Worlds

Twenty-five kinds of ground

Survey a system, learn what its worlds are actually made of, then decide which is worth a colony ship. Some will feed a population for a century, some pay in things that should not exist, and some are cheap rock nobody will ever come for — which is its own kind of value.

What a world holds differs from galaxy to galaxy. You find out by looking.

Solid ground

  • Lush world render

    Lush

    Water, weather, and room to grow into.

  • Terrestrial world render

    Terrestrial

    Familiar enough that nobody writes home about it. That is the appeal.

  • Oasis world render

    Oasis

    Green where the water reaches, dead everywhere else. The border is the whole story.

  • Tropical world render

    Tropical

    Hot, wet, and growing over anything you stop maintaining.

  • Ocean world render

    Ocean

    Almost no land, and every metre of it argued over.

  • Aquamarine world render

    Aquamarine

    Shallow seas the whole way round, bright enough to see from orbit.

  • Muddy world render

    Muddy

    Neither land nor water will commit. Everything here sinks a little.

  • Cloudy world render

    Cloudy

    You will map it by instrument. Nobody has seen the surface from above.

  • Arid world render

    Arid

    Dust and thin air. Shallow ground, easy digging.

  • Dry world render

    Dry

    It had water once. What it kept instead is what was dissolved in it.

  • Rocky world render

    Rocky

    Plain stone, and a great deal of it. Where most empires start.

  • Cratered world render

    Cratered

    Struck often enough that the ground is other worlds now.

  • Lunar world render

    Lunar

    Grey, still, and close enough to somewhere useful to matter.

  • Barren world render

    Barren

    Bare rock. Cheap to hold, and no one is coming to take it from you.

  • Airless world render

    Airless

    No atmosphere to lose, so nothing weathers and nothing hides.

  • Snowy world render

    Snowy

    Cold, but it still has seasons. The thaw is when the work happens.

  • Icy world render

    Icy

    Ice over something. Finding out what takes patience.

  • Frozen world render

    Frozen

    Locked solid. Everything here is harder than it ought to be.

  • Glacial world render

    Glacial

    The ice moves, slowly, and takes whatever you built on it.

  • Magma world render

    Magma

    Still cooling, still moving. It pays in things you find nowhere else.

Gas giants

  • Blue giant world render

    Blue giant

    No surface to stand on. You take what you need from orbit.

  • Green giant world render

    Green giant

    Its colour comes from something in the upper bands worth harvesting.

  • Orange giant world render

    Orange giant

    Banded and restless. Storms outlive the crews that chart them.

  • Red giant world render

    Red giant

    Deep, heavy and slow. Everything sent down comes back up expensive.

  • Yellow giant world render

    Yellow giant

    Bright enough to work by, and never quiet.