#abadarcorp rep

(art by Daelewd on DeviantArt (some NSFW on their page, fair warning))

I’ll be the first to admit it: playing a heroic corporate character is hard in the best of times, and certainly difficult in this day and age. Either you get removed from the picture by the less scrupulous rivals and superiors, or you break down and become part of the problem after years of trying to be the one to change things from the inside.

A lot of games and settings that have this option definitely don’t sugar coat it, making your characters morally complex in a morally dubious world like the Corpos in any iteration of Cyberpunk, but the fun thing about fiction is that we’re allowed to sometimes show a less monstrous version of capitalism on occasion, as a treat.

In the Starfinder setting, this is usually in the form of AbadarCorp, the new face of the religion of the god of civilization and prosperity. Unlike most megacorporations, AbadarCorp does actually as a whole believe in the mission statement that civilization must come first over even profit. It’s not entirely their fault that their vetting process sucks and their message is so easily twisted to justify the same sort of exploitation that other capitalist companies get up to. They just unfortunately have a bit of Abadar’s now-erased brother’s greed-based vibes clinging to the faith like a case of chronic bronchitis.

Either way, that relatively more benevolent angle to the faith does make it the perfect backdrop to this corporate agent-themed archetype, though I have no doubt that the AbadarCorp Rep could easily be retooled and reflavored for any less morally upstanding corporate character.

Now obviously, envoy and perhaps mystic or witchwarper are the most natural choices here, but a corporation needs all kinds of field agents, especially in the wild galaxy beyond the boardrooms and offices. A soldier that is their own bodyguard, an operative that hacks their way into servers that their winning smile doesn’t get them access to, and so on.

So let’s see exactly what being a corporate representative of the god of commerce gets you!

The base dedication for this archetype comes with knowledge of their company’s inner workings, giving them a new skill with which to recall such info.

Many of these suits are always running the numbers, which sometimes includes physics and literal trajectories rather than just business projections. As such, they can offer advice to benefit an ally in their skilled or combat endeavors.

Corporate movers and shakers often couch their language with buzzwords, doublespeak, and other ambiguous language. Usually this is used to sound important while passing along very little meaning, but it can be used to send hidden meanings understood by those that know what to listen for.

Businesspeople would not be very good at their job if they couldn’t manipulate people into doing things, and so many know how to use their business knowledge to convince people with deals that at least seem fair on the surface.

You don’t have to be in the business sector to know that it pays to know the right people, and these representatives demonstrate that by accruing a list of contacts of people to ask about hidden goings-on or even who can fabricate a forged set of credentials for them when needed.

With money comes power, even if it’s technically not your own. An implicit threat of reprisal from a powerful corporation can often be just as good as actually being intimidating in your own right, as many of these agents know.

Even if they’re off galivanting in the galaxy, at their core these individuals are businessfolk. As such they still know how to maximize profits and turn failure into success in a more traditional business fashion.

A fairly simple archetype for those wanting to play a character with a corpo edge to them. Exactly what that means for them will vary by the character and what build they go with. Certainly any charisma-based class is a good choice here, but don’t neglect the other options, my friends. They still have plenty to offer here. Unless you’re really leaning into the business aspect though, you probably don’t need to take all these feats.

Being a corporate representative has to be a stressful career. I have to imagine that it can sometimes feel like a spy, in that one has to suppress the true self for a constructed identity to manipulate others. One has to wonder how they handle it. Probably poorly. Makes for good drama, I suppose.

It is rare to see a living elebrian, let alone one in a position of power in the undead-dominated society that runs their world, but Denshiyna is nothing if not tenacious, and has spent her life building her power. Rumor has it that she has some great plan for the company once she has the resources at her command, and many wonder what lengths she will go to in order to see those plans through.

A branch laboratory claims to have found a way to quickly extract the gasses produced by the floating Zalyop plants, which is used in industrial and pharmaceutical purposes. However, they have been curiously recalcitrant about the specifics of the method. That is where the party comes in, supporting a company investigator to discover the truth, and whether the methodology really does provide the promised results while also obeying local laws.