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I don't know if this will be of use to anyone else at this late date, but I'm running Year of Scoured Stars as a campaign and compiled what we know of the Scoured Stars system itself from across a handful of sources. Not a lot of true spoilers here, and this is the GM's forum, but I'll tag the planets with spoilers anyway.
Agillae
An orange dwarf star with five terrestrial planets, all of which are in the star's habitable zone.
Agillae-1: A warm world, usually safe and rich in resources if not very fertile. Carnivorous plant creatures are the dominant predators. The deadliest family of plants are bluethorns, which are highly sensitive to electromagnetic radiation. They either register EM radiation as prey, or it drives them into a frenzy, with the result that bluethorns stampede toward comms signals and similar emissions from miles away to attack them.
Gravity: Standard
Scoured Stars Incident: Jadnura's expedition established an outpost on the planet during the initial expedition. Comms transmissions soon lured bluethorn predators to the outpost (possibly resulting in the destruction of their starships). Even so, under Jadnura's leadership, Agillae-1 maintained the largest outpost of survivors until the rescue mission.
Agillae-2: A few enormous rock monoliths jut from the steamy swamps and jungles of this tropical world. Extreme biodiversity.
Gravity: Standard.
Home World: Agillae-2 was the original home world of the nelentu, who joined with the thyr during or perhaps even after fleeing the system to found the Kreiholm Freehold in the Saaruq-Ruaan binary star system.
Scoured Stars Incident: The Starfinders trapped here by the Godshield all died.
Jinsul Occupation: The jinsuls strip most of the planet's vegetation to fuel their war industry, then use the cleared terrain to drill troops and test vehicles.
Agillae-3: We have no data on this planet.
Agillae-4: A hyper-industrialized city-planet.
Gravity: Standard
Home World: Well, here's the trick. We never find out which planet in the Scoured Stars system is the original jinsul home world. We do learn that they call their home world Otorak, but they reject the Pact Worlds' naming system entirely so we never find out which planet they're referring to. A heavily industrialized planet does seem to match the jinsuls, however. If Agillae-4 isn't Otorak, when we have no other clear candidates, and Agillae-4 must then have been the home world of one of the remaining three undiscovered Scoured Stars civilizations.
Jinsul Occupation: Apparently treating their original home world as just another resource to strip mine (admittedly, it seems likely that they'd already exhausted their home world's resources before they fled), the jinsul construct a massive data-processing station among the ruins of their former home.
Agillae-5: Insidious alien nanites have turned the surface of this planet into a starship graveyard.
Gravity: Standard
Scoured Stars Incident: The virus lured numerous Starfinder ships into its web, trapping the crews in virtual simulations or enslaving their minds with nanites.
I have some head-canon concerning this virus, but I'll leave it out of this lore compilation.
Bastiar
The largest, brightest, and most massive of the three stars. Bastiar is a yellow dwarf stars with eight planets: five terrestrial planets, a gas giant with more than three dozen moons, and two ice giants. Figuring out which of those planets are the ice giants is hazier than it needs to be, though.
Bastiar-1: We have no data on this planet.
Bastiar-2: A rocky, volcanic planet with pockets of rich vegetation. Rivers of lava flow all over the planet's tectonically active surface.
Gravity: Low
Home World: Bastiar-2 was the original home world of the mentrasi, who were wiped out in a natural disaster several centuries after reaching their new home on Kukanou-2b, a moon orbiting the gas giant Kukanou.
Note 1: The Mentrasi Tear reached the menstrasi just weeks before they were (coincidentally) wiped out in the "271st Orbit" of their calendar, suggesting 271 years after they established their colony. However, a year on Kukanou-2b is 508 days of 18 Pact Standard hours; thus a Kukanous-2b year is 381 Pact Standard days long. A little more math puts just under 283 Pact Standard years between the founding of the mentrasi colony and their destruction. So either they were wiped out before the Gap, or they were wiped out in 283 AG, which is in the same general time frame (within a decade and a half) that we know the izalguun Tear reached Izalrran, which seems about right.
Note 2: A survivor of the Scoured Stars expedition, Eshki, was trapped by the Godshield on a world that closely matches Bastiar-2's description (he doesn't actually name it), but he also credits Jadnura with getting him through the first rough months. However, Jadnura was trapped on Agillae-1, and the Godshield blocked communications, so there's a continuity error here that needs to be resolved. (In my game, I'm just moving Eshki to Agillae-1; his connection to Jadnura is the important element.)
Bastiar-3: A fertile planet blanketed in fungi.
Gravity: Standard
Jinsul Occupation: The jinsuls establish a heavy military presence here.
Bastiar-4: We have no data on this planet. During the Scoured Stars expedition, the Starfinders dropped a medical ship in orbit here to place it in medical quarantine. However, we know Bastiar has two ice giants, and this is kinda the only place the second giant can go. (How you get a humid jungle planet farther out in orbit than an ice giant is not my place to answer.)
Bastiar-5: A barren, gray world. Seemingly innocuous and easily overlooked, but in fact the physical location of the slumbering god Kadrical.
Gravity: Standard
Jinsul Occupation: The jinsuls establish a heavy military presence here, obviously.
Bastiar-6: A humid jungle planet.
Gravity: Standard
Jinsul Occupation: The jinsul install a heavy military presence on this planet.
Bastiar-7: A gas giant with icy rings and over three dozen moons.
Gravity: High
Home World: Original home of the thyr, though signs of their civilization would be hard to detect. During or perhaps after fleeing their home, the thyr joined up with the nelentu of Agillae-2 and went on to found the Kreiholm Freehold in the Saaruq-Ruaan binary star system.
Scoured Stars Incident: Several Starfinder ships were in orbit around Bastiar-7, searching for rare mineral, when the Godshield started to manifest. Some ships fled for Bastiar-2, but at least 10 others, including the Empyrean Eye, were trapped here. Something destroyed the Empyrean Eye - possibly just an accidental collision in the planet's icy rings - and the ghost ship then wiped out the remainder.
Bastiar-8: An ice giant with at least two moons, which I'll call 8a and 8b for convenience.
Bastiar-8a: One moon is rocky, barren, and inhospitable on the surface but contains air-filled cave systems. Long ago, before Kadrical ever manifested the Godshield, jinsuls treated this moon as "God's Home." Only the holiest of jinsul priests were allowed to step foot on the sacred moon, bringing other living creatures here only as sacrifices. Dhurus, one of Kadrical's heralds, maintains a strong mystical connection to this ancient sacred site.
Gravity: Low
Scoured Stars Incident: As far as I can discern, a team of Starfinders arrived here in search of "God's Home" a location they'd learned of elsewhere in the system. In the shrine to Kadrical, they appear to have accidentally drawn the attention of Dhurus - at that moment light years away on the jinsul's new home world. Dhurus summoned demons to imprison (and gradually sacrifice) the Starfinder captives. This interaction may have also briefly roused Kadrical, causing the slumbering god to reflexive raise the Godshield, both trapping the Starfinder expedition and cutting off Dhurus (and Kadrical's other wandering heralds) from Kadrical and the system. Demons have been sacrificing captive Starfinders to Kadrical on a slow drip ever since, but Dhurus doesn't seem to have had an opportunity to learn much from his captives prior to the Starfinders' rescue mission.
Bastiar-8b: A ship operating "somewhere near" Bastiar-8 encountered the home world of a particularly nasty, non-sapient species called huskborn. While it's possible that huskborn might be native to the ice giant itself, it feels more likely that they would be native to one of its moons instead. (And it seems unlikely that they're from Bastiar-8a.)
Callion
The smallest of the three stars, Callion is a red dwarf with two small, tidally locked planets. The planets' orbits are synchronized so they're always on opposite sides of the star.
Callion-1: Similar to Verces in many respects, this planet can support life but is a permanent tundra on one side and desert on the other. Its upper atmosphere is wracked by gigantic magnetic storms that wreak havoc on vehicular sensors, comms, and navigational systems, making the use of air vehicles and even starships incredibly hazardous. Home to massive, predatory sand worms.
Gravity: Standard
Scoured Stars Incident: A sizable number of Starfinders managed to survive on the desert side of the planet here until their rescue. While we don't know anything about the outpost, it seems plausible that they were drawn to the ruins of an ancient city and then utilized it to survive. This in turn would suggest that Callion-1 is the home world of one of the system's three undiscovered native sapient species.
Callion-2: The original izalguun home world, this planet's temperate zone is ringed by a massive, technologically advanced and entirely automated megacity, making Callion-2 particular reminiscent of Verces.
Gravity: Standard
Home World: The izalguuns created this chaotic, materialistic megacity before rejecting technology (and their home world); after the izalguuns reached Izalraan (Icefront), they shunned most tech and any reminders of their home. Just before they left, they placed an AI in charge of maintain the megacity forever. Part of the jinsul master plan is to force the izalguuns to resettle Callion-2, which is the very last thing the izalguuns want to do.
Scoured Stars Incident: A team of Starfinders explored the megacity and interfaced with its networks, but were wiped out by automated defenses when they tried to enter a restricted area. After analyzing data found on the dead invaders, the AI created a hologram (synthesizing an amalgam of the Starfinders' various humanoid species) to better interact with future visitors.
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I don't know if this will be of use to anyone else at this late date, but I'm running Year of Scoured Stars as a campaign and compiled what we know of the Scoured Stars system itself from across a handful of sources. Not a lot of true spoilers here, and this is the GM's forum, but I'll tag the planets with spoilers anyway.
Agillae
An orange dwarf star with five terrestrial planets, all of which are in the star's habitable zone.** spoiler omitted **...
That's actually pretty handy to have, thank you!
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Two side details I noticed on later passes:
Agillae-4 and Bastiar-3 have elliptical orbits akin to Triaxus, indicating extreme seasonal variation. We don't know that Agillae-4 is the jinsul home world, but adding scorchingly hot summers and long, brutally harsh winters to their environment certainly matches their culture of "macho" pain tolerance and constant scramble for resources.
Bastiar-8 has, in fact, 12 moons (at least).
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Just noticed one more obscure but significant detail:
Tekians, a species of machine-like silicon-based aliens, evolved on the sun-blasted side of Callion-1 and joined the Kreiholm Freehold. (This is fortunate for me, 'cause I totally missed this detail when I plopped desert ruins on there while running The Scoured Stars Invasion.)
So far they get only a small role in one scenario (#1-39). No stats, but we get an illustration!
This accounts for six of the Scoured Stars' eight civilizations.
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Final note: On another pass I finally noticed that the Kreiholm Freehold was founded before the Godshield rose. Presumably this cut off contact between the civilizations until the Godshield finally fell again much, much later, at which point the species came back into contact as they prepped to evacuate the system.
There's no indication who Kreiholm was, but in my own headcanon is makes sense to make them a nelentu - who better than a member of a symbiotic species to preach the benefits of a blended civilization?
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Welp, with the new Scoured Stars AP announced it looks like it's time to put this thread out to pasture. I'll retire it with with a laundry/wish list of four dangling threads I hope the new hardback addresses.
We know Dhurus was the Master of Conquest. And we know Iteration-177 was the herald Ailuros. But which Master was Ailuros? I think fans have settled on Preservation or possibly Archivist, but who can say, really.
Managing Creative Director (Starfinder)
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Great posts here!
I can say that I'm addressing a good number of these question/spoilers in the Scoured Stars Compilation, though they'll appear as small revisions/additions, so you'll need to keep your eyes peeled!
Not EVERYTHING is getting a direct answer here, as I think the story of the Scoured Stars has some life in it well past the Scoured Stars season and the compilation adventure. :)
-Izalguuns
-Mentrasi
-Kreiholm
-Jinsuls
That leaves us with 4 others and 2 other heralds.
As a creative, I think it's really important not to "shoot all your shots" when it comes to a story. I intentionally left several other Scoured Stars groups and a two missing heralds (one of which has already appeared to canny-eyed Paizo readers). I think it's important that we can mine these stories again as fan interest is there.
So yeah, expect some wider stories in the years to come!
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Oh, interesting! So...
That shines a whole new light on things! And well timed for me, since my group finally encounters the Kreiholm Freehold next adventure.
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Managing Creative Director (Starfinder)
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Yeah, and I suppose I can shed light on a few additional lore elements while I'm here... that and I'm in the process of doing my final readthrough before sending to Edit, so this is all VERY fresh in my brainpan.
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The AP compilation touches on the distinction between Callion-2 and Agillae-4. Specifically why one megacity had mentions of izalguuns and ended up not being their homeworld. It's deep deep deep lore and I can't wait for people to start investigating when the book gets released.
The AP compilation clears some of the timing issues on Tears as well. It talks about the current/final status of each known Tear, stats on how the Tears can be USED IN A GAME (artifact stats) and also introduces the general location of one previously unmentioned Tear (in addition to the status of the assumed Kreiholm Tear).
And yes, it also clarifies where the Jinsul homeworld was and its current status during the events of Fate of the Scoured God.
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OK! Hopefully that provides some additional context for everyone. I'm not giving away all the secrets until the book, but I did wanna clear up any misconceptions or "isms" from a 5 year old product. All that being said, there's going to be some retconning just to fix up a bunch of weird "isms" that we either didn't think worked in our current setting or needed to be changed to keep wider things consistent. One big area of change is the Kreiholm Freehold, which is getting its own small write-up in the backmatter. Some of the species get a bit of an update there, and at least one previously unplayable species is getting some stats.
There, enjoy these lore nuggets. I need to get back to getting this darned thing off to edit ;)
That's all great.
I wish it was next year and I had the book already, but that's all great. :)
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Yeah, it's a bit of a retcon, though not so much on the page as it seems when Ports of Call was initially promoted. Right now I'm just waiting for and hoping that the Scoured Stars hardback fills in a lot of blanks. Really I just want to pin down Otorak, and due to weird synchronicity the SS hardback, both original deadline and now delayed, are fated to (hopefully) answer that shortly after I finally conclude my Scoured Stars home game.
Contributor
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Regarding Bastiar's planets, the description of the system "Bastiar is a yellow dwarf star with eight planets—five terrestrial planets, a gas giant with more than three dozen moons, and two ice giants" is from the first scenario set in the Scoured Stars system (#1-99).
The same scenario mentions on pages 18 and 28 that Bastiar-7 and Bastiar-8 are ice giants. The map on p. 9 shows 5 small inner planets and 3 larger outer planets. If we consider only what can be inferred from #1-99, it's likely the gas giant was Bastiar-6, given that gas and ice giants are typically outer planets and much larger than terrestrial planets. This would also match the order in which the planet types are listed on p. 11.
Later scenarios seem to indicate the gas giant with dozens of moons and the ice giant with icy rings have been merged as the Thyr homeworld, which is now Bastiar-7. I don't know whether another giant exists somewhere in the system, but that's probably something we'll find out once the Scoured Stars hardback is released. :-)
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Welp, with the new Scoured Stars AP announced it looks like it's time to put this thread out to pasture. I'll retire it with with a laundry/wish list of four dangling threads I hope the new hardback addresses.
Scoured Stars Spoilers #1
Scoured Stars Spoilers #2
Scoured Stars Spoilers #3
Scoured Stars Spoilers #4
Now that the book is out I can finally check and see that, yes, of the three lingering questions I really wanted answered, I got answers to all three.
Plus bonus history! The hardback intro tucks in some important specific facts about the early days of the Starfinder Society! We know why and when the first First Seeker was elected now! And why and when the Society established the Lorespire Complex!