Aucturn

The ominous world of Aucturn, the Stranger, remains mostly an enigma even after centuries of interplanetary travel. Visual observations of the planet vary significantly from viewer to viewer, and both its diameter and rotational period fluctuate wildly and seemingly randomly. However, most of The Pact Worlds lean toward one particular hypothesis: namely that Aucturn is not a planet at all, but a living thing—an immense embryo or egg that will someday mature into a near-deific being of untold cosmic power: one of the Great Old Ones.
The farthest planet from the sun, Aucturn is not a signatory to the Pact and is claimed by the Pact Worlds only out of proximity and necessity. A weird and sickly world cloaked in thick poisonous clouds, the Stranger warps reality with its very existence, endangering any living creature that approaches or visits it. Yet Aucturn is far from uninhabited, and the living planet is currently a battleground between the cults of the Elder Mythos, who aspire to nurture a new god, and the forces of the Dominion of the Black, which seek to subjugate and manipulate the nascent Great Old One for their own sinister purposes.
The most prominent settlement on Aucturn is the Citadel of the Black, home to the Pyramid of the Black Pharaoh, the largest temple to Nyarlathotep in the Pact Worlds. Once, the Citadel was apparently neutral ground between the Elder Mythos cults and the Dominion, but at some point during the Gap, this tenuous detente turned to open conflict, and today the Citadel is the center of the Elder Mythos’s war effort. The Citadel of the Black is also home to the mysterious entity known as Carsai the King, the closest figure the planet has to a head of state, but one whose true form and nature remain unknown. A powerful leader in the cults of the Elder Mythos, Carsai has ruled the Citadel of the Black for millennia, leading some to believe that he might be an avatar or herald of Nyarlathotep himself. Carsai’s defense of Aucturn—and thus the Pact Worlds—from the predations of the Dominion of the Black, combined with the fact that he is a relatively approachable and reasonable figure on an otherwise incomprehensible planet, is the primary reason for the Pact Council’s reluctant acceptance of the world into their agreement as a protectorate. Interestingly, Carsai’s representation in some popular media as an antihero—a deviously handsome and rebellious godling protecting the Pact Worlds from unthinkable horror—has significantly increased the worship of Nyarlathotep and the Outer Gods in the Pact Worlds.
The space around Aucturn is littered with old ships purportedly sent by inner system worlds to neutralize the planet during The Gap. While visiting starships are sometimes allowed to land unharmed, these corrupted, madness-inducing hulks still drift as a warning to all those who might seek to cleanse or colonize Aucturn’s breathing shores. The Pact Worlds, unable to clear this neighboring area of space of these dangers, are resigned to maintaining a nominal connection with it instead.
Aucturn’s surface is a sickly, organic place, with fleshlike ground and mountains resembling tumors through which flow thick veins of a black ichor that acts as a psychotropic drug for many of the native creatures, most notably the skittering, proboscis-tongued orocorans. Whole landscapes can change in a blink, leaving visitors feeling as if they’re in some sort of dream—one moment walking among fungal forests or along the edge of sphincter-like canyons, the next in some ichor-lord’s monastery or at the foot of glowing towers pulsing with abandoned half-biological machinery. Breathing the world’s toxic, yellow-green atmosphere only makes the situation worse, as it contains a seemingly endless variety of drugs, mutagens, and poisons.
Settlements on Aucturn are rare, generally isolated communities of native creatures or Outer God cultists huddled behind heavy fortifications or in the crumbling ruins of haunted flesh-block edifices from a forgotten age. Attacks by the Dominion of the Black are common, their brain-eating and chittering hordes bombarding the surface in single-use drop pods or burrowing up out of the planet’s flesh like botfly larvae to make suicidal guerrilla attacks on any creature they encounter. After the Citadel of the Black, the most populous settlement is Amniek, the circular tower city at the base of the polyp-like mountain called the Gravid Mound. According to the Midwives, the 13 cowled casters who rule the city, Aucturn is already pregnant despite not having been born itself, and their egg-shaped mountain will one day burst, spewing Aucturn’s child into the universe—and when it does, they will be there to receive its dark gifts.

Geography

Aucturn’s geography is mutable and inhospitable. Landmasses are composed of rubbery soil or chalky stone that grows only stunted, mutated vegetation. The planet’s oceans are vast, heaving masses of black sludge through which unseen leviathans swim. Poisonous gases constitute Aucturn’s atmosphere, although the specific nature of the poison varies from place to place—in some places, the poison is merely a thin hallucinogenic mist, while in others it gathers in a clinging, soupy neurotoxin.
Aucturn’s geography twists and morphs as the planet heaves and contracts, creating entire mountain ranges of fleshlike hummocks or draining away rivers. This state of flux can change the landscape in a matter of moments, but usually occurs over a handful of months or years. Despite this, several common features typically persist in Aucturn’s geography.
Aucturn has a large ocean around its southern pole called the Undulating Sea. Although the size of this ocean varies, it always surrounds a frigid polar cap and contains several settlements along its northern shores—most significantly the Citadel of the Black. Other oceans slither about as the planet writhes; sometimes these bodies of liquid connect to the Undulating Sea, but most often they form gigantic lakes with their own coastal settlements.
A large mountain range called the Twisting Peaks runs roughly northwest to southeast across much of Aucturn’s surface. These stony, gray mountains are indescribably ancient and weathered by Aucturn’s acidic winds. The mountains shield the most severe weather, sheltering a vast field of the hardy poppies that grow to the south of the mountains. The highest of the Twisting Peaks are carved into stone fortresses, drawing lightning from passing storms and flickering with enticing greenish lights.
A smaller mountain range called the Chalkmounds stretches across Aucturn’s northern hemisphere. The stone of these peaks is porous and crumbles easily. This strange stone absorbs toxins from the atmosphere, making the Chalkmounds a more hospitable place for humanoid habitation, but the stone cannot be quarried without exuding this concentrated poison. Furthermore, due to some ancient and forgotten disaster, the Chalkmounds are pocked with massive blast craters and emit significant background radiation. Hardy settlers live in the Chalkmounds, as the air is frequently breathable, but their rate of mutations is incredibly high.

History

The sun is little more than a glimmer above Aucturn’s poisonous skies. From a distance, the planet actively defies classification—observers disagree on the planet’s appearance and diameter, although its mass remains fairly constant. To remote scanners, Aucturn is sometimes a gas giant with striations of swirling crimson atmosphere, while at other times, it is little more than a lifeless rock with a thin, clear membrane of air. This inconsistent appearance is a planetary-scale illusion caused by some unknown magical effect; whether it is generated by Aucturn itself or precipitates the strangeness of the world is a hotly debated topic among occult scholars.
When starships approach orbit, the unappealing truth of Aucturn is quickly revealed to them: a strangely organic but mostly inhospitable world swathed in a poisonous, yellowish-green atmosphere. The planet swells and shrinks over time, its surface roiling and sliding along with oceans of inky muck. Alarmist observers posit that the planet expands and contracts like a massive breathing organism or pulsing tumor, and many of the cultists who inhabit Aucturn eagerly agree, asserting that their world is the waiting womb of a Great Old One ready to burst upon the solar system and usher in a terrible age of darkness.
Life is stunted and toxic on Aucturn, and bizarre mutations abound—many offworlders suffer horrid transformations after only a few days on the surface. Those with merely physical changes are fortunate, for Aucturn warps the mind and drains sanity even more swiftly than it alters physical matter. Most of Aucturn’s inhabitants, both native and immigrant, have long held their own malignant purposes. The planet was once a neutral meeting ground between worshipers of the Outer Gods and representatives of the aberrant Dominion of the Black. Long before the Gap, these forces declared war on each other, and the forces of the Dominion were, for the most part, ejected from Aucturn. The cultists of the Outer Gods are not wholly in control of their planet, however, as pockets of Dominion resistance remain, and unaligned indigenous monsters prey eagerly on both sides.
RESIDENTS Most of Aucturn’s native creatures are monstrous and vicious. Light-absorbing bryrvaths lurk in Aucturn’s shadowed places and assail intruders with soul-rending coruscations of color. Gugs—split-armed giants with massive vertical mouths—infest tunnels and warrens beneath the planet’s surface. Oily, oozelike behemoths called shoggoths lurk within Aucturn’s seas, occasionally roiling onto land and uttering their madness-inducing howls. Malignant psychic ghosts that are visible only as flashes of pale lights and unblinking eyes stalk the landscape. But by far, the most common of Aucturn’s native creatures are the orocorans, semi-intelligent predators with mosquito-like proboscises and temperaments who sup from the planet’s ichor springs and spend their time in narcotic stupors. Other denizens of Aucturn consider individual orocorans a nuisance, but the creatures pose a serious hazard in large swarms.
Small cells of agents of the Dominion of the Black hold control over small biotech factories, remote caves, and other isolated locations on the planet. They avoid further conflict with the worshipers of the Outer Gods while they rebuild their strength and contact their allies floating in deep space between the stars. Unfortunate explorers who come across these hidden enclaves find that the Dominion fiercely protects its secret lairs and eagerly grasps for fodder for its horrid experiments. These agents most often include the magic-wielding neh-thalggus and yah-thelgaads, as well as the technical-minded deh-nolos.
Despite Aucturn’s dangerous creatures, poisonous atmosphere, and scarce resources, some humanoids still make the planet their home. For the most part, these people—mostly Human and Ysoki—have either pledged their lives to the cults of the Outer Gods or are recluses with only a tenuous grasp of reality. These humanoids usually live in sealed buildings with oxygen generators and wear respirators outdoors, although some settlements use alternative methods to provide resident humanoids with comfort, such as the ancient aircleansing machines of the Citadel of the Black or the natural purifying effect of the Chalkmounds. Despite dealing with the atmosphere, these humanoids remain susceptible to the eldritch energies that bathe the planet. Residents usually bear strange mutations, such as chitinous plates, withered limbs, or extra eyes, that may render them unrecognizable as members of their original species.
SOCIETY Chaos is the norm across all of Aucturn, and each community’s influence extends only as far as its leader’s reach. For some leaders—such as Carsai the King or the Midwives—this reach is substantial, but Aucturn lacks even local governments in many places, much less a planetary one. What law exists is usually brutal and erratic, built on fear or blind devotion to an evil power rather than a system of justice. The poor and ill on Aucturn have no rights and are useful only as food, slaves, or victims of frenzied experiments. The powerful constantly plot and scheme to keep their precarious positions, lest some upstart minion overthrow them during a moment of weakness.
This lawlessness allows evil to run unchecked on Aucturn. Among the residents of Aucturn, no acts are taboo, no topic of study is forbidden, and secrets are the most valuable currency. Here, revolutionaries are free to scheme against legitimate governments elsewhere, vast factories produce drugs that are outside of any civilization’s laws, and scholars research forbidden ways to warp reality. Slavery is commonplace, although a life of servitude may be preferable to a short existence as a drugaddled test subject, victim of brutal torture, or abused acolyte of a nefarious cult.
Although it is a relatively large planet, Aucturn is not a significant participant in interplanetary politics. Due to its remoteness and hostility toward most forms of life, Aucturn isn’t a voting member of the Pact Worlds; it is instead considered a protectorate, a world to be watched carefully rather than embraced. Although Aucturn has the right to have a representative speak at council meetings—a right employed by Carsai the King or his proxies in the past several years—the world doesn’t have the same legal standing as other planets, or even some large moons, in the system.
CONFLICTS AND THREATS The most significant ongoing threat on Aucturn is the simmering feud between the followers of the Outer Gods (most commonly Nyarlathotep) and the Dominion of the Black. While the cultists and the Dominion were never on the best of terms over the millennia, this delicate detente slid into all-out war sometime during the Gap. The cults of the Outer Gods ejected most of the Dominion forces from the planet and declared themselves the sole heirs to Aucturn, but the Dominion of the Black hasn’t wholly given up its foothold on Aucturn. Small enclaves of Dominion agents lurk in isolated parts of the planet, such as in the Chalkmound Ziggurats or Frost-That-Bleeds, pursuing their abstruse experiments and seeking a way to strike back at the cultists. Dominion assault squads sometimes target their enemies on the planet directly, attacking from orbital drop ships, burrowing up through underground tunnels, or even slipping directly into cultist bases from adjacent dimensions. The tenacious cultists have proven resistant to Dominion attacks: bioweapons are less effective because the cultists already insulate themselves well against the planet’s poisonous atmosphere, erratic psychology shields the cultists’ minds from direct psychic attacks, and exhausting rituals have honed their physical fortitude. The Dominion would require a widespread planetary assault to retake the world, and the rest of the Pact Worlds are happy to let the Dominion waste its resources against a poisonous planet at the outskirts of the solar system.
The orocorans are the most numerous indigenous creatures on Aucturn, but they are so isolated and drug addled that they rarely pose a significant threat to others. Although the mighty orocoran ichor lords can focus a tribe of orocorans on a specific purpose—usually, an attack against a superior or well-defended foe—these tribes often fall to bickering and scatter within a short period of time. Only rare orocoran leaders—such as the Hunger-Enders described on page 145—can unite the aberrant addicts in pursuit of a long-term goal.
The cultists of the Outer Gods are at home on Aucturn, and they are one of the largest threats to the Pact Worlds. Concealed by the planetary illusion and sheltered within one of the most inhospitable environments in the star system, cultists are free to study mind-shattering truths of reality, invent potent drugs and poisons, and plot to bring down the governments and civil structures of the rest of the universe. Most citizens of the Pact Worlds consider the cultists of Nyarlathotep on Aucturn to be distant and ineffective, or even harmlessly countercultural, but this stereotype plays right into the cultists’ hands. Some cultists spend their days in narcotic hazes in a manner reminiscent of the planet’s native orocorans, but others focus on very specific—and usually very dangerous—goals. For example, some followers of the Outer Gods include skilled hackers developing viral memes that spread gibbering madness; others train as assassins and amass information about key leaders and organizations on other planets; still others pursue sophisticated theoretical physics to perfect bombs of unimaginable power. If even one of these schemes comes to fruition, citizens across the Pact Worlds will learn how dangerous the cultists lurking at the edge of the system really are.

Tourism

Aucturn is a planet filled with biological terrors, disturbing mysteries, and evil cults. A few of the significant locations on Aucturn follow.
Amniek The second-largest settlement on Aucturn, Amniek is a circular city of just over 90,000 people—mostly cultists—sprawling around and within several basalt towers at the base of the Gravid Mound. Amniek is governed by a council of 13 spellcasters called the Midwives. Although the Midwives rule Amniek, their principle duty is ministering to the Gravid Mound, carefully shepherding the birth of the godling within. While the Midwives have traditionally been female, there is no strict gender requirement; of the current Midwives, three are men and two are rag-shrouded siblings of indeterminate gender. Amniek’s other residents pursue daily activities as might be found in any civilized settlement, including trade at a spaceport atop one of the city’s towers, but the city is both literally and emotionally in the shadow of the Gravid Mound. Residents spend several hours each day raising chants of obeisance to the Midwives and pleas for mercy to the being within the mound. Visitors aren’t technically required to join these chants, but residents of the city advise doing so—after all, if tomorrow is the day the godling finally spills forth, today is the day to have beseeched its pity.
Blackened Key AbadarCorp constructed this sprawling research complex with the permission of Carsai the King for the purpose of studying Aucturn’s unique environment and ecology, perhaps eventually discovering a way to make the planet habitable for larger groups. It saw only a few months of operation before agents of the Dominion of the Black viciously attacked, killing all within. The base was renamed Blackened Key due to its charred walls and burned-out laboratories, and is now host to a multitude of ghosts and other undead. Some whisper that Carsai knew that the Dominion would be enraged by the complex’s presence and allowed it to be built to draw those creatures’ ire so that he could make a move elsewhere.
Chalkmound Ziggurats Although there are more hidden redoubts and bolt-holes on Aucturn containing creatures of the Dominion of the Black than the cult of Nyarlathotep would care to admit, none are as dangerous to them as the secret temple-laboratories in a vast cavern far beneath the Chalkmounds. Here, several stone ziggurats stand hundreds of feet tall: once-powerful shrines to Nyarlathotep, these underground ziggurats were abandoned millennia ago but still echo with religious energies. The Dominion of the Black discovered this forgotten place and reactivated it, seeking to psychically corrupt Nyarlathotep’s worship by perverting the brain waves of captured cultists. Swarms of deh-nolos, neh-thalggus, and yah-thelgaads labor in the flickering lights shed by the ziggurats, swapping around the brains of captured cultists to extract and mutate their bio-theological energies. These efforts are overseen by wormlike chyzaedus, the closest thing the Dominion has to religious scholars. Captured brains may hold other, deeper secrets that a daring recovery mission into this stronghold could procure and employ against the Dominion.
The Chillblains Aucturn’s northern reaches are less frozen than its southern pole, though the temperature does take quite a dip there. A particular large stretch of land called the Chillblains approaches absolute zero. Though this seemingly supernatural cold affects living creatures as normal, liquids and other inanimate objects rarely freeze despite the very low temperature. Certain devotees of the Outer Gods claim that their patrons protect their bodies from the cold and have been seen walking freely through the Chillblains wearing not much more than simple cloth robes. However, when two or more of these cultists get within 10 feet of each other, that protection vanishes and they are usually killed instantly.
Citadel of the Black The Citadel of the Black is Aucturn’s largest settlement in both size and population. Located on the shores of the Undulating Sea, it is a massive building almost a mile tall and with a base of several dozens of acres, made of a jumbled collection of dense stone, black iron, pulsing flesh-bricks, spires of jagged bone, and tough organic membranes. Due to eldritch atmospheric pumping engines within the building, the yellow smog of Aucturn is rendered nontoxic, allowing a large number of humans, ysoki, and other races of the Pact Worlds to congregate within the ominous structure and in the many smaller buildings clustered at the Citadel’s base like barnacles on a ship.
Despite its immense size, the Citadel seems mostly abandoned, as fewer than 160,000 residents inhabit its multitude of floors and cavernous chambers. Many residents go days without seeing another living soul, which suits its many misanthropic hermits and obsessed scholars of arcane lore just fine. Some even believe that the tower is larger on the inside than on the outside or that the building actually has multiple interiors, each its own demiplane.
The undisputed ruler of the Citadel of the Black is Carsai the King, immortal high priest of Nyarlathotep and, some whisper, an avatar of the Empty Traveler himself. Carsai appears in public frequently; each appearance draws large crowds of fawning cultists, and his charismatic speeches are often broadcast throughout the Pact Worlds; cries of adoration and spontaneous ecstatic suicides are not uncommon during these spectacles. Despite Carsai’s position, the Citadel of the Black is not a theocracy, and the city has just as many agnostic scholars of forgotten or forbidden lore as it does devout cultists of Nyarlathotep. These scholars study in the tower’s many libraries of blasphemous tomes, such as the tumorous Weeping Cathedral or the magically silenced Repository of Errant Lore. Other citizens work the fleshfarms in the vaults beneath the building to feed the populace, or serve as the Highstalkers—a security firm that straddles the line between a police force and sanctioned serial killers.
CITADEL OF THE BLACK CE cyclopean tower Population 153,130 (45% human, 14% orocoran, 11% ysoki, 6% Android, 24% other) Government autocracy (Carsai the King) Qualities academic, notorious Maximum Item Level 18th
Dark Valley A settlement of ramshackle prefabricated living structures and portable generators, Dark Valley exists in permanent shadow. The reason for this lightlessness has yet to be understood, though groups of scientists from various corporations have spent decades studying the area. Dark Valley has no permanent residents, and the buildings are only minimally maintained by the researchers who stay here. The periods in which Dark Valley is inhabited usually last only a few months, as the effects of Aucturn’s atmosphere are heightened within this area between the Chalkmounds and the Gnashing Range.
Endless Throat This gaping pit, 40 feet wide, yawns at the bottom of a steep-sided canyon. The pit winds down beneath Aucturn’s surface, looping and twisting in a disorienting fashion but leading ever downward. Its walls quiver occasionally and are slick with black ichor, leading to the unmistakable feeling of moving through a massive organism. A faint soothing call always echoes from farther down the passage, as though from something just out of sight around the next few bends.
Endless Throat winds ever downward, rarely varying in diameter or temperature, in defiance of geological rules. Although a few corpses litter the passage in places—explorers who succumbed to injury or starvation before finding their way back out—the most significant landmark is a personal transport vehicle resting askew against one of the slick passage walls 370 miles down. The vehicle has been picked over by the few travelers who have made it this far. It faces the entrance, and its logs show it traveled a journey of over 200,000 miles—much farther than Aucturn is wide. Scrawled in blood on the windshield are the words “We found the One Who Calls” and a series of numbers with no apparent meaning.
Frost-That-Bleeds Aucturn’s southern polar ice cap is even more inhospitable than the rest of the planet. Although the poisonous atmosphere and scouring winds are just as prevalent here as they are elsewhere, the temperature is far below freezing and the winds kick up howling snowstorms of jagged crystals. Though dangerous, this region has startling beauty: Aucturn’s weirdly fluctuating magnetic field creates miles-wide sheets of colorful, rippling auroras that dance across the sky. Beneath these lights, scientists of the Dominion of the Black labor in a factory called Frost-That-Bleeds. This structure is a monolithic series of hollow ice blocks that penetrate the planetary surface, circulating Aucturn’s foul, eldritch ichor through the blocks like black blood through pulsing veins. Scientists of the Dominion of the Black study this ichor, perfecting potent strains of magnetotoxins to poison the planet from within and convert its magnetic field into a powerful beacon for their agents drifting in the black space between the stars.
The Fury Place This plain of rubbery soil and stunted trees is hundreds of miles across and riven by a deep chasm filled with roiling clouds that spread throughout the plain. The resulting thin mist resounds with an overwhelming psychic imperative to furiously attack nearby creatures. Strong-willed individuals can keep this bloodlust at bay, but they still risk becoming victims of the raging creatures that roam the plain.
Scant pre-Gap records indicate that this area of Aucturn didn’t previously inflict the psychic rage it does now. To the contrary, the site was formerly known as “the Loving Place” and encouraged enthusiastic orgies and unbridled lusts. Even older records speak of the area as one where creatures would be overwhelmed with lassitude, entering a listless torpor and eventually perishing from starvation upon a field of bones and chitin left by previous visitors. Historians speculate that this region cycles through eons-long ages where a particular sin predominates; according to this theory, sloth gave way to lust, and lust to wrath. As some visitors are able to overcome the psychic compulsion toward bloodshed, these scholars speculate that the era of wrath is ebbing, and some other sin may soon take its place.
Gentle Forest In the shelter of steep-sided mountains called the Gnashing Range rises a vast forest of green and black trees with gnarled branches. From a distance, the Gentle Forest appears to be the only large mass of healthy vegetation on Aucturn. The trees are actually interspersed with several enormous eel-like creatures of a similar coloration and size. These ersatz trees use the surrounding foliage as camouflage; however, they can be distinguished primarily by their heaving, peristaltic contractions, like hiccups, and also because they twist lazily and slowly when living creatures come near. Suckered mouths jut from the creatures in an imitation of branches; these mouths kiss and caress nearby victims for several minutes, sometimes whispering the victim’s thoughts out loud in a choir. These curious creatures don’t seem to be intelligent, merely uttering psychic copies of others’ thoughts, but some burble the thoughts of previous travelers. Ultimately, the trees are overwhelmed by a need to feed: creatures that stay near for too long find that the mouths have sharp teeth that can latch on to victims, allowing the eels to drain their blood. The remaining bloodless husks serve as fertilizer for the forest’s actual trees.
Gravid Mound This polyp-shaped mountain resembles an egg balanced on its narrow end, dominating the surrounding landscape. The top of the mountain is an open caldera containing chunky amniotic fluids that occasionally bubble and roil, spilling over the sides of the mound. A cabal of 13 hooded spellcasters called the Midwives—who also rule the nearby city of Amniek—insist that the Gravid Mound contains an embryonic godling, nurtured within Aucturn as a fetus within a womb. The Midwives regulate the Gravid Mound’s bubbling fluids and occasional shuddering, attempting to ease the impending birth when the Gravid Mound will burst like a cyst and spill the new godling forth. The Midwives understand that this godling will have indescribable power, and they hope their ministrations both accelerate its birth and elevate them as its high priests when it exercises its first soul-splitting cries.
Flying beasts with features of wasps and armored serpents sip from the caldera like grotesque hummingbirds. The Midwives consider these creatures to be nuisances, although some grow to immense size on the eldritch fluids.
Grindhold An example of one of the settlements of cultists dotting the landscape of Aucturn, Grindhold is a small, fortified city ruled by a splinter faction of Nyarlathotep’s faith. Maintaining independence from the Citadel of the Black, Grindhold supports a small starport and minor trading interests, specializing principally in distilled poisons, mind-altering drugs, and explosives manufactured by the city’s joyless human and dwarven specialists. Grindhold’s militia is surprisingly professional and trains with flying biotech ships shaped like enormous bats with grasping mandibles. Rumor holds that the heretical faction survives only at Carsai’s whim, but Grindhold’s leader, High Visionary Habblegeth (CE female dwarf mystic), insists that her knowledge of “secret truths” of the Black Pharaoh protects her city from Carsai’s unholy vengeance.
Master’s Maze Several miles north of the Citadel of the Black, a series of box canyons, chasms, and gullies creates an enormous maze dozens of miles wide, with tens of thousands of branching passages. Seen from above, this maze creates a mind-rending pattern that causes mortal minds to shy away; the only way to truly solve the maze is to enter it. Although the passages of the maze seem natural, they have been carefully shaped and expanded by generations of cultists of Eloritu to create a living prayer to the god of secrets: the alignment of each passage has carefully designed to hold occult significance.
The maze is rumored to have precisely one unique solution, and it is said that an adherent who walks this path will obtain divine enlightenment sufficient to elevate her to the power of a demigod. Not content to make the twisting passages the only obstacles to enlightenment, overzealous priests of Eloritu sometimes introduce dangerous monsters into the Master’s Maze, making it a test of martial skill and stealth as well as of intellect.
Meatwalking Prison One of the least understood prisons in the Pact Worlds, Meatwalking Prison is an ancient iron fortification constructed at some point during the Gap. Carsai the King officially sanctions this prison, but its day-to-day operations are overseen by the warden Zixiz (CE female android mystic), who uses lumbering gugs as guards. Occasionally, one of Zixiz’s robotic agents arrives at another incarceration facility across the galaxy and offers to take that prison’s most dangerous or troublesome offenders off its hands (though usually only the most corrupt prisons take such a deal). As such, Meatwalking Prison houses the worst of the worst, even though its methods of imprisonment don’t break any Pact Worlds laws. In fact, the facilities seem pleasant and comfortable, despite the monstrous guards, and—very rarely—a prisoner elects to stay within the structure after his sentence has been served. Many are highly suspicious of Carsai’s motives and believe that Zixiz is either brainwashing or indoctrinating her prisoners for some dangerous purpose.
Monastery of the Hunger-Enders Several of the lonely, ruined fortresses atop the Twisting Peaks are located near underground passages and claimed by a cabal of orocoran mystics called the Hunger-Enders. More powerful even than the dreaded orocoran ichor lords, the Hunger-Enders have all died from gorging upon the eldritch fluids that flow beneath Aucturn’s surface and risen again as undead creatures. Although long past their addiction for the planet’s ichor, the Hunger-Enders distill the fluid into concentrated forms in their underground chambers, overseeing vast swarms of orocoran aspirants that hope to sample the refined stuff. These aspirants live austere lives as slaves to the Hunger-Enders’ whims. Their distillations require rare alchemical components; unlike many orocorans, the undead Hunger-Enders are willing to negotiate with strangers to obtain these ingredients in exchange for the ancient relics found beneath their mountain fortresses.
Pilgrim’s Panacea One of the few ships to have fallen from the Shattered Hulks and survived planetfall intact, the hospital ship called the Pilgrim’s Panacea is half buried in a sea of ichor in Aucturn’s northern hemisphere. The ship’s engines and engineering section were completely demolished in the crash, but the rest of the ship landed safely—to the dismay of its survivors. A group of aquatic humanoid cultists swarmed into the ship and fell upon the physicians and wounded alike with inhumane violence and debased lusts.
Since that dark day, several generations have been born within the ship. Although this progeny has primarily human-looking forms and scientific knowledge gleaned from generations of study of the ship’s medical archives, they retain the underwater mobility, aberrant appetites, and horrid faith of their aquatic forebears. Recently, this tribe has begun masquerading as doctors for hire, providing just enough genuine medical care to build a good reputation among unsuspecting offworlders. Potential “patients” who meet certain abstruse criteria are taken to aquatic sacrifice chambers and never seen again.
Pyramid of the Black Pharaoh This glossy pyramid of unknown material sits across the Undulating Sea from the Citadel of the Black. It is the center of worship for Nyarlathotep on Aucturn (and, indeed, the entire Pact Worlds) and sees innumerable pilgrims every year. Much of the pyramid’s interior is a vast cathedral where congregants gather, but there are no official services. The worshipers of the Crawling Chaos are expected to talk among themselves, sharing secrets and conspiratorial whispers. Each devotee then must decide for himself whether what he has heard is true or if had just been lied to; discovering if such a lie would serve another’s purpose is part of this strange form of worship.
The pyramid also contains a maze of secret passageways and hidden chambers, some of which seem to move and shift when no one is in them. Those who come to the pyramid believe that some of these areas contain unique magic, outlawed technology, or other taboo secrets and actively seek them out, but are generally tight-lipped about what they have found, an unsurprising response for a cultist of Nyarlathotep.
Many have noted that Carsai the King has never been seen within or traveling to the pyramid. Some say this is a ploy to confuse those who believe he is an avatar of the Black Pharaoh.
Righteousness In the shelter of the Twisting Peaks stand a handful of interconnected hemispherical domes. Powerful lights along the structures, visible from miles away, appear as a sigil that conveys a calming effect upon any viewer. This magical effect is one of the key defenses of the angelic forces that inhabit this small settlement, which they call Righteousness.
Although Righteousness is closed to most outsiders, a few peaceful visitors are sometimes invited in. These visitors describe walkways of light, regular rows of galleries and amphitheaters, and hundreds of angelic inhabitants. The armored angels of Righteousness spends their days training for war or participating in celestial choirs whose holy hymns quell Aucturn’s mutating effects near the settlement. The angels explain to curious visitors that Righteousness is a beachhead for a celestial crusade against an evil force that has not yet arrived on Aucturn but will do so in the near future. The angels don’t provide further details, however, explaining that to reveal the evil’s nature might provide it with undue warning. The angels are oppressively fatalistic despite their near-constant training, as no angel in Righteousness—even their solar angel commander, Ambrennil—expects to survive their coming crusade.
Saltlash There is a strangely pastoral sight on a series of cliffs riddled with dense salt deposits at the edge of the Undulating Sea: a series of seemingly normal fishing villages untouched by technology. Only upon closer inspection does Aucturn’s influence reveal itself. Inbred human families who worship some aquatic terror living under the waves occupy these villages, collectively known as the Saltlash region. These humans, who have acclimated to the planet’s poisonous atmosphere, barely eke out a living from year to year, a routine centered around the yearly Festival of Tithing. The joyless celebration culminates when an immense squid-like tentacle bursts from the sea, winds across the cliffs and into the largest village, and drags a chosen sacrifice—usually one of the towns’ younger residents—back into the inky depths.
The stoic Saltlash folk suffer this loss because those salt deposits touched by the questing tentacle are changed into a valuable resource. Saltlash residents know the secrets to distilling these salts into a powerful narcotic that heightens the user’s paranoia. As this drug is odorless and tasteless, it commands a high price in other communities on Aucturn, and buyers often sell it offworld. Over the past few years, however, the villages’ populations have been dwindling, forcing the people of Saltlash to kidnap outsiders on the eve of their festival to proffer to the tentacle.
Shattered Hulks Aucturn is orbited by derelict hulls of hundreds of Pact World ships, including warships of enormous size. These wrecks occasionally collide, raining fiery wreckage onto the planet far below, but for the most part, the derelict ships float slowly around the planet like lazy flies around a corpse. These vessels are assumed to have been dispatched from inner system worlds at some point during the Gap for reasons now unknown. Although some of these floating hulks certainly contain valuable relics or information from the Gap, the eldritch energies of Aucturn have warped the ships. Few of the wrecks have been explored, as all contain madness-inducing interiors. A few documented examples hint at the horrors to be found among these lost ships. The warship Collum’s Champion has internal corridors of quivering flesh rather than steel, its crew transformed into immortal human-sized polyps extruding from the walls and constantly screaming in pain. The transport Memories of War gives off an eerie light that casts impossible shadows on the surrounding wrecks. The scout ship Scarlet Runner is much larger on the inside than the outside and contains endless dim hallways that intersect bizarrely and echo with manic laughter from somewhere deeper within.
Sideways Steps Several monolithic stone steps ascend one of the Twisted Peaks, shrouded in cloying mist that obscures visual, magical, and technological observation. Some visitors ascending onto one of the steps see a colorful vortex within the mist nearby, although only one person can see this manifestation at a time: the visitor’s companions usually cannot see or interact with the portal.
Each stair’s vortex leads to another version of Aucturn, and most bear dramatic changes: one is a blasted wasteland patrolled by massive, murderous robots of unknown design; another bears fields of sweet-smelling flowers beneath a brightly glowing moon; and another is a mere riven shell as though the godling lurking within the planet long ago burst free. The positions of the stars plainly confirms that each planet is indeed Aucturn, but one from an adjacent reality. Only initial observations have been made in any alternate Aucturn, as visitors who don’t return through the vortex within a few minutes find it permanently closed behind them and are lost forever.
Suppurating Scarp This wide cliff in the Gnashing Range towers hundreds of feet high and constantly seeps a thin, yellowish pus-like fluid that drips down the cliff and collects in disgusting pools at its base. Although different from the black ichor that flows throughout the rest of Aucturn, this pus has a similar hallucinogenic effect when imbibed. Creatures able to force themselves to swallow the repulsive fluid and gaze upon the Suppurating Scarp see shapes in the whorls and eddies of the dripping pus that are almost always prophetic yet grim: an image of a dire fate to soon befall the viewer, the name of the viewer’s next loved one to die, or a stylized representation of a treasured item that the viewer will permanently lose.
Orocorans shun the Suppurating Scarp, bearing a deeply ingrained fear of the tiny wriggling worms that occasionally squirm out of the cliff to plop into the pus pools below. Orocoran rumors hold that a fresh corpse submerged in the shallow pools of pus and left undisturbed for 11 days rises again as a horrid amalgamation of bloated yellowish worms bearing the dead creature’s memories but none of its kindness or mercy.
Toothy Menhirs Thrusting up from the slick, rubbery ground in a miles-wide valley, the Toothy Menhirs are monolithic rectangular slabs 20 feet wide and 80 or more feet high. The slabs are set in a roughly triangular pattern, with a few outliers scattered nearby. Although the site has the appearance of a primeval set of standing stones, the Toothy Menhirs are made of tough, yellowish bone and resemble enormous, blunt teeth. The menhirs can be damaged, but they regenerate with startling rapidity. Strange humanoid creatures made entirely of tiny teeth lurk among the menhirs, merging into the slabs when they know they are being observed.
Some offworlders observing the arrangement of the Toothy Menhirs experience a nagging sense of déjà vu, as though the pattern of the slabs were somewhat familiar but somehow fundamentally incorrect, such as if one or two were slightly out of place. Computational analysis reveals that the layout of the slabs is similar, but not exactly identical, to several different constellations visible from Aucturn’s upper atmosphere. Some believe that wrenching the slabs into an alignment matching one of these configurations of stars will cause something glorious—or terrible—to occur

Alternative Name(s)

The Stranger

Type

Planet

Inhabiting Species

• Bryrvath
• Orocoran