The Observatory

The Observatory is the most common name for the solar system arranged around the Empyrean, or the Genus Solaris. At first glance, it is a simple star surrounded by a surprising number of planets, a staggering 108 satellites orbiting in multiple planes with eccentric yet stable orbits.
In truth, it is a dyson sphere that is one mighty mind, each planet a specific component, and its star the CPU. Small locations develop immaterial spirits which manage their weather, composition, and other factors, and have roughly the intelligence of a human. These form the minds of larger locations, the size of nations, much like how individual neurons and clusters of neurons form a brain or organ. These Genus Loci have minds that are comparable to large corporations or small governments by themselves, only barely understandable from a mortal perspective. These are but the component organs and neurons of the network that forms the planetary intelligence, the Genus Planetos, whose thoughts are so grand and strange that it it difficult to call them thoughts at all. And at the top of this pyramid of minds is the Genus Solaris itself, a matryoshka doll of nested minds within minds, forming an intelligence that is beyond anything mortals can conceive.
Every orbiting planet is a matrioshka brain, connected to each other by immaterial astral wires the size of worlds, and the star itself an impossibly powerful mind, with plasma currents the size of mountains forming its ever-shifting and adapting neural nets.
Every Planetos hosts life in some form or another, oftentimes recognizable and mighty, other times strange and hidden. On many Planetos there live a wide variety of sapient beings, such as the Fae, the Jade Children, the beast peoples, humanity, and many more nations and empires spanning even those.
When the time comes, the Genus Solaris scours life from the Observatory, preserving only select elements to reseed the next iteration. This mighty, mystical hyper-computer has gone through a number of these resets and iterations, known as kalpa. It is the Twilight of the Eighth Kalpa.

Geography and Structure

The central fixture of the Observatory is the mighty star that forms its gravitational center. It has many names, the Genus Solaris, the Empyrean, and the Prime Mover are but a few of its hundred names.
It is a true star, but what caused it to become a hyper-intelligence, what causes its thoughts, and what created the planets around it is all unknown and the subject of myth, legend, and religion.
The space around the Empyrean is the Astral Sea, a mana-dense ocean of energy whose currents form the data streams and communication between the mighty minds that form the Genus Solaris.
Arranged around the central star are the nine Aether Spheres. Within these Aether Spheres are the Planetos, these are the mighty matrioshka brains that form the servers of the Genus Solaris, and the homes of the many cultures and organic beings that make their home in the Observatory. Each Planetos is composed of multiple Loci, each a nexus of leylines and a superintelligence in its own right. There are also smaller objects orbiting the Genus Solaris or even other Planetos, known as Orbitals, which are normally only a single Loci.
From each Planetos, one can see the four moons of the Observatory: Manamoon, Kimoon, Psimoon, and the Wtfmoon.
Reality has seven Layers. The Physical, the Internal, the Augmented, the Hosted, the Virtual, the Lunar, and the Astral.

The Genus Solaris

The large, golden star at the center of the Observatory. In truth it is an enormous plasma-based computer, utilizing mystical, psionic, and living principles in its design.
It is the pinnacle of existence in the Observatory, all things are born from and strive towards its light.

The Moons

The Observatory has four moons, set amongst the Fixed Stars and located at four, equidistant, tetrahedral positions. They can be seen from every Planetos, though how many are visible at one time varies based on location, time of night, time of year, and other factors.
The Lunar Gates are holes in the Aether Spheres opposite each moon, where the light and domain of the three other moons overlap. Their light is what allows physical access to the various layers.
Of the four moons, three correspond to the three Principles, those of Life, Mind, and Energy. Theories, myths, and legends abound as to the nature of the fourth moon. Each of the moons is associated with aspects of the six senses, either internal or external.
Manalun The celestial body of spellcraft, magic, and motes. It is a blue celestial body without craters, seeming almost fractured because of the many purple lines along its surface, it often drags an aurora borealis around itself as it travels through the night sky. It is associated with societies, the external consciousness, the song of existence, the external song, and the visual world, the external sight.
Kilun The celestial body of life, qigong, and dollops. It is a crimson celestial body covered in craters, often associated with nights of thunderclouds. It is associated with digestion, the internal taste, kinesthesia, the internal touch, and heartbeat, the internal sound. Its appearance in the night sky is often the herald of the mating seasons of animals.
Psilun The celestial body of thought, contemplation, and instinct. It is an emerald orb in the sky, the shadows on its otherwise smooth surface shifting nightly. It is associated with thought, the internal consciousness, the personal experience of existence, the internal sight, and memory, the external smell. Its appearance in the sky is often associated with shooting stars.
Hermanita The strangest and brightest of the celestial bodies. It is a brilliant pink orb with a set pattern of shadows, craters, and lines on its surface. It is the only known celestial body to eclipse the Genus Solaris at any time. It is associated with the physical reality, the external touch and taste, and the breath, the internal smell.

The Astral Sea

The space between the planetos and aether spheres. It's filled with the luminiforous aether, a form of essence in various states.
It is primarily found as luminifaquas, a form of liquid moonlight with traits similar to water, or luminifaeros, a form of essence very similar to air. The luminifaquas forms something like a dense foam or tangled web through the luminifaeros, these streams split and connect and twist around one another, forming a shape similar to that of a network of neurons. These streams range from a few dozen meters thick, to thousands of kilometers.
The largest of these streams have a distinct form of essence known as the luminifterra at their center, these form the special type of streams known as Backbones. These streams of flowing data connect the various Orbitals and Planetos within the Observatory with each other, the moons, and the Genus Solaris.
Within the Astral Sea are numerous and varied beings well adapted to life in these extremely high essence-density areas. Others venture into this sea from Orbitals or Planetos.
Access to the Astral Sea from a Planetos or Orbital is achieved in the Virtual Layer by riding Knock-Up Currents formed by beams of moonlight.
But the most horrifying of these come from the Backbones themselves, either when they intersect or at their borders. The Noise. Entities that are structurally similar to Aeons, Daemons, Elementals, and Kami, but are chaos given form. Their goals inscrutable and unknowable, even to themselves.

The Planetos

Worlds of varying sizes, they all have a shared standard for gravity, pressure, temperature, atmosphere, and similar. Though Planetos can deviate from these defaults, it is normally only in one or two ways. Their weather, geography, species, biomes, and cultures vary wildly.

Orbitals

Lesser Planetos of varying size. They share the same standard settings as the Planetos despite being much smaller, the largest of these having the landmass of Australia, but oftentimes less. There are 666 of these throughout the Observatory, some bound to specific planetos, others wandering the entirety of the Observatory.

The Aether Spheres

Indestructible, nested spheres of crystal that separate the main orbitals of the Genus Solaris. The closer a Sphere is to the Genus Solaris, the greater the ambient power within.
The innermost aether spheres have the highest concentrations of power and energy due to their proximity to the Genus Solaris. And as one gets further away from the star, the power drops off. The outermost aether sphere is the sphere of the Fixed Stars. Believed to be the home of the moons, reflecting the Genus Solaris' light back into the Observatory. Each aether sphere has twelve planetos within it. There are believed to be 666 Orbitals in the Observatory, ranging in size from a single island to some that are the size of entire continents.
Travel between the Spheres is only accomplished through specific streams that pass through the Lunar Gates, places where the light of three moons overlap, opposite of the fourth moon.

The Layers

There are seven layers of reality, much like how there are multiple layers of abstraction in a computer. Generally, travel between the layers is very difficult to outright impossible.

1. Physical Layer: The material world, the realm of atoms and chemical reactions. This is the hardware.
2. Internal Layer: The spiritual landscape of your soul, which most experience as a plain at the base of a mountain. It is from here that people experience and alter their supernatural landscape. This is the personal kernal/software on the level of zeros and ones.
3. Augmented Layer: The edge of where the spiritual world interacts with the physical world. Works on consistent dream logic, it is the 'tech overlay' layer and the basest layer of the spirtual, the closest to the physical. It's where people interact with spirits. It is a layer overlapping with the physical, where the glowing runes of magic, the icons of spells, and the displays of feats occur and reside. It's the place from which most psionics start. Icons, projections, and similar things that appear only in the Augmented Layer are called Arrows (Augmented Reality Objects). This layer is roughly equivalent to machine code.
4. Virtual Layer: This is accessing the layer of the Genus Loci. This is equivalent to the level of programming languages. Perceiving this layer is the minimum needed to see the true immaterial. While the prior layers are either physical, internal, or layered upon the physical, the Hosted Layer is truly beyond physical reality, though 'shadows' or 'references' to the physical world exist here. This is where most spirits reside, and this world operates on what many would term as 'dream logic.' However, there are still rules, such as the inability to fly without wings, or temperatures, or how, hovering above, arranged around the Genus Solaris in fractal patterns are the massive hosts of the Planetos, and closer, like clouds, are tremendous data collections guarded by spiders and IC.
5. Hosted Layer: This is accessing the layer of the Planetos itself. The laws of reality are even looser in this layer than in the Hosted Layer. To be able to access this layer is the minimum for the Sky Tier/Stormcaller. Normally it is only physically accessible through Gateways, areas of overlapping lunar light or specially built doorways, but dedicated or skilled technicians can project into the Virtual Layer without leaving the physical. However, this is the layer which packets fly through to travel between planetos, almost like swimming in the shallows. This layer is roughly equivalent to the level of an operating system.
6. Lunar Layer: This is a nearly mythical layer of access, the layer of the moons. There are in truth four variations of this layer based on which moon one is accessing. Able to route through the moons to access the power of all planetos within their purview. Accessing the Celestial Tier. Roughly equivalent to accessing the internet.
7. Astral Layer: The highest level, routing through the Genus Solaris itself, accessing the entirety of the Observatory at once. Knowledge of this layer is sparse, almost mythical, and mostly theoretical. Required to access the Solar Tier.

Chronology

Time is cyclical and iterative in the Observatory. The Eternal Genus Solaris scours the Observatory of life, selecting certain elements to preserve and reseed its planetos with life. And while the Genus Solaris is eternal, the worlds within it have gone through several cycles of creation and destruction, with millions of years passing between each iteration. Each cycle of growth and destruction is known as a kalpa.
According to the eldest deities and genus planetos queries, the Observatory is on its Eighth Kalpa.
The Septimo Dynasty was founded by the seeding children of the Seventh Kalpa, and ruled nearly the entirety of the Observatory until the Great Rebellion.
It was chaos after the Great Rebellion, every planetos, and sometimes every loci for itself, until the rise of the Templars. The Templar Order started as an offshoot of the original Septimo Dynasty forces that grew in power over time, using the ancient technology and their development of the Hearthsards to bring some measure of justice and order to the inter-planetos relations. The other Great Empires rose during this time as well, until the Templar Order swore itself to the Kingdom.
There have been numerous wars between the great powers over the centuries, with alliances and rivalries shifting over time. But with the Throne of Dominion to master the Streams and the martial and economic might of the Templar Order working together, the Kingdom rose to dominate the Observatory.
However, while they are the single greatest power, the other Great Empires are serious threats.

Culture

There are few unifying cultural elements across the entirety of the Observatory, simply due to its enormous span and breadth of sapient beings and cultures within it.
Their culture is consistently more openly sexual than Earth's, due to a combination of easy access to contraceptives and sexual-disease curatives. Additionally, many cultures favor very light, skimpy clothing due to the more open sexuality, the very mild climates of most planetos, and the ability of the supernatural to protect oneself. Polygamy is also commonly accepted due to the strange disparity of gender ratios for sapient species, theories abound as to why.
Claiming is one of the few universal cultural practices, roughly comparable to a one-sided marriage. A definitive statement of sexual exclusivity and financial responsibility.
The striving for Ascension is seemingly encoded into the very genetics of the world. All life strives for perfection and divinity in some way or another, not necessarily effectively or constantly. However, the way this manifests in any one culture varies.
Another major underlying culture is the self-sufficiency baked into many of them. How this manifests varies, but due to the oftentimes high lethality of the planetos within the Observatory, the average citizen is expected to be able to take care of themselves in one form or another.

Political Climate

There are six major powers in the setting. The Kingdom, the Draconian Protectorate, the Theocracy, the Undying Lands, the Coalition, the Megacorp Alliance, and the Unity.
The largest power is the Templar Kingdom. Ruled by the King, who utilizes the Throne of Dominion to alter the Streams and Gates, and cast along them.
The other major powers are roughly equivalent to one another, which has the advantage or greater power shifting from situation to situation and moment to moment.
The Draconian Protectorate is ruled by an ancient bonewyrm. Its master, a Bonewyrm of such age and power that he lived beyond the turning of the last kalpa, rules it from a mobile lair, an Orbital he has shaped into his own, mobile demiplane to hoard his treasures. His brood and family rule from their own ships in imitation of his orbital, ruling their protectorate states and planetos from their astral fleet.
The Theocracy is ruled by its semi-incarnated Goddess, and is in truth a collection of lesser states serving beneath her. Serving as a worshipful ascension/incarnation platform, all seek true advancement through biological ascension and forced evolution, seeing to create the perfect form for their goddess to incarnate into.
The Undying Lands are ruled by the partially incarnated Demon Prince. These planetos are brought to border on the spiritual, forcibly pushed up the spiritual ladder to blur the lines between the spiritual realms. The pinnacle of tantric research is performed in the Undying Lands, as its Elders pursue greater and greater depths of depravity.
The Coalition is ruled by a democratic alliance of nations, unified by the might of Etheria and her many temple-schools for archwitches, providing the mystical might to prevent the other major powers from asserting their dominance.
The Megacorp Alliance is a group of major corporations without any singular base. They represent the unified corporate interests of the massive, pan-Observatory businesses that keep the economy of the Observatory running.
The Unity is a large empire, run by the eusocial tentacle-beast species, the Cambrians. This psionic species is partially parasitic, with multiple life stages and diverse genetic castes. However, their preferred method of rulership is symbiotic, merging with their hosts and cultivators.

Fauna & Flora

There are wide varieties of species in the Observatory.
Dragons, phoenixes, fae, elementals, jadekin, beast peoples, and more.
The intensity and high amounts of energy suffusing the Observatory means that the ecology is extremely dynamic, powerful, and competitive. Giant monsters roam many planets, some nearly locations unto themselves. The apex species on any particular Planetos are referred to as Kaiju, and are often extremely large, with only a handful of individuals.

Natural Resources

Two supernatural forms of resources form the basis of much of the Observatory. solar motes and echo dollops.
There are also supernatural materials, oftentimes found in locations of intense energy concentrations. Metals tend to hold solar motes extremely well, while living things tend to hold dollops very well.
Orichalcum is definitionally a metal that has the greatest density of solar motes in its structure as is possible.
The specific metals and monsters available in each area and planetos vary wildly.

Alternative Name(s)

The Grand Realm, The Solar System, Heavenly Spheres

Type

Solar System

Included Locations

• Starting Planetos