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The Forgehome Sphere

Overview

The primary is a manifest zone to the Elemental Plane of Fire, which provides a blazing light that sustains life and lends a deep orange hue to everything its light touches. It emits fire straight from the depths of the connected plane, and serves as the gravitational center of the sphere.

Hundreds of satellite structures hold orbit around the primary. Each is a processing facility that takes in raw planar heat and produces synthetic Fire Planar Crystals, grown to perfect purity and stabilized on site, then shipped down to the various worlds to fuel their entire civilization. Crystals of this kind occur in nature only at manifest zones, where they form on their own and serve as the zone's reservoir. Nowhere else has anyone grown them deliberately. None of what is grown here leaves the sphere.

Society is three castes. The Mercane are the nobility. They hold the government, own the concerns, and set every price. The artisans are the citizenry and carry the economy on their skill; every hull, helm, binding, and crystal in the sphere is their work. The Warforged are the labor caste. They were built for it, they work the faces nothing living can survive, and their conditions are slavery in all but name. The only movement between castes runs one way and in one case: a Warforged who settles its Life Debt may enter the Artisan Caste.

Forgehome is classified as a derelict sphere. No phlo current runs to it or from it, and no star chart lists a coordinate for it. This is by design. An ancient Mythal, cast by House mages in the distant past, prevents both the accidental discovery of the sphere and any traversal through the crystal shell, and the last natural portal was closed by the House in an age long past. Vessels cross to other spheres by the gate spell, cast aboard by navigators carried for that purpose and no other.

The outermost planetoid is actually an Ancient Antæran Forge of War. Probatio is starmetal and machinery through its entire mass, and it is the only holding in the sphere the House did not make and cannot alter. Every exposed surface carries runes and glyphs in unbroken sequence. No scholar here can read them, and the standing assumption is that they work the machine. Enough of its operation was recovered to bring it back into service and it has run ever since. Every Warforged in all the Known Spheres is said to have been created in this forge. What else it was designed to build has not yet been discovered, though it is only a matter of time, and experimentation has already produced other variants of Warforged.

Planetology & Astrology

  • Type of Sphere: Standard
  • Primary Body:
    • Name: Follis
    • Type: Fire Body (Manifest zone to the Elemental Plane of Fire)
  • Spelljamming Aware: Yes

Inner Track (<200 million miles)

  • Planet Name: Crucibulum

    • Distance: 62 million miles
    • Size Category: C
    • Planet Type: Fire type
    • Planet Shape: Spherical
    • Other Notes: The first body in the celestial track is Crucibulum. A world dedicated to smelting metals. Its surface is a worked crust of slag terraces and tap channels which run molten metal in courses redirected so many times that the original landscape is unrecoverable. It takes the largest crystal allocation of any body in the sphere and burns it as fast as the ships can land it. The air carries a particulate and thermal load beyond anything a living body can be protected against, so the working population is entirely constructed; flesh is permitted a single shift per planetfall. The ore it works comes from extra-planar sources, such as the Elemental Plane of Earth, or other Outer Planes. It leaves as billet, ingot, and drawn stock bound for Navalia. The loss rate is recorded as within tolerance.

  • Planet Name: Navalia

    • Distance: 148 million miles
    • Size Category: E
    • Planet Type: Earth type
    • Planet Shape: Spherical
    • Other Notes: The second body in the celestial track is Navalia. A world dedicated to shipbuilding and armament. It is the largest world in the sphere and produces most of what it sends outward. Its slipways are cut into the bones of highlands that no longer stand, and finished hulls are lifted straight off the ground and away. It builds the Spelljammers and other heavy machinery that fuel the industrial machine. Its rivers and oceans evaporated during the terraforming generations ago, forming the clouds that cover the planet like a blanket. The air is breathable at elevation and filtered everywhere below it, thick with the taste of scale and quench-water. The yards never stop, and from orbit the dark face of the world is nearly as bright as the lit one. This is where the story of the green worlds is strongest and where every attempt to put it down has failed, and the crews here name their yards the way other people name their dead.

Goldilocks Zone (200–300 million miles)

  • Planet Name: Tabularium

    • Distance: 241 million miles
    • Size Category: E
    • Planet Type: Earth type
    • Planet Shape: Spherical
    • Other Notes: The third body in the celestial track is Tabularium. A world dedicated to administration. It sits in the band where a world in any other sphere would carry weather and ocean and open country, and it carries none of them. Every crystal grown at the satellites is entered against its books before it burns anywhere. No hold lifts from a processing facility without a number issued here, and every Warforged that comes off the line at Probatio is registered here before assignment. What nature survives on this world is enclosed: biodomes and private gardens attached to executive residences and House offices, kept for the enjoyment of those who hold them. The planet's air is cycled through these domes because the arrangement filters it more efficiently than any works the House has built, and for no other reason.

  • Planet Name: Peculium

    • Distance: 295 million miles
    • Size Category: A
    • Planet Type: Earth type
    • Planet Shape: Belt
    • Other Notes: The fourth body in the celestial track is Peculium. A belt of asteroids at the outer edge of the habitable band, settled by the Warforged and built out by them under House title. The rocks carry no atmosphere, which is why the House permitted the settlement at all: nothing that breathes can live there in any number, and a population that requires no air, no food, and no heat costs nothing to house. The Warforged quarter in bored-out workings and in hulls salvaged from the yards, strung together by lines and gantries run between the rocks. A Warforged who has discharged its Life Debt enters the Artisan Caste and may open premises and trade, though every business is registered with the House and the House holds the title to all of them. The shops deal in scrap, salvage, repair work, and parts pulled from decommissioned stock.

Outer Track (>300 million miles)

  • Planet Name: Frigidarium

    • Distance: 355 million miles
    • Size Category: D
    • Planet Type: Earth type
    • Planet Shape: Spherical
    • Other Notes: The fifth body in the celestial track is Frigidarium. A world dedicated to the long-term storage of goods and criminals. It is a frozen world, far enough from the primary that its surface has never been worked and never needed to be, and much of it remains undeveloped against some future requirement never specified. Sentences are carried out in massive detention facilities, which double as labor camps and account for most of the work done on the planet. The cold is hard enough to crack unattended stock, so every facility stands enclosed and heated. Large shipyards hold orbit above the planet, housing the Spelljammers of the House Navy alongside the hulls held for sale.

  • Planet Name: Probatio

    • Distance: 470 million miles
    • Size Category: C
    • Planet Type: Earth type
    • Planet Shape: Irregular
    • Other Notes: The sixth body in the celestial track is Probatio. An Ancient Antæran Forge of War; starmetal and machinery to its core, irregular in shape and without atmosphere. Every exposed surface carries runes and glyphs in unbroken sequence. The runes have not yet been deciphered, but the working assumption is that they operate the machine. Enough of its function was recovered to restart it, and it has run constantly since. Every Warforged in all the Known Spheres is said to have been created here. Work continues on the rest of its function, and experimentation has already yielded variant Warforged the standard line does not produce.

Recognized Pantheon

Lesser Deities

  • Mensor, Keeper of the True Measure (LN)
  • Solvara, Who Settles the Ledger (CG)
  • Fabrica, Mother of Honest Work (NG)
  • Alpha, Patron God of Warforged (CN)
  • Cinerea, Who Sells the Flawed Casting (NE)

Intermediate Deities

  • Astrilex, Warden of the Fair Contract (LG)
  • Malleor, the Hammer That Does Not Rest (LE)
  • Ustrina, Who Burns the Rival Yard (CE)

Greater Deities

  • Ignatarnus, the Unspent Flame and First Forge (N)