Dreams of Horizon
Documenting the lives and times of worlds far removed in both time and space, Dreams of Horizon is a speculative fiction series pushing the limits of what is physically possible in order to explore some of the most exotic and wondrous denizens of deep space. From exploding galaxies to chromatic ice worlds, we embark on an atlas of the fictional Mira Cluster in an exploratory vision of what may lurk out in the endless void.
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All Articles
The Horizon System: Praya, the Exotics Author
Striking out towards the final sun of the Horizon System, we chance across a world in its sibling’s image. Though this great leviathan is an impressive creature in and of itself, it serves only as an accessory in the wonderful oasis of life that is the Far Shore of Horizon.
The Horizon System: Physalia, the Miracle Author
Drifting over to the other face of the Horizon System, we find a surrealist vision scattered across five suns and forty-seven worlds. Many are small things not unlike Mars, tiny oases kept on life support by the invisible hands of gravitational giants.
The Horizon System: Olindias, at the Edge of Infinity
Rendezvous with a foreign world, hailing from the now-vanished arrays of Ceratium’s quarter. Finding safe haven from the rapacious hunger of Physalia, this Saturn-like world has accrued its own impressive array of satellites, including a miniature version of Antipathes-Cerianthus. Cloaked in seas of liquid nitrogen, these small worlds are a last stop before the infinity of interstellar space.
The Horizon System: Rhodactis, the Ruin Author
Embrace the gravitational infinity of a failed star. With eleven times the mass of Jupiter crushed into an electron-degenerate mass nearly as dense as gold, this frigid gas giant hosts an entire solar system in miniature. With fifty round moons and innumerable smaller ones, one could spend lifetimes unpacking the numerous enigmas of this ruinous behemoth.
The Horizon System: Antipathes-Cerianthus, the Azure Duality
Gaze upon a trio of clouded, frozen worlds. Two Neptunian holdovers from their past heyday dance through the cold void together, a Mars-sized aquarian ice world trailing the pair together. Draped in shades of grey and blue, they provide a demure end to the splendor of the Resonant Worlds.
The Horizon System: Cryogenia, the Frozen Periphery
Peruse an icy beauty of a super-Earth, kept on the brink of a deep freeze with the help of oceans doped with poisonous ammonia. Lashed by brutal winter storms and pelted by meteor showers, this dark, chilly tundra is nevertheless a ground for clever biological innovation divorced from the brutal rat race of Horizon.
The Horizon System: Horizon, Lost in Paradise
Bask in the glory of a natural splendor far removed from the familiar and ordinary. The youthful biosphere of this carbon-choked jungle world thrives in its unusual conditions, sprouting satellite lineages across the galaxy and giving rise to one of the most diverse and ecologically unique communities in the whole of the known universe.
The Horizon System: Panthalassa, the Infinite Sea
Journey to an unending ocean flaunting chromatic exuberance far in excess of Earth’s comparably meagre seas. These sun-soaked tropical seas have accrued all sorts of odd hitchhikers and hanging-ons, from ancient biological relics of eras long past to sailors and outlaws the galaxy over.
The Horizon System: Changxing, a Broken-Glass Rose
Mourn the passing of a once-verdant world, laid low by its own children. A sinister secular resonance among this super-Earth’s extensive array of moons has rained heavenly wrath on its inhabitants below, bringing a mass extinction of epic proportions. In the lichen reefs and bacterial forests that emerged in the aftermath of the disaster, a new set of strange creatures is set to conquer this empty planet.
The Horizon System: Acidianus-Thermococcus, at the Edge of Existence
Regard a pair of acidic paradises, teetering at the edge of habitability. Wracked with volcanic activity and covered in natural nuclear reactors, the metallic, acidic oceans gave birth to a strange ecosystem of quartz trees, metallic gastropod-analogues, and radiation-feeding titans.
The Horizon System: Riftia, in the Shadow of the Sun
Explore a world pushed beyond the brink, rendered completely hostile by a brightening sun. As the oceans slowly evaporated and the surface got hotter and hotter, most life fled the deteriorating conditions by taking to the air, while an exotic domain of wholly alien biochemistry moved into the empty lands below.
The Horizon System: Tonicella, the Life-Giving Drought
Examine a minor world of endless sands, eroded and disfigured beyond comprehension. Once briefly a verdant, Earth-like paradise, its oceans have dried and its lands have grown barren as Actinophrys has steadily robbed it of its water. Nevertheless, the few lifeforms marooned on this anaemic world eke out a meagre existence in shadowed canyons and lowland oases, their desire to live carrying them through this endless suffering.
The Horizon System: Chironex, the Deceptive Giant
Behold a venerable giant, stalwart in its survival for eons. This Neptunian world survived the supernova that brought an end to its kind’s rule over the Horizon System and ushered in the age of the Living Worlds. Largely unchanged for a billion years, it and its entourage of moons stand as a testament to what once was.
The Horizon System: Alvinella-Chrysomallon, the Twin Blasphemies
Dance between the whirling twin orbs of a planetary pair eternally tracing their tortured waltz through the celestial spheres. Accompanied by an entourage of fragments, they tug and rip at each other, splitting open their crusts and revealing great gouts of magmatic flame.
The Horizon System: Navanax, the Extremophile Allotrope
Behold the beguiling face of a world gone exotic. Stripped of its erstwhile cloak of supercritical steam, this Earth-shaped acid world wheels through the Horizonian heavens. Swinging through months of darkness and unending light, this harsh planet’s red and golden face unseats all who dare to brave its wrath.
The Horizon System: Tridacna, the Prismatic Hell
Marvel in the majesty of an enormous celestial jewel, forged in the fires of creation themselves. From scales of ruby and sapphire to pulsing arteries of quicksilver and gold, this acrid, acidic giant pushes the bounds of what is possible in planetary physics.
The Horizon System: Rhopalura, the Resonant Lifeline
Envision a little world caught between giants. Teetering on the edge of gravitational destruction from all sides, only a tangled conspiracy of opposing forces keep it from a catastrophic end. Nevertheless, it is this combination of forces that sustains its life, long after its central fires should have died.
The Horizon System: Elysia, the Imprisoned Prometheus
Witness a blasted ruin of a world, stricken by celestial fire and seared by volcanic rage. With its vast oceans of lava beneath a torrid, toxic sky, this viridian hell will not know peace until its fiery end in the belly of its dying sun, billions of years to come.
The Horizon System: Chrysaora, the Sun-Soaked Transience
Journey to a hellish, crimson Jupiter analogue, hailing from the frigid depths of the great beyond but having found its true calling searing beneath a hateful sun. With its intense gravity and immense bulk, it shares its torturous experience with the remainder of the Horizon System as an agent of Actinophrys’s raging flares.