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Liga is Oerth's sun. It orbits the Oerth at a distance of 100 million miles, taking 364 days (one Oerth year) to complete its journey. It has one satellite, a planetoid known as the Moth. In Oerth's planetary system, it is between Luna and the Grinder, an asteroid field.

On Oerth, Liga is commonly thought to have been created by the god Pelor, or to actually be Pelor. Devotees of Rao believe Liga is the light of their god's soul. Worshippers of Pholtus say that their god set the sun in the sky and maintains it on its yearly path. The Touv associate the sun with their goddess Nola. The Olman believe in a procession of suns, each age of Creation dominated by a different one, with the current one being the fifth to exist.

Physical features

Liga consists of a core of molten metals about 1,000 miles in diameter surrounded by a photosphere, a superhot atmosphere that surrounds the core up to a distance of 37,000 miles. The heat of the sun is deadly up to 29,000 miles away; beyond that point it provides heat to the rest of the system, but does not pose an imminent danger of immolation to organic life.

There are portals to the Elemental Plane of Fire on the surface of the core, and some speculate a large gate in the center of the core may keep the sun hot. Unlike many suns, Liga does not feature sunspots, solar flares, or atmospheric storms.

Spherical lakes of elemental water do somehow manage to avoid evaporating on the surface of the photosphere. They resemble pinpricks from space, and are invisible from the surface of the Oerth, but are tens of miles across. Sustained by temporary portals to the Elemental Plane of Water, these lakes remain a cool 65 degrees Fahrenheit until the portals move somewhere else on the sun, at which point they quickly boil away. The origin and purpose of these lakes are unknown, but some believe the gods of Oerth sustain them in order to regulate the temperature of the sun.

Inhabitants

Liga is populated by denizens of the Elemental Plane of Fire, including salamanders, fire elementals, and a flying castle inhabited by several dozen efreet. The efreet have a great flying vessal made of brass, with sails that are sheets of flame. The lakes are inhabited by water elementals and water weirds. The water elementals say they have been sent to dwell on Liga on the orders of a great noble superior, while the weirds are simply pests.

The Golden Forge

According to legend, in the Heart of the Sun lies a Golden Forge, capable of destroying the Hand and Eye of Vecna. [Vecna Lives!, 71]

The Moth

The Moth is a small planetoid, only 200 miles in diameter. Due to its extreme closeness to the sun (15,000 miles) it is invisible from Oerth. It has no atmosphere or life. The Moth is tidally locked. One side, Brightside, is too hot for fleshy creatures to survive on unaided; the other side, Nightside, is as cold as Brightside is hot, far chiller than the surrounding space, capable of freezing human flesh with its unexplained killing frost.

Anti-Liga

There are a number of parallel myths from various cultures on Oerth telling of a second sun that once graced the skies in an age before history. This other sun, dubbed "Anti-Liga" by scholars, is said to have been an exact twin of Liga, separated from it on the same orbital path by 180 degrees. Many thousands of years ago, Anti-Liga vanished without a trace, and the myths do not agree on how or why this might have happened. Some believe it may have come untethered from its orbit and slammed into the next planet, shattering it and creating the asteroid field known as the Grinder.

Bibliography

• Cook, David. ''Vecna Lives!''. Lake Geneva, WI: TSR, 1990.

• Findley, Nigel. Greyspace. Lake Geneva, WI: TSR, 1992.

• Grubb, Jeff. Spelljammer: AD&D Adventures in Space Boxed Set. Lake Geneva, WI: TSR, 1989.

• Lai, Gary. "Hopeful Dawn." Dungeon #41. Renton, WA: TSR, 1993.

• Reynolds, Sean K. "Core Beliefs: Pelor." Dragon #346. Bellevue, WA: Paizo Publishing, 2006.