Ravimarga

"Ravimarga" means "Path of the Sun"

• Fantasy setting with ships that move among the stars.
  • They are called "sunships."
• Solar system with four suns, each quite distant from one another, appearing only as very bright stars in the night sky.
  • Each generates its own gravity, with multiple planets orbiting it.
• System of planets, designed according to "Points of Light" design - few settlements, most of them large, with most shipping and transportation arranged by sunships.
• Ravimarga Character Creation

The Ravimarga

• A band of "solar winds" upon which ships may sail to move quickly from one place to the other in the Ravimarga system.
  • Requires the use of "sun sails," sails of various colors that shimmer with golden pearlescence, which can catch the solar winds and propel a ship quickly.
  • The longer a ship remains in the solar winds, the hotter it gets, with heatstroke and even spontaneous combustion of wood and cloth after too long.
  • Ships that are crafted of the "divine gold" - thevaqan - are immune to this effect, and in fact move faster than other ships within the Solar Wind.
• Forms a lemniscate path, with "windstop" points along it that provide access to the myriad systems.
• At its center is Barhis, a great port of call for many of the sun-ships.

Barhis

• At the great Solar Crossroads is Barhis. It is a mighty station shaped like a round-edged diamond crafted of stone, thevaqan and massive panes of gamani glass.
• There are five "levels" to it - a wide central disc (the Commons), a disc above it in the cone where the very rich and noble dwell (the Regentum), and the topmost disc, which is the palace of the Keeper of Baharis. Below the Commons is a smaller disc where the very poor are relegated to dwelling (the Flushings), and the bottom-most disc is where the Keeper's engineers work in darkness.
• Strange arcane engines at either end of the diamond generate light, heat, and channel the power of the Ravimarga through the points of the station, providing for all its needs.

The Golden Sun

• Called Varijaia, a name which means "the Golden Sun."
• System of 9 planets.
• Considered the cradle of civilization because it is the source of thevaqan, the strange gold that is reactive to the solar winds.
• Dominated by the Rastram Kanaqa, a spacegoing empire.

Adhivirajate

First Band • Desert • Rastram Kanaqa • 0 Moons

• "Surpassing in Brightness."

The planet closest to the sun, considered holy for its proximity to the Golden Sun.

• The faithful make pilgrimages here, and only those aligned with the Suryavarna may dwell here.
• The original homeworld of the gevana (all gevana are born into the Suryavarna by default).
• Very sandy, the sand of which is used to craft qamani, the colored glass iconic of the Rastram.

Tejabrabha

First Band • Mountains • Rastram Kanaqa • 1 Moon

• "Sword's Lustre."
• A military industrial planet, headquarters of the Rastram's shipyards and munitions factories.

Kanaqa

Second Band • Riverplains • Rastram Kanaqa • 3 Moons

• "Golden."
• The homeworld of the Rastram Kanaga.
• Home to the Kanaqa Sajkara, the Imperial Emanation, who is an emanation of the Golden Sun itself.
• It is also the source of thevaqan.

Alambusa

Second Band • Water • Rastram Kanaqa • 0 Moons

• "Garden."
• A water world where a great deal of agriculture takes place in great floating garden-barges, each acres across and turned into their own miniature biomes.

Grahpana

Second Band • Mountains • Rastram Kanaqa • 3 Moons

• "The Bazaar."
• A small mountainous world that acts as the headquarters of the Sunwrights.
• Connector point to the Ravimarga.
• Almost entirely covered in industrial or mercantile settlements.

Suksetra

Second Band • Plains • Rastram Kanaqa • 0 Moons

• "The Good Fields." The breadbasket of the Rastram, where most common food items are grown.

Lagudyavati

Third Band • Plains • Rastram Kanaqa (Colony) • 3 Moons

• "New Home."
• A still largely-wild colony world with a handful of settlements.
• Lawbreakers who do not warrant imprisonment may instead find themselves assigned dwellings at the edges of these settlements and expected to do work for the community as a whole while demonstrating their fitness to rejoin society.

Bandipala

Fourth Band • Barren • Rastram Kanaqa (Colony) • 0 Moons

• "Keeper of the Imprisoned."
• A world with a very thin atmosphere, dotted with various prison complexes.

Vadyazila

Fourth Band • Barren • Rastram Kanaqa (Colony) • 1 Moon

• "Execution Stone."
• An uninhabited protectorate world with an almost non-existent atmosphere.
• Once a place where criminals being executed were abandoned, but that practice has gone out of use in the Rastram.

The Blood Sun

• System of 13 planets.

The Blood Imperium

Themes: Mongol language; facial tattooing; polyamorous society; blood-using witches; Dronigmar

• Empire of human warlords, often at odds with the Void Sodality; often use great Dronigmar stoneships
• Khortgal: "water" world, though planet is toxic and water is some chemical; floating harvesting camps used to gather precious substances for alchemical work; five alchemist guilds pretty much dominate the world, protected by the Imperium; surface of liquid catches on fire during the day
• Chuluu: barren stone world very close to the Blood Sun; one of two worlds considered homeworld of the Dronigmar
• Shimtei: mountainous world with rich valleys with human settlements; second of two worlds considered homeworld of the Dronigmar
• Rondil: multi-biome world (mostly forest, savannah, and swamps), HQ for Imperium

The Midmarches

• Khili'ann: Desert world known for Maker ruins; lots of garifolk
• Saitai: Mining world known for metallurgy and automatons
• Tarnigast: world filled with big monsters, largely unoccupied, single mountain-top settlement/port
• Rootworld: Rootworld Orthodoxy, rootsingers, garden/agriculture planet
• Shulamai: Swamp world; headquarters of the Blood Witches
• Takhal: Abandoned, plague-ridden world

The Void Sodality

Themes: Piracy, cold, void, Uzbek language, black steel, layers of coats/cloaks

• Outermost three planets of the system, made up of five allied "Void Lords" whose night-ships somehow manage to travel great distances despite the total lack of use of thevaqan.
• Reputation as raiders and pirates.
• Oqshom: A world whose distance from the Blood Sun results in a near-perpetual state of twilight during the day, and deep black freezing nights. Ruled by the Void Lord Noza, a notorious pirate. Oqshom has a single moon.
  • Girdob: A small moon in orbit around Oqshom, Girdob is ruled by Void Lord Mardya. She is the wife of Noza, and a notable pirate queen in her own right. Girdob is a water world, with terrible storms that constantly criss-cross its surface. The only land are patches of tall spires, the result of weak volcanic activity, that stick up out of the ocean, out of which settlements are carved and interconnected with bridges.
• Qecha: A thin-aired world of deep rivers and extensive swamplands, with only three small seas. The lands are all low and marshy, but the native plantlife here generates both air and heat naturally, providing the ability to inhabit the world. Qecha is ruled by Void Lord Roqalia, an infamous torturer and interrogator. It is orbited by two moons.
  • Tuman & G'ubor: These two moons are the dominion of Void Lord Ardumaq. Both are mountainous bodies carved with deep, mist-filled trenches. Though the air is very thin above the layer of the mist, the fog itself traps both heat and breatheable air produced by carefully-tended tree gardens in the trenches.
• Sovuq: A world with two moons, which is perpetually ice-covered, ruled by Void Lord Wavaq. Cities here are built deep underground, to take advantage of planetary geothermals. The air above-ground is all but unbreatheable, so thin is it, but local airborne microplankton dwell within its subterranean caverns, producing breatheable air as part of their natural life cycle.

The Frost Sun

• A pale blue sun that doesn't give much heat
• System of 5 planets, three of which are frozen.
• xxx: x
• Erudan: The second world, a water world, with cold waters that are constantly freezing and thawing as they rotate to face away from and then toward the sun. Home to erudael, a humanoid people who dwell in subaquatic/subterranean homes near the warm center of the world.
• xxx: x
• xxx: x
• xxx: x

The Dragon Sun

• System of 8 planets
  • 5 Planets: The Tyrannicum - an empire of dragons, ruled by the most ancient of dragons. (Volcanic mountains/ice caps world, swamps/forests, desert/storms, savannah/agricultural, water)
  • 3 Planets: The Rebel Worlds - worlds not part of the Tyrannicum, including one that is all-human, one in which dragons and humans work together, and another that is in the hands of a militant religious order of sorcerers.

The Tyrranicum

Themes: Roman empire, Latin-sounding, slavery, elemental themes

• Staenix: Desert/storms world
• Andimar: Human slave-breeding world (savannah/agriculture)
• Tyrranicum: x - Senate world, dragons-only, ruled by the Senate of Tyrants (volcanic mountains/ice caps)
• Vyrdun: Swamp/forest
• Pelagos: Water world

The Rebel Worlds

• xxx: x - one that is dragons + humans
• xxx: x - one that is all human
• xxx: x - military theocracy

Other Info

Theme: Fire, violence, strength, hoarding, greed, tyranny

• Breath of the Great Dragon: Sun launches projectiles of flame and ash routinely, coating the upper atmosphere of first and second band worlds in ash clouds and causing hazards to sunships.
• Senate of Tyrants, a governing body of old dragons who rule the Tyrannicum. Constant infighting and oneupsmanship, keeping track of subtle ebb and flow of strength, so that occasionally one Tyrant falls so far below his fellows' estimation that they fall upon and eat him
• Great Hatching Grounds: Moons of various worlds are off limits, used as a place for hatching grounds. It is illegal for individual dragons to hatch their young. They are hatched and raised in crèches, identified by name and moon.
• Dragons undergo five Moultings:
  • Hatchling's Moult (approx 5 yrs), where they become bipedal from salamander-like forms;
  • Adult's Moult (approx 25 years), achieving full bipedal growth and acknowledged adulthood;
  • Breeding Moult (approx 100 years), becoming quadrupedal with wings (or sextupedal) and emerge gendered, capable of breeding;
  • Sage's Moult (approx 250 years), achieving a larger size and emerging without sexual characteristics, shedding gender entirely;
  • Tyrant's Moult (approx 500 years), achieving their largest size and emerging voracious and with a will to dominate

Races

• Humans, the most populous of the peoples due to their original discovery of sun-flight. Human genetics are very vulnerable to the emanations of the different suns, resulting in four "nations" of people. A child born to someone who have lived for a long time in a given system is likely to be born bearing the traits of the humans of that system, especially if his parents are of different heritages. Two humans of the same nation who have a child in a system other than their home system will likely have a child of their own heritage, but if that child remains in the system of his birth, his own children are likely to be natives.
  • Rastramal (Golden Sun), tall and graceful humans, usually with smooth long blue-black hair, golden-to-bronzed skin, and eyes that range from amber-gold through brown to black. They frequently adorn themselves in wraps of cloth and wear gold jewelry.
  • Kunmarg (Frost Sun), a tough and warlike nation of humans native to the Frost Sun, with pale skin and thick light-hued hair (usually in white, pale blonde or red) on head and body. They are well-adapted to cold environs, and tend to be thickly built but rarely over six feet in height.
  • Andimarans (Dragon Sun), the humans of the Dragon Sun with dark, swarthy skin, and kinky (often dreadlocked) hair of varying chromatic hues, including dark reds, dark greens, blues, browns, and blacks. They are heavily tattooed, and found in one of two states: the city-dwelling folk who have accepted the rule of their dragon overlords, or nomadic tribal guerillas who rebel against the dragons. The latter are often hunted by dragons for food and sport.
  • Rondilar (Blood Sun), humans whose skin tone ranges from a pale but dusky pink all the way through the red spectrum to a deep brick red, usually with white or grey hair, and silvery, grey, or blue eyes.
• Gevana, the tall, jet-skinned people of the Rastram Kanaga. They do not need water, and their eyes are always protected by a nictating mirror-reflective membrane protecting their delicate gem-colored eyes. They have six digits on the ends of their limbs and narrow chins. They wear implanted stones of qamani, the glass created by their people. They are the originators of the Suryavarna faith, and all their people are assumed to occupy a position of clergy within it, even if they are not part of the religious structure per se.
• Amagari, a race of bird-like anthropomorphs that inhabit a variety of the worlds of the Four Suns. They, and the other "gari" were said to have been created by a people they call "the Makers" who remain only in legends and strange ruins. The Amagari are artists, with profusions of beautiful feathers and multipartite voices capable of mimicking nearly any sound, and running multiple "tracks" of sound simultaneously. They hold Maker ruins and relics as precious.
• Zungari, a race of bat-like anthropomorphs. They share legends of "the Makers" but claim they were terrible slave-masters whom the zungari overthrew and slew ages ago to win their freedom. They despise Make ruins and relics, and are often violent toward amagari.
• Qyrgari, the last of the three gari peoples, who appear to be anthropomorphic mammals of some kind, with double tails, short talons, tall, pointed ears and sets of sharp teeth in stubby snouts. They are a desert-dwelling people found almost exclusively among the tombs of the Makers on various worlds, sites that they defend. Despite this, they are a largely non-violent people, and known for their philosophy.
• Dragons, a great race of reptilian tyrants native to the Dragon Sun system. They are notorious for their skill in genetic engineering, a trait that they claim to have taught the Makers (though the Gari claim it was the Makers who taught the dragons). Though they are said to have not always done so, dragon start off in humanoid form, and as they age and strengthen through the years eventually grow into draconic forms. For the first century of their lives, they have six arms, one set of which can develop into wings as they age (though they begin to lose use of it as a manipulating limb).
• Erudael, an aquatic, scaled race from Erudan, an aquatic world in the Frost Sun system. Though they are resistant to cold, they are not immune to it, and erudael settlements are all built near the warm core of the world, deep in its trenches. They have three counter-jointed digits on their forelimbs with poisoned talons.
• Dronigmar, a sexless race of amorphous slug-like creatures who long ago evolved a sticky slime that acts as a powerful glue to rock and stone. Over time, they developed stonewright skills, eventually crafting themselves bodies of interlocking stone pieces that they constantly shed as they grow and develop. Dronigmar who survive to two centuries of age develop into childwrights, elephantine creatures who split off "buds" that develop into new dronigmar (the word is singular and plural). They sail in great stone ships.