Creatures Creature Families Creature Abilities
Creature Adjustments Creature Templates

SFS Standard Excuba Creature 4

Unlike all other known types of spectra, excuba spectra are fragmented creatures made of countless tiny pieces that act together as a single networked whole. No accounts of an excuba encounter exist before the Drift crashed, and prevailing theories hold that either the trauma of the crisis created them, or they were created by the Drift as a response to the crisis itself. Whatever the case, excuba encounters have become all too common. These spectra swarms are often dispatched to infiltrate mortal worlds as spies or observers. They collect information for more powerful spectra like wyspirias to analyze and preserve. Some speculate that excubas have always lurked in the galaxy as invisible spies for other spectra, and that the Drift Crisis merely caused them to take a new, less cohesive form.

Elite | Normal | Weak

Elite Weak Excuba Creature 4

Image of an excuba
Source Alien Core pg. 176
Recall Knowledge DC 18 19 20
Perception +11 (darkvision, techsense (precise) 60 feet)
Languages arc network, digital telepathy, truespeech (can't speak any language)
Skills Computers +15, Deception +12, Drift Lore +13, Occultism +11, Piloting +11, Stealth +11
Str +0 Dex +5 Con +2 Int +3 Wis +1 Cha +2
Arc Network The excuba 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 excuba 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 excuba 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 excuba gets a critical failure on a Piloting check to Navigate or Plot a Course through the Drift, they get a failure instead.
Techsense The excuba senses creatures and objects with the tech trait as a precise sense within the listed range.
AC 20
Fort +8
Ref +13
Will +11
HP 42
Immunities electricity, grabbed, precision, prone, restrained, swarm mind
Resistances bludgeoning 2, piercing 5, slashing 5
Weaknesses area damage 5, splash damage 5
Autoencode (illusion, mental, occult, tech) An excuba's visual appearance is altered when the creature is perceived by creatures, items, and objects with the tech trait (such as robotic creatures, cameras, and sensors) unless they succeed at a Perception check against the excuba's Deception DC. Excubas in their swarm form appear to be formless shadows and are additionally concealed, while excubas in their humanoid forms register as familiar or unremarkable looking humanoids.
Data Vault An excuba can store data within their body as if they were a computer. Hacking an excuba requires three successes against their Will DC to access their data.
Digital Telepathy (aura, occult, tech) 100 feet. An excuba 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.
Speed 20 feet, fly 40 feet
Occult Innate Spells DC 21, attack +13 (+2 damage to cantrips, +4 damage to other spells) (-2 damage to cantrips, -4 damage to other spells); 2nd
skim data (at will)
 1st
Cantrips (2nd)
Constant (5th)
Change Shape [one-action] (concentrateoccultpolymorph) The excuba can take on the appearance of any Small or Medium humanoid.
Data Search [one-action] (concentrateocculttech) Frequency once per minute; Effect The excuba selects one creature with the tech trait in its space, searching their mind and memories. The creature must attempt a DC 21 Will save.
Critical SuccessThe creature is unaffected and is immune to Data Search for 24 hours.
SuccessThe creature is unaffected.
FailureThe excuba accesses the creature's memories of the last 24 hours, downloading a holographic copy into their data vault and gaining insights into the creature's tactics. The creature must roll twice and take the lower result on the next attack roll, skill check, or saving throw made against the excuba or one of the excuba's spells or abilities. This effect has the misfortune trait.
Critical FailureAs failure, but the excuba also obtains a specific type of memory (such as what happened the last time the creature encountered a Drift beacon) regardless of how long ago it was. The target creature loses this memory until it gains access to the excuba's data vault.
Swarming Synchronization [one-action] (occulttech) Each enemy creature in the swarm's space takes 2d8 sonic damage (DC 21 basic Reflex save). On a failure, creatures and objects with the tech trait also become glitching 1 (glitching 2 on a critical failure).

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.