Ravimarga

"Ravimarga" means "Path of the Sun"

• Fantasy setting with ships that move among the stars.
  • They are called "sunships."
• Solar system with four suns, each quite distant from one another, appearing only as very bright stars in the night sky.
  • Each generates its own gravity, with multiple planets orbiting it.
• System of planets, designed according to "Points of Light" design - few settlements, most of them large, with most shipping and transportation arranged by sunships.

The Ravimarga

• A band of "solar winds" upon which ships may sail to move quickly from one place to the other in the Ravimarga system.
  • Requires the use of "sun sails," sails of various colors that shimmer with golden pearlescence, which can catch the solar winds and propel a ship quickly.
  • The longer a ship remains in the solar winds, the hotter it gets, with heatstroke and even spontaneous combustion of wood and cloth after too long.
  • Ships that are crafted of the "divine gold" - thevaqan - are immune to this effect, and in fact move faster than other ships within the Solar Wind.
• Forms a lemniscate path, with "windstop" points along it that provide access to the myriad systems.
• At its center is Barhis, a great port of call for many of the sun-ships.

The Golden Sun

• Called Varijaia, a name which means "the Golden Sun."
• System of 9 planets.
• Considered the cradle of civilization because it is the source of thevaqan, the strange gold that is reactive to the solar winds.

The Rastram Kanaqa

• "The Golden Empire" made up of six of the nine planets of the system, though they control all nine (the other three are a colony world, a penal world, and an uninhabited protectorate).
• Advanced civilization that produces and uses most of the thevaqan in the Four Suns.
• Once a solar theocracy, their culture has long since separated its thevaqan-technologies from its religious orders, forming the Suryavarna faith, and the Sunwrights, the engineers who craft thevaqan into useful ships and tools.
• Themes: Imperial India, solarpunk, glass & gold
• Adhivirajate: "Surpassing in Brightness." The planet closest to the sun, considered holy for its proximity to the Golden Sun. The faithful make pilgrimages here, and only those aligned with the Suryavarna may dwell here. The original homeworld of the thevana (all gevana are born into the Suryavarna by default). Very sandy, the sand of which is used to craft qamani, the colored glass iconic of the Rastram.
• Tejabrabha: "Sword's Lustre." A military industrial planet, headquarters of the Rastram's shipyards and munitions factories.
• Kanaqa: "Golden." The homeworld of the Rastram Kanaga, and home to the Kanaqa Sajkara, the Imperial Emanation, who is an emanation of the Golden Sun itself. It is also the source of thevaqan.
• Alambusa: "Garden." A water world where a great deal of agriculture takes place in great floating garden-barges, each acres across and turned into their own miniature biomes.
• Grahpana: "The Bazaar." A small mountainous world that acts as the headquarters of the Sunwrights. Connector point to the Ravimarga. Almost entirely covered in industrial or mercantile settlements.
• Suksetra: "The Good Fields." The breadbasket of the Rastram, where most common food items are grown.

The Outer Three

• Lagudyavati: "New Home." A still largely-wild colony world with a handful of settlements. Lawbreakers who do not warrant imprisonment may instead find themselves assigned dwellings at the edges of these settlements and expected to do work for the community as a whole while demonstrating their fitness to rejoin society.
• Bandipala: "Keeper of the Imprisoned." A world with a very thin atmosphere, dotted with various prison complexes.
• Vadyazila: "Execution Stone." An uninhabited protectorate world with an almost non-existent atmosphere. Once a place where criminals being executed were abandoned, but that practice has gone out of use in the Rastram.

The Blood Sun

• System of 13 planets.

The Frost Sun

• A pale blue sun that doesn't give much heat
• System of 5 planets, three of which are frozen.
  • Erudan: The second world, a water world, with cold waters that are constantly freezing and thawing as they rotate to face away from and then toward the sun. Home to erudael, a humanoid people who dwell in subaquatic/subterranean homes near the warm center of the world.

The Dragon Sun

• System of 8 planets

Races

• Humans, the most populous of the peoples due to their original discovery of sun-flight.
• Gevana, the tall, jet-skinned people of the Rastram Kanaga. They do not need water, and their eyes are always protected by a nictating mirror-reflective membrane protecting their delicate gem-colored eyes. They have six digits on the ends of their limbs and narrow chins. They wear implanted stones of gamani, the glass created by their people. They are the originators of the Suryavarna faith, and all their people are assumed to occupy a position of clergy within it, even if they are not part of the religious structure per se.
• Amagari, a race of bird-like anthropomorphs that inhabit a variety of the worlds of the Four Suns. They, and the other "gari" were said to have been created by a people they call "the Makers" who remain only in legends and strange ruins. The Amagari are artists, with profusions of beautiful feathers and multipartite voices capable of mimicking nearly any sound, and running multiple "tracks" of sound simultaneously. They hold Maker ruins and relics as precious.
• Zungari, a race of bat-like anthropomorphs. They share legends of "the Makers" but claim they were terrible slave-masters whom the zungari overthrew and slew ages ago to win their freedom. They despise Make ruins and relics, and are often violent toward amagari.
• Qyrgari, the last of the three gari peoples, who appear to be anthropomorphic mammals of some kind, with double tails, short talons, tall, pointed ears and sets of sharp teeth in stubby snouts. They are a desert-dwelling people found almost exclusively among the tombs of the Makers on various worlds, sites that they defend. Despite this, they are a largely non-violent people, and known for their philosophy.
• Dragons, a great race of reptilian tyrants native to the Dragon Sun system. They are notorious for their skill in genetic engineering, a trait that they claim to have taught the Makers (though the Gari claim it was the Makers who taught the dragons). Though they are said to have not always done so, dragon start off in humanoid form, and as they age and strengthen through the age eventually grow into draconic forms. For the first century of their lives, they have six arms, one set of which can develop into wings as they age (though they begin to lose use of it as a manipulating limb).
• Erudael, an aquatic, scaled race from Erudan, an aquatic world in the Frost Sun system. Though they are resistant to cold, they are not immune to it, and erudael settlements are all built near the warm core of the world, deep in its trenches. They have three counter-jointed digits on their forelimbs with poisoned talons.
• Dronigmar, a sexless race of amorphous slug-like creatures who long ago evolved a sticky slime that acts as a powerful glue to rock and stone. Over time, they developed stonewright skills, eventually crafting themselves bodies of interlocking stone pieces that they constantly shed as they grow and develop. Dronigmar who survive to two centuries of age develop into childwrights, elephantine creatures who split off "buds" that develop into new dronigmar (the word is singular and plural). They sail in great stone ships.