Vor
Species Data
Attribute Dice: 12D (+6D for PC)
DEXTERITY: 1D/2D+1
PERCEPTION: 2D/4D
STRENGTH: 2D/4D
KNOWLEDGE: 1D/2D
MECHANICAL: 1D/2D+2
TECHNICAL: 1D/3D
Size: 1.4-1.9 meters
Move: 5/9 walking, 15/22 flying
Homeworld: Vortex
Description:
"No more music. Not until we are finished here."
-An unidentified Vor clan leader
The Vors are a sentient species inhabiting the Mid Rim world of Vortex. They are thin, brittle-boned reptilian mammals who fly on leathery wings. Although they are a flying species, they
live in underground hummocks. While Vors seem inscrutable and nearly emotionless by Human standards, they are capable of creating music that is considered beautiful both by the Vors
themselves and by members of other species.
Throughout the galaxy, the Vors are renowned for the Cathedral of Winds, a colossal building on Vortex that creates music by vibrating with the wind. Annually, the Vors play a concert in
the Cathedral, flying through it to open and close windows and doors, using the Cathedral like an organ. The structure became one of the Twenty Wonders of the Galaxy but was generally
considered a myth until the Vors joined the Old Republic.
However, the Vors still had few extra-planetary interests. When the Galactic Empire replaced the Republic, the Vors felt repelled and refused to play their annual concert again.
Biology and Appearance
Vor is the name of the sentient species native to the planet Vortex, in the Glythe Sector of the Mid Rim. They are a species of humanoids with avian, mammalian, and reptilian
characteristics. An adult individual can reach as much as two meters in height. The Vor body is covered with hairless, soft, rubbery skin that is green in color with white and grey spots.
Each Vor has graceful physical features that emphasize the species' natural agility. They are slender beings, particularly in their limbs, being generally weaker than most Humans. The Vor
head is flat and pointed, dominated by a vestigial beak. Their pupil-less, ebon-black eyes are covered by lids that are occasionally prone to callosities.
Although they can move by walking, Vors are winged beings and have two leathery, transparent flaps going from the wrist to the hip. The Vors can use these wings to fly although their
three-meter wingspan is almost too short to allow this. Vors can also glide using their wings along with their hollow bones--a skill that changeling species are unable to reproduce. Their
flight ability is also adapted to the natural, gale-force winds of their homeworld; while non-native pilots found that flying in those winds was very difficult, Vors boasted great
maneuverability during the stronger cyclones there. Much of this was due to their experience in intently watching the native currents; over a lifetime, a Vor could predict the changes
in weather more efficiently than specialized technology.
At the end of each wing, a Vor has one four-fingered manipulative appendage. The hand has an inter-digital membrane similar in appearance to their wings, although this film did not reach
the last phalanges of the fingers. The most external digit is a partially opposable thumb. As the hands and arms are attached to the wings, a Vor can hold items such as weapons in hand
while flying, but he or she could not use them. Each leg ends in a foot with three forward-pointing toes.
Vor lungs are adapted to the pollution-free atmosphere of Vortex; consequently, they are very susceptible to contracting illnesses in more polluted environments. Diseases to which Vors
are susceptible included dioxo-brionchiectasis shock, hemorrhagic molting, lungrot, and silicalung.
The Vors are very intelligent beings, comparable to the Cereans in sheer reasoning capacity. Although autonomous individuals, Vors coordinate well in groups, working together with little
or no communication and making use of a sort of collective mind. Other species believed that this ability was more related to natural bio-chemicals than to cultural reasons. With a life
expectancy of 85 standard years, a Vor is considered an adult at 16 and can work until he or she is 70 years of age.
Society and Culture
"We cannot blame anyone for the Cathedral's destruction. We understand that it was an accident, and we forgive Admiral Ackbar. While the Cathedral is gone, this
is not forever. We will rebuild, and this will be our sole purpose until we can once again play our concert in peace.
Until that time, let no music sound. No pipe shall be blown, nor voice raised in song. It would be a mockery of our broken sacred place. In silence the first Cathedral was born, so it
will be again. Let all heed this command."
-Krini-shen, Chief Council of Vortex
The Vors are a creative, studious, and hard-working people who dislike conflict and make good use of their natural intelligence without rejecting manual work. Nevertheless, to outsiders
they are most famous as emotionless, imperturbable beings who seem not to react to important or dramatic events happening around them. As such, the species appeare not to be affected in
moments of great tragedy, or even joy; however, this is a wrong impression on the part of strangers. Vors are indeed concerned and touched by such events, like most other sentients; they
simply did not express those feelings in a way that non-Vors could easily interpret—except when they composed music with this goal. Indeed, the calm, peaceful, spiritual Vors tried to
stifle their personal emotions and maintain composure when among others. As a species, Vors are much more centered around the needs of a collective before those of any individual, trying
to grasp what they call "the bigger picture." Vors allow themselves outbursts of emotion only in private. A side effect of this talent to hide emotions is an unparalleled skill at
negotiation and a penchant for deceit in games of chance. Despite their closed nature, parts of the Vors' body language can be understood by aliens: for example, baby Vors nested and
curled up to protect themselves.
Vor music has galaxy-wide reputation, as it could elicit emotions in other beings, although the exact feeling depended on the listener. Aliens considered the Vor voices to be particularly
beautiful when in song—and the winged beings usually sang whenever working at something that did not require them to use their voice for other purposes. However, non-Vors found the
species' speaking voices less appealing and weak. This view notwithstanding, the Vorese language, also known as Vortexlex, has a rhythmic, melodic sound that makes good use of the Vor
ability to chirp. Vors write their language in imitation of the natural wind spirals of Vortex, and most of them can also speak Basic. Vors commonly have one-word names, such as Deskalur,
Inchiiri, Kaliopi, Wiliran, and Yiruthir. Others have names of two parts separated by a hyphen, such as Krini-shen and Sha-viri. Vors can also have a name and a surname, as exemplified
by Senator Fyg Boras.
Vors have little need for clothes, as they interfere with flying, but they do cover their genitals and, in the case of women, the top of their chest. Vors manufacture a delicate material
known as Vors-glass that is used in ornamental glassware throughout the galaxy from at least 19 BBY to the present.
Habitat
Vortex, the native planet of the Vors, has an unusual axial obliquity that causes severe seasonal changes and very strong winds during a months-long season. Some 6.5 billion Vors live in
a tribal society on the world, which is classified as their homeworld by the Republic to reflect that it is not primarily a trading center or a stronghold of any kind. The Vors share the
planet with the non-sentient bird known as the goa lawah.
The Vors live in small, partially buried dwellings in the mountains and plains of Vortex, which are covered in magenta, tan, and vermilion-colored grass. Vors commonly take shelter from
stronger tempests and hurricanes in their domiciles whenever they noticed a storm coming and during the season of storms. As the Vors are technologically advanced, they could have easily
built more resistant buildings, but they considered individual homes to be of little historical relevance and thus more useful if they were recyclable. Monuments, on the other hand, are
supposed to be perdurable and impressive, with the Vors using their natural sense of harmony and keen aesthetic sense to build elegant wonders and impressive artistic achievements.
The bunker-like, circular homes are built in concentric circles around a cultural center of their civilization. Each settlement is considered autonomous and unrelated to the others, but
Vors work together, regardless of their area of origin, to maintain monuments and spaceports.
The Cathedral of Winds
The Cathedral of Winds, sculpted by the Vors millennia before the Battle of Yavin in the grass plains of Vortex, is a mountain-high building of several hundred meters in height. Whenever
the wind blows through it, the Cathedral vibrates, producing music. The Vors decided to build it because they are prone to sing and create music whenever they worked.
The Cathedral reflected the sunlight on its outer surface. It is mostly hollow, with hundreds of open chambers, rooms, and corridors of different sizes. Although ethereal, delicate, and
crystalline in aspect with some organic tint, the Cathedral is a very strong building. This is due to the fact that its construction is based on a complex organic blueprint, which gives
it a hardened structure able to resist the strongest winds for dozens of decades.
Once a year, during the solstice of the storm season, the Vors celebrate a galaxy-renowned cultural fete known as the Concert of the Winds. During the event, flying Vors manipulate the
windows, doors, and openings of the Cathedral of Winds, sometimes covering them with their own bodies, according to a choreographed plan that they communicated to each other secretly and
without sound in a completely synchronized way. Thus, the wind blew through the thousands of flutes and over them, transforming the Cathedral into an enormous organ as it was struck by and
filled with the strong winds. This exquisite, re-echoing, plaintive sound is known as the music of the winds. This is an eagerly awaited event, because the music, partially created by the
specific weather, partly by the secretive Vors, can not be repeated. Additionally, the Vors do not allow any kind of recording of the concert.
To the Vors, the Cathedral of Winds is the core of both their society and their planet, physically and spiritually, as well as their most cherished masterpiece. The Vors also believe that
playing in the Concert is the highest distinction a person might aspire to.
History
The Vors are recorded to inhabit the galaxy during the Pius Dea crusades (12,000 BBY–11,000 BBY), albeit only unofficially. During this conflict, the scout Hicco became the first outsider
to view the Cathedral of Winds. The general population outside Vortex considered stories of such a monument magnificent but ultimately no more than legend. Nonetheless, the Cathedral
became one of the Twenty Wonders of the Galaxy as compiled by Vicendi in 10,000 BBY. Only when Vortex joined the Galactic Republic in 3977 BBY did their symbol and their species enter the
conception of reality of the average galactic citizen.
Despite this affiliation with the Republic, Vortex is only a symbolic member, as Vors rarely desire to leave Vortex. They adopt technology from the Republic, including space travel. They
built spaceports for aliens, albeit only limited-service ones, because the Vors themselves would rather fly by their own means in their atmosphere and felt little need to fly outside
Vortex. Once the spaceports were finished, the Vors welcomed tourists and began to export food and raw materials, buying in exchange middle- and high-level technology. The Vors even
bought weather-predicting satellites to keep track of unexpected storms; the Vors themselves, being better meteorologists than the satellites, did not need these, but incoming tourists
felt comfort from knowing that such devices were available. In 188 BBY, the Treaty of Vors was signed.
In 22 BBY, during the Separatist Crisis, a number of Vors were living on the planet Coruscant. A study of the Rhire Medical Academy showed that the high pollution in the galactic capital
was very harmful for the weak-lunged Vors, as well as for several other species, including six avian species. The contamination was mostly caused by industry and by civilian traffic, and
it could cause severe illnesses. Soon after this event, during the Clone Wars, Vortex fell within the territory controlled by the Republic rather than its rival, the Confederacy of
Independent Systems.
In 19 BBY, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine of Naboo proclaimed himself Emperor of the Galaxy and began the Galactic Empire. The Vors considered the Empire as the perpetrator of several
excesses that were to be resisted. As the Vors were a peaceful species, they did not resist militarily; instead, they ceased to welcome visiting aliens, although they did not close the
borders of Vortex to tourists. Also, as an objection to Palpatine, the Vors sealed all the openings in the Cathedral of Winds to prevent its music from sounding, thus canceling the
annual Concert of the Winds. During Palpatine's reign, the species refused to perform for any non-Vor.
Special Skill:
Strength Skill: Flight: Time to use: one round
