Beltspace is a spelljammer's heaven. It is a small sphere on the major phlo rivers to Realmspace, Bralspace, Greyspace, and several other important Known Spheres. Beltspace entirely lacks planets. Thus no groundlings use up valuable space. Instead, the sphere contains four major asteroid belts, each orbiting its own tiny sun, and many more smaller belts orbiting the larger ones, as well as numerous free-floating planetoids and large rocks.
Beltspace is inhabited by spelljamming powers and races in relative proportion to their influence throughout the Known Spheres. It is valued for its central location and its varied populace, rather for any intrinsic properties, as the sphere is notoriously mineral-poor.
One of the minor belts of Beltspace is known as the Clan Belt. The Clan Belt orbits the major Freehold Belt and is inhabited by a Tuigan-like culture of clanholds. The Clan Belt came into prominence in 1373 DR, when an asteroid base within the Belt known as the Fortress, said to be inhabited by pirates, was attacked by forces of the Elven Imperial Fleet and the Greatspace Defense Force, accompanied by Citadel Lakgar. The attacking fleets were decimated by ships of the Vodoni Empire, coming to the aid of the Clan Belt, with whom it was revealed the Vodoni had forged a mutual defense pact. Despite the Vodoni victory, the Fortress and its 12,000 inhabitants (4,000 of which were confirmed to be non-combatants) were destroyed. Clan witnesses accused the Elven Imperial Fleet of murdering the Fortress-folk without giving them a chance to surrender, while the elves accused the Vodoni of framing them for Vodoni atrocities.
The primary planet is dominated by dragons, giants, Norse and Celtic humans, wild elves and fae. One of the few spheres where the giant races are still dominant.
A sphere defended by a very large spelljammer fleet, with nine inhabited worlds, one for each major alignment category, each protected by an Arcane-built force shield. The merchant cartel which owns the sphere touts it as a place for "heroes" to retire to. Visits to the planets are strictly limited, and heroes cannot live in Herospace while actively pursuing any interests off their retirement alignment world. Quite a few "heroes" pay well to retire to this sphere, both permanently, and for temporary vacations. Rumor has it that the only other planetary body in the sphere other than the nine retirement worlds, a central planetoid which the merchant cartel uses as a base, also hides an important Arcane outpost.
The home of many spelljamming lizard men, this sphere has three suns, an air world and two jungle worlds. In addition, it has a rogue planet called the Wanderer, a seemingly lifeless world that moves through the sphere with a will of its own in no discernible orbit. Rumors say that the Wanderer is not native to the sphere at all, but rather a planet that somehow moves from sphere to sphere.
Dinosaurs and reptilian creatures (except for dragons) of all sorts make their homes on both jungle worlds and in the air world. Each of the three suns in encircled by numerous lizard man space stations containing thousands of eggs and their keepers. This is one of the favorite spheres for lizard men to sun their eggs in order to increase the intelligence of their offspring.
The spelljamming lizard men have also established several colonies planet-side and are attempting to teach their primitive groundling cousins civilization, with mixed success.
Several reptile gods have power in this sphere.
A ruined sphere with no surviving native inhabitants. Mindspace is the lost home sphere of the psionically talented kuresh race, and was once inhabited by numerous psionic beings. Losing a war of conquest against a superior mind flayer empire which had established itself in Mindspace, the kuresh sacrificed their own society and the populations of their sphere to the fiendish psionic artifact known as the Mind Destroyer in order to grant the artifact the power to obliterate their illithid foes.
Magical and psionic items still survive in the ruins of the sphere, which contains many asteroids and planetoids plus two once-inhabited planets, a sun and an ice world. Sages believe the planetoids are the remains of at least two other planets that did not survive the conflict.
Hidden among the planetoids is the Last Bunker, the fortress from which the Mind Destroyer was unleashed. For centuries, the mummified undead kuresh wardens of the Bunker guarded the Mind Destroyer, while the kuresh who had unleashed it suffered as the fiendish psionic undead known as duncharath. In 1374 DR, Vigilar penetrated the Last Bunker with a surviving piece of the great Annulus. Like the Mind Destroyer, the illithid-created Annulus was one of the three Great Weapons used by Gith to destroy the Overmind of the ancient illithid master empire, triggering the slave revolt which brought the empire down. The Vigilar utilized their piece of the Annulus to eradicate the Mind Destroyer, which also destroyed their piece of the Annulus in the process.
The destruction of the Mind Destroyer freed the undead kuresh haunting the Last Bunker to their final rests. It also freed the souls of many victims of the sphere's destruction who had been caught on the edge of the Mind Destroyer's effect, and whom were slain by other means as the Mind Destroyer attempted to consume them. Groupings of these unfortunates had haunted the sphere and the Mind Destroyer itself as callers in darkness until the artifact's destruction granted them peace.
Since its fall, Mindspace has attracted treasure seekers to pick over its ruins. Due to the plague of callers in darkness which beset the sphere, such treasure seeking expeditions were short and very dangerous. Re-populating the sphere was likewise impossible. With the callers gone, both treasure hunters and colonists may venture into Mindspace in ever-increasing numbers. However, Mindspace continues to be dangerous. Other undead uncaring of the Mind Destroyer's end surely haunt the sphere's ruins. Weapons and traps remain from the sphere's last great conflict. Mindspace's primary remaining danger is also a legacy of the war - numerous psionic parasites who dwell dormant in the sphere. Should these creatures detect psionic activity, they awaken and move in to feed.
There are no deities in Mindspace.
This sphere is named for the Pyre, its central sun body of elemental fire, superheated smoke and deadly toxic vapor. Half-molten earthbergs float through the Pyre's upper atmosphere among clouds of smoke and toxic vapor. It is inhabited by fire-beings and rare individuals who can withstand its heat.
Ashen is the planet closest to the Pyre. It is covered in a desert of white dust, searing hot by day, chilling cold by night. Ashen is dead world inhabited by the buried spires and pyramids of a lost civilization. Scattered desert-dwelling creatures make their homes on Ashen.
The second planet, Verdura, is a jungle world, fully two- thirds land, with only a few shallow seas and lakes dotting its surface. Only a half-dozen mountain peaks protrude from the treeline, but none tower more than 10,000 feet. Verdura is home to deadly, often animate plants, and is a reptilian paradise, though true dragons are extremely rare. Once, its yuan-ti empire stretched forth to claim the stars. Now, the yuan-ti coil around the ruins of their fallen glory and rarely spelljamm.
The third planet from Pyre is Quelya. It is almost entirely ocean, which is inhabited by sahuagin empires. The planet has three small continents. The largest, Acclasia, is entirely controlled by the Radiant Empire, a human theocracy with significant minority populations of gnomes and elves. Despite rule by a theocracy, no human gods are worshipped on Quelya. The priests of the Radiant Empire revere a nameless, inchoate mystic source of energy that they believe grants life to all things. They are evangelist priests, lacking a formal divinity or recognizable clerical training but capable of a natural link to their mystic energy, and able to spontaneously cast divine spells. The next continent, Yavvan, is only slightly smaller, but mostly made up of the uninhabitable Wasting Desert, beneath which illithid maintained strong Venerator Creed-dominated communities. The Ringing Mountains which surround the desert are divided between sixteen dwarven kingdoms, orc tribes, and an outpost of the Radiant Empire. The smallest continent, Hoquan, is a marshy land dominated in its east by a large swamp called the Undying Green. It is home to halflings and lizardfolk and a peninsula on its west coast held by the Radiant Empire. The remainder of the planet's land consists of island archipelagos inhabited primarily by humans and halflings avoiding the Radiant Empire. There is little organized native spelljamming, though all Quelyans are oddly familiar and comfortable with spelljamming visitors and trade for such an apparently young and unsophisticated planetary society. In 1374 DR, Quelya was invaded by the githyanki in alliance with a Vodoni blockade fleet and draconic forces from Golotspace. The invaders devastated the Radiant Empire, but the githyanki retreated in disarray after the sudden demise of their lich-queen. Immediately thereafter, lacking the planetary ground support represented by the githyanki, the Vodoni withdrew under threat from an elven fleet from Perianth (see below). The reasoning behind the Golotspace retreat was more mysterious, but retreat they did, leaving behind only scattered dragons and their personal forces. One positive result of the invasion was the destruction by the githyanki of the religious illithid communities beneath the Wasting Desert. Another unexpected result of the invasion was the abandonment on Quelya of tens of thousands of gith forerunners recruited by the githyanki from Penumbra, who were exiled to a peninsula of Acclasia by the rebuilding Radiant Empire. However, the Vodoni did not depart empty-handed. In addition to stolen valuables, the Vodoni bore away numerous captives, known on Quelya as the Lost. Within weeks of the Vodoni withdrawal, the Radiant Empire assembled a pursuit fleet. Their volunteers swore the Vow of Neverness, promising to never rest until every last one of the Lost had been brought home or accounted for. The Radiant Fleet encountered the Vodoni and was completely destroyed without survivors, only to return the next day as a deathless ghost fleet. The ghost fleet and its deathless crew were destroyed again, only to return again the next day. This continued until the Vodoni were driven from Pyrespace. The Neverness Fleet, as the Radiant Fleet had come to be called, then vanished, reappearing only to battle new Vodoni incursions into Pyrespace. The means of breaking the Quelyan fleet's curse was obvious - fulfillment of the Radiant Fleet's original purpose. But the Vodoni chose to risk losing hundreds or thousands of enforcers in battle with the Neverness Fleet, should the Vodoni ever re-invade Pyrespace, rather than surrender one single prisoner.
The final inner planet of Pyrespace is the elven and fey planet of Perianth, dominated by thick, ancient forests, with less than 30% of its surface area covered by crystal-blue lakes and small seas. The elves of Perianth are divided among approximately a dozen fiefdoms. These nations have not openly warred for over a millennia, instead spending their time engaged in political intrigue for dominance and influence. However, the elves of Perianth and their fey allies quickly band together against outside threats. The Elven Imperial Fleet maintains an embassy and token force on Perianth. However, the elves of Perianth allow the Fleet no greater access to the sphere, reserving elven influence in Pyrespace for themselves. They are without a doubt the most powerful unified force in the sphere.
Perianth's foil is its Spider Moon, the moon to which Perianth's dark elves were long ago banished. The drow's imposed isolation was broken by the illithid of Moradin's Forge (see below) in their search for allies in Pyrespace. While the drow did not issue forth in force soon enough to prevent the illithid's ejection from Pyrespace, they remain an emerging threat to Perianth and the sphere.
The Chain of Tears is a mineral-rich asteroid belt which is all that remains of a destroyed world. It separates the inner worlds of Pyrespace from the outer regions of the sphere. The majority of the spelljammers which call the Chain home are gnomes, who made up the majority population on the lost world the Chain was birthed from. However, formians have begun to establish a significant presence in the Chain of Tears, while undead have haunted it since its inception.
The outmost planet of Pyrespace is Moradin's Forge. This world is located beyond the Chain of Tears, in a region of bone- chilling cold created by the Tears' blocking most of the Pyre's heat. It is a dark, mountainous world of cratered chasms, with the vast majority of its surface water bound up in massive polar icecaps. But while Moradin's Forge has almost no native life dwelling on its surface, it has a warm and welcoming Underdark sustained by volcanic steam vents and containing a vast wealth of mineral resources. Moradin's Forge was recently conquered by an alliance of illithid from outside Pyrespace. Various small spelljamming mind flayer forces joined with groups departing the mind flayer worlds of Glyth and Falx in search of quick profit and advancement unavailable on those established illithid worlds in a major colonizing venture funded by the illithid merchant clans of Glyth. The illithid approached the orcs of Moradin's Forge as allies against the dwarven nations which were steadily defeating the orcs for control of the planet. With the orcs' assistance, the illithid defeated the dwarves, and then turned on their erstwhile allies. Illithid subdual of the dwarves and orcs of the planet was almost complete in late 1374 DR, when the dwarven resistance sparked a full-scale dwarven rebellion which was quickly joined by the few remaining orcs. The rebellion would have been easily crushed except for significant outside assistance. The oliphim, a race of burrowing spider-like sentient constructs, invaded Moradin's Forge, intending to claim it for their homeworld. Shortly thereafter, the Great Githzerai himself sanctioned a massive githzerai rrakkma to Moradin's Forge. By early 1375 DR, the illithid colonial venture had withdrawn from Pyrespace, leaving Moradin's Forge to an uneasy alliance of freed dwarves rebuilding their nations, oliphim establishing their homeworld, and the surviving orcs seeking a place for themselves in the new order.
The secret of Pyrespace is that it is actually legendary Highspace, the ancient birthplace and home sphere of the vaati, reigar, kamerel and tritons, prone to spawning such native outsider "high races" when exposed to divine energy, and thus the focus of a divine conspiracy of silence, history suppression and non-interference. Ashen was the vaati homeworld, transformed in the fall of their empire into a desert. The Chain of Tears was once the homeworld of the reigar and their many gnomish slave- servants. The kamerel abandoned Perianth when they fled to the Outlands, leaving that world to be claimed by elven colonists. Underwater ruins on Quelya avoided by the superstitious sahuagin were once the homes of the tritons. The tritons fled to the Elemental Plane of Water when Highspace was invaded by the ancient master illithid empire. The illithid then enslaved the other race dwelling on Quelya - the original gith. These proto-gith were developing into a high race themselves, but while they had the growing potential to become a high race, they had not yet done so. The illithid captured the proto-gith and bore them away as slaves, hoping to harness the proto-gith's potential to their own use. Instead, the illithid had taken the seeds of their own destruction. While the illithid succeeded in preventing the gith from becoming a high race, their twisting and manipulation of the gith's potential produced the race that eventually threw down the ancient master illithid empire.
While deities cannot enter or interfere in Highspace, beyond the spells and granted powers of their followers, without risk of spawning a high race, this ban is not absolute. The proto-gith worshipped a proto-gith goddess native to the sphere who could act freely without this risk. She was almost slain by the illithid, and her remaining power was imprisoned beneath the Wasting Desert. It was her remaining self which was the inchoate divinity of the Radiant Empire. The last of this goddess was absorbed by Enki when that ancient human god was resurrected in Highspace by the Knights of the Sword Coast. While Enki has not inherited the full immunity to Highspace held by the proto-gith goddess, he does maintain partial immunity. Enki is thus the only deity who can interfere in Highspace at all, even if only in a limited fashion. Also, unknown to its priests, Enki has become the new divinity of the Radiant Empire. Finally, many believe that the resurrection of Enki in Highspace released enough divine energy to spawn a high race despite the involvement of the proto-gith deity's power. The oliphim's entrance into Highspace was based on their desire to attain high race status. But whether a high race is forming, and who they might be, remains unknown.
A faerie sphere still under Titania's control, this sphere is composed of four worlds - one of each prime element. Each of these planets also contains enough of the other elements to maintain interest, and is inhabited mostly by faerie. The most populous world is a standard earth world. While elves, gnomes and humans are present on this world, their numbers are small and their power insignificant compared to that of the faerie folk and of the creatures of faerie extraction.
Each planet is orbited by two moons, while the stars are huge gems that orbit around the planets as a group.
No deities other than those of the Sylvan Pantheon (including Titania's evil sister) have access to this sphere. Except for a chosen few elves and gnomes, no non-faerie priests exist in this sphere. Non-faerie worship the sylvans under other names but are not granted power in return.
A tiny sphere, barely 80,000 miles in diameter, surrounded by
protective shadow clouds. Its carefully balanced ecosystem almost
collapsed do to outside interference, but was restored by the Knights
during their search for the control heart of the now-deceased
witchlight marauder of Gamero Base.