Necropolis is a frozen and barely hospitable world. Originally known as Dahrtag, the planet is known for its unique culture, centered around death and ancestor veneration. This culture has given rise to elaborate funeral rites and tomb cities, known as necropoleis, which led to the world's current name. Its location at the very edges of the Core Worlds keeps away all but the most audacious pirates and raiders, while at the same time allowing its reclusive people to remain at the fringe of most galactic conflicts.
While Necropolitan culture may at first appear macabre to off-worlders, the locals do not merely mourn their dead: they also celebrate and remember them. The grandiose spires and monuments erected in ostentatious cemetery complexes and mausolea attest to this. The careful maintenance practiced by locals, the cold clime of the world, along with the elaborate mummification processes employed by local embalmers will ensure that what remains of the dead endures for as long as possible.
Recent archaeological excavations have revealed impeccably preserved mummies and tombs hidden beneath the millennia-old glaciers of the planet. Digging expeditions near the volcanoes of Necropolis have located entire cities encased in layers of igneous sediments, likely the result of sudden eruptions. What all such discoveries agree upon, however, is that Necropolitan culture has remained remarkably similar across the ages. This cultural cohesion and resistance to change is likely a result of the ancestral worship practiced by the people of Necropolis; anthropologists are unsure if it is this worship that caused the fixation for the dead observed in the local populace or the other way around.
It is difficult to determine when sentient life first arrived at Necropolis, as historians are not certain whether the planet was used as a graveyard world even before it was settled by permanent living residents. The local flora and fauna are wholly complementary to the death that permeates the world. Boneworms native to the planet will set their fearsome teeth upon anything they suspect to be dead; locals go to great lengths to exterminate them and protect their burial vaults from the vermin. Cryptberries, the fruit of a plant endemic to Necropolis, are fatally toxic to most forms of life - although the quick and painless death they offer has made them popular for ritual euthanasia procedures carried out on the planet.
The unique aspects of the local culture have not gone unnoticed by the rest of the galaxy and this attention has resulted in a burgeoning death industry. Many Core Worlders frequently choose to be entombed in Necropolis - if they can afford the luxury. Ever since they achieved such interstellar acclaim, Necropolitans have had to increase their efforts in keeping ambitious looters and tomb raiders outside of their tombs. The grander tombs are thus littered with countless bodies of foolhardy thieves who, having fallen afoul of the traps laid within, now serve as a warning to those who would seek to defile the dead.