The Drone Exocortex synchronizes a self-motivated neural program with your brain, allowing you to remotely command a custom robot companion up to 150 feet away. This drone follows detailed neural commands, boasts integrated weapon mounts, receives automatic repairs during daily preparations, and can be advanced through feats and modifications. You can issue complex orders (using extra actions), enhance or modify your drone on the fly, and deploy battle-ready mods like Desperate Repair and Killbot for tactical edge.
In Starfall, a drone is much more than a tool—it’s a survival necessity, social signal, and a trusted ally. Mechanics and engineers outfit their drones not just for battle, but for scavenging Rift anomalies, mapping hazardous trade lanes, running encrypted guild errands, or tending ramshackle outposts in the storm’s path.
Scavenger Crews: Drones are specialists in anomaly mapping, debris sorting, or even Rift hazard detection.
Guild Agents: Deploy drones for document relay, encrypted comms, sabotage, and tech dueling at guild burner meets.
Outer Sphere Nomads: Drones become sentry guards, field medics, and plague monitors—sometimes modified with bio-magitech found on dead worlds.
Personal Touch: Many Starfall mechanics decorate or personalize their drones—lo-fi emote screens, cult symbology, patchwork armor, or battle hymns stored in memory.
Legends tell that the greatest Rift survivors trust their drone’s instincts as much as their own, sometimes waking to find the drone has made “protective” modifications overnight.
Drones have shifted workforce dynamics, creating new jobs for drone tamers and “drone duels” for entertainment, law, and honor. In some stations, local folklore claims the best drones have souls—a mesh of mechanic-intent and Rift-wild logic.
Social Roles: Drones host messages, act as social mediators, even participate in formal rituals, like guild admissions or alliance treaties.
Tech Culture: Local drone design competitions, “hackathons,” and patch swaps create cross-factional tech networks in the Rift, building camaraderie or fierce rivalry.
Security: Drones act as first responders, perimeter alarms, and interlocutors. Security-minded outposts station “drone pickets” to defend against pirates or Rift beasts.
Drone Exocortex
Your exocortex connects to a basic robot companion called a drone, which accompanies you on your adventures and follows your neural commands to the best of its abilities. In addition to the customization all robot companions receive, your drone begins with one integrated weapon mount. You control your drone with your thoughts up to 150 feet away; only you can operate, control, and repair it. If your drone is ever beyond your range of control, it can’t perform any actions. During your daily preparations, you automatically repair your drone, restoring it to maximum Hit Points, even if it’s been destroyed. You can further customize and advance your drone by taking feats. You can spend additional time directing your drone for a more complex plan of action.
You can spend 2 actions to Command instead of 1 when commanding your drone; your drone can then use an additional action (typically three actions, rather than 2).
You can Modify your drone and any weapons it wields when you are within reach. The drone counts as armor for the purposes of Modify. You gain the following new mods.
Desperate Repair (drone exocortex): Your drone gains temporary Hit Points equal to your level plus your Intelligence modifier.
Killbot (drone exocortex): Your drone gains a +2 status bonus to damage rolls. If your drone’s Strikes deal more than one weapon damage die, the status bonus increases to 2 per weapon damage die, to a maximum of +8 with four weapon damage dice.
Adventure Hooks
Lost drones as plot threads: A drone stray, gone into the Rift, returns carrying impossible data or a cryptic upgrade.
Rival mechanics duel in neutral space, their drones carrying encrypted tokens or laying out digital battlefields.
Drones bear memory fragments—data ghosts, guild secrets, or ancestral revenge codes—making every field model a possible storyline agent.
In the Starfall Galaxy, your Exodrone is more than a remote construct: it’s a neural echo, loyal ally, and symbol of survival, carrying the legacy of mechanics who refuse to let civilization die in the Rift.
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