The Helio Sphere is a world of near perpetual sunlight. This light illuminates vast dunes of amber desert sand and oases dotted with violet underbrush. The seas of sand are bordered on the north by the cooler savannas. To the south lay the warmer black bluffs of the volcanic badlands. This harsh, yet beautiful, landscape is the home of a people known as the Beta.
The Beta are humanoid beings with permanent colorful markings upon their skin, resulting from the Beta’s secondary nervous system composed of an electromagnetic field, known as a voltaic-field. This field causes latent technology around them to awaken to their presence. Each Beta, upon reaching adulthood, selects a major clan, matching their markings to their clan colors. The clans are: Oban-Fa (‘The Transmundane Singers’) marked green to match the verdant northern polar city of Saala Kath, Zur’Tii (‘The Crucible-Born’) whose red marking represents the fire that burns in the southern polar city of Anodansii, and S’Juke (‘The Dune Shepherds’) whose ever-moving fleet city walks with them from oases to oases. While the clans have obvious skill-based ideals they are also a very fluid society and no Beta does not travel or interact with those of other clans.
The Beta’s lifestyle is one best understood through the lens of their advanced technology. They explore the world with weapons of hardened light built from the Modular Tools of Lux-Engineering while discussing their discoveries with their digitized ancestors, known as the Divine Collective. They analyze unknown languages with predictive algorithms to decode past dead cultures. They teach classes of children about volcanic activity while examining such activity through hardened glass in temperature controlled rooms. Above all, the Beta know that they and the technology they create are inseparable from the world around them. To a Beta the world is a grand machine of infinite complexity that must always be puzzled out and examined.
Types of Characters:
- Beta who come to the Garden have either been chosen to go on Pilgrimage transported there by accident, most likely from interacting with ancient technology. Either way, the Beta are avid seekers of knowledge and value bonds with those around them. Characters may be from one of the three major Clans. All Beta have markings on their skin representing their voltaic-fields. Note that these are represented by makeup out-of-play.
Read the full Tetra Helio Sphere setting packet here.
This world currently has a low population of player characters.