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Player > Setting > Planets > The Sun
Starfinder Core Rulebook p.434
Diameter: ×100
Mass: ×280,000
Gravity: ×28
Location: Pact Worlds
Atmosphere: None
Day: —; Year: —
While the Pact Worlds’ mother star bears a different
name in every distant culture to observe it through a
telescope, within its system it is usually referred to as simply
the sun, or sometimes Mataras (a Lashunta name meaning
“burning motherâ€). Like most stars, the sun is an incredibly
inhospitable place, almost incomprehensibly hot, with pressures
capable of crushing ordinary starships like overripe fruit. In its
heart, the massive energies unleashed regularly tear holes to
the Positive Energy Plane and the Plane of Fire, giving birth to
whale-like fire elementals and plasma oozes that roil and breach
in its photosphere, as well as certain efreet, salamanders, and
intelligent flame-dwelling creatures with the supernatural
ability to withstand the sun’s tremendous pressure and heat.
Though largely left alone by the Pact Worlds, the sun
nevertheless attracts a few ordinary humanoid residents; of these,
members of the Church of Sarenrae are by far the most common,
as befits worshipers of the sun goddess. Roughly a century ago,
Sarenite scholars orbiting and observing the star discovered an
anomaly: a collection of inexplicable and deserted bubble-cities,
tethered together by magic and somehow floating unburnt within
the sun’s flaming seas. What’s more, as they approached, the
Sarenites found a magical tunnel opening miraculously in the sun’s
fire, allowing them to approach the cities without being destroyed.
Though it’s still not known who built the cities, how they were
constructed, or why they were abandoned—mysteries scholars
and engineers desperately study—the Burning Archipelago quickly
became the church’s most sacred settlement.
Today, the Radiant Cathedral in the central bubble attracts
worshipers and scientists from all across the system. Gleaming
Sarenite sunskimmers use stellar sails to soar dangerously close
to the sun’s corona, servicing the orbital power stations that
gather solar energy or magically bottle nuclear fire for resale. In
slightly safer orbits, various corporate outfits fly robotic tankships
full of algae genetically engineered to capture that same
energy via advanced photosynthesis. Corporations also operate
solar-powered robotics plants and so-called “jungle boxes†in
which modified plants extrude rare and complex chemicals. These
last are somewhat controversial, as the extreme magic and genetic
engineering used to mutate ordinary plants can sometimes twist
organisms more than their corporate creators initially intended.
Twice in the last year, various jungle boxes operated by NatuReal
Compounds Ltd. have gone feral, with sentient plant creatures
roaming the halls and devouring the attendant crew. Fortunately,
most jungle box operators have learned (somewhat) from the
scandal and have gone entirely automated—yet they still need
to quietly hire independent operators to accompany their repair
technicians any time a box goes dark.
In addition to visitors from the Pact Worlds, trade delegations
from the Plane of Fire regularly use the Burning Archipelago to
meet with Material Plane contacts. These dignitaries have much
to offer, but perhaps the most interesting information they bring
to the table is word of strange ruins and whole empires of fireimmune
creatures—some even humanoid—floating within the sun’s
deeper layers, as yet unreachable by outside races. Combined with
the apparently vast age of the bubble-cities, this news leads some
scholars to wonder whether the sun might harbor clues to the first
races to arise in the system, perhaps even the legendary First Ones
of Aballon. Many different organizations quietly monitor the sun’s
surface in hopes of making contact with these solar dwellers or
claiming new artifacts forced to the surface by stellar convection.
Yet, if these so-called “deep cultures†are truly progenitors of the
Pact Worlds races, why have they staunchly refused to respond to
the messages and shielded probes dropped into the sun’s depths?
And why do the efreet and other elemental travelers seem so
scared to speak of them? Of late, one particular theory has been
sweeping the conspiracy centers of the bubble-cities’ infosphere:
the idea that the energy is so great at the center of the sun that
time itself begins to warp, making the civilizations in the sun’s
depths not representatives of the past but of the future.
While the sun is officially held in common by all of the Pact
Worlds, the Burning Archipelago is considered an independent
protectorate, and its citizens are afforded the right to self-govern.
Though the bubble-cities are very close to theocracies, thanks to
the heavy Sarenite element, each one has its own unique flavor,
from the heavily religious central bubble of Dawnshore to the
more corporate Fireside or Stellacuna with its science labs.
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