#waterwheel

Another peek at exterior tilesets, from Adventure Inside, releasing this Friday on Patreon and itch.io!!

Source details and larger version.

Sundown is an aging universe finding itself sleeping more and more. Most of the stars that will ever be born are dead and their remnants cooling. Dark energy flings galaxies apart at breakneck pace. Space is littered with megastructures by extinguished civilizations. Whether they ended in war or not, they are surrendered now, and there is peace forever.

One focus character is an orphaned Dyson sphere managed and inhabited by a corporate seedlet. Her stellar core is depleted into a magnetar, and she has since adapted to subsist efficiently on its energy. The object, named Campfire, is among the last awake consciousnesses. She made contact with a distant seedlet and exchanges digital letters with him.

Ergospheric turbines, known as waterwheels, harvest energy from the spin of black holes. With no name other than an industrial serial alphanumeric, one of these turbines persists on a black hole destined to not evaporate for another few trillion years. The minimally sapient operator seedlet, whom Campfire calls Waterwheel, sends his surplus energy to a far away depot to be received by no one.

Another character is a circumgalactic ring serving as a hub for FTL cross-supervoidal lines called bolts. It communicates with its nearest stations, struggling with the growing duration of pauses.

Tower of Time stimboard!

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Windhelm

Concept art for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim