I've had this image in my head for months, tried to make good concepts of it. All environmental concept drawings failed horribly... So I guess I'll have to dive right into it and try to describe it word wise as good as possible. Introduction Dark... light? "Impussibru! Light cannot be dark!" you might say. Heh. Well, the idea is simply that this planet I have in mind doesn't have its own sun, hence the term dark in the title. Here is the plot twist; The planet is still very bright! Why so? This planet is located really close to the centre of a galaxy. The entire sky is filled with this massive display of colourful clouds consisting of stars. The space is truly an amazing view. Being so close to the centre has gifted this planet with a few enchantments. The planet Scientific Name - Currently unknown Nickname - Dark Light The first thing to take notice of is that even though the planet doesn't have any "proper" sun within reach, it still has a day/night cycle. The planet still rotates and the side facing the cluster storm of stars in the galaxy would be the side covered in day light. As opposite, the side facing out towards the vast and empty space is treated as during the night time. Most of the planet is covered in thick forests and huge oceans. Some occasional spots may be covered in long chains of mountains. The enchantments The main, and most important, enchantment this planet has - caused by the short distance to the centre of the galaxy - is a kind of protective layer around the planet that creates an atmosphere close to the surface. An atmosphere good enough for most creatures to survive in. Another enchantment the planet has been gifted with, from the light of the star sky, is luminescence. Almost all plants are glowing in a gentle blue-ish light. Even the moss in the caves are glowing faintly. The atmosphere together with the strong gravity from the centre of the galaxy is causing a weird phenomena. This phenomena is floating islands. These islands consists of the pieces that has been torn of the planet upon a starfall. The islands are not very huge, might just be big enough to fit a tiny house on them. Of course, this also leads to craters bellow the islands. Resources A resource that can be found almost everywhere is a kind of night blue star crystal. It grows mainly on the ground and on tree trunks. The star crystals could be used to craft stuff such as equipment and ammo. Heck, might even be used to enchant certain projectile weapons. NPCs The creatures of the planet exists in any environment; On the surface, in the caves, in the oceans, flying around the floating islands/mountains, you name it. The living creatures on the planet is not very hostile. They seem to simply ignore you. Until! you try to harvest the resources of the planet. I currently have no idea of what kind of creatures would live on the planet, I just have that semi-hostile image in my head. This suggestion is still being worked on. These are my main ideas of it and I am probably going to add more stuff in the future as I work them out.
Whenever I think of the center of the galaxy, any galaxies that is, I think of the theory that located at every epicenter of galaxies is a super-massive black hole. That is part of the theory on how galaxies have the pure gravitational forces that they have. So to me something being located at 'the center' seems of to those speculations. Mostly a personal pet-peeve regarding what science currently hypothesizes about the galaxies. To me something that would make slightly more sense that it would not be located AT the center of a galaxy, but near one so that it will still get the light from it and could even possibly experience some day and night cycles depending on it's rotational orbit. In a way similar to Gallifrey as it is located near the center of it's galaxy, except for the part that Gallifrey has two suns. Just take those out of the equation.
So instead you have this planet with a black abyss as the backdrop on one side, but an incredible view of space on the other. Oh hey, while you've brought up Gallifreyans; control of time. Just a theory, a planet trapped within it's galaxies black hole, but nearly immune to the incredible gravitational force it puts out. Sort of like Milliways, if you've ever read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. It would provide one hell of a challenge and would be incredible to explore.
I imagine it would have to be a pretty advanced planet/society though.... Now that I'm thinking about it, what if it wasn't? *Engage QuestIdeaFormation.exe*
I was thinking of a very close-to-nature, yet very advanced race. As in, they know what they are doing, they have awesome tools and such, but they do not have access to electricity, refined metal and all that.
I was thinking Robots, probably the Apex though. Or the Apex running an experiment with the Florans that they didn't want disturbed, so they put it in the place that they thought hardest to reach. Brainstorming is fun.
