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Azrinaran elves, for clarity. Descendants of elves from the Azrinae family on Golarion, who fled to Apostae during the Gap (a history provided with significantly more detail than it seems the Gap should allow). Minimal changes to the lore, really.

There are numerous colossi, of a variety of species, throughout the AP.

I'm prepping to run this. on pg. 17 it mentions 3 villains from previous adventures but it does not say which adventures they come from or how to know if they are dead?

Vradak - comes from what adventure and is there something on that chronicle sheet that needs to be marked

Lunesha comes from 5-10 but is there something that needs to be marked on that chronicle sheet

Khalin - comes from what adventure and is there something on that chronicle sheet that needs to be marked. This one doesn't say dead it just says varies.

For future reference: An index to all named NPCs in SF 1st ed.

But to save a few clicks:

Meanwhile we have a dragon on Triaxus who was considered a threat pre-Gap and who is now, from the information given, no more than 800 years old, physically. That's the thing about the Gap; you can't solve the puzzle. The pieces don't fit together.

Note that by the era of Pathfinder, Bretheda, Eox, and Verces had already been planet-hopping for thousands of years.

Varies a ton between artists, but skimming through my art archive I see that most artists who show off a little vesk skin depict slightly pebbly, lizard-like scales.

Justice for Ratrod! Seriously, Radaszam was utterly in the wrong when he fixed that match and Datch could and should have hung this albatross around the Society's neck back all the way back in Season 2!

Starfinder Galaxy Guide hits in May 2025 and the Starfinder Player Core in August 2025 (a Gen Con release). Starfinder GM Core will also release in 2025 (I assume at the same time as SFPC, but I don't know).

The Gap (in no coherent order):

* Golarion and other worlds in the Mataras system catch up with Verces and Bretheda, developing interplanetary and eventually interstellar travel. Various nations and worlds from the system establish colonies in nearby systems, often requiring the use of generational arkships.

Some notable colonies include:

* Hobgoblins, presumably from Tian Xia, establish an interstellar empire that the modern Gideron Authority claims as its own. The hobgoblin empire eventually collapses, for unknowable reasons.
* A colony in the neighboring Marixah system, which brands itself the Marixah Republic after emerging from the Gap.
* Explorers from the Mwangi Expanse use a magic portal to establish a colony now called Xibion.

* Absalom Station is constructed and the Starstone relocated from Golarion's surface to the station's core.

* Somehow, either through a fluke mutation or a blessing from Hylax, shirrens, a component of the Swarm, gain individuality.

More later!

Quick n' dirty additions, and trying to avoid any major spoilers:

Pre-Gap dates assume the Gap began somewhere in the 4700s AG, just for a baseline. If you disagree, just slide those numbers around to taste.

Millions (or hundreds of thousands? Sources contradict) of years ago: The Sivv Dominion uses its advanced technology to aggressively spread across the galaxy, stopped only when the Kishalee empire, possessing its own incredible technologies, cripples the sivv empire in a stunning act of sabotage. The Sivv Dominion collapses and is soon wiped out by its surviving enemies.

Hundreds of Thousands of Years Ago: The act that doomed the Sivv Dominion also sent the Kishalee Empire into a long slide of cultural decay. Eventually it, too, collapses. The Sivv and the Kishalee are eventually forgotten by history, remembered only in the prehistoric legends of other species.

Unknown Pre-Gap: Eox fires a doomsday weapon that destroys the planets Damiar and Iovo, creating the Diaspora. The weapon also backfires, devastating Eox. The handful of native elebrians who survive the initial cataclysm turn to undeath to persist.

Unknown Pre-Gap: The planet Golarion's first great human empire, Azlant, uses magical portals to explore the galaxy, establishing colonies on Akiton and New Thespera.

Unknown Pre-Gap: The Oatia elves of Castrovel study the stars, making advanced discoveries, and eventually use portals to depart to distant worlds, eventually spreading to numerous worlds and possibly even other galaxies.

Circa 10,100 Pre-Gap: Earthfall. An asteroid pulled from the Diaspora smashes into Golarion, obliterating Azlant and ushering the planet into the "Age of Darkness." Azlanti colonies elsewhere in the galaxy, including those on Akiton and New Thespera, are suddenly and permanently cut off from home.

Unknown Pre-Gap: The Azlanti humans of Akiton wage war against the planet's resident witchwyrds. The witchwyrds are outnumbered. The majority stay and fight the Azlanti, eventually evolving into shobhads. A smaller population negotiates a peace with the Azlanti. The smallest percentage develops starflight and flees. Of these, those who remain nomadic are the witchwyrds we know today. Some settle on a new world, Kasath, and eventually evolve into kasathas. The Azlanti humans gradually become the Hylki. Much of this history will be forgotten or suppressed by the start of the Gap.

Circa 9,160 Pre-Gap: A massive starship from a distant galaxy crashes into Golarion. Its wreckage and the alien creatures and technology that trickle out of it fascinate the local human barbarians, who call the wreck the Silver Mount. This event introduces androids to the galaxy and releases small populations of some creatures collected on Akiton and Castrovel into the wild.

Circa 9,000 Pre-Gap: Gnomes first emerge on Golarion.

Unknown Pre-Gap: Eshovok the Far-Sighted unites the vesk and establishes their empire, the Veskarium. The Veskarium wages a war of extermination against the other two sapient species on their planet. Eventually, the Veskarium rules the planet, unopposed.

Unknown Pre-Gap: The deity Kadrical first arrives in the system modern Pact Worlds explorers call the Scoured Stars and adopts the system as his domain. Kadrical first manifests a powerful field, the Godshield, to protect the jinsul species from the ravages of their sun.

Unknown Pre-Gap: Under Kadrical's watchful eye, izalguuns develop technology considered advanced even in modern times. Several other species in the Scoured Stars unite to form a blended civilization; much much later this civilization will call itself the Kreiholm Freehold. Jinsuls serve as Kadrical's enforcers, maintaining the peace and guarding against external threats.

Unknown Pre-Gap: A mysterious "darkness" from space threatens the Scoured Stars. Kadrical responds by engulfing the entire trinary star system in the Godshield, cutting the planets off from each other and the rest of the galaxy.

Unknown Pre-Gap: Centuries later, Kadrical slips into a torpor and the Godshield falls. The eight indigenous civilizations of the Scoured Stars all flee, scattering across the galaxy by various means. One of Kadrical's heralds attempts to stop the exodus, but succeeds only in scattering it.

Unknown Pre-Gap: Not long after (no more than a couple of centuries later), Kadrical briefly wakes, discovers that he has been abandoned, and sends an artifact out into space, each one intended as a beacon to ask its civilization to return. None respond.

Circa 4,800 Pre-Gap: On Golarion, Aroden raises the Starstone from the bottom of the Inner Sea and builds a great capital city around it: Absalom. This ushers in the "Age of Enthronement."

3,226 Pre-Gap: Having developed interplanetary travel, the Veskarium invades and conquers the neighboring world in their system, Iji. The Veskarium renames the planet Vesk-2.

Circa 200 Pre-Gap: Aroden dies and prophecy is forever broken in the multiverse.

161 Pre-Gap: The Veskarium completes its initial conquest of all eight planets in their solar system.

Circa 100 Pre-Gap: The Russian Revolution of 1917 takes place in a distant galaxy.

0 Pre-Gap: The Gap begins, marking the end of the reliable historical record in the Golarion system. The start of the Gap is porous, with no clear and singular cutoff point. The physical loss of Golarion post-Gap means that most historical records do not survive, leaving a tattered history that grows even sparser as the Gap approaches. Surviving records of dubious authenticity suggest that Golarion was in the early stages of technological society, with isolated usage of aircraft and orbital vehicles. The ancestors of space goblins are reputed to have snuck onboard a spacefaring vehicle and infested an orbital space station. The Pathfinder Society is active in this era, eventually inspiring the formation of the Starfinder Society.

I can attest that I'd been noodling a short series of write-ups of "overlooked" PC species for Starfinder, taking species who had simply been mentioned in passing and providing them with stats and lore on how they fit into the setting. An expansion of this post in the homebrew forum.

I've abandoned those plans entirely now and, as far as I can see, were I to offer up or update that forum post now, I would be in violation. Sad thing is that I'd been specifically waiting for the end of SF1 with the purposeful intent of not stepping on any creative toes.

Well obviously you're going to want to use a four-armed character (runs and hides)

OK, I've run the numbers with this additional data point and reached a different conclusion: Prime Executives are elected to four-year terms. Elections take place early in the year, on "the fours," and the office is limited to two terms.

So, working backward:

324 AG: By mid-year Melacruz is out of office and providing counsel to the new Primex. We can assume elections are held early in the year; the first Primex took office as a reaction to the end of the Gap, aka Day 1, 0 AG. So if the social catastrophe that was post-Gap Absalom Station began on "January 1st," getting someone in charge by "Spring" makes a lot of sense.

So we can assume that as of A Cosmic Birthday, Melacruz has been out of office for just a few months, and that the election was held within the calendar year: 324 AG.

320 AG: Melacruz is re-elected, placing her in her second term by the time she appears in The Devastation Ark. This checks out, assuming TDA takes place later in the year.

316 AG: Melacruz is elected. Within her first year in office, she survives an assassination attempt, which has already happened when she and the entire setting are first introduced in 317 AG. Checks out.

Screaming backward in time, now:

8 AG: The first Primex, Loqua Tem, leaves office. (Assumed.)

7 AG: Loqua Tem is Primex during the Magefire Assault. This checks out, placing the event toward the end of his second term.

4 AG: Loqua Tem is re-elected.

3 AG: Loqua Tem is in office during the Signal. This checks out.

0 AG: Loqua Tem is elected within a few months of the end of the Gap.

Okay! I'm sorted, this all works. Next Primex election's coming up in early 328 AG, and might actually be democratic for the first time! See you there.

Buckle up, starfarers, we're flying back into The Great Tuvix Debate sector.

The description of this flip-map definitely does not match the original Space Station flip-mat.

Right, but the issue under discussion is that this is the only time, I believe, in the full run of the RPG, that it's been suggested that characters with environmental protections active can't verbally communicate directly with other people who aren't on comms.

I think we've all been assuming that Starfinder RPG armor comes with something like Stormtrooper-esque helmet mics at a bare minimum, since this is a ruleset that assumes you can smell and even put objects in your mouth through active environmental protections.

Of course, it's possible that what we're actually seeing here is a sneak preview of the limitations to environmental protections we know are coming in SF2.

To un-muddy a little bit of this discussion, the Starfinder 2E core book is set to be released at Gen Con 2025. I'm "betting" (actually just musing what I would do, if handed the reins) that starships will be introduced in a theoretical book released 1 year later, at Gen Con 2026.

Venture-Captain: Hey, everybody! I need you to rescue Envar--

PCs: Uggggghhhh...

Venture-Captain: ...'s body double!

PCs: Oh! Okay then!

And remember, contact them via the portal rather than via e-mail. (I've always received nigh-immediate responses through the portal.)

The most recent Paizo Live confirmed that A Cosmic Birthday runs levels 1-3 and spits PCs out at 4th level. Which is to say, the standard advancement rate for an adventure. Presumably Empires Devoured will likewise run levels 10-12 and spit PCs out at 13th level.

The scenarios sound like they're closer to a Starfinder Society scenario or possibly even bounties - think more in terms of a single combat encounter.

Technically, Aucturn hatched... looks at watch ...about two weeks ago in SFS #7-03: Aucturn Asunder. A Cosmic Birthday will delve into the aftermath.

venture-captain: oh hey u guys are back early

starfinder: walruses're cursed

venture-captain: what?

starfinder: *loading a pistol and getting back on the rocket-ship* walruses're cursed

After my previous reply I thought of a counterexample: a simple "silent alarm" trap, such as one that pings security over comms when a door is opened. I wouldn't assume PCs have "observed" a triggered trap that doesn't noticeably affect them.

To add to this:

The AbStat lore in Pact Worlds and Dead Suns 1: Incident on Absalom Station is identical; you don't need both, so Pact Worlds will give you the majority of what's been said about both AbStat and Aucturn in SF. (Also note that the AbStat article is not included in the Dead Suns hardback.)

Little Aucturn, like most of AbStat, has never been extensively detailed, but SFS scenario #2-21: Illegal Shipment is partially set there and provides a little interesting lore, including details on a noteworthy gang.

As for the Ghost Levels, Drift Crisis is the most extensive source of lore so far.

Sent.

The NPC Index has been updated to include Mechageddon! and the remainder of Starfinder Society Season 6. It is now "complete" for the published 1st edition run, and has a few entries from what's been announced for SFS Season 7.

If you really want to know:

Deeper spoiler:

For backmatter, we get:

* An article on New Valor, including a full-page map and a new creature companion (8 pages)
* A catalog of new mechs, including a starship to carry them (12 pages)
* New mech components (2 pages)
* An article on Daimalko's colossi, including some cultural info, three new varieties of colossus, and the new colossiborn PC species (6 pages; note; quite a lot of colossus lore is peppered throughout the AP, as you might expect)
* 3 new critters (3 pages)
* A deity article for the demon lord behind it all; saying who is a spoiler; suffice to say they've had a bit of a glow-up since the Pathfinder era (4 pages)
* Rules for the fiendblood corruption (3 pages)
* 4 side jobs (8 pages)

That would mean devoting about 20 pages of Mechageddon! to reprinting rules from Tech Revolution. Doing that would be... unusual.

Galactic Magic touches on Ethereal travel. In a nutshell, Ethereal space is considered good for running stealth missions, but it's terrible for travel times. Ships that could navigate the Ethereal without getting bogged down in ectoplasm - ether ships - are mentioned as ancient, lost magitech. (One such ether ship - the King Xeros - has turned up in an adventure.)

That's true; the Starfinder Discord is constantly active.

I now have all of Season 6 in hand, so it's time to finally get to work on this update!

If there's one thing the Starfinder product line could easily ignore going forward, it would be a covert conspiracy that was successfully thwarted and covered up at the highest levels of government.

I did not see any rule that proactively states a VI occupies a "complement" seat, which is not definitive but I interpret as meaning it does not.

Point to consider: If VIs take up crew slots, then starships that carry a maximum of 1 crew (interceptors and racers) cannot add VIs without replacing the living crew entirely. (And the drone frame, which is inherently operated by VIs, has a maximum crew of 0.)

I've compiled a complete (for now) index to all named NPCs and starships in Paizo's official Starfinder sources. This is up to date through the Scoured Stars hardback and Starfinder Society scenario #6-14. I will continue to update as Mechageddon! and SFS Year 7 are released.

You can download the PDF here.

I get that, but the thumb on the scale's a little too obvious for me this time. Particularly since SFS has taken "the third option" into account before -- both with this specific NPC and with an associate.

We all know players are unpredictable and will zag instead of zigging at the strangest times, so based off personal experience, there's two ways I can see this encounter going that the scenario doesn't take into account:

How previous scenarios handled this:

I'm slightly concerned that this scenario is overlooking a distinct third possibility of what PCs will do about a certain NPC...

My first instinct while reading through this is that I'd want to have the PCs already on board the Idari when "the call" goes out. Interplanetary communication and travel times occasionally get overlooked in these rescue scenarios, I feel (see also the initial hook for The Devastation Ark, a far more extreme case of the same issue).

Specifically, I'd just say

Also, is Daemon pronounced Day-mon or Dee-mon?

In real life, dee-mon. In settings with the Monster Manual in their evolutionary DNA, day-mon.

Just putting this out there in case devs see this while working on 2nd edition:

As the Primex of Absalom Station, Kumara Melacruz is limited to two terms of office. How long each term of office last has never been specified, but we know that as of Dead Suns 1/Pact Worlds in 317 AG, she was halfway through her first term of office, and that by The Devastation Ark in 320 AG, she is now in her second term.

Once upon a time I crunched numbers to try to figure out when/how often the primex elections take place (also taking into consideration that the first primex, Loqua Tem, was elected in the aftermath of the Gap, prior to the Signal in 3 AG, and was still in office in 7 AG).

The only reasonable number I could land on was that the first prime executive election was held in 0 AG, and that each term of office lasts 5 years. (Thus Loqua Tem was elected in 0 AG and held office until 10 AG.) Any other combination either missed the known dates or resulted in a weirdly long... gap between the anarchy that arose at the end of the Gap and the election that solved that existential threat.

Thus, as of 325 AG, when second edition is released, Kumara Melacruz should be in the process of leaving office and Absalom Station should need a new primex!

I'm a little behind reading up on this season (partly due to the subscription woes), but having read this, I want to chime in on how a big part of the appeal of SFS for me is the "living campaign" aspect, seeing NPCs return and evolve over an growing period of time. So, that said, I really enjoyed seeing NPC A (see below) pop up! Coincidentally as I read this I'm in the middle of doing something similar with a different "rescue," NPC B, in my home game.

Update: I am working on this, but toward the goal of dotting my Is and crossing my Ts I've created an index of every named NPC and starship in every SFS scenario released to date. I've discovered quite a few connections I'd been oblivious to before!

Expanding that to other SF sources, and then I'll get to work writing up revisions. Though honestly at this point I'm on the fence about waiting for the end of Year 6, but we'll see.

The adventure doesn't say, and to my eye does its best to stress it doesn't matter (it's sold and gone by the time the adventure starts). It's referred to as a relic and an artifact, but isn't necessarily either of those in the technical sense. So it's probably some high-level item (magical, hybrid, etc.) that could be found deep inside the sun. If the players get curious, I'd dig up some magic item (or maybe lesser artifact) associated with efreet, the Plane of Fire, or some such. Or you could use it to foreshadow the culture the PCs are going to encounter down the line.

I'm trying to not weigh in on SF2 discussion because, well, I want to be generally positive, but I'll say this. As someone who just isn't interested in the PF2/SF2 ruleset but is interested in the SF setting, I plan to keep up with the game line once it transitions.

The twofold truth of the matter is that SF's creature and encounter design is streamlined enough that converting SF2 adventures to SF1 will likely be relatively painless (I say this as someone who converted all of Legacy of Fire from 3.5 to PF1 to run it.), and it's going to take SF2 a good long while to branch off in directions that SF1 hasn't covered. So my hope is to keep on trucking in the 2E era, converting adventures. Heck, I'd even ponder putting adventure conversion guides on Infinite, but I think I'd slam into a hard OGL/ORC wall there.

Oh hey new Forum members :O How many members does Society's Forum even have?

We've never been given solid numbers, but the Scoured Stars hardback suggests that the Forum is actually fairly large. The Forum is "the most numerous of the Society's leaders" and made up of veteran field agents, managers, scholars, and some venture-captains. They're essentially the entire upper-management bureaucracy running the Society.

For me it actually raises the question of whether the faction leaders shouldn't be officially considered Forum members as well.

Thought of another one, related to the Historias:

Sounds like a lot of the right choices being made.

I'll touch on some of these when I update my Narrative Arcs thread, but:

** The Other Scoured Societies **

Dipping back in to footnote myself. Having taken a closer look through the Scoured Stars AP now, I reckon there's a good chance...

Is there currently a mechanic where people can look at a map of the galaxy or look at the sky and point to a star and find a path to that system? Like blind exploration? Right now it is you just follow beacons and get to your destination, but what if I see a Type K star "here" and want to go explore it, do some calculations and enter the drift.

A fairly large chunk of the Dead Suns AP is predicated on not being able to astronavigate to a visible star via the Drift without the system's Drift coordinates.

On the other hand, explorers have to be able to go to an unexplored system somehow, and explorers like the Pact Worlds and the Azlanti visiting their closest galactic neighbors first doesn't sound like a coincidence.

So, presumably, some kind of "blind" Drift navigational calculation is possible, but it's likely to require extensive, time-consuming number crunching. And it may be that real-world distance adds to the complexity, making it, say, difficult but reasonable to calculate a Drift course to the nearest unexplored star, but exponentially more difficult to reach some dot on your starmap of the far side of the galaxy.

The Gap could factor into this. Real-world star maps are based on light and radio emissions traveling at the speed of light. If you're chasing a star, and the light from that star left it before the end of the Gap, the light you're seeing now might be wrong.