The Veglar
Created By: Jay P Hailey
Short Summary: A race of hostile, but desperate humanoids
Appearance: The Veglar are humanoids about the same size and weight as a human and similar in general layout but obviously reptilian in nature, Their skin is covered in soft green scales articulated to facilitate movement.
Biology: The Veglar are omnivourous with a strong preference for meat.
They lay eggs but nurture their young. They are a carbon based life form, they
breath oxygen and use the same basic biochemistry as everyone in the Trek universe.
They prefer hot, dry environments. They start to suffer hypothermia at higher
temperatures than a human.
Location: Veglar is located at the very edge of the Federation where a Starship on a deep space probe or a frontier mapping expedition might discover it. It is not close to any other empire unless this amuses the GM
Population: The population of Veglar is 9 Billion and declining
Languages: The Veglar speak Veglar. There used to be many more languages on their world but as their central government rose to prominence it stamped out the older languages in favor of it own favored model
Government: The Veglar are ruled by a military dictatorship. This fascism suits their racial temperament, despite some troubling human rights issues.
Position in the Veglar government is decided by one's rank in the military, a council of high generals rules the world. A Veglar rises to the rank of High General (Roughly equivalent of a four star Admiral in Starfleet) by succeeding in major tasks, while subverting the goals of his rivals. It's an intensely political process, filled with ruthless Machiavellian maneuvering, betrayal and alliance building.
Economy: The Veglar economy is occupied with trying to survive. The Veglar have worked into a state of slow decline and are flogging it harder, trying to stay ahead of bleak disaster.
Military: The Veglar military is grossly huge and disproportioned for their needs, but the Military lends structure and stability to a culture in an advanced state of crisis.
The Veglar Military is currently centered around 12 - 15 City Ships. Disks a kilometer in diameter they are equipped with grossly powerful impulse drives and antigravity generators. They mount the most powerful particle beam cannons their weapon smiths can craft and hundreds of missiles with plasma fusion warheads. These missiles pack a huge punch and can be very dirty in terms of fall out.
These City-Ships carry tens of thousands of occupation troopers and a hundred of their distinctive white shuttlecraft with stubby wings, optimized for all sorts of roles, from cargo lighter to gunship.
On the way back to Veglar with occupation trrops and shuttles off loaded, these City ships are packed to the rafters with organic material and foodstuffs, including live animals in cryogenic suspension to keep them fresh.
History: The planet Veglar was a tropical and desert world with a thriving ecosystem and long history. The first Sentient Native of Veglar appeared approximately 100,000 years ago. The Veglar developed cultures and societies and after a long slow climb towards true civilization they reached their industrial age.
The Veglar industrial age has been an unmitigated disaster. Numerous wars and aggressive exploitation of their world's resources has damaged Veglar severely. Now all but incapable of supporting life, Veglar is in decline, and with it, the desperately struggling Culture of the Veglar.
Within historical times, the "Central Authority" or the Veglar Authority took complete control over Veglar and all her people. Still more recently, an aggressive space program and space infrastructure has been built to exploit all of the other planets in the Veglar system.
Within the last few years, Veglar science has discovered the Warp drive and now Veglar missions reach for their neighboring worlds reaching for more resources to try repair the horrible damage to their home world.
Culture: The Veglar are very conscious of relative positions of dominance, submission and social hierarchy. Their culture rewards struggle for higher position by any means necessary including lying, cheating, stealing, black mailing betrayal, threats of violence and even murder if handled within certain restrictions.
The Veglar culture's ruling class is the military with higher military rank being the reward for accomplishment both in a constructive sense and in a destructive sense.
Relations: The Veglar have infiltrated and conquered a neighboring world, the Kamari. The did this using a surprisingly elegant tactic of deception and public relations, only revealing their jack booted, iron Fist methodology at the very end.
The Veglar would feel very threatened should they run into a technologically superior race or nation. Their first goal is to dominate and avoid domination.
Advantages: The Veglar as a race are militaristic and well organized. They have built a stunningly large and capable space infrastructure and huge city-ships. An individual Veglar is physically durable and can tolerate very high temperatures under very dry conditions.
Weaknesses: The Veglar tend to view the world through hostility colored lenses and are a suspicious lot. Constant maneuvering and betrayal make the average Veglar suspicious and untrusting. The Veglar have damaged their ecosystem very badly and perhaps fatally, by being unwilling to stop viewing civilization as a battle to dominate their world.
Special: They were bright red Jumpsuits for uniforms. Some accounts have them wearing latex masks to pass as more human like, but this has been discounted as lacking credibility.
The Veglar currently live in huge Arcologies under the surface of their world. The air is often stale and the food is the equivalent of Soylent Green. Daily life for joe-average veglar is grim. His main outlet is working hard for the success of the project to strip the Kamari homeworld of all it's resources, battling for petty bits of dominance and watching escapist video.
Group Name: The Veglar
Organization: Fascist military dictatorship
Campaign Role: A race of black hated bad guys to make doing the "Starfleet Thing" with challenging.
World Role: The Veglar are a minor race on the fringe of the Federation. Properly handled they might become minor allies or even partners.
Relative Influence: In the Veglar and Kamari System nearly total, Outside, non-existant.
Publicly Stated Goal: The domination of all creation.
Relative Wealth: Compared to the Federation, miniscule. Compared to another individual planet in early warp drive culture, many industrial and military assets.
Special Disadvantages: The Veglar industrial build up has ruined their planet's ecology. It's now a hostile, almost lifeless desert with toxic atmosphere, washed by acid rain. If this damage continues untreated the world will die, and with it, the vast majority of Veglar.
Those who favor them: Those Veglar who are too math impaired to realize that no amount of city ships trucking bio-mass back to Veglar is going to help.
Area of Operation: At the edge of the Federation
Headquarters Location: The Veglar System, in a huge orbital space complex orbiting what's left of their world
Public Face: Friendly Visitors to Kamari who only want what is best and some help repairing their world.
Notable Members: None established, yet.
History of the Group: The Veglar's trouble started in their industrial age. The Veglar culturally view life as a struggle for dominance. They viewed their relationship with their world in this fashion.
The Veglar aggressively exploited their world's resources while failing to take steps to protect their world and its ecosystem.
The damage grew worse, the Veglar moved into Emergency shelters and tried to turn to space for a fix for their problems.
The problem is that no practical number of ships built can truck in enough fresh elements to make much of a dent in a planetary system. The Veglar are wedded to a bloody-minded brute force approach even though it is plain to many that this approach is doomed. The Veglar have sunk enormous resources and all their hopes into the process.
If a new approach can be presented to the Veglar in a convincing enough fashion they will glom onto it, even at the price of violent rebellion against the current ruling class.
Notes -
The Veglar are actually very early in their warp drive era. Their weapons while terrible are primitive compared to Starfleet models, their shields and sensors similarly so. The huge particle beam cannons of the Veglar City-Ships could lay waste to huge swaths of unprotected planetary surface, but are ineffectual against Starfleet Shielding, effectively doing no damage to a modern Starfleet ship. If a City ship could fire continuously for hours it could punch through the protection of a Starfleet vessel.
The fusion warhead of the Veglar missiles can pose a threat to a Starfleet ship, simply because the weapon is so broadly destructive. Alone a single Veglar missile is no challenge at all for a Federation Starship, it can be easily shot down by phasers, jammed by sensors or cast aside by tractor beams.
The threat is that a Veglar city ship can launch *hundreds* of warheads swamping a Starship's defenses. Even so it would take three to four unanswered broadsides from a Veglar City-Ship to breach a Federation Starship's shields.
Veglar EW is not effective against Federation technology allowing A Starship's phasers to easily target specific systems of the monster ships including weapons and engines.
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Disclaimer: Paramount owns all things Trek. I claim original characters and situations in this material for me.