Almost 50 years ago, a Starfinder scout ship ventured beyond the Hydra Nebula, deep into the unexplored reaches of the Vast. Upon arrival, the Starfinders announced the discovery of a star system with planets inhabited not just by unfamiliar aliens, but also by humans—a society apparently not of Pact Worlds origin. It also reported the existence of multiple large starships of unknown design, and the scout’s intention to establish communication. The Starfinder ship made no further transmissions.
This was the Pact Worlds’ first contact with the Azlanti Star Empire, a vast union of diverse races, worlds, and star systems under the dominion of humans who left Golarion millennia before the Gap. The Azlanti Star Empire seeks to bring all inhabited worlds under its hegemony, exploiting their knowledge, labor, and resources for the good of the empire. Its driving philosophy asserts that humans—specifically pure-blooded Azlanti—are the most perfect species and that their destiny is to conquer the galaxy and rule over all lesser species. The Star Empire’s fleet of starships is believed to rival the navies of the Pact Worlds and Veskarium combined, and its legions of gem-augmented aeon troopers ruthlessly conquer new territories and quell dissent.
Since that meeting, encounters between the Pact Worlds and the Star Empire have been few, but always hostile. No vessel reporting direct contact with Star Empire forces has survived the encounter, at least in officially recorded sources, and so far only the barest outlines of their society have been gleaned by spying on transmissions. Two diplomatic delegations sent by the Pact Worlds government were firmly rebuffed: the first vanished without a trace, its members assumed to have been captured or killed; the second destroyed outright as soon as it came out of the Drift in Azlanti territory. The Veskarium colony world of Najin-Korozayas, established only a decade before first contact with the Star Empire, was obliterated in an Azlanti attack soon after, its entire populace slaughtered or enslaved and its resources plundered. Since then, both the Pact Worlds and the Veskarium have kept their distance from systems believed to be in Azlanti territory, forbidding explorers or colonists from entering, and the Stewards keep a close eye on the region, lest the Azlanti decide to move in force toward the Pact Worlds.
A Brief History of Everything and the Gap:
History is broken in Starfinder. No matter where you go, from the myriad mortal worlds floating in space to the strange realms of the gods, you’ll find the same thing: historical records go back a few centuries and then suddenly go blank or contradictory, shifting randomly between readings and becoming reliable again only when referring to the dim and misty ages of the ancient past. What’s more, this hole torn in history isn’t restricted to blurred photographs and garbled almanacs. Modern history begins with accounts of worlds across the multiverse erupting in riots and panic as those living through this transition found their memories suddenly blank or unreliable. While these people retained all the knowledge, skills, and interpersonal connections from their lives, specific memories became difficult or impossible to retrieve—a woman might have instinctively known a million tiny details about her spouse but have had no concept of how they met or how long they’d been married. Nations forgot why they were at war. Angels lost track of sinners’ indiscretions. Everything in motion remained in motion, but without context or reason.
Some cultures collapsed in fire and famine, but most societies, faced with no other choice, simply gritted their teeth and carried on, either attempting to piece together their traditions from the unreliable shreds of the past, or else using their amnesia as a chance to reinvent themselves, unshackled from whatever they might have been before. Those races that reproduced faster had the advantage, as children born into a world without recent history accepted the fresh start as natural—new historical records and memories held firm, and that was all that mattered. Gradually, order reestablished itself.
Today, roughly 3 centuries after the obscured period now referred to as the Gap, most societies view the historical cataclysm with little interest, save for the crypto-archaeologists, salvagers, and scientists who attempt to unearth and reverse engineer wondrous artifacts from the lost age. For everyone else, the focus is on creating new history, moving ever onward and upward.
No one has ever been able to say for certain what caused the Gap, as even the gods themselves remain steadfastly silent (or ignorant) regarding the matter. Nevertheless, theories abound, the most popular being that the Gap was a quantum ripple effect caused by the discovery and use of Drift technology, a hole torn in history and traveling backward in time, possibly entangling our timeline with those of alternate universes. Others argue that the Gap was caused by whatever magic whisked away the planet Golarion, a magical resonance that stretched forward and backward, its tremors gaining strength until they eventually shattered the fundamental structure of time.
What is known, however, is that while the Gap is universal—and a combination of carbon dating and astro-chronology suggest it lasted several millennia—its edges are geo-temporally inconsistent. Where one star system might have accurate records stretching back 300 years from the present, worlds in different parts of the galaxy might have 310 years of history, or only 275. Some scholars have even uncovered rare “caches” within the Gap—places where accounts seem suddenly consistent for a given period or topic. For an organization like the Starfinders, locating these scattered bread crumbs and syncing them up with ancient pre-Gap records may yet hold the key to unraveling the greatest mystery of the universe.
Golarion and the Pact Worlds:
The solar system today called the Pact Worlds has been inhabited for millennia, stretching back tens of thousands of years even before the Gap. While all of the planets in the system could make an argument for their own significance, most outside observers agree that the system's most important planet was the third from the sun, called Golarion.
The presumed birthplace of humans, dwarves, halflings, and numerous other races still found in the system, Golarion was most notable not for its vast civilizations, but its theological significance: in addition to caging a dark god of destruction called Rovagug in its core, Golarion was also home to a magical object called the Starstone, which allowed mortals to ascend to godhood. At some point during the Gap, however, that world vanished. High priests and divine servants petitioned their gods for answers, and all received the same information: Golarion still exists, as do the descendents of those people on it when it vanished, safe in a seclusion unreachable by magic or science. Beyond that, gods and demons all maintain the same firm policy that no further information will be forthcoming—if indeed they even know it. The existence of Absalom Station in Golarion’s former orbit raises even more questions. Was it built as a lifeboat? Was it simply a Golarion-made space platform left behind after the disappearance? Or was the station itself somehow responsible for the planet’s disappearance? Regardless, the mystery of Golarion leads many both within and without the Pact Worlds to still refer to the solar system as “the Golarion System.”
The Vast and the Drift:
When history recommenced at the end of the Gap, many worlds found they had already established spaceflight and interplanetary trade. Vercite aetherships, Eoxian bone-cruisers, Brethedan vacuum-swimming bio-vessels, and more all plied the void, and magical gates and dimension-hopping spells granted opportunities to visit other worlds and confer with colleagues throughout the system. Yet while spaceflight was relatively common, the vast distances between the stars still made travel beyond a single solar system mostly infeasible—the realm of planes-walking spellcasters or long-lived daredevils.
The ascension of Triune changed all that. While the solar system had always had gods dedicated to machines, even back to confirmed antiquity, they’d always remained relatively minor. Yet exactly 3 years after the end of the Gap in the Golarion System, a new deity revealed itself: a divine network integrating Epoch, the machine-built deity of Aballon; Casandalee, the god of androids; and Brigh, the clockwork goddess. Calling itself Triune, this new collective consciousness vaulted to prominence by providing mortals with access to a heretofore unknown hyperspace dimension called the Drift, reachable only via technology and granting easy travel to distant stars. For a relatively low price, ships could now acquire a Drift engine that let them slip quickly between star systems.
In the wake of this revelation, a land rush began. The adventurous and disenfranchised sought opportunity in new colonies. Corporations sought resources and freedom from regulation. Governments sought to expand their territories. Yet as quickly as it began, this exodus hit its first hurdles, for many “new” worlds were already inhabited or bore strange contagions inimical to life, and predatory civilisations both vast and incomprehensible lurked in the dark between the stars. New races flooded the Pact Worlds in turn, coming in peace and in war, forcing the worlds to come together for mutual protection and in shared appreciation for all they held in common. Today, space exploration remains rampant and lucrative for citizens of the Pact Worlds, but it’s still a romantic pursuit and fraught with danger.
