Herdspace

Notable Figures: One-Six-Nine

Crystal Sphere: Yes

Astral Haze: No

Read Up: The Maelstrom’s Eye by Roger E. Moore

Herdspace is an unusual Crystal Sphere, unique in all known space at the very least.

Instead of a void with planets and stars in some sort of orbit, the entire inner surface of the Crystal Sphere is covered in geology and topography that resembles the surface of a standard Material Plane world. A vast wilderness full of jungles, plains, mesas, and seas stretches out in all directions, lit by a distant white sun that rests in the middle of the Wildspace system. The interior surface of the crystal shell also has its own gravity, wrenching unprepared ships out of linear speed when they first enter, but allowing creatures to walk along its outer surface.

When a ship enters this system through a portal in the Crystal Sphere, rather than an opening in the inside wall of the sphere, the portal warps the vessel miles through the crust to a point in the air. Leaving it likewise requires one to locate a portal, which manifests on the interior of the shell as a column of light that shoots up from the ground and instantly warps a vessel back into the Flow.

The atmosphere extends several thousand miles up before rather abruptly cutting out, leaving most of the volume of the sphere an airless void.

But undoubtedly the most striking feature of all in Herdspace is the presence of the Megafauna.

The Megafauna

The Megafauna are great lumbering beasts the size of planets. They tread around the outer surface of the crystal shell, striding atop incomprehensibly huge ecological niches in biomes of staggering scale. The Megafauna each have their own gravitation as well, with entire ecosystems growing upon them. Their arms, backs, and heads are covered in dense rainforests and shallow lagoons. Entire cities and civilizations live and migrate upon the backs of these Megafauna as they move in steps that would bowl over gods and trample the Tarrasque.

The physical and metaphysical implications of Herdspace are a subject of hot debate in the scholarly community, and the nature of the Megafauna themselves perhaps gets the most attention. They seem almost entirely benign, aimlessly walking and foraging without knowing or not caring that millions of souls would be snuffed out in an instant if they were to fall over. So large are they that no spell or effect seems to register on their person, and no divination spell reveals what they are or where they came from.

One theory gaining traction is that they are in fact ancient weapons—or failed experiments—left over from a war that predates even our oldest understanding of the multiverse, a war against magic itself.

The reasoning for this theory is thus: the footsteps of these Megafauna often crush deep into the water table underground, leaving massive lakes where there had been none. Unfortunate explorers have fallen into those lakes—or taken a swim—only to find that the waters seem to disenchant magic items permanently.

It remains to be seen what else there is to be discovered in Herdspace.