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Player > Setting > Planets > Idari
Starfinder Core Rulebook p.446
Diameter: 3 miles
Mass: less than ×1/100
Gravity: ×1-1/2 (artificial)
Location: Pact Worlds
Atmosphere: Normal
Day: 27 hours; Year: 4 years
A colony ship designed to transport whole generations at
a fraction of light speed, the Idari was the single largest
ship ever produced by Kasath. When it reached its destination
of Akiton and found the world too populated—and too well
defended—for outright colonization, the ship took up orbit just
past Verces and declared itself a Pact World in its own right.
Unlike Absalom Station, however, the Idari has not become a
melting pot and remains inhabited primarily by kasathas and
governed according to traditional kasathan values.
While the Idari retains its massive reaction drives, these
engines haven’t fired in decades, and their power has been
rerouted to aid the Crucibles, the ship’s impressive state-run
manufacturing sector. The ship’s prevalent artificial gravity
comes from the vast rotating cylinder referred to as the Drum,
which makes up most of the ship’s body. This curving landscape
is home to gleaming cities, rolling parks, and glass-walled
hydroponic farm-towers. Daylight is constant inside the ship’s
corridors, rerouted from solar collectors on the hull’s sunward
faces, though individuals often observe a 27-hour day broken
into nine-hour work shifts. Through the center of the Drum
runs the Hub, a zero-gravity transport tube with elevator spurs
running down to the “ground,†allowing travelers to quickly
access any location in the Drum, as well as the bridge, combat
stations, engineering, and other areas.
Government on the ship is handled by the traditional kasathan
Doyenate, a representative council composed of the most
respected members of a variety of fields and callings. While
the doyens and their close relatives act as a sort of aristocracy
among kasathas, and these families tend to be known for
accomplishments in certain fields, status as a doyen is never
inherited but instead recognized by the people—sometimes
against the prospective doyen’s will. (The doyen of exploration,
for instance, rarely appreciates being dragged back home to a
desk job.) All doyens have a say in government decisions, yet
their status both within the council and in general society is
determined by their role’s importance—a fact that has resulted
in trouble in recent decades as roles like captain, so important
during the Idari’s flight, gradually lose significance.
Idaran citizens are independent and may travel or emigrate
without restriction, yet keeping the ship running requires a
significant crew, and many of those who live on the Idari work
for the government in some capacity. Idarans residing on the
ship for more than a year and desiring the right to participate
in the ship’s government must accept and train for an auxiliary
crew role. These roles are generally considered a formality,
to be used only in the event of extreme emergency, and
plenty of Idarans have professions totally unrelated to their
reservist rank and training. Both professional crew members
and ordinary civilians live side by side in the city-like Sectors
spread throughout the Drum—dense but artistically arranged
settlements designed around different themes. Travelers
riding along the Hub can easily see the differences between
sectors, as they pass from river-cut Almolar to temple-choked
Brispex with its sharp and shimmering gables, from urban
Khovi to the vat-farms of Mesacand, and so forth.
One of the most recognizable features within the Drum is
the Sholar Adat, a cathedral-like spire in Brispex stretching
nearly to the Hub, which acts as a combination cemetery,
library, and ancestor temple. While many kasathas use the
structure to record and archive their memoirs or pay tribute
to lost loved ones, the temple’s claim to fame is the process
called adat.
When a kasatha dies aboard the Idari, the body is fed into
the ship’s recyclers to be broken down into useful components.
Before this happens, however, the corpse is taken to the
Sholar Adat, where robed attendants—adata—harvest a hairthin
slice of the deceased’s brain, which is then preserved and
added to the temple’s archives. Through the building’s complex
technomagical machinery, these samples can be used to kindle
brief flashes of the deceased’s memory and sometimes even
to contact the departed soul with questions. While querying
a soul isn’t cheap and accessing a soul that passed less than
a hundred years ago requires a warrant, many adata spend
their time in stasis beds patched into the ship’s Sensorium,
untangling the blizzard of ancient memories with the goal of
advancing kasathan society through ancestral wisdom.
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