As requested by kurtisevan here are the lore pieces that go with the recently uploaded Gods and Idols 2D artwork, http://opengameart.org/content/gods-and-idols-artifact-images

These lore texts are released under a CC-BY license, if you use them in your project please attribute them to www.GodsAndIdols.com in your credits.

They were written by APIStudios member Sean Pan.

Name: Lost City (Avalon Palace)
Description: This is a crumbled interior of villas and plazas that evidently remain miraculously from the legendary Crux, where the God Oberon once reigned and held court before both mortals and gods. Its construction is impeccable, and this portion maintains a shielded cathedral that still maintains a quantity of breathable air from thousands of years ago. In the streets are the ashen remains of denizens, caught in their last breath into molten statues.

Name: Lost City(Avalon Fiefdoms)
Description: At first glance, it seems to be a gigantic piece of debris coated in a thick layer of radioactive ash.  Closer inspection reveals that there’s more to it.  The tips of building can be seen poking out of its volcanic burial shroud.  Inside are whole city blocks of some forgotten megalopolis, entombed by an ancient storm of ash.  There are hollow spots where human bodies once lay in repose, now long disintegrated.  The cavities are not entirely hollow, for possessions the dead remained behind. 

Name: Ore Range (Living Ore)
Description: This is a large, independent formation of jagged minerals that had been torn off from some intergalatical disaster once, as evidence of life in fossilized forms still are evident in this adrift mountain range. Oddly enough, the very rock appears to absorb sunlight and is propagating in size.

Name: Automated Factory (Small Crux Factory)
Description: The size of a small moon, this strange device appears to be an ancient factory bearing the mark of a long lost god. It still continues to generate large quantities of small goods, such as ball bearings or optical crystals, gaining the raw materials by attacking asteroids and is guided by a strange internal sentience.

Name: Alien Shipyard (Starlight, the Last Fortress)
Description: Never meant to be used by humans, it has kept running since the cataclysm that claimed the planet it circled, with the few entrances within demonstrating controls fitting only for great giants.  Machines whir and hum, still creating armor plates capable of withstanding direct hits from runaway meteors.  Guns capable of tearing through even that armor come hot off assembly lines.  The computers are smart enough to build devices capable of warping the laws and time and space, but remain ignorant of their deceased clientele.  Even as you watch, a giant crane snatches an asteroid, and hauls it in for raw materials.

Name: Crystal Gateway (Gate of Souls)
Description: A strange, sculpted edifice of clear quartz, with cloudy knots in the hard interior of the artifact clearly visible within its oblong form. The form of an archway can be seen carved at one end of the artifact, although it leads directly into a dead end into the crystal. Rumor has it that energetic humanoid forms occasionally be glimpsed inside.

Name: Loose Moon (Arm of Crux)
Description:  The blasted moon is easily distinguished from the pieces of an exploded planet, by it’s spherical form and surface regularly pocked with meteor impacts.  Once it must have orbited a planet, providing everything from tidal changes to inspiration for an idle artist.  Now one side has been scarred to blackened, twisted ruin by the planet’s combustion and it spins endlessly in the void, with no purpose.  But strange grooves scar into the surface, from which pictographic language can be seen.

Name: Prism Lens (Sword of Light)
Description: It is difficult to imagine a window large enough for such a gigantic sheet of glass. Whether it was meant for a collossal starship or a telescope of unheard of proportions is unknown, but regardless, this gigantic pane of glass, miraculously unmarred, is spinning through the cold vacuum of space. For each revolution it makes, it bends and refracts starlight, creating prismatic wonders.  Sometimes the lights seem like an aura borealis and others like something is reaching from beyond its surface. 

Name: Pearl (Oil Orb)
Description: A gigantic piece of crust floats in space, its hollow interior cracked open like an egg shell.  It slowly rotates, allowing the tons of oil contained within to leak out and form a black cloud around it. Much of this oil has frozen solid around the asteroid, coating it in its own juices.  The process is reminiscent of a pearl.

Name: Ancient Statue (Oberon's Face)
Description: A large statue, perhaps twice the size of a man, made of scarred marble.  Originally, it must have shown a man wearing a toga, with his hands raised in a gesture of friendship or exhortation.  The savage description of the planet that would have formed its base left its mark on the former masterpiece.  The great heat melted the face, causing it to flow into an expression of woe and despair.  The hand on the left side twisted and turned down, creating a dichotomy with the right, still turned up. 

Name: Icen Fire Stone (Ailythe, Heart of the Mountain)
Description: This huge boulder would seem unremarkable at first.  It’s a typical piece of exploded planet, rough and jagged in the absence of erosion. It is basalt. One unexplained property renders it an utter mystery.  No matter what is done to it, one side is always ice cold and the other burning hot.  Nothing can change it. 

Name: Novelty Gallery (Tourist's Museum)
Description: A whole building floats in the ravenous void.  It was once a museum of novelty and strangeness that would have orbited the annihilated planet.  The power is long dead, rendering the flashy signs cold and the windows dark.  From cracks and breaks in the structure, a colorful assortment of knick knacks and oddities has leaked out.  Posters proclaiming the impossible has been done, supposed artifact from far off cultures and times, and weird stuffed animals are just some of the things floating. 

Name: Metallic Orb (Connectors of Crux)
Description:  The original purpose of the orb is hard to guess.  It’s a shiny metallic thing, with various antennas poking out.  You can make out faded logos on its surface.  A cloud of debris surrounds the orb.  Metal of all kinds seems attracted to the satellites.  Most of it seems to be hunks of rock especially laden with ore, but broken parts of space ships, wrecked metal and other, less recognizable things can be seen drifting about.  It might be a good source of raw material… or artifacts.

Name: Suspended Magma (Crux Fire)
Description: A strange accumulation of fiery rock and silvery metals still molten after its long exodus through the voids of space. within the interior, something like a naked tongue of fire can be witnessed, still inciting and searing the amorpheous mass from within. Oddly enough, if introduced to an atmosphere, it solidifies into a single amber formation.

Name: Luminous Iceberg(Crux Ice)
Description: A massive, jagged hunk of ice the size of many planetoids and moons that spears through the gap of space with enormous speeds, accumulating velocity ever since its original ejection from the destruction of a planet. A pale, greenish illumination luminates from the surface of the ice and it carries an inexplicable sense of goodwill.

Name: Ancient Sediment(Crux Earth)
Description: At one time, this must have been a natural wonder for the people of the lost world.  Its giant mesa, shaped incongruously like an upside coffee mug. The stone is layered, reflecting the many layers of rock and sediment that make up its colorful bulk. It lazily drifts in the void, almost creating a sense it’s enjoying the change of view, for surely it was ancient even before the end of its world. 

Name: Storm Winds (Crux Wind)
Description: A swirling vortex of stellar gasses, rocky shards and loose metal that prowls through the galaxy with a malign intelligence with a peculiarly destructive behavior. Seeking out the nearest construction, whether it be an orbital station or a fleet of ships, it proceeds to engulf and swallow the target. Oddly enough, the eye of the storm contains evidence of terrestial origins: water, soil, and even the stray statue.

Name: Mysterious Fossil(Sangdrax)
Description: This appears to be a normal boulder, of some deep stratum, until closer inspection.  Eerie fossils of unimaginable age, are encased with the protective coating of the rock.  There are the usual tiny organisms, fascinating to a scientist perhaps, but it is the skeleton that draws the eye.  Belonging to some enormous reptile, it has two long necks surmounted by snake-like heads.  Could there really have been such a species, or was it a unique freak?

Name: Veinous Ruby(Heart of the Planet)
Description: The size of a moon, this enormous orb of ruby is roughly cut into the form of a misshappened sphere, budging on one end. Long lines of darkness spread like fingers across the surface, resembling the veins of a living creature more than a natural growth. Upon closer examination, any small cracks made into the ruby's surface fissure and explode into a geyster of molten gems and magma, serving to seal over the crack. It is almost as if it is trying to heal itself.

Name: Strange Mechanical Hives (Construcion Nanobiots)
Description: Although not garguantuan, this is a swarm of mechanical creatures of varying sizes that gradually increases in numbers the longer it is left with any raw materials to work with. Various machines, the largest the size of a human fist, appear to emit buzzing dark clouds of tiny servitors that vigorously attack asteroid rocks, break down loose metal, and even glean from nebula gasses to replicate more of themselves. Fortunately, their numbers appear to be limited by some source of energy provided by the largest of them: eventually the older clouds of machine break down and new replacements must be made, often cannibalizing from the bodies of their formers.

Name: Vast Imagescreen (Glass, Mirror)
Description: Whatever this was designed to do, it was made for a grand purpose, this gigantic screen made of etheric materials that impossibly resemble glass, but with a toughness that defies comprehension. When placed within the atmosphere of a planet, it takes on a opaque and milky quality, but becomes clear if placed in space. Occasionally, if struck by a source of energy, brief glimpses of the vast universe can be seen flickering across its surface.

Name: Electricity Oddity
Description: This sizzing orb of coherent energy is the size of a small moon and maintains its form even as it drifts through magnetic fields and solar disturbances. Although it may be temporarily dispersed through the application of any intense proton bombardment and separated into distinct nuggets, all individual portions of energy will attempt to reunite through confinement. It seems possible that there are many more sparks like this in the universe, and in their quest to find each other, appear to demonstrate a rudimentary intelligence.
 
Name: Moon Ship(Oberon Battleship)
Description: Using technology far beyond the norm, this spherical star station is not only fully capable of supporting life within its corridors, but appears to be able to processes any ore fed into its automated forges.Such ore and materials become exuded into the exterior of the station, encrusting the entire platform with layers of sediment, until an artificial moon is created. Even when the technological interior of the ship is fully disguised by the moon surface, however, access to the central orb remains easy, with powerful weapons available at the command of the crew.

Name: Dark Angel(Frozen Form of Britta)
Description: What beauty is captured within this crystalized form of a woman! Not surprisingly, she would not be such a sight if it weren't for the massive wings bullying the air around them. And if one were not accustomed to such a sight, it would be these grand projections which one's eyes would first be attracted to. They are majestic, emerging smoothly from her back, the defining feature of her alien race, but they are strange, deep, even to those who have never seen such things before. Her wings are umbrally black, shadowy in their appearance to utterly absorb light, and radiate terrifying power. Her skin, unlike the average human, is oddly unblemished, untouched, no hint of bruises or scars whatsoever. A layer of ice has completely encapsulated this woman, but her closed eyes and countenance imply something of serene sleep instead of death. Perhaps she can be awakened?