Shatterspark (5e Environment)
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This page is incomplete and/or lacking flavor. Reason: Unfinished
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Our story spreads from a planetoid called Ferron, known for being a relatively cosmopolitan flatworld that's grown in prestige and population thanks to its policies of open trade and protected enterprise. Ferron itself is only a few hundred miles wide. It's one of many celestial bodies floating through a colossal region of space we known as Shatterspark. Shatterspark is populated by everything from tiny mile-wide skyles to orbworlds several times the size of Ferron herself.
Gravity Cores. Each celestial body is centered upon what's called a gravity core that simultaneously gives the body a contained gravitational pull and a gravity barrier. The pull keeps creatures and items upon its surface, while the barrier provides an invisible cushion of force that prevents collisions with other celestial bodies.
These cores vary widely, and are often at the unreachable centers of each world to prevent easy study. Generally each appears as a Large, solid gemstone. Each core's gravitational properties influence the body around it, such as having unidirectional gravity (flatworlds) or gravity that's nearly the same in every direction (orbworlds). Weight tends to be fairly consistent between cores, but outliers exist; on such outlier worlds, the same item might be much heavier on much lighter than is standard. The origin of cores is shrouded in myth, but a common belief is that they were all once part of one entity—and perhaps most celestial bodies were as well.
Celestial Drifting. Within Shatterspark, the drifting of celestial bodies is as unpredictable as Ferron's weather. But, generally, all bodies within the Shatterspark system stay in a relatively contained bundle, as if drawn to the company of each other. Some days a bird's flight is enough to reach the neighboring hemispherical world of Jotun's Crown, while another day it might take more than a week of high-speed slingjamming travel to reach it.
Void. The area of Shatterspark outside the pull of any body's gravity is called the void. It's a rather dangerous space. Its thin atmosphere robs most creatures of breath. Mysterious aberrations like starsharks and cthuldrones predate any helpless floaters who find themselves in the void, and cruel folks like mindflayers are known to pull floaters into an even worse fate. At any given time the "void" between worlds tend to be rather narrow, such that a neighboring world is almost never out of reach to a bird willing to hold its breath for a minute or so.
Slingjammers & Interworld Travel
While there are many known forms of airship, slingjammers are the most renowned sort, specializing in high-speed interworld travel. Each slingjammer harnesses a contained and manipulated gravity core, albeit one weak enough for mere folks to harness and configure. The core's gravity is manipulated to give a jammer its own, relatively small gravitational pull and gravitational barrier while navigating the otherwise unsafe void. The core is manipulated to give a jammer its primary form of locomotion: pulling the jammer itself to the nearest body. A skilled pilot can rapidly pull a jammer from one body to another, "slingshotting" to ever greater speed, but often at ever greater risk.
Due to the way jammers function, any travel outside Shatterspark itself is likely a one-way trip. With a strong enough slingshot a ship will fly in a straight line into the unknown expanses of void outside of Shatterspark. Belief in worlds beyond Shatterspark is fairly popular, but any crew foolish enough to slingshot into the void has never been heard from again.
Despite how famous slingerjammers are throughout Shatterspark, these ships incredibly costly to craft, often afforded only by vast governing bodies instead of mere individuals. Common folks are more likely to use wings or balloons to only travel to one neighboring world at a time, using cosmological forecasting to plan trips that take multiple stops over weeks or months. As such forecasting isn't perfect, anything more than a daytrip to a neighboring world is an incredible risk from one which may never return.
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