Canonfire! Forums-viewtopic-The 12 Lairs of the Zodiac

Mon Jan 16, 2006 11:06 am The 12 Lairs of the Zodiac

Has there ever been anything canon said about the 12 Lairs of the Zodiac, or the Five Wandering Stars for that matter, other than that they exist?
If not, what, if anything have you done with this in your campaign?
I know what Greyspace has said in detailing the celestial bodies, but I'm more interested in what if any influence on terrestrial campaigns they have had, even as far as people just naming them.

Mon Jan 16, 2006 11:42 am

Greyspace sort of ruins the mystique of astronomy. IMC all I've ever used is the two moons and the fact wether the sun goes around Oerth or vice versa really doesn't come up. A constellation guide would be useful in creating prophecies and such. Having Celestian for a GH god sort of implies the importance of astrology/astronomy in the campaign too.

Mon Jan 16, 2006 12:54 pm

The newest issue of Dragon Magazine has a few articles on astrology, including twelve fantasy constellations.

Mon Jan 16, 2006 10:30 pm

I'd made my own, a long time ago, and had posted them to the original Greytalk list, but, alas... I've got them somewhere, but they're not canon. In one of the 2nd Ed. books it has a flan 10-sign birth sign, but that doesn't cover the 12 zodiac signs, nor the wandering stars. For the latter, I used the names from Greyspace but ignored the other Speljammer nonsense.

Mon Jan 16, 2006 11:04 pm

Thu Jan 26, 2006 12:55 pm

Mon Jan 30, 2006 3:34 pm

I certainly wasn't looking forward to this issue of Dragon Mag. [I simply have no interest in astrology et. al.]

I was pleasantly surprised, the sun and moon articles are great and the zodiac article was quite good as well. I found the zodiac feats waaaay too underwhelming for a feat choice -- but otherwise a great set of articles.

Also the master astrologer seems like a natural PrC for clerics of Celestian....quite nifty all together. The only thing that could have made the issue more complete would have been a write up of Celestian himself.

My only question though is if you were going to make your players roll randomly for birthday, how would you work the festival weeks into the zodiac? Wouldn't there need to be 13 zodiac signs for that to work?

Mon Jan 30, 2006 4:48 pm

The original boxed set said there were only twelve. I'd assume that the festival weeks are split between their adjacent star signs.

Wed Feb 01, 2006 11:36 am

Actually this will skew all the zodiacs, similar to Earth's astrology. Instead of being an even 28 days they will have to be set up around every 30 days and after three months you will have an extra day hanging around. (Since 12 can't be divided evenly into 364 days.) I suppose you could say that certain zodiacs (probably the four that fall on festival days) actually include 31 days instead of 30?

If only Gary had been better with numbers.