The Corpse Fleet

The aptly named Corpse Fleet is composed of renegade undead who broke off from Eox's navy when their home planet signed the Absalom Pact. Refusing to cooperate with the inferior worlds of the living, the first defectors disappeared beyond the edges of the solar system. In the depths of space, the newly formed Corpse Fleet regrouped and swore to oppose the unity of the Pact Worlds and their former foes in The Veskarium, as well as all other living threats. Many members of the Corpse Fleet, except for those undead recently animated as part of the fleet’s ongoing operations, view themselves as exiled from the almost spiritually sacred soil of Eox.

Structure

When the first admirals and captains departed the Eoxian Navy to form the Corpse Fleet, they brought their military order and ranks with them. In the intervening centuries, the structure of the Corpse Fleet stabilized, with a distinct military hierarchy that imitates the navy from which it derived. At the head of this organization is the Undying Admiral, the overseer of all Corpse Fleet operations. While ostensibly advised by various supporting admirals, the Undying Admiral is solely responsible for coordinating the individual task forces of the Corpse Fleet.
Supporting the Undying Admiral and his orders are the various admirals of the Corpse Fleet. Each admiral is responsible for a task force of several dozen Corpse Fleet starships. The admirals maintain relative autonomy with their assigned task forces, each directing their respective armadas to accomplish objectives set forth by the Undying Admiral. To ensure the continued survival of the Corpse Fleet, admirals rarely work in the same system as one another, and task-force fleets act independently to prevent enemy forces from pinning the entirety of the Corpse Fleet in a single engagement. Some outsiders mistakenly assume this means the Corpse Fleet operates in small groups; the truth is that even a single task force is as large as entire defense fleets of Pact World organizations.
Rear admirals and commodores command fleets of four to eight starships. These detached armadas are sent on long-term missions away from their originating task force. The rank of rear admiral is awarded to members of the Corpse Fleet assigned to extended sojourns from the parent task force. These small fleets operate beyond the scope of their fellow undead for decades at a time. Conversely, commodores have direct command over similarly sized portions of a task force, though these fleets rarely see deployments longer than 1 to 2 months. Otherwise, when acting within the task force, commodores manage the orders assigned to their ships during fleet engagements.
It falls to captains to command the individual ships of the Corpse Fleet. Assisting each captain is a commander, who focuses on motivating the ship’s crew, either through fear or by fostering intense loyalty. Admirals create captain-and-commander pairings of differing dispositions, as the balance often ensures a suitable mix of caution and ferocity in combat situations. Below the rank of commander are the lieutenant commanders who manage distinct operations. On Corpse Fleet battleships, lieutenant commanders typically hold each non-captain starship role (engineer, gunner, pilot, and science officer), commanding shifts of grunts who perform the many complicated tasks involved in maintaining and operating large vessels.
Lieutenants and ensigns are the lowest ranks in the Corpse Fleet. Ensigns perform a number of roles, acting as reserves and students under superior officers. Lieutenants fill key positions within the naval assets of the Corpse Fleet but also act as ground-based specialists. Most officers of the Corpse Fleet operating outside of a starship are either lieutenants or converted—the enlisted branch of the Corpse Fleet. Mystics of Urgathoa, trained assassin operatives, and soldiers replete with necrotech arms and armor are the most common of the Corpse Fleet’s ground agents. Some lieutenants choose never to serve aboard a starship, instead focusing their efforts on surface operations. These officers are very rarely awarded with promotions to the rank of commander, and only a select few ever ascend to the rank of captain.
The converted are the mindless or near-mindless undead created by the Corpse Fleet’s brutal necromantic tactics. When a boarding action is deemed necessary by a Corpse Fleet captain, hordes of skeletons and zombies flood enemy starships. These boarders engage in horrific hand-to-hand combat, often supported by scores of ghoul ensigns bearing necrotech firearms. Sometimes, this carnage is enough to corrupt the slaughtered souls into undead, but usually this conversion requires high-level mystics to cast animate dead on the fallen. Most vessels don’t carry such mystics, so the most viable dead are carried back to a base or capital starship, where such spellcasters are more common.

Public Agenda

The Undying Admiral sets forth the great endeavors of the Corpse Fleet. Each task force is deployed to oversee a given project. The first great mission was to establish a series of hidden installations and outposts throughout Near Space and The Vast. These secretive locations house the factories and shipyards of the Corpse Fleet, each of which is a necrotech masterpiece that required decades of dedicated construction to complete. For every completed munitions factory or shipyard, a dozen abandoned Corpse Fleet structures mire the stars. Such facilities are landmarks of the Corpse Fleet’s continued evolution, with each forgotten installation stripped of equipment to forge newer and more efficient production facilities elsewhere.
To this day, the Corpse Fleet seeks to maintain a steady supply of converted troops and starship officers. The fleet might never have reached its current numbers were it not for the bountiful humanoid harvests reaped during the Stardust Plague. In the years since, Corpse Fleet task forces have dispatched commodores to head small fleets sent to harvest living beings from the Pact Worlds and the wider galaxy, as the ongoing conflict between the Corpse Fleet and The Stewards and the Knights of Golarion ensures that the undead require constant replenishment of soldiers to maintain their offensive capabilities.
Beyond the Corpse Fleet’s need for production facilities and its morbid means of recruitment, there exists one primary goal for the fleet: to shatter the unity of the Pact Worlds. By ending the Absalom Pact, members of the Corpse Fleet believe they can return their home world, Eox, to its former glory. To achieve this monumental task, the Corpse Fleet strives to construct an armada of such size that it can rival the combined fleets of the Pact Worlds. While such an accomplishment could take centuries of construction and corpse harvesting, some task-force fleets are assigned other missions to speed up the endeavor, operating under the supervision of admirals seeking to uncover hidden magic or technology capable of either destroying the forces of the Pact Worlds or forcing their subservience to Eox.

Assets

Thousands of undead agents serve as officers or converted members of the Corpse Fleet. Some of the fleet’s most important and influential members are described below.
Admiral Morbari Coranith (NE female Elebrian ghast mystic): The worship of Urgathoa is one of many links between officers of the Corpse Fleet and the people of Eox. Coranith received the macabre blessing of the Pallid Princess in the earliest stages of her undeath. She directs her task force in an ongoing search for artifacts of religious or spiritual significance, believing they contain power that can give the Corpse Fleet the edge it needs to defeat the Pact Worlds. The ships of her fleet are replete with followers of Urgathoa, each capable of casting powerful spells to wound intruders and repair the unliving. Morbari leads her operations from the Dark Reliquary, a unique carrier filled with Necrofighters.
Admiral Vurannka (NE female elebrian bone trooper technomancer): While Vurannka never reached the elevated position of bone sage, she was still very influential in Eoxian politics before she left to join the Corpse Fleet. She brought a number of Eoxian vessels and troops with her and was rewarded with the position of admiral despite not being very keen on fighting. From aboard the bridge of the bulk freighter Soul Glutton, Vurannka organizes much of the Corpse Fleet’s operations, deciding when to build or abandon production facilities and the best locations for these structures, which are the undead navy’s metaphorical lifeblood.
Captain Inu-Szar (NE female elebrian bone trooper envoy): The captain of the Osseous Branch, a Corpse Fleet cruiser, Inu-Szar is one of the few diplomats in the fleet. Her ship can host living creatures—a rarity among the vessels of the Corpse Fleet. Inu-Szar is a ruthless diplomat, focusing her efforts on extending the reach of the Corpse Fleet into the deepest reaches of the Vast. She specializes in forging temporary alliances with species that have assets or technology valuable to the Corpse Fleet. Her negotiations have seeded agreements and alliances with several races and empires otherwise ambivalent to the Corpse Fleet’s undead nature.
Captain Kovlov Amalan (LE male Vesk corpsefolk mechanic): A seasoned campaigner within the Veskarium’s forces, Kovlov Amalan was infamous for finishing battles despite suffering severe wounds. His luck ran out in the Battle of Aledra as his squad struggled against a tide of Eoxian soldiers. When Amalan rose from death as an intelligent zombie, he was recruited by Eox to fight against his former comrades. Still eager for battle, he agreed and was among those who defected with the signing of the Absalom Pact. Amalan now serves as the captain of the Last Breath, a corpse-collection vessel. The Last Breath roves the galaxy, scouring the spaceways for forgotten battlegrounds, lost colonies, and wrecked starships to harvest the remains of once-living creatures that would otherwise eventually turn to dust. Such corpses are either reanimated by Corpse Fleet necromancers or serve as grist for the undead navy’s own necrograft factories.
Captain Xorketh (CE Android vampire soldier): Xorketh was once a member of the Android Abolitionist Front, operating out of The Diaspora. A chance encounter with a Corpse Fleet infiltrator ended their life and ultimately resulted in the android being reanimated as an undead with a thirst for blood. With few options, Xorketh sought out the Corpse Fleet, enlisting as an officer to satiate their new addiction. Putting their knowledge of slaver tactics and countertactics to use, Xorketh quickly became one of the Corpse Fleet’s most skilled agents in the art of harvesting new undead for the ranks of the converted. They’ve since ascended to the rank of captain, commanding the battleship Mortality’s Mill, a grotesque derivative of an Eoxian Thaumtech Omenbringer chassis that specializes in vicious boarding and body-harvesting operations across the galaxy.
Lieutenant Ravitious (NE male wraith operative): Almost every form of undead has a place in the Corpse Fleet, though those few incorporeal undead have difficulty assisting in the physical operation of a starship. Ravitious’s living identity has been lost to time. He operates under direct orders from the admirals of the Corpse Fleet, routinely redeployed to the command of different officers in need of his specialized skills. Ravitious uses his incorporeal nature to board enemy starships, focusing his attention on disabling engines or shields. Against larger enemy targets, he leads a squad of similarly incorporeal Corpse Fleet agents to ensure the success of his sabotage operations. Rare are the souls who can keep calm in the face of a Corpse Fleet armada—rarer are those who keep calm against a Corpse Fleet armada and an incursion of ghostly saboteurs.
The Perpetual Mass (NE occult zombie Oma): Oma, also known as “space whales,” are immense beings that can survive in and travel through the vast inky void of space. The Corpse Fleet had the fortune to come across and defeat one such creature in recent years in a massive naval engagement. Rather than simply leave the oma’s corpse to rot, the Corpse Fleet turned its considerable necromantic skill toward reanimating the vast stellar beast. Now known only as the Perpetual Mass, this creature is the zombified remains of an oma, further augmented with plates of bone and steel commonly seen in Eoxian starship design. Half zombie and half starship, this creature now serves as an undead siege vessel and is one of the largest ships in the entirety of the Corpse Fleet.
Undying Admiral Shathrava (LE male elebrian necrovite technomancer): Once a powerful bone sage on Eox, Shathrava oversaw a vast territory prior to the signing of the Absalom Pact. He sought a policy of isolationism in the face of the Veskarium’s assault on the Golarion System, which ultimately distanced him from the other bone sages. Recognizing that events would soon force a detente with the inferior living beings of the other worlds of the system, Shathrava forged a coalition of key officers from the Eoxian Navy and departed the system, forming the Corpse Fleet. To this day, he directs Corpse Fleet operations, maintaining regular contact with his allies and servitors on Eox. Returning to his home world is the guiding purpose of Shathrava’s actions, though he will do so only when he can assure Eox’s dominance over the revolting living members of the Pact Worlds.

History

The historic Absalom Pact was signed 5 years following the Battle of Aledra, the first major confrontation between the forces of the Golarion System and the Veskarium. Not all inhabitants of the signatory worlds were content with the agreement, especially senior military commanders of Eox’s ever-expanding navy. Unlike the fleets of many of the Golarion System’s other worlds, the Eoxian Navy had held its own against the hostile Veskarium. To see their victories sullied by the “mewling infants” of other worlds chafed many Eoxian admirals and commodores, resulting in their sudden defection.
How the Corpse Fleet managed to mobilize and escape the attention of the nascent Stewards is a mystery lost amid the chaos of the signing of the Absalom Pact. Less trusting members of the Pact Worlds posit that the Corpse Fleet was unofficially sanctioned by several of the ruling bone sages of Eox, specifically those who remained skeptical of the Pact Worlds’ potential to triumph over the vesk. This theory suggests that the Corpse Fleet was given sufficient material and political backing to depart the system and travel into deep space, where it would await the results of further hostilities between the Pact Worlds and the Veskarium. If the Pact’s efforts failed, then the Eoxians could still call in a sizable reserve of ships to defend their world—all without risking their full assets in the defense of other planets.
The bone sages maintain to this very day that the legal leadership of Eox never endorsed the Corpse Fleet. The first sightings of the undead armada following the Absalom Pact’s signing were during the tumultuous time of the Stardust Plague. Heavily modified ships, clearly Eoxian in origin, raided dozens of plague-ridden carriers and bulk transports. The Stewards investigated what few coherent reports of Corpse Fleet sightings they received, but they could never pin down the renegade undead navy in an engagement. Meanwhile, the Corpse Fleet harvested thousands of ill people, offering them the salvation of undeath in exchange for service. Over 2 decades, the Corpse Fleet’s numbers swelled due to the sickened living seeking salvation from death.
In the following centuries, travelers discovered Corpse Fleet facilities across Near Space and the Vast. These explorers, particularly members of the Starfinder Society, often reported finding abandoned structures of Eoxian design on planets previously uncharted by the Pact Worlds. All traces of useful information regarding the Corpse Fleet had already been stripped from these discovered structures, the fleet having long since moved on. The infamous Starfinder Historia-4 compiled a large dataset for the Starfinder Chronicles detailing the change from standard Eoxian construction methods based on dating the structures—the older the structure, the more it adhered to known Eoxian standards, while newer structures diverged into previously unseen designs.
Whether suspicions surrounding the Corpse Fleet’s true loyalty to the Eoxian bone sages were correct is now irrelevant. The appearance of The Swarm provided the last chance for the renegade fleet to return to the Pact Worlds in defense of their former home world. Instead, the Corpse Fleet remains at a well-measured distance from the advancing Swarm, content to continue their efforts in raiding forces of the Pact Worlds and the Veskarium. Exactly what involvement the Corpse Fleet will have in the ongoing war against the Swarm remains—like most of the Corpse Fleet’s actions—a mystery.

Type

Military, Navy Fleet