Castrovel

Castrovel

(Cosmos)

Titles

The Green; the Green Star; the Green Planet

Type

Planet

Adjective

Castrovelian

Diameter

×1

Mass

×1

Gravity

×1

Atmosphere

Breathable

Orbit

Half a year

Inhabitants

Lashunta, elves, formians

Satellites

One moon

Images of Castrovel

Source: Distant Worlds, pg(s). 10ff.

More information about this subject might be available on StarfinderWiki.

Castrovel (pronounced KAHS-tro-vel), the Green Planet, is the second planet from Golarion's sun and the blue planet's closest neighbor.

Description

While Akiton is generally associated with warfare, Castrovel often represents fertility and lust. These generalizations are well-founded, as the planet is almost entirely covered in teeming jungles, endless swamps, and strange clouds of colored gas. The abundance of life across its surface leads to huge trees and enormous creatures, many of them predatory. Its humid atmosphere, while technically biocompatible with Golarion, spawns incomparably powerful storms; living moldstorms that ravage its moistest climates consume any organic matter in their wake.

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Rune representation

In scholarly works, Castrovel is sometimes represented by a rune: three circles interlaced in a top left to bottom right diagonal fashion, with the middle circle having a vertical bar within it.

Inhabitants

The planet is dominated by a race of psychic matriarchal humanoids called lashunta. Lashuntas are split into two subspecies called damaya and korasha; lashuntas choose which subspecies they will develop into when they hit puberty. The damaya are tall, intellectual and usually take on leadership roles while the korasha are shorter, broader and focus more on manual labour. Both damaya and korasha have a cultural obsession with scholarship and self-improvement. Riding enormous lizard steeds, lashuntas patrol the edges of their city-states, driving off the dangerous fauna of the foetid jungles.

Another species which is known to live on Castrovel is that of the feline coeurl, although it is not known if they are native or were brought there from somewhere else.

Other inhabitants amongst the teeming array of life on the planet, include:

• amelekanas
• ankylosauruses
• assassin vines
• caulborn
• centipede ticks
• cerebric fungi
• cliffhunter pteranodons
• compsognathuses
• daeodons
• desa-desas
• dimetrodons
• elves, the second most predominant race after the lashunta
• formians
• fungus leshys
• gnomes
• hieracosphinxes
• ibarixo
• immolises
• isopods
• jungle drakes
• kaiju
• kappas
• kareqs
• khizars
• krimesh
• lizardfolk
• locathahs
• magma dragons
• maraxes
• megafauna
• mistcallers
• mobats
• moonflowers
• mountain eels
• neles
• orepedes
• quadhorns
• quezeqars
• ratfolk
• scalescribes
• selkies
• shotalashu
• sky fishers
• teshki
• tree fishers
• tripkees
• witchwyrds
• yugolars

Gazetteer

Paths on branches connect parts of a tree settlement on Castrovel.

Castrovel is made up of five continents with notable locations detailed below.

Asana

Asana is the largest and most populous continent on Castrovel. It is largely populated by lashuntas and contains multiple large cities and city-states that are connected by aiudara.

Qabarat

Qabarat is the de facto capital of Asana. Also known as the Shining Jewel of the Western Sea, it has three universities and four aiudara, one of which leads to Akiton. It is located where the Yaro River breaks through to the sea.

Ocean of Mists

The Ocean of Mists is a several-hundred-mile-long canyon north of the Sea of Teeth. It was here that Sovyrian elves first encountered a creature from the Dark Tapestry that they captured and imprisoned underneath the Crown of the World. At the bottom of the canyon, there are ruined citadels which were built by an unknown species referred to by the teshki as the 'forecomers'. Once such citadel is built atop a great serpent and creates the eponymous mists. It is guarded by mysterious creatures who use name-speech to kill anyone who comes close.

Floating Shards

There are nine Mountainheart Cities in the south of Asana created by lashuntas by severing the peaks of mountains and levitating the tip above their respective mountains inside large cylinders. They are heavily fortified and can be barricaded inside the mountains in case of an attack from the formians. In 4993 AR, the Mountainheart City of Yemar's cylinder closed and attempts to re-establish communication have been futile. It is now called the Silent Shard by the lashuntas, and Asanan leaders worry that the development of a secret superweapon in the city may have caused the defense mechanism to activate.

Tidelight

Tidelight is a mysterious castle situated at the south of the Gulf of Parting. Lashuntas have no record of who built it and it holds several strange phenomena. When the tide is low, a beam of light emits from the castle as all the water from high tide drains out. Every person who has been in the castle when this beam appears has disappeared.

Shemez Desert

The Shemez Desert in the north east of Asana is particularly well known for containing a maze called he Winding Way. People who walk the labyrinth are given visions of their past, present, and future but if they step off their path they lose whatever they hold most dear. Siktemporas delight in deliberately misleading travellers off their paths.

Sovyrian

Sovyrian lies to the south of Asana and is mostly populated by elves. Due to being surrounded by tempestuous seas, it is isolated from the other Castrovelian continents. Sovyrian's capital is the city of El set on the banks of the Woven River.

The Colonies

The Colonies are the formian settlements south-east of Asana. Most of the formian civilisations are below ground, leaving the surface as an unsettled wilderness.

Ghechek Peninsula

The Ghechek Peninsula is a war-torn area in the east of the Colonies. While it used to contain arable land, it is now a site of constant battle with the lashuntas of Asana. It is now riddled with abandoned fortresses, mountain warhives, and fields full of formian soldiers, whose bodies often serve as traps for those who would try to scavenge from the remains.

House of Runes

In the north of the Colonies lies the House of Runes, a physics-defying structure surrounded by cacti and covered in undeciphered runes. Many scholars who have tried to decipher the runes have died or disappeared.

Ukulam

Ukulam is the least-populated continent on Castrovel and largely made up of jungle. Formians, elves, and lashuntas have all attempted to establish colonies here but have fallen prey to the wildlife and environment.

Loskialua

The most populated city on Ukulam is the elven city of Loskialua, founded by elves called the Oatia who chose to live there so they could watch the stars in peace. It was deliberately built near a caulborn Grove of Memory and has recently been expanding due to the creation of floating gondolas to help transport building materials.

Ankelun

Ankelun, also known as the Dry City, is an abandoned settlement made up of large, ruined domes. It is surrounded by a dried-up moat that once contained powerful kaiju blood. Seven doors remain sealed in the city, marked with blood and nomads who wander the area claim that one day these doors will open again and return the city to its former glory.

Yan Monastery

The Yan Monastery is dedicated to a mysterious Chained God who can allegedly answer any question truthfully and with perfect foresight. To be granted an audience with this entity, people must pass a daunting set of tests before having to navigate a dangerous labyrinth. Like many monasteries on Golarion, the monks there follow a simple way of life in the hopes of achieving enlightenment.

Aurovas

Little is known about polar continent of Aurovas, aside from that it is home to creatures with white fur that cross the frozen sea to attack Sovyrian every winter.

Portals

Like most of the planets in the solar system, Castrovel is known to have a number of magical portals linking the Green Planet to its neighbours. The lashunta warrior-scholars learned the workings of these gates long ago, especially the ones that connect Castrovel to Akiton. Because of this, these two planets probably have the closest relationship of any in the solar system. Less common portals also connect Castrovel to Golarion and Triaxus.

The elves of Castrovel are responsible for a different, more-localized portal called an aiudara, or 'elf gate'. These transport people for thousands of miles, enabling fast, global travel around Castrovel.

Satellites

Castrovel has one moon which, in comparison to Golarion's moon, is larger and orbits Castrovel more closely; this difference manifests itself through more pronounced tides than those on Golarion.

Connection to Golarion

Castrovel (along with Akiton and Golarion's eccentric orbit) exhibits a strange influence over the floor of Lake Nirthran in the Darklands realm of Sekamina, causing it to buckle up near the lake's center. This has an influence on the tides of the Dying Sea that are not fully understood by scholars.

Upon arriving to Golarion's solar system thousands of years ago, the Androffan spaceship Divinity collected a large number of specimens from Castrovel and stored them in its Habitat Pod 1. The ship and its support fleet eventually crashed into Golarion; a significant portion of Habitat Pod 1 remained intact and continued supporting its inhabitants, which included the Lotus-Eaters village of lashuntas, predators, plants, and a weredeinonychus known to the lashunta as a malachrom.

References

Paizo published major articles on Castrovel in Distant Worlds and The Seventh Arch.

For additional as-yet unincorporated sources about this subject, see the Meta page.