Fixer (Starfinder Archetype)
(art by ringasure on DeviantArt)
Despite being called “Organized Crime”, the clandestine activities criminal empires is just as susceptible to Murphy’s Law as anything else, perhaps more so due to the active interest that law enforcement and the general public has in not letting them actually do such activities. Sometimes things go wrong. You might end up with a corpse and murder scene you are ill-equipped to deal with, or you might be compromised and forced to flee elsewhere, or maybe due to circumstances beyond your control, a lot of evidence was left for investigators to find. When in such situations, this is where organized crime calls in the cleaners.
Named for not just physically tidying up crime scenes, but in how they generally clean up messes that their clients find themselves in, cleaners, or fixers, work to ensure no consequences for either the organization or individual manifest from their lack of discretion. Need a body disappeared and the signs of violence scrubbed? Call the fixer. Need a new identity? Call the fixer. Accidentally left a cyber trail a mild wide while hacking? The fixer has you covered.
And it’s not just criminal groups that have need of a fixer. Clandestine organizations that ostensibly serve the law or state (but are not as firmly bound by it) may need to cover their tracks so that other enforcement divisions without the right security clearance don’t bog them down and their enemies don’t wise up to their efforts, for example.
Regardless of who they work for, most fixers don’t get actively involved in the criminal activities of those they work for except when forced to by circumstance, and may in fact have a day job they spend most of their time doing until they get that phone call and the payment is sent. Despite being only technically guilty of aiding and abetting, any criminal with any brains highly respects a good cleaner, and avoids disrespecting them for the same reasons you don’t harm a medic even if they wear the colors of the enemy side, because there may come a time when you need their services to pull your arse out of the proverbial fire.
A fixer is never without their kit of cleaning tools, a literal collection of tools and chemicals meant to destroy and obscure evidence. Solvents to wash away blood, metal detectors to find and collect those pesky spent bullet casings, and even home repair supplies to mask damage from unsavory activities, just to name a few. What’s more, the fixer has a network of contacts they can pull favors with to arrange for transport of people and goods, no questions asked and avoiding the authorities.
Beyond the physical, fixers also carry software and computer viruses that they can upload and direct, along with their own hacking skill, to obscure data from a local infosphere, mitigating digital trails for someone else. Caution should be used with this, since it’s only a matter of time before a well-moderated and backed up infosphere undoes the damage, but hopefully those investigating will have moved on to other leads by then.
As they grow in skill, their reputation in the underworld does as well, making it easier to get info from the criminal element or acquire favors from them.
True masters among fixers are almost as revered and feared as the crime bosses themselves, both for their reputation in being able to protect criminal enterprises, but also the quiet knowledge that their network and skills could easily make crossing one a bad idea. This makes it rather easy for them to leverage intimidation if they decide to.
Whether the party are villains or not, those that find themselves facing the consequences of the law can definitely make use of having a fixer in the party to smooth things over. That being said, that specialization does make it a hard sell to actually try if it’s not that kind of game. Even still, their skill at erasing evidence and concealing things can be a fun addition to a biohacker, mechanic, envoy, or operative toolkit, or with another class if you can find a way to make it work.
With how the lore of the archetype is written, there is a bit of a paradox with the fixer that needs to be addressed. Acting as a cleaner is supposed to keep them from actually getting involved in the actual dirty work that creates the problems they fix, and yet in an adventuring setting, they will inevitably be forced into such messy scenarios that they are then expected to clean up. If their adventures are primarily criminal in nature, they might begrudgingly be stuck working on hot jobs they loudly complain about having no business being part of. Meanwhile on the other hand, if adventuring is their day job but they also moonlight as such a cleaner, it can lead to interesting drama as they are forced to juggle both the rigors of their life and the demands of their clients, especially when one gets involved with the other.
Tiblix lives a fairly normal life, working as a butcher in an undercity market serving the locals and those seeking exotic flavors alike. Sure, he occasionally lends his expertise in getting out blood to the local gangs to clean up their messes, but that’s only a side gig… This most recent call has left him out of his depth… He has to join a team… to help repair a planet that was split in two.
As a group of transporters that ask no questions, the party sometimes gets requests for time-sensitive and particularly hot cargo. This becomes a problem when their passenger, a wanderlust-embodying fey called a worieg, secretly reprogrammed their flight path to a completely different destination. Knowing that their employer is going to assume they bailed with the cargo to fence it, the party has to find a world-class fixer and fast, someone that can smooth this whole thing over.
A die-hard Pure One, Silathi not only refuses all augmentation, but prefers to do as many things by hand with simple tools whenever possible. This serves her well in her artisanal leatherworking job, but rumor has it the verthani puts her chemicals to work in other ways as well, cleaning up after corporations that pay for her services.