Sun

Sun

(Cosmos)

Titles

Mataras (Lashunta)

Type

Yellow star

Diameter

×100

Mass

280,000

Gravity

×28

Atmosphere

None

Year length (PST)

None

Day length (PST)

None

System

Pact Worlds system

Inhabitants

Fire elementals, plasma oozes, efreet, salamanders, anassanois, protocites

Images of the Sun

Source: Core Rulebook, pg(s). 434-435

More information about this subject might be available on PathfinderWiki.

For another meaning of "Sun", please see star.

The sun of the Pact Worlds system, sometimes called by its Lashunta name of Mataras ("Burning Mother"), is a yellow star.

Geography

Entering the Burning Archipelago.

The sun's surface is super-heated plasma that moves in invisible waves and has immense gravity that can easily crush most starships. The fusion reactions that take place in the sun's core emit such powerful energies that it regularly rips open portals to the Positive Energy Plane and Plane of Fire.

Burning Archipelago

The only area of the sun that is habitable by most species of the Pact Worlds is a series of connected platforms surrounded by magically protective fields called the Burning Archipelago. When a starship approaches this area, a narrow tunnel of reduced solar energy and lessened gravity opens to allow it safe passage to the platforms. Each of the platforms containes a city and is protected by transparent spheres and connected by magical tethers. Unknown mechanisms keep the bubbles habitable and shield them from the sun's radiation and blinding brightness.

History

In 223 AG, the then-uninhabited Burning Archipelago was discovered and named by Sarenite priests and scientists in a station dedicated to studying the sun and its connection to their goddess. No one knows why the cities exist or were abandoned. Inspired by a vision of herself walking in the Burning Archipelago's streets, the Sarenite priestess Imryll Novaheart convinced some of Sunrise Station's staff to journey there. In doing so, they discovered the low-energy tunnel that allowed them to safely enter the Burning Archipelago. Soon enough, many Sarenites migrated to the Burning Archipelago, and the Radiant Cathedral in the most prominent central bubble of Dawnshore became one of the goddess' holiest sites.

For many years, the little information known to the Pact Worlds concerning the deep cultures who inhabit ruins deep in the sun were provided by visitors from the Plane of Fire, who seem reluctant to speak more of them. Scholars have attempted to contact these deep cultures in hopes of learning more about the first life to arise in the Pact Worlds system. This changed in 319 AR, with the completion of the Sun Diver, the first starship in the Pact Worlds capable of diving into the sun itself.

Government

The Burning Archipelago is a protectorate of the Pact Worlds, and the rest of the sun is considered a shared holding of all of the Pact Worlds' members. Each city in the Burning Archipelago has its own government, ranging from theocratic Dawnshore to corporate-controlled Fireside and Stellacuna. All traffic in and out of the Archipelago is monitored by the Sarenite Dawn Patrol from Sunrise Station, although only the most suspicious travellers are denied entry.

Inhabitants

The sun's plasma is home to fire-immune merchants and immigrants from the Plane of Fire and strange creatures adapted to the heat and pressure. The majority of Pact Worlds citizens are restricted to the Burning Archipelago, a melting pot of peoples from across the entire system. Aside from the Sarenites, who use sunskimmers to magically bottle nuclear fire for sale and maintain the Burning Archipelago's power stations, the sun also attracts corporations to its orbit for robotic experiments in algae-based energy capture, or build solar-powered robotics plants and deploy jungle boxes (transports filled with gene-modded plants) to produce rare chemicals.

The sun's extreme energy, combined with the mutations to plants in NatuReal Compounds jungle boxes, has led to at least two instances of the formation sentient and carnivorous plant creatures — to fatal effect in the instances where the boxes were not fully automated.

Deeper within the sun float other bubble-cities, their inhabitants ignorant of or uninterested in outsiders: Noma, a city controlled by the AI of the same name which has generated countless protocites, distant cousins to the anacites of Aballon; Kahlannal, a city which originated as a starship carrying its anassanoi inhabitants from their doomed home star; and Lantanir, one of the oldest and deepest cities, home of the lantanirians who are suspected to be connected to the First Ones.