Applied Knowledge

Once per day before attempting a skill check or saving throw against a creature, a contemplative can use its bonus for the skill associated with that creature’s type (such as Life Science for an ooze or Mysticism for an outsider) in place of its normal bonus.

Atrophied

A contemplative’s limbs are practically vestigial. A contemplative can manipulate most tools and one-handed weapons (including small arms) without difficulty. A contemplative can’t properly wield a two-handed weapon without dedicating its telekinetic powers to supporting the weapon, and even then it takes a –4 penalty to attack rolls. It also can’t use its spell-like abilities or fly until it is no longer wielding that weapon.

Psychic Flight

Contemplatives fly supernaturally at a speed of 30 feet with average maneuverability, but their base speed is only 5 feet.

Psychic Senses

Contemplatives have blindsense (thought) out to 30 feet and darkvision to a range of 60 feet.

Limited Telepathy

Contemplatives have limited telepathy with a range of 30 feet.

About the Contemplative

Famously intelligent, contemplatives resemble an immense brain with a tiny, four-armed body dangling below. For millennia, contemplatives have methodically unraveled esoteric secrets from the safety of isolated, insulated homes on Akiton. Since the advent of Drift travel, more and more contemplatives witness the galaxy’s wonders firsthand, serving as exemplary doctors, scientists, investigators, mystical consultants, and supernatural warriors. Yet, contemplatives rarely act alone. Even loners often refer to themselves as “we,” not “I,” either reinforcing their collective mindset or referencing some otherworldly presence unknown to even close contacts.

Countless generations of evolution have developed the superspecialized contemplatives’ bodies, each one designed to prioritize thought over all but the most essential biological functions. A typical contemplative weighs about 100 pounds, with their massive brains representing roughly 70 of those pounds. The rest consists of a spindly humanoid body hanging from the brain by a thick “neck” of tough ligaments, neural pathways, and blood vessels. These lower features are diminutive nearly to the point of uselessness. A host of flexible shoulder spines indicate areas once dedicated to heavy muscle attachment, now wholly vestigial. Two legs, with any semblance of feet having disappeared ages ago, can barely support the creature’s weight for more than a few seconds. Contemplatives occasionally sway their legs reflexively as if walking in mid-air, reliving distant ancestors’ motor memory. More often, though, the legs serve to stabilize a disoriented contemplative, helping them brace or push off from walls when flying in stressful conditions. Only two of the upper limbs serve as traditional hands, typically terminating in a few fragile fingers that are as dexterous as a human’s. However, with such a gracile build contemplatives struggle with physical labor, relying on telekinetic powers to manipulate larger tools—made all the more awkward by their arms’ meager length, which requires a contemplative to incline their brain or pitch upward just to get close enough to reach larger surfaces. The other two limbs aren’t arms at all but antennae, serving as a contemplative’s primary sense organs for smell and touch. Like the rest of the lower body, these arms are a shadow of their former capabilities, and xenoanthropologists speculate that ancient contemplatives boasted extremely precise scent abilities before evolving to favor psychic senses. A contemplative often orients themself above any object of interest, softly tapping the surface while they examine it with a wide range of sensory input, including from their eyes, which project a short distance from the bottom of their brain. Contemplative brains are supernaturally sophisticated. With a staggering brain-to-body ratio, a contemplative can retain a wealth of information and learn sophisticated skills quickly. Their brains are segmented into distinct quadrants rather than hemispheres, with redundant lobes enabling intense mental multitasking. What’s more, the intense cerebral activity creates a constant aura of telekinetic and telepathic force, much in the way a mammal emits body heat. On its own, this force tends to sweep up lightweight objects to orbit the contemplative’s body and pester nearby minds with mental static. Fortunately, contemplatives have an extensive adolescence of play, and meditation helps optimize their thoughts and control these energies, redirecting them into sustained telekinetic flight, precise communication, and more. These skills aren’t just a matter of convenience. Without mastering personal telekinesis, an adult contemplative’s brain is too heavy to move unaided. When truly unconscious, a contemplative is at a low risk of suffocation or organ damage as their unsupported mass compresses delicate innards and restricts airways. True sleep is a rare treat enjoyed using specialized hammocks or unique fluid baths that support the upper body. Instead, most contemplatives rest by logging, much as many aquatic mammals do, allowing part of their brain to sleep while the other part maintains buoyancy and some awareness.

A contemplative’s existence often revolves around isolation. Quiet halls enable deep thoughts, and remote outposts deter casual visitors who might interrupt complex calculations. Silent vistas eliminate distractions, allowing for the reception of distant psychic signatures. In solitude, a contemplative can achieve great things that are objectively their own triumphs, validating their existence to the cosmos. Yet contemplative culture also includes a strong sense of community. Other species provide security and strength, enabling contemplatives to accomplish together what would be impossible alone. Peers offer intellectual engagement to challenge theories, build upon discoveries, and encourage progress. For millennia before ubiquitous space travel, contemplatives established tight-knit telepathic neighborhoods awash with half-conscious chatter and mental intimacy. Even as contemplatives travel to other worlds in the modern era, they physiologically crave the feeling of others’ thoughts, and extensive periods of true solitude often trigger anxiety. Contemplative society steadily juggles these competing extremes of separation and unity. Into the modern age, contemplatives maintained this balance by living in enclaves apart from other species, creating communities that manifested group consciousnesses without becoming true hive minds. Nonetheless, contemplatives’ speech reflects generations of external isolation and internal communion, as even individuals refer to themselves with the first-person plural “we” rather than with the singular “I” around other creatures—sometimes even when the closest other contemplative is light-years away. In the absence of kin, contemplatives find comfort in establishing new communities with loose hierarchies, enabling them to be part of something greater, like a starship crew or adventuring party. When such close associations aren’t possible, contemplatives sometimes invent fictitious personalities, each expressed and controlled by different brain quadrants to emulate a functional community. Extended psychic networks connected communities on the home world of Akiton for untold generations, so despite having existed for millennia and lived across the planet, contemplatives and their culture evolved as one, remaining relatively homogeneous into the post-Gap era. Even over the past few centuries, contemplatives’ long lifespans, lengthy adolescence, and communal parenting have sustained shared cultural values that survive when individuals emigrate elsewhere and integrate into dramatically different societies. Newer Divisions Pervasive personal augmentation technology has challenged age-old traditions in contemplatives’ evolution, training, and upbringing. Of Akiton’s contemplatives, two fringe philosophies have emerged. To the traditionalists known as the Pristine Muse, personal augmentations are tools that beget mental laziness, threatening the species’ ongoing evolution into increasingly intellectual powerhouses. A movement called the Transcendent Cortex pushes back, insisting that contemplatives have neared the limits of what flesh alone can achieve and that cybernetic enhancement or even complete digitization would enable their society to achieve unimaginable success. Most contemplatives embrace neither philosophy fully, instead dabbling in augmentations as they see fit. Psychic Titans No matter their philosophies and idiosyncrasies, contemplatives are intelligent, and they know it. However, mainstream contemplative society doesn’t encourage exploiting or lording their education and wit over others; instead, their self-awareness carries a sense of self-restraint. By a contemplative’s estimation, their staggering psychic prowess and intelligence are like a deafening roar to vulnerable minds, thus it’s only polite to “whisper.” Savvy onlookers recognize this perspective for the accidental paternalism it is. The more it’s exposed to other cultures, the more contemplative society has gradually acknowledged other species’ mental resilience and adopted less benignly demeaning behavior.