Ratheren

RATHEREN
Moon Base of Desperate Survivors
Diameter: ×1/3
Mass: ×1/4
Gravity: Special
Location: The Vast
Atmosphere: Thin
Day: 25 hours; Year: 300 days

Centuries ago, as the ferrans—the inhabitants
of the planet Ferrantus-4—developed advanced technology
and began to look toward the stars, they saw their race’s
ultimate fate: a region of nearby space so dark that it could
only be a black hole. Luckily, the Ferrantus system was
just far enough away to be spared the worst effects of the
black hole’s gravitation and radiation, but the study of the
stellar phenomenon, which the ferrans came to call “the Maw,” ignited the curiosity of many of the planet’s scientists.
Astrophysics became a popular field of study, launching a
scientific revolution. Eventually, the ferrans achieved limited
space flight, traveling to their moon Ratheren to build a selfsustaining
research station to better study the Maw.

Decades later, the ferrans discovered that a rogue black hole–
like entity was on a collision course with the Maw. Knowing that
such a conglomeration of energy would result in the formation
of a quasar—and render their system uninhabitable—the ferrans
were faced with a multipronged crisis.
To combat the despair that arose from the future’s cold
truths, faiths sprang up seemingly overnight. The most
popular religion declared that the ferrans were destined
to merge with the Maw and that they would be safe only
once they embraced this fate.
The most zealous followers even
thought that the catastrophe
would transform them into a more
advanced state of being.

Those ferrans who approached
the crisis with the rationality of
science worked feverishly to find
some way to save their people.
They came close to cracking
technological interstellar travel
long before the Drift made it
commonplace, but in the end,
they were too late. The world
leader of Ferrantus-4, who
firmly believed that the Maw
meant their salvation rather than
their destruction, enacted an
insane plan to launch the planet into the black hole using a
combination of industrial force fields and teleportation magic.
The fanatic succeeded, but there wasn’t enough time to retrieve
the moon-based researchers before Ferrantus-4 disappeared
with a burst of energy that pushed Ratheren outside of the
quasar’s gravitational pull. Many of the remaining ferrans
believed that their kin had committed an act of mass suicide,
but as a few die-hard optimists studied the Maw, they picked
up strange signals—signals that shouldn’t have been able to
pass the event horizon.

Today, most of the ferrans of Ratheren spend their time
eking out an existence on their moon base and attempting to
discover whether the rest of their people are still alive within
the Maw. A few, however, find this pursuit foolish and wish to
turn their efforts toward finding a new place to live.

Before the ferrans colonized it, Ratheren was a moon made
mostly of dark stone. It has very little atmosphere, almost
no natural life, and deep crevasses crisscrossing its surface.
Its gravity is irregular, with a gravitational field ranging from
about as strong as that of lost Golarion to twice as strong.
The Ratheren base now encompasses almost a quarter of the
moon—a sprawling metropolis of squat buildings connected
by enclosed walkways. Hydroponic gardens provide food
and oxygen for the residents, and purifiers recycle liquid
waste and clean the water that’s collected from the moon’s
dwindling polar cap. The facilities obtain geothermal power
from turbines deep within Ratheren’s fissures. Day and night
are artificially controlled to simulate Ferrantus-4’s original
cycle, even though many generations of ferrans were born
and lived their lives on the moon without ever knowing the
lost planet of their origin.

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