Starfinder Character Concept: A Luminous Skeletal Priest
Okay. So. Reading the Ports of Call setting book presented me with the fabulous concept of the Last Call, a colony ship turned mobile funerary barge:
“Space is a minefield of fatal disasters, and the undead can arise from those who die gruesomely or without last rites. Knowing this, a Pharasmin sect called the Cemeterians repurposed a colony ship as their flying temple and set out to provide funerary services across the galaxy. Having now operated for over 50 years, the starship is known as Last Call is easily recognized by its sign reading “Let the End be an Ending” painted above its docking bay. The ship periodically jumps across the galaxy, serving as a trading post, morgue, and neutral ground for all but the unrepentant undead.”
This is enchanting to me. Combined with all the space undead you get in Starfinder, like my beloved Marooned Ones. Just the idea of a ship that is going out to find the wrecks, the dead stations, the lost colonies, in order to grant the dead their last rites and to lay the unquiet dead to rest. Or to just provide services for ships or stations that don’t have their own priests. I so want a character who at least spent time on her as part of their background.
And then, while I was thinking about deathly space priests and their funeral ship, I remembered a Starfinder race that I have loved since I first read about them: the Shatori. I noticed them because of the image firstly, Shatori are 7ft tall translucent immortals with glowing bones. They have a glowing skeleton that shines through their semi-transparent flesh. It’s amazing.
They accidentally set off an invasion of their world by daemons of Abaddon while looking for alternate power sources way back when, and created a spell to keep some of them alive in stasis until the invasion was over, but messed it up and wound up hibernating for centuries in a pocket dimension next to the Boneyard, the deathly energies of which gradually converted the sleeping Shatori into living but sterile immortals. They can’t give birth, can’t create more Shatori, so the survivors in that stasis dimension are the only Shatori’s that are ever going to exist anymore, and each death among them is an irrevocable loss. So they are, as a people, incredibly conscious of death, and seek to preserve their knowledge against their loss. As well as live full lives, in honour of all the Shatori that will never get to live.
Which. Combined with the Last Call.
Now. Shatori do not generally have truck with religion. They’re essentially immortal space Vulcans, they believe in impartiality and rational self-interest. And Pharasma, in particular, is complicated for them, on account of her Boneyard being the thing that … well, did the thing.
But they believe that each death is an irrevocable loss. They believe in preserving the knowledge and actions of those who have died. They believe in ensuring that those who are lost are not forgotten. So maybe one of them might be willing to crew a ship and find the lost dead and ensure that their names, their deeds, their knowledge, and the nature of their deaths, is recorded and not lost to time and the vast emptiness of space.
Also. Imagery-wise. A 7ft tall luminescent death priest, aboard a flying funeral ship. I’m just saying.
I do think I want an investigative sort of Cemetarian here. Not just last rites. They’re Shatori, they want to know the hows and whys and what-is-lefts. Recovery and preservation of knowledge, so that those who have died did not die wholly in vain. In which case, they might actually be in favour of the survival of intelligent undead, as it preserves the person and the knowledge, which might have maybe driven a little bit of a wedge between them and more zealous Cemetarians (and Pharasmins in general). So they might have been politely asked to leave the Last Call at some point. But they’re interested in continuing the calling regardless. In finding the dead of space, and laying them properly to rest, and recording the nature and circumstances of their deaths, and retrieving as much of who they were and what they knew as possible.
A mystic, almost certainly. Not a direct devotee of Pharasma, though they masked that well for a long time, more a simple chronicler of the dead. I think the Akashic connection? Knowledge, the preservation of knowledge. I like that Shatori already get detect magic, grave words, and stabilise as spell-like abilities. They lean towards deathly investigation from a standing start. We’ll likely build their spell repertoire to match that.
For background … I don’t think I’d go priest. I suspect they may not still be a member of Pharasma’s flock, on account of not actually being that religious or opposed to undeath on a philosophical level. I think I’m going to go with Void Nomad instead. Touched by the isolation and death of the vast cold reaches of space. We’re going to be a philosophical sort of Shatori on an evolving journey of discovery regarding death, that thing which is the horror and inevitable end of our entire species. By studying and honouring and embracing those who have perished to the void, we are slowly learning to accept our own inevitable end.
So. A quiet, contemplative lady, a shining skeletal Shatori on a journey of discovery, death and acceptance.
For a name … I deeply love the names of the planets in the Shatori’s home system of Disaj: Perdane, the world they lost to Abaddon, Perdure, the world on which they enacted their desperate and doomed attempt to escape death, and Prevail, a world relatively unscathed by past mistakes. There’s a theme there that I like. So. She’s going to have renamed herself out in the void, to remind herself of home and to keep the knowledge alive.
Durance Vail. An ex-Cemetarian of the Last Call. A Shatori void nomad akashic mystic. Heh.
(Or, put another way, and still to my giddy delight, a 7ft glowing skeleton lady who would like to go exploring spooky shipwrecks and speak with dead people for broadly altruistic purposes).
(Also, yes, space undead and nautical horror will never not be themes for me. I like spooky ships).
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Class Feature Friday: Indeterminacy Aspect (Vanguard Aspect)
Ah, quantum physics, arguably the final frontier of theoretical physics. A lot of people can’t wrap their heads around it, and the metaphors used to describe it can often paint an incomplete picture. However, the gist seems to be that even smaller than protons, neutrons and electrons are quantum particles that seem constantly to change, or at least don’t have a set form until observed, and that there may be an infinite state of maybe-particles just beyond/behind/below space as we know it.
The vanguard class deals with the manipulation of how chaotic randomness creates entropy in matter and energy, so it only makes sense that some would be able to tap into the erratic nature of these quarks and bring forth for a few moments their infinite possibility.
This aspect was introduced in the Drift Crisis book, which makes sense as the galaxy was altered by the sudden crash and breakdown of the setting’s hyperspace dimension, causing either new abilities to be developed by the chaos, or at least tapped into as alternatives while an entire dimension used by every interstellar civilization was on the fritz. Thematically, quantum mechanics works very well as something to explore in this case, since victims of the crash and subsequent crisis were randomly destroyed, sent wildly off course into hostile space, or even ended up on other planes or even alternate material planes!
I could go on about how I disliked the Drift Crisis on principle, but I’ll just leave it at that for today. Suffice to say that I’ve been burned by setting-spanning events that leave the assumptions about the setting changed even after things settle down.
In any case, as we’ll soon see, these vanguards prove exactly what they can do with the chaotic energies of the quantum, which in some ways reminds me a bit of how witchwarpers tap into alternate realities and possibilities.
What is and what is not are blurry for these vanguards, making them surprisingly gifted liars. Furthermore, their focus on ever-changing states makes it easy for them to forcibly reposition foes.
Whether it is their own reactions or being forced to move or act by foes, these vanguards are changed by the interaction with other actors and observers, letting them squeeze a little more entropic power out of such acts.
The effects of quantum particles changing state on the matter that they form is not fully understood, but with an expenditure of energy or as part of a release upon being heavily injured, these vanguards can suffuse their surroundings with energy that warps reality and twists the properties of the terrain, making it difficult to traverse as the matter might break off in sheets, liquify, lose friction, and other strange effects. What’s more, the snap-back when reality reasserts itself is strong enough to throw off aim. Meanwhile, the improved version of the ability causes floors and walls to bond to those standing on or touching them, temporarily impeding movement for a few moments.
Finally, powerful vanguards that have this aspect as their primary can disentangle hostile weapons that strike them from normal reality, damaging or even breaking such weapons as they are shunted into the quantum.
A vanguard with this aspect loves their forced movement, reactions, and hindering foes, so a maneuver and battlefield control build is preferable. Definitely pick up weapons and upgrades for entropic strike that make it easier to take control of the battle and debuff foes.
As I mentioned briefly before, it would not surprise me if there was a connection between this aspect and the power of witchwarpers. Perhaps some of these warriors might have latent witchwarping powers, or studied witchwarping to develop the aspect. Either way, much like the reality-warping mages they probably share a similar worldview, having a fluid idea of what is and what might be.
It was hundreds of years of slumber in a flawed demiplane that transform the shatori into nearly immortal, but sterile and eerie beings, their flesh altered to be nearly transluscent and their bones limned with light. Many are content to share their knowledge with others to better the universe around them. However, a shatori vanguard named. Lixos believes that by better understanding how the properties of their bodies were altered, it may be possible to reverse the process and restore their people to a more mortal, but vibrant future.
Rumors of strange sights and sounds have been reported in the abandoned housing projects of Beos Waystation. Paranormal investigators are called, but the sources of these disturbances is a young child who ran away from home after her powers over entropy and quantum mechanics awakened. Now, they are terrified of hurting someone with their newfound power.
The party’s current security detail has put them at odds with a mercenary company headed by a pahtra warrior with unusual quantum powers, supposedly granted when the feline was subjected to a vesk super soldier program. It is unknown if any of that is true, but there is no denying the way she subtly alters matter and reality around her.
Class Feature Friday: Genetics Field (Biohacker Field of Study)
With the advent of Character Operations Manual, I’d say that it’s time to start doing Starfinder stuff a bit more often, so let’s start with an option for one of the new classes, the biohacker!
Part doctor, part medical scientist, the biohacker is a fun class all about buffing, debuffing, healing, and having a large supply of non-magical serums at hand.
Regardless, all biohackers are distinguished by their fields of study, branches of biological research that inform their techniques and grant them abilities, in today’s case, genetics.
Genetics is the study of inherited traits, particularly how DNA and protein coding produce the myriad adaptations seen across various species, as well as how otherworldly influences can alter that as well. Such biohackers might be genetic researchers pioneering gene-therapy bio mods, curing genetic disorders, or even field researchers seeking life forms with unique traits to map out, to name a few.
The booster associated with this field of study enhances hearing sensitivity to such a degree that the recipient can sense other creatures and objects nearby by the sound they make. The chemical cocktail achieves this by introducing or awakening genes associated with such sensitivity, temporarily expressing them.
Conversely, their inhibitor, which works on both living and unliving targets, the latter by way of chemical cocktails rather than traditional genetics, targets the makeup of the target’s flesh, introducing a vulnerability to an energy type that the biohacker formulates it for. Even immune and resistant foes are not safe, their defenses weakened by the effect.
The breakthrough associated with this field of study uses gene therapy to help a subject adapt to grievous injury to body or mind, allowing them to function at full capacity temporarily while their body heals, though obviously it is not a true curative, and cannot negate overwhelming damage.
Since the biohacker class is heavily reliant on their theorems and supply of serums to make do, I’ll also include some recommendations. Geneticists certainly favor any serum that temporarily alters an ally to gain new abilities, both subtle and overt, particularly polymorphic and adaptive serums, to name some key choices. Meanwhile, they might favor the speedy serums, strange anatomy, toxic skin, and tranq dart theorems.
Since a biohacker eventually ends up with three such fields of study, none of these actually change up how they’re built that much (at least for now), but the genetics field offers three things. The sound blindsense is somewhat situational, but the ability to inflict vulnerabilities, or at least negate resistance and immunities can help bring down foes that would otherwise be mostly unaffected by an energy type, making limited damage type parties more viable. What’s more, they can basically keep an ally that has been thoroughly wrecked by ability damage and drained up and moving, at least until they can get proper treatment, something that any player who’s ever been left immobile on 0 strength will be grateful for.
I could easily see this field of study be used for both good and evil, curing disease and giving people the bodies they’ve always wanted on one end, and performing horrific transformative experiments or engaging in eugenics on the darker side of things.
Recent rumors around the cantinas of the Far Worlds have hinted at sightings of strange interlopers that single out individuals of different races with no apparent pattern, and either stun them to take a blood sample, or kidnap them entirely. Judging by their build, these figures are hobgoblins beneath their armor, but who can say what their motive and purpose is?
Kohbodex is a brilliant geneticist working for the Azlanti Star Empire, like most shatori these days. However, he also has a very important side project that will prove important to the future of his race: He is seeking a gene therapy that will give back his race’s ability to reproduce.
To call Dr. Halbix a mad scientist seems appropriate, though he would refuse to acknowledge such an appellation. However, his tendency to use prisoners bought wholesale from unscrupulous penitentiaries and kidnapped derelicts alike in his experiments certainly doesn’t make him seem like a servant of the people, nor does the genetically-modified results of his work.
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