The bill nobody else pays
There are plenty of charming species in the catalog. The Falleen have pheromones that argue for them. The Twi'lek and the Latero are naturally persuasive. Every one of them gets a bonus and walks away.
The Zeltron are the first ones who get a bill.
Their pheromones and the limited telepathy behind them do not only attract — they push. A Zeltron can put a feeling in your head on purpose. The catch, and it is a real one, is that the channel does not have a direction switch. They are receiving the whole time, from everyone nearby, and their culture is built around that fact rather than around the charm.
They're playable now, in the catalog and the Character Builder.
A world that shuns the wrong feelings
Zeltros sits in the Inner Rim, and the species diverged from baseline Human stock far enough to be classed separately. Skin runs pink through crimson; hair turns up red or blue, and the Legends record widens that to brown, black, white, silver and pink.
The cultural detail that matters is the one people usually mention last: Zeltron society shuns anger, fear and depression. Not disapproves — shuns. That reads as decadence from outside, and it is easy to write the species off as the galaxy's party planet. It makes considerably more sense once you know that a Zeltron in a room full of frightened people is a frightened person, through no decision of their own. A culture that polices its emotional weather is not being shallow. It is doing maintenance.
One honest note on the sources: the lore is split on whether Zeltros kept a real defence force. The Legends article on the planet says it maintained a substantial one that simply lacked orbital shielding; other material says the species never bothered. Both are on the species page, unreconciled, because picking one would be inventing.
The build
| Ability modifiers | CHA +2, DEX +1, WIS −2 |
| Size / speed | Medium, 30 ft |
| Skill | Persuasion |
| Projected Feeling | Once per Short Rest, as an Action: a creature within 30 ft makes a DC 12 Wisdom save or is Charmed or Frightened (your choice) until the end of its next turn |
| Empathic Bleed | You always know the dominant emotion of any creature within 10 ft. While one within 10 ft is Frightened, make a DC 12 Wisdom save at the start of your turn or be Frightened too |
Projected Feeling is deliberately an Action, not a free rider on a conversation. Spending your whole turn to maybe Charm one target is a real cost in a fight — which is why the interesting use is usually out of initiative, on the guard who was about to call it in, or the broker who needed to like you for ten more seconds. Your choice of Charmed or Frightened is the part worth planning around; the same trait talks someone down or sends them running.
Empathic Bleed is not flavour. Fear effects are contagious for you specifically, and the save comes at the start of your turn, so a Frightened ally standing next to you is a recurring problem rather than a one-off. The WIS −2 makes that save worse, which is the point: the species is bad at exactly the thing its biology demands of it.
Note what the kit deliberately does not do. There is no "Advantage on Persuasion" trait, because the Falleen already own that and doubling it would be the same idea billed twice. The Zeltron get Persuasion proficiency and spend their trait slots on the thing no other species does.
The ones who got out
Deliah Blue was chief mechanic of the Mynock and ran with Cade Skywalker and Jariah Syn — a working-class Zeltron a long way from any pleasure world. Dani was a thief who ended up an Alliance irregular. Vianna D'Pow was an albino bounty hunter and thief, which is about as far from the species stereotype as the record goes.
And then there is Demagol — born Antos Wyrick, the flesh carver of the Mandalorian Wars. A Zeltron scientist who fell in with the Neo-Crusaders and did the kind of work that earns a name like that. Worth keeping in mind next time someone tells you the species is harmless.
Zeltros itself ran on elected monarchs: King Arno and Queen Leonie held the crown through the Galactic Civil War by vote, not bloodline.
Build your own
The Zeltron are live in the Character Builder — push a feeling, then live with what comes back. Read the full species profile, or browse the rest of the species catalog, now 134 strong.