Lune

The silver moon of Therafim, Lune is the moon by which lycanthropes measure the rise and fall of their condition, and by which all dark creatures count the nights as they pass. This is appropriate, for while Lune's silver disk is coldly beautiful when seen in the night sky above Therafim, it is also a cursed place, filled with danger and evil.

On Lune, there is a much lighter atmosphere than on Therafim, as well as lighter gravity. This makes it easier for flying creatures to get around, but also more dangerous thanks to the lightness of the air, since there is a very real danger that flying too high will cause a creature to slip into too-thin air and fall right off the moon. Because of this, there is no overall benefit to fliers that try to avoid this terrible fate. Lune's surface is a barren wasteland of crater-pocked dust and rock, where little grows, and nothing thrives. Beneath this surface there are a few rare areas of fertility, where creatures can find food and shelter from the intermittent meteor showers that almost constantly pepper the landscape. These areas are hotly contested, as are any water sources in Lune's subterranean world, and so most creatures that live on this world are constantly driven by the desperate need for survival.

Despite these inhospitable conditions, there are some inhabitants of Lune that do fairly well for themselves. The kaorti are one of these groups, because of their care in organizing themselves, and in keeping the majority of their population in a mid-sized pocket dimension where they are able to find all the food and shelter that they need. The kaorti are another immigrant race, having come from a hostile plane of existence, and they use Lune as their base of operations while they plan their eventually domination of Therafim. The kaorti often ally themselves with the zern that have also set up shop on Lune, and the pair of them often use magical portals or living ships to carry themselves to the surface of Therafim as they find the resources to do so.

Another set of inhabitants of Lune that manage to do all right are the illithids and the neogi. These two races are able to do all right on Lune because they do not use it as a permanent home. Instead, these two races use their void-spanning ships to traverse the distance between Lune and Therafim on a regular basis, keeping small, nomadic settlements available for use by their individual groups at need. For these races, Lune is a shelter against the hostility they often encounter on Therafim, a place where they can hide until more pleasant conditions establish themselves.

One often overlooked race from Lune are the moon rats. These tiny swarms of creatures are, on Therafim, relatively harmless in small numbers and in darkness or daylight. But when exposed to moonlight, they suddenly become vastly more powerful physically, and increase in mental and magical abilities as well. On Lune, moon rats are as intelligent as any human, and often moreso. The moon rats, in fact, are the most intelligent natives of Lune, as the other moon monsters there are either non-native (see the linnorms description, below, and the kaorti, zern, illithids, and neogi, above) or else crazed, flesh-devouring creatures (such as moonbeasts and mooncalves). Moon rats, however, feel a deep enmity to the creatures on Therafim, seeing these other beings as soft and weak for living on such a fertile world while the moon rats just barely get by on Lune. They have great desires to conquer Therafim, but every time they stow away on the ships or magical portals of the other races that traverse between worlds, they quickly discover that their heightened abilities came from the inherent magic of Lune itself, and as soon as they get too far from Lune, it abandons them altogether, resurfacing only in part when they are in the direct light of their homeworld.

The real reason why Lune is so dangerous, besides its inhospitable environment, is because of the true rulers of the planet: the linnorms. These cursed dragons were responsible for unleashing terrible, forbidden magic in the distant past of Therafim, and were banished to the moon as a result (though there are one or two that still live in remote, hidden locations on Therafim). There are only a very few of these twisted dragons in existence, and every year that passes they grow a little more evil. And with that growing evil, their power grows as well. The linnorms find it vastly difficult to escape Lune, thanks to the divine curse placed upon them, and this entrapped status, coupled with the monstrous deformities of their bodies, weighs heavily upon them, driving them steadily more wicked, making the rage in their hearts burn all the hotter. Any permanent settlements on Lune do not last long, for the linnorms view everything as a potential source of amusement, where they might vent some of their limitless fonts of hatred for all living things. Occasionally a linnorm will find a way to escape to Therafim, but this is an uncommon occurence at best, happening perhaps once a millennium (though, of course, statistics can be misleading), and such an event tends to be enshrouded with tales of disaster and woe visited upon the people of Therafim.

Major Races: Fallen dragons (especially linnorms); Moon monsters (moonbeasts, mooncalves); kaorti and zern; moon rats; illithids; neogi.

Government: Assorted; Terror-Driven Anarchy.

Nation Alignment: Neutral Evil.

Places of Note:
Hellsfont: A deep, wide lake of tar-like substance that bubbles and spits its black ooze almost constantly. Hellsfont is the only place on the surface of Lune that has actual vegetation that seems to thrive. The only problem, of course, is that the vegetation in the swampy terrain around this foul body of liquid is made of deadly species straight from the depths of the Lower Planes. The Hellsfont itself is an intermittent, ever-shifting portal to various Lower Planes, which the linnorms occasionally put to use to summon and bind creatures to do their wicked bidding.

Site 7: Set at the base of a large crater, Site 7 is the seventh site where the kaorti tried to set up a semipermanent base of operations, and the only one that has succeeded, more or less. Inside this crater, the kaorti have a relatively large facility made of easily-replaceable organic construction material, along with a portal allowing quick escape into their pocket dimension at the first sighting of a linnorm in the region. When the danger passes, the kaorti return to their tasks, starting with rebuilding what the passing linnorm certainly demolished while passing through.

Temple of Broken Hopes: This was once a monumental structure built by the neogi when they first arrived on Lune, seeking to form a base from which they felt they would surely be able to dominate all of Therafim in time. The linnorms, in their perverted wickedness, allowed the neogi to make their slaves labor for almost a century, building a vast structure as much aboveground as below using their strange, twisted, alien architecture. Then, when the place was finally complete, a true testament to neogi power and rulership, the linnorms gathered, and then calmly went through the entire complex, trapping all inside, and turning them into undead or other twisted abominations, one by one. Now called the Temple of Broken Hopes, standing as a monument to fallen hubris, the twisting dungeons and mazes of this place are filled with the plundered treasures of dozens of different peoples from all ages of Therafim, but also with some of the most dangerous guardians and traps. It is believed that the linnorms themselves keep the Temple of Broken Hopes functional, replacing and tweaking the various dangers within it for their personal amusement, in the hopes that some foolhardy souls will enter. It is known that the linnorms do not enter the Temple when others go inside, though it is generally felt that this is because the linnorms would much rather magically scry the goings-on inside their favorite entertainment site than dirty their own claws by being a part of the attraction.

Terrain Features:
Devil's Scar: Like the deep, jagged cut of a massive dragon's talon, the Devil's Scar is a deep fissure in the face of Lune where an especially large meteor caused a violent release of underground gasses in the ancient past. Ever since that time, the Devil's Scar has made a good place for flying creatures, or those with flying ships, to hide out from the linnorms, since few linnorms care to do any flying with their magical abilities, and none can do so naturally. The neogi and the illithids have a reasonably friendly living arrangement in this miles-long fissure, each group keeping to their own areas on each stopover on Lune, making temporary camps on the larger outcroppings from the sides of the Devil's Scar. Of course, even in this relatively safe area, no creature dares to make a permanent lair, since this would certainly anger the linnorms, should they ever notice that another creature is able to find the peace that they will never find inside.

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