5e Homebrew Spelljammer Background
While I’m talking about strange and terrifying god corpses in the Astral Sea, have a homebrew background for the Luminous Order, a homebrew organisation of mine, an almost paladin-like order of lighthouse keepers who set up lighthouses and lightbuoys in the Astral Sea to warn ships away from dangers like, well, mind-warping god corpses and sundry other dangers.
LIGHTKEEPER OF THE LUMINOUS ORDER
The Astral Sea is vast and dangerous, full of unexpected peril, and no one knows that better than the Lightkeepers of the Luminous Order, those brave and resilient souls who man the lightbuoys and lighthouses that the Order erects to warn those nearing the deadliest of those perils. You’ve spent untold years out in the silver, perhaps manning the tiniest and most isolated of tiny lightbuoys, perhaps more secure in one of the larger installations of the Order. Either way you have developed a sense for danger, a keen eye and a watchful mind. The Sea is vast and treacherous, and so the Lights of the Luminous Order keep watch, not only for their own sakes, but for the sakes of all who sail the Silver Sea. For whatever reason, perhaps simple loneliness, you have left the Order, but you will carry their lessons and the things you experienced out on the lights with you always.
Skill Proficiencies: Perception, and your choice of one of the following: Arcana, History, Religion
Languages: Two of your choice
Equipment: a set of common clothes, a spyglass, a belt-pouch with 10gp, and an enamelled pin of the tower-and-light which the Luminous Order gives to all who have served with them. These pins, worn honestly, invite respect from travellers and voyagers across the Astral Sea.
FEATURE: EVER WATCHFUL
The Luminous Order trains its keepers to be ever alert, and to always maintain the light. As a result of this training, you gain the Alert feat from the Player’s Handbook, and you learn the light cantrip. Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma is your spellcasting ability for it (choose when you select this background).
PERILOUS STATION
All members of the Luminous Order, no matter their station or function, serve time out on the lights, manning one of the Order’s lighthouses or lightbuoys. Some of these are tiny rickety buoys, two or three-roomed stations floating in the void of the Astral Sea, while others are more well-established, perhaps full towers and lighthouses built on firm asteroids or even gardened mini-worlds, courtesy of some of the Order’s druids and mages.
Where did you serve? Did you man a tiny buoy in some poorly-mapped region of the Sea that barely saw traffic (or resupply), or one of the larger lighthouses near well-known and well-trafficked dangers, or something in between? The table below suggests some locations your character might have served at, or you can work with your DM to come with one more suited to your character and campaign:
d6 Station
Buoy Nine Zero Azimuth (‘Last Stop’), a tiny, recently-established buoy guarding the edge of a newly-discovered (by the Order) section of the Sea that no vessel has yet successfully returned from. And there have been no shortage of attempts. Far flung as it is, the Order has had some difficulty in getting supplies and shift changes out to B90-A in timely fashion.
Sector Eight Great Light (‘Greengarden’), one of the Order’s larger regional hub-lights, standing guard over a well-travelled section of the Sea known for strange eddies and sudden colour pools, often to the Feywild or Limbo. An order of druids who pass often through the area have put their efforts into growing a small habitat and air envelope on Greengarden’s asteroid base.
Installation Five Four One Nadir (‘Station Dark’). One of the least desired posts in the Order, I541-N keeps watch over the approach to a dark mass of strangely-glistening rock that drifts erratically, and perhaps purposely, through the Sea, the remnants of a dead dark god that seeds madness into those who stray too close. The lightkeepers are not immune to the rock’s effects, despite many efforts to shield the station, and so keepers are rotated off the station considerably more often than at other posts, in an effort to keep the long-term effects to a minimum.
Light Four Two Helix (‘Wreckship’), an ancient lighthouse that warns vessels away from the Stargasst Eddy, a well-known yet still utterly unexplained mass of wrecked spelljammers and astral vessels that no one knows the cause of. Ships who enter the Eddy hoping to salvage their predecessors all-too-often follow in their footsteps, but the prospect of so much salvage still lures ships in. There has been a longstanding debate within the Luminous Order on whether they have any further responsibility to ward off or even forcibly stop ships from entering, but the Order exists to warn, not to quarantine, and so ships venture into the Eddy even still. A different question, and perhaps one that comes down to individual lightkeepers, is whether the crew of L42-H have any responsibility to try and rescue anyone who makes it most of the way out again …
Buoy One Six Intersect (‘Rickety Town’), a buoy in a very turbulent area of the Sea where several nearby Wildspace systems weirdly overlap onto more or less the same area, leading to a disturbed section of the Sea where one can traverse unexpectedly and without warning into Wildspace. Or where Wildspace can traverse unexpectedly and without warning onto you. Rickety Town, proudly named by some of its long-term keepers, is manned exclusively by autognomes and warforged, in case of sudden intrusions of vacuum and the passage of time.
Sector Thirty One Watch Light (‘Sentinel 31’). Some areas of the Astral Sea contain more colour pools, links to the other planes, than others, and some contain darker pools than others, links to more dangerous planes. Sector 31 is one of those. For whatever reason, colour pools to the Abyss and the Far Realms are common in this area of the Sea, and those who man the watch light, Sentinel 31, have hair-raising stories of things they have seen traversing the Sea beyond the reach of the light’s great beam.
