Astral map from Spelljammer: Adventures in Space
The big difference for this latest iteration of the astral is that it means travel within systems is relatively slow (even with Spelljamming speed, ditching off Toril of Realmspace out to the Astral boundary is 30 days) but travel between systems is 'DM fiat' officially, 'speed of thought' by the Lore and looking at our last dedicated astral resource (The Plane Above of 4e) travel across the Astral point to point takes d4 to 2d6 days - a range of 1-12 which is still quicker than getting in and out of most systems. For 3.5e in the Manual of the Planes these travel times were 0.5-21 days - so even then travel time between systems was typically shorter than getting out to the Astral in the first place.
Checking what is typical for some famed systems - from the last planet to the Astral in Realmspace is 32 days - but from the Toril itself, 62 days. For Greyhawk this is 40 days from the Spectre - but Oerth is a geo-centric system so you are *80 days* from the Astral boundary to actually landing a Spelljammer on Mordenkainens lawn. Krynnspace is a bit smaller - 20 days from the stellar islands to the astral boundary, 39 days to Krynn. I generated a pair of systems for my Light of Xaryxis campaign and those had 60 and *76* days from the outer planet to the Astral Boundary. With a typical Spelljammer air-capacity of 120 days that makes it a risky business in some places to do the combined crossing of two 'outer systems' in a voyage - out from your start system - crossing the astral needs no air - then in at your destination.
All this suggests connecting Astral realms is simple enough but projecting power into systems is harder; suggesting you might have Astral based realms and powers who leave systems to themselves. Treating the Astral as an ocean and the spheres of wildspace as 'landmasses' seems broadly appropriate. However, almost all the 'landmasses' you come to on the astral sea have barren coastlines with all the interesting stuff in deep interior. The big difference between our perception of 'space is the high ground' from sci-fi is that we have three bits
- the astral which is really easy to traverse, if chaotic in how long it might take
- the wildspace 'expanse' between the astral boundary and any planets
- the various planets
Typical random rolled star-system
Crossing that wildspace moat is tedious and locks you into an in-escapable journey - travelling in, doing the thing and travelling back out even at Spelljamming speed takes a while. My recent Light of Xaryxis campaign lasted a continuous calendar year in game with no downtime simply because of the time burned in getting in and out of a system and travelling over and back between worlds. Compared to the mobility afforded by the Astral, dealing with Wildspace is *slow*.
From that initial reddit post there was a list of powers who were once 'powers of Wildspace' recognised as the big players in the phlogiston between crystal spheres. Powers mentioned on the post included:
- The Elven Imperial Fleet, which has always been kicking around, one of the few inter-planetary groups
- The Xaryxians, as in the 5e book, an elven pocket empire
- The Vodoni Empire, interesting one, villains back from AD&D, a human empire, with a few systems back in the day
- Unhuman forces - the orcs, goblinoids, and so on - shards of a nation broken by the 'forces of law' back in the day
- The Scro empire - more organised orcs, supposed to be out there forming a multi-system nation
- Shards of the Illithid Empire, hunted by the githyanki & githzerai; possess some worlds
- Psurlons, who are an interesting bunch of shapeshifters that are good for using in place of Mind Flayer
- Beholder hives
- To these, with the Astral Sea, we should add the Githyanki - of whom we have talked recently - native to the astral.
One would imagine you can always have a pocket empire of some random necromancer, lich, whatever, slowly working away.
Mindflayers worlds make a lot of sense when you consider the 'wildspace moat' and the fact that githyanki will age all their time spent on the astral when they leave the astral. Hiding out on worlds off the astral makes sense, let your enemies perish of old age if they dare to come after you.
Psurlons are fun - like a budget Mind Flayer - but with access to much of the same kit like Nautiloids and the likes. They work perfectly well with Mind Flayers so you could have an interesting set of psurlons running around with things like Mind Witnesses, quaggoths, neh-thagglu and maybe some of the madder psionic or arcane tools, which might be them running down legacy equipment from departed allies or things that they found kept in bottles or stasis or whatever. I think they have a fun potential as they are not quite as dangerous as Mind Flayers but they come from a different tactical angle in that they are more into shape-shifting and skulduggery.
Then you have beholder hives which I think are actually the perfect foil because a bunch of beholders is bad news. Even one beholder ship, if you shoot it out from under the crew then you still have 10 beholders who can fly at you and ruin your whole day. So with beholders, the story is kiting them into one another and generally just avoiding having to go toe to toe with them at all.
Then you have a bunch of groups that are not empires or nations of themselves - they operate in and around other peoples realms:
- Giff mercenary bands, which is interesting that we've never heard of a Gith central power
- The Neogi are slavers and traders so more welcome in bad neighbourhoods
- Mercane and the Dohwar, the penguin folk, are traders in other people's realms,
These are a bunch of folk who will rock up if someone has enough coin but they are not really the kind of expansionist powers that you would run up against.
All the above are vessel-bound groups who travel by ship and can be found in Wildspace. Out on the Astral itself there are also a bunch of natives and a couple of the above groups could also be found flying about individually without their ships (githyanki, illithids and beholders). From The Plane Above who else was hanging out on the Astral Sea? Who is going to be there on your intra-system jaunts? According to that the races of the Astral Sea ought to include:
- The Couatls, the feathered serpents - competing for glorious slayings in the cause of good
- The Maruts, the Inevitables - described as 'warrior bureaucrats of the heavens', harbingers of all order
- The Quom, dwellers on great comet ships - seeking shards of their dead god at any cost
- Miscellaneous big nasty monsters like devourers, astral dreadnaughts, wandering demons, devils and celestials
The Quom are an interesting sort - a comet ship-dwelling race who had their god die, and now they seek to bring them back whatever it takes. A dash of craftworlds in there with a fully mobile empire of world-ships. Definitely some mileage in there but perhaps they ought to be listed among the vessel-using powers before.
The big, nasty things hanging around in the Astral, like the classic Astral Dreadnoughts, suggest the vessel-using groups will have whaler equivalents, dedicated monster-hunting ships like Astral Clippers and Astral Schooners of the githyanki being sort of like a classic version.
Pulling all this together and it seems like you should have a bunch of Astral powers continually in each others business because it is impossible to enforce a border on the Astral - everything is equidistant and once your foe has gotten to one of your places once, it is much easier to get back there the next time. I feel I have not fully plumbed the implications of the astral having no defencable boundaries and planets in wildspace being that much trickier to get at, let us consider this a setting of the table, to be returned to again.
For general background Dump Stat just released a chunky summary of the astral to compliment their earlier piece on the plane both of which are good backgrounders.
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