Shadow
Type: character, protagonist
AKA: Furball, Hen, Featherbutt (Nicknames mostly coined by her crewmates—Vex especially)
Race: Velari (wingless anthropomorphic avian)
Age: Mid-twenties
Height: 170 cm (5' 7")
Weight: 50 kg (110 lbs)

Visual Description:
Shadow’s lithe, feminine frame is covered in sleek black fur that mimics the softness and flow of small feathers. Her skin beneath the fur is black, blending seamlessly with her fluffy coat, except for vivid emerald-green accents: her tongue, the delicate folds of her genitals, and hidden nipples (appearing only as slight bumps beneath fur).
White feather-like spots accent her shoulders and hips, and the base of her long, thick tail. Her legs are digitigrade, each ending in three-toed feet with elegant, taloned claws. She rarely uses any kind of footwear, so the soft pads of her toes make her steps nearly silent on most surfaces. Her sleek, feathered head, adorned with backward-pointed expressive ear tufts, flows seamlessly into a dense, voluminous neck mane.
Her small black beak is smooth and gently curved, giving her awkward kisses a strange, alien delicacy that often catches her lovers off guard. Her eyes are striking: entirely green sclera with solid black pupils, giving her gaze a hypnotic, otherworldly quality. A gentle voice, musical and melodic, carries bird-like coos and chirps, especially when flustered or emotional.

Personality:
Shadow is a walking contradiction: submissive but stubborn, awkward but sharp, insecure yet resilient. She fakes confidence when she has none, cracks jokes to mask fear, and flirts without realizing the effect she has on others. Her past taught her to use compliance as survival, but it also left her with a deep, aching need for connection—one she’s never learned how to satisfy, and barely even knows how to name.
She’s curious, fast-thinking, and resourceful—especially when working with tech—but socially clumsy, often misreading emotional cues and overcompensating with self-deprecating humor. Shadow wants to be useful, needed, valued—not just a pretty thing to hold down, use and forget. She’s spent her life being passed from one set of hands to another, her body remembered long after her name was not. What she wants, but fears to chase, is to matter beyond a quick fuck. To be seen, kept, fought for. Loved, not just lusted after. Someone real.

Backstory:
Shadow was born in the underbelly of a sprawling hive-city on a Coalition-controlled world—where xeno species like the Velari are viewed as expendable curiosities at best. Her parents died in an anti-xeno riot, leaving her to scrape by in a world that saw her body as a commodity. Years of abuse hardwired a submissive survival instinct, along with deep shame over her own biology and desires.
She was briefly taken in by a kind human who treated her with genuine care, but the sense of alienation never left. Eventually, she fled, finding work on the fringes as a mechanic aboard a scavenger ship Nomad. It was there—among outcasts and smugglers—that she began carving out a life. It wasn’t safe, or clean, or easy… but it was hers.

Current Role:
Aboard the Nomad, Shadow serves as mechanic, tech specialist, and occasional chaos magnet. She's invaluable when something breaks—and something is always breaking. Despite her insecurities, her crewmates value her for far more than her technical skills. Whether she believes them—or believes she deserves it—is another story.

Biology & Sexuality:
Like all Velari, Shadow experiences periodic heat cycles—intense, all-consuming periods that hijack her mind and body every few weeks. It isn't arousal, it's compulsion. A primal, pounding ache that claws its way up from her gut and turns every movement, every breath, into something dangerously close to desperation. She usually tries to funnel it into work, but lust doesn’t care about productivity.
Outside heat cycles Shadow is, by blunt and clinical standards, a nymphomaniac. Her desire constant but psychological, not all-consuming. It’s just a nagging itch that sparks too easily—a glance, a stray comment, or the wrong kind of touch and she’s already fighting to keep her composure. She hates it—how quickly her body craves things she knows will only leave her feeling worse. She wants affection, not just sex, but her body’s always offering itself first, and she’s never sure how to fight it. Instead she tries to hide it behind jokes, distractions, and a mask of control.

Type: Flightless anthro avian species
Status: Rare, scattered, quietly vanishing
Origin: A lost homeworld, now erased from charts and memory

The Velari are a dwindling species known for their unique biology and tragic history. Once native to a single planet, their population collapsed after a mysterious planetary catastrophe—officially blamed on a “dimensional event”, though all records are heavily redacted or lost. Rumors speak of time fractures, dimensional convergence, or Precursor artifact accident. No one knows for sure. The whole planet is simply vanished.

The species are resistant—uniquely resistant—to certain dimensional stresses common in deep-space travel and hyperspace interference zones. No one fully understands why, but in regions where human minds fracture or machines short out, Velari can walk through unscathed. Some scientists believe they evolved near a natural hyperspace anomaly. Others think it’s not evolution at all—but bioengineering. Either way, it makes them invaluable for hyperspace navigation in unstable regions… and deeply feared by those who believe they are “cursed”.

Culturally, the Velari carry the weight of extinction. Scattered across the galaxy, very few communities remain, and most have assimilated or fallen silent. Their language is dying. Their history is fragmented. Most no longer believe survival and future for the species as a whole is possible.

The Coalition maintains a shallow tolerance for their existence due to utility.

What’s left of the Velari remember what was taken—but not how to take it back.

Visual appearance and guidelines

Nomad
Type: spaceship
Nomad is a small deep space scavenger ship. Its crew consists of ten people, including the captain, first mate, pilot, navigator, engineer, mechanic, security officer, medic, communication specialist and cargo master.
The crew of Nomad are just a simple workers who are trying their best to stay afloat and are not important in the grand scale of the universe. But to survive in the unforgiving depths of space, they sometimes had to engage in some morally questionable activities.