Starkind

Starkind, often referred to as Dragons, are one of the oldest known races in the Milky Way galaxy. They are loosely governed by the Council of Elders.

Background

Starkind often live to be at least 3000-3500 years old, discounting any accidents or other significant injury. They do not begin having children until they are about 750 years old, and only have them every couple hundred years. They usually have a single live birth, but occasional multiples are born (either twins or triplets). They birth and raise their young on planets such as Earth as the young need an oxygen-rich atmosphere until they are about 14-15 years old. The offspring tend to stay with or near their mothers for the first 150-200 years, though some leave before then.

Those in the Sol system use the Earth as their Nesting Ground. Outside of nesting, they spend most of their time traveling around or lounging on asteroids in the Solar System. When nesting, the females stay near Earth, usually residing on the Moon or on nearby asteroids when they aren't on Earth. They have been responsible for saving their Nesting Ground from major meteor strikes for the last 66 million years.

The K-T extinction event was an attack on their civilization, which was mostly based on Earth at that time. Enough of them were spread throughout the Sol system to prevent their extinction. Since then, they have spent much of their adult lives preventing that from happening again. They began wormhole travel about 30 million years ago. They have thus populated a large percentage of the Milky Way galaxy.

They are familiar with the Halfen, Renn, Kimmalevoi, and the other races in the galaxy. However, they only rarely become involved in the politics and dealings of the other races, and most prefer spending time only with other dragons. Ekoha and Chiemi are two of only a few that have become directly involved in human history.

Appearance and abilities

Starkind are large, cold-blooded, silicon-based life forms. The have an appearance similar to Eastern dragons, but with very large wings. Their scales are translucent and matte, allowing them to use their chameleon-like skin to easily blend in with their surroundings. Some have color preferences they stick with for extended times. When in a vacuum, their scales become extremely shiny, and their skin becomes jet black, so they blend into the sky by looking like the stars.

They use their skin to very efficiently absorb energy from the full spectrum of light, and use micro wormholes to boost the energy output exponentially when they are moving (once they hit the 250km/s speed where they can accelerate to 0.10c). This makes them very difficult to see with radar since they absorb it. They can ride the solar winds to move from place to place, similar to how a sailor can use the winds to move a boat, even tacking against the wind to move into it.

Once up to speed (about 250 km/s, takes about 20 minutes, distance covered about 10,000 km), they can use stored light energy and solar wind energy particles to speed up to about 1/10 the speed of light (about 29,979.2 km/s, takes another 5 minutes to speed up to that speed).

They eat the rocks (asteroids, etc.) to obtain oxygen, strengthen their bone structure with the silicon, and to obtain various other trace elements. While in vacuum, they “breathe” to move the oxygen gas from their special rock-digestion stomach to their lungs. However, they do not require large amounts of oxygen.

Spatial awareness and wormhole travel

All dragons have excellent spatial awareness, especially within a vacuum. They can easily and innately calculate trajectories and orbits. Unless they are sleeping, adults can sense objects within the 360 degrees around them within about 1000 meters.

Starkind can use wormholes without the use of a jump engine and can “see” through them in order to travel through safely. Using their telepathic abilities, they can "see" the other side of the wormhole and identify the phasing anchor points found around the edges of each wormhole. These anchor points phase in and out of existence at a regular rate (which is different for each wormhole).

Telepathic communication

Starkind are highly intelligent and communicate via telepathy, They call this speech "mindspeak". Their emotions are communicated through combinations of abstract colors and shapes sent telepathically with their thoughts. While they can project/send thoughts to others, hear thoughts sent to them, and read the emotional state of others, they can not read minds. They can understand spoken human speech, but cannot vocalize it correctly.

With their thoughts come various colors that help convey emotion:

Primary colors	Intensity of colors	Patterns	Meanings
Yellow	Bright		Joy
Mixed Pastels	Muted, mellow		Happiness
Rainbow	Muted with hints of brightness	Ripple, halo, splash	Amusement Mirth
Green and blue	Bright	Bursts	Just kidding Joking Not serious
Red	Bright, bold	Jagged bursts, lightning	Anger
Blues	Muted, mellow	Gentle wash	Calm
Pink	Bright	Bursts	Annoyance
Hot pink laced with bright yellow slashes	Bright		Suspicion
Green Olive green	Dull, muted		Grumpiness Resigned
Red and orange	Bright	Bursts	Alarm Sharp concern
White	Bright	Flashes Bursts	Pain
Green	Murky, swampy		Fear
Yellow w/red and orange	Muted (yellow), bright (red and orange)	Wash (yellow), speckles (red and orange)	Cautious
Tans/browns	Muted		Understanding Acceptance
Tans/browns with mixed pastels	Muted (tans/browns), bright (pastels)		Relief
Blues with white	Pale (blue), bright (white)	Crystalline patterns (blue), geometric (white)	Attentiveness
Blues with white and yellow	Pale (blue), bright (white), muted (yellow)	Crystalline patterns (blue), geometric (white), muted highlights (yellow)	Thoughtful, considering

Characters

• Chiemi
• Ekoha