Creating some Golarion in the Vast....

[SolidHalo]

So one of the things I loved about Golarion was Aroden and the Worldwound. So since I don't know the answer to these either via Pathfinder or Starfinder I thought I would just recreate my own. I am planning on making 2 planets, a moon, and a spatial anomaly. The two planets are going to represent the Lands of Mammoth Lords (allowing me to introduce barbarians with ray guns! lol) and Ustalav (I love the idea of a dark undead world where living creatures struggle to survive sort or like Van Helsing movie). The Castle Moon where Nerosyan was recreated and is in a direct path for what the WorldWound spits out. The rest of Mendev? Who knows but the moon has atmosphere and standard gravity just that the constant battles has forced the citizens of the Castle City (is it Nerosyan then?) to create force fields to protect their farms and basically non combatants civilizations behind the castle city. Finally the WorldWound appears to be some type of black hole anomaly but closer inspection is that it is a wormhole type spatial event. Though not something that could be believed the three have made a trade agreements with each other as none of the areas want to be overrun by what is spit out of the anomaly. So thoughts?

[Withdrawn]

Okay, not to Necro, since it has been two months since this was posted, but if you're still looking for opinions?

I'd say that it looks/works fine. You sound like you just want to port The Worldwound and its surrounding nations straight to Starfinder, and this seems like it does that. GMs are specifically encouraged to create all sorts of new and weird worlds at their leisure to populate the Starfinder Galaxy. For all that the Core Worlds of Starfinder have tons of super interesting plot hooks and nifty setting stuff/ideas, the Core Book dedicates a great deal of its time to setting up that there's a New Frontier of exploration that has been exploding with wayfarers and settlers for the past three centuries.

Now if you wanted something similar but distinct from the Worldwound and nations surrounding it, I'd suggest doing a bit more work. For example it sounds from this like you weren't (aren't?) quite sure exactly what role you want the Moon to mimic/hold.

While I get that the Mammoth Lords border the Worldwound, I'd say that if you want Barbarians with ray-guns, it sounds more like a planetary-scale version of Numeria. I'd suggest that you write it up as having a ring of detritus surrounding it that on inspection is clearly the remains of destroyed spacefaring vessels and other technological monoliths. The ring is probably unstable, having become trapped in orbit around the planet as opposed to being set up, and occasionally rains down in meteor storms on the world below. This both justifies the access and use of advanced technology, and the unstable and 'barbaric' state of the world's inhabitants. If you really wanna flesh it out, you might even take some inspiration from Horizon Zero Dawn, it's just that - instead of there having been a fall from an advanced era of technology - there was a society still in development when some interstellar disaster struck and the world's inhabitants have been forced to deal with it and adapt to it ever since.

What you described Ustalav as... works as a description of Ustalav, but the first thing it made me think of was Eox, and While Eox is basically shaping up to be Starfinder's version of Geb, the fact that Eox specifically operates as a safe haven for and welcomes intelligent undead makes the existence of intelligent Undead elsewhere - in the vein of Ustulav - kind of... weird. There should be something about this planet that both makes it so rife with undead and that keeps them interested in staying (beyond just, 'I was born raised here, and I refuse to leave. It's my planet') the way that the Gallowspire and the Vampiric Courts' deals with the Ustulavic nobility do in Pathfinder. To that end, I'd suggest looking up Zombie Stars and maybe making it so that the planet orbits one of these. Given we're talking about a setting with magic, you can potentially justify any effect from such a star as you'd like. Maybe undead arise more easily under its light, and any corpse that isn't properly cremated arises as a mindless terror to prey upon the living before growing 'naturally' (due to the light of the dead star) into advanced and intelligent versions of its type. Maybe the star's light isn't instantly fatal to Vampires or as harmful to other light-vulnerable undead, affecting them as if they were one step more resistant.

As for the spatial anomaly - the Worldwound is such a grave threat because it's huge. It's an always active slowly growing portal to the Inferno (I think that's the plane in question?) the size of a country on a world where most don't have the technology to flee. The Spatial Anomaly works as a good equivalent... locally. The Worldwound in Pathfinder isn't an everyday worry for those countries that don't immediately border it. But everyone who knows about it occasionally worries because it's a planet buster that in theory could go off whenever

Real Life:

- kinda like the Supervolcano under Mt. St. Helens.

The Spatial Anomaly is just too local. and while it's big, and it's dangerous, it's the sort of thing that - if the alliance fails to keep it under control - would basically end up like the Azlanti Star Empire or maybe the Riven Shroud:

• It's big
• It's scary
• It can't really be dealt with
• Occasionally it spits out raiding parties (of demons, in this case)
• Don't Go There.

Basically, something less 'poised to wipe the setting clean' and more: "Place 's a s+!%hole. *spittoon sound* 'S crap hand for the folks 'as 'live' there - if'n ye can call that livin' - but if you don't go near it won't bother ya' none."

What you want is something that's already like that. Something that - unbeknownst to most - could represent a Galactic Threat on par with the Swarm itself.

Personally? I recommend ripping off wholesale the Eye of Terror from Warhammer 40k.