 13 billion years ago."
"In all, the gas makes up a giant cloud, estimated to weigh a trillion times more than our Sun, all surrounding the Local Group."
The "music of the spheres" was supposedly the sound that those spheres (in which the stars and planets were embedded) made as they moved around. Given the obvious connection between the spheres and music, I'm actually surprised that bards played such a minor role in Spelljammer.
The gas clouds between galaxies.
The largest object in space most people are aware of is the galaxy. Galaxies are typically clumped into galaxy clusters, each cluster being up to about 50 galaxies. There are only two large galaxies in our own galactic cluster, the milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy, but there are 35 known smaller ones. The largest of these is a mere 7 kilo-parsecs across (our galaxy is 30). A galaxy cluster is typically about 50,000 kilo-parsecs across.
http://www.sunspot.noao.edu/sunspot/pr/tree/filament.html
Imagine a large mass of soapsuds. galaxy superclusters (clusters of clusters) are arranged along the faces, corners, and edges of each and every bubble. On a large scale, that is the structure of the universe. The inside of those bubbles makes our typical concept of vacuum look like neutronium.
SNIP Each solar system has its own sphere, which has different constellations and such - which is why the Krynnish constellations move when their deities start mucking around, and the Oerthians and Realmsies never notice. (One short novel reference from Weis and Hickman, and we get Big Heap Key Setting Elements in a completely different setting ten years later. Would-be world designers, take note.)
Interesting! Great summary by the way. I'm not familiar with the "Big Heap Key Setting Elements" event you ellude too, could you please explain this further?
Heh. Sorry if that wasn't clear. The first Dragonlance book threw in a bit of exposition where a couple of major stellar constellations (representing two of the major deific powers in the setting) disappeared from the night sky, as an omen of the upcoming conflicts. The Spelljammer designers specifically state that trick as a reason why each world has to have its own crystal sphere.
Nothing important, in other words.
Heh. Sorry if that wasn't clear. The first Dragonlance book threw in a bit of exposition where a couple of major stellar constellations (representing two of the major deific powers in the setting) disappeared from the night sky, as an omen of the upcoming conflicts. The Spelljammer designers specifically state that trick as a reason why each world has to have its own crystal sphere.
Nothing important, in other words.
Ah! Cool! That does make since, and I remembering wondering which systems winked out during that incident. Man, It's been like, 16 years since I read that...
Here's a thought; are we sure that all the campaign worlds are even in the same galaxy? Even deeper, can galaxies even exist in Spelljammer?
Ah! Cool! That does make since, and I remembering wondering which systems winked out during that incident. Man, It's been like, 16 years since I read that...
Here's a thought; are we sure that all the campaign worlds are even in the same galaxy? Even deeper, can galaxies even exist in Spelljammer?
The crystal spheres surrounding Krynn, Oerth, and Toril are next to one another in a stable configuration called the Radiant Triangle. Since part of the point of Spelljammer was to provide an interesting way to travel between those three worlds (the only official campaign settings at the time), they tried to make it easy.
Galaxies would be enormous spiral configurations of billions of crystal spheres. There may well be galaxies in the Spelljammer setting. Only one - the one in which the Known Space of the Spelljammer books is located - is known.
There's some speculation that at the edge of this "galaxy" the phlogiston becomes too thin to travel on.
In another sense, "galaxies" are just patterns of stars, like the Milky Way. They're enscribed into the surface of the various crystal spheres. "Galaxy" comes from the Greek kyklos galaktikos or "milky circle," and originally referred to the Milky Way only.
I am wracking my brains to recall where I read this, but to no avail. I'm sure it's not something I made up, as I recall the "wow, cool!" factor when I read it. Can't remember where for the life of me - I'm not even sure it was a core SJ product - it may even have been one of those throwaway crossover references that you used to see in 2e. It was clearly a late-in-the-day retcon, but I kinda dug the idea that you could see other suns from your own planet. Anyone else remember this, or have the hallucinations taken hold again?
I'm not using any normal DnD settings such as Krynn or Toril, thus no conflict in cosmology and astrology.
You might say that it's like a kind of science-fiction, but it uses older (and now discredited) science. Because of that, it doesn't feel like the science fiction we're familiar with, but it has its own kind of consistency that manages to work in a D&D setting.
Book 6 of the Cloakmaster books was 'The Ultimate Helm'.
Right you are,I read it and seem to have stored it somewhere seperately from the first five,I may actually have to clean my house just to find it again,BOTHERATION!
Right you are,I read it and seem to have stored it somewhere seperately from the first five,I may actually have to clean my house just to find it again,BOTHERATION!
You ain't missing much...;)
Pax,
KRad