Prestige Class Spotlight 16: Gray Corsair
(art by Levie7 on DeviantArt)
Few fates are worse than being enslaved, and few on Golarion understand that better than the Gray Corsairs, a group of good-natured pirates that took it upon themselves to hunt and target slaver ships specifically, slaying the crews and freeing the captives. So effective were they that the Eagle Knights approached them with an offer, becoming privateers in the name of Andoran, continuing their work in disrupting the slave trade, especially in regards to Cheliax, and effectively become the naval branch of the Eagle Knights.
Needless to say, being able to keep doing their fulfilling work and having the financial and military backing of Andoran was a pretty sweet deal, so the Gray Corsairs agreed, becoming even more of a scourge to slavers than before.
It’s funny how due to a quirk in the alphabet we’re already talking about the Eagle Knights again, but honestly I like the Gray Corsairs better in part that their status as privateers means they lack the same baggage that other branches of the organization have in their modern day associations with real life. They may have gone legit, but they’re still pirates to their core, fighting against perfectly ordered societies that value sapient life less than the power of those on top.
As we’ll soon see, this prestige class is extremely flexible, which makes sense given the large number of professions that prove useful on the sea, including spellcasters, making it quite useful for nearly any class combination. So let’s see what that’s about.
The requirements are somewhat less strict for the corsairs, only requiring adequate skill and familiarity with skills associated with piracy and sailing, and of course a recommendation from a senior member of the group.
Being a hero of the seas means having grateful friends and allies in multiple ports. As such, Gray Corsairs boast a large portfolio of ports they can reliably find free lodging and information in when they visit, and even use that cultural familiarity and goodwill when aboard ships whose home port favors them so.
These corsairs also choose a single class to link to their corsair levels, granting improved concentration if they chose a spellcaster, or the agility avoid the reach of foes when moving through crowds or swimming.
They also periodically gain boons associated with their linked class representing limited training in that class. Spellcasters gain additional spell slots (but not spells known), combat classes gain additional feats, and sneaky classes with bonus damage such are rogues and investigators continue to improve their precision damage techniques.
As pirates, these sailors spend a lot of time in the rigging, learning to become mobile enough to climb with occupied hands and without opening themselves to attack.
Unsurprisingly, they fight hardest against slavers and slave owners, striking with greater accuracy and lethality.
In a bid of cruelty, some slavers will do the unthinkable and dump their “cargo” into the ocean if they don’t think they can outrun privateer ships, dooming those poor souls to a briny end. With that in mind, even non-mage corsairs learn just enough magic to cast a modified water breathing spell on such victims from a distance, buying them time to rescue them after the battle has ended.
Suffering is found belowdecks in a slaver ship, and these corsairs understand better than most there are fates worth than death, hardening their resolve and making them immune to fear and make them much more likely to stabilize when near death.
The minor magic of these corsairs continues with constant magic that makes them impossible to shackle or pin down, and they can transfer that magic to another with a touch, blessing them with such freedom for a few minutes, while the ward returns to the pirate after a day.
Like the wind they harness, the most powerful gray corsairs can wisk away others to freedom, letting them glide as mist on the wind, or outright teleport to a friendly ship.
Like I said before, this archetype is built with versatility in mind, able to do some minor scaling with various classes. While several spontaneous casters are on the list of classes this prestige class works with, honestly your best bet is wizard, magus, or cleric since you can actually purchase/automatically know spells of higher level, which the spontaneous classes lose out on. Meanwhile, combat class options get bonus feats and rogue and investigator get extra dice for their integral precision attack, so you’ve got options and so many builds to consider.
One has to wonder what sorts of storied happened to cause the Gray Corsairs to not just dedicate themselves to emancipation, but also to unifying into a singular organization. However, all of that lore is a moot point when compared to why your character chose this path. Perhaps they were the child of someone the corsairs rescued, or maybe they possessed a strong sense of justice that a senior member noticed and chose to cultivate, or something else entirely.
The crew of Shining Maiden grows restless. They are privateers and slaver hunters, but their most recent voyage turns them to the frigid waters of the north, far from the slave trade circuit, and the captain hasn’t revealed the nature of the mission he has led them on.
The Sea of Tears, named for how it is fed from the oceans above in a never-ending cascade of droplets, is notoriously used by the hryngar slave trade selling captives to many different Deep Lands settlements. But they are not alone in those waters, and among the creatures of the lightless deep are dwarves that have made it their mission to undermine the profit margin of their gray kin.
Though they are used to hunting slavers, the crew of the Telma Mae have never faced their newest foe, a legendary wyvern of mythic power who has been kidnapping sailors to enslave for some sinister purpose on the Isle of Bleached Bones. Is the beast serving a master, and who could command such a creature?
