Realmspace

Realmspace

Realmspace is the term used to describe the Torilian system and its surrounding environs within the Prime Material Plane. To those on the surface of Toril, Realmspace is called the Sea of Night, while the Netherese refer to it as the Skyward Realms. Contained within a crystal sphere suspended in the enormous expanse of the phlogiston, Realmspace consists of wildspace (empty vacuum), a sun, eight planets and their satellites, and a variety of asteroids, comets, and nebulae. 

There are worlds beyond worlds—cold, hot, light, dark, watery, and earthen. They all share one basic need—a need for heroes. — Elminster Aumar

The Solar System

The Sun

The largest fire body of Realmspace is located at its center and radiates a comfortable amount of warmth throughout the entire sphere. It is particularly susceptible to solar flares, which erupts almost continually.

Anadia

One of the two Dawn Heralds, this small, amber-and-green-colored planet is closest to the sun and is mostly populated by halflings and umber hulks. It is covered in canyons that dwarf the Great Rift, and the equatorial regions are unlivable because of the sun's proximity.

Coliar

Coliar is a gas giant mostly populated with avian life-forms and other flying creatures. Floating islands of water and earth revolve around the planet's core. Elminster is said to own a resort on one of these islands. The planet is covered with clouds and appears as a gray-white sphere from Toril. It is considered one of the Dawn Heralds.

Toril

The third planet in the system is the most populated, teeming with life. Approximately 60% of the surface is covered with water. Fauna on Toril ranges from creatures living in the air, on the land, under the water, and within subterranean habitats. This planet was formerly known as Abeir-Toril.  

Selûne

Selûne is Toril's largest natural satellite. It orbits about 183,000 miles (295,000 kilometers) from Toril, although some sages from the late 14th century DR claimed that its orbital distance was only about 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers). Only one side of it ever faces the planet; the other side is called the "dark side", yet it is not always dark. This is where most activity takes place. Although Torilians had named it after the deity Selûne, the moon's own inhabitants named their home after Leira. Trailing in the orbit of this satellite were the Tears of Selûne.

Abeir

Toril's "twin planet", exists near Toril's orbit but is located within a "pocket dimension" that is out of synchrony with the rest of Realmspace. It has roughly the same characteristics of Toril.

Karpri 

The first of the Five Wanderers, Karpri, the fourth planet in the system, is an oceanic world. It is an absolutely beautiful place to behold from wildspace. From Toril, it appears as a large star but as a sapphire ball with white caps when viewed by magical means. The poles are covered in pack ice hundreds of miles thick and stalked by deadly cold-loving predators, while floating on the equator's waters can be found seaweed, which at some points can support up to five tons of weight but are also home to massive, dangerous insects. The waters of the world are inhabited by aquatic elves and predacious sea life, making this planet as dangerous as it is beautiful.

Chandos

The next of the Five Wanderers, Chandos is another oceanic world. Its seas contain lumps of rock that, when piled high enough, create highly unstable islands. Those living on these islands are the human, dwarven, and orcish descendants from a pair of spelljammers that crash-landed here long ago. Over time, they lost their technologies and developed an enmity for each other, forgetting their pasts and becoming primitive. From Toril, this planet appears as a greenish-brown smudge, which changes over time.

Glyth

The third of the Five Wanderers is a gray planet that has a beautiful ring and three satellites observable from Toril. In truth, Glyth is a harsh, ringed planet that, as of the mid-14th century DR, has been occupied by the dreaded illithid for about a century. Plant life is continually burned by the harsh atmosphere or by the mind flayers to prevent their humanoid cattle hiding from them. A remarkably pure, edible gelatin "water" can be found in the place of seas, and while the planet still has ice caps as normal, nothing lives there. Most activity occurs underground. As well as the planet's rings, Glyth is orbited by three satellites. One, known as Haven, is a hollowed out asteroid and treated as neutral ground for the different mind flayer factions. Another, Mingabwe, is a trading port for non-illithids. Orbiting Mingabwe is Polluter, an unmapped asteroid. A group of over 300 mercenaries from the Code Helm reside here< conducting raids against illithids in the system.

Garden

Garden is not actually a planet. It is a series of earthy-masses connected together by a massive plant. Non-sentient life-forms create a balanced ecosystem with the many varieties of plant life growing here, but otherwise it is populated by pirates. Garden is also orbited by twelve satellites. Garden can rarely be seen from Toril, but when it is spotted, it appears as a tiny green speck.

H'Catha

The last of Toril's Five Wanderers, H'Catha, appears as a crystalline glimmer of white. Consisting of a flat disc of 300‑mile-thick (480‑kilometer) water with a single mountain in the center, close-up, this world looks like a giant wagon wheel, with the Spindle (the mountain) always pointing directly at the sun. Near the base of the mountain, six ports, each owned by a different type of beholder accept spelljamming traffic from other beholders, (not ones who lived on H'Catha, as that would provoke a war,) and a mysterious humanoid race. Other species are only allowed to land if they have goods to trade and leave as soon as they are done. The world is orbited by two satellites, Turnbetl and Lumbe.

Additional Astronomical Bodies

• Comet K'Thoutek
• Skull of the Void
• Caer Windlauer
• Galleon Nebula
• Color Spray Nebula
• King-Killer Star

Far Realm-infested Stars

At some point before 1396 DR, and as consequence of the actions of the Abolethic Sovereignty, some entities from the Far Realm invaded Realmspace and took a place among the stars. Although these beings look like stars, in truth these beings are elder evils.

• Acamar
• Caiphon
• Delban
• Gibbeth
• Hadar
• Khirad
• Nihal
• Zhudun

The Crystal Shell

The crystal shell of Realmspace has a radius of 3.2 billion miles (5.15 billion km). Like all crystal spheres of this size, it appears to be perfectly flat from the inside or from the outside. The shell is immune to damage of any kind and prevents the phlogiston from entering its wildspace interior.
The Realmspace crystal shell has a unique feature: its interior is lined by cryptic glyphs and wards, printed in illegible characters that are several hundred miles tall. Any attempt to magically read one of those writings, if successful, triggers the ward, which releases a spell hundreds of times larger and more destructive than normal. No two writings are alike and they can all be activated an infinite number of times. It is believed that these writings were placed on the sphere as a means of protection, but their exact origin is unknown.
The dashes, dots, and tildes in the writings produce openings to the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Radiance that ranges between a few yards and hundreds of miles in diameter. These brilliant portals, thousands of miles apart from each other on the sphere's surface, can be seen from its inhabitants as stars and constellations. Although the Radiance plane is highly destructive to creatures and ships that dare enter it, portals through the sphere can be safely created on top of a star-opening, temporarily superseding it. For an inhabitant on one of the planets, that particular star will seem to disappear for a few minutes and then reappear. The inner surface of the sphere is inhabited by a mysterious group of hundreds of thousands of humanoids known as the Wanderers.
Some of the stars visible in the Northern hemisphere of Toril were named by the elves of Eaerlann. A few of those were used to name the mountains in the Star Mounts. While most original names have been forgotten, their translations in the mounts' names being all that remain, a few of their original names survived to the mid‒14th century DR, such as the stars Y'tellarien, or "The Far Star"; Y'landrothiel, or "Traveler's Star"; and N'landroshien, or "Darkness in Light". The reason why the Elven star names were used to name the mountains is unknown and thought to be an ominous secret kept by the elves.

Constellations

Realmspace holds a number of constellations, arrangements of stars as viewed in the night sky.

• The Centaur
• The Woman Warrior 
• Amaunator's belt 
• Correlian 
• A crown 
• The Harp
• The Sword and Dagger 
• The Lady of Mystery 
• The Dragon of Dawn 
• The Firbolg 

Cosmography

The space around Realmspace is a vertex in a stable triangle in the flow of the phlogiston. The other two vertices are in the location of Greyspace, where the world of Oerth can be found, and Krynnspace, home of the world of Krynn. The phlogiston has a strong current that flows between Realmspace and Greyspace, making two-way travel between the two crystal spheres relatively fast and simple. There are one-way flows from Greyspace to Krynnspace and from Krynnspace to Realmspace, but not in the opposite directions. Due to this current, it is impossible to travel directly from Realmspace to Krynnspace and from Krynnspace to Greyspace. For that reason, traveling from Realmspace to Krynnspace is easier if one goes through Greyspace first instead of going directly.
A close neighbor of Realmspace is Refuge, a small crystal sphere that contains a spaceport controlled by the Arcane. Refuge itself is a vertex in another stable configuration of the flow, known as the Arcane Inner Flow, which contains the crystal spheres of Pirtelspace and the elven-controlled sphere of Darnannon.

History

The wildspace of the Realmspace crystal sphere was unusually warm compared to others. This leads sages to speculate that the sun and Realmspace itself are the oldest among the generally known crystal spheres. It is believed that the creator races from Toril were the earliest intelligent inhabitants of Realmspace, and the first to develop the magical means necessary to travel to other crystal spheres and other planes, around the same time when inhabitants of other spheres also started to travel. These early migrations into Realmspace date from the apex of the draconic domain over Toril. The first to arrive were dwarves, followed by treants, elves, and, lastly, mind flayers.
A second wave of migration, roughly coinciding with the time primitive humans started to develop their civilization and with the establishment of Ostoria, heralded the arrival of halflings, gnomes, merfolk, giant-kin, titans, and tritons, as well as―unbeknownst to other races―sharn and phaerimm. Centuries later, around the time of the apex of Ostoria, a third wave of direct migrations from other crystal spheres saw the arrival of beholders, lesser dragons, leucrotta, centaurs, satyrs, and wemics, among others. The final wave of migrations, estimated to have happened around the time humans learned magic from the elves, laying the foundations of what would later become Netheril, saw the arrival of pegasi and other winged humanoid races.
During the Time of Troubles, the chanting of the Wanderers temporarily ceased due to the fall of Realmspace's powers. For the duration of this period, no portals could be opened through the crystal sphere. Travelers in Realmspace are sometimes terrorized by a mysterious and intimidating bat-shaped vessel known as the Batship, an invasive presence that originated in a remote crystal sphere and seems to have adopted Realmspace as its hunting grounds.

Type

Solar System