The Old Wanderers Saga

They come from a planet long dead, made molten by their expanding star. Their forms over the years have become vastly diverse from the use of biotech implants to entire gene modifications, and can only be recognized as a single species by the restless look they always have.    Solans, they call themselves, rarely organized in the vast cosmos. They seek only the occasional kind host in their never ending journeys through the stars, not looking for somewhere in particular, just looking. To crews that take them on, there is an old knowledge: Solans bring fortune to their hosts, one good turn for another. Perhaps it is their occasional tinkering with ship parts to keep them running longer than they should, perhaps the morale they bring as companions to all who would have them, perhaps they are simply good luck to have, but stories of these Solans keeping ships in the sky is worth the meager rations and small rooms to dwell in.   Sometimes they will travel with ships for far longer than a single journey, becoming a friendly face to hold the crew together, or even considered a fixture of the ship itself. They themselves find this reputation rather amusing, calling themselves “Fair Folk” from legends of their own planet. Like these “Folk”, they can be a force to be reckoned with when someone affects them outside their rules (Ask before taking, do no harm to the innocent, leave choice to those who will be effected), or even just to defend their hosts; Solans are infamous for their “protective aggression,” fighting ruthlessly for the sake of bonded shipmates, even against more of their own kind (which they seem to inherently recognize).   What is little spoken-of, however, is their greatest advantage: they are wanderers, observers, and collectors. Younger Solans will use their knowledge and supplies of dangerous weaponry of different species to hold their own against larger opponents, and elder Solans, more titanium than carbon-based, will know ships, enemy flight patterns, and tactical weak points to target in ships or even being-to-being contact with little more than their own appendages or a basic plasma cannon.    This dichotomy, unsettling companion and infamous warrior, can polarize ship-crews about whether to accept Solans and carefully observe their unusual rules, or keep a safe distance from them, but one thing is agreed on: they never stop moving. Even in sleep, they will shift and turn, claiming to see things that aren’t in their “dreams”, and a core aspect of most Solan religions is the soul continuing to another place after the body dies, with the remains most often burned to ash and scattered over the molten surface of their dead world.    Solans, even in death, do not stop moving. They simply wait.