Character Creation

We'll finalize character creation during session 0, but here's some guidance for developing a character concept.

• Your character begins at 1st level
• You start of as an Evgeniya-Jaimisson Corporation employee on a small company freighter.

Questions Each Character Should Answer:

1. What led me to being employed by EJ Corp?
2. What did I leave behind when I took this job?
3. What ties (if any) do I have outside the company?

Starship Roles: Since you will be working with your fellow crew members on a Company freighter, you need to consider your starship role. Most themes detailed in this article suggest possible starship roles. Those that don’t might lend themselves to a character who can fill any role, depending on class and skills. At the very least, your group needs an engineer, a gunner, a pilot, and a science officer. Look for opportunities to build your characters to fill other roles, too, including chief mate and magic officer.

Ability Scores: We will be using the Point Buy Method (10 pts) with each ability starting at 10 and max ability score of 18.

Playable Races

EJ Corp primarily recruits in the Pact Worlds and Near Space, but many Vasters (see Vaster theme below) sign on with the company. That said, there are some limitations. In particular, for light freighter crews, EJ Corp only accepts Small and Medium races as the leased ships are not designed for larger or smaller crew members.

In addition to the standard Playable Races, you can choose from the following races:

• other Pact World native races ( Astrazoan, Borai, Dirindi, Ikeshti, Kalo, Maraquoi, Nuar, Ryphorian, SRO, Strix, Verthani)
• Near Space races (Brenneri, Damai, Dromada, Ghoran, Ijtikri, Kanabo, Pahtra)
• races from the Vast (Gosclaw, Shimreen, Vlaka, Wrikreechee)

Classes

Each of the classes can fit in as an EJ Corp light freighter crew member, some easier than others.

Biohacker

You’re fascinated by science in all its many facets. You understand that the fundamentals of biology, chemistry, physics, and other disciplines can help you exploit your enemies’ weaknesses and bolster your allies. You might be studious and methodical about your research, pushing your mind to the limit in search of discovery, or you might be a daring experimenter, improvising concoctions and stumbling upon grand revelations. Either way, you use your knowledge of several fields of scientific study to aid your allies, whether in the thick of battle or in crafting a perfect plan. Details

• this class is particularly difficult for answering the "What led me to being employed by EJ Corp?" question
• where did you gain your training as a biohacker?
• clear fit as a team medic and probably best suited for starship science officer

Envoy

You make your way in the universe with a charming smile, quick wit, and keen sense of self-preservation, and excel at getting others to do what you want. You might be a trickster, hustler, or con artist, or you might serve as an actor, ambassador, or businessperson, paving the way for negotiation through kind words or the occasional dirty trick. You may also be skilled in diplomacy, serving as the face for a starship crew, talking your way into restricted systems or gaining audiences with local politicians or warlords. Details

• good candidate for starship captain
• where/how did you develop your envoy abilities?

Mechanic

You are a master of machines, from advanced supercomputers to simple magnetic engines. Understanding how these devices work gives you insight into the world around you, allowing you to make the most of your gear, circumvent hardened defenses, and even take over remote systems. Details

• natural fit for starship engineer
• either AI choice (drone or exocortex) works well

Mystic

You understand that what most people call magic is simply an expression of the innate connection between all things, and you intuitively tap into this unseen power to create strange effects. You sense the intangible and exploit your bonds with others, whether to bolster them or bend them to your will.(good mystical connections: empath, healer, melophile, star shaman). Details

• mystical connections that fit well: empath, healer, melopohile, star shaman
• how did you gain your abilities and connection
• depending on the connection, would fit well as pilot or mystic officer

Operative

You’re a consummate professional, and you always get the job done, whether it’s scouting enemy lines, hunting down criminals, stealing and smuggling items, or assassinating key figures. As an operative, you’re skilled in a wide variety of disciplines and specialties, and use speed, mobility, and your quick wits rather than relying on heavy weapons. You excel at the art of surprise, whether it’s sniping targets from cover or striking while their backs are turned. Your cause may be righteous, but you have no problem fighting dirty—achieving your objective is all that matters. Details

• good specialization choices: daredevil, gadgeteer, ghost, hacker, thief
• where did you get your training?
• specialization will influence a natural starship role

Solarian

The stars guide the planets with gravity, create life with light and heat, and utterly consume worlds in supernovas and black holes. You understand that these acts of creation and destruction are not opposites, but rather two parts of a natural, dualistic cycle. You seek to be an agent of that cycle, an enlightened warrior with the ability to manipulate the forces of the stars themselves. Constantly accompanied by a mote of fundamental energy or entropy, you can shape this essence in combat to create weapons and armor of gleaming stellar light or pure, devouring darkness. Whether you apprenticed in a temple or came to your powers through personal revelation, you recognize yourself as part of an ancient tradition—a force of preservation and annihilation. Details

• this class also presents challenges in answering the "What led me to being employed by EJ Corp?" question
• how did come to your powers?
• good fit as starship captain or magic officer and can also be a capable gunner or chief mate

Soldier

Conflict is an inevitable result of life. On every world that harbors complex living organisms, creatures battle one another for dominance, resources, territory, or ideals. Whether you’ve taken up arms to protect others, win glory, exact revenge, or simply earn a living, you are the perfect embodiment of this truth. You’re an expert at combat of all types but tend to prefer heavy armor and weapons—the bigger, the better. You may be a career soldier, a fresh mercenary recruit, or a lone wolf who rejects authority, but whether rushing in for hand-to-hand combat or firing tactical barrages, you’re a consummate warrior, never hesitating to put yourself in the line of fire to protect your friends. Details

• most of the fighting styles can work if you can answer "What led me to being employed by EJ Corp?"
• where did you get your training?
• good fit as gunner or chief mate starship roles

Technomancer

To the uninitiated, magic and technology are completely unrelated, but you know there are more correlations between the two than most suspect. Magic and technology are just tools, and when combined into one discipline, called technomancy, they can be far more powerful than one or the other on its own. You utilize tech to empower, harness, and manipulate magic, and you wield magic to augment, control, and modify technology. You are an expert at hacking the underlying structure of the universe itself, bending the laws of science and nature to your will. Your technomancy—which is gained from scientific study and experimentation—manipulates the physical world, weaves illusions, allows you to peer through time and space, and if necessary, can blast a foe into atoms. Details

• combined with the theme you select should help answer the "What led me to being employed by EJ Corp?"
• where did you get your training?
• good fit as science officer or magic officer starship roles

Vanguard

Change and decay are the only universal constants, and your understanding of these principles makes you a nigh-unstoppable force of nature: a juggernaut brimming with fundamental energies that allow you to hold the front line of any conflict and turn your own injuries into strength. The entropy within the universe and the level of chaos within any system stand at your disposal, and you channel them into potent combat abilities. To you, the inevitable decay of the galaxy is simply a force to shape, control, and even temporarily reverse. The ability to control when and how things change defines your philosophy and power, allowing you to transform blows that should have destroyed you into ticking time bombs of destruction ready to be unleashed upon your enemies. Details

• combined with the theme you select should help answer the "What led me to being employed by EJ Corp?"
• how did you come by these abilities?
• good fit in gunner and chief mate starship roles, potential fit for pilot and magic officer

Witchwarper

Most people believe that reality is limited to their physical surroundings. You know the truth: that everything around you is merely a thin veil draped across the infinite tapestry of existence. Your reality is a palimpsest, with all possible worlds and all alternate existences at your disposal. Through your magic and force of personality, you can peer into these time lines and pull from them as you see fit, using their dimensional echoes to twist and reshape your own world. Details

• combined with the theme you select should help answer the "What led me to being employed by EJ Corp?"
• how did you come by these abilities?
• good potential fit for starship captain or magic officer

Themes

People from all walks of life come to EJ Corp for work, and the themes below make good backstories for Company employees. As you develop your character, share your ideas with your fellow players and look for ways your characters might have met before or even have some history together. The following themes are particularly well-suited for this campaign.

• Ace Pilot: Every starship needs a reliable pilot. Flying Company freighters and driving loading vehicles might not seem glamorous, but it’s steady work. A dependable navigator helps ensure timely deliveries and safe passage. Most pilots plying the Drift are like you, making sure payloads and passengers move across the galaxy.
• Corporate Agent: You’re a businessperson. When your crew needs to negotiate a legitimate deal, you handle the talking. You know EJ Corp’s policies and applicable laws, as well as how to skirt them. Another one of your specialties involves getting something done with help from others further up the corporate chain. If you can’t do something yourself, you probably know who in the Company to ask. As the (probable) highest-ranking Company rep on the starship, you’re well-suited to serve as the vessel’s captain.
• Grifter: The Company is filled with smooth-talking corporate agents, products of a university education or packaged corporate management training. You’re not one of them. You learned your negotiating skills in less reputable establishments, and you know the shady side of business. To your colleagues, you’re someone who always has a plan or readily comes up with one. They depend on your quick thinking and smooth-talking to make better deals appear out of thin air.
• Mercenary: You could be a security specialist or a gunner, but you’re just as likely to be a natural leader—and good chief mate material. You know how to handle a heavy workload and can direct your colleagues to efficient action. Simultaneously, you know how military hierarchy works, which helps you deal with corporate structures and law enforcement agencies. Your colleagues look to you when events take a dangerous turn.
• Outlaw: You have a dark past, perhaps giving you a reason to stay on the move. As part of a Company crew, you likely have the most know-how in handling corrupt dock managers, navigating shady business deals, and hiding illicit cargo. Perhaps you feel grateful for the second chance that your hauler job represents, or maybe this gig just helps you pay the bills while you wait for another opportunity to present itself.
• Prole: As part of the working class, you survive by selling your labor for a paycheck. You’re probably very good at what you do, whether you’re an accountant, a cook, or a technician. However, it’s only a job, and the Company is just your employer. The pay isn’t good enough to merit a lot of risk. You might be marking time until something better comes along, using the job to meet some other desire, or hoping—like so many others—that you can make it big despite your humble origins and skills.
• Spacefarer: In the corporate shipping world, spacefarers serve as engineers, navigators, science officers, and surveyors. Maybe you’ve always had a fascination with outer space, and taking a freighter job gave you the opportunity to scratch that itch. Most people who spend a lot of time in the void are like you. You likely have many skills useful to your crewmates, and they look to you because you always seem to have a knack for getting the job done.
• Starwalker: As a starwalker, you’re used to being in space. On a corporate hauler, you’re equally skilled in both astrogation and extravehicular work, potentially specializing as a pilot or engineer. In any case, you excel at getting into tricky areas to make repairs or to perfectly execute your role in the crew’s latest cunning scheme.
• Street Rat: You grew up without a lot of options, and you took corporate work to escape the streets of your home world and make a better life for yourself. You provide your crew with information on local scenes, from official import regulations to unofficial export channels. What’s more, you know how to blend in as a hidden observer or unanticipated backup. If a deal goes bad, you have a natural talent for using alleys and byways to cut a quick retreat to the spaceport.
• Vaster: You come from a planet in the Vast, possibly one terraformed a generation ago by the Company. Resourceful and diverse, vasters must know how to handle a starship and make do with less, whereas other settlers focus on simple survival. Maybe you initially traveled to the Pact Worlds on the Company payroll so you could see the galaxy. You might come from a society unrelated to the Pact Worlds or Veskarium, and a job on a Company hauler granted you a ticket out.
• Themeless: If you want to be a nondescript Company drone, going themeless might work. However, for this series of adventures, a theme such as prole or vaster might better serve you. Both suggest a humble background but provide features that you’ll likely use in this adventure path.

Alignment

Although Starfinder has the classic alignments from D&D/Pathfinder, I don't care to use them explicitly. Instead, think about your character's moral compass and motivations. The words on the cover say it all: You’re no hero. Instead, you’re a corporate cog trying to make a life out of shipping goods aboard a starship owned by the Evgeniya-Jaimisson Corporation, known among its workers as the Company. Your crew might be mere coworkers, or you might consider them good friends; regardless, you need to get along with your crew during extended hauls through the Drift. You might stick your neck out for these colleagues, but only because you expect them to do the same for you.

They say nice people finish last in the corporate world. They’re right, but sometimes it’s better to finish last with your integrity intact—though only you can make that trade- off. You’ll to have to make a lot of choices in this business, often between doing what looks easy, efficient, and practical as opposed to doing what’s right. So remember this: doing the right thing usually means doing the hard thing. The right thing is going to cost you time and money, maybe even blood. Every action has consequences, and we affect those we meet and do business with in a hundred small ways; when you treat other people well, you’ve got a good chance they’ll treat you favorably in return. If you decide to stab them in the back or punch them in the face, don’t be surprised if they shoot first the next time you cross paths.

A lot of people in this business are survivors. They look out for themselves because they have to. They keep their head down and their visual organs on the prize, taking risks only to protect their interests and their friends. When it comes to following corporate policy, law, and moral codes, flexibility serves you well. Survivors follow the rules when they have to, but when mischief gives them the best solution, they misbehave. Nobody wants to die for a small paycheck.

The worst among you are antiheroes. These people do the right thing for the wrong reasons. Their motivations are often selfish or predicated on baser desires. An antihero might still chase down a vicious criminal or ruin a corrupt former employer, though only for a fat bounty or to satisfy revenge— not because “it was the right thing to do.” Antiheroes consider everyone else to be bleeding hearts. Fuzzy feelings and good deeds don’t pay the bills.

Still, no one wants to share bunk space with a bloodthirsty murderer or inveterate thief. Living in a moral gray area poses a constant balancing act, and the corporate hauler world is full of scoundrels, slackers, and vagabonds. Maybe you’ve made some bad choices in your life—you wouldn’t be the first. But just like everybody else in this (or any) line of work, you have to try to learn from those mistakes, live a better life, and earn an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s labor whenever possible.

Backgrounds

You’re going to meet a lot of people in this campaign, and some of those characters will return repeatedly. The backgrounds provided here add elements to your character history that give you a clear connection to at least one of most important or recurring NPCs. They aren’t intended to replace your character’s entire backstory. Instead, they detail one specific incident in your past that you can integrate with the story you imagine for your character. Select only one of these backgrounds with each player choosing a different one. If none of these backgrounds seem appropriate for your character, reach out to me create a custom one.

• Former Smuggler: You have a checkered past; for a time, you smuggled illegal weapons, drugs, and other contraband in and out of the Pact Worlds. After you attracted the attention of the Stewards, they briefly incarcerated you aboard the Steadfast, their flagship. There, you made a connection that broke you out. EJ Corporation is a job with a bit less heat attached.
• Golden Parachute: For a time, you lived on the other side of the law. Specifically, you worked for the Golden League a while ago, alongside a Xun assassin. After a particularly nasty job on Eox, you decided to walk away from the League to find a career with a longer life expectancy. The Golden League didn’t want to let you go, but the assassin covered for you; out of gratitude for all the close calls over the years, he told his bosses in the Golden League that he pushed you out of an airlock as punishment for your betrayal.
• Kalistocrat Childhood: You grew up in a family that followed the Prophecies of Kalistrade. Since these prophecies insist on celibacy, you and your siblings were all adopted, and your parents filled your head with the idea that the zeros in your credit balance measured your success in life. When you became an adult, you left home and abandoned the religion, alienating your parents and siblings.
• Mine Collapse: Here’s the story of how you almost died. There you were, mining thasteron in Akiton’s Winterlands a few years ago. Akiton doesn’t even have laws, let alone safety regulations, so no one was surprised when, one day, a molecular borer ignited a thasteron explosion that collapsed the mine on hundreds of workers. Most died, but you and a ysoki managed to work together to melt your way out.
• New Hire: Life is hard, and you’ve been down on your luck for a long time. However, you still have a few friends from the old days when you had credits to burn. Things went downhill for you after that. A few weeks ago, you were squatting in Downside when you ran into an old friend and they recognized you. They put in a good word with the Company and got you this job as a result.
• Old Hand: You've been with the company a long time, and you know just how cynical it is. There's another employee that you've worked with over the years. She's reliable and trustworthy, and maybe one of the few friends you can count on.
• Terraformer: Before you started work aboard BD514, youworked for the Company on a terraforming project on the planet of Entha in the Vast. Entha is a water world with an immense ocean so deep and dark that it’s never been fully explored, earning it the name “the Shadow Sea.” While there, you worked alongside a resourceful and reliable construction worker. When you left Entha for less dangerous work on a cargo hauler, they were preoccupied with the unsafe working conditions on Entha. You haven’t heard from them since.
• Union Busted: If there’s one thing that brings corporate management together, it’s the threat of an employee union. A few years ago, before you started at the Company, you worked long hours at an AbadarCorp factory when one of your coworkers started speaking to you and the others on your shift about forming a union. The managers came down like a hammer soon after, and you were all out on the street. You bounced back—if you can call the Company a bounce—but you’re not really sure what happened to your coworkers.