Thursday, October 31, 2019

ELECTROGEIST

Looking like lightning in an emaciated humanoid form, the only indication of this creature's undead provenance is the baleful electric blue eyes that seem to bore straight through the target of the creature's ire.

When dealing with relatives or older colleagues using new technology, the panicked declaration “it’s like it has a mind of its own!” is an all-too-common refrain. While most domestic instances are simply a matter of user error and ignorance, adventurers know that in extreme cases, the same signs of technological malfunction may be signs of an electrogeist inhabiting the device.

Electrogeists are powerful undead creatures that form when a learned magic user or technologist’s corporeal being is destroyed while attempting a great technological feat - deliberately so or not. Documented cases of electrogeist creation include failures to successfully transfer memories into a digital consciousness, such as when something goes catastrophically awry in uploading oneself into an artificial intelligence, or when a flaw in the design of a technological device results in the death of the inventor. The amount of intelligence that it requires to be reborn as an electrogeist means that many of the spirits were formerly technomancers or mechanics, though intelligent mystics have been recorded.

Somewhere between a spirit and data, electrogeists are able to inhabit both physical and digital spaces with equal adroitness, allowing them to surprise, confound, and terrify the living - all the better to inflict pain and panic upon the corporeal forms that the electrogeists resent and despise.

Held together by will and spite, electrogeists take on forms of pure electric current and retain the electromechanical knowledge they possessed during life. These talents combined allows them to freely enter and inhabit digital technology. During this age of increasing interconnectivity, this ability makes them particularly dangerous, as they are able to upload themselves as raw data into one machine and emerge from a networked device miles away. Electrogeists may remain undetected for months within a computer system, stalking their targets through the network and waiting for them to be alone before springing an ambush, then retreating back into the network, leaving what looks like a tragic electrical accident in their wake.

Electrogeists can be found in nearly any technologically-advanced societies, though they seem especially prevalent in cultures where technological advancement is divorced from ethical concerns and safety considerations. Their intelligence and technomagical powers make them dangerous and difficult to destroy; a canny electrogeist can live for centuries, if it is able to control it’s violent urges. Particularly evil electrogeists take a perverse pleasure in clandestinely assisting unwitting inventors and engineers to create ever more interconnected societal constructs, the better to bring entire civilizations toppling into death and chaos through the electrogeists’ sabotage of the systems that it helped create.

Though reports of electrogeists in the service of the Corpse Fleet have yet to be publicly verified, the Stewards appear to be taking even the threat of these cyber-saboteurs seriously, investing heavily in cybersecurity personnel in order to protect Pact Worlds territory.


Electrogeist CR 11


XP 12,800
CN Medium undead (incorporeal)
Init +5; Senses darkvision 60 ft., blindsight (electricity) 60 ft., darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +20

DEFENSE
HP 155


EAC 23; KAC 24
Fort +12; Ref +10; Will +14
Immunities Undead immunities, electricity

OFFENSE


Speed 30 ft., fly 60 ft. (perfect)
Melee claws +17 (3d4+11 E)
Ranged crackling bolt +19 (2d8+11 E)
Offensive abilities breath weapon (60 ft line, 12d6 electricity damage, DC 20, usable every 1d4 rounds)
Spells Known (CL 11th; ranged +19)
4th (3/day) - overload systems (DC 22), digital doorway
3rd (6/day) - arcing surge (DC 21), discharge (DC 21), handy junkbot, synaptic pulse (DC 21)
2nd (at will) - inject nanobots (DC 20), microbot assault

STATISTICS


Str +0; Dex +5; Con -; Int +8; Wis +3; Cha +0
Skills Computers +25, Engineering +25, Stealth +20
Languages Common, 8 others; shortwave 100 ft.
Other abilities incorporeal, unliving

SPECIAL ABILITIES


Blindsight (Ex) Electrogeists are so attuned to electricity that they are able to sense the bioelectricity of living things and electronic constructs. Electrogeists gain blindsense (electricity) out to a range of 60 feet; this typically allows them to detect living creatures and constructs with the (technological) trait. At the GM’s discretion, some creatures may not have bioelectricity and thus would not be detected by this blindsight - assuming they aren’t wearing any electronic gear.

Shortwave (Ex) An electrogeist can communicate wirelessly. This acts as telepathy, but only with other creatures with this ability or constructs with the technological subtype.

Inhabit System (Ex) An electrogeist that has made a Computers check to gain root access to a functioning computer can enter the computer as a move, gaining full comprehension of any data that it contains and having full control over any systems managed by the computer. While inhabiting a computer, the electrogeist can be detected with a successful Computers check opposed by the electrogeist’s Computers check. On a success, the PC can identify that something inside the computer is within the computer writing its own code in real time; on a failure, the PCs mistake the electrogeist for a virus or a bug. An electrogeist can remain in a computer indefinitely. If a computer is given the broken condition, the electrogeist can exit the computer into any adjacent space as an immediate action; otherwise, the electrogeist is trapped in the damaged computer, though if the computer and data is not destroyed, the electrogeist can emerge in the event that the computer is ever repaired. An electrogeist that has root access to multiple networked computers can move between them as a swift action.

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