The Starfinder Society Campaign is divided up into "Seasons" each approximately a year long. The following section describes the events preceding and surrounding each of those seasons, and may help give context to scenarios set in those seasons. However, any information necessary to understanding a scenario should be made available by your GM, so you do not need to memorize the following information unless you want to.
The Scoured Stars Incident (Pre-Season 1)
In 316 AG, the Starfinder Society elected the renowned kasatha explorer Jadnura as First Seeker. Elevated due to his reputation for maintaining balance between the various divisions of the Society, Jadnura also proposed a tantalizing personal objective: a coordinated expedition to a region of space known as the Scoured Stars.
The Scoured Stars are a small cluster of star systems known for housing worlds filled with vicious fauna, not to mention an abundance of malicious outsiders and other strange entities. Well over a century ago, the Starfinder Society prohibited expeditions to the Scoured Stars, in part because of the deadly inhabitants but also because findings from the few successfully explored worlds showed little of research value. Jadnura’s quest would have seemed suicidal, had he not provided a link to the mysterious worlds.
During his time as a Starfinder field agent, Jadnura discovered a mysterious artifact known only as the Tear. The item was little more than a jagged hunk of magical stone etched with indecipherable markings. The magical artifact defied most mystical and technological investigation, relenting only after years of intense scrutiny. It took the most powerful divination magic available, but veteran Starfinders uncovered a link between the Tear and the Scoured Stars. When Jadnura ascended to the rank of First Seeker, he rallied the Society to travel to the Scoured Stars to at last answer the Tear’s secrets.
While the threats of the Scoured Stars were powerful, they were disorganized and possessed no obvious spacefaring assets. What followed was one of the greatest single undertakings by the Starfinder Society. A task force of almost 80% of the Society’s assets and agents joined the First Seeker on his mission into the Scoured Stars. Everything went well at first, with reports returning of Jadnura and the bulk of the Starfinder teams landing on the surface of the world to which the Tear directed them.
And then, nothing.
When the remaining Starfinders in the Lorespire Complex attempted to make contact, they discovered a terrifying reality: the Scoured Stars were now cut off from the rest of the galaxy. A vast shield of aurum energy surrounded the region of space, preventing communication and travel into the systems. Drift travel was rendered ineffective, and even visual scans failed to pierce the shifting veil, which was soon after dubbed “The Godshield” for its incomprehensible power. This single event left the Starfinder Society crippled, as most agents and assets are now trapped within the now-untouchable region of the Scoured Stars.
New Beginnings (Season 1 - Part 1)
With the bulk of the Starfinder Society lost in the aftermath of the Scoured Stars incident, the Society was on the brink of ruin. Only the actions of a particularly outspoken Starfinder, Luwazi Elsebo, has held the Starfinder Society together in the ensuing months. A dedicated assembly of surviving senior Starfinders has assisted Elsebo in stabilizing the Society, as well as in rebuilding the Forum. Many of these agents specialized in managing specific aspects of Society operations, each becoming de-facto leaders for Society factions old and new.
Even with the dedication of Luwazi and her allies, the Starfinder Society suffered further losses as discouraged surviving agents opted to leave the Society. The loss of additional field agents, especially veteran agents, made holding onto the Society’s vast portfolio of claimed planetoids, stellar regions, and other archaeological sites almost impossible. The necessity of maintaining the Society’s claims on these regions was too much for the remaining agents to handle, and Luwazi turned to outside assistance from reputable mercenary organizations.
Through such imperfect arrangements, Luwazi Elsebo and her allies successfully held the Starfinder Society together long enough for a new cadre of Starfinders to complete their training. Those agents spent their first year working to rebuild the Society and undertaking missions that would set the groundwork for a return to the Scoured Stars.
Under Luwazi Elsebo’s direction, the Starfinder Society launched a major rescue operation into the Scoured Stars. Bypassing the shield around the system, the Starfinder Society returned to rescue their lost companions from untold hardships across the Scoured Stars. First Seeker Jadnura was among those rescued over the course of these missions. However, during this momentous rescue, a new alien threat emerged. Known as the jinsuls, these aliens came in vast numbers and seized the Scoured Stars in a single decisive battle that forced the Starfinder Society to abandon its rescue operations and retreat with the agents they managed to save.
The Starfinder Society left the Scoured Stars, but a new threat, the jinsuls, occupied that distant region of space. Knowing little of this alien threat, the Society returned to its primary goal of exploration and the acquisition of information. Many within the Society’s upper leadership began assembling the best of the best field agents for missions to learn more about the jinsuls and continue unraveling the mysteries of the Scoured Stars!
The Jinsul Threat (Season 1 - Part 2)
Following the Society’s retreat from the Scoured Stars, the jinsul menace did not remain dormant. Led by a semi-divine being known as Dhurus, the jinsuls began turning the Scoured Stars into a war engine that produced scores of new starships and technologies. The Society monitored the situation, with the Exo-Guardians stockpiling weapons from the sites of previous missions while the Acquisitives and Dataphiles worked to stymie the jinsuls’ advance with a daring strike into the Scoured Stars.
Events conspired to pull the Society back into grasp of the Scoured Stars when a group of agents traveling to an uncharted star system found it under invasion by jinsuls. These brave Starfinders managed to help save a group of dignitaries, who relayed that they belonged to the Kreiholm Freehold—yet another of the civilizations that departed the Scoured Stars in ages past. The Society established diplomatic relations with the Freehold, all while the jinsuls continued their attacks in hopes of forcing their former neighbors to return to the Scoured Stars.
In the meanwhile, First Seeker Jadnura assembled a group of Starfinders to explore the location of the mysterious Tear relic that first led him on the path of the first disastrous Scoured Stars mission. These agents uncovered the ruins of another Scoured Stars civilization and hints that a powerful deity dwelled within the Scoured Stars.
As the jinsul menace continued attacking numerous civilizations, First Seekers Luwazi Elsebo and Jadnura brought together a force of Starfinders to learn more about the jinsuls by traveling to the world the jinsuls settled before returning to the Scoured Stars. This mission led the Society to uncover more about Dhurus, including that the jinsul leader was in fact a divine herald of the deity that slept within the Scoured Stars: the god known as Kadrical the Preserver.
Jadnura and Luwazi began to formulate a plan on how to proceed, but other agencies within the Society weren’t so pensive. Historia-7, leader of the Dataphiles, uncovered that her mentor, Historia-6, was not who he’d always claimed to be. A struggle broke out within the Dataphiles, as Historia-6 took possession of Historia-7’s body and threatened the entire Starfinder Society. Only a timely intervention by a group of Starfinders and Zigvigix, leader of the Exo-Guardians, managed to save Historia-7 from her former mentor. Discarding her honorary title, Historia-7 has reclaimed her former name of Celita and stood ready to aid the Society in its coming struggle.
In time, a renewed jinsul assault against the Kreiholm Freehold called the Society back into action in defense of its new allies. Led into battle by a group of experienced Starfinders, the Society fleet managed to push back the jinsul assault, but learned that Dhurus would not accept defeat and planned to either wake Kadrical or siphon the sleeping god’s powers for itself. A second of Kadrical’s heralds, the mysterious Ailurious, appeared during the battle to render assistance and confirm the Society’s fears about the jinsul threat.
Bringing together a massive fleet, spearheaded by the recently repaired Wayfinders flagship the Master of Stars, the Starfinder Society once again ventured back into the Scoured Stars to stop Dhurus and the jinsul menace once and for all. The battle was long and arduous, but the Society’s most senior agents took to the field against Dhurus and stopped the xenophobic herald from siphoning Kadrical’s powers. With their herald defeated, the jinsuls retreated from the Scoured Stars in disparate packs of ships.
At the battle’s end, First Seeker Jadnura declared his stated mission finished and chose to remain within the Scoured Stars as the system’s new custodian. With the deity Kadrical awakening in a universe he’d not been involved in for millennia, Jadnura seeks to live out the remaining years of his life as a guardian of the Scoured Stars. Meanwhile, Jadnura’s departure has formalized the transition of First Seeker authority, and Luwazi Elsebo has taken her place as the formally recognized leader of the Starfinder Society.
Weaponized Media (Season 2)
Returning to Absalom Station from the Scoured Stars, the Starfinder Society’s battle-tested agents expected a heroes’ welcome. Instead, a series of media advertisements and vidcast news feeds relayed scathing information about the Starfinder Society’s recent actions. Statements called out Starfinders for meddling in the affairs of foreign powers, inciting the threat from within the Scoured Stars, and effectively operating an unsanctioned paramilitary organization. More and more anti- Society rhetoric began to fill the infospheres of the Pact Worlds.
Despite attempts of the Starfinder Society’s leadership to determine the source, they failed to uncover the culprits behind the multimedia “hit campaign” and the damage continued to grow. Many organizations within the Pact Worlds watched the Starfinder Society with wary eyes, wondering if association could bring unwanted backlash. For Starfinder agents, the task of exploration and cataloging remained paramount, as the Society’s leaders hoped to combat the ongoing sour media outlook by providing the Pact Worlds with tangible evidence of all the good that the Society could do in the galaxy.
Luckily for the Society, their efforts over the course of the year led to stunning victories against their hidden foes. Through actions across the Pact Worlds and beyond, the Starfinder Society proved its value and battered down the incoming tide of negative press. After uncovering the identity of the smear campaign’s architect, First Seeker Luwazi Elsebo dedicated the last days of her tenure to defeating this force and ensuring that her successor could begin their role as First Seeker without the negative press of the past.
A New Future (Season 3)
Elected as First Seeker by a slim margin, Ehu Hadif Ko’ra Amares of Clan Tolar is a veteran kasatha Starfinder. He won the election on a platform of returning the Starfinder Society to its roots of exploring the past. Soon after his election, Ehu Hadif began a series of missions focused on re-examining missions from the Society’s distant past and exploring locations closer to the Pact Worlds. More than any First Seeker in recent memory, Ehu Hadif has opened up numerous exploration possibilities into the worlds of Near Space.
The Year of the Data Scourge (Season 4)
The Year of the Data Scourge pits the Starfinder Society against a mysterious threat targeting the Pact Worlds. As a series of digital attacks ravages infospheres and technology across the system, robotic attackers seek out Society agents and strongholds. The Starfinder Society launches missions to stop the attacks while assisting in defense of the Pact Worlds.