I’ve also posted this on the Starfinder Reddit, but I thought I’d do it here as well for a bigger draw. So, a little backstory. I went to Dragonmeet in London this weekend and decided to sign up for a couple of organised play Starfinder games as I’m trying to learn the rules and get a group together. Fun times, played a few different scenarios and character classes to try. I’d never actually done organised play like this before, wound up with a Society number just for paperwork purposes on the GM’s purposes. But I also entered into a charity raffle, one of the prizes of which is a Society boon that includes rules for a Manticore frame starship. Context clues will probably tell you how the raffle turned out.
I’ve looked around and it seems like the Society doesn’t have any games running in my city (any more at least, the last reference I could find comes from August...) so it’s unlikely this boon will see real play beyond the occasional convention game. I’m trying to get something together, but until then I wanted to share some of the love. So thought I’d get involved more with the Starfinder community as a whole and turn the naming of the ship over to you guys for some fun.
For context, Manticore ships are explorers with combat load outs. I won’t recreate statlines or exact copy text but the skinny of it is the Manticore line of ships used to be the Starfinder Society’s tool for clearing the way for more scientific vessels. However, most of them were lost in the Scoured Stars incident so this particular Manticore is one of only a handful left in circulation. Its loadout in general seems more like a military than an exploration vessel; lots of guns, some very pragmatic safety mods and zero luxury trappings. A soldier would love this ship, an envoy would hate it.
The pilot character I created to go along with this Manticore is an SRO (Sentient Robotic Organism) named Ancillary-9. Ancillary-9 used to be a ‘dumb’ AI who served solely as a navigational computer and general assistant for the Manticore’s previous pilot, a Lashunta soldier/mechanic named Boyajian. Eventually, all of Boyajian’s tinkering and upgrades on Ancillary-9’s positronic brain crossed whatever threshold is needed to upgrade to full sentience and house a soul, causing him to fully awaken. Believing this to be some kind of miracle, Ancillary turned to the worship of Triune and the study of magic, becoming a technomancer. Ancillary-9 has some missing memories of the time between gaining sentience and what is now called the Scoured Stars incident; when he regained awareness, Boyajian was missing and Ancillary-9 is now the sole pilot of the Manticore vessel.
So, what do you think a religious robot might name a military ship with a chequered past and missing pilot?