#vesk

Ykaskes and Lyra

(art by Lazlo74 on DeviantArt)

The Agents with No Name, the Spies with the Horicalchum Guns, who come from Vesk Prime with Love, and Only Die Twice (or however many times the party has to cast Raise Dead).

Bond references aside, today we’re looking at an archetype that presents us with a more modern spy than what we typically see in the glut of quasi-medieval settings!

Directive 9, as you might have guessed, is a secret spy organization that serves the Veskarium, defying the stereotype of the warlike vesk people for a more subtle approach, an answer to those situations where running in with a ton of weapons is not the solution.

And since spies and secret agents can have many different skill sets, you’re hardly limited to the obvious choice of envoy or operative.

For that matter, your character doesn’t have to be Vesk, or even serve the Veskarium, as despite the name, this archetype can be easily adapted to pretty much any spy organization in the game with nothing more than a simple replacement of a proper noun.

So if you want to play a character with stealth and cunning on their side, that can improvise in tight situations and fight readily with similarly clandestine agents, this archetype might be what you’re looking for.

As befits their job description, these agents are trained in stealth and noticing details, and if that training aligns with their other skillset, they prove especially good at it.

Hiding from eyes and ears is one thing, but many a spy across the ages has been thwarted by extraordinary senses. As such, these clandestine rogues use a combination of training, minor equipment modifications, and the like to help them fool such senses. At first this is limited to mundane forms of extraordinary senses such as vibration or scent (but only temporarily for scent), but later expands to include supernatural senses such as detecting thoughts or the presence of life energy.

Even if they themselves are not operatives in any form, they are very familiar with the way such enemies try to open up gaps in their target’s defenses to deal grievous wounds or gain other tactical advantages. As long as they are not entirely off guard and not reacting to something else already, they can try and read the true intentions of their foe, block out distractions, and at least mitigate the additional effects from their tricky maneuvers, if not the wound itself.

Mental coercion is another bane of a good spy, and these agents are conditioned to resist such things, especially at key moments. Even if they can’t fight off such control, they are still conscious of their actions, and by biding their time, can muster a surge of willpower to act on their own volition at a critical moment.

Sometimes a situation arises that requires a specific piece of simple equipment, but one doesn’t have that equipment on hand. Luckily these agents are quite adept at cobbling together such devices from on-hand materials. A simple hand weapon, a contraption functioning as a pistol, a grenade created by mixing chemicals, or even a simple technological device like a communicator, or something similar, for a nice cinematic spy ability. Of course, even as cinematic as it is, is still requires raw materials, and so needs time “borrowing” or purchasing minor items in a settlement to refresh one’s supplies, less so if they have access to one of their agency’s holdings or safehouses.

The tool kit for this archetype is full of a lot of fun stuff for being a spy, whether you’re a clever improvisor with the envoy class, a sneaky operative, or even a gadgeteer mechanic. However, don’t underestimate other class options here. Martial classes might be posing as ordinary members of a military until they are needed for clandestine missions that even their superiors don’t know about, or they might be full-time agents that specialize in eliminating targets. Meanwhile, the vast magics of the spellcasting classes, particularly illusions and divinations prove very useful for a mystical spymaster no matter their actual specific discipline.

In the real world, spy fiction is very much a fantasy, with real spy work being much less fantastical, even banal by comparison. Which isn’t to say it is without risk, only that said risks usually end with imprisonment and torture rather than dramatic fights on rooftops or sinister villains ripped straight from the villain B-list of some relatively low-power comic book superhero. And all that is fine, because we don’t play these games for banality. We play them for the fantasy. And if your GM is as much a spy fic nerd as you might be having chosen this archetype, you can probably expect at least some version of spy fic fun, whether it be Bond or Bourne.

Though she poses as one of the gene-modded “fake” elebrians on her social media, Junishaal is in fact the real deal, her job as an influencer being a cover for her real profession: being a spy and informant for Eyeless, an anti-undead spy operation.

With eyes that gaze upon the mystery of the cosmos and find meaning, the lunar giant clan of Entrugas knows many things, but rarely shares them. When they do, the courses of entire planetary civilizations are altered. Not content to wait for the giants to offer answers, a nation has sent a spy to infiltrate the ranks of the smaller species that live alongside the giants to gain the answers they seek. Unfortunately for the party, they have been accused of being those spies!

ArtFight: Aim for the Stars 🌠

Artfight 2024 attack on @autobot-enthusiast of her fashion-forward vesk boy! Always a joy to find more Starfinder enjoyers out there, and what a fun character this was to draw!

Recent commissions for a birthday boy in a Starfinder game