Introduction
Cloudspace was created during my first "serious" forays into world design back in the early days of the 1990s. It was designed as a home for Talerra—a small world that was slowly developing as the base of my campaign. The planet was meant to be a starting point for Spelljammer campaigns, but I wanted the populace at large to be ignorant of the outside world. This led me to design the planet—and, later, the sphere—to be relatively isolated.
Defining Cloudspace was a secondary objective in the beginning, since I was waiting for the party that was adventuring on Talerra to advance several more levels before their journey into the void. As such, the sphere went through several iterations in my head—an advantage of not having to keep anything consistent with existing material—before settling into the form documented here.
The sphere was originally filled with dozens of giant air worlds and a single terrestrial world orbiting the system's small sun. The many planets led to a loss of focus within the sphere, so all the air worlds, save one, were eventually replaced by the "Gods' Breath" clouds. The rest of the sphere's features evolved over time, and continue to do so to this day.
Sphere Overview
Cloudspace is a small, heliocentric sphere. It has a diameter of 1,920
million miles (just over 19 days at spelljamming speed), making it
less than one third the diameter of Realmspace. The temperature is a
pleasant sixty to sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit in the inner system,
but it drops into the low fifties as you get out towards the sphere wall.
The stars, as seen from the worlds of Cloudspace, are actually portals into the flow. These portals are unusually large—some over a mile across!—and sages theorize they may be the reason this relatively young sphere is so warm. Another point of interest is that no portal has closed—nor new portal opened—on this sphere within the lifetime of the oldest humans.
Two planets, a handful of moons and a sparse asteroid belt are the primary places of interest in Cloudspace. Talerra is the most densely inhabited world in the sphere, but its xenophobic population keeps the casual spacefarer away. The asteroids of the Dust Belt are small and mostly lifeless. A handful of populated cloud cities in this belt follow erratic orbits that make it hard to predict their location over a period of more than a few months. A small dry dock facility, The Smiling Spider, orbits a primitive jungle moon around Rainbow. It is the best place to learn more about the sphere.
Worlds of Cloudspace
Additional Astronomicals
The Gods' Breath
One of the unique features about this sphere is the large pockets of fresh air that drift around in the outer quarter of the crystal sphere—between 600 million and 950 million miles form the sun. The pockets are shaped like flattened spheres; they average several hundred to several thousand miles in diameter, with a depth of one-fifth to one-tenth that distance. These air pockets form a shell around the sun, and lie along the same plane as the nearby sphere wall. The clouds are rarely more than fifty million miles from one another and can be seen as fuzzy stars up to 500 million miles away. Individuals inside of an air pocket see blue skies when they look towards the sun.
These air pockets have no natural gravity of their own—though they still force ships to tactical speed. Small asteroids are sometimes found drifting along inside of a pocket, providing a haven for a variety of flying (and non-flying) creatures. Most are harmless, but they provide food for larger predators, such as scavvers. The asteroids often have pools (or lakes, for the larger ones) of water and a variety of plant life. These rocks were most likely part of the Dust Belt at some point. They're a common stopping point for ships leaving the sphere, or even those just "passing by".
Clouds are very common inside of the air pockets. (So common, in fact, that the air pockets themselves are referred to as "clouds".) The clouds in an air pocket grow, shrink and drift just as they would on a terrestrial world. They can be light and fluffy, thin and wispy, or dark and rain-laden. Thunderclouds occur, though it rarely rains. When it does, the rain "falls" in random directions around the air pocket. Sometimes, the clouds grow to fill up the entire pocket that they inhabit. These "dark" air pockets can block stars as seen from the planets.
Some of the air pockets—or, in some cases, just the clouds inside—are not simply fresh air. They can have foul or deadly air, and may completely displace a ship's atmosphere. Others might contain spores or hallucinogenic compounds that cause havoc with the crew. A successful Wildspace Survival skill check should be able to identify bad areas of air.
Inhabitants of Cloudspace
Cloudspace is a lightly traveled crystal sphere. Few visitors from outside journey deeper than the orbit of Rainbow. Those that do, usually have business with the cloud cities of the Dust Belt. The rare individuals who go all the way to Talerra tend to keep their origins secret by disguising themselves as seafarers.
Imperial Elven Navy
The IEN presence in Cloudspace is a single man-o-war, the Minya Oore (translation: "First Sunrise"), assigned to patrol the sphere and keep an eye on the scattered groups of elves found on the various worlds. It is lightly crewed, and carries an ambassador for political dealings. The ship spends half of its time patrolling the Gods' Breath, with frequent trips to the Smiling Spider, the cloud cities, and the occasional visit to Talerra.
The Minya Oore is seventeen years into its twenty-one year assignment. A courier ship visits them once every eighteen to twenty-four months, collecting reports and relaying messages. The man-o-war has the most accurate and up-to-date charts of this sphere, which the navigator makes available to the crew of the Smiling Spider.
Dwarves of the Mooncleaver Clan
The Mooncleaver Clan is based out of a single large citadel in the Dust Belt. The clan arrived in Cloudspace just over fifteen years ago; their two hammerships carried a dismantled forge. While searching for a good rock in which to build their homes, the dwarves made contact with the elves of the cloud cities. The Mooncleavers numbers over 100 dwarves—not enough yet to power the forges that drive their ship. When their numbers rise, they plan on moving the citadel out into the Gods' Breath to have a better chance of attracting customers for their wares. They will continue to man their trading posts, using their remaining ship to keep them all connected.
The clan currently owns a single hammership, the Light of the Forge, which they use to transport goods to and from the cloud cities. They set up a small trading post on one of the cloudy peaks to keep the construction effort supplied with materials that are hard to find in a desolate asteroid belt—such as wood, food and clothes—for which the dwarves trade finished metal and stone goods.
