The Universal Orrery

a worldbuilding bible

What is it? (Doylist)

The Universal Orrery is a public-domain creative writing project which explores the fantasy world of Enarch from the perspective of an outside observer. The information contained in these documents cover the vast breadth of the world - from the land’s geography to the population who call it home, from the myths of creation to the magic that permeates through the whole universe. It is, in essence, an encyclopedia of Enarch’s whole existence.

The Universal Orrery started in 2018 as the backdrop for stories told in a tabletop roleplaying game. I started putting together ideas I had for a shared world that I could play in with my friends. After running a couple campaigns and several years of adding, removing, and tweaking the contents of the world, I now surrender it to any other creators to use it however they will. I encourage you to copy, use, reproduce, and/or modify the contents of this project to suit your story and your style.

Although it was originally created for tabletop games, this project is not exclusively for them alone. This project serves as a metaphorical charcuterie board of ideas which can be used by anyone for any purpose. Games, written literature, films, short videos, or any other form of creative derivative work.

What is it? (Watsonian)

The Universal Orrery is exactly what it says it is: an orrery containing a universe. In some higher dimension of existence, there are cosmic creatures who created the orrery long ago as an act of self-expression and now keep it as a centerpiece in their bountiful, hyper-planar gardens.

There are thousands of “nodes” in the orrery which orbit around one another with mathematical precision, and each node contains a world within itself. One of these nodes- five layers out from the center - contains a world called “Enarch” by the people who inhabit it. According to most of the extra dimensional entities, this node was no more important than its neighbors, but one of them thought otherwise, choosing this world out of a thousand to grant the gift of life, allowing complicated structures to take root and propagate outwards from a single seed.

A hundred thousand years later, this node has become a garden in itself, and the otherworldly entities now watch it with quiet fascination, much like one would watch a terrarium. Occasionally, the universal orrery is thrown out of balance from one effect or another, and the entities choose to interfere. But for the rest of the time, they simply watch as the people of the land live their lives. Their fascinating, wonderful lives.

Categories

This project is broken into four main sections, described below. You can navigate to these four categories' landing pages using the sidebar at any time.

WORLD explores the geography of Enarch and how it functions on a fundamental level.
CULTURE explores the population of Enarch and what life looks like for them.
STORIES describe myths and legends that the people of Enarch tell, and some they don’t.
TABLES provides additional information about Enarch in a collection of lists and spreadsheets.