The Dust Belt is a sparse ring of asteroids orbiting the sun, occupying the space between Talerra and Rainbow. Most of these rocks are small—less than a couple hundred yards across, some no bigger than a pebble. The space between the asteroids, each of which are many thousands of miles apart, is filled with bands of fine, greyish-brown dust—from which the belt gets its name. No one knows from where this dust comes, but it somehow replenishes itself—even though it seems to be constantly lost to the gravity wells of the asteroids with which it shares its orbit.
Ships flying through the Dust Belt may not even realize that they are inside an asteroid belt. Their chances of slowing to tactical speed are very slim indeed—less than 0.01%. To determine if your players encounter an asteroid, roll a d10 four times. If each roll was a zero, then their ship drops to tactical speed near an asteroid somewhere along the 100 million miles the belt covers. There's a 5% chance that the ship will fly through a dust band. (This doesn't force it to slow to tactical speed.) When that happens, the crew will be at a -1 penalty to vision related skill checks and some members might pick up a light cough until the dust settles—covering every horizontal surface on the ship's hull—after 1d6 minutes.
Asteroids more than a few dozen feet in size often have atmospheres, water, and a variety of simple plants and animals. The plants—mosses and fern-like shrubs—have acquired the ability to vibrate when touched. This ability allows the "shiver plants" to shake of any dust that's collected on their leaves or other photosynthetic surfaces. They can continue to shake for several minutes—or until the pressure is relieved—and must rest several hours before moving again. Life-bearing asteroids are home to small mammals commonly referred to as "dust bunnies". The dust bunnies look somewhat like furry, long-legged frogs. They feed on a wide variety of insects and some types of shiver plants. Dust bunnies are harmless, their only defense being the ability to jump great distances—over one hundred feet, for the larger specimens. They often use this ability to jump between nearby asteroids. It is unlikely that these creatures are native to the Dust Belt, though how they arrived remains a mystery.
Though the Dust Belt is made up of mostly small asteroids, there are a handful of larger ones following erratic orbits around the sun. (Some theorize that the dust, over the course of several weeks, can affect the course of large objects.) They are several hundred miles in diameter (size C) and have thick atmospheres surrounding what appears to be a core of magma. The largest of these asteroids, big as a good-sized moon, is Shepherd.
The six major asteroids in the Dust Belt share several things in common. Their magma cores are surrounded by several miles of thick, noxious gas, which, in turn, are surrounded by blue, cloud-filled skies. Some of the clouds on the large asteroids are solid, and can support a small city or farm. These solid clouds are populated by several races, including elves and aarokocra. (The material from the Aerial Adventure Guides put out by Goodman Games would find a natural home in the clouds of these asteroids.)
Shepherd marks the inner radius of the Dust Belt; it follows a predictable path around the sun, unlike most other bodies in that range. Its regular orbit makes it a very popular meeting place for the belt's other inhabitants, who use skyships to travel between cloud cities and the asteroids themselves.
