The Fly Anything feat represents the absolute pinnacle of piloting expertise—a level of mastery so profound that physical limitations become mere suggestions. In Starfall Galaxy, where salvage crews encounter ancient alien derelicts, where Rift anomalies warp vehicles into impossible configurations, and where multi-species crews must operate craft designed for wildly different physiologies, the ability to pilot anything regardless of its intended operator isn't just impressive—it's priceless.
This is the feat that separates competent pilots from legends. It's the difference between "I can fly most things" and "Hand me the controls—I don't care what species built it, I'll make it work."
The Derelict's Secret
Captain Vess had seen a lot of impossible things in thirty years of salvage work in the Outer Sphere. Rift anomalies that bent space into knots. Stations where time ran backwards. Ships that weren't quite in this dimension anymore. But the derelict they'd just boarded—that was something special.
"It's pre-Cataclysm," the xenoarchaeologist breathed, running scanners over the bridge controls. "Maybe even pre-Republic. I've never seen this species' work before."
The controls were... organic. Chitinous protrusions growing from walls, pulsing with bioluminescent patterns. No buttons, no screens, no wheel or yoke. Just these alien stalks that seemed to respond to—what? Touch? Thought? Scent?
"We need to move it before the Rift storm closes in," Vess said. "Can you fly it?"
The xenoarchaeologist laughed. "Captain, I study dead civilizations. I don't pilot their ships. It would take weeks to decode the control scheme, assuming it's even possible for human hands—"
"I can fly it," interrupted a quiet voice.
They all turned. Kael stood in the doorway, eyes already scanning the control interface. Kael, the crew's junior pilot. Young, quiet, unremarkable—except for one thing. Kael had Legendary proficiency in Piloting. And when you reached that level, "impossible" became negotiable.
"You've never seen controls like this," the xenoarchaeologist protested.
Kael stepped forward, hands hovering over the chitinous stalks. "No. But I've flown sixty-three different ship types across twenty-seven species' design philosophies. Watched this ship's external maneuvering thrusters fire when we approached—saw which controls pulsed when they activated." Fingers touched one stalk, then another. The ship hummed. "Everything that flies follows principles. These stalks... they're pressure and temperature sensitive. See the bioluminescence? That's feedback. The species that built this probably had thermoreceptors in their manipulation appendages."
Kael settled into what might charitably be called a pilot's seat—more like a cradle designed for a body with a completely different skeletal structure. "I can't interface with this like they did. My hands aren't built for it. But I can improvise."
The others watched as Kael's hands moved across the controls—not smoothly, not naturally, but with absolute confidence. The ship shuddered, then lifted. Through the viewport, the Rift storm crackled closer.
"Fifteen minutes to storm intercept," Vess said.
"Then we'd better move fast." Kael's hands danced across alien controls, coaxing ancient engines to life. The derelict—silent for centuries—responded. Not gracefully, not perfectly, but it moved.
They cleared the storm with thirty seconds to spare.
Later, when asked how they'd done it, Kael just shrugged. "When you reach a certain level, you stop piloting vehicles and start understanding flight itself. The controls are just... suggestions."
The Universal Pilot Protocol
Commission archives contain a classified designation: Universal Pilot. Only forty-three individuals in the entire galaxy hold this rating. All of them have Legendary Piloting proficiency. All of them have demonstrated Fly Anything capability.
Universal Pilots are deployed when standard protocols fail:
Archaeological expeditions recovering ancient vessels with unknown control systems
Emergency responses where the only available vehicles are alien designs
Diplomatic missions requiring piloting of provided transport that wasn't designed for humans
Black-box scenarios where captured enemy craft must be piloted immediately
The training program to achieve Universal Pilot status is simple: there isn't one. You can't teach this. You either reach Legendary proficiency naturally and develop the intuition, or you don't. The Commission just identifies pilots who've demonstrated the capability and adds them to the registry.
One Universal Pilot, Commander Yaren, described it this way: "I don't look at controls and think 'how does this work.' I look at the ship and understand what it wants to do. The controls are just the conversation we're having about it."
The Rift Runner
In the lawless reaches, they tell stories about Lix, the pilot who could fly Rift-touched vessels. Not ships that had passed through the Rift once or twice—ships that had been changed by it. Vessels whose control systems had been warped into impossible configurations, where the steering responded to concepts instead of physics, where the throttle controlled things that weren't quite speed.
Normal pilots couldn't handle Rift-touched ships. The controls made no sense. Input A might produce output B one moment and output Q the next. Ships that had decided steering was a suggestion, not a command.
But Lix could fly them.
"It's not about forcing the ship to obey," Lix explained once, after too many drinks in a port-side cantina. "Rift-touched ships aren't broken. They're just... different now. They follow rules—just not our rules. You learn to work within their logic instead of imposing yours."
Raiders and salvagers paid premium rates for Lix's services. There's profit in Rift-touched wrecks—if you can pilot them out of the anomaly zones before they collapse entirely. Lix specialized in flying ships that shouldn't fly, through space that shouldn't exist, using controls that shouldn't work.
"I've flown seventy-two impossible ships," Lix said. "And every one taught me something new about what 'impossible' really means."
Fly Anything Feat 15
Source Player Core pg. 221
Prerequisites: Legendary in Piloting
You can intuit how even the most interesting vehicles function. You can pilot a ship even if it would be physiologically impossible for you, including those that require telepathy or other supernatural abilities. You can use Piloting instead of Crafting to Repair a part of a vehicle, starship, or mech with a –2 circumstance penalty as long as you have the appropriate parts available to you. You can use Piloting instead of Computers to Hack a vehicle, starship, or mech with a –2 circumstance penalty.
Physiological Impossibility
Tentacled Alien Controls
A vehicle designed for an octopus-like species requires simultaneous manipulation of eight independent control stalks, each responding to different pressure and rotation inputs. A human pilot with Fly Anything observes the control layout, then uses both hands, feet, elbows, and even chin pressure to approximate the required inputs.
Neural Interface Incompatibility
A telepathic species' vehicle uses thought-directed controls that directly interface with their unique brain structures. A non-telepathic pilot with Fly Anything can't use telepathy—but they recognize the secondary manual override systems (designed for emergencies) and pilot through those, or they improvise by watching how the neural interface translates thoughts into actuator movements and replicate those movements manually.
Size Mismatch
A Small-sized Phukwa needs to pilot a vehicle designed for a Huge Gargo, with controls spaced meters apart and requiring tremendous strength to operate. The Fly Anything pilot rigs leverage systems, uses their body weight creatively, and positions themselves to operate multiple controls in sequence rather than simultaneously.
Missing Sensory Input
A vehicle designed for species with echolocation or magnetic sense provides crucial piloting information through sensory channels the pilot lacks. The Fly Anything pilot compensates by cross-referencing other instruments, using visual cues to infer what the missing sense would provide, and adapting their piloting style to account for delayed information.
Tactical Applications
Captured Enemy Vehicles
Scenario: Boarding action against pirate raiders. Your team takes the bridge of their assault craft.
Without Fly Anything: You need to either bring a pilot familiar with this specific alien design, or spend precious time decoding controls while the ship drifts.
With Fly Anything: Your pilot takes one look at the control layout, recognizes it as a variant of Gargo military design adapted for telepathic interfaces, and immediately starts piloting using the backup manual systems. You're underway in seconds, using the captured craft to assault the pirate base.
Ancient Ruin Activation
Scenario: Xenoarchaeology team discovers a functional pre-Cataclysm transport in sealed ruins. The artifact is priceless, but the Rift storm closing in will destroy the entire site in an hour.
Without Fly Anything: Team must choose between abandoning the artifact or risking weeks of study to decode controls that might not even be compatible with human physiology.
With Fly Anything: Legendary pilot examines controls for ten minutes, then successfully pilots the ancient craft out of the ruins. The entire archaeological find—vehicle and all—is preserved.
Multi-Species Crew Redundancy
Scenario: Your exploration vessel's primary pilot—a Phukwa with wing-based instincts—is critically injured during an anomaly encounter. The ship is a hybrid design optimized for Phukwa neural-motor coordination.
Without Fly Anything, Secondary pilots struggle with the alien control scheme, risking mission failure or accidents.
With Fly Anything: Your human pilot with Legendary proficiency steps in, compensates for lacking Phukwa instincts, and maintains mission effectiveness.
Infiltration Operations
Scenario: Guild intelligence needs operatives to steal a prototype vehicle from a hostile faction. The vehicle uses control systems designed for a species with prehensile tails and compound eyes.
Without Fly Anything: Mission requires recruiting a pilot from that species—increasing security risk and complicating trust dynamics.
With Fly Anything: Your pilot can steal and operate the vehicle regardless of its alien design, maintaining operational security.
Running Fly Anything Scenarios
Create Physiologically Impossible Vehicles
Design vehicles that highlight the feat's power:
Control Scheme Oddities:
Requires manipulating controls with both hands and feet simultaneously
Uses sensory inputs the pilot lacks (telepathy, echolocation, infrared vision)
Sized for operators much larger or smaller than the pilot
Requires species-specific physiology (tails, wings, tentacles)
Make It Feel Earned:
At level 15, players have worked hard to achieve Legendary proficiency. When they use Fly Anything, make it a moment of awesome. Describe how they improvise, how they intuit the controls, how other NPCs watch in amazement.
Describe the Improvisation
Don't just say "You pilot the ship." Show how:
"The controls are designed for six-limbed insectoid beings. You position yourself awkwardly, using both hands, both feet, and even your knee to operate multiple stalks simultaneously. It's not elegant, but it works."
"The neural interface flashes error messages—'species incompatible.' You ignore it, instead watching how the interface translates thoughts into actuator movements. You replicate those movements manually, your hands flying over backup controls faster than most pilots' conscious minds could process."
Limitations Still Apply
Fly Anything is powerful, but not infinite:
Doesn't Grant Missing Abilities: If the vehicle requires psychic powers to operate and the pilot lacks them, Fly Anything won't work. It overcomes physiological mismatches, not ability prerequisites.
Performance May Vary: Piloting check DCs might be higher when using Fly Anything—you can fly it, but optimal performance requires familiarity.
Time to Adjust: First time using alien controls might require a few rounds or minutes to understand the interface.
GM's Discretion: Some vehicles might still be genuinely impossible—vehicles with no controls, vehicles requiring abilities beyond physiology (like divine connection to operate), etc.
When Impossible Becomes Routine
Fly Anything represents the ultimate expression of piloting mastery in Starfall Galaxy. It's the feat that says, "I don't care what species designed this, what dimension it came from, or what laws of physics it pretends to follow—if it can be piloted, I can pilot it."
In a galaxy where salvage crews encounter vessels from extinct civilizations, where Rift anomalies warp ships into impossible configurations, and where multi-species cooperation requires adapting to wildly different technologies, the ability to transcend physiological limitations isn't just useful—it's legendary.
When the ancient derelict's controls make no sense, when the captured enemy craft uses alien interfaces, when the only escape vehicle was designed for tentacled beings and you have mere hands—the pilot with Fly Anything just smiles and says, "Hand me the controls."
Because at the legendary tier, "impossible" is just another challenge. And challenges are what legends are made of.
Adventure Hooks:
The Precursor Fleet: Ancient automated defense fleet activates, threatening a populated system. Only way to shut it down is to board the command ship and pilot it using controls designed for a species extinct for millennia. The Commission desperately seeks a Universal Pilot.
Rift Runner's Gambit: Legendary pilot Lix offers to teach the party their techniques for flying Rift-touched vessels—if they help with one last impossible job. The target: a ship that exists in three dimensions simultaneously.
The Infiltration: Guild intelligence needs to steal a prototype stealth craft from a hostile faction. The vehicle uses control systems designed for telepathic aliens. Standard infiltration teams can't operate it. They need someone with Fly Anything.
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