Emperor's Graveyard
Broken World with a Secret
The world known only as Emperor’s Graveyard is a blasted hunk of stone orbiting a dying yellow sun in the Vast. The Starfinder Society recently discovered its coordinates in an old hobgoblin ruin on the planet Sansorgis in the Acalata system, now occupied by the Gideron Authority. The information was encoded within a helldrive crystal, a rare device used to power pre-Drift faster-than-light travel, which has since been turned over to Gideron Authority leaders.
Scans indicate Emperor’s Graveyard was once a planet with an atmosphere and an ecosystem, but now not much remains. The surface is pockmarked with craters, the size and shape of which suggest they were created by massive explosions or the impact of huge meteors or asteroids traveling at extreme speeds. At the edge of its continental plates, enormous rivers of lava slowly roll out of blistering calderas. The planet’s seas have nearly boiled away, leaving enormous salt flats behind. All told, Emperor’s Graveyard is a wasteland with a thin atmosphere and high radiation. Its continents have been wracked by earthquakes, as the tectonic plates try to find a new equilibrium. The thermals and soot from volcanoes create a dense cloud cover, causing enormous temperature differences from one region to another.
Deeper examination has revealed that under the churning continents, floating in the lava, is a strange, dense cube, 3 miles to a side. Untethered, it shifts about like a cork bobbing in water, unconsumed by the planet’s molten core. Four intact, squat structures spaced evenly across the surface of the planet appear to be made of the same mysterious material as this cube but have no other distinguishing features apart from several series of pictographs on the interior walls. Xenoarchaeologists and xenolinguists from the Starfinder Society have studied these images and have come to the conclusion that the planet was once ruled by an emperor, though their exact name and identity have been lost due to time and the Gap.
This, however, is where the definitive knowledge about Emperor’s Graveyard ends. Many believe that, due to its location being hidden away in a hobgoblin-created drive, the planet was once a part of a hobgoblin empire, perhaps even its original seat. Some claim that the world was bombarded with nuclear bombs and chunks of rock pulled from the system’s asteroid belt by a competing empire, while others blame the destruction on a schism from within. A large contingent of researchers speculate that the surviving structures are cenotaphs commemorating the battles that must have raged across the planet’s surface.
A cult of fanatic hobgoblins speculates that the cube floating near the planet’s core is a tomb of some kind, containing the remains and worldly riches of the unnamed emperor. This group has set up a camp within one of the surface structures, which they defend with fervor. They will do anything to be the first to reach the cube and uncover its secrets, believing they will aid the Gideron Authority in reaching new heights.
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