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So Starfinder Society released an adventure set on a space station dedicated to Shelyn, despite the fact that Shelyn's current status is currently unrevealed and you can't even worship her legally in the SFS play setting.
But I became fascinated by the idea of what kind of culture might have built Songbird Station and how it might fit into the setting as a whole. Here is a homebrew culture for anyone to use:
The Golden Worlds
Some time either during or before the Gap, no one is certain of exactly when, a group of wealthy Shelyn worshipers embarked on a journey into the stars to follow a "vision" sent to their leader, a nobleman known as Giacometti the Shining Baron. What little is known from what few records that survived the Gap, Giacometti convinced fifty prominent families of wealthy nobles and their two hundred servants to follow him on a quest to find a planet where Shelyn was "waiting for them".
They arrived either by ship or by portal, the records didn't specify, on a beautiful, pastoral planet that was known by the native sentient population as "Cressira", the third planet in a vast solar system of nineteen other planets with three sentient species living on three habitable worlds.
While little is known of their arrival, the consequences of their settlement on this world is well documented: Giacometti and his followers conquered the primitive race of bird like aliens that dwelled upon the planet and quickly spread out across the system, subjucating or allying with local governments and tribes until the Cressira system was now fully under their control. From that day forward, Cressira and it's four habitable neighbors were joined together as "The Golden Empire" and the system that these planets occupied were known as "The Golden Worlds".
Since the founding of their "empire", the power of the system has waxed and waned. Trade with both the Pact Worlds and the Veskarium has helped the Golden Empire maintain their independence and despite their relatively small population (barely a quarter of the Pact Worlds and the Veskarium), the Golden Empire has leveraged it's vast mineral wealth to into an economic powerhouse.
The human population of the planet Cressira has exploded in the past three hundred years and the population speaks a combination of Common and also Old Taldane, the tongue spoken by the original settlers of the planet. Half-Elves are also a common sight on Cressira but the second largest ethnic population on the planet is Fess, a colorful avian species that shares their planet with the "Imperials" in a tense and complex social structure.
The only other habitable planets in the system are nearby Passan and Grell, twin planets that sit at the edge of system's "Goldilocks zone". Passan is home to a race of Gill-Men, also transplants from Golarion, who traveled to the planet on their own through a magical portal long before the Gap. While Grell was the home of a colony of Vesk who had broken away from Veskarium two hundred years before the arrival of the Human population. The Gill-Men of Passan and the Vesk of Grell were eager to join into a potential hegemony with the Imperials and are considered equal partners in the system's government, something which the Fess have bristled about for centuries.
The Golden Empire is a constitutional oligarchy, with an elected Civilian Government, a noble class, and an Emperor who sits as the Head of State. The Legislative and Executive branch sit together in a single house known as "The Ephorate" while the Emperor and his family, who has lost much of his real power of the centuries, retains control of the Judicial Branch.
The current Emperor is Alvinus V, an Aasimar from a family of Aasimars who claim to be descended from angels in service to Shelyn herself. Because of the Gap, no one is certain when Alvinus' family, House Wold, replaced House Giacometti on the throne but the constant threat of being unseated or removed from power has made House Wold extremely paranoid and courtly power games are a constant problem for the Golden Empire's government.
The members of the Noble class rarely holds any official positions of power but tend to manipulate the government behind the scenes. There are fifty-two noble houses, each descended from the original fifty houses that traveled from Golarion or the leaders of the Gill-Men and Vesk that were already living on the system. The Fess have no noble houses but are supposedly always guaranteed a "voice" in government matters. In practice, the nobles tend to shut the Fess Tribal governors out of most important functions. Each noble house is ruled by three important noblemen, each from the same family or related to the family by marriage. House Ravelli is currently the most powerful house and it's Lord Baron, Galvin Ravelli (LN Half-Elf), has recently secured the loyalty of House B'elsk by "adopting" Surnoc B'elsk (CN Vesk) as a member of his family.
The Ephorate and the Lord Minister are officially all commoners and officially run the day to day of the Empire's government, but unofficially each Ephor is in the pocket of either a noble house or a the Emperor himself, with political fights playing out in the Ephorate as a proxy for the machinations of the noble class. The military is also under the control of the Lord Minister and the Ephors but the two most powerful forces remain outside it's control: The Peacock Guard, are powerful group of star knights are entirely loyal to the faith of Shelyn and only take orders that conform to the ancient paladin code of Shelyn. Meanwhile, the Songbirds, a cabal of spies and assassins remains firmly loyal to whoever sits on the Imperial throne.
The Golden Empire is known for it's amazing artistic works and since almost all physical labor is performed by automated machines (or by poorly paid Fess), the entire population often indulges in artistic endeavors at all hours of the day. Each and every single object built in the Golden Empire has been designed to hold some sort of objective, artistic beauty and artistic works are one of the Empire's most popular exports. As a consequences, the Artistic Guilds are among the most powerful political forces in the Empire. There are Seven Guilds in Total:
The Painters (which includes graphic artists, computer programmers, and animators),
The Sculptors (which includes robotics and mechanics),
The Dramatics (mostly actors and singers),
The Playwrights (which includes all areas of writing),
The Dancers (which includes martial artists),
The Gourmets (which includes a large number of chemists),
and The Historians (a broad guild that tends to include all non-fiction writing).
Each guild runs it's own school and approves what cultural expressions are considered "high" (approved) art and what qualifies as "low" (unapproved) art. While freedom of expression is a cherished right in the Golden Empire, the Guilds remain in control of what has access to government funding and thus money tends to flow to sources deemed to have "high artistic value". Critics of this system are quick to point out that in the past an explicit pornographic holoprogram that praised the government had been given government funding while a hard hitting documentary that exposed political corruption was deemed "of little social value" and denied a government stipend.
To help spread their native artistic culture across the stars, the imperial government builds and manages "culture temples", space stations that are owned and operated by the Church of Shelyn but paid for by the Imperial Government. Songbird Station in the Pact Worlds and the Black House of Song in the Veskarium are the two most recognizable of these culture temples.
The Empire's holonet productions are extremely popular in the Pact Worlds and actors trained in the Golden Worlds are considered more skilled than native born entertainers. Currently, Stars of Passion, a soap opera like holonet show about life on a Pact Worlds Space colony is one of the Pact World's most popular series and is produced entirely in the Golden Empire. Actual space explorers are quick to point out that the show bears little resemblance to reality and that there are far fewer love triangles on real life scientific explorations.
The Golden Empire's artistic community does have a dark side, however. The Imperial Songbirds often use well known actors as intelligence assets and some of the actors themselves are actually trained Songbird operatives. A-List Holostar Garla Finsk (CN, Human, Operative) is actually a Songbird assassin who has recently murdered a powerful Pact Worlds politician.
Artists who travel to The Golden Empire are often met with disdain by the Imperial Artistic Guilds and many of the Pact Worlds or Veskarium born artists are either exploited (in any number of ways) or outright denied access to audiences in the Golden Empire.
While there are nearly twenty planets in the Golden Empires, only three are fit for occupation by sentient life. Cressira, the capital planet, is a lush world of sun dappled forests, fertile plains, sun drenched savannas, and picturesque mountains. Rosegarden, the seat of the empire and the original city founded by the settlers, is a garden the size of an entire city with vast gardens nestled inside or on top of historic buildings or high tech mega structures.
The people of Cressira and the Golden Empire as a whole tend to dress in a manner that is at once old fashioned and at the same time cutting edge. Men are often clad in colorful doublets, surcoats, justacorps, houppelande, breeches, and slops. Women wear flowing gowns, headdresses, petticoats, bustles, and colorful wigs. Both sexes also enjoy wearing colorful feathered hats, multicolored capes, hose, and bright hoods. Unlike other Monarchies where richly appointed garb is reserved for the powerful or the wealthy, The Golden Empire actually gives even it's poorest citizens a government issued "finery stipend" along with their other welfare payments so as not to disrupt the aesthetics of the Empire.
Weapons and technological equipment from the empire is often artistically engineered to bring "joy upon sight", a aesthetic principle which demands that even a medical injector or a piece of rope be bother functional and pleasing to the eye. Among the Vesk who have visited the Golden Empire, the nickname for Golden Imperial soldiers is "Fancy Pistols". A derisive reference to the artistic quality of Golden Imperial military equipment. When it has been pointed out that the Vesk never conquered the Golden Empire during the wars against the Pact Worlds, the Vesk are quick to reply that the Golden Empire was never officially a Pact Worlds colony and that the Golden Empire's paramilitary forces, while well equipped, have never actually fought in a real war.
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A quarter the size of the Pact Worlds is a pretty solid power, considering the Pact Worlds aren't exactly united unless there's a defensive war to fight. There need to be some fracture lines in there somewhere IMO or it needs to be smaller.
But yes, a good and interesting writeup.
A quarter the size of the Pact Worlds is a pretty solid power, considering the Pact Worlds aren't exactly united unless there's a defensive war to fight. There need to be some fracture lines in there somewhere IMO or it needs to be smaller.
But yes, a good and interesting writeup.
That's a good point. The problem is that I don't have an exact number for the size of the Veskarium so I was assuming it was bigger than the Pact Worlds.
I think the final product would have an addendum about the Fess and the fact that the Fess aren't at all happy about being second class citizens on their own homeworld and that there's a revolution coming pretty soon.
By the way: Fess would use converted Tengu rules.