Faction Overview: Dataphiles

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Illustration by Josef Kucera

Churches, corporations, governments, and other organizations all have secrets. The Dataphiles work to uncover these secrets, deciding what to share and what to store in their vast data vaults inside Archive's Cortex, a sector of the Lorespire Complex in Absalom Station. While not all information is shared beyond the Dataphiles' archives, the simple act of guarding knowledge acts as a guiding light for the Dataphiles. Data comes in many forms, and the Dataphiles employ more than just computer-specialists in their ranks. Those Starfinders skilled at withdrawing information from sentient creatures—either by coercion, discourse, or trickery—are highly valued. As their sites of interest are among the best-defended installations in the galaxy, the Dataphiles also have a pressing need for trained combat specialists—whether to have a strong arm protecting a hacker during a delicate operation, or to have an armed ally capable of getting the prize out alive.

If you have been following Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild news from the start, you have probably heard about the Dataphiles. They are the first faction we announced almost four months ago over on the Know Direction Podcast. It is quite appropriate if you've listened to entire that podcast and are still ravenous for more information on the Dataphiles; after all, the Dataphiles are all about getting as much information as they can!

You can't have a futuristic setting without addressing important things like computers, corporate espionage, the flow of information, and hackers. The Dataphiles specialize in researching, finding, codifying, and controlling any information they can get their hands on (or other suitable appendage... yes that's an ongoing theme in Starfinder descriptions). The organized play team really wanted to have an organization that would appeal to not only computer specialists, but to those characters interested in accumulating vast amounts of key information. We see the Dataphiles as letting us explore some themes from modern organizations, like Anonymous or Wikileaks, while also letting us throw in a scenario or two where the PCs can "Hack the Gibson."

This brings us to the leader of the Dataphiles, the android, Historia-7 (LN female android mechanic). In keeping with the Dataphiles theme, rather than give all the details on Historia-7 and history with the Starfinder Society, I think it's appropriate to present some tidbits of information that might be important to Historia-7. I'll leave it to all you intrepid data seekers out there to figure out what you can from these details.

• You'll have a chance to meet Historia-7 in Starfinder Society Scenario #1-01: The Commencement. (Ok, easy start)
• Historia-4 compiled a significant record on the divergence of Corpse Fleet construction practices from those of their Eoxian counterparts, submitting the details for publication in the Starfinder Chronicles.
• Historia-6 strongly supported the election of First Seeker Jadnura, and was subsequently lost during the Scoured Stars incident.
• Kuthona.

Illustration by Sebastian Rodriguez

I hope you will all have some fun scrutinizing these tidbits.

Now, it's time for our regularly scheduled boon reveal! This week's boon is something very different from what you've seen with our previous previews. Much like the capstone boon we showcased last week, this week's boon is another informal category of boon that John and I concocted after several cackle-filled meetings. To set the mood, "It was a vibrant and joy-filled PaizoCon when Thurston and John first conjured the idea for the meta boons..."

So here it is!

Digital Presence (Slotless* Boon)

You work to propagate a thriving digital community.

Prerequisites: Dataphiles: Tier 1

Cost: 0 Fame (see below)

Benefit: If you complete a scenario that you played online, such as by using a virtual tabletop or a play-by-post format, you earn 1 additional Fame and 1 additional Reputation with the Dataphiles faction.

Special: You can only benefit from this boon a number of times equal to your current Reputation Tier with the Dataphiles faction (maximum four total times at Reputation Tier 4). Each time you fulfill the requirements of this boon, mark it on your Chronicle sheet along with the associated Reputation Tier. Have the GM sign beside this notation.

*After receiving some editorial and community feedback, we're moving away from the term "Untyped Boon" and are now using "Slotless Boon" instead. This should be a clearer title for how these boons work, and avoid any confusion about how many boons of this type you can slot.

Story time! Each faction will have a boon like the Digital Presence boon. These unique "meta boons" operate outside of regular play conditions, often requiring player-initiated actions to achieve. As you can see with the Dataphiles' boon, we're trying to encourage online play—after all, it seems pretty appropriate for a faction that's all about information and technology. Because we wanted these to be bonuses, rather than things you had to buy to take advantage of, the meta boons are all about giving characters a small Fame and Reputation bump for completing certain out-of-game objectives. But to make it more than a one-time objective, we opened it up so that a character can benefit from these bonuses up to once per Reputation Tier (so, up to 4 times on a high-level character).

Ok, so that's it for our latest faction reveal. Come back next week when we talk about our final Starfinder Society faction: the Acquisitives.

Thurston Hillman
Starfinder Society Developer