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Player > Setting > Planets > Apostae
Starfinder Core Rulebook p.458
Diameter: ×1/5
Mass: ×1/250
Gravity: ×1/10
Location: Pact Worlds
Atmosphere: Normal or none
Day: 7 days; Year: 243 years
Apostae is a rocky planetoid that is much smaller than
most worlds in the Pact Worlds system, with an orbit
that angles strongly from the ecliptic, almost perpendicular to
that of Absalom Station. These telltale clues lead to general
acceptance of the theory that the planetoid originated
somewhere beyond the system and was caught in the sun’s
orbit thousands of years before the Gap. Whether the world
was guided to the system intentionally or arrived through
some accident remains anyone’s guess.
The few existing records of visits to the planetoid in the
centuries prior to the Gap describe a barren, airless surface and
a warren of atmosphere-filled caverns and tunnels riddling the
rock through to its core. Many of the chambers were empty, but
others held ancient machines that still hummed, indestructible
doors, permanently comatose and preserved creatures with a
range of alien forms, and vaults of advanced technology and
weapons. Though a few research teams explored Apostae before
the Gap, interacting with a now-extinct race known as the ilee
that dwelled inside the tunnels, no group from outside the world
ever established a permanent foothold on the planetoid, which
most assumed to be some sort of ancient generation ship or
otherwise self-contained environment. Strangely, nothing in the
records suggest that the ilee themselves had any knowledge
of their origin, giving rise to the theory that they may have
degenerated over millennia between the stars or else been some
sort of captured or servitor race that outlived their masters.
No one knows exactly what happened to completely kill off
the ilee, but since the end of the Gap, Apostae has been primarily
in the hands of several powerful houses of drow—purple-skinned
elves who reject their kindred on Castrovel and worship powerful
demons. How and when the drow first came to the world is also
a mystery lost to the Gap, but most believe that they fled there
shortly before Golarion’s disappearance, guided by their demonic
patrons in a twisted parody of the elves’ own escape. Today,
despite centuries of effort to expand their holdings and increase
their meager population, the drow still maintain only incomplete
control of the planet-ship’s interior, and their influence on the
barren surface is mostly restricted to a single major city near
one of the massive doors leading down into the rock. Even this
much, however—when combined with their significant economic
power—has been sufficient for them to claim Apostae as their
home world and become signatories to the Pact, over the loud
objections of Castrovel’s elves.
Much like the bone sages of Eox, the drow houses don’t work
together as a cohesive government and assemble only to elect
ambassadors as required by the Pact. Each drow house acts
independently, with most operating family-run corporations
that deal primarily in arms, especially new technologies
discovered or retroengineered from the alien items recovered
by archaeo-salvage teams within Apostae. The orcs, half-orcs,
and other races that live in the drow-controlled settlements are
at best second-class citizens, with no say in political matters,
mostly used as laborers or subterranean cannon fodder when
teams break into previously sealed chambers in search of the
fabled Armory or Chamber of Life.
The most powerful house on Apostae is House Zeizerer,
which also has the broadest and most successful network
for weapon sales. House Zeizerer controls Nightarch, the
largest city on the planetoid’s surface and the only known
point of entry to Apostae’s interior, as all of the other huge
doors set into the planet’s surface are locked and have
proven indestructible. As a major spaceport, the city hosts
bustling markets dealing in personal and starship weaponry,
mercenary squads of orc and half-orc warriors, fleshwarping
augmentations, and custom weapons designs.
In addition to searching for alien technology within the
planet’s vaults—either on official contract or by slipping past
drow defenses—visitors often come to Nightarch to study the
eponymous arch at the center of the city. This arch is similar to
those that link many of the system’s worlds—and a functioning
ring of such portals within the city provides access to most of
the other Pact Worlds—yet this particular arch is covered in
markings that have so far defied all efforts at analysis. When
it activates, spontaneously and at rare and random intervals, it
creates a gate to unknown landscapes. So far, no group that’s
passed through these short-lived portals has ever returned.
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