Background

Ambitious, creative, and endlessly curious, humans have shown more drive to explore their system and the universe beyond than any of their neighbor races—for better and for worse. They’ve helped usher in a new era of system-wide communication and organization and are admired for their passion and tenacity, but their tendency to shoot first and think about the consequences later can make them a liability for those races otherwise inclined to work with them.

Background

Originally from a planet orbiting a dying star far beyond the Pact Worlds, the four-armed kasathas maintain a reputation as a noble and mysterious people. They are famous for their anachronistic warriors, ancient wisdom, and strange traditions.

Background

Idealized by many other humanoid races and gifted with innate psychic abilities, lashuntas are at once consummate scholars and enlightened warriors, naturally divided into two specialized subraces with different abilities and societal roles.

Background

Once part of a ravenous hive of locust-like predators, the insectile shirrens only recently broke with their hive mind to become a race of telepaths physically addicted to their own individualism, yet dedicated to the idea of community and harmony with other races.

Background

Heavily muscled and covered with thick scales and short, sharp horns, the reptilian vesk are exactly as predatory and warlike as they appear. Originally hailing from a star system near the Pact Worlds, they sought to conquer and subdue their stellar neighbors, as they had all the other intelligent races in their own system, until an overwhelming threat forced them into a grudging alliance with the Pact Worlds—for now.

Background

Small and furtive, the ysoki are often overlooked by larger races. Yet through wit and technological prowess, they’ve spread throughout the solar system, giving truth to the old adage that every starship needs a few rats.

Background

Dwarves are a stocky race, roughly a foot shorter than humans, with broad, heavy frames. Dwarves trace their heritage to the missing planet of Golarion, yet for them, this is not merely a matter of history, but identity—they were forged in the furnace of Golarion’s subterranean passages, and many dwarves born long after the planet’s disappearance still feel the sting of its loss, kept alive in dwarven song and legend. Dwarven history also claims that they once had a different racial god, Torag, who left his worshipers in the hands of his brother Angradd during the Gap so he could stand guard over Golarion, wherever it is now.

Background

Lithe, long-lived humanoids, elves are easily recognized by their pointed ears and pupils so large that their eyes seem to be all one color. Possessed of an inherent bond with the natural world, they tend to subtly take on the coloration of their surroundings over the course of many years and have a deep spiritual regard for nature.

Background

Long-ago emigrants from the primal fey realm called the First World, gnomes are a vivacious people who have adapted to their tumultuous heritage in curious ways, and evolved significantly from accounts found in pre-Gap records. Gnomes today fall into two ethnicities: feychildren and bleachlings.

Background

If it’s true that opposites attract, then elves and humans are the best proof. Despite their general distrust of non-elves, many elves find humanity’s passionate energy, dedication to living in the moment, and ability to accomplish so much in their short lives deeply appealing—a flame that burns all the brighter for its brevity. At the same time, many humans are attracted to elves’ lean bodies, elegant style, and centuries of wisdom. Where the two populations interact, half-elves occasionally result.

Background

Halflings are a common race in the Pact Worlds and their colonies, having spread nearly as far as humans. Popular legend even claims that halflings were among the first humanoids to spread beyond Golarion and into the stars to colonize new worlds. Once thought of as a people without a homeland, halflings have peppered the void with colonies, and halfling caravan fleets—dozens of ships from as many different makes and eras—ply the trade lanes, eager to see new sights, swap stories, and trade strange and foreign goods. Their small stature and tendency to wander make halflings popular targets for raiders and conquerors, but time and again the tenacious race has rebounded from harsh challenges thanks to their cooperation, optimism, and what seems to be a racial gift for subterfuge.

Background

Half-orcs have both human and orc ancestry. Though these individuals sometimes result from the union of orcs and humans, the relative rarity of pure-blooded orcs among the Pact Worlds means that most half-orcs are the children of other half-orcs. They usually stand a bit taller than humans and have strong, muscular builds, with green or gray skin. Many halforcs have tusk-like canines protruding from their lower jaws, as well as slightly pointed ears and large brows that give them a brooding appearance.

Background

The shapeshifting astrazoans have lived as humans, lashuntas, verthani and many other races for the past few centuries, but their origins are shrouded in mystery. As even they have no records of their beginnings, it is widely assumed they came into being at some point during the Gap. They have little in the way of their own culture and strive to find their place in the galaxy.

Background

Bantrids have unusual anatomy. Their lower halves are nothing more than dense organic spheres. Bantrids move by spinning these foot-orbs using hundreds of thousands of cilia on the underside of partial sheaths that cover the orbs. Their upper torsos are stout columns that taper slightly at the top. Bantrids have no heads in the fashion most humanoids do. Instead, their visual and auditory sensors are located in the middle of their torsos, directly under small mouths containing a few teeth made only for chewing fruits and nuts. Bantrids have no noses and, in fact, no sense of smell at all. Near the apex of their torsos, bantrids have a pair of appendages that resemble large, flat hands with several thin fingers. Bantrids’ skin often bears striped coloration along the length of their torsos and across their upper limbs.

Background

Borais are an unusual form of corporeal undead. Instead of being a dead body animated by negative energy, a borai has a mostly dead body that retains the smallest sliver of its soul. The two are inexorably bound, as the body draws vitality from the soul while the soul uses the body to remain on the Material Plane. Some borais are the results of partially botched resurrection attempts, either magical or technological, while others were people who were simply too stubborn to fully die when their time came.

Background

Plantlike humanoids, the solemn khizars live in harmony with the natural environment, and many strive to protect the wilderness areas they inhabit. While this often brings them into conflict with other species and cultures, khizars are eager to learn about others’ ways in an effort to understand them.

Khizars are humanoids with two arms, two legs, vestigial vines on their backs, and greenish-brown skin of tough cellulose fiber. They have hydrostatic skeletal structures and bleed a thick sap-like liquid if cut. Their limbs end in rootlike tendrils with some manipulative ability, but these are clumsier than a humanoid’s fingers. Khizars’ heads are actually complex seedpods; these tough, translucent membranes over woody latticeworks contain phosphorescent seed clusters that glow softly through the papery membrane, giving the species the nickname “lanternfolk.” The color of this glow shifts as khizars experience different emotions, and canny observers can tell khizars’ mood before they convey a word. Lacking mouths, khizars “taste” things by touching or handling them with their digits.

Originating in the wild expanses of the untamed continent Ukulam on Castrovel, khizars developed from carrionfeeding plants that used slow movement and crude empathic senses to find dying animals to feed on. They eventually grew to have full-fledged societies, though they hardly approach the population numbers of elves, formians, or lashuntas. With space travel becoming more common, some khizars have relocated to the Ice Wells of Aballon to protect those natural spaces from the native robots’ encroaching megaplexes.

Khizars have a strong sense of individuality, but they maintain no gender or cultural divisions based on appearance, caste, wealth, or other indicators. The only things ancient khizars competed over were food sources and having new and novel experiences, and they tended to solve competitions over the former by embracing the latter. Khizars tend to be very protective of the natural spaces where they live, sometimes resulting in violent clashes, and many have recently joined or allied with the Xenowardens in defense of certain worlds. Khizars are oblivious to many physical differences in other species, so they judge people by their actions rather than their appearances.

Background

SROs (short for “sentient robotic organisms”) are among the most advanced forms of robots, with internal circuits and positronic brains so complex that they, like androids, attract a soul and develop true artificial intelligence and free will. SROs are most common on Aballon, though they are different from the native anacites. Unlike androids, SROs do not have a unified appearance, and many are at best vaguely humanoid in shape, while others have shapes designed purely to assist in their primary functions.

Background

With their ebon feathers, murky eyes, and massive wings spreading behind them like angels’ pinions, strix are imposing people to anyone not familiar with their kind. Pre-Gap accounts speak of a small and usually isolationist population of strix on vanished Golarion. Today, strix still tend to keep to themselves, especially in the race’s most concentrated population in the Pact Worlds: a mysterious spire called Qidel, Aerie of the Sun, on Verces.

Background

Barathus are the sentient apex of Bretheda’s gas-giant ecosystem, blimp-like creatures vaguely reminiscent of jellyfish, with several unusual evolutionary adaptations. The first is their ability to rewrite their own genetic code instinctively and at will, adjusting their own biology to allow them to manufacture a huge array of substances—and even advanced biotechnology— within the crucibles of their own bodies.

Yet while this ability makes them quite successful in the Pact Worlds economy, and has deeply influenced their culture’s understanding of wealth and trade, their more notable adaptation is the ability to combine with others of their kind into larger, hive-minded superentities. These mergings create not merely amalgams of their component beings, but entirely new entities with unique and independent consciousnesses, yet which in turn often disband back into their component individuals after a particular need or threat has passed.

Background

The beings known through the Pact Worlds as contemplatives of Ashok were once humanoids of extreme intelligence living on Akiton. Upon unlocking exceptional psychic powers, they deliberately evolved their brains, to the detriment of their bodies. Now, contemplatives float along using telekinesis, their atrophied bodies dangling from pulsating brain-sacs.

Background

The Shadari Confederacy lies cloaked deep within an area known as the Kurzach Nebula: an immense cloud of ionized, dingy-colored gases that block most scans and make astrogation difficult. As such, this loose organization houses all manner of fugitives, itinerants, and other scoundrels, and it is led by the inhabitants of Great Shadar, a waterless planet orbiting this system’s dim star. These residents call themselves draeliks, and they are singularly united in support of the Confederacy’s lawless ideals. To outsiders, however, they often seem more beholden to the grotesque sceaduinars: extraplanar creatures from the Negative Energy Plane, and the main figures of the most prominent draelik faith.

Background

With purple skin and white hair, drow are physically beautiful but merciless. Common drow form the majority of civilian and military forces and are governed by more powerful drow nobles. This strictly matriarchal culture leaves few opportunities for a common male, and training as an enforcer for a noble house or arms dealer is one of only a few ways a drow male can secure a somewhat comfortable life—if not necessarily a long one.

Drow are ruthless opponents, having no qualms about setting ambushes or luring enemies to locations where they have the upper hand. They regard ideals such as fairness and honor as pathetic gestures of lesser races, and consider all who hold such beliefs deserving of exploitation. Drow have no compunction about using other races as slaves and minions, using them as cannon fodder when exploring potentially dangerous new locations or as a line of defense that allows drow to flee to safety when an encounter turns against them.

Background

Formians resemble giant ants with humanoid upper bodies, and carve their chitinous plates with insignias reflecting their individual names and achievements. Members of a hive all share a telepathic link, allowing them to coordinate efficiently.

Within a hive are castes specialized to particular tasks. The queen leads the hive and is its sole means of propagation, while castes like the aristocratic myrmarchs and mercantile taskmasters direct lower castes like warriors and workers.

Formian workers are the backbone of hive labor and hatched in large clutches-many workers never gain a name beyond their number within the clutch. While strong, they typically flee combat unless ordered to fight. Formian warriors, by contrast, are fierce sterile females, each with a stronger individual identity to allow for more effective battle tactics. This individualism makes warriors more likely to chafe under strict hive hierarchies, and these are the formians most likely to set out on their own.

Formians are most common on Castrovel. For millennia they sought to eradicate the lashunta, their traditional foes, but their queens now instead focus on adopting other species’ technology to industrialize their traditional hive societies.

Background

No one knows what planet or even galaxy the grays call home, but reports of their unnerving abductions, nightmarish paralysis, and mysterious experiments have been collected from countless worlds for as long as starships have sailed in the dark spaces of the universe. Such reports are fragmentary and unreliable, offered by victims recounting hazy memories of enduring various procedures under clinically bright lights or waking in cramped and lightless confinement, and do little to explain the methodology or goals of their captors. Those captors, though, have much in common no matter the specific circumstances or the species of the victim: an otherworldly presence, condescending interactions, and a sinister disregard for the agency and dignity of those they take as subjects for their experiments.

Grays communicate only telepathically, even among their own kind. Their faces and glassy black eyes show little emotion or reaction, and while graceful, they usually move with deliberate intention, often spending several moments in thought before committing to an action or movement. This inscrutability renders them enigmatic and disturbing to most other races.

Little is known about the grays’ motivations, and to date no efforts have been successful at establishing diplomatic relationships with them. However, their goals appear to center around the search for information, rather than conquest. Victims of their paralytic abductions are almost always returned mostly unharmed, though the sudden appearance of a series of scars or an inexplicable implant undermines the effects of the grays’ ability to erase memories of the experience. Researchers wonder at the end goals of this accumulation of knowledge and what purposes the information gleaned may serve in the meantime. Some fringe scientists believe grays are preparing for an eventual all-out invasion, while others posit they are simply curious about us, but their alien mindsets lead them to sate this inquisitiveness in disturbing ways.

Once rare enough that reports of their abductions were written off as conspiracy and delusion, encounters with grays have become disturbingly more common with the advent of Drift travel. Their sleek, disk-shaped starships lurk in the dark corners of the Drift, appearing seemingly out of nowhere to confront vessels with inattentive or unwary crews. Much like the grays themselves, their ships are designed less for offense and more for evading and subduing their targets, employing tractor beams and EMP weapons to disable and control a vessel, preserving its crew as test subjects. Such captives find themselves unable to move, held under brilliant lights, their captors mere silhouettes as their thoughts and memories are sifted under the gray’s psychic touch.