Eox and the Undead

[pithica42]

I think "tourist" is genius for living people that go part way with necrografts. I've heard that term in some communities before for people that dip their toe in a particular 'lifestyle'.

[jimthegray]

what amazes me about the dead suns ap is the the eoxain diplomat comes off as a fairly stand up guy

[CeeJay]

He may be Lawful Evil... but he's still Lawful. ;)

[pithica42]

Did it actually list his alignment? I don't remember that and I'm AFB.

[CeeJay]

It did, yes.

[Ascalaphus]

I'm digging the idea that living elebrians have a cultural expectation of creating sufficient offspring before transitioning.

Also, as regards the corpse fleet: production capacity is certainly a thing, but so is having capable officers. Reanimating skilled enemy personnel, using techniques that maybe work even if the brain tissue has been exposed to hard vacuum, and switching their loyalties via necromancy - well, we're talking Borg assimilation strategic scariness now.

[jimthegray]

CeeJay wrote:

It did, yes.

yes he is listed as evil, but the lawful part of his axis appears to be pretty strong, he will even help you out in 1 moment with out any obvious payoff if you have played strength with him in the past

[CeeJay]

Ascalaphus wrote:

I'm digging the idea that living elebrians have a cultural expectation of creating sufficient offspring before transitioning.

Also, as regards the corpse fleet: production capacity is certainly a thing, but so is having capable officers. Reanimating skilled enemy personnel, using techniques that maybe work even if the brain tissue has been exposed to hard vacuum, and switching their loyalties via necromancy - well, we're talking Borg assimilation strategic scariness now.

I feel like the Corpse Fleet's capability should on average be gradually degrading over time despite their considerable best efforts, the moreso the clearer it becomes that they're more wedded to their vision of supremacy than they are to real fate of Eox itself. Although they would have gotten a big recent boost in support with the alliance between the Pact Worlds and the Veskarium.

[jimthegray]

CeeJay wrote:

Ascalaphus wrote:

I'm digging the idea that living elebrians have a cultural expectation of creating sufficient offspring before transitioning.

Also, as regards the corpse fleet: production capacity is certainly a thing, but so is having capable officers. Reanimating skilled enemy personnel, using techniques that maybe work even if the brain tissue has been exposed to hard vacuum, and switching their loyalties via necromancy - well, we're talking Borg assimilation strategic scariness now.

I feel like the Corpse Fleet's capability should on average be gradually degrading over time despite their considerable best efforts, the moreso the clearer it becomes that they're more wedded to their vision of supremacy than they are to real fate of Eox itself. Although they would have gotten a big recent boost in support with the alliance between the Pact Worlds and the Veskarium.

they likely also have out of system bases and support, but yes there shoule be some degradation of capability as time goes by.

though they do have the advantage of not needing to worry much abou life support and crew needs

[CeeJay]

jimthegray wrote:

CeeJay wrote:

Ascalaphus wrote:

I'm digging the idea that living elebrians have a cultural expectation of creating sufficient offspring before transitioning.

Also, as regards the corpse fleet: production capacity is certainly a thing, but so is having capable officers. Reanimating skilled enemy personnel, using techniques that maybe work even if the brain tissue has been exposed to hard vacuum, and switching their loyalties via necromancy - well, we're talking Borg assimilation strategic scariness now.

I feel like the Corpse Fleet's capability should on average be gradually degrading over time despite their considerable best efforts, the moreso the clearer it becomes that they're more wedded to their vision of supremacy than they are to real fate of Eox itself. Although they would have gotten a big recent boost in support with the alliance between the Pact Worlds and the Veskarium.

they likely also have out of system bases and support, but yes there shoule be some degradation of capability as time goes by.

though they do have the advantage of not needing to worry much abou life support and crew needs

Spoiler:

Yes, and I think their biggest disadvantage -- they can probably compensate technologically, for the most part -- is that they have to press-gang the corpses of sentients right out of battle, which means more and more of their ranks are the old style of undead and they have less and less benefit from Eox's accommodations with civilisation.

[pithica42]

SFS 1-01: Minor Spoiler:

The Corpse Fleet apparently use corpses not just for press-ganged troops, but also for spare parts in weapons/ships. In "Into the Unknown" there's a CF ship literally looking for brains to replace some part of their guidance system. They don't necessarily have to be zombified to still be useful. In fact, I'd argue the spare parts angle is probably better for the bulk of them.

Also, Animate Dead still provides complete control on the initial creation. You could create intelligent undead and then use normal military psychology to indoctrinate them over time. That looks like it happened to at least one Corpse Fleet officer in the Corpse Fleet gazette in DS3.

[Ascalaphus]

Well without any of the ethical limits/prime directives the Pact Worlds might have, the Corpse Fleet could be zipping onto as yet undiscovered civilizations, evaluating whether they're powerful ("target for knowledge acquisition through reanimation") or weak ("spare body parts").

Unlike the Pact Worlds and the Veskarium they don't have to devote resources to defending a home base, so they're much more mobile. On the other hand there might now be entire body-farm planets that we don't know about.

I'm assuming the Corpse Fleet got easy FTL through the Drift, whereas before they had to use heavy-duty magic for it. Of course pre-Gap Eox was one of the few civilizations that had enough magic to actually do that, and there were already hints that they were conquering worlds during Pathfinder times, but Distant Worlds shows them on only one world. So maybe modern Eox actually has several colonies that the rest of the Pact Worlds know nothing about, administered through the Corpse Fleet.

Another aspect to consider: are Elebrian undead privileged compared to undead animated from other species?

[Metaphysician]

My own view is that, while the Corpse Fleet might want to *become* the Undead Borg, Resistance is Futile, they aren't there yet. They've only existed in their modern form for less than three centuries, and they have to operate with only limited and surreptitious support from a major economy. That puts the breaks on one's ability to rapidly expand and retool. It also means that, for all their extant power, they have a certain fragility: if they take major losses in battle, they can't replace them as quickly as a nation-state military could ( secret shipyards and bases can't really compare with a planetary economy for pipeline ).

So, sure, they can raid worlds and take what they want. However, the only worlds they could actually conquer and control are going to be relatively undeveloped worlds that won't give them much other than baseline raw materials ( corpses ). Conquering a world to steal their tech base is a dubious proposition, since a world with a good enough tech base is a world that will probably cost a sizable chunk of their fleet to conquer. Doesn't do them much good to conquer a planet with ( say ) extensive adamantine mining and manufacturing, if a third of their numbers get lost in the process, with them needing a couple decades to rebuild.

[Metaphysician]

Oh, and just to note, sure, they can animate corpses as new recruits, and I'll grant that between necromancy and good old press gang tactics, they can make them obedient. However, I haven't seen anything to suggest they can magically *train* their newly animated conscriptees. So, press gang zombies will still be as unskilled as any other green arrivals to boot camp, needing weeks or months to turn into useful soldiers and sailors, and years into genuinely experienced personnel.

[pithica42]

They could always also go the more subtle route on at least some worlds.

Find the old retired soldiers, sailors, officers in a given society. The ones with the experience but with bodies long infirm. Then you recruit those, through a proxy, Old Man's War style. Give them new Bone Trooper or Ghoul or Vampire or whatever bodies are appropriate for their experience. Use basic military training techniques to indoctrinate them into your cause, then use them on milk runs against other weaker opponents until they've proven loyal. That's your NCO and officer candidate pool. The press gangs are your grunts and they're often essentially mindless anyway.

Also, frankly, since Animate Dead can turn anyone into any type of undead (up to CR=Caster Level), it's not like they have to convert them into the weakest form of undead. Even an untrained Ghoul or Marrowblight charging down a hill at an enemy is going to be effective for something. How much training did ghouls ever need in slaughtering civilians before?

Dead Suns 3: Has literally nothing to do with the adventure, but I'm spoiler tagging it anyway.:

In the Gazetteer for the Corpse Fleet, there is a captain that is a Vesk corpsefolk (intelligent zombie) who was a former military commander in the Vesk Fleet. He was 'recruited' after dying in battle to the Eoxian horde. They convinced him to turn on his own species and he's became one of the most effective officers against his species. Obviously, this means that recruiting fallen enemy soldiers can work.

Moreover, his current mission is going around and finding ships that were destroyed in space battle and turning the corpses either into CF soldiers or 'grist' for the necrotech factories.

Ascalaphus wrote:

Another aspect to consider: are Elebrian undead privileged compared to undead animated from other species?

It looks to me like they are on Eox, but not necessarily in the Corpse Fleet. It doesn't list their races, but based on description, I think most of the bone sages and upper classes appear to be former Elebrians. There's at least one Bone Sage that may be a android ghost or wraith. But I think it's generally true that Elebrians would have higher status. We'll probably know better on that after Pact Worlds comes out.

It doesn't look to me like the Corpse Fleet cares. Their philosophy looks more like 'undead first', life doesn't matter. Most of the officers listed are former Elebrians, but I get the impression at least that this is just a matter of seniority and history of successful missions more than anything. They seem to be a very meritocratic organization. It's more important that you win than what your corpse looks like.

In fact, I bet that exact line is in their 'diversity training' manuals in basic training.

[CeeJay]

Ascalaphus wrote:

Unlike the Pact Worlds and the Veskarium they don't have to devote resources to defending a home base, so they're much more mobile. On the other hand there might now be entire body-farm planets that we don't know about.

Splintered Worlds spoiler:

They do in fact have a home base, but it's a jury-rigged anchorage sort of affair and just the latest of many similar installations. Near Space and the Vast are apparently littered with former Corpse Fleet bases and installations.

Quote:

I'm assuming the Corpse Fleet got easy FTL through the Drift, whereas before they had to use heavy-duty magic for it.

There was no "before." The Corpse Fleet as such is strictly a product of post-Gap politics and circumstance.

Quote:

Of course pre-Gap Eox was one of the few civilizations that had enough magic to actually do that, and there were already hints that they were conquering worlds during Pathfinder times, but Distant Worlds shows them on only one world.

Were there? Where? I had the impression that interstellar travel was immensely difficult and time-consuming before the Drift -- so was just interplanetary travel, for that matter -- so I don't think that any of the actors familiar from the Pact Worlds were doing it routinely. (Of course being dead before you mount a long interstellar flight could help.)

Quote:

So maybe modern Eox actually has several colonies that the rest of the Pact Worlds know nothing about, administered through the Corpse Fleet.

Someone on Eox is clearly using the Corpse Fleet, but "modern Eox" as a gestalt entity is fairly clearly not.

My candidate:

There's a supposedly apolitical group of ancient liches operating on Eox called the Conclave of Whispers, who claim to focus their efforts on researching the spiritual aspects of undeath. I suspect that the real heart of support for the Corpse Fleet in Eoxian society -- aside from one active Bone Sage of the Eternal Convocation who explicitly outlaws the living from her domain -- is this Conclave. Or at least someone, or several someones, in it.

[pithica42]

Is your candidate...:

The Festrog Queen? If so, I got the same vibe.

[CeeJay]

:) She occurred to me (and is probably involved), but my money for the main offender is actually on someone else.

[metatron]

pithica42 wrote:

The term I've seen used the most as a derogatory term for the living in canon has been "breathers". Both Androids and Eoxians seem to use it. I like it, as it kind of seethes with superiority. Haha, the breathers can't handle all the smoke in the club.

Defecator! Filthy defecator!

[pithica42]

Nice!

The converse of that is, of course, "rotter."

We were hold up the the aft cargo bay behind a line of gear when the rotters breached the airlock and forced their way in. Even with the environmental protections up, you could practically taste decay in the air. It was all I could do to keep from vomiting in my helmet when the call came in to open fire. The noise broke the sickness in my gut as I emptied my first clip into the oncoming horde.

[Metaphysician]

pithica42 wrote:

They could always also go the more subtle route on at least some worlds.

Find the old retired soldiers, sailors, officers in a given society. The ones with the experience but with bodies long infirm. Then you recruit those, through a proxy, Old Man's War style. Give them new Bone Trooper or Ghoul or Vampire or whatever bodies are appropriate for their experience. Use basic military training techniques to indoctrinate them into your cause, then use them on milk runs against other weaker opponents until they've proven loyal. That's your NCO and officer candidate pool. The press gangs are your grunts and they're often essentially mindless anyway.

Also, frankly, since Animate Dead can turn anyone into any type of undead (up to CR=Caster Level), it's not like they have to convert them into the weakest form of undead. Even an untrained Ghoul or Marrowblight charging down a hill at an enemy is going to be effective for something. How much training did ghouls ever need in slaughtering civilians before?

While you certainly *can* 'recruit' experienced soldiers/etc via undeath, that's not exactly a trivial effort itself. You still need to find them, and either turn them or brainwash them, neither of which is trivial efforts. Its something the Corpse Fleet can ( and obviously does ) do, but its not a magic button that eliminates all training pipeline problems.

As for simply turning out high CR undead, a ghoul doesn't need training in slaughtering helpless civilians. However, if you want to actually run a functioning modern navy and army, you need skilled personnel. "Terror killing civilians" won't keep the ships functioning, or man them, or build new ones. It also won't fill your need for skilled commanders, or infantry able to operate at a tactical level above 'charge and murder'.

The Corpse Fleet is not a wandering mob of ravenous undead. Its not even a sketchy mercenary band slash bandit gang, that happens to drink blood. Its an entire modern ( space ) naval fleet with ( space ) marine forces, using cutting edge ( magic ) technology, that went 'rogue' and supports itself through piracy. They need highly trained personnel, for the same reason the USS Nimitz can't simply slap a few hundred prisoners in irons and tell them to grab an oar and row.

[Metaphysician]

Also, lacking a home world or home base is *not* an advantage. Sure, you don't need to spend resources defending it, but it also means you don't have all the resources that a home base provides. You effectively have to operate on just what you can carry, which is a comparative shoe string. It also *direly* limits your ability to replace ships, unless your "fleet" includes some kind of giant mobile drydock ( at which point, mobile or not, *that* is the "home base" that you need to defend ).

[pithica42]

I'm not trying to say it eliminates every training problem. I'm trying to say that it changes them in ways that drastically affects available strategies.

You can go to a vessel that lost a fight (whether with you or with anyone else), drag all the corpses aboard, animate them, and give them a choice. Join or get fed to the ship as spare parts. Even if only a few choose 'Join' it's still a recruitment path that isn't available to any other Navy/Army/what have you. It's an advantage. A big advantage. They already have military training, all you have to do from there is split them up and indoctrinate them the same way you would with any new recruit.

The corpse fleet can recruit from among the old anywhere they can put up a recruitment station. They can turn the fallen of any side in any battle into shock troops, new recruits, or spare parts. They can wipe out an industrial center with a biological weapon and then turn the people into corpsefolk workers in their own factories building their own ships. Again, those workers already have training, you're just changing management/location. If they balk, they're ship parts.

It doesn't 'solve' everything. But it does change things. The created still have free will. You can end up with defectors or saboteurs. It still has problems. You have to ensure you cull any of them you think even have a chance of balking right off the bat. I'm willing to bet that when they have time they use something like speak with dead to eliminate the ones that would certainly balk (priests of pharasma). Your indoctrination, propaganda, psyops, training, and command/control stuff all has to be on point to make them choose to stick it out with you. But I'd bet it works vastly more often than it doesn't. The alternative is death or becoming a literally mindless cog in the machine, after all.

[avr]

Sounds like a recipe for mutinies. Particularly since the Corpse Fleet isn't going to allow people to leave any time soon, can't allow even the most supervised shore leave, and forcibly becoming undead is going to make many press-ganged recruits angry. Regardless of whether the alternative would be death.

It's different if you're creating a gang of vampire spawn to jump the heroes within a few days (at which point you expect them to die), this sort of thing has to last years.

[thejeff]

Metaphysician wrote:

Also, lacking a home world or home base is *not* an advantage. Sure, you don't need to spend resources defending it, but it also means you don't have all the resources that a home base provides. You effectively have to operate on just what you can carry, which is a comparative shoe string. It also *direly* limits your ability to replace ships, unless your "fleet" includes some kind of giant mobile drydock ( at which point, mobile or not, *that* is the "home base" that you need to defend ).

This is the real point. It doesn't really matter how easy or hard it is to recruit new crew or how trained they happen to be.

This is a fleet, not a marauding horde. They need resources. They need not just repairs, but new ships, replacements and even more if they want to grow stronger. No point in all this new crew if you don't have ships for them. They need not just a drydock, but heavy industry, factories, shipyards, the resources of a planet or at least a nation.

Which is largely why I originally assumed Eox was heavily supporting them.

Every raid you go on, every conflict risks losing ships. You have to be able to replace them or you can't keep doing it. Even if you can animate crews from the ships you destroy. You might be able to salvage some ships you beat, but that's not sustainable.

Beyond that, the Corpse Fleet is old. They left something like 300 years ago. Now that doesn't really bother undead, but have there been no serious tech advances in that time? Obviously it can't be as fast as our tech has advanced in the last 300 years (Imagine a rogue British fleet (best of the day) from the early 1700s being a threat to a modern navy), but there's been plenty of contact with other cultures and lots of chance for technological advancement since then. The Corpse Fleet should be seriously outdated by now.
Unless the known worlds are a lot more stagnant than they should be and/or the Corpse Fleet has some serious industry backing them up, they really shouldn't be too serious a threat.

That said, we're probably looking too closely at this. The Corpse Fleet is cool. Raising the dead from space battles to serve as crew is cool. Digging to deeply into how it all actually works doesn't serve the rule of cool.

[pithica42]

That's where indoctrination comes in. You use isolation, routine, propaganda, and team building to make the individuals want to stay. You play up their new advantages, and the glory of their new lives. They're different now, better, stronger, faster, and amortal. You convince them that you're right, that they agree with you, and they don't mutiny.

Ideally, the whole thing would be a multi-step process.

Speak with Dead or use other divination or technological resources on the corpses to discern how they'd likely manage the transition. Any corpse that has any indication that they wouldn't convert gets turned into shock troops or spare parts. If you don't have time to pre-check, you can always use more shock troops or spare parts.

Animate the remaining in an environment you control and give them a choice. Any baby-dead that balks, in any way, gets turned into spare parts. They were going to rot anyway otherwise.

Send the joiners through a rigorous basic training and brain washing program, and use divination, technology, and mundane intelligence to watch their behavior. Anyone that balks about their new life at any point 'washes out' and gets turned into spare parts. Or they get commanded and put on the front lines in a 'suicide mission'.

Split the graduates up and send them on milk runs or to stable manufacturing centers with experienced and loyal commanders to test them while continuing to monitor them while doing low-level tasks. Meritorious behavior is rewarded. Mutinous behavior gets you "transferred" same as above. Keep feeding them propaganda and playing up their superiority, give them time to forget their old life, feed them the lie until they come to believe it.

At some point, the vast majority of them either drink the kool-aid or wash out and become spare parts or cannon-fodder. Either way, you're stronger, and you didn't have to raise, feed, educate, and indoctrinate them for 20+ years. Really valuable feeder stock (like research scientists) can even be forcibly controlled indefinitely by their creator under the tenets of Animate Dead or through spells like command undead (though, ideally, that'd be the exception).

It's not a flawless system, by any means. Someone could slip through and play along until their mutiny would hurt. I think there is at least one example of this already in canon. But I do think it gives them opportunities no other military has, opportunities that are massively advantageous. They can play a lot faster and looser than the other groups and still come out ahead.

[CeeJay]

thejeff wrote:

This is a fleet, not a marauding horde. They need resources. They need not just repairs, but new ships, replacements and even more if they want to grow stronger. No point in all this new crew if you don't have ships for them. They need not just a drydock, but heavy industry, factories, shipyards, the resources of a planet or at least a nation.

Which is largely why I originally assumed Eox was heavily supporting them.

They kind of are like a marauding horde, a little? You're not wrong to speculate that their situation would leave them desperately short of resources if Eox wasn't actually supporting them.

Spoiler:

Their supporting faction on Eox got them started -- apparently there are people on the Pact Worlds who speculate that the original plan was for the Corpse Fleet to function as an unofficial reserve if the Pact didn't work out, but this went sideways -- and they have apparently kept running by scavenging both personnel and equipment and building their own impromptu bases and facilities ever since.

Whoever is supporting them from Eox clearly is not able to gift them much in the way of resources, because so many of their actions are consistent with trying to preserve limited personnel and materiel. They sat out the Swarm War, a decision which decisively estranged them from most of the Bone Sages whatever the original plan was, and their biggest one-off boost in personnel came from raiding hospital ships during the Stardust Plague. One has to wonder if that was really the kind of heroic proof of Eoxian superiority everyone signed up for, but it does hint that they are working in pretty difficult circumstances to build toward their ultimate goal and are trying to avoid picking too many really big fights until they reach it.

That said, the Corpse Fleet is still a match for many defensive fleets in the Pact Worlds, apparently, but they have had to cannibalize lots of resources from across space to stay viable. One of their big capital ships currently is a zombified oma reanimated after a space battle. At least one admiral's ship is a converted freighter. Their bases were originally built to Eoxian standards but have steadily diverged in design and materials, presumably based on whatever was available. They're like an army permanently "living off the land" in a way.

It basically seems that the Corpse Fleet "going renegade" might have started out as a wily necrovite ruse, but if that was true (and there's nothing definite) it got out of control and ended up really going renegade, and their operation has that feel to it.

[thejeff]

CeeJay wrote:

thejeff wrote:

This is a fleet, not a marauding horde. They need resources. They need not just repairs, but new ships, replacements and even more if they want to grow stronger. No point in all this new crew if you don't have ships for them. They need not just a drydock, but heavy industry, factories, shipyards, the resources of a planet or at least a nation.

Which is largely why I originally assumed Eox was heavily supporting them.

** spoiler omitted **...

The "permanently living off the land" thing is what I don't buy. It can work for a low tech army. It makes no sense for a modern or SF one. You can "live off the land" scavenging food and even horses and you've got blacksmiths to forge more swords and spears.

You can't do the same with tanks and planes and ships and all the modern or SF paraphernalia of war. Industrial warfare.

Now, if the Corpse Fleet took off into the back of beyond, somewhere off in the Void and conquered a primitive world or two and turned them into undead industrial factory worlds, then they might be able to continue to pose a serious threat. Especially if their contacts on Eox kept feeding them modern technology.

[CeeJay]

I don't suppose there's anything to stop you from speculating they did that, if you feel it's necessary. The dimensions and full nature of their organization are still mysterious. Maybe they happened across automated magical foundries or the equivalent of a Star Forge or something, like Revan in Knights of the Old Republic; or maybe you can have their doing so as a plot point in a game. There are any number of possibilities.

[pithica42]

thejeff wrote:

Beyond that, the Corpse Fleet is old. They left something like 300 years ago. Now that doesn't really bother undead, but have there been no serious tech advances in that time?

They haven't been sitting idle for those 300 years. They find dead planets or weaker colonies and convert them to corpse fleet ship yards and research sites. They steal technology and magic that they come across or is in the minds of the corpses they find. They bleed the place dry of resources, then they abandon it and move on to the next spot. The vast is littered with the abandoned husks of their shipyards, I think it said that dozens have been found by explorers.

They've also got agents in Eox and on other worlds feeding them intel and weapons developments that they modify and build off of. They almost certainly buy tech under the table from places like Apostae or the Hellknights. It's not like they're lost in space or trying to find Earth while being hunted by a superior force like BSG was. If anything, they're described as still being on the bleeding edge (or past it) of military tech, compared to the PW.

I think Ceejay's right that they probably started out as a sanctioned false-flag mutiny and were getting active help from Eox, but the situation changed at some point, probably with the arrival of the swarm. After that, popular consent swayed significantly in Eox, and only now are they starting to get cut off from Eoxian resources and are lashing out.

[avr]

thejeff wrote:

The "permanently living off the land" thing is what I don't buy. It can work for a low tech army. It makes no sense for a modern or SF one. You can "live off the land" scavenging food and even horses and you've got blacksmiths to forge more swords and spears.

You can't do the same with tanks and planes and ships and all the modern or SF paraphernalia of war. Industrial warfare.

You kind of can using UPBs and workshops in Starfinder's universe though. It's an imagined extension of printing parts I think.

pithica42 wrote:

That's where indoctrination comes in. You use isolation, routine, propaganda, and team building to make the individuals want to stay. You play up their new advantages, and the glory of their new lives. They're different now, better, stronger, faster, and amortal. You convince them that you're right, that they agree with you, and they don't mutiny.

That can work to an extent, but when things go wrong you get mutinies anyway. Propaganda et al. is not perfect. Sepoys in India would mutiny sometimes under the British Raj for example. If you can take your ship and just go, and live off the 'land', then it becomes even more attractive.

[CeeJay]

avr wrote:

thejeff wrote:

The "permanently living off the land" thing is what I don't buy. It can work for a low tech army. It makes no sense for a modern or SF one. You can "live off the land" scavenging food and even horses and you've got blacksmiths to forge more swords and spears.

You can't do the same with tanks and planes and ships and all the modern or SF paraphernalia of war. Industrial warfare.

You kind of can using UPBs and workshops in Starfinder's universe though. It's an imagined extension of printing parts I think.

That's a good comparison and I think a correct one.

It's worth noting the Starfinder universe has lots of "Science!" but that it's not much beholden to actual science. Just in terms of game mechanics, with enough UPB's on hand you can do hull repairs on the fly in the depths of space. Actually upgrading your ships would be trickier, you probably need real facilities for that, but adapting alien technology and magic on-the-fly should be possible too.

[Simeon]

I like the idea of Eoxians trying to play undead as glamorous and luxurious. Ads for sunbathing in the glow of radioactive fires, trying to get rid of a little of that nasty undead paleness. Open air spaceship racing, cryoblast dueling, using lesser undead creatures to fight elaborate proxy battles.

[CeeJay]

Simeon wrote:

I like the idea of Eoxians trying to play undead as glamorous and luxurious. Ads for sunbathing in the glow of radioactive fires, trying to get rid of a little of that nasty undead paleness. Open air spaceship racing, cryoblast dueling, using lesser undead creatures to fight elaborate proxy battles.

ZOMG, all of these suggestions are amazing. :D

[jimthegray]

CeeJay wrote:

Ascalaphus wrote:

Unlike the Pact Worlds and the Veskarium they don't have to devote resources to defending a home base, so they're much more mobile. On the other hand there might now be entire body-farm planets that we don't know about.

** spoiler omitted **

Quote:

I'm assuming the Corpse Fleet got easy FTL through the Drift, whereas before they had to use heavy-duty magic for it.

There was no "before." The Corpse Fleet as such is strictly a product of post-Gap politics and circumstance.

Quote:

Of course pre-Gap Eox was one of the few civilizations that had enough magic to actually do that, and there were already hints that they were conquering worlds during Pathfinder times, but Distant Worlds shows them on only one world.

Were there? Where? I had the impression that interstellar travel was immensely difficult and time-consuming before the Drift -- so was just interplanetary travel, for that matter -- so I don't think that any of the actors familiar from the Pact Worlds were doing it routinely. (Of course being dead before you mount a long interstellar flight could help.)

Quote:

So maybe modern Eox actually has several colonies that the rest of the Pact Worlds know nothing about, administered through the Corpse Fleet.

Someone on Eox is clearly using the Corpse Fleet, but "modern Eox" as a gestalt entity is fairly clearly not.

** spoiler omitted **...

yeah it was hard to have space travel but we know that the witchwyrd had some form of ftl

[Owen K. C. Stephens]

The Corpse Fleet is a fascinating concept, and one I have spent a lot of time considering.

Obviously there's a good chance they are receiving support from at least some Eoxian groups, though how much and how often is an open question. But, for example, blueprints and technical specifications are easy to send someone in a compressed data format.

Similarly while some undead need food and rations of some kind, others don't. The vast majority need no air, they need no antivirals or antivenins. They need supplies--but a high-tech generator with a lifespan of centuries that powers primarily energy weapons can take care of a huge percentage of their problems.

While they need some bases of operation, they can select worlds with no habitable planets. They are often able to gather resources in places other forces wouldn't even bother to look.

They need to replace those lost to combat, but no one ages out. No one loses a step in speed, or cognitive function. At some level that might become a problem (if everyone with mid and high rank is going to keep that rank for millennia, how do low-level officers advance?), it also allows them to use experts to find solutions and know their brain trust remains strong.

And, they likely have a high percentage of spellcasters among them given Cox's culture. Magic covers many gaps in operation.

[kaid]

I would think over time the pressure to get advancement for mid/high rank people would be to keep expanding the military. Also losses of starships is likely violent enough that even the more hardy undead may have trouble surviving it or if they do are just lost drifting forever until they encounter a planet or sun.

[pithica42]

Yep. It looks like what they do is cellularize the fleet whenever they need to promote. You have Admirals and Commodores that command one or more ships, along with Captains in charge of their own ships, and if they need to promote, they just add a new ship or new cell of ships. It also gives the distinct impression that the top brass can only remain the top brass as long as they're good enough to stay that way.

It's like Game of Corpse Thrones. You win or you die.

[thejeff]

pithica42 wrote:

Yep. It looks like what they do is cellularize the fleet whenever they need to promote. You have Admirals and Commodores that command one or more ships, along with Captains in charge of their own ships, and if they need to promote, they just add a new ship or new cell of ships. It also gives the distinct impression that the top brass can only remain the top brass as long as they're good enough to stay that way.

It's like Game of Corpse Thrones. You win or you die.

But for that they need ships, which reinforces that they need heavy industry backing them up. They're not just a pirate fleet out there, they're at least the equivalent in economic power of one of the Pact Worlds. Which means more than scattered easily abandoned shipyards in space. You need all the supply chain that feeds the shipyards.

Sure, you could probably do that in an asteroid belt, especially since you don't need much in the way of oxygen/food/etc. But on the scale that's implied, it's not a casual operation. Not a "move in, plunder and move on".

You shouldn't be able to build space fleets out of nothing, even if you don't need anything to live on.

[Nixitur]

Owen K. C. Stephens wrote:

if everyone with mid and high rank is going to keep that rank for millennia, how do low-level officers advance?

Hmm, I'm now imagining the Corpse Fleet engaging in some good ol'-fashioned Klingon Promotion. Sure, none of the officers lose cognitive function or power, but they may very well become complacent or stray from the Corpse Fleet's stated goal. And if, as suggested by pithica, the Corpse Fleet is largely meritocratic, that would probably be seen as actually fine. If everyone is unaging, a weak commander would obviously be seen as a huge liability, and as someone to be quickly replaced.

[pithica42]

thejeff wrote:

But for that they need ships, which reinforces that they need heavy industry backing them up. They're not just a pirate fleet out there, they're at least the equivalent in economic power of one of the Pact Worlds. Which means more than scattered easily abandoned shipyards in space. You need all the supply chain that feeds the shipyards.

I've already been over this. They have that.

nothing to do with story but mentioned in Dead Suns 3:

They have a rogue planet called Barrow that is entirely dedicated to their required industry for fleet operations and ship building. It's full of factories turning out new ships and military research facilities designing new ships, weapons, and all the required weapons manufacturing et al for ops. It looks like their MO is to strip these kinds of places bare and use up every resource they can before moving on, much like the swarm.

Moreover, this is a post post-industrial culture. They don't need what we think of as 'heavy industry' to build ships (none of the governments or corporate entities do). Really, time is the only scarce resource for most of these groups (and undead have the advantage of having a lot more of that, generally). Everything else is available in abundance. They have nano-tech, super advanced bioengineering, technomancy, and whatever the heck UPB is. They have the equivalent of nano-scale 3d printers that can make other nano-scale 3d printers. All they need is time to make what they need. Economics is fundamentally different for all of the major groups in the game.

The corpse fleet and Eox also make their ships, apparently, at least partly out of corpses, dismembered undead, and other engineered biological material. They can, potentially, literally take a pile of corpses and some mutineers and any asteroid floating in space add some UPB and turn it into a ship. They don't even necessarily need people or a factory for this, they could have some weird pre-programmed assembly ooze like thing that just eats these things and spits out a ship whenever it's done 'digesting' the raw materials. They don't need industry in the same way that we do, because it's possible they have factory ships that can make copies of themselves or make other ships, like having babies. (I don't know that this exists, explicitly, in canon, but it's heavily implied and certainly possible with what is explicitly listed.)

[pithica42]

I feel like I'm beating a dead horse, so I'm going to let this whole thing drop and get back on more flavorful topic talk, but I did re-read the Corpse Fleet Gazetteer last night, and I noticed this...

Spoiler:

The CF fleet is described as being divided into multiple task forces (it doesn't say how many, but there are at least 3) with each one being about the same size as the planetary fleet of an individual PW planet. It also mentions that they have dozens of the factory/research planets like Barrow, not just the one. They also have made diplomatic forays into several alien systems and trade with them for new tech and (by implication) corpses/volunteers. They also travel around looking for various plagues and offering the sick a way out. Apparently one of them recently basically doubled their population, which is pretty huge. So in addition to all the other things I mentioned already, they have numerous other input/processing streams.

I'm honestly finding it harder and harder to believe that the CF fleet has any real intention of rejoining with Eox, at all (except possibly to make it a protectorate), and their stated desire to do so is at this point primarily propaganda to help with recruiting efforts on Eox and/or fleet morale for the old guard. It's quite possible that they're larger than the Azlanti Star Empire or any of the other listed powers. I won't know that for sure, of course, until further details about the other powers emerge. Though I'm convinced, at this point, they could have won the Vesk/PW war if they had tried.

[CeeJay]

pithica42 wrote:

beating a dead horse

I believe they prefer "immortuate equine." :D

for pithica:

Your speculations sound about right to me. I believe the incident that doubled their numbers was the Stardust Plague which was unusually virulent. The sense I have is that they're big on paper but probably aren't in a position to actually take on the Pact Worlds yet (I think their task forces compare in size to the defense fleets of certain organizations, like possibly the Knights of Golarion, various Hellknight Orders and so on)?

[pithica42]

CeeJay wrote:

pithica42 wrote:

beating a dead horse

I believe they prefer "immortuate equine." :D

** spoiler omitted **

And I believe you owe me a new keyboard since I just spewed mountain dew all over this one. :-)

[Ravingdork]

Where is the Corpse Fleet Gazetteer?

[starlite_cutie]

The first thought that came to mind, when I came across this thread, was that Eox might have originally have been just a huge planet that was designated as a kind of interstellar cemetery; To save space on habitable planets.

Then a few necromancers had to go and ruin it for everyone.

[pithica42]

Dead Suns 3: Splintered Worlds has a Gazeteer on Eox, the Corpse Fleet, and some other undead stuff.

[CeeJay]

Okay, well, I'm in the midst of this Eox adventure and I'm not going to have Pact Worlds for a while yet. And I'm kinda dying, so to speak, to know. What places on Eox does Pact Worlds talk about? What's the deal with the Borais? Is there anything in it that would have bearing on the Pact Port setting in particular?

[pithica42]

I've only skimmed through it, but it looks very similar to the gazetteer from Dead Suns 3. There is some new information, though. It's 10 pages long, and I think the Gazeeteer in DS3 was only like 4. 1 page is a flat map.

Spoilers from Pact Worlds:

The notable locations are Arran Rifts, Blackmoon, Catacomb Mountains, Church of Silence, Eternal Barrows, Exantius, Fading Run, Grim Reach, Halls of the Living, Karus, The Lifeline, Necroforge, Orphys (with a city stat block), Oubliette, Pact Port, The Pyre, Rememberance Rock, Sprial Basilica, Thanox, Urabron, and Zinhew.

Pact Port in particular only has a couple paragraphs. It's a little longer than the one in DS3. I can quote the whole thing to you in a PM if you want.

EDIT: It's in a spoiler tag, so it probably doesn't matter...

Quote:

Pact Port is the only city on Eox that is not part of the

Necropoleis. Instead, it is a standard city designed primarily
as a landing place for Pact Worlds trade ships and for the
warehousing of Eoxian goods for export. Pact Port is a small
domed city of 100,000 denizens, more than half living, and
is administered by Sadrat Phain (NE male elebrian ghoul
envoy) in the name of the Conclave of Whispers. Within the
dome, ventilation systems maintain air designed to support
as many forms of life native to the Pact Worlds as possible.
Sadrat is permissive about most issues, upholding only those
laws required by the Absalom Pact, with the sole exception of
strictly forbidding any relic of ancient Eox to be removed from
the world without the approval of the Convocation.

Every year, dozens of travelers come through Pact Port to
purchase necrografts and have them installed. Before making
the trip to Orphys or the Necroforge, they are directed to a small
neighborhood in Pact Port called the Hospice, where necrograft
merchants display catalogs of their wares. Prospective patients
must be ready to negotiate the exorbitant fees and ironclad
contracts before they can have the necessary surgeries.
Necrograft companies maintain these storefronts in Pact Port
to dissuade those not serious about the procedures and to keep
unwanted applicants from their front doors.

They mention Zo! (same guy from SFS1-09 and 1-05, I believe) and a few other NPCs, most of which are in DS3.

They have a full page on just Eoxian Society.

Borais aren't undead. They're 'half-dead', often the product of a botched resurrection. I was really looking forward to/hoping for corpsefolk. Personally I really don't like them. They're the only race out of the book that I had issue with.

[CeeJay]

Oh hey, thanks, that's really useful.

The Borais do sound a little... confusing. Ah well. Thanks again.