Helios Retreat

Helios Retreat is a desert moon, like Exosol, but where Exosol has red deserts pierced by black mountain ranges, Helios Retreat has yellow sand punctuated by dozens of green and blue oases.

Many of those pockets of life support small communities that call the desert moon their home. Toba have been emigrating from Quantum Prime to Helios Retreat for centuries, but most return to Quantum Prime after a few years, driven back by the heat, the dryness, and the sand … but a few have always stayed, settling in small houses near the springs and ponds, sheltering from the sun under the large leaves of the oasis trees and the thick earthen construction of their adobe-like homes.

Those who live around the oases make their living by cultivating rare fig-like fruits, smelting sand into glass, and creating blown and formed glass art, or carving caravans into rare and precious sculptures pieces of rock hauled by caravans from distant outcroppings in the desert.

The Glass Smelting Studio is a collective workshop shared by a half dozen Toba artisans. The outskirts of the open-air studio feature hundreds of small glass sculptures hanging from palm-trees, swaying gently in the desert breeze, tinkling, chiming, and reflecting prismatic sprays of colorful light. Closer to the center of the studio are tables stands, and shelves of completed projects - fantastical art pieces, glass sculptures of angels, monsters, gods, spaceships, and more. Closer yet are Toba craftspeople busy at work, who will just have time to look up briefly as Rocket Dogs race through their spaces. Is that one Toba using small files to refine a shape and cut grooves into a goblet? Is that other Toba polishing a complete piece … or in setting rare black gems? The Rocket Dogs are moving too quickly to be sure.

At the center of the Glass Smelting Studio are the huge furnaces, burning all day and all night, keeping their loads of liquid glass molten and ready to work. Watch out for the Toba glass blowers carrying blobs of liquid glass on the end of their steel pipes! Avoid the furnaces! Don’t trip over the benches where skilled artists are rolling, prodding, and snipping the hot glass!

There’s so much to see here, but no time to slow down - maybe the Rocket Dogs can stop back some other time when a race isn’t afoot!