The Lantern WorldSource Starfinder #16: The Blind City pg. 62
Location The Vast
Settlements —
Diameter x1/2; Mass x1/8; Gravity x1/2
Atmosphere Normal
Day 27 hours; Year 902 days
The planet Astevint shines brightly in the Vast, orbiting a
dying orange sun. The stones of Astevint are charged with
a strange energy, causing them to radiate photons without
emitting heat or other energy. As a result, the entire planet
shines like a dim star. Only the planet’s natural stone glows,
including any particulates like gravel or sand, causing
anything else to cast strange shadows. Although Astevint
rotates as most other planets do, it doesn’t have a typical
day/night cycle—the planet is perpetually illuminated.
Plant life is abundant on Astevint, particularly clover
and a form of massive, broad-leafed fern. Plants here draw
sustenance from the soil, but also gain energy from the
ground’s illumination rather than from the light of Astevint’s
distant sun. Such plants grow most densely in areas of rocky
soil rather than in deep loam, and bear leaves that are low
to the ground and inverted. As such, the low-lying ferns
and shrubs are the lushest and healthiest, while those with
leaves on tall stalks must subsist on illumination refracted
through the atmosphere and are usually stunted and twisted.
A rare few petrified “beacon trees” radiate Astevint’s shining
energy from their tall trunks, providing eerie radiance even
when the ground cover is too dense for any of the planet’s
light to shine upward.
Stone removed from Astevint quickly loses its illumination,
although very dense stones shed light for as long as a month,
and transplanted beacon trees glow for up to a year if fed
and watered. Physicists specializing in the obscure field of
esoteric optics maintain research bases on the planet to study
the planet’s peculiar illumination. These bases are usually
located near groves of beacon trees, where physicists and
botanists work together. What originally turned Astevint
into a planet-lantern is a mystery, but scientists posit that
some ancient calamity—perhaps caused by the builders of
the eons-old brass ruins that dot the planet’s coastlines—
permanently altered the world long ago. A few roving packs
of violent bryrvaths, glutted
on Astevint’s illumination, appear to be the planet’s only
other intelligent life-forms. Whether these creatures are
descended from the planet’s original inhabitants or are later
arrivals remains a mystery, as the bryrvaths are perpetually
addled and entirely uncommunicative.
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