Gain Magical Insight from the Endless Motion of Planets on The Ancient Orrery

Magic is everywhere in the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons. It infuses and permeates through the world, lifting the fates of our player characters, and breathing life into powerful monsters and beings of unknowable power.

That is a wondrous start, but perhaps not enough for little old me. I have brewed something very special for some of my games based on some very simple fantasy fiction logic: can only things and people be magic? What about places?

In a past article, I looked at the Shrine of Holy Light. A holy site that can bestow powerful energy to Clerics and Paladins if they remain penitent to the holy forces energising the place. This power comes from a Landmark, a kind of Magic Item that bestows benefits for a short time to those who visit that site. Places can be just as magical in the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons. Or they have been in my games. Here's another site of unlikely, but phenomenal power.

The Ancient Orrery

Wizards schools, magical academies, and grand observatories dedicated to staring at the stars all have their own models of the universe. On the inner dome of the art deco building, a great mural of the stars with dotted lines with labels of ancient names of the constellations in Elvish or Draconic. A great brass telescope can dominate the space while shelves upon shelves of books drift from surface down to the students as they need them.

The Spheres Move in perfect hArmony - Chromatic Orrery by Volkan Baga

Somewhere deeper within that institution, a person will find the orrery. A diagram great or small that mirrors the cosmology around you. With enough research, astronomers can map out the local solar neighbourhood. It's how Galileo did it in our world. The cosmology in Dungeons and Dragons varies greatly whether it's the standard model in the Player's Handbook or if you've created something special for your world.

An Ancient Orrery is one such special diagram of space. One of the first made in the given world, it is accurate before its time. This immense model of the local celestial bodies is a miraculous marriage of astronomy, the science of the stars, and astrology, the magic of the stars. Some orrery devices are simple and can occupy a table top, but the Ancient Orrery is grand and immense.

The great grinding gears of the Orrery power themselves. The ancient brass and bronze will have tarnished in places, losing the metallic shine here or there, but never losing functionality or consistency. The orbs of the nearby planets and light of the sun and moon. The synchronisation between the celestial bodies in the Orrery and the grand beyond above in the heavens matches perfectly and has never decayed over the ages.

The movement can track many things - Ghirapur Orrery by Kirsten Zirngibl

The Ancient Orrery look vastly different depending on which world you set your games on. Unlike our world, the Material Plane may be in the centre of the Orrery, while the sun would be in the centre of ours. Great brass tracks would loop around the centre, like rings. These rings track the orbits of the planets and other bodies in the local system. The power source inside, ancient and immeasurable never runs out inside this device, giving the accurate, bright glow of the suns and moons in the solar system. Each planet and other body in this Orrery moves on the track on a tiny pole, letting the planet rotate as close to its real world equivalent in the night sky.

The astrologers who built the device all those centuries ago used methods lost to time to build the device with such precision. In those times, the accuracy is so great, that the device mirrors what we see so far. If a comet or meteor ever threatened the Material Plane, the rings that the planets spin would extend and unfold, and a body that looks just like the new mark in the sky. Astrologers can look up in the sky, to see a red comet streaking across the blue sky but also look down at the Orrery to see a piece of red glowing glass tick across a new track, mirroring that comet.

The Ancient Orrery is a miraculous and ancient feat of magical engineering that can mirror the wider universe with little effort. It's been a source of learning and wisdom for hundreds of years.

Wisdom of the Spheres

The Orrery has been placed in one location near a hub for wisdom and learning in your setting for Dungeons and Dragons. Though attempts to move it have been made in the past, the intricate machinery was too precise and fiddly to be disassembled safely, though this isn't to say ambitions to move it haven't been applied.

Instead, the access and visibility of this artifact is given to the public in very very controlled manners. The long lost of appointments that can be made to see the Orrery is long and competitive. Many have joked it's easier to see a monarch or a holy figure who lives reclusive in their grand palace or immense temple shrine.

In the past, there have been many attempts to steal pieces from The Ancient Orrery. One such event was known as The Slow Heist. The efforts of one particular thieves guild planted an Artificer who a great deal about magical machinery. Over a time of years, the Artificer was placed as one of the Orrery's mages, keeping the peace and maintaining the competitive scheduling demands of the people visiting the Orrery.

The lights of the stars above bring insight and clarity - Vedalken Orrery by John Avon

As the Artificer worked alongside the machine, he took one piece per year, and sent them over seas back to his thieves guild employers. His long Elvish lifespan made this easy, and he would send screws and bolts, then rails and pistons. The Artificer found it curious that the machine did not suffer. It never grew sluggish or One of his most ambitious tasks was taking one of the glowing orbs that orbits the machine. His cover story was easy. The machine began to tick slower over night, but he didn't think much of it. He'd then spread some broken glass under the Orrery, to make it seem that one of the celestial bodies fell off and broke.

When he removed the orb, and sent it off to his masters, there was something strange. He came into the laboratory with his bag of glass shards, but saw the orb he had removed, ticking around the edge of its perch as it should have been. The Artificer took a good long look under the panels and gear boxes of the Orrery. Every piece he had removed was still there. Years of the Artificers work seemed to have been undone. He went to visit his employers, but they had received all the pieces he had sent, and they had even started to put the pieces together. The decades and centuries went by, and the Elf Artificer sent more and more pieces to his bosses. The original Orrery lost none of its functionality. After five hundred years, the entire Orrery was shipped away, but to no effect. The original pieces, which where shipped across the world, were successfully built by the Rogues, but the machine didn't tick and didn't move. The one in the original workshop was moving perfectly, as though it were never tampered with or taken apart. The ancient artifice used to make the Orrery is still miraculous and couldn't possibly be understood.

Boon of the Stars

Ancient Orrery Stats generated with Homebrewery

The grand majesty of the device is what draws mages from across the world to see it. A spell caster can look up at the synchronous movement of planets, suns, moons, and other grand bodies in the sky being perfectly mirrored by the device their in them.

Those that look up at the device during a long stretch of study. The spell caster can feel an immense surge of power added to their magic. The movement of figures in the night sky can influence their thinking and can bolster how much they can cast their spells, how powerful their spells are, and even what their spells an do. This influence can join together mage schools that need to conduct a divination ritual or bolster their damage and defence going into a battle.

A party of adventurers can be tasked with guarding the site or escorting a visitor moving to see the site. Its benefits are immense and its reputation cannot be ignored.

Now we want to hear from you. Will your caster characters enjoy the astrological benefits of the Ancient Orrery? What other arcane sites and locations could make for a Landmark? Let us know in our discord server or in the comments below.

Adam Ray contributes much for adventurers here on Apotheosis Studios. As co-founder of fantasticuniverses.com, they write all kinds of gaming press, while they write news about the League of Legends Card Game on RuneterraCCG. On Youtube, they can be found game mastering for No Ordinary Heroes, or editing the antics on The Hostile Atmosphere. Find where they dwell by climbing their Linktree.