Post by TheUdjat on Jul 11, 2008 10:13:15 GMT -5
Venus: The World
Important Things to Determine:
- The passage of time—Hours, Days, Months, Seasons, etc.
- Weather and Climate
- Oceans, Rivers, Rainfall, and Water
- Everything about the land
- The Sky overhead
- The Individual Continents
- Natural disasters and other unusual world features
The Passage of Time:
Time passes differently on Venus. The world turns slowly, more slowly than the world revolves around the sun, and so days are not a reliable method of tracking time. Venus does have an artificial moon, however, created during the terraforming process to monitor atmospheric conditions and keep the world’s climate from slipping into devastating conditions. The moon circles Venus on a near-24 hour cycle, and though this isn’t visible to Venus’s inhabitants, they do note that the tides rise and fall in a steady 24 hour cycle. Thus, days are counted by ‘High Mark’ (High Tide) and ‘Low Mark’ (Low Tide), each occurring nearly 12 hours apart.
In terms of light and darkness, Venus’s days appear (to its inhabitants) to pass in 120-day cycles. That is, every 60 High Marks, the sun rises or sets. Every 120 High Marks, the cycle completes itself.
‘High’ and ‘Low’ aren’t the only Marks, though. A clock of sorts has formed along shores, incrementally tracking the level of the water as it rises and falls, and breaking it into 11 such Marks (High, Low, and 10 in between. The days works in a 20-Mark cycle).
There are no years on Venus. A year has no value, as there are no dramatic changes in climate as the planet revolves around the sun, and there is no system of astronomy to speak of. The nearest thing to a season is the change from day to light, around which plants grow and die. Agricultural change happens faster on Venus, as plants rise dramatically during the day, are harvested just before nightfall, and go into hibernation for the 60 Tides of Night. Not all plants follow this cycle, but enough do that it has impacted society, and forms the basis for civilization’s patterns. There’s no wet/dry cycle, no cold/hot cycle—just day/night.
So, in summary, these are the methods of tracking time:
- Marks, roughly equivalent to an hour (actually around 1.17 hours, or 70 minutes).
- Tidal Cycles, usually just called Tides, which is one complete cycle from Low Mark to High Mark and back to Low Mark. This is roughly equivalent to one earth day (technically 23.33 earth hours).
- A day on Venus lasts 60 Tides, and a night on Venus lasts the same amount of time. Between the two, one Solar Cycle (or just Cycle), is 120 Tides (or about 117 Earth days). This is essentially a Season on Venus, and the highest unit of measuring time. People measure their age by Cycles, and tend to be 3x the age of people on Earth (a person we would think of as 20 years old is 60 Cycles old).
- What about weeks? This would be more of a governmental separation, which isn’t horribly ridiculous. Indeed, for scheduling growth of crops and harvest and such, it would make sense to separate the days into, say, 5-Tide increments of time. As appropriate for a week, this marks when the old market days would happen. For convenience sake, this will also be referred to as a week on Venus, or perhaps a Fivetide.
- Every three Fivetides is a Quarter, meaning a quarter of the day or night. Quarters typically determine when harvest are done, tracking the movement of the sun through the sky (well, its general location anyway). The Tides of a Fivetide should eventually have names, but I’m not going to get into that yet.
Mark – Hour
Tide – Day
Fivetide – Week (5 days)
Quarter – Month (15 days)
Day/Night – Season (60 days/2 months)
Cycle – Year (120 days/4 months)
Venus will also have a regular storm that passes through, perhaps once every five Cycles (so almost every two years of earth time). This is, incidentally, the time it takes for Earth to reach its nearest point to Venus, so presumably this will be the underlying reason for the storm’s passage.
This storm is an Acid Storm, the worst of its kind. Such acid storms happen from time to time on Venus, but are generally extremely infrequent. Most plants have developed a resistance to it (except some food sources), but most animals have not (people included). It is an event anticipated by all citizens, and they take necessary measures to prepare for it. It should have some kind of name, like the Scourge or something.
Weather and Climate:
Before it was terraformed, Venus was inhabitable—pressure as severe as the oceans, sulfuric acid rain, clouds the races across the sky at hundreds of miles an hour. It was hell.
Venus is habitable now, to be certain, but not all of its unique charm was lost. The clouds, in some respects, were an advantageous aspect of Venus, and so they stayed—though they will no longer kill everything in devastating rains. The clouds are thick and reflective, serving to both block out the skies and to reflect the incredibly severe rays of the sun. But it also equalizes the temperature across the planet, meaning that Venus does not have polar ice caps, nor does it have much variance in climate. Indeed, all of Venus is predominantly humid and hot
There are some exceptions, of course. In some places, Venus is sufficiently high that the air thins out, and things become colder. On the northern plateau, in fact, the weather approaches arctic and snowfall is frequent. In other spots, steep mountains sufficiently block moisture from falling on area, resulting in small deserts—but these are not exceptionally frequent, given Venus’s solid cloud-cover.
There is, in short, a lot of water across Venus and a whole lot of heat—ripe conditions for jungles, swamps, forests, and dense grasslands of vegetation. Mountains are rarely rocky and deprived of vegetation, dry, rolling plains and deserts are a rarity, and so forth. One might think this makes planting and agriculture easy—and in some respects it does—but the vast competition of growing things poses its own problems. There is generally no problem growing something, but keeping weeds from overtaking it can be exceedingly difficult.
Boats are clearly an important necessity for any society, but deepwater travel is problematic for other reasons. Indeed, the only ships sturdy enough and brave (or foolish) enough to traverse the deep oceans are of Aphrodite make, and these are slowly being eclipsed by the safer airships recently introduced.
Obviously, Venus has a lot of rainfall. Sometimes these storms can get rather severe with high winds, but the biggest fear tends to be acid rather than winds. These storms happen occasionally, but enough to bother farmers and city-goers alike. Everyone tends to own waterproof cloaks for the frequent rains, and some even own acid-proof clothes that serve to deal with minor acidfall (mostly soldiers and those that have no choice but to be out in it).
All of this serves to make Venus’s wilds very difficult to tame, minimizing the success widespread agriculture has had. Indeed, civilized farming tends to work best at higher altitudes—which Agriculture has in abundance, perhaps explaining their rise to prominence. Water-born food sources like rice tend to fare well, too—indeed, the prominence and importance of water will likely influence much of Venus’s cultures and religions.
Oceans, Rivers, Rainfall, and Water:
As mentioned previously, water is important on Venus. Natural waterways form the basis for communication, trade, and fresh water; the tide of the oceans creates the standard Venusian measurement of time, and acid storms are a plague and unifying factor for all. Water is everywhere, and it is both beneficial and harmful.
- Oceans: Where the water is shallow, travel by boat is safe—in deeper water, patches of acidic sea are more likely, and the dangerous denizens of the deep oceans can terrorize and sinks ships, and consume sailors. This has limited travel throughout Venus for ages, leaving much of the world unexplored and uncharted. Airships are changing this by allowing people to take to the skies, but this is slow-going. (Note that Sulfuric Acid is denser than water, and thus confined to the deeper regions of the ocean and occasional rainfall)
- Rivers: Venus has its fair share of rivers—more all the time when severe acid storms cut new channels in the terrain. Rivers bring in fresh water—ocean water isn’t precisely salty, but it does carry silt and a higher instance of acidity, making it less preferable to consume (dangerous in some instances). But rivers are so plentiful that supply is rarely an issue. Droughts are unheard of.
- Rainfall: Frequent, sometimes torrential. Much of Venus is rain forest or jungle. Most rainfall is simply water, but there is the occasional acid storm (causing ‘acidfall’), and, of course, the Scourge. Rainfall is reliable, steady, and expected in this warm and wet environment—and as there are always clouds overhead, it could happen at any time.
- Water: In a general sense, Venusian water doesn’t look like earth water—not that the inhabitants would ever know the difference. It sparkles, appearing a little silvery in color—and indeed, the clouds are all a little silvery to match. Even storm clouds aren’t so dark (excepting The Storm).
All about the Land:
Venus has developed an immensely fertile soil from its terraforming, and use of sulfuric acid concentrations to improve soil has also been utilized. Farming is not a matter of getting things to grow, but getting the right thing to grow. Beyond the soil, though, Venus is a place of your standard variations in elevation: valleys, rolling hills, and even steep mountains and plateaus. The big difference, though, is that Venus is full of green. Forests, swamps, jungles, thick grasslands—something is always growing on the Morning Star. Even the sparse deserts have their fair share of cacti.
To be a little more specific, Venus has essentially two types of climates: Highlands and Lowlands. At higher altitudes, temperatures cool enough that the environment is less thick, and more prone to traditional temperate conditions—deciduous forests, rolling grasslands, and cooler swamps in some cases. The Lowlands, easily more frequent, are more classically Venusian—teeming with jungle-like trees, vines draped everywhere, bamboo-like plants, and so on. It’s hotter and more humid in the Lowlands, and so farming tends to be more work. Even once cleared for habitation, these tropical climates tend to slowly overtake civilizations foothold, as new vines and trees spring up almost overnight (well, literally overnight), making these towns look like a meld between buildings and greenery.
In terms of mineral content, Venus is about standard Earth fare. Terraforming has accomplished some impressive feats in its time. Coins are still the standard currency, particularly as acid will not ruin them—paper has never even occurred to them. Lesser societies still use bartering, especially with gems and goods, but Aphrodite has a well-instituted currency, using predominantly silver or silver alloys. Gold is the higher form of currency, valuable as ever, but is seen only seldom in most circles.
That was a tangent. At any rate, in terms of minerals, Venus is unremarkable, except that items that do not react to sulfuric acid tend to be more valuable (silver and gold, for instance).
The Sky Overhead:
Clouds. Lots of damn clouds. It’s rare that the clouds part at all, and so seeing the silvery clouds overhead has become pretty typical. As such, astrology is virtually non-existant. The people don’t see the artificial moon, they don’t see stars and galaxies. The sun appears as a brighter circle of sky moving across above them, and this can give them an estimate of where in a Cycle they are—but it is otherwise unseen. Towards sunrise or sunset, the skies grow brilliantly orange or red like an earth sunset (though they don’t see the sun itself). Due to the slow Venusian day, of course, these sunsets can last for a very long time (a full Tide, probably).
Venusian Skies are also where airships travel. These ships have revolutionized exploration, colonization, military might, and travel. They are exclusively controlled by Aphrodite, who jealously guards their technological might. High winds and acid storms can sometimes be perilous for airships, but it is vastly safer than traversing the deep oceans.
As this is the name of the campaign, you can bet air travel will have a lot to do with the setting. The clouds and acid rain may also feature heavily into things, as well as the ‘hidden sky’ beyond (stars).
Continents:
There are essentially four major land regions of Venus. ‘Land mass’ would be a misleading term, since only two of them are entirely contiguous. There are also countless islands scattered across Venus, most of them unexplored, boasting who-knows-what.
(Okay, the continents need names. I’ve already stolen the NASA naming scheme for the names of the Colony Ships, so I need something else for the land. For now, they will be referred to by cardinal directions)
- East. The eastern continent is our standard setting, where the majority of colony ships landed and where the Aphrodite empire flourishes. It is long, stretching across the planet horizontally, fairly close to the equator. To the northwest, this continent has highlands, and this is where Aphrodite’s core territory (Cytherea and other provinces) is located. It is urbanized, cultivated, and less tropical than other regions. The outlaying area of the Empire are mostly cultivated, as well, but as one proceeds towards the south and eastern ends of the continent, rivers become more numerous and the lands become lower in altitude. These areas are more wild, except in patches where the highlands have blocked moisture to create little deserts. Towards the northeast, a thriving delta of rivers forms the basis of Hathor lands, these already under Imperial control but rich in history and culture of their own. Their land is not so high as Aphrodite, but still has a thorough farming system. The intervening land is dominated by primitive tribes scattered throughout the savage lowlands. The Oshun tower is somewhere within this area.
- North. The northern continent carries two colony ships—Astarte and the doomed Ishtar. Astarte landed towards the southeast, and accordingly most human civilization has sprung up in that area. The land is brutal and hot, lowlands, but the people there have adapted to it and established cities. Inversely, the extremely high plateau on this continent is considered off-limited due to the strange creatures dwelling there. A warrior-ruled society, the people of the northern continent are constantly repelling attacks from these beasts. These extreme highlands tend to be very cold compared to the rest of Venus, and are the only place where snowfall actually occurs—and it’s always snowfall. Somewhere in the center of this plateau a valley exists where the Ishtar tower crashed, and strange things are afoot there.
- West. The western continent, only recently receiving visitors, is considered harsh and inhospitable—very accurate, really. This low-lying expanse of lands, most of them barely-connected islands, is home to many bizarre creatures and certain tribal humans that have adjusted to the Venusian climate—mutating in some cases. There are few structures here, excepting the people that dwell on the northern island, with a higher altitude. These people are still not quite civilized, though, prone to frequent raids on the small tribal settlements to their south. Somewhere in this mess is the Freyja tower, but it has mostly sunk into marshy terrain it landed on, and forms the center of a small lake. The land here is especially moist and swampy as compared to other regions, making long-term settlements problematic at best. Some villages build using stilts for their huts, or construct tree-cities.
- South. The southern archipelago, as large as a small continent, is home to many scattered tribes and villages. Unlike those to the West, these have formed a sort of confederation under a unified religion (similar to the kingdoms around Hathor), and centered on their tower Xochiquetzal on the centermost island. They are extremely distrustful of outsiders, prone to violent and bloody rituals, but full of interesting rites and treasures. This is a place many explorers are eager to go (but then, so is the west, where rumors abound of ancient ruins). Land here is all lowlands, thick with vegetation and completely jungle.
Natural Disasters and Other Unusual Features:
The Scourge, as previously mentioned, is the most critical natural disaster on the planet. Since it eventually hits everyone, it’s a significant occurrence. The acidity of the planet is in general an important feature, as it impacts plants and animals alike, and unifies civilization against a common foe.
The day/night cycle will also cause unusual events. Plantlife that runs in rapid 120-Tide cycles has already been discussed, but there will likely be creatures that strike to remain in constant darkness of constant light, nomadically moving around the planet. Birds and seas creatures are the best candidates for this, though perhaps some greatly enterprising humans could undertake this—the southern inhabitants of the East continent, certainly, have the best odd of maximizing their sunlight by moving west-to-east with the sun, then rapidly moving west again to catch the sun as it rises. Done properly, they could minimize their nights to the time it takes to cross the continent (admittedly this is significant). Airships make such propositions even easier.
There are still many islands that have yet to be detailed, and the further removed a place is from Aphrodite, the more bizarre I hope it to be. Generally speaking, there are only four powerful cultural entities in the world: the Aphrodite Empire (including its seven provinces), Kemet (Ta-Mehew (Lower Kingdom) and Ta-Sheme’aw (Upper Kingdom), the lands near Hathor), and Ashtoreth (a Tetrarchy of four powerful states near Astarte). The other lands are too fragmented to be considered powers, and should have extremely differing cultures (and perhaps Venusian adaptations to express this).
Point being: weirder stuff in the archipelagos, the Northern Plateau, and the Southern Jungles. I’ll add to this section as more stuff crops up.
[NOTE: I’ll try to get a topographical map of Venus up soon, so you all can see what I’m talking about.]
Important Things to Determine:
- The passage of time—Hours, Days, Months, Seasons, etc.
- Weather and Climate
- Oceans, Rivers, Rainfall, and Water
- Everything about the land
- The Sky overhead
- The Individual Continents
- Natural disasters and other unusual world features
The Passage of Time:
Time passes differently on Venus. The world turns slowly, more slowly than the world revolves around the sun, and so days are not a reliable method of tracking time. Venus does have an artificial moon, however, created during the terraforming process to monitor atmospheric conditions and keep the world’s climate from slipping into devastating conditions. The moon circles Venus on a near-24 hour cycle, and though this isn’t visible to Venus’s inhabitants, they do note that the tides rise and fall in a steady 24 hour cycle. Thus, days are counted by ‘High Mark’ (High Tide) and ‘Low Mark’ (Low Tide), each occurring nearly 12 hours apart.
In terms of light and darkness, Venus’s days appear (to its inhabitants) to pass in 120-day cycles. That is, every 60 High Marks, the sun rises or sets. Every 120 High Marks, the cycle completes itself.
‘High’ and ‘Low’ aren’t the only Marks, though. A clock of sorts has formed along shores, incrementally tracking the level of the water as it rises and falls, and breaking it into 11 such Marks (High, Low, and 10 in between. The days works in a 20-Mark cycle).
There are no years on Venus. A year has no value, as there are no dramatic changes in climate as the planet revolves around the sun, and there is no system of astronomy to speak of. The nearest thing to a season is the change from day to light, around which plants grow and die. Agricultural change happens faster on Venus, as plants rise dramatically during the day, are harvested just before nightfall, and go into hibernation for the 60 Tides of Night. Not all plants follow this cycle, but enough do that it has impacted society, and forms the basis for civilization’s patterns. There’s no wet/dry cycle, no cold/hot cycle—just day/night.
So, in summary, these are the methods of tracking time:
- Marks, roughly equivalent to an hour (actually around 1.17 hours, or 70 minutes).
- Tidal Cycles, usually just called Tides, which is one complete cycle from Low Mark to High Mark and back to Low Mark. This is roughly equivalent to one earth day (technically 23.33 earth hours).
- A day on Venus lasts 60 Tides, and a night on Venus lasts the same amount of time. Between the two, one Solar Cycle (or just Cycle), is 120 Tides (or about 117 Earth days). This is essentially a Season on Venus, and the highest unit of measuring time. People measure their age by Cycles, and tend to be 3x the age of people on Earth (a person we would think of as 20 years old is 60 Cycles old).
- What about weeks? This would be more of a governmental separation, which isn’t horribly ridiculous. Indeed, for scheduling growth of crops and harvest and such, it would make sense to separate the days into, say, 5-Tide increments of time. As appropriate for a week, this marks when the old market days would happen. For convenience sake, this will also be referred to as a week on Venus, or perhaps a Fivetide.
- Every three Fivetides is a Quarter, meaning a quarter of the day or night. Quarters typically determine when harvest are done, tracking the movement of the sun through the sky (well, its general location anyway). The Tides of a Fivetide should eventually have names, but I’m not going to get into that yet.
Mark – Hour
Tide – Day
Fivetide – Week (5 days)
Quarter – Month (15 days)
Day/Night – Season (60 days/2 months)
Cycle – Year (120 days/4 months)
Venus will also have a regular storm that passes through, perhaps once every five Cycles (so almost every two years of earth time). This is, incidentally, the time it takes for Earth to reach its nearest point to Venus, so presumably this will be the underlying reason for the storm’s passage.
This storm is an Acid Storm, the worst of its kind. Such acid storms happen from time to time on Venus, but are generally extremely infrequent. Most plants have developed a resistance to it (except some food sources), but most animals have not (people included). It is an event anticipated by all citizens, and they take necessary measures to prepare for it. It should have some kind of name, like the Scourge or something.
Weather and Climate:
Before it was terraformed, Venus was inhabitable—pressure as severe as the oceans, sulfuric acid rain, clouds the races across the sky at hundreds of miles an hour. It was hell.
Venus is habitable now, to be certain, but not all of its unique charm was lost. The clouds, in some respects, were an advantageous aspect of Venus, and so they stayed—though they will no longer kill everything in devastating rains. The clouds are thick and reflective, serving to both block out the skies and to reflect the incredibly severe rays of the sun. But it also equalizes the temperature across the planet, meaning that Venus does not have polar ice caps, nor does it have much variance in climate. Indeed, all of Venus is predominantly humid and hot
There are some exceptions, of course. In some places, Venus is sufficiently high that the air thins out, and things become colder. On the northern plateau, in fact, the weather approaches arctic and snowfall is frequent. In other spots, steep mountains sufficiently block moisture from falling on area, resulting in small deserts—but these are not exceptionally frequent, given Venus’s solid cloud-cover.
There is, in short, a lot of water across Venus and a whole lot of heat—ripe conditions for jungles, swamps, forests, and dense grasslands of vegetation. Mountains are rarely rocky and deprived of vegetation, dry, rolling plains and deserts are a rarity, and so forth. One might think this makes planting and agriculture easy—and in some respects it does—but the vast competition of growing things poses its own problems. There is generally no problem growing something, but keeping weeds from overtaking it can be exceedingly difficult.
Boats are clearly an important necessity for any society, but deepwater travel is problematic for other reasons. Indeed, the only ships sturdy enough and brave (or foolish) enough to traverse the deep oceans are of Aphrodite make, and these are slowly being eclipsed by the safer airships recently introduced.
Obviously, Venus has a lot of rainfall. Sometimes these storms can get rather severe with high winds, but the biggest fear tends to be acid rather than winds. These storms happen occasionally, but enough to bother farmers and city-goers alike. Everyone tends to own waterproof cloaks for the frequent rains, and some even own acid-proof clothes that serve to deal with minor acidfall (mostly soldiers and those that have no choice but to be out in it).
All of this serves to make Venus’s wilds very difficult to tame, minimizing the success widespread agriculture has had. Indeed, civilized farming tends to work best at higher altitudes—which Agriculture has in abundance, perhaps explaining their rise to prominence. Water-born food sources like rice tend to fare well, too—indeed, the prominence and importance of water will likely influence much of Venus’s cultures and religions.
Oceans, Rivers, Rainfall, and Water:
As mentioned previously, water is important on Venus. Natural waterways form the basis for communication, trade, and fresh water; the tide of the oceans creates the standard Venusian measurement of time, and acid storms are a plague and unifying factor for all. Water is everywhere, and it is both beneficial and harmful.
- Oceans: Where the water is shallow, travel by boat is safe—in deeper water, patches of acidic sea are more likely, and the dangerous denizens of the deep oceans can terrorize and sinks ships, and consume sailors. This has limited travel throughout Venus for ages, leaving much of the world unexplored and uncharted. Airships are changing this by allowing people to take to the skies, but this is slow-going. (Note that Sulfuric Acid is denser than water, and thus confined to the deeper regions of the ocean and occasional rainfall)
- Rivers: Venus has its fair share of rivers—more all the time when severe acid storms cut new channels in the terrain. Rivers bring in fresh water—ocean water isn’t precisely salty, but it does carry silt and a higher instance of acidity, making it less preferable to consume (dangerous in some instances). But rivers are so plentiful that supply is rarely an issue. Droughts are unheard of.
- Rainfall: Frequent, sometimes torrential. Much of Venus is rain forest or jungle. Most rainfall is simply water, but there is the occasional acid storm (causing ‘acidfall’), and, of course, the Scourge. Rainfall is reliable, steady, and expected in this warm and wet environment—and as there are always clouds overhead, it could happen at any time.
- Water: In a general sense, Venusian water doesn’t look like earth water—not that the inhabitants would ever know the difference. It sparkles, appearing a little silvery in color—and indeed, the clouds are all a little silvery to match. Even storm clouds aren’t so dark (excepting The Storm).
All about the Land:
Venus has developed an immensely fertile soil from its terraforming, and use of sulfuric acid concentrations to improve soil has also been utilized. Farming is not a matter of getting things to grow, but getting the right thing to grow. Beyond the soil, though, Venus is a place of your standard variations in elevation: valleys, rolling hills, and even steep mountains and plateaus. The big difference, though, is that Venus is full of green. Forests, swamps, jungles, thick grasslands—something is always growing on the Morning Star. Even the sparse deserts have their fair share of cacti.
To be a little more specific, Venus has essentially two types of climates: Highlands and Lowlands. At higher altitudes, temperatures cool enough that the environment is less thick, and more prone to traditional temperate conditions—deciduous forests, rolling grasslands, and cooler swamps in some cases. The Lowlands, easily more frequent, are more classically Venusian—teeming with jungle-like trees, vines draped everywhere, bamboo-like plants, and so on. It’s hotter and more humid in the Lowlands, and so farming tends to be more work. Even once cleared for habitation, these tropical climates tend to slowly overtake civilizations foothold, as new vines and trees spring up almost overnight (well, literally overnight), making these towns look like a meld between buildings and greenery.
In terms of mineral content, Venus is about standard Earth fare. Terraforming has accomplished some impressive feats in its time. Coins are still the standard currency, particularly as acid will not ruin them—paper has never even occurred to them. Lesser societies still use bartering, especially with gems and goods, but Aphrodite has a well-instituted currency, using predominantly silver or silver alloys. Gold is the higher form of currency, valuable as ever, but is seen only seldom in most circles.
That was a tangent. At any rate, in terms of minerals, Venus is unremarkable, except that items that do not react to sulfuric acid tend to be more valuable (silver and gold, for instance).
The Sky Overhead:
Clouds. Lots of damn clouds. It’s rare that the clouds part at all, and so seeing the silvery clouds overhead has become pretty typical. As such, astrology is virtually non-existant. The people don’t see the artificial moon, they don’t see stars and galaxies. The sun appears as a brighter circle of sky moving across above them, and this can give them an estimate of where in a Cycle they are—but it is otherwise unseen. Towards sunrise or sunset, the skies grow brilliantly orange or red like an earth sunset (though they don’t see the sun itself). Due to the slow Venusian day, of course, these sunsets can last for a very long time (a full Tide, probably).
Venusian Skies are also where airships travel. These ships have revolutionized exploration, colonization, military might, and travel. They are exclusively controlled by Aphrodite, who jealously guards their technological might. High winds and acid storms can sometimes be perilous for airships, but it is vastly safer than traversing the deep oceans.
As this is the name of the campaign, you can bet air travel will have a lot to do with the setting. The clouds and acid rain may also feature heavily into things, as well as the ‘hidden sky’ beyond (stars).
Continents:
There are essentially four major land regions of Venus. ‘Land mass’ would be a misleading term, since only two of them are entirely contiguous. There are also countless islands scattered across Venus, most of them unexplored, boasting who-knows-what.
(Okay, the continents need names. I’ve already stolen the NASA naming scheme for the names of the Colony Ships, so I need something else for the land. For now, they will be referred to by cardinal directions)
- East. The eastern continent is our standard setting, where the majority of colony ships landed and where the Aphrodite empire flourishes. It is long, stretching across the planet horizontally, fairly close to the equator. To the northwest, this continent has highlands, and this is where Aphrodite’s core territory (Cytherea and other provinces) is located. It is urbanized, cultivated, and less tropical than other regions. The outlaying area of the Empire are mostly cultivated, as well, but as one proceeds towards the south and eastern ends of the continent, rivers become more numerous and the lands become lower in altitude. These areas are more wild, except in patches where the highlands have blocked moisture to create little deserts. Towards the northeast, a thriving delta of rivers forms the basis of Hathor lands, these already under Imperial control but rich in history and culture of their own. Their land is not so high as Aphrodite, but still has a thorough farming system. The intervening land is dominated by primitive tribes scattered throughout the savage lowlands. The Oshun tower is somewhere within this area.
- North. The northern continent carries two colony ships—Astarte and the doomed Ishtar. Astarte landed towards the southeast, and accordingly most human civilization has sprung up in that area. The land is brutal and hot, lowlands, but the people there have adapted to it and established cities. Inversely, the extremely high plateau on this continent is considered off-limited due to the strange creatures dwelling there. A warrior-ruled society, the people of the northern continent are constantly repelling attacks from these beasts. These extreme highlands tend to be very cold compared to the rest of Venus, and are the only place where snowfall actually occurs—and it’s always snowfall. Somewhere in the center of this plateau a valley exists where the Ishtar tower crashed, and strange things are afoot there.
- West. The western continent, only recently receiving visitors, is considered harsh and inhospitable—very accurate, really. This low-lying expanse of lands, most of them barely-connected islands, is home to many bizarre creatures and certain tribal humans that have adjusted to the Venusian climate—mutating in some cases. There are few structures here, excepting the people that dwell on the northern island, with a higher altitude. These people are still not quite civilized, though, prone to frequent raids on the small tribal settlements to their south. Somewhere in this mess is the Freyja tower, but it has mostly sunk into marshy terrain it landed on, and forms the center of a small lake. The land here is especially moist and swampy as compared to other regions, making long-term settlements problematic at best. Some villages build using stilts for their huts, or construct tree-cities.
- South. The southern archipelago, as large as a small continent, is home to many scattered tribes and villages. Unlike those to the West, these have formed a sort of confederation under a unified religion (similar to the kingdoms around Hathor), and centered on their tower Xochiquetzal on the centermost island. They are extremely distrustful of outsiders, prone to violent and bloody rituals, but full of interesting rites and treasures. This is a place many explorers are eager to go (but then, so is the west, where rumors abound of ancient ruins). Land here is all lowlands, thick with vegetation and completely jungle.
Natural Disasters and Other Unusual Features:
The Scourge, as previously mentioned, is the most critical natural disaster on the planet. Since it eventually hits everyone, it’s a significant occurrence. The acidity of the planet is in general an important feature, as it impacts plants and animals alike, and unifies civilization against a common foe.
The day/night cycle will also cause unusual events. Plantlife that runs in rapid 120-Tide cycles has already been discussed, but there will likely be creatures that strike to remain in constant darkness of constant light, nomadically moving around the planet. Birds and seas creatures are the best candidates for this, though perhaps some greatly enterprising humans could undertake this—the southern inhabitants of the East continent, certainly, have the best odd of maximizing their sunlight by moving west-to-east with the sun, then rapidly moving west again to catch the sun as it rises. Done properly, they could minimize their nights to the time it takes to cross the continent (admittedly this is significant). Airships make such propositions even easier.
There are still many islands that have yet to be detailed, and the further removed a place is from Aphrodite, the more bizarre I hope it to be. Generally speaking, there are only four powerful cultural entities in the world: the Aphrodite Empire (including its seven provinces), Kemet (Ta-Mehew (Lower Kingdom) and Ta-Sheme’aw (Upper Kingdom), the lands near Hathor), and Ashtoreth (a Tetrarchy of four powerful states near Astarte). The other lands are too fragmented to be considered powers, and should have extremely differing cultures (and perhaps Venusian adaptations to express this).
Point being: weirder stuff in the archipelagos, the Northern Plateau, and the Southern Jungles. I’ll add to this section as more stuff crops up.
[NOTE: I’ll try to get a topographical map of Venus up soon, so you all can see what I’m talking about.]
Acid Storms could provide for strange illumination, maybe?
