Quick Facts
System: Mataras System (The Pact Worlds)
Orbital Position: Eighth orbital track outward from Mataras (~4 AU), situated beyond The Diaspora and The Idari
Common Epithet: The Dead World
Planetary Diameter: Terrestrial (~6,300 miles)
Planetary Mass: Terrestrial Standard
Surface Gravity: Standard Gravity
Atmosphere: None (Toxic, radioactive vacuum; artificial breathable biospheres exist only inside sealed force domes and subterranean vaults)
Day / Rotation: 30 Standard Hours
Year / Orbit: 5 Standard Years (~1,825 days)
Natural Satellites: None (Several automated orbital defense platforms and bone-ship drydocks)
Capital / Seat of Government: Orphys (The Necropolis of Glass and Bone)
Dominant Species: Undead Elebrians (Necrovites, Liches, Vampires, Ghouls, Skeletons, Zombies), Living Elebrians (~5%), Foreign Expatriates
Ruling Governance: The Necro-Oligarchy of the Bone Sages (Ruling council of aristocratic liches and technomancers)
Systemic Influence: Full sovereign signatory of the Pact Worlds; galactic leaders in necrotechnology, cyber-grafts, bone starship engineering, and interplanetary broadcast entertainment (death sports)
Primary Deities: Urgathoa (The Pallid Princess / Goddess of Undeath), Zon-Kuthon (The Midnight Lord), Pharasma (Despised and blasphemed), Abadar (Commercial trade)
Astrogation Dossier: The Blasted Cradle
Eox—infamously commemorated as The Dead World—is the eighth major celestial body of the Mataras System, orbiting in the cold twilight approximately four astronomical units from Mataras. To incoming starships, Eox presents a harrowing, nightmarish vista: an airless, crater-pocked sphere of scorched obsidian basalt, radioactive dust storms, and glowing fissures of green necrotic energy.
Yet Eox is neither abandoned nor silent. Beneath its irradiated vacuum thrives one of the most technologically formidable, economically wealthy, and politically cunning civilizations in the galaxy. Ruled by immortal undead oligarchs known as the Bone Sages, Eox has transformed the condition of death from a tragic end into a supreme instrument of efficiency. As full, founding signatories of the Pact Worlds, the undead of Eox walk the boulevards of Absalom Station as protected ambassadors, export advanced necrotechnology across the stars, and broadcast gory, high-rating reality television to billions of living citizens across the system.
The Ancient Cataclysm & The Great Transformation
Millennia before The Gap, in the ancient epochs of the solar system, Eox was a verdant, thriving terrestrial jewel inhabited by the Elebrians—a tall, graceful humanoid species with oversized craniums, pale skin, and an extraordinary aptitude for arcane science.
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| THE CATACLYSM OF EOX |
+=============================================================================+
| [THE PRE-GAP WAR] ===> Ancient war against twin worlds Damiar & Iovo. |
| [THE MAGEFIRE] ===> Planetary superweapon fired; shatters the Twins |
| into [[The Diaspora]]. |
| [THE BACKLASH] ===> Apocalyptic feedback ignites Eox's atmosphere |
| and strips the planetary biosphere. |
| [THE NECRO-EVOLUTION] => Elebrians embrace undeath to survive radiation, |
| becoming the immortal [[Bone Sages]]. |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
The Magefire & The Shattering of the Twins
Eoxian civilization grew arrogant and warlike, entering an existential planetary conflict against its neighboring sister worlds, Damiar and Iovo (the Twins). To achieve total victory, the ruling magisters of Eox constructed the Magefire—a titanic, planet-cracking superweapon tapping fundamental cosmic negative energy.
When the Magefire was fired, it achieved its catastrophic objective: Damiar and Iovo were annihilated, their pulverized fragments forming the chaotic expanse now known as The Diaspora. However, the magical and energetic backlash was unforeseen and instantaneous. A tidal wave of radiant eldritch fire ripped back along the firing vector, igniting Eox’s stratosphere, vaporizing its oceans, and scouring all biological life from the surface within hours.
The Rise of the Bone Sages
As lethal radiation and atmospheric collapse threatened the total extinction of the Elebrian race, the planetary elite retreated deep into subterranean fallout vaults. Realizing that biological bodies could not survive the poisoned, airless wasteland, the surviving rulers made an irreversible pact: they systematically converted themselves into undead horrors through dark magical and technomagical rites.
The most powerful spellcasters became necrovites—a sophisticated technological evolution of the classic lich who store their souls inside cybernetically shielded inanimatums (technomagical phylacteries). Others became vampires, mummies, and intelligent ghouls, while reanimating the millions of deceased citizens as mindless skeletal servitors, corpse-drones, and radiation-shielded laborers. Thus, Eox died as a world, only to rise again as an immortal necropolis.
Planetary Geography & Necropolises
The surface of Eox is an airless, radioactive wasteland subject to severe solar radiation and hard vacuum. However, massive arcologies and subterranean rifts house bustling centers of industry and diplomacy:
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| PLANET EOX |
+=============================================================================+
| [ORPHYS] | [THE FACET] | [THE BONE YARDS] |
| Capital necropolis | Crystalline crater at | Automated skeletal |
| shielded by force domes | ground zero of the | quarries & necro- |
| for living visitors. | Magefire backlash. | harvesting plants. |
+--------------------------+--------------------------+-----------------------+
| [THE GREAT GRAV-TRAIN] | [NECRO-SHIPYARDS] | [THE PYRE] |
| Pressurized rail lines | Zero-g slipways growing | Colossal geothermal |
| spanning basalt plains. | calcified bone-hulls. | fusion crematoriums. |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
1. Orphys (The City of Domes)
The political, cultural, and economic capital of Eox is Orphys, constructed within the sheer walls of a massive equatorial canyon.
- Force-Dome Atmospheric Envelope: Unlike the rest of the planet, Orphys is sealed beneath shimmering, kilometers-wide magnetic force domes that contain a pressurized, filtered atmosphere. Here, living foreign diplomats, corporate traders from AbadarCorp, and off-world tourists can walk without environmental suits.
- The Hall of Sages: The seat of the planetary government, an imposing palace of carved black basalt and adamantine where the Bone Sages convene to administer planetary trade and foreign diplomacy.
- Living Enclaves: Orphys contains neighborhoods catering specifically to living residents and off-worlders, featuring luxurious hotels, synthetic food synthesizers, and entertainment clubs.
2. The Facet
The scar of the ancient cataclysm, The Facet is a colossal impact crater hundreds of miles wide where the Magefire superweapon backfired. The extreme heat and arcane pressure vitrified the planetary crust into a jagged bowl of iridescent, radioactive green glass. Necromantic scholars and cultists of Zon-Kuthon make pilgrimages to the Facet to study the lingering planar tears connecting Eox to the Negative Energy Plane.
3. The Bone Yards & Necro-Factories
Across the barren basalt wastes lie vast automated complexes known as the Bone Yards.
- Mindless undead (skeletons and zombies) equipped with heavy laser drills work the mineral mines without food, sleep, or radiation shields.
- Massive bio-vats produce necrovitae—a synthetic, embalmed necrotic fluid used to nourish vampires, preserve organic corpse-flesh, and power biological components in Eoxian starships.
4. The Necro-Shipyards of Eox
In high orbit above Eox hang the skeletal drydocks of the planetary fleet. Eoxian starships are renowned across the galaxy for their grotesque yet formidable designs: vessels crafted from calcified bone, fossilized chitin, and hardened necro-ceramic composites that require neither life-support, artificial gravity, nor air circulation, allowing them to dedicate immense power to particle cannons and reinforced shields.
Culture, Necrotechnology & Media Empire
Eoxian culture is cold, highly logical, and ruthlessly practical. To an undead citizen of Eox, the living are erratic, fragile, and inefficient creatures burdened by biological weaknesses like hunger, exhaustion, emotional volatility, and fear of mortality.
Necrotechnology & Necro-Grafts
Eox leads the galaxy in the development of necrotechnology—the fusion of cybernetics, genetics, and necromantic magic.
- Necro-Grafts: Specialized cybernetic and necrotic prosthetics harvested from preserved dead tissue and infused with negative energy. Living individuals throughout the Pact Worlds frequently purchase Eoxian necro-grafts for their durability, sensory enhancements, or dark-vision capabilities.
- Energy Inanimatums: Necrovites continue to push the boundaries of soul storage, encoding their soul matrices onto dense quantum micro-drives embedded deep within their adamantine-reinforced skeletal frames.
The Interplanetary Media Empire
Paradoxically, Eox is the media and reality-television capital of the Pact Worlds.
- Death Sports Broadcasts: Because undead performers cannot permanently die from standard physical trauma, and because Eoxian law does not recognize conventional mortal safety codes, Eoxian broadcast studios produce ultra-violent, high-adrenaline entertainment for off-world audiences.
- Shows like Survival Run, Gladiators of the Void, and extreme torture-comedy game shows are broadcast via Drift communications arrays to billions of living viewers on Absalom Station, Verces, and Akiton, generating trillions of credits for the Bone Sages.
Politics, The Pact & The Shadow of The Corpse Fleet
Eox’s relationship with the rest of the galaxy is fraught with diplomatic tension, moral horror, and realpolitik.
The Ratification of the Absalom Pact (291 AG)
When the formidable starfleets of the Veskarium invaded the Mataras system, the military forces of the living worlds were pushed to the brink of defeat. The Bone Sages offered their massive fleets of bone-dreadnoughts and immortal shock troops to the allied effort. Eoxian weapons were instrumental in breaking the Vesk assault, and when The Absalom Pact was drafted in 291 AG, Eox demanded and received full, equal sovereign membership.
This treaty enraged religious factions across the galaxy—especially the righteous paladins of the Knights of Golarion and the clergy of Pharasma, who view all undead as cosmic abominations against the natural order. However, the Pact Council strictly enforces Eox’s sovereign protections.
The Treason of the Corpse Fleet
When Eox signed The Absalom Pact, the treaty required the planet to decommission much of its offensive naval tonnage and sign universal non-aggression treaties recognizing the sanctity of living beings.
A massive faction of the Eoxian military navy, led by radical necrovite admirals, refused to submit. Proclaiming that the living are nothing more than biological raw materials waiting to be harvested for parts and labor, this rogue fleet mutinied, stole hundreds of capital dreadnoughts, and vanished into the deep void of The Diaspora and the uncharted reaches of the Vast.
Today, this extremist renegade armada—known as the Corpse Fleet—wages an asymmetric shadow war against the living, raiding trade convoys and assassinating Pact diplomats. While the Bone Sages of Orphys officially condemn the Corpse Fleet as traitors and outlaws, intelligence operatives within The Stewards strongly suspect that conservative Sages secretly funnel credits, starship parts, and captured prisoners to the Corpse Fleet through back-channel smuggling networks.
Campaign & Adventure Hooks
- The Reality Arena Heist: The player characters are abducted by unscrupulous off-world brokers and sold to an Eoxian entertainment corporation to compete in Death Run 3000—a televised obstacle course across the radioactive glass wastes of The Facet. The PCs must use their wits, combat prowess, and cameras to survive while plotting a desperate escape from the production studio.
- Corpse Fleet Slipway Sabotage: A deep-cover operative for The Stewards discovers that an automated orbital shipyard above Eox is covertly assembling a stealth battlecruiser bearing unauthorized Corpse Fleet transponder codes. The party is deployed on a black-ops mission to infiltrate the vacuum drydock, plant demolition charges on the drive core, and extract telemetry proving the Bone Sage’s complicity.
- The Stolen Inanimatum: A desperate, progressive living Elebrian insurgent hires the party to steal the inanimatum (phylactery) of a tyrannical Bone Sage who runs an illegal indentured living labor camp. With the Sage’s soul held hostage in a portable stasis case, the heroes must navigate a tense diplomatic standoff inside Orphys before the undead garrison locks down the force domes.