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.
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Interesting ideas. Not to pour could water though, but there's a couple of aspects missing;
* Shobhads. They're one of the notable inhabitants of the planet. How exactly they got there, what their relation to the witchwyrds and kasatha is, is unclear. Seems like the kasatha did (mostly) evolve on Kasath, but Akiton was somehow the promised land for them.
* In Pathfinder's Blood of the Beast it's mentioned that the Warp psychic discipline is a particularly ratfolk thing. And the capstone spell is Interplanetary Teleport. My own take is that nobody really knows where the ratfolk came from but that they're kinda everywhere in the universe, quite comfortable existing aside other races (hiding in the pipes).