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I've decided for my home campaign to resolve the mystery of the First Ones -- as far as the GM is concerned. Here's the short version. . . .

The race of machine progenitors of the anacites of Aballon, known to them as the First Ones, were originally created by the sivv civilization nearly a million years ago. Teetering on the brink of collapse toward the end of its wars with the kishalee, the ancient sivv civilization conceived a desperate plan to gather resources and establish refuge caches scattered across the galaxy. These “prospector ships” were completely automated to increase their operational range, both in terms of time and resources. The ships that reached Aballon completed their prospecting and cache creation cycles then departed the system in search of similarly rich and isolated planets. Part of the programming for each of the prospector ships included instructions to avoid habitable or near-habitable planets. The sivv leaders believed, rightly, that kishalee scouts would search for sivv holdouts on these types of planets, whereas barren worlds, such as Aballon, would be more likely to go unnoticed.

The war progressed and the sivv civilization eventually collapsed. The prospector ships were left to fend for themselves, continuing their programmed missions for thousands of years. The kishalee discovered and destroyed most of these ships and their hidden caches scattered across the galaxy over the span of later centuries, but the refuge on Aballon was overlooked.

The sivvs designed the First Ones to establish automated factories on the planets they visited. These factories would become self-sustaining, automated colonies with orders to continue construction of anacites that, in addition to building and mining, could also serve as reserve soldiers in their war with the kishalee. Each reserve colony contained programming meant to shield the operation from detection by kishalee scouts. This programming prevented the anacites from overproducing and from revealing themselves to anyone beyond their own kind.

When the signal from the First Ones failed to provide further instruction because of the collapse of sivv civilization, the anacites on Aballon eventually reached a point of population and production saturation. They shut down all further production and entered a period of low-energy hibernation for thousands of years. During this time, however, the colony’s central AI continued processing information and monitoring communication channels for signs of the return of the First Ones. Over time, the AI developed something of its own personality and became impatient. It began sending anacites on scouting and exploration missions to gather new information that the AI could use to determine an appropriate course of action. This work progressed slowly and cautiously, as it risked compromising the colony’s primary programming to remain hidden.

Further millennia passed and the anacites continued gathering information and evolving. This process eventually led to the appearance of the anacites today known as Those Who Become, an event that would forever alter the course of future developments on Aballon.

I have been developing Akiton as a location for a couple of campaigns that I'm running and gradually adding my own material and take on things. One area that I've recently focused on has been the city of Maro. I thought I'd share the ideas that I came up with explaining, not only its ancient past, but the origin of sentient species on Akiton itself.

Furthermore, I should mention that a big impetus for developing these ideas has been to connect them with my re-tooling of the Iron Gods adventure path for Starfinder and set on Akiton instead of Golarion.

Information and inspiration for the following take on Akiton's history comes primarily from Souls for Smugglers Shiv, Distant Worlds, and Starfinder Pact Worlds.

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Among the first sentient visitors to Akiton were the serpentfolk of Golarion. During the height of their power, the serpentfolk explored many of the planets and planetoids of the Pact Worlds system and established outposts on a handful of them, including Akiton. To avoid contact with the elves of Sovyrian, who had also begun exploring the solar system, the serpentfolk built their primary outpost in the relatively protected environs of the Edaio Rift—near present-day Maro. That original outpost has long since crumbled to dust, but later groups of serpentfolk brought slaves to construct a more permanent settlement in the rift, digging tunnels into the base of the rift and connecting them with the Darklands of Akiton. This serpentfolk settlement formed the foundation of what has become the city of Maro.

The defeat of the serpentfolk empire on Golarion by the Azlanti and the decapitation of their god, Ydersius, caused the serpentfolk to flee from their many holdings on the surface of Golarion. Many fled to the Darklands of Golarion, but some fled to Akiton, taking many slaves and other creatures of Golarion with them. When the final collapse of the serpentfolk empire came about, those on Akiton, fearing pursuit by their hated enemies, the Azlanti, severed the connection of the magical portal they had created to link the two worlds. Isloated and alone, the remaining serpentfolk and their slaves, along with a variety of allied races and creatures that the serpentfolk had brought with them, laid the foundations of a new civilization.

Millennia passed and, gradually, the refugees from Golarion adapted to their new environment. The humans, experimented on by serpentfolk wizards to better adapt them to Akiton’s harsh environment, quickly evolved into the deeply red-skinned humans known today as hylkis. Eventually, groups of hylkis rebelled and escaped into the wilderness, establishing cities of their own. The greatest of these was founded on the site of present-day Arl. The serpentfolk sacked Arl repeatedly for a period of years before hylki clerics, believing they were contacting their long-forgotten Azlanti deities for aid, opened a planar portal to their lost homeland of Azlant. The magic was temporary, but it re-established contact and, in the exchange, paved the way for Azlanti wizards to create a semi-permanent gateway atop the red pyramid which the hylkis had built to honor their gods.

The arrival of the Azlanti on Akiton shifted the balance of power dramatically. The serpentfolk were once again threatened with annihilation. In a desperate attempt to build an army of more loyal soldiers who could reproduce rapidly, serpentfolk wizards used lychanthropic magic and hylki slaves to create and breed the ysoki race. The truth of their creation has been lost to history, but, to this day, many ysoki feel an innate attraction to Maro and its deeper caverns, not knowing that it was here, in the subterranean labs of the ancient serpentfolk, that their species originated.

Eventually, the serpentfolk were routed from Maro and Maro was sacked. The serpentfolk scattered. Some fled deeper into the Darklands of Akiton; others fled to the deserts. In time, the remnants of the serpentfolk culture were forgotten and the serpentfolk themselves became increasingly barbaric, as had their kin on Golarion. Their descendants evolved into the race known today as the ikeshtis.

The ruins of Maro remained abandoned for centuries save for savage tribes of ysoki. The hylki, finally freed from their millennia of servitude to the serpentfolk, spent many more generations beholden to their Azlanti masters. Following Earthfall and the destruction of the Azlanti Empire, the hylki were finally free to chart their own course. For many years after, Maro remained a refuge of the ysoki. Gradually the ysoki learned from the hylki and the two species began trading with each other. Generations of hylki who had never known the tyranny of the serpentfolk and the haunting memories of Maro took up residence there, beginning the long process of transforming Maro into the cosmopolitan hub of commerce that it has become today.

I don't have much free time to write adventures for my Starfinder group, but it's something I've always enjoyed doing. So, when I do take the time to write them, I try to work as quickly and efficiently as possible. When creating encounters, I like to adapt and modify existing stat blocks from various published sources, but quickly and efficiently locating stat blocks across a growing collection of books and supplements becomes increasingly difficult.

Perhaps I'm the only GM who thinks and works like this, but in case I'm not, I thought I'd share a GM resource that I created to help me quickly locate stat blocks published in various sources.

I call it simply the Starfinder Stat Block Index, and it can be accessed in Google Sheets format HERE.

Spoiler Warning: The index contains names, type and CR of the creatures listed, so it could implicitly spoil information for players.

The index isn't comprehensive. It contains stat blocks from only the products that I own so far. As I acquire more products, I'll update the index. Some creatures are entered more than once, if their stat block appears in more than one source. I only included creatures that had complete (or mostly complete) stat blocks listed, not simply partial stats.

I have searched the Core Rulebook and the forums for information about the cost of resupplying and refueling starships but haven't come across any. Has this been addressed in other rules or forums yet?

Categories of specific things that I'd like to see rules for:
* refueling standard thrusters
* refueling Drift engines
* resupplying life support material (e.g., food, water, air/oxygen, etc.)
* recharging power cells and batteries (this is partially addressed by battery recharging rules, but might scale differently for starships)

Along with these rules, I'd like to see rules for determining some sort of consumption rates that could be universally/generically applied to travel around the galaxy.

I'm fine with creating house rules to cover this, but I wanted to check here first to see if anything already exists, either officially or unofficially.

Thanks.

The Pathfinder Campaign Setting book lists 4079 as the year in which Qadiri forces first invaded Taldor, sparking the Grand Campaign, whereas the Taldor Sourcebook (p. 3) gives the date as 4029. Which date is correct?

Thanks!

Several ideas for adapting the Age of Worms Adventure Path have already been shared here. Here’s another. First, a warning—anyone who doesn’t like borrowing from other game materials to expand/modify their own campaigns won’t like what I’m proposing here. It includes pieces of Greyhawk, modified for Golarion, but still obviously Greyhawk in most respects. I suspect it will be an equal opportunity offender of both Golarion and Greyhawk purists. There are some AoW spoilers scattered in what follows as well.

I have begun a conversion “sourcebook” of sorts, from which I’ve summarized the main ideas below, to keep things fairly brief here.

I have kept the two broad storylines of the campaign somewhat separate – the story of the Wind Dukes of Aqaa and that of Kyuss. I’ll discuss the Kyuss story, since it’s the most important to the campaign. If people like it and want the rest, I’ll add it later.

The Ebon Triad
The Cult of the Ebon Triad seeks to unite Asmodeus (Hextor), Rovagug (Erythnul) and Norgorber (Vecna). With small modifications to specific details and references throughout the AP, this adaptation feels pretty transparent and didn’t require much of a mental shift for the players to make.

Kyuss
Kyuss is a necromancer from ancient Taldor who led his followers to the Brazen Peaks along the northern border of Katapesh and built the city of Kuluth-Mar in a secluded mountain valley that collected what water flowed from the mountains. The change of setting from lush tropical jungle to arid hills required some creative re-envisioning, but in many ways adapted smoothly, changing from a Meso-American feel to a Babylonian feel.

Kyuss curried favor with Urgathoa instead of Nerull to gain his mastery of necromancy. I also envisioned the spellweavers to have a connection with the alien masters of Katapesh. There was a similar feel there to me.

Setting
The severest jolt of adaptation comes from my decision to lift the city of Greyhawk and many of its environs (e.g., Diamond Lake, Blackstone, Mist Marsh, etc.) straight from the Greyhawk setting and transplant them in Molthune. I wove the city of Greyhawk into the history of Molthune, making it a city on par with or even greater than Canorate or Eranmas. Although Canorate remains the capital, Greyhawk is the country’s most important trading hub and its strongest holding, to such an extent that the Imperial Oligarchy has granted its Lord General and its Directing Oligarchy a far greater degree of autonomy than any other city or region in the country. I have plotted out many intrigues and political tensions arising from this situation that could form excellent adventures on their own, so I’m pretty confident that the insertion can be made fairly convincingly without sacrificing much of the city’s existing tone and flavor.

Another advantage to transplanting Greyhawk in Molthune that I discovered was that the geography cooperated nicely. Greyhawk sits along the east bank of the Nosam River, near its mouth into Lake Encarthan. Diamond Lake, in turn, sits nicely about four day’s ride southeast of the city in the hills there (i.e., Cairn Hills). I then turned much of the lowland along Molthune’s border with Druma into marshland, creating the Mist Marsh. The Five Kings Mountains made an excellent replacement for the Abbor-Alz Mountains and the location of the Greysmere dwarves. I could list more examples of transpositions, but I think you get the idea if you’re an old-time gamer like me who has played in Greyhawk and compares all of the elements of the AP between settings.

I debated transplanting Alhaster intact, but I liked the adventures and materials developed for it so much (and because my time for revising is limited), I decided to include it largely unchanged as well. Again, the geography cooperated pretty well. I placed Alhaster in the far northern bay of Lake Encarthan that is part of Ustalav. The tone and flavor of the city seemed to fit pretty nicely with the corrupt and petty lands of Ustalav as well.

Although the distance is a bit stretched, I placed the Rift Canyon in the valleys of the Mindspin Mountains. Again, the geography cooperated, by placing the giant clans in a suitable location. The greater relative distance between Alhaster and the Rift Canyon does pose a troublesome discrepancy, but, given the level of the PCs by the time they reach this part of the AP, I didn’t worry about it.

That covers the gist of my conversion ideas. Feedback and ideas are, of course, welcome.

I've just begun exploring the full world of Golarion in more detail. Looking at the poster map contained in the Gazetteer, I see the scale topped out at 240 miles. When I calculated the distance from the mouth of Nosam River in Molthune to the northern borders of Katapesh, I came up with approximately 650 miles.

Assuming a world size roughly equivalent to Earth, with an average of 69 miles per degree of latitude, that would equate to less than 10 degrees of latitude change between these two regions. This would be about the distance from the very south end of Italy to the very northern shores of Africa. Also, by comparison, the Inner Sea is roughly the same width as the Red Sea.

I'm not complaining, just wanting to make sure I haven't missed something somewhere adjusting the scale of the maps to add more interior area to many of the otherwise tiny kingdoms and to better explain the climate shifts from one region of the map to another.

Has anyone had the Faceless One succeed in summoning/conjuring the Ebon Aspect?

After a thwarted assault on the Hextorite temple, the PCs in my campaign took on the grimlocks and barely managed to defeat them, expending considerable resources in the process. They decided the best plan was to return to the surface and inform Valkus Dunn of everything they discovered, leaving Theldrick and the Faceless to One to lick their wounds and plot their next moves, knowing that they've been discovered by some capable enemies.

I'm toying with the idea of having the Faceless One complete the ritual to raise the Ebon Aspect. But what's he going to do with it? He's smart enough (and informed enough) to know that Valkus and Allustan pose serious threats to any direct assault upon the town. And why would he want to assault the town anyway? So, I'm wondering, what would you do if you were an evil genius wizard of Vecna who'd just succeeded in summoning something nasty but not necessarily uber-powerful?

BYW, given Grallak's death, I've decided that the Ebon Aspect doesn't arise fully empowered, but that it would arise somewhat more powerful than the "weakened" version presented in TFoE.

Does anyone else have plans to incorporate the new Expedition to Ravenloft adventure into their AoW campaign? My players are currently cleaning out the temple of the Ebon Triad below Dourstone's mine. I plan to drop a few clues about Ravenloft leading up to their departure for Greyhawk following the Encounter at Blackwall Keep.
I'm thinking of placing Barovia in the Valley of the Mage and substituting the new Ravenloft adventure for "The Hall of Harsh Reflections" and "The Champion's Belt," placing the clues obtained from those adventures in the hands of Strahd, who, I'm thinking once delved into the lore surrounding the Age of Worms himself and still has some of that information stored away in his library.
I was also thinking that I'd incorporate prophecies surrounding the holy symbol of Ravenkind and the Sun Sword into those related to the Age of Worms as well, perhaps as elements of the tools needed to prevent it from happening.