Faction Overview: Second Seekers

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Illustration by Josef Kucera

Where the First Seeker leads, the Second Seekers follow. Exemplifying dutiful service, the Second Seekers follow-through on the Society's pledge to support the First Seeker, the elected head of the Starfinder Society. Unlike other factions, the goals of the Second Seekers vary over time, adapting to each new leader's mission.

Even before the Organized Play team started work on the factions for the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild, we had the opportunity to work with the Starfinder team to create the in-game Starfinder Society organization. One thing the Organized Play team agreed on from the beginning was changing up some of the leadership structure for the new Society. We'll be going into further detail on differences between the Pathfinder Society and Starfinder Society in a future blog post, but for purposes of today's blog, I wanted to briefly talk about one new role: the First Seeker.

The First Seeker is an elected Starfinder who takes on a senior leadership role within the Starfinder Society, directing the organization for a brief period. Each First Seeker is elected based on a platform: a defined goal for the Starfinder Society to pursue. As an example, the Society's previous First Seeker, a kasathan solarian named Jadnura, petitioned to explore a corner of the galaxy known as the Scoured Stars. That particular mission didn't go so well for the Society...

The Second Seekers are a faction dedicated to furthering the agenda of the current First Seeker. Their dedication extends only to a specific First Seeker, not necessarily to any First Seekers who came before or after. When characters gain Reputation with the Second Seekers, they only gain Reputation with the specific First Seeker who they champion. This means that the Second Seekers will evolve as we continue telling stories through the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild campaign, with each newly elected First Seeker acting as an entirely new faction. Once a First Seeker's term ends—such as at the end of a season storyline—that doesn't mean your characters stop championing that First Seeker. In fact, any character with an appropriate faction boon for that specific First Seeker can continue to champion that individual for the rest of her career—just don't expect a lot of new scenarios involving that First Seeker!

Because of the First Seeker's importance to the Second Seekers faction, you'll see the Second Seekers presented in text with the associated First Seeker listed in parenthesis. The first iteration of the Second Seekers faction shows up as "Second Seekers (Luwazi Elsebo)."

Illustration by Miroslav Petrov

This brings us to our first faction leader for the Second Seekers: Luwazi Elsebo (NG female human envoy). Luwazi was responsible for keeping the Starfinder Society together in the aftermath of the previous First Seeker's expedition to the Scoured Stars. Her goals include rebuilding the damaged Society while investigating what happened in the Scoured Stars. If any of the Starfinders lost in the Scoured Stars can be saved, Luwazi intends to find a way to make that happen.

Players get their first chance to interact with Luwazi Elsebo in Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild Scenario #1-00: Claim to Salvation, the pregenerated character special debuting at Gen Con 2017, written by Pathfinder Society and Adventure Path veteran, Larry Wilhelm. This scenario acts as a prequel to the start of the Year of Scoured Stars, and showcases some of Luwazi's more unorthodox methods for keeping the Starfinder Society intact, along with the first seeds of a faction we'll be spotlighting in a future blog.

Now, I don't want the Exo-Guardians to get away with having more information than our recently spotlighted faction, so I figure I can share one more thing. Characters gaining Second Seekers (Luwazi Elsebo) Reputation can access some pretty exceptional boons, many of them themed around the idea of preserving and rebuilding the wounded Starfinder Society. Here's one boon I think a lot of Second Seekers are going to pick up.

Team Spirit (Untyped Boon)

You are an expert at using your resources to help other Stafinders.

Prerequisites: Second Seekers (Luwazi Elsebo): Tier 2

Cost: 1 Fame

Benefit: When you or another character is killed during an adventure in which your participated, reduce the Fame cost of the raise dead spellcasting service by 2. This boon is not expended when used.

Special: A character can only benefit from one copy of this book at a time, to a maximum discount of 2 Fame.

As you can see, a character purchasing this boon reduces the cost of raise dead by a noticeable amount of Fame. Even if just one character in a group has this boon, every character at the table benefits from the discount. I suspect we'll see a lot of characters gaining Second Seekers (Luwazi Elsebo) Reputation picking this boon up. I also suspect we'll see groups looking to muster for higher difficulty content going out of their way to make sure a Second Seeker is on the team!

Ok, that's it for today's post; I need to get back to finishing up the last Gen Con scenarios. Stay tuned for our next blog, when we talk about Wayfinders—and I don't mean the magical compasses!

Thurston Hillman
Starfinder Society Developer