Setting information

> There's a lot of setting information from a "Pact Worlds" perspective -- specifically a human perspective -- in Chapter 12 of the CRB. Most of it is pretty irrelevant to this setting but feel free to read it.
> This page contains italicised text as excerpts from the CRB, the rest is homebrew elaborations for use in this campaign.
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## Gods & religion

* There are no "real" gods like in medieval settings or Starfinder core. Worshippers may believe their god speaks to them or answers their prayers but there is no evidence to verify this.
* Some individuals still profess a religion of some kind, but that god does not make themselves known in any real way (as above). Furthermore, the transition to life in space not only tends to require the shedding of religion in the first place but also soon leads to scriptural nonsense (eg. that the sun god circles Earth means little to worshippers who've never seen their home planet or sun. Similarly, that a god created a planet in a number of days means little to someone who's never experienced a day) which rapidly loses traction as the generations progress.
* Nonetheless, some religiosity persists but isn't universal to an entire race (and sometimes even crosses between species from different planets).

## Magic use

* Not all races (species) can use magic like in Starfinder core. The appropriate organ/technology/mechanism is required to perform the "magic".
* There is also considerable debate as to what counts as magic and what is simply not yet explained/understood. Shirren pheromones and Lashunta sensory organs certainly give some humans the feeling that something supernatural is taking place but these aren't shocking abilities within their own communities.

## Race

Basically refers to species as the core rules. Each species has races that would've been localised regions on their home planet, but the transition to a space faring society unavoidably increases their ability to/technology for global travel and, as such, in general, little if any racial differences exist within a species.

## Geography

### The Riven Shroud

*In a remote portion of a galactic arm is an immense spherical megastructure built directly around its sun. Called the Riven Shroud, it is a Dyson sphere: a lacy grid of continent-wide modules of alien architecture, linked by vast solar sails but rent open in some unknown disaster. Its creators vanished millennia ago, and much of it remains abandoned. The ruined regions near the gash are open to the vacuum. Much of the rest appears relatively intact and is home to isolated communities of researchers, scavengers, and squatters. Several, including the aatevak, qotraua, and xixinnt, claim descent from the Shroud’s creators, but the mismatch between their biology and the structure’s architecture makes their claims unlikely.*
*The Shroud’s life-support system functions only partially, and some areas have unbreathable atmospheres or fluctuating gravity. Its remaining defense systems periodically engage without provocation. The space around and within it is also perilous, containing massive haunts said to be the ghostly remains of the worlds destroyed to fuel the Shroud’s creation. The structure also suffers periodic incursions from organisations seeking its secrets.*
*Eerily, the Riven Shroud may be using these incursions to slowly repair itself. Bordering its edges are irregular arrays of derelict ships and stretches of newer sail. The largest and most ancient of this dead armada share the same strange architecture as the Shroud. Other ships are later arrivals that carried would-be despoilers or settlers. Most of these fell to battles with competing factions or the sphere’s automated defences but some appear to be abandoned, with nary a trace of their crews’ fates.*
((More jernk on the Shroud to come...))

### Daegox IV

The entire planet of Daegox IV serves as a galactic prison. While it's unclear why the various governments, alliances, and factions of the galaxy send prisoners here, what is clear is that hundreds of thousands of prisoners inhabit this planet with the least dangerous able to roam the lush forested wilderness of its surface.

The planet is owned and run by Daegox Corporation, composed of a mysterious humanoid race of unknown origins and curate Daegox IV from an orbital platform named Skywatcher. Whispers and rumours are all Daegox Corp's competitors have to go on for their motives and goals and their involvement in the galactic economy appears to be limited to prisoner admission fees. Their competitors are becoming increasingly suspicious of the company's intentions due to the suffocating lack of information.

### The Veskarium

The Veskarium refers not to a single planet but all eight colonised planets within the one system. One of those planets, Vesk Prime (Veskarium I), is the homeland of the vesk. It is also the homeland to several sentient slave species of the Vesk including jackalfolk, snakemen, and porcupeople. Vesk 2 homed some kind of hyper-intelligent squidfaced people who were also subjugated once the Vesk made it to space. Antlike beings and primitive feline barbarians lived on Vesk 5 and 6 respectively. And Vesk 7 and 8 were the planets belonging to frost behemoths who had developed space travel well before the vesk conquered them. All were brought under the vesk empire, and although the standard of living has skyrocketed under vesk rule, their rigid caste structure with the vesk on top is unwelcome to races accustomed to absolute conquest like the humans or shirren.

Ultimately, despite their racial supremacy, unforgiving legal system, and tyrannical autocracy, the vesk seek to provide their vassal races with stability, comfort, and luxury. But that utopia is a way off, since their aggressive expansion tactics have failed to endear them with the other spacefaring races of the galaxy.

### Custom worlds

There are a great many planets in a great many systems in a great many clusters that have discovered the Shroud. There must be tons of planets not documented in the Starfinder CRB so if you don't want to use one in there, make your own... There are plenty of resources to generate something for inspiration.

* This tool will generate a system complete with a handful of variables you'll probably want to know.
* Alternatively, you might get more variation/planets with rolling dice on a table like this. Roll a d6 for each column (or just choose them).