Creatures Creature Families Creature Abilities
Creature Adjustments Creature Templates

SFS Standard Iridia Creature 8

When mortals encounter spectra outside the drift, that encounter is usually with an iridia. These opalescent, bipedal ambassadors travel the cosmos as messengers and agents of the Drift, extolling the benefits of new and emergent technologies. They champion growth and improvement in all aspects of life but especially focus on the advancement of new technologies. Their goals often put them at odds with those who forswear controversial and dangerous tech or who approach new and untested discoveries with caution.

Iridias are known to visit remote worlds in the Vast, far away from Absalom Station and the Drift lanes where Triune's original signal and the secrets of Drift travel were suppressed, lost, or misunderstood. They bring the people of these isolated worlds instructions to achieve interstellar travel and a second chance to join the galactic community.

Elite | Normal | Weak

Elite Weak Iridia Creature 8

Image of an iridia
Source Alien Core pg. 177
Recall Knowledge DC 23 24 26
Perception +16 (darkvision, techsense (precise) 60 feet)
Languages arc network, digital telepathy, truespeech (can't speak any language)
Skills Acrobatics +16, Computers +18, Deception +14, Diplomacy +16, Drift Lore +20, Occultism +14, Piloting +14
Str +2 Dex +4 Con +2 Int +4 Wis +2 Cha +6
Arc Network The iridia can communicate through items and creatures with the tech trait, projecting sound from and speaking through the item or creature's voice, speakers, or other audio output. In addition, the iridia can use any item or creature with the tech trait within their digital telepathy aura as the point of origin for their spells and abilities when calculating range, distance, line of effect, and area of effect.
Slip Drive An iridia has an internal biomechanical Drift engine, allowing them to function as a Drift engine for a starship or vehicle they pilot as a 1-minute activity. An excuba can enter or exit the drift themself as a 1-minute activity. When an iridia gets a critical failure on a Piloting check to Navigate or Plot a Course through the Drift, they get a failure instead.
Techsense The iridia senses creatures and objects with the tech trait as a precise sense within the listed range.
AC 26
Fort +13
Ref +18
Will +16
HP 130
Immunities electricity
Resistances cold 6, sonic 6
Digital Telepathy (aura, occult, tech) 100 feet. An iridia can communicate telepathically with any item or creature with the tech trait within their aura, as well as with other technologically telepathic creatures (such as those with shortwave and similar abilities). This ability also allows the spectra to remotely attempt Computers checks within their aura.
Reactive Strike [reaction]
Shift Dimensionality [reaction] Frequency once per round; Trigger The iridia is targeted by a ranged Strike; Effect A rainbow of visual distortion cascades across the iridia. They desynchronize from reality and are briefly replaced by a two-dimensional rendering, gaining concealment against the triggering Strike.
Speed 25 feet, fly 40 feet
Melee [one-action] schism +18 (agiledeadly d8), Damage 2d8+6 bludgeoning
Ranged [one-action] dusk ray +20 (magicalrange increment 60 feetversatile c), Damage 4d8 electricity
Occult Innate Spells DC 26, attack +18 (+2 damage to cantrips, +4 damage to other spells) (-2 damage to cantrips, -4 damage to other spells); 4th
translocate (at will)
 3rd
2nd
skim data (at will)
 1st
Cantrips (4th)
Constant (5th)
Change Shape [one-action] (concentrateoccultpolymorph) The iridia can take on the appearance of any Small or Medium humanoid.

All Creatures in "Spectra"

NameLevelSpoiler
Excuba4
Iridia8
Wyspiria11

Spectra

In the Great Beyond, time is measured not in hundreds, thousands, or millions of years, but rather in eons—in iterations of reality itself. Only rising to prominence within the last three centuries alongside the advent and proliferation of Drift technology, spectra have thrived in a burgeoning niche of the otherwise stagnant zeitgeist of the Great Beyond.

Though their origins and objectives remain shrouded in mystery, encounters with spectra revolve around new technological discoveries, sharing the knowledge of faster-than-light travel, and protecting the Drift. No one knows if spectra existed before the Drift, but their connection to the hyperspace plane is indisputable. Prominent metaphysicians believe spectra were created as amalgams of raw quintessence pulled into the Drift, just as the Drift itself grows from pieces of the Multiverse. If this is true, spectra's interest in the proliferation of Drift technology takes a subtle sinister turn, as each new Drift engine serves to harvest the Great Beyond and all its denizens for the growth of the Drift and spectra themselves.

The Drift Crash

For centuries, most accounts of spectra encounters were of the "Drift angels" that rescued lost and broken starships stranded in the Drift, bringing them out of hyperspace and back into the Universe itself. All this changed during the Drift Crisis disaster, when Drift travel failed across the galaxy. In the aftermath of the crash, spectra encounters sharply increased, and excubas have overtaken iridias as the spectra most commonly seen by spacefarers.

Voices of the Drift

Spectra rarely use their own voices to speak, instead telepathically harnessing nearby communication devices and communicating through starship intercoms or display text on vidscreens. In the rare accounts of spectra speaking aloud, their voices are described as mixes of synthesized, low-fidelity tones and "blurry-sounding" beeps and screeches.

Facilian

Facilian the Blossoming Fractal is the first of the arc spectra, a demigod of beginnings, novel ideas, and experimentation. They inspire mortals toward breakthroughs in their work, strokes of sudden inspiration, and to overcome blocks in their perspectives. Facilian's followers sometimes receive visions of strange signs and formulas while traveling through the Drift, left to reach their own understandings of what the visions mean.

Prophet of the Drift

In the aftermath of the Drift Crash, spectra became stranded across the galaxy, torn apart and unable to return to the Drift. Amid the destruction, a broken wyspiria called False Casanda emerged as a spectra champion and supposed guardian of Casandalee's essence. Though the All-Code has since returned, some say they have seen False Casanda's starship, the Argent Sierra, out in the Vast, hunting for something still lost.