Solar System
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Other planets can be seen circling in the night sky above. Sometimes, mighty archmages - and now, the members of the Astromantic Society and others following in their footsteps - have visited them, bringing back tales of strange and fantastic places if they bother to tell about their exploits at all. And sometimes, the inhabitants of these far-off worlds come to visit this one.

In recent years, a number of presumably "lost colonies" of humans or near-humans with subtle differences to humanity have been discovered on some of these worlds. None of these "variants" discovered so far are identical to the known near-humans on Rothea such as elves, dwarves, halflings and so forth, but they tend to differ from mainstream humanity to a similar degree. This has exited researchers and explorers, and the race is on to find clues for a "progenitor species" from which all known humanoid races have evolved.

Planets of the Solar System

The following planets are known to exist, from those closest to the sun to those the farthest from it.

See Also

  • Astromantic Society - the predominant explorers of the solar system
  • Dreaming Circle - a society that has explored the solar system for a long time… without even being aware of it!

Adventure Ideas

Designer's Notes & Resources

I always thought that the ability to explore other planets with magic was rather underdeveloped in fantasy settings, apart from the late, lamented Spelljammer setting. After all, the idea of traveling to such worlds is very old indeed - didn't Johannes Kepler write of a journey to the moon in his Somnium?

But while Urbis should by no means be regarded as "hard SF", I wanted to make the other planets to have reasonably plausible ecologies. And more to the point, I wanted to use these other worlds to explain the existence of classical fantasy RPG creatures which look as if they couldn't have possibly evolved in a terrestrial environment - and I wanted to describe these other worlds as precisely the kind of "strange, alien vistas" that H. P. Lovecraft and others of his generation wrote about. In this vein I also wanted to avoid having "humans-in-rubber-suit" natives - but eventually I reconsidered and introduced the idea of "lost human colonies" (makes you wonder who founded these colonies and when, doesn't it)? After all, the "Planetary Romance" genre is such an old staple of science fiction - from the "John Carter on Mars" stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs to James Cameron's "Avatar" - that I figured I might as well add some humanoid natives to romance.

Nevertheless, the focus of Urbis remains on human exploits, and to be specific, on human exploits in the Known Lands, so for now the other planets will remain only a minor aspect of the setting. But for those GM who want to explore this niche, the possibility of extraterrestrial adventures and campaigns exists.

If you have any good ideas for these locales, don't hesitate to add them in as non-canon material. I likely won't have time to revisit them any time soon. There may also be place for a small Mercury-equivalent planet closer to the sun than Magrith, and perhaps more planets between Ilsur and Calturus.

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