Geography

The Riven Shroud

 * In a remote portion of a galactic arm is an immense spherical megastructure built directly around its sun. Called the Riven Shroud, it is a Dyson sphere: a lacy grid of continent-wide modules of alien architecture, linked by vast solar sails but rent open in some unknown disaster. Its creators vanished millennia ago, and much of it remains abandoned. The ruined regions near the gash are open to the vacuum. Much of the rest appears relatively intact and is home to isolated communities of researchers, scavengers, and squatters. Several, including the aatevak, qotraua, and xixinnt, claim descent from the Shroud’s creators, but the mismatch between their biology and the structure’s architecture makes their claims unlikely.


 * The Shroud’s life-support system functions only partially, and some areas have unbreathable atmospheres or fluctuating gravity. Its remaining defense systems periodically engage without provocation. The space around and within it is also perilous, containing massive haunts said to be the ghostly remains of the worlds destroyed to fuel the Shroud’s creation. The structure also suffers periodic incursions from organisations seeking its secrets.


 * Eerily, the Riven Shroud may be using these incursions to slowly repair itself. Bordering its edges are irregular arrays of derelict ships and stretches of newer sail. The largest and most ancient of this dead armada share the same strange architecture as the Shroud. Other ships are later arrivals that carried would-be despoilers or settlers. Most of these fell to battles with competing factions or the sphere’s automated defences but some appear to be abandoned, with nary a trace of their crews’ fates.

((More jernk on the Shroud to come...))

Daegox IV
The entire planet of Daegox IV serves as a galactic prison. While it's unclear why the various governments, alliances, and factions of the galaxy send prisoners here, what is clear is that hundreds of thousands of prisoners inhabit this planet with the least dangerous able to roam the lush forested wilderness of its surface.

The planet is owned and run by Daegox Corporation, composed of a mysterious humanoid race of unknown origins and curate Daegox IV from an orbital platform named Skywatcher. Whispers and rumours are all Daegox Corp's competitors have to go on for their motives and goals and their involvement in the galactic economy appears to be limited to prisoner admission fees. Their competitors are becoming increasingly suspicious of the company's intentions due to the suffocating lack of information.

The Veskarium
The Veskarium refers not to a single planet but all eight colonised planets within the one system. One of those planets, Vesk Prime (Veskarium I), is the homeland of the vesk. It is also the homeland to several sentient slave species of the Vesk including jackalfolk, snakemen, and porcupeople. Vesk 2 homed some kind of hyper-intelligent squidfaced people who were also subjugated once the Vesk made it to space. Antlike beings and primitive feline barbarians lived on Vesk 5 and 6 respectively. And Vesk 7 and 8 were the planets belonging to frost behemoths who had developed space travel well before the vesk conquered them. All were brought under the vesk empire, and although the standard of living has skyrocketed under vesk rule, their rigid caste structure with the vesk on top is unwelcome to races accustomed to absolute conquest like the humans or shirren.

Ultimately, despite their racial supremacy, unforgiving legal system, and tyrannical autocracy, the vesk seek to provide their vassal races with stability, comfort, and luxury. But that utopia is a way off, since their aggressive expansion tactics have failed to endear them with the other spacefaring races of the galaxy.

Custom worlds
There are a great many planets in a great many systems in a great many clusters that have discovered the Shroud. There must be tons of planets not documented in the Starfinder CRB so if you don't want to use one in there, make your own... There are plenty of resources to generate something for inspiration.


 * This tool will generate a system complete with a handful of variables you'll probably want to know.
 * Alternatively, you might get more variation/planets with rolling dice on a table like this. Roll a d6 for each column (or just choose them).