Just imagine the following scenario:
Its our good old, contemporary earth and everything, mankind supposed to know about Outer Space is a lie. Somehow a sinister gouvernment-conspiracy / a dark magical cult / a powerfull bunch of idiots with a strange kind of humor managed to hide the truth from us. In fact the physical laws of Outer Space behave just like the laws being described in the spelljammer-rules, and even more: our solar-system is nothing more than one of the countless crystallspheres that float through the phlogiston. But the truth can not be hidden for ever. Its the year 20XX (not far from now) and strange phenomenes apear during some space-missions and "unfortunately" become public.
- Thanks to an seemingly horrible accident the astronaut Dr. Becky Langström realizes that she can breathe in open space while staying near to the spaceshuttle floating around in earth´s orbit.
- The Contact to Voyager II is suddenly lost. It seems that it crashed against some kind of wall....
- an expedition of the new Apollo-Programm dicovers something really disturbing on the dark side of the moon - an ancient, wrecked galleon, seemingly beeing a part of the spanish main of the 17th century.
- the european space-probe Bölkmöller III finds signs of live within the astroid-belt. Fotos of strange, gargantuan fishlike creatures "swimming" near an asteroid are sent to earth.
- A small group of large, blueskinned aliens lands near the village Winsen in northern Germany and tries to sell an ancient looking and beautyfully carved "chair" to locals. For 30.000 euros the chair is sold to a buissnessman from Hamburg and Winsen suddenly becomes a Mekka for UFO-freaks. The aliens disapear as suddenly as they apeared.
What would you think about this kind of spelljammer-campain ? How would you handle "Earthlings in Wildspace" ?
Now, to the basic idea. Assuming, of course, we could actually power a Spelljamming helm (we are kinda lacking in the spell-slinger department), the immediate impact would be space exploration. SJ helms offer an ENORMOUS advantage in terms of propulsion; we'd go from rockets as big as sky scrapers to airplanes fitted with a chair. It'd put the most interesting planets in our solar system, the Moon, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter, all within a day or so travel and therefore open to exploration and possible colonization. And at 30k euros a pop, helms would be insanely cheap; even if they were 30 MILLION euros, they'd be a bargain. The control, power, and speed SJ helms have to offer is decades if not centuries ahead of our current tech level, and nevermind the fact that the entire propulsion system fits inside a simple chair.
And the advantages wouldn't just stop in space. Even if SJ helms were slow and clumbsy in the air, the mere fact that they consume almost no fuel would and have no engines make low-altitude aircraft as a viable alternative to subways.
And that's just SJ helm as propulsion. Add in SJ "gentle space travel" physics, the advantages rack up even further. Ships don't need insanely thick hulls to keep in air and radiation out; air need not be carried in tanks except for emergancies; gravity makes working in space so much easier; planets become viable for real colonization, not just host to a few research stations, etc.
I haven't gotten very far with it, as my players have so far confined themselves to Realmspace.
Beyond the Moons has a copy of what did get done but because it isn't finished it has been placed in the Drawing Board area (of the Lost Spheres archive section) instead of being put onto the main website where I would prefer to see it.
Please have a look at the existing Terraspace. If you really want to do this crystal sphere then it would really help the Spelljammer community as a whole if you could fill in the blanks and get this great idea fixed.
What would you think of this short sketch:
Alliance-Space:
The earth of AS looked exactely like our earth - at least until the beginning of the 1980ties. In 1981 a huge spacefleet of the neogi entered our crystalsphere and discovered earth. The neogi-lord who commanded the fleet decided, that earth would be a perfect place for hunting slaves and launched a first attack. The unsuspecting earthmen where completely surprised and in the first few month of the neogi-invasion, the neogi where quite succesfull with their hit-and-run-tactics and their magic. But slowly, the humans managed to drive the neogi of their homeworld. After three years the neogi-wars where over and something had changed on earth. Facing a threat from outer-space, mankind started to unite. Now its twenty years since the invasion and earth is ruled by a newly established global gouvernment - die alliance. Thanks to the neogi, the mankind of earth now knows about magic and slowly integrates it in their technology. The thought about ancient mystic tomes and spellcasting old geezers still seems strange to most earthlings and so they prefer it to call magic devices "quantumtechnology" and spells "psionic abilitys". Real spellcasters are rare on earth, most earthling-magicians would belong to the artificer-class (as in Eberron).
There are even warforged on AS-Earth, but earthlings call them cyborgs, androids or robots.
Earthly helms where developed on the basics of the neogi-lifejammer. The so called neuro-jammer, that powers earth´s spaceships, is a huge electronic device that needs a lot of electric energy. A neuro-jammer still drains life-force from the user, but it does so at a much lower rate than the original life-jammer. Its also slightly slower. Spaceships from earth mostly look like "normal" sci-fi-starships. Smaller ships are often planelike in apearance while greater ones remind somehow at a mixture between large submarines and modern naval dreadnoughts.
Most planets of Alliance-Space are not inhabited and there are only three intelligent races: humans, the remaining neogi who settled the moons of Uranus and the tri-kreen who are native on Mars. Venus and Ganymed are very earthlike world and are extensively colonized by the earthlings. Mars has a very similar ecosystem as Athas and the Alliance is also trying to establish colonys there (but Venus and Ganymed are much more atractive for human settlers)
By now there have been only few expeditions outside our crystalsphere by spaceships from earth and earthlings still think themselves to be the only humans in space...
PS: Please forgive me my bad english...its not my native language..
why not go back a few hundred years or more and then have that earth be attacked/visited by one of the races from the SJCS?
can you imagine the effect on 1700/1800s earth if a scro attck ship landed in london or washington/new york?
how that would turn out could really depend on which nation the attackers /visiters landed on
why not go back a few hundred years or more and then have that earth be attacked/visited by one of the races from the SJCS?
Of course, this could be a good idea, but in that case, we would have earth included as just another fantasyrealm. I intended more to have a contrast between a fantasy-space and a technological based civilisation. Perhaps, the earth of the d20-modern-setting Urban-Arcana could be a part of the spelljammer-universe ?
Hi Folks !
Just imagine the following scenario:
Its our good old, contemporary earth and everything, mankind supposed to know about Outer Space is a lie. Somehow a sinister gouvernment-conspiracy / a dark magical cult / a powerfull bunch of idiots with a strange kind of humor managed to hide the truth from us. In fact the physical laws of Outer Space behave just like the laws being described in the spelljammer-rules, and even more: our solar-system is nothing more than one of the countless crystallspheres that float through the phlogiston. But the truth can not be hidden for ever. Its the year 20XX (not far from now) and strange phenomenes apear during some space-missions and "unfortunately" become public.
- Thanks to an seemingly horrible accident the astronaut Dr. Becky Langström realizes that she can breathe in open space while staying near to the spaceshuttle floating around in earth´s orbit.
- The Contact to Voyager II is suddenly lost. It seems that it crashed against some kind of wall....
- an expedition of the new Apollo-Programm dicovers something really disturbing on the dark side of the moon - an ancient, wrecked galleon, seemingly beeing a part of the spanish main of the 17th century.
- the european space-probe Bölkmöller III finds signs of live within the astroid-belt. Fotos of strange, gargantuan fishlike creatures "swimming" near an asteroid are sent to earth.
- A small group of large, blueskinned aliens lands near the village Winsen in northern Germany and tries to sell an ancient looking and beautyfully carved "chair" to locals. For 30.000 euros the chair is sold to a buissnessman from Hamburg and Winsen suddenly becomes a Mekka for UFO-freaks. The aliens disapear as suddenly as they apeared.
What would you think about this kind of spelljammer-campain ? How would you handle "Earthlings in Wildspace" ?
maybe it has something to do with the fact i'm sitting on the couch with my girlfriend while she watches Black Knight for the 87th time
, but I absolutely love your idea, much moreso than integrating earth at an earlier period. Integrate modern day earth, internet, nuclear weapons, space shuttles, and everything. magic vs. modern tech would prove VERY interesting. in fact, i think this idea is so cool that i'd be willing to help work on it, for fun.
i would, however, suggest one change that someone in this thread already suggested. don't have a government conspiracy. make it so that, for some reason, magic and spelljammer physics were absent from our crystal sphere. when voyager smacks into the crystal sphere, magic and spelljammer physics spring back into being. new shuttle missions find that the shuttle is encased in air, has gravity, etc. sorcorers are born, etc.
what a cool idea.