#kasatha

(art by tukuart1 on DeviantArt)

When one looks up at space, one’s eyes are drawn to the stars, the celestial bodies, and everything that is, well, visible.

But the truth is, there is an unfathomable vastness between each of those lights. Even the closest ones like our moon are agonizingly out of reach save by the most extreme and powerful methods. And in a traditional fantasy and science fantasy setting like the Lost Omens and Pact Worlds eras of the unified setting of the two games, such vast emptiness is home to things that expand and distort mortal conception of what is possible, and more often than not is hazardously indifferent or outright cruel to “normal” life.

In Pathfinder and Starfinder’s core settings, Desna is the goddess of the stars, but many fans of the lore will also remember her dim reflection, Black Butterfly, who presides over those vast empty stretches and acts as a warrior against the depredations of great old ones, outer gods, and other horrors that shun the light and prey upon life that orbits stars.

While Black Butterfly has her own worshippers, one of her more notable organizations of devotees in the Pact Worlds are the disciples of stillness, a tradition that originated with the kasatha people, who seek to achieve ascetic emptiness and reject worldly attachments in order to hone themselves to fight against the evils between the stars as their goddess does. For their efforts, they achieve techniques and powers associated with that goal.

Now obviously, you don’t have to be a kasatha or even be a worshipper of Black Butterfly to take this path, and while many of her devotees remain at her temple aboard the Idari, others travel abroad or settle down, teaching the next generation. Additionally, many also take vows of silence, celibacy, or abstain from other pleasures in their pursuit of enlightenment. Like all paths to better self-understanding, there is no one path.

But let’s take a look at what benefits these ascetics gain from their choice!

Like the paladins of old, Black Butterfly blesses these ascetics with the ability to sense evil, a handy tool indeed when many horrors beyond the stars are difficult to see with the naked eye or wear inconspicuous shapes.

Their training also mirrors the monks of old, giving them a physique capable of greater speed with any and all traversal methods.

The prayers of these warriors are silent, and with a bit of resolve they can even use them to center themselves and recover a bit of their stamina, albeit only once a day. With even more resolve they also gain some additional reserves of vitality on top of that.

The most powerful among them though are able to achieve a supernatural state of absolute stillness, becoming as dark as the shadows between stars. Effectively, light bends around them as they slow their heart rate, breathing, and metabolic processes, making them invisible and undetectable to most senses and mechanical sensors. What’s more, their bodies become almost like inert matter despite still being able to move and act, becoming immune to frailties of the flesh for the full two minutes that this state typically lasts. (Fun fact, this ability is outright banned in Starfinder Society liveplay, and it’s easy to understand why. Getting so many blanket immunities on top of incredible stealth in a format where you only fight in like, three combats at most and then have everything fully recharged for the next scenario with the implied time passage is a bit broken. It’s actually pretty rare to see an ability that you’re not allowed to use in Society Play.)

Blending a little bit of paladin with some monk is nice, as it getting a minor stamina heal and a high level neat ability. Naturally, soldiers, solarians, and vanguards are a decent choice whether you go unarmed or not, and those classes are outright mentioned by name in the archetype’s lore blurb. However, don’t think you’re limited to just martial classes here. Imagine a mechanic seeking enlightenment alongside their AI partner, or any number of mages seeing such introspection as a good complement to their own studies of their mystical abilities. Indeed, this archetype’s mobility and healing is just as good at playing keep away with foes as it is with rushing into combat.

Truly, archetypes like this demonstrate how many different ways there are to exist and be. There are plenty of ascetic groups in Starfinder, but the fact of the matter is, the Disciples of Stillness don’t seek such enlightenment for purely their own benefit. Instead they use it to open their minds so as to not crack under the strain of the strangeness of the horrors they must face, and of course, gaining the skill and might to do just that. Some might not call it a pure journey, but I don’t think the people so elitist as to say things like that are actually seeking enlightenment themselves, not in a way that matters.

The party has come across an unusual circumstance. When they took a mission with Disciples of Stillness to raid a rogue planet for relics stolen by the dark-dwelling horrors that live there, they did not expect to find a frozen cadaver in the vault, and certainly not that it would get up and talk to them. Turns out the undead creature is Reskaagyr, a powerful necrovite that sought undead to persist long enough to hunt and destroy the very same horrors the party now faces. While grateful to be freed from imprisonment, the monks can’t help but wonder if he can truly be trusted.

As professional negotiators, the party is used to dealing with disputes, but never one quite like this. On one side, an osharu research team eagerly studying a relic found drifting in an asteroid belt, and on the other, a kasatha enclave that want the object destroyed with extreme prejudice. Both claim a religious imperative for their  desires, and have compelling arguments on their side, with the osharu pointing out that studying the relic could give clues to better fighting the foes the kasatha are eager to defeat.

Posting some backlog stuff! This is a piece from 2021 I think? From when I just started figuring out Procreate. This is our whole Starfinder party dressed in fancy outfits, celebrating a year of that campaign.

Here’s my Kasatha Xenoseeker Operative for a starfinder game. Her name is Oculi Cultus and she loves learning about and researching cultures.

She also has been known to sneak in places or commit long range assassinations if its for a greater good.

Jayr, my crunchy miserable and odd PC from an old Starfinde campaign, now updated for artfight

“Three baboons. How preposterous. The human body can gestate one, maybe two baboons at most.”

We’ve now come to my most played TF2 class! I wasn’t really one to charge into battle, unless I also had one or two offensive classes in front of me. Let’s dig into how I’d play him as a PC in Starfinder.

Image © Paizo Publishing.

[The Starfinder monsters I’m most interested in are the ones with weird xenobiology: some of the writers got really into designing alien ecologies and weird behaviors. Like the crest-eater, which wants your delicious calcium to make solar panels. One thing in Starfinder that I don’t mention below, because it works better with the advanced tech levels of that game, is that kasatha technology is built around solar collectors that are biomimetics based on crest-eater anatomy. That’s super cool.]

Crest-Eater CR 4 N Magical Beast This creature is a horned, reptilian beast the size of a bison. It has three sets of legs—the middle pair is held aloft and tipped with sharp claws. It has long, elaborate horns growing from its head and spine—sails of tissue grow between the horns and hold them fast to the skin. It has two pairs of beady black eyes, and a mouth full of large, crushing teeth.

Native to the harsh deserts of Kasath, crest-eaters are powerful creatures that inspire both reverence and fear in the kasatha that live there. A crest-eater is so named because, when they prey on a kasatha, typically tear open the head, devour the bony crest, and leave the rest of the body behind for scavengers. A crest-eater’s primary goal is calcium, which they incorporate into their elaborate horns and shells. These in turn act as solar panels, giving the crest-eater their main source of energy. These horns wax and wane in size as the crest-eater forages, shrinking in lean times and growing to extravagance when it is well fed.

Crest-eaters have a social organization similar to elephants, with females and juveniles living in herds organized around the oldest female, and males living solitary lives for much of the year. Members of a herd are devoted to each other, sleeping in shifts and fighting together to oppose hunters or avenge their fallen relatives. They are tolerant of smaller predators, which clean up their kills and often have sharper eyes and ears than the crest-eaters do. Solitary males are the individuals most likely to attack a village or other settlement, and they have an outsized place in kasatha folklore.

Some crest-eaters have been exported to other planets, where they are often surprisingly docile compared to their violent behavior on Kasath. If a planet has an oceanic past, large deposits of chalk and limestone serve as food just as readily as bones, and are more convenient to harvest. A crest-eater is of nearly human intelligence, and training them has more in common with teaching a child than handling an animal. They make good, loyal bodyguards if fed well, and are especially valued by those that fear necromancers and their skeletal armies. Kasathas are known to make wickedly sharp bone cestuses using the horns of a crest-eater, and these weapons are often treated as heirlooms and badges of honor.