Adapted from Starfinder 2e Playtest ,
In the vast and unpredictable Starfall Galaxy, where cosmic forces and emergent technologies constantly reshape existence, some individuals defy the very boundaries of life and death. The Borai are one such enigma – a versatile heritage representing a being simultaneously living and dead, a corpse reanimated by its own soul into something just barely sustained. They are not merely corporeal undead; their bodies function as living shells that protect their tattered, undead souls, making them a unique bridge between the mortal coil and the ethereal beyond.
Borai are most often created through a botched resurrection attempt, whether technological or Mana-based, or as the result of dangerous necromantic experimentation often linked to rogue A.I. Constructs or Rift-Entities. In rare cases, an individual's sheer stubborn determination and refusal to accept their demise can force their soul back into their cooling corpse. Once a person becomes a borai, their living body and undead soul are inexorably bound. The body draws vitality from the soul, preventing external rot and degradation, while the soul tenaciously clings to the body as a vehicle for corporeality and prolonged existence within the material plane.
Even if a borai is "killed" again and subsequently resurrected or reincarnated, this bond isn't severed; a borai always returns to life in their unique state. Unlike many forms of undead, borai retain their personality, memories, and feelings, and often strive to maintain the emotional connections and relationships they forged in life. Yet, death has left an undeniable mark. Many living beings instinctively sense something "off" about a borai, an unnerving dissonance that strains relationships and pre-existing social connections. This slow fracturing of friendships and souring of support systems often pushes borai out of their comfort zones, driving them from their homes and past lives toward the unknown – an experience that leaves many borai jaded, emotionally guarded, or eager to embrace new experiences.
If you want to play a character who blurs the lines between living and dead, constantly struggling to find their place in the universe, you should play a borai.
YOU MIGHT...
Be determined to succeed and refuse to accept your own failure or defeat.
Embrace new experiences, places, and relationships, perhaps even recklessly or to your own detriment.
Fear what killed you or avoid the place you died.
OTHERS PROBABLY...
Confuse you with a Bone-Echo, reanimated construct, or other undead, and become surprised when you breathe, eat, or sleep.
Find your presence unnerving, even if they can't pinpoint why.
Seek your advice about grief, loss, death, and the afterlife.
Physical Description
Borai appear as they did in life, save that their skin often takes on a pallid, waxy hue, and their blood becomes infused with void energy, turning it into a thick, black ichor that's sometimes subtly visible through their flesh. As their body is alive, Borai must breathe, eat, and sleep, and they can be healed, stabilized, and even resurrected like any other living creature. Borai age at radically slowed rates, allowing them to live for a few additional centuries. After this time, a borai's physical body deteriorates to such a degree that the soul can no longer sustain it; the borai then both dies (as living creatures do) and is destroyed (as undead creatures are). Scholars are divided as to whether these souls move on to their appointed afterlives or deteriorate and immediately re-enter the cycle of souls as raw quintessence in Creation's Forge.
Society
Borai are reanimated all throughout the Starfall Galaxy, from the bustling core worlds to the uncharted Frontier, making them a diverse people with a scattered population. Many borai begin their second lives trying to live as they did before their death, maintaining the same routines and relationships – usually while attempting to conceal their undead nature using cosmetics, illusions, or augmentations. This is frequently doomed to failure, either because those around them reject their new state, or because the borai feels out of place and distant from their former life.
While some borai choose to travel the galaxy, others migrate to regions more accepting of reanimated beings, such as the Ruins of the Tibburat Marches (where Bone-Echoes are common) or isolated sectors where Mana-wells have created zones of unusual reanimation. As borai require the same comforts as living creatures, they can still have trouble fitting in, even within undead or construct societies. Borai, who've lived over a decade as undead tend to consider family a matter of friendship, loyalty, and love rather than genetics or lineage. Found families and sprawling friendship groups are common, though some instead find companionship in mercenary or military units, among members of the same social movements or philosophical institutions, or within the cutthroat hierarchy of a corporation or consortium. Some borai embrace their ominous presence and disconcerting aspects, finding employment as terrifying enforcers or imposing bodyguards, while others seek to overcome and erase the stigma of their undead nature by holding diplomatic positions or taking jobs where they interact with the public.
No widespread naming conventions exist for borai, and most retain the name they had in life. Some borai who leave behind their old lives adopt new names of their own creation that they feel better represent their identity heading into the second (or arguably third) phase of their life.
Beliefs
Borai are influenced by the cultures and societies they were born into, and many continue to worship the same cosmic entities and cleave to the same philosophies as they did in life. With time, most borai tend to favor concepts of emotion, travel, or the cycle of souls. They might find solace in the teachings of a Cosmic Wanderer archetype, who guides souls through the void, or a philosophy that embraces the constant flux of existence. Many borai take solace in a philosophy known as the Song of Silence, which teaches that undeath is the ultimate goal of life, and that one's mortal life is simply a trial run for one's undead life, where one can take the lessons learned through mortality and apply it to their second life, becoming perfected or enlightened.
Popular Edicts: Embrace new experiences, learn from your past, refuse to accept defeat. Popular Anathema: Abandon those who accept you as you are.
Borai Mechanics
Borai Heritage
You've returned from the brink of death as a borai—at once both living and undead. You gain the borai and undead traits, in addition to the traits from your ancestry.
Unlike other undead, you do not 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.
Borai Ancestry Feats
Borai Lineages
Borai can select any of the following lineages at 1st level.
Etheric Borai (Feat 1)
Borai Lineage You became a borai through a botched resurrection attempt—perhaps a Mana-ritual disrupted, a religious rite gone awry, or faulty technology. Your soul is loosely tethered to your body, allowing you to temporarily shield your living form from the chaotic energies of the void or Rift. You gain the Soul Shield reaction.
Soul Shield [Reaction] (Borai, Void)
Frequency: Once per day
Trigger: You would be dealt void damage.
Effect: You push your soul out of your body and use it as a shield to protect your living form from the ravages of the void. Against the triggering damage and until the beginning of your next turn, you gain void healing, meaning you are healed by void damage and harmed by vitality damage.
Resolute Borai (Feat 1)
Borai Lineage You became a borai through your own stubborn willfulness. When you died, you refused to accept your own defeat and clung to your corpse, forcing your soul back into your body and giving you life along with it. You gain a +1 circumstance bonus to Will saving throws against fear and effects that would make you confused or controlled, and a +1 circumstance bonus to your Will DC against attempts to Demoralize you.
Necrotic Borai (Feat 1)
Borai Lineage You became a borai intentionally, through necromantic experimentation conducted by yourself before your death or another individual after your death, perhaps linked to a rogue A.I. Construct or a powerful Rift-Entity. This experimentation has strengthened your defenses against death but has also made you look more like a corpse than a living being. You gain the Diehard feat and death effects no longer kill you if they reduce you to 0 Hit Points. This keeps you from being automatically killed or from having your dying value automatically decrease, but it doesn't make you immune to other parts of the spell or effect. For example, you can still take mental damage and become frightened by a vision of death, you just don't instantly die from it.
Borai Ancestry Feats (1st Level)
The following feats are available to borai characters.
Baleful Gaze [One-Action] (Feat 1)
Borai, Concentrate, Emotion, Fear, Mental, Visual
Frequency: Once per minute You have an ominous presence that unnerves the living. You've learned to harness this sinister aura to your own advantage and can scare your foes with a focused glance. Focus your ill intent at one living creature within 30 feet. The target must succeed at a Will save against the higher of your class DC or spell DC, or become frightened 1 (frightened 2 on a critical failure) and be stupefied 1 as long as the frightened condition lasts. Once you've used Baleful Gaze against a creature, it's temporarily immune for 24 hours.
Borai Lore (Feat 1)
Borai Since your resurrection, you've learned a lot about yourself, your place in the cycle of souls, and other undead. You become trained in Intimidation and Cosmic Lore. If you would automatically become trained in one of those skills (from your background or class, for example), you instead become trained in a skill of your choice. You gain the Additional Lore general feat for Borai Lore.
Death-Touched Caster (Feat 1)
Borai You exist on the boundaries between life and death, and you can channel your own imbalanced spiritual essence into Mana-based spells. Choose one of the following cantrips: vitality lash or void warp. You can cast this spell as a divine innate spell at will. A cantrip is heightened to a spell rank equal to half your level rounded up.
Special: You can select this feat twice. Each time, you must select a different cantrip.
Only Slightly Dead (Feat 1)
Borai Your living body is flush with vitality, which easily hides your ichor-filled veins from sight. You don't have to attempt Deception checks against a creature's Perception DC to successfully Impersonate yourself as a living member of your ancestry or hide your borai heritage, nor do you require a disguise kit for such Impersonations. This is a non-magical effect that doesn't protect against detection, revelation, or scrying effects. Additionally, when a creature actively attempts a Perception check against you, you gain a +4 circumstance bonus to your Deception DC, but only for the purposes of seeing through your disguise when you're Impersonating yourself as a living member of your ancestry or otherwise attempting to hide your borai heritage.
Borai Ancestry Feats (5th Level)
Deathly Constitution (Feat 5)
Borai Thanks to your life-altering brush with death, your living body is better protected against the weaknesses of the flesh. You gain a +1 circumstance bonus to Fortitude saves against disease and poison.
One with the Void (Feat 5)
Borai The ichor pulsing through your veins is more liquefied void energy than blood, and it protects your flesh from similar substances. You have void resistance equal to half your level.
Soul Sustenance (Feat 5)
Borai Your soul is nearly whole and can sustain your living body indefinitely, without the need for outside nourishment. You don't need to eat or drink.
Unliving Memories (Feat 5)
Borai Some element of your borai nature gives you flashes from somewhere beyond, visions from the afterlife you were intended for or might still one day obtain, or echoes from the Aether Synapse. You become trained in a skill of your choice and gain the Additional Lore feat for a Lore subcategory about a specific plane or cosmic concept tied to your afterlife (such as Outer Rifts Lore, Aether Synapse Lore, or Creation's Forge Lore).
Borai Ancestry Feats (9th Level)
Shroud of Shattered Spirits [Reaction] (Feat 9)
Borai
Frequency: Once per day
Trigger: An enemy's Strike or targeted effect would hit you and you weren't already concealed, hidden, or undetected by that enemy. Your mere presence attracts restless Mana-echoes, fragmented souls, or lingering Rift-shards, like a magnet attracts iron. You manifest these spirit shards in a chaotic whirlwind around you that you barely control with your thoughts. You become concealed until the beginning of your next turn, and the flat check for concealment applies to the triggering Strike or effect that would have hit you. If the flat check fails, the Strike or effect misses you.
Resonant Weapon [One-Action] (Feat 9)
Borai, Divine, Spirit You release a pulse of spiritual energy into one weapon you're holding, making it resonate with immaterial soul stuff. Until the beginning of your next turn, your weapon gains the effects of a mana-disrupting weapon, dealing 1d6 additional void damage to incorporeal creatures. At 17th level, Strikes with the weapon deal 1d6 additional void damage to all creatures.
Unleash Pneuma [Two-Actions] (Feat 9)
Borai
Frequency: Once per day You unleash a portion of your spiritual essence—either the vitality of your living body or the void of your undead soul—in a violent burst around you. You deal 5d6 damage of your selected type (see below) to all adjacent creatures (basic Reflex save using your class DC or spell DC, whichever is higher). At 9th level and every 2 levels thereafter, this damage increases by 1d6. When you take this feat, choose either vitality or void. Once chosen, this selection can't be changed. Unleash Pneuma deals the chosen damage type and gains the chosen trait.
Special: You can take this feat twice, but you must select a different damage type each time. If you do, Unleash Pneuma's frequency becomes once per day per damage type, rather than once per day.
Borai Ancestry Feats (13th Level)
Intuitive Talent [Free-Action] (Feat 13)
Borai
Frequency: Once per hour You enjoy embracing new experiences and have a knack for picking up new skills and talents, sometimes over the course of countless lifetimes, as your semi-dead nature grants you a wider perspective on the cycle of souls. Choose a skill that you're untrained in. Until the beginning of your next turn, you become trained in the chosen skill.
Metabolize Soul [One-Action] (Feat 13)
Borai, Concentrate, Healing
Frequency: Once per day You force your body to metabolize a portion of your animating soul to rapidly heal your wounds and prolong your life. You regain 3d8 Hit Points plus a number of additional Hit Points equal to your level.
Stubborn As... (Feat 13)
Borai You're willful, stubborn, and refuse to accept your own failure—traits that have served you well in life and in death. When you critically fail a saving throw against a mental effect, you get a failure instead. Additionally, you gain the Deny Failure reaction.
Deny Failure [Reaction] (Borai, Fortune)
Frequency: Once per day
Trigger: You fail or critically fail a saving throw.
Effect: You refuse to accept your failure! Reroll the triggering saving throw. If your result is a critical failure, this use of Deny Failure doesn't count toward its frequency.
Borai Ancestry Feats (17th Level)
Baleful Aura (Feat 17)
Borai
Prerequisites: Baleful Gaze You've learned to unleash the anger and malice built up over the course of your life and restless death against multiple foes at once, creating a potent aura around yourself. You can choose to use Baleful Gaze as a 2-action activity, rather than 1. When you do, Baleful Gaze gains the divine trait, loses the visual trait, and affects each living creature in a 30-foot emanation, rather than a single living creature.
Undying [Reaction] (Feat 17)
Borai
Frequency: Once per hour
Trigger: You have the dying condition and are about to attempt a recovery check. You've died once before and have no intention of dying ever again, so your soul stubbornly resuscitates your body when you would otherwise perish. You're restored to 1 Hit Point, lose the dying and unconscious conditions, and can act normally on this turn. You increase your wounded condition as normal.
Here are a few adventure hooks designed to appeal specifically to a Borai player character, leveraging their unique nature as simultaneously living and dead, and integrating elements from the existing Starfall Galaxy lore.
Adventure Hooks for Borai Player Characters
1. The Ghost in the Machine's Past
Hook: Strange energy fluctuations and fragmented, almost sentient, data echoes have begun to emanate from a long-abandoned Automaton research facility deep within a radiation-scorched asteroid field in the Outer Sphere. This facility is rumored to be the very site where a catastrophic Mana-surge or a rogue A.I. experiment went awry, leading to the Borai PC's own reanimation. The PC feels an unsettling, almost magnetic pull towards the location – a mix of dread and an insatiable need for answers. Now, the echoes are growing stronger, subtly reanimating derelict droids into confused, semi-aware constructs that mirror the Borai's own liminal state, but are far more unstable.
Borai Appeal: This hook directly confronts the Borai's origin, offering a chance to uncover the truth behind their unique existence. The PC would be driven by a desperate curiosity to understand what happened, perhaps hoping to find a way to stabilize their own condition or prevent others from suffering a similar, uncontrolled reanimation. Returning to the place of their "death" or confronting the very forces that created them would be a powerful, personal journey. A Cerebral Nexus might seek the PC's help to decipher the corrupted data echoes, or a Bone-Echo from the Ruins of the Tibburat Marches might sense a familiar "death echo" from the site, offering an uneasy alliance.
2. The Fractured Quintessence Harvest
Hook: A series of unsettling disappearances and strange, lingering void-signatures have been reported in a remote, burgeoning colony on the Frontier. The victims aren't simply dying; their bodies are found perfectly preserved, yet their souls appear to have been violently extracted, leaving behind a chilling void. The Borai PC, whose own blood is infused with void energy and whose soul is tenuously bound to their living form, feels a disturbing resonance with these events. They experience phantom pains where souls were ripped, or vivid, disturbing dreams of the Aether Synapse being torn. A parasitic Rift-Entity, or a reclusive, desperate cult attempting to harness raw quintessence, is suspected of being behind the "harvest," seeking to create a new form of life-death fusion or power a dark ritual.
Borai Appeal: This hook taps into the Borai's empathy for those caught between life and death. The PC's unique dual nature makes them uniquely suited to understand the phenomenon and potentially track the entity responsible. They might be driven to protect others from experiencing a similar, agonizing fate, or to prevent the cosmic imbalance caused by the theft of quintessence. Their unnerving presence could be an asset in dealing with the cultists or the Rift-Entity itself. A Kashrishi might approach the PC, sensing the profound emotional distress of the victims' lingering echoes, or a Spark Droid could be intrigued by the chaotic, emergent "life" of the fractured soul remnants.
3. The Pilgrimage to Creation's Heart
Hook: Ancient, fragmented prophecies, recently rediscovered in a forgotten Vaelen archive, speak of a cosmic nexus point – perhaps a dormant Mana-well of unparalleled purity or a localized distortion near Creation's Forge – that holds the key to understanding the true cycle of souls and the nature of quintessence. However, this site is said to be guarded by primordial Mana-constructs or protected by a reclusive order of Strix who believe it should remain undisturbed. The Borai PC begins to experience vivid, almost telepathic, calls from this location, feeling an undeniable pull towards a deeper understanding of their own ultimate fate. These calls hint at a looming cosmic imbalance that threatens to disrupt the very flow of souls in the galaxy, potentially leading to a permanent end for Borai upon their final deterioration.
Borai Appeal: This is an existential quest for the Borai, offering a chance to understand their place in the grand cosmic design. The PC would be driven by the desire to unravel the mysteries of the afterlife, to find a way to stabilize their unique existence, or even to transcend the eventual deterioration of their living body. The journey would be a spiritual pilgrimage, potentially leading to profound revelations about the Aether Synapse and the fundamental forces of the Starfall Galaxy. A Surki explorer, drawn by the unique Mana-signatures emanating from the site, or a Dracosmyr who senses the deep, ancient bonds of the cosmic forces, might offer to aid the Borai in their quest.
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