#verthani

And we end off this week with one of the dominant intelligent species of one of the Pact Worlds that didn’t make the cut into being a core species. (Did you ever notice that? Of all the species that are considered “core”, only the lashunta are considered the “main” species of their world, and even that is contested by elves and formians).

So now we shall look at the Verthani, the natives of the tidally-locked world of Verces!

Of all the species in the Pact Worlds, the Verthani were the first to master space travel, being technologically and magically more advanced than most other species. While the natives of Golarion were just figuring out gunpowder, the Verthani were sending ships to other planets, and even having their very own proxy war with Eox. (They chucked a kaiju engineered to be a major problem for the undead at Eox and everything! Shame the bone sages used a disguised portal ritual to redirect it to Golarion).

Unfortunately we know very little about the rest of their tech level from that time, but we do know they had cybernetics and advanced weaponry, but were otherwise barely touched on in the Distant Worlds book (the book even advises just modifying elves for those players that wish to play one in Pathfinder).

However, it would seem that not much has changed between then and now, aside from a higher industrialization and tech level. In this modern era Verces is known for being the most preeminent manufacturers of performance spacecraft and vehicles, as well as elaborate race circuits that show over the expertise of the pilots and of course the engineering chops of the various shipwright companies.

In addition to this, verthani retain three broad social castes in their society, which are less about hierarchy and more about philosophy, and for that matter each individual interprets the basics of each differently. These castes include the Augmented, who see cybernetics and biotech as the path to finding one’s true self, followed by the Pure Ones who reject most augmentation in favor of focusing on other pursuits, and finally, the God-Vessels, who strive to become living vessels for the will and energies of their deity of choice, marking their body with holy brands that leave unchanging scars in their normally shiftable skin color.

Each caste had and continues to have it’s role to fulfill, with Augmented focusing on technology and engineering, Pure Ones on keeping the civilization running in terms of governance and agriculture, and God-Vessels keeping on top of spiritual matters. Again, however, these castes and their roles are hardly rigid in nature, but do serve as a source of cultural pride for some.

Taller than most humans at an average of 8 feet, Verthani at a distance might be mistaken for humans until one makes out the details. In addition to their height, verthani possess longer limbs and more delicate on average facial features. Additionally, their eyes are large and black, bulging out of their face similar to rats and mice. Additionally, their skin can change pigmentation, sporting all sorts of colors. Most adults keep their coloration relatively stable, but some embrace the vibrant emotional expressions of their youth as well as possibly a form of fortune telling.

With only a relatively narrow strip of their world being easily inhabitable, the Ring of Nations government is an example of a nearly perfect democratic world government in action, with citizens protected but also free to go their own way as they see fit. This isn’t to say that there isn’t small-scale and corporate-level crime, but it is a stellar example of a government that actually prioritizes it’s people. Indeed, this culture of cooperation helped inspire many aspects of Pact Worlds government.

Verthani are tough and scientifically minded but their gangly limbs are not built for great feats of strength.

While not every member of the species takes advantage of this, the immune system of Verthani is very accepting of augmentations, allowing them to fit complex augs even in the same system.

Living in perpetual sunset (or sunrise, depending on the perspective), they have eyes well-suited for low-light.

Practical and fast learners, verthani tend to master their favored skill quite quickly, whatever that may be.

The color-changing aspect of their skin can be leveraged as camouflage when necessary, breaking up the outline of exposed areas of their skin (and of clothing built to mimic that property) for stealth.

Being tough and smart makes verthani good choices for tanky builds as well as skill-based builds, with envoy and vanguard being good choices, as is mechanic and studious biohacker. Technomancer is the most directly benefited casting class, but any will do. Indeed, for cultural reasons, mystic and evolutionist are good choices for God-Vessels and Augmented verthani respectively. Their weakness in strength means that they’ll probably favor ranged builds with the various combat classes, but even that is easily surmountable if you really would prefer melee.

(art by ringasure on DeviantArt)

Despite being called “Organized Crime”, the clandestine activities criminal empires is just as susceptible to Murphy’s Law as anything else, perhaps more so due to the active interest that law enforcement and the general public has in not letting them actually do such activities. Sometimes things go wrong. You might end up with a corpse and murder scene you are ill-equipped to deal with, or you might be compromised and forced to flee elsewhere, or maybe due to circumstances beyond your control, a lot of evidence was left for investigators to find. When in such situations, this is where organized crime calls in the cleaners.

Named for not just physically tidying up crime scenes, but in how they generally clean up messes that their clients find themselves in, cleaners, or fixers, work to ensure no consequences for either the organization or individual manifest from their lack of discretion. Need a body disappeared and the signs of violence scrubbed? Call the fixer. Need a new identity? Call the fixer. Accidentally left a cyber trail a mild wide while hacking? The fixer has you covered.

And it’s not just criminal groups that have need of a fixer. Clandestine organizations that ostensibly serve the law or state (but are not as firmly bound by it) may need to cover their tracks so that other enforcement divisions without the right security clearance don’t bog them down and their enemies don’t wise up to their efforts, for example.

Regardless of who they work for, most fixers don’t get actively involved in the criminal activities of those they work for except when forced to by circumstance, and may in fact have a day job they spend most of their time doing until they get that phone call and the payment is sent. Despite being only technically guilty of aiding and abetting, any criminal with any brains highly respects a good cleaner, and avoids disrespecting them for the same reasons you don’t harm a medic even if they wear the colors of the enemy side, because there may come a time when you need their services to pull your arse out of the proverbial fire.

A fixer is never without their kit of cleaning tools, a literal collection of tools and chemicals meant to destroy and obscure evidence. Solvents to wash away blood, metal detectors to find and collect those pesky spent bullet casings, and even home repair supplies to mask damage from unsavory activities, just to name a few. What’s more, the fixer has a network of contacts they can pull favors with to arrange for transport of people and goods, no questions asked and avoiding the authorities.

Beyond the physical, fixers also carry software and computer viruses that they can upload and direct, along with their own hacking skill, to obscure data from a local infosphere, mitigating digital trails for someone else. Caution should be used with this, since it’s only a matter of time before a well-moderated and backed up infosphere undoes the damage, but hopefully those investigating will have moved on to other leads by then.

As they grow in skill, their reputation in the underworld does as well, making it easier to get info from the criminal element or acquire favors from them.

True masters among fixers are almost as revered and feared as the crime bosses themselves, both for their reputation in being able to protect criminal enterprises, but also the quiet knowledge that their network and skills could easily make crossing one a bad idea. This makes it rather easy for them to leverage intimidation if they decide to.

Whether the party are villains or not, those that find themselves facing the consequences of the law can definitely make use of having a fixer in the party to smooth things over. That being said, that specialization does make it a hard sell to actually try if it’s not that kind of game. Even still, their skill at erasing evidence and concealing things can be a fun addition to a biohacker, mechanic, envoy, or operative toolkit, or with another class if you can find a way to make it work.

With how the lore of the archetype is written, there is a bit of a paradox with the fixer that needs to be addressed. Acting as a cleaner is supposed to keep them from actually getting involved in the actual dirty work that creates the problems they fix, and yet in an adventuring setting, they will inevitably be forced into such messy scenarios that they are then expected to clean up. If their adventures are primarily criminal in nature, they might begrudgingly be stuck working on hot jobs they loudly complain about having no business being part of. Meanwhile on the other hand, if adventuring is their day job but they also moonlight as such a cleaner, it can lead to interesting drama as they are forced to juggle both the rigors of their life and the demands of their clients, especially when one gets involved with the other.

Tiblix lives a fairly normal life, working as a butcher in an undercity market serving the locals and those seeking exotic flavors alike. Sure, he occasionally lends his expertise in getting out blood to the local gangs to clean up their messes, but that’s only a side gig… This most recent call has left him out of his depth… He has to join a team… to help repair a planet that was split in two.

As a group of transporters that ask no questions, the party sometimes gets requests for time-sensitive and particularly hot cargo. This becomes a problem when their passenger, a wanderlust-embodying fey called a worieg, secretly reprogrammed their flight path to a completely different destination. Knowing that their employer is going to assume they bailed with the cargo to fence it, the party has to find a world-class fixer and fast, someone that can smooth this whole thing over.

(art by Tirick on DeviantArt)

And we’re at the last of these “quick” Operative alternate options, and we’re finally at one that is noticeably distinct enough to really qualify as a truly different specialization.

While one usually thinks of operatives as doing their thing in civilized places, sneaking into high rises, lurking in slums, and that sort of thing, but it’s important to remember that Starfinder covers the entirety of space as well, so of course there would be operatives trained for fighting and infiltrating in space.

These are the sort of folk that sneak onto space stations, or even ships in transit, or fight aboard any sort of device that lacks even the most basic gravitation. Whenever there is a need for a highly specialized sort of skill set in space, these are the people that are called.

Obviously no mission is without risk, but the void of space represents whole other challenges and dangers that these specialists have to consider, and put themselves at risk of. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart.

As you might expect, these operatives are trained for zero-G maneuvering, making it overall easier for them to do so. Additionally, they know the best way to apply force when pushing off objects, allowing themselves to be propelled further.

Exceedingly simple, but specialized enough to definitely feel different than other options. I’d recommend a high athletics and acrobatics, to say nothing of important equipment choices like a grappler and armor thrusters, because the last thing you want is to end up drifting in space. Of course, this option is only as viable as how often you are in such environments in game, so check with your GM.

I imagine that these operatives arose from as early as the time when espionage followed interstellar travel. Governments, corporations, and the like all have reasons to spy on or sabotage the vessels of their rivals and enemies, and that would only continue as starships become more common. As the technology evolved, so did they.

Verthani were among the first to explore space, and so they are perhaps the most intimately familiar with it’s ins and outs. As such, there are certain special agents that specialize in doing wetwork in space, such as the assassin that just leapt a mile through the void from one ship to the next to sneak on board and perform their dread task.

As a fully automated station, The Nexus Array is devoid of life support and even the barest suggestion of creature comforts, not even a walkable interior. As such, cracking it’s server is going to require a specialist familiar with zero-G environments.

 With the new Tech Revolution book came a new class to Starfinder, the nanocyte! This tanky combat class has a nanomachine colony integrated into their body, granting them many benefits that such a symbiotic relationship can bring, ranging from obscuring themselves with clouds of nanites to creating weaponry out of nanomachines, and more.

Nanocytes also specialize in faculties, which are more elaborate than the one-note knack abilities, representing a suite of tricks that their nanomachines are particularly good at.

The first of these faculties, which we are focused on today, is discorporation!

One of the core defensive abilities of the nanocyte class is their ability to rapidly break down and rebuild their bodies to either harden against attack, or open up temporary holes in their bodies to let attacks pass through unhindered. While viscerally disturbing, those with the discorporation faculty take this even further, able to break down their body at will.

Such discorporators seem to melt or evaporate at will, and almost seem more like a swarm of nanites able to adopt a humanoid form than they do a living being with a very meticulous ability to take them apart and put them back together again while maintaining their consciousness.

Indeed, that seems to be what sets these nanocytes apart from their peers, since their consciousness seems more integrated into the nanites themselves much more so than others, to say nothing of how advanced they are to be able to remember and rebuild their shape so easily.

Such nanocytes might be insidious infiltrators and assassins, or they might simply be elusive combatants, or even simply explorers that can get into nearly anywhere.

 Rather than try to escape damage, discorporators can unleash a spray of nanites from their wounds to fill the air with a cloud similar to one they might have created deliberately, albeit lasting mere moments, though perhaps long enough for them to escape or get into a better position.

The iconic ability of this faculty, however, allows them to break down into a liquid-like form, slithering through small spaces and being resistant to physical damage, but losing many of the benefits of limbs, speech, and so on.

Eventually, they also learn to spray their nanites while also escaping damage reflexively, and they can instantly liquify parts of their body to avoid the effects of wounding weapons, reforming and merging the damaged parts nearly instantly.

More powerful discorporating nanocytes can achieve a flying, gas-like state, becoming resistant or immune to many physical ailments while it lasts, and are hard to disperse.

The most powerful of these can discorporate and form a sheath shell around an ally similar to what nanocytes normally do on their own, providing all manner of useful protection for hours at a time, though they can also form limbs to create nanomachine weapons and help fight back. However, doing so destabilizes their sheath form, reducing the time they can remain covering an ally like so.

This faculty works well with pretty much any nanocyte build, allowing them to enter a mobile and resistant state, while also providing reflexive cover and the ability to shield another at high levels, so with that, you can do things like combine it with the infestation faculty to deal damage to nearby foes when you get hit, combine it with effects that bolster the cloud array, or provide new abilities to the sheath array if you expect to get to high level. Regardless, it is quite useful for any utility, stealth, and defensive build.

 More so than any other nanocyte faculty, the question of how much of these beings is still mortal and how much is just nanomachines comes to mind. Some might be more likely to refer to themselves as “We” than other nanocytes, but not all of them. Certainly they are more familiar with how their own bodies fit together than most others, akin to those who regularly use polymorph abilities.

  An unknown verthani intruder was detected not long before the assassination of Magistrate Verga, but no trace of them can be found, and no immediate escape route was available… that is until the party runs a sweep for nanomachine signatures, finding traces of them leading into the ventilation.

 Strange solar flares and radiation are detected emanating from the surface of a distant world. When approached, explorers find the source to be a solar fey called hulsa, who is obsessively blasting the landscape with solar fire. If politely asked why, they reveal that a curious figure stole a relic from them and vanished into a mass of nanomachines that escaped underground to parts unknown. Unable to track the thief, the fey has been trying to melt a path to follow ever since, though they have certainly gotten very far away by now.