Nestled within the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy exists the still beating heart of an otherwise dead and forgotten empire. Its name has now slipped from the tongues of most civilisations throughout the Lanaikea Supercluster that it once influenced, but the denizens of the Milky Way still know of it as Rodinia, and still grant it the respect it commands. For it was the growing disinterest of its inhabitants in governing the affairs of so-called lesser civilisations that allowed themselves and their empire to fade into obscurity, as opposed to any sort of particular weakness. It’s for this reason that the Milky Way exists as an odd bastion of civility and diplomacy in an otherwise hostile and dangerous universe; the long and oversized shadow that Rodinia casts over the galaxy keeps everyone in line. Even if no official contact has been made with the enigmatic Rodinians for thousands of years, no one wants to risk having them show up at the doorstep for causing a ruckus in their galactic backyard. A single one of them can still handily bring a civilisation and its government to their knees.

On approach from a distance, the first visible features of Rodinia are its reflective golden polar spires that partially wrap around the core of the megastructure. These spires contain engines, both sub- and trans-light, power generators, sensory apparatus, offensive and defensive measures, and emit from their tips the fabled Scattering Barrier that envelopes and protects the structure.

As you get closer still, the planetarium at its centre will become discernable. Consisting of eight planets gravitationally locked by golden arcs between them, contained within a blue glass-like sphere, the Rodinia Planetarium is mostly for show and houses Rodinia’s elite. These planets are facsimiles of Earth from various periods in its geological history, like snapshots in time, each corresponding to what the ancestral homeworld looked like when each of the eight species of Rodinian evolved and left the Earth – this being why they are sometimes referred to as the ‘Creatures of Earth’. Most of the population instead live within the Weave, the vast network of hidden interior dimensions that’s accessed from gateways in the golden arcs inside the planetarium. Rodinia’s interior dimensions have been growing for eons, and may contain millions of artificial planets by now.

What goes on within those interior spaces is a mystery to the outside cosmos. There has been no contact between Rodinia and any of the civilisations that were either once ruled by it or who have recently gained space-travel. Rodinia is a relic of an older world that silently drifts around the galactic core serving as a tourist attraction for the Milky Way’s inhabitants.

The home of a civilisation that's put itself out to pasture, and from which most of my OCs come from.