Pathfinder Chronicles - Gazetteer - Asamnet

Pathfinder Chronicles
18
Time, The Cosmos, and the Great Beyond
The planet Golarion orbits a yellow star in a distant
corner of the multiverse. A blue world of titanic
oceans and massive continents, it spins through the
cosmos as it has for tens of millions of years.
More than a dozen worlds neighbor Golarion.
Nearest is Castrovel, the Green World, home to lush
forests, weird swamps, and oceans of multi-hued gas.
Fourth from the sun is Akiton, the Red Planet, a place
of tyrannical empires, fabulous monsters, and deserts
in the beds of ancient oceans. Along with the cratered
moon, these worlds loom large on Golarion’s night
horizon, although the common man knows little of their
origins or the fabulous cultures that thrive upon them.
And there are worlds beyond the vision of Golarion’s
most skilled astrologers, spheres of malignant gas
inhabited by inscrutable entities with designs of their
own upon Golarion’s fate.
The Pathfinder Chronicles speak of active gates in the
ruins of Lost Azlant that lead directly to these unusual
locales. The Abadari heretic Govan the Wanderer posited
a network of such gates linking all of the worlds to one
another, but definite evidence of such a system has eluded
discovery throughout history. Still, soothsayers and
foolhardy adventurers alike often look to the stars and
wonder at the possibilities that lie beyond the sky.
Past the sky, past the planets, past the universe itself
dwells the infinity of the Great Beyond, a bewildering
assortment of impossible dimensions and mythical
domains commonly referred to as the planes. Here are
the homes of the gods, and here also dwell the spirits of
the dead and the great beasts and creatures of legend—
demons, devils, angels, genies. Horrible or beautiful
entities from beyond the planar gates might visit the world
and make playthings of its people, but the common man of
Golarion has no expectation to see these things in person,
and a cynic might suggest that they do not exist at all.
Many residents of Golarion believe theirs to be a socalled
“Second World,” with the First World existing as
a rough draft of reality, a place where concepts take on
life and form, and where the ghosts of possibilities that