Voraija

Voraija

(Creature)

Type

Magical beast

Starship Tier

1/2

Environment

Any gas giant or vacuum

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Source: Alien Archive 4, pg(s). 134

Voraijas are a species of predatory, gregarious, space-dwelling cetaceans.

Appearance

Voraija skin looks like a mix of warm colours, which provide little concealment in open space but blend them in with the upper atmosphere of gas giants. Every individual voraija has a distinct pattern of metallic osteoderms which generate a unique echo through disruption of microwave radiation, allowing pods to identify individual members from long distances. On average, voraijas weigh around 40 tons and measure 80 feet long, and can grow up to more than 100 feet long.

Voraija pods sing to each other in electromagnetic waves characterised by playful riffs and forceful shouts. Most creatures compare it to buzzing or heat, while starship sensors register it as overwhelming static.

Ecology

Voraijas hunt in pods, targeting organic creatures native to gas giants. Small prey like cloud rays are corralled and stunned with high-frequency waves before being swallowed whole, as voraijas' small teeth have difficulty inflicting lethal wounds. Large prey like oma and giant space tardigrades are killed by microwave bursts, before the voraijas bite into their carcasses.

Voraijas mature at the age of 35 and live for centuries, with the eldest matriarchs being more than a millennium old.

Habitat

Pods of voraijas migrate between the stars in erratic and ponderous patterns which see them returning to the same solar system only once every few centuries. Upon entering a system, voraijas follow the solar winds toward a gas giant where they could nest, where they remain for up to a few years. When the juveniles could travel, the pod spends a few months touring the other planets, sending microwave bursts to sense what has changed since the last time they came.

Society

The visit of a voraija pod can severely disrupt communications across a planet's surface, so advanced societies often send starships to escort the voraijas out and minimise the damage. However, due to their stubborn curiosity, these encounters usually result in misunderstanding and violence, and due to the powerful emotional bonds between members of a pod, a death (especially that of an elder matriarch) can turn the voraijas vengeful, causing them to hunt down and destroy any starships across the system.

In the past, voraijas were hunted by unscrupulous manufacturers who harvested their organs, like brains and hearts, as budget starship upgrades, before the Pact Worlds government banned voraija hunting, causing the industry to collapse. While most voraijas do not attack starships unprovoked, a few elders still bear the scars of these hunts (which often involved injecting transmitters into survivors to track the pod), and attack starships on sight. In place of this practice, enterprises have explored profiting off voraijas through tours, during which tourists are carried as close as possible to voraija pods to watch them fly and sing, in exchange for a substantial sum of credits. However, these starships often draw too near and provoke the voraijas into attacking, and while activists have spoken out against it, this practice shows no sign of decline. Meanwhile, starship manufacturers study intact voraija corpses to find ethical alternatives to their organs as starship systems.