The Constellations

[Deacon]

Has anyone tried to do any illustrations of these?  I would be glad to give it a shot if I were given proper descriptions on each one of them.  I have read through the information on Baraeon's Constellation, and I will throw something together later when I get home and post it up sometime.  Let me know what you think when I post it.

[Leanthar]

The handbook has a description of each constellation. I would LOVE to see you draw them in a skydoom type thing... never know, if done well enough (or if we can convert it to something well enough) it may just appear in game!

[ZeroVega]

Conveniently enough, I was the one who wrote up the Constellations' Descriptions. Feel free to send me a PM (you have my e-mail also) and we could work together on them if you like. Great idea by the way!

ZV-

[Leanthar]

*smiles at ZV* And a wonderful job he did!

[EdTheKet]

I did tweak them here and there though, ZV Anyway, what's in the book is final.
And there's some stuff happening with one of the constellations, so you might not want to do that one yet (and to avoid any spoilers I'll PM you which one )

[Gulnyr]

Y'know, I thought about this when the constellation descriptions came out, but decided it would be impossible.  The constellations move in a very bizarre manner, and it's pretty rough trying to resolve the motion of one in relation to other constellations.

As an example, this is what Grannoch's constellation description says:

Giantess' Supremacy always has the same number of stars, fifteen, its positions in the sky changes throughout the year, as do the colors of the stars. Summer, the stars glow faint red, and the constellation sits in the Southern sky; Fall, the stars glow yellow, and the constellation sits in the Western sky; Winter, the stars glow the faint blue, and the constellation sits in the Northern sky; Spring, the stars glow the brightest white, and the constellation sits in the Eastern sky.

I'm aware that we're talking about a fantasy world here, but those cannot be stars.  They can be magical balls of light high in the air or orbiting Layonara, but not stars.

I'm not trying to crush this idea.  I like it.  Individual constellation drawings would work.  I just can't see how there could be a definitive map given the constellation descriptions.  I don't mean to sound negative, but I'm an astronomy nut and it kind of hurts my brain trying to get the descriptions to mesh, heh.  Also, just to show how far I thought it through, I have determined that Layonara is flat; no matter where you go, the sky looks the same.  Yeah, I'm a nerd.

[Deacon]

I'm not planning on doing a sky map showing each one of them in relation to each other, I was just considering doing a picture of each one of them separately, then let the DM's handle sorting out their positions

[ZeroVega]

To Gulnyr: I hear you. I'm also a fan of Astonomy, mainly just stars, however the idea I had when I was writing up the constellations is that they're not merely stars, more like windows to the gods and for the gods to Layonara. The sky (mainly the night sky) is always called "The Heavens" so I thought it would be interesting to make them act as if they are embodiments of some sort for the gods.

I agree, the movements I wrote up were possibly a little much (though I am quite fond of some of them), however being that this is a fantasy world, and we're dealing with "planes," powerful entities that can create and destroy entire worlds, and gods who each have a constellation of stars to depict them it made sense (to me at least) that they wouldn't act as stars. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure if you could even call them stars!

The constellation of the Viper, did stars just "appear" when a certain someone attained a certain "level" of power? *shrugs* I don't think even they would have enough power to "create" quantities of hydrogen in with a mass in excess of several nonillion kilograms, that could perform nuclear fusion.  *thinks he sounded really smart*  It's magic!  

Again, I admit I possibly over did it with the movements, however it wouldn't hurt to document their most prominent form(s) just to give people an idea of what they look like. Heck, you could scrap a good deal of the movements all together and still be left with some pretty neat stuff!    Anywho, there you go. ZeroVega's explination, "How the World Works!"

[ZeroVega]

P.S. Your last point was really spiffy Gulnyr, didn't even think about making the star movements (or their "movements" as seen by the inhabitents of the rotating world of Layonara) scientifically "flow" so that the world wouldn't be flat. My bad! (P.S. Remember Dragon Lance? The moons?)  

[Gulnyr]

That's cool, ZV.  I like what you did, and I can see how your thoughts work with the descriptions.