Velans

Overview

The second xenosophonts to be classified by humanity, the Velorans are named after the constellation in which the first world where their unambiguous artefacts were identified. Ironically, it was only this discovery that led to the realization Veloran 'artefacts' had been known and misidentified for almost half a century; the feral 'xenodrones' (seperate and distinct from those from recognizably Human origin) which had been generally believed to be distantly derived from Precursor machinery were in fact of much more recent provenance.

The Veloran homeworld has not yet been discovered and is estimated to lie up to several hundred light years outside of the nebulous outer boundary of Human-explored space, however, various education assumptions have been made about it.

1) Its parent star is a non-flaring M-type red dwarf, similar to Gliese 581

2) The homeworld is a rocky world with a surface gravity between 0.7 and 1.5 Gs.

3) The homeworld is inside the water zone; as a consequence it can be expected to be less than 0.25 AUs from the primary and will almost certainly be tidally locked to the primary.

4) The homeworld is expected to have an oxy-nitro atmosphere broadly similar to that of Earth; Veloran biochemistry and floral/faunal stock is fundamental similar to that of Terrestrial origin and requires comparable temperature and gaseouc chemistry.

Veloran Biology

Like Terrestrial life, Veloran-derived life uses DNA and RNA as its fundamental genetic materiel, albeit with a number of different amino acids and codons. As a result, Veloran biochemistry is only moderately compatible with Terrestrial life and Humans would find many things devoid of nutritional value or poisonous.