Soltan Ephemeris Illustration

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In Stranger Skies takes place in a part of Calidar’s universe called the Soltan Ephemeris, named for the sun at its center. It includes three native planets and their moons, as well as a sparse asteroid belt on the outskirts called the Fringe. A fourth planet, an artificial alien world, also gravitates through the Soltan Ephemeris on an off-center, elliptical orbit, taking it well past the limits of the Fringe.

All these worlds possess living souls that generate magic. Each world soul affects people and their gods in different ways, as well as the world’s laws of physics. Although most civilizations are able to sail between worlds, each does so using its own methods. The magic enabling travel through space’s Great Vault limits who can do so, how often they are able to do so, and how far they can go. None of the native civilizations have the power to journey beyond the confines of the Soltan Ephemeris.

 from CAL1 In Stranger Skies, by Bruce Heard

Map (March 2017)

The Soltan Ephemeris Illustration
The Soltan Ephemeris Illustration (Starfield credit: NASA, ESA, SSC, CXC and STScI.)

This map is now available in printed form at DriveThruRPG.

Sources

Comments

This illustration was years in the making. I came up with the idea back near the start of Calidar’s development, in 2013. From late 2013 to mid 2014 I worked up models of each planet, researched how to light them properly, and rendered them all individually. These images were released on my old blog, with each world placed on top of a thematically appropriate-looking starfield. But then I got stuck trying to place them all in the same image.

Fast forward to early 2017, and inspiration finally struck. This time, I set about creating the starfield as a composite based on a number of different NASA photographs.  (Credit: NASA, ESA, SSC, CXC and STScI.)  I had a lot of fun doing this, although I ended up tweaking the overall contrast and colours quite a bit to stop it from completely overpowering the planets and moons of the Soltan Ephemeris.

The colours were rather serendipitous; I only realised towards the end of the composition that I had placed each planet over an area of the backdrop with thematically correct colours.  So you can see Calidar is close to the Oortan Cloud with its deep, majestic blues; Draconia is amid fiery, violent-looking reds; Lao-Kwei and Kumoshima are in an area of mysterious purples; and Ghüle is off in the corner in a ghoulish green area of space.  It’s almost like I designed it this way — and I suppose I did, but it was mostly subconscious.

Notes

  • Mock-ups — aside from Calidar itself, the worlds here are all mock-ups. When Bruce comes to design each individual world, the maps are likely to change drastically. At that point I will likely revise this image with new planet renders.

References

  1. Soltan Ephemeris Illustration post at Patreon
  2. Soltan Ephemeris Illustration release announcement at Facebook
  3. Soltan Ephemeris Illustration post at thorfmaps.com

Thanks to:

Jesper Andersen, Azure Admiral, Trentin Bergeron, David Chart, Francesco Defferrari, Christopher Desmond, Joshua DiCicco, Paul Dupuis, Marty Godsey, Bruce Heard, Brian Isikoff, Eric Jackson, Grégory Le Louette, Wendy Lord, Christopher Maikisch, Harri Mäki, Nate Mangion, Carl Matthews, Gordon McCormick, Anna B Meyer, Sverre Midthjell, Hervé Musseau, Wolfgang Neckel, Cameron Paine, Thomas Pizard, Dave Poppel, Friedrich Röhrer-Ertl, Jeff Scifert, Robert Slaughter, Erin D Smale, Joshua Starnes, Kurt Stoffer, Sandra Tait, Douglas Zielsdorf.