Return of a Pirate (Homebrew Starfinder Short) (Patreon)

The stars were like a breath of fresh air after nothing but stale, recycled air on a three month journey. How long had he been in there, dormant, all but sleeping? The power generator had long since run dry, so even when he used magic to bypass that issue, the systems couldn’t tell him how long it had been since his last check in.

Well, sort of. He had been dormant for ten revolutions of the nearest planet around the red dwarf. Leaning back in the surprisingly comfortable seat of the ship he’d “borrowed” from those that woke him up, he took catalog of what he had been able to discern.

Six new species had been discovered since he slept, two of which came from the Dead Sector! If he hadn’t looked at some of the tech in this ship he wouldn’t have believed it, but the melding of magic and technology in this ship was...strange. Most of the ship was purely technological, much to his surprise when he first used his magic to interface with it, but certain systems had the feel of various style of magitech utilized by certain species.

Turning his gaze to the reanimated pilot, Yashdo considered the strange species it once was. Bipedal, not a big surprise, two arms to his four, and not particularly noteworthy in most respects. What made them interesting was their origins, not their physiology like the gas giant barathu.

“How did your species even get its start, little meat-sack? For millennia it was accepted that no life would be found in the Dead Sector. Oh sure, some planets have places where magic does not function, but an entire sector of space is a very different matter. The various ‘intellectuals’ must have had a field day when you and your furry companions first left the Dead Sector,” Yashdo said to himself.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“This Drift Engine is interesting,” he mused three days later, “it provides a similar result as the Planar Jump Drives of my time, yet poses far less danger, is far cheaper, and the plane of existence it links to can only be reached through technology. Such a strange quirk, makes one wonder if it would have ever been discovered by those outside the Dead Sector.”

Yashdo’s musing was cut short as his cranial implant received an alert, the ship would be leaving the Drift in a few minutes. A smug smirk spreading under his cowl, Yashdo reminded himself that it had been centuries at least, the lair could very well have been discovered by now.

Making his way to the bridge, he felt a tinge of annoyance that teleportation magic didn’t work in the Drift. Teleporting from one room to another and startling his crew had been so much fun. Still, when the entire crew was undead slaved to his will, it wouldn’t have been as much fun anyway.

Upon reaching the bridge, he was confused to find that the entire room was awash in red lights. Why would-?

Yashdo’s pondering was cut short as the ship rocked from impact. Leaping into the captain’s chair, he immediately synched his mind to the ship’s systems to figure out what was happening.

The response he received boded well for his plans: the impact had been drop-pods repurposed for use in space, and utilized a design that he had made back when he was still living, mortal flesh. On top of that, he was able to access the guidance systems in the pods and hack his way through the firewall.

Slicing into the audio feed, Yashdo began broadcasting to the pods occupants currently trying to open the pods, “Greetings, I have an offer for you that you would be fools to refuse. But first, tell me what you know of the Star Cabal?”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Six hundred years. He had been dormant for so long, he had known that it had been a long time, but not known it. It hadn’t truly registered. Even undead, there was still only so much the mind could process at a time. Hearing that the Star Cabal had vanished five hundred years ago, not long after the humans first appeared, was shocking.

He had thought that their cabal would last centuries, not the mere one that it did. The four of them had sworn that their legacy would outlast the empires and nations that towered above them.

“No helping it, I’ll have to start over,” Yashdo muttered to himself.

Making his way to the office/trophy room of the previous leader of the local pirates, Yashdo considered how he was going to play this. He could go for overwhelming power from the start or slow subversion. Power would be more fun, but subversion was more likely to succeed.

Upon seeing what was behind the pirate leader, a glass case containing an old suit of vesk armor with the skull of its former wearer covered in cybernetics, Yashdo’s plans immediately changed. Ignoring what the fat human was saying, Yashdo promptly send a blast of magic into the human’s skull, causing the blood to boil and burst as the entire skull vanished.

Turning around, the vesk pirate escorting him was in the midst of targeting Yashdo with twin pistols when he wove another spell. The powered armor froze in place, trapping its wearer and rendering them unable to so much as twitch a finger.

“Not what I originally planned, but I think Khazkhak would much prefer to take the body of another vesk than a corpulent human. Now don’t you worry your scaly head, you will be the host to one of the founders of the Star Cabal. Or rather, your body will, you won’t survive the transition,” Yashdo commented before he paused, “The years dormant must have had a bigger impact than I expected, I never would have told them that before. Something to keep in mind.”

Playing an old, wordless tune through his cranial implant, Yashdo set about placing the vesk pirate into the armor that was to Khazkhak what his phylactery was to him.