Contemplative Heritages

Whether it's a nurtured response or a natural consequence of your instinctive genius, your brain rewards you with endorphins whenever you witness your inferior rivals flailing helplessly in a mental sea. You gain the Shielding Arrogance reaction.

Just as antibodies isolate and eliminate pathogens in the bloodstream, your brain has evolved its own psychic defenses that deflect unwanted thoughts. You gain mental resistance equal to half your level (minimum 1). If you roll a success on a saving throw against a mental effect that would apply the controlled condition, you critically succeed instead.

Your brainwaves are so powerful that occult magic manifests and dances to the tune of your very thoughts. Choose one cantrip from the occult spell list. You can cast this cantrip as an occult innate spell at will. A cantrip is heightened to a spell rank equal to half your level rounded up.

Contemplatives' guided evolution has shrunk their limbs and expanded their immense brains. Rarely, by some genetic quirk, a contemplative like you is born with a body more closely resembling your less specialized ancestors. With longer, stronger limbs, you are still unmistakably a contemplative. You lose the atrophied trait. In addition, you gain 10 Hit Points from your ancestry instead of 6.

Not content with their own thoughts, some contemplatives opened themselves to other minds seeking knowledge throughout the galaxy, developing far-reaching awareness as a result. You are descended from these psychic explorers or trained extensively with their successors. You gain detect thoughts as an occult innate cantrip, which you can cast at will. A cantrip is heightened to a spell rank equal to half your level, rounded up. In addition, increase the range of your thoughtsense by 10 feet.

You've returned from the brink of death as a borai— at once both living and undead. You gain the borai and undead trait, in addition to the traits from your ancestry. Unlike other undead, you don't gain void healing. You're healed by vitality effects and damaged by void damage, as if you were a living creature. Likewise, you can be stabilized, healed, and brought back to life as if you were a living creature, save that you always return to life in your normal undead state (as a borai). You gain low-light vision, or you gain darkvision if your ancestry already has low-light vision. You can choose from borai feats and feats from your ancestry whenever you gain an ancestry feat.

You have an innate connection to the Drift. You gain the prismeni trait, in addition to the traits from your ancestry. While you're in the Drift, you can automatically pinpoint the location of Drift beacons, Drift lanes, Drift engines, and other Drift-related technology within a 100-mile radius. If you're Piloting a starship that doesn't have a Drift engine, you can serve as a connection between the Drift and that starship. This is a 1-minute activity that has the concentrate trait, and it allows the starship you're Piloting to enter or exit the Drift. Once within the Drift, the starship travels via conventional thrusters, as normal. When you get a critical failure on a Piloting check to Navigate or Plot Course through the Drift, you get a failure instead. You gain low-light vision, or you gain darkvision if your ancestry already has low-light vision. You can choose from prismeni feats and feats from your ancestry whenever you gain an ancestry feat.