The Boneyard

Rising up from its base near the perfect city of Axis and stretching into the Astral Plane to an unimaginable height, Pharasma’s Spire holds a unique place among its fellows within the Outer Sphere. Also known as the Boneyard, the Spire directly receives mortal souls arriving at the end of their long astral migration. There in Pharasma’s courts, beneath the gaze of celestials and fiends alike, the souls of the dead receive judgment on their ultimate place within the Great Beyond.     The Boneyard rests atop a massive spire rising up from the plane of Axis, serving as the final destination for the great River of Souls. Although it contains a variety of regions, mortals largely recognize the plane for the presence of the domain of Pharasma, the Lady of Graves, goddess of birth and death. Within her courts, deific and planar representatives gather their pledged souls, surrounded by the vast Graveyard of Souls and the looming moon of the demigod Groetus. It is mildly neutral-aligned.    

Mysteries of the Spire

Often spoken of, but never examined except in passing, the Spire itself has its own unique mysteries. Some legends say that Pharasma constructed the Spire herself, forming it out of the raw stuff of the Maelstrom when the first of Golarion’s gods fashioned reality. Other, older sources maintain that Pharasma claimed the summit of a preexistent Spire as her own, taking possession and responsibility over the beacon of souls which may have been constructed and subsequently abandoned by an earlier divinity, scouring away most traces of those earlier powers.   Admittedly, some of the tombs within the Graveyard of Souls display an alien iconography revolving around a pantheon of gods of whom only Groetus can be readily identified. The lands atop the Spire possess a tendency to wrap around themselves, preventing accidental egress upon the absolute edge of their boundary. However, determined travelers can literally will themselves to find that border, reaching a desolate stretch of land where the forests and fields wither away to bare rock before meeting the void and the plummeting, unimaginable drop down to the city-plane of Axis. Anyone diving from the height passes massive, yawning archways in the rock that lead deeper into the Spire’s interior, broken and winding stairs that spiral up the Spire’s length for miles at a stretch, and hundreds of small, vacant niches.

Geography

Pharasma’s Court

While the River of Souls arrives at Pharasma’s domain atop the Spire, not all souls undergo the same process. Some souls come having already made their choices via their actions and beliefs, while others with more conflicted natures—or pre-existing pacts to specific entities—make their decisions at the advice or temptation of infernal and divine suitors, who are eager to sway their spirits in one ideological direction or another, or with Pharasma’s direct arbitration if need be.   Each of the Eight Courts—one for each aligned plane of the Outer Sphere—sprawls across dozens of miles and draws the souls of those whose inner natures mirror those of their linked planes, or the souls of those pledged to specific deities dwelling on those planes. Each court is centered on a large, permanent portal to its plane and a smaller number of ancillary gates to specific domains or deific realms.    

The Devouring Court

Unlike the other seven courts, the part of the Boneyard devoted to Abaddon is a barren and forbidding place, devoid of any sense of splendor, and possessed of a palpable misery that emanates from the mirror-smooth and pitch-black surface of its central portal. No emissaries of the daemon lords stand in the court— they and their servitors are specifically banned—and only the rare proxies of Urgathoa and Zyphus stand out among the damned souls. Those souls destined for Abaddon that have not already been chosen by the gods face the portal and its low, visceral scream, which is punctuated by the sounds of gnashing teeth and dripping spittle.    

The Inner Court

The souls arriving in Pharasma’s Court do not always gravitate toward a specific plane and its linked court. A soul might be split in its nature between Axis and Hell, or at their death might have suddenly embraced the faith of Sarenrae while otherwise they had been strictly aligned with the moral precepts of the Abyss for most of their sinful life. In such cases—which occur frequently—the shuffling of souls is less an orderly process of identification and selection than it is an instance of interested parties advocating their cases to each conflicted soul within the Inner Court, which surrounds Pharasma’s Palace in a collection of solemn granite forums and plazas. The arguments are often long and fierce, but violence is exceedingly rare except for souls torn between such opposing ideologies.    

Pharasma’s Palace

The Inner Court does not resolve the most difficult of cases: those of souls already pledged by contract (often to one of the infernal powers) who regretted the pact and actively sought redemption toward another alignment. The debate in such cases occurs not in the courts, but in Pharasma’s direct presence within the goddess’s palace, with the conflicted parties often sending their most powerful representatives specifically chosen for the task, such as the unique albino protean Ssila’meshnik, the pit fiend Dorikon the Bile-Tongued, or the solar Fallisimor the Redeemer.   Pharasma’s Palace harbors the Lady of Graves and her worshipers’ souls. A soaring gothic structure, the palace stands in contrast to Pharasma’s often somber and dour nature, constructed of white marble glowing with an inner light and bearing floors paved in onyx, representing the goddess’s dualistic power over birth and death.    

Notable Sites

While Pharasma’s Court and the surrounding Graveyard of Souls are among the most important and widely known locations within the Outer Sphere, they comprise only a fraction of the plane’s area. Despite being named Pharasma’s Spire, the domains universally associated with it are the only ones commonly visited by non-natives, and the plane itself seems to desire it that way.  

Pharasma’s Court

  • The Devouring Court
  • The Inner Court
  • Pharasma’s Palace
 

The Lake of Mortal Reflections

 

The Graveyard of Souls

 

Moon of Groetus

 

The Realm of the Content

Type
Dimensional plane

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