Welcome to Absalom. Enjoy your stay!
Dead Suns is the first adventure path released by Paizo for Starfinder.
The story begins with the arrival of the party on Absalom Station, where the players are immediately caught in the crossfire between two rival street gangs, and ends with a battle over control of an ancient superweapon.
The adventure is divided into six chapters:
- Incident at Absalom Station
- Temple of the Twelve
- Splintered Worlds
- The Ruined Clouds
- The Thirteenth Gate
- Empire of Bones
Has its own character page.
Tropes
- Adventurer Archaeologist: The PC's are members of or working with the Starfinder Society, an entire organization of Adventurer Archaeologists... IN SPACE!
- Subverted by Halkueem Zan, who certainly THOUGHT he was one, but his conclusions are hilariously off the mark and colored by his prejudices. Still, while his findings are inaccurate, they are useful for navigating Castrovel's jungles.
- Amateur Sleuth: The players are asked by the Starfinders to investigate the death of Durovar Kreel, as a means of demonstrating their skills and resourcefulness to the organization
- Apocalypse Cult: The Cult of the Devourer serve as central antagonists of the adventure.
- Apocalypse How: The Stellar Degenerator superweapon is capable of Stellar Extinction by draining a star of all its energy, with all the horrific consequences that entails.
- Brain Uploading: Done voluntarily by two Kishalee scientists to ensure that someone would always be able to be custodian to the Gate of the Twelve Suns. Tragically The Devourer drove one of the AI's mad to enable its cultists to seize the Stellar Degenerator.
- Contrived Coincidence: The main plot is kicked off when someone's Drift travel randomly shears off a portion of an ancient machine hidden in a pocket dimension.
- Death World: This campaign sends the PC's to not one, but two of them!
- Castrovel, homeworld of the Lashuntas, Elves, and Formians. Beyond the protected centers of civilization, the jungles that take up most of the planet's surface contain all manner of dangerous predators and Man Eating Plants. The PC's will be struggling to avoid getting trampled, devoured, or infected by Ksarik Spores. As if the Cult of the Devourer wasn't enough...
- The planet of Eox, homeworld of the now undead Elebrians. Outside of cities built to support living visitors the planet is uninhabitable to most forms of life.
- Evil Versus Evil: The Cult of the Devourer and the Corpse Fleet are racing to obtain the Stellar Degenerator first, and the Pact Worlds are screwed if either one gets it before the PC's do.
- Forgotten Superweapon: The Stellar Degenerator, the discovery of which ends up being the main focus of the entire campaign.
- Future Primitive: The Kish eke out an existence on a dilapidated floating city in orbit around a gas giant. They are the descendants of the Kishalee, the civilization that hid the Stellar Degenerator.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The Devourer, the setting's god of black holes, destruction, and supernovas. Its cultists seek to use the Forgotten Superweapon in order to bring about the unmaking of the universe their god desires.
- Mile-Long Ship: The Empire of Bones is the first Ultranaught introduced in the Starfinder game. It also serves as the final dungeon in the campaign.
- Mob War: Getting caught up in one is the very first thing that happens to the player characters.
- The Necrocracy: The undead populated planet of Eox plays a role in this adventure. The PC's work with Ambassador Nor of Eox is what kicks off the central portion of the campaign's plot. The PC's must also go to Eox in the third book once they learn that the Corpse Fleet is also interested in the Stellar Degenerator.
- Our Liches Are Different: Necrovites are an advanced form of undead who used magic to store their souls into an Electroenchephalon. Basically liches... IN SPACE!
- Gevalarsk Nor, Ambassador of Eox, is an ally to the PC's especially if they retrieve his package for him. The adventure does not encourage the PC's attacking him, and since he is a CR 13 opponent at a time most parties would be around level 2, any attempt to attack him wouldn't end well for the group.
- Admiral Serovox of the Corpse Fleet serves as the Final Boss of the adventure.
- The Undead: Feature prominently in this adventure.
- There's the planet of Eox and its undead populace. One of the earliest things the PC's do is a job for Eox's ambassador Gevalarsk Nor. If you do the job as he requested he'll even return the favor later in the adventure.
- The Corpse Fleet, a disavowed group of Eoxian nationalists and undead supremacists, feature as secondary antagonists during the adventure. Until the sixth book when they take center stage as the Big Bad.
- Pocket Dimension: The Kishalee used advanced magitek to hide the Stellar Degenerator inside of one; only accessible by a gate ringed by twelve suns!
