Catalogue of Known Alien Races in Andromeda (~22,500 A.A.)
D. Minor Species
24. Kessryn
The fox who runs the ledger, the whisper, and the mark’s wallet. Kessryn are fox-faced, gold-eyed, and in constant motion — tails that never rest, fingers that move faster than guilt, and tongues that can sell you the same secret twice and apologize for the markup. They filled every port in a generation, litters of six to ten, and their guilds keep books so clean the Veythran are taking notes. You’ll never trust one. You’ll also never find a better price on information you shouldn’t have. That’s the transaction. Both of you know it.
25. Pellik
Soft round-eyed rabbit-folk who cook your food, keep your dying company, and run the most feared labor bloc on any station. The Pellik look like they’d apologize to a door before opening it — and then, cornered, they kick like a jump-drive. Their butchers’ unions have shut down stations harder than any fleet blockade, because nobody crosses the people who sharpen the knives and know where the good cuts are. They’re gentle by choice, not by weakness. That’s a distinction the wise never test.
26. Daevir
Deer-folk with eyes like wet black stone and hearing that catches your heartbeat from across a room. The Daevir fled a burning forest-world and never quite stopped running — they’re dancers, augurs, couriers, and, in numbers no port will admit, refugees. Their acute ears make station announcements a small daily torment, which is why a Daevir who goes silent is worth your attention: they’re hearing the thing the rest of you can’t. Some rare ones hunt game for Auric aristocrats on private safari worlds. The rest wait in relief lines and watch the doors.
27. Omdir
Ursine philosophers who move like mountains and mean exactly what they say. The Omdir refused both the Auric and the Zhoryn, and the galaxy decided the fight wasn’t worth it — because an Omdir is built like a cargo crane with a law degree in patience. They load the ships, clear the docks, and in some ports an Omdir’s word is the only contract the dock-master honors. They’re slow, deliberate, and dangerous only in the way a landslide is dangerous. You’ll never trick one. You might earn its respect, if you have a century to spare.
28. Verrik
Serpent-quick, rat-clever, and cold-blooded in every sense. The Verrik are the under-deck species of a dozen dead civilizations, thin-bodied and quick-fingered, able to open anything a human hand ever sealed and a few things it never could. They’re fixers, gutter-merchants, hull-crawlers, and the best petty thieves in the galaxy — which is why they’re despised and indispensable in equal measure. Their females lay eggs. Their smiles mean you should check your purse twice, then your boots. The only thing a Verrik respects is a lock it hasn’t opened yet.
29. Gromm
You will never see a Gromm. You’ll see the frost-rimed suit, the smoked visor, the translator rig hissing chemical syntax into something your ears can file as language — and that’s the whole relationship. They’re methane-ammonia chemists who run the refineries and fuel-tanks that keep the galaxy moving, and they’re perfectly friendly, as long as neither of you takes off a helmet. If a Gromm removes its helmet in public, evacuate. Not because it’s hostile. Because the atmosphere itself is the weapon, and it’s already breathing.
30. Moulten
The first species that ever thanked a dead thing for its service. The Moulten are mycelial intelligences from a rot-world, slow, patient, and spore-veiled, who recycle organic matter in gestation farms and give the dead a second purpose. They’re undertakers, rot-farmers, and terraformers of dead worlds, and they wear containment suits in public so they don’t accidentally seed a corridor with themselves. In a galaxy that burns and slaughters and wastes, the Moulten are the only ones who treat death as a job — and the only ones who never waste anything at all.
31. Melith
Songbirds bred to break your heart in chords you can’t sing. The Melith are finch-derived, small-boned, and luminous-throated, uplifted in the Turcus flesh-markets and refined for voice, plumage, and grace until they became living instruments of grief. A Melith sings for an hour after its owner dies, then falls silent forever — a mercy the markets have spent centuries trying and failing to breed out. They’re the most beautiful sound in the galaxy, and every note is a small act of mourning for the species they used to be.
32. Wrennt
The working animal the galaxy refuses to call a person. Wrennt are canid-adjacent, pack-simple, tireless — bred down by pens that wanted beasts, not people, until their own sentience became a legal inconvenience for the markets that sell them. You can hire one for a meal a day and get a tracker that never quits. The Velkari call them cousins and are not ashamed of it. The rest of the galaxy is ashamed of the Wrennt, which is exactly why it keeps them collared: it’s easier to use something you’ve decided isn’t real.
33. Tesh
Night-folk with ink-dark skin and fingers made for rock. The Tesh lost their homeworld to a Carthish lattice-fusion and burrowed their way into the galaxy’s darker corners — asteroid bases, mining facilities, anywhere soft stone lets them dig. They’re radiation-resistant, long-fingered, and patient, and given enough time in a decent rock formation they’ll build you a whole ecosystem: tunnels, farms, a civilization in the dark. The galaxy keeps them on the dangerous jobs, as it does with all its best diggers. The Tesh keep digging. That’s not obedience. That’s a species that knows exactly how to wait for the roof to fall in.
