Vanilla Lore Expanded: Planet Types (Patreon)

Deadworlds

Planets which have not been significantly contacted by humans. Generally not inhabitable. All planets are like this before people arrive for the first time.

Ice worlds

Planets locked in the cold grip of an ice age, covered almost entirely in swathes of frozen sea, with glaciers kilometers tall. Perhaps they supported life before, perhaps they will support life again, one thing is certain - it will take centuries before anyone will be able to find that out.

Animal worlds

Planets with no people. Either everyone died, or the planet was seeded with plant and animal life by terraforming robots and nobody arrived. These planets can appear in numerous different shapes and forms - gigantic oceans spanning the whole planet, filled to the brim with aquatic life, or a planet covered in grasslands and rainforests, ruled by dinosaurs brought back from extinction.

Medieval worlds

Similar to Earth from the agricultural revolution until the industrial revolution. Social structures are usually feudal or imperial. Planets can stay in this state for millennia.

Steamworlds

Similar to Earth in the 19th century. Often this state is short-lived, as societies develop into midworlds, but it can be very stretched out depending on culture and government structure.

Industrial worlds

Similar to Earth in the 20th century, Industrial worlds are undergoing an industrial revolution, and are often the most polluted planets covered in factories and coal plants.

Midworlds

Worlds whose people have mastered flight, but not cheap interplanetary travel. Earth is in this stage in the 21st century.

Urbworlds

Super-high density planets dominated by cities. Urbworlds’ population growth outstripped their social and technological development, so they tend to be overcrowded, polluted, violent places. The people here are often callous towards strangers. This is often the outcome for midworlds that see their demographic transition into lower birth reversed by dysgenic reproduction patterns.

Coreworlds

Advanced human societies that united under one governing body, coreworlds are a healthy mix of urbworlds’ production focus and high population with glitterworlds’ care for the environment and technological progress. Coreworlds are not entirely covered in megacities, with nature reserves and conservation centers playing a crucial role in maintaining a healthy ecosystem for fauna to prosper and flora to carry on the air scrubbing function.

Glitterworlds

The most technologically advanced societies that can be led by humans. Swaddled in comforts by the strong arms of technology, glitterworlds are the peak of recognizable human society in terms of art, health, and generous human rights. Common people from these planets often lack grit and are very trusting in people and technology.

Farming worlds

Every galactic civilization needs a steady supply of food. Farming worlds are devoted predominantly to farming. Not necessarily technologically backwards, with some using automated machinery that grows and harvests the multitude of crops, farming worlds are in fact carefully guarded due to their strategic importance. Many galactic governments have fallen before simply due to an enemy blockading their sources of food.

Rimworlds

Planets lacking in strong central government and low in population density. These places tend to hover around the industrial level of technology or lower. Because they’re not homogenized by a central government, they tend to see a lot of interaction between people of different technology levels, as travelers crashland or ancient communities stumble out of their cryptosleep vaults. These planets are often at the rim of known space, hence the name.

Prison worlds

Back in the time when prison complexes on urbworlds and glitterworlds were overflowing, someone came up with a brilliant idea to ship all the prisoners onto a different planet. Prison worlds can range from far away, run down colonies, to huge prison complexes on local moons. Some of them have an actual prisoner processing infrastructure, while others are just desolate planets, where prisoners are left to their own devices.

Toxic worlds

Worlds destroyed by pollution, chemical or nuclear warfare, but still habitable at a low level, with sufficient technology.

Glassworlds

Worlds utterly destroyed by high-energy weapons of mass destruction. They’re nicknamed ‘marbles’ because their surfaces have been “glassed”. Nuclear weapons aren’t enough to glass a planet, so this level of destruction is rare. On some of these worlds, people can walk outdoors for a time without dying. None of them harbor permanent life bigger than a paramecium.

Transcendent worlds

It’s a stretch to call these entities worlds, since they resemble giant computers more than they resemble planets. The mechanics of these planets is mysterious, but many scholars believe transcendents are the outcome a sovereign archotech decides to incorporate a whole planet into itself. More on this later.

Trash planets

A planet-wide junkyard and a dumping ground for nearby glitterworlds and urbworlds, trash planets have their own ecosystems and social structure, where scavengers fight to the death over things that others found without any value.

Other worlds

Beyond these categories, there are many exceptional planets in strange states created by their peculiar social and technological evolutions. Given the scale and age of the universe, there is a lot of time and space for a lot of very strange situations to develop.