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W'hoorn
Last Updated August 3, 2026
Excerpted from “A Catalog of Races of the Starmourn Sector”.
The W’hoorn are a race of winged bipeds with a bent for combat, and a a strong respect for physical dominance. Though they lost the ability to fly long before achieving spaceflight, they can leap powerfully and use their wings to glide.
At a Glance
| Relationships | They are essentially serial monogamists by virtue of the fact that they’re such a contentious race that decades-long relationships are unusual. |
| Social mobility | In traditional W’hoorn culture, there is quite a bit of social mobility due to the Right of Challenge. This permits a W’hoorn who is within a certain ‘level’ of another to issue a challenge to an unarmed fight to the death. If the higher status person wins, the loser is in disgrace and his or her immediate family will suffer disgrace by proxy as well. This serves as a pretty big incentive to challenge only when you’re pretty sure you can win. If the higher status person loses, only he/she suffers the social disgrace – not his/her immediate family. |
| Entertainment | They’re big fans of competitive sports, particularly those involving physical contact. |
| Government | Military rule. The head of the military – called the Navarach – is the defacto head of their government. The current Navarach is Sothyr Lat (f). |
| Home System | Benu |
| Homeworld | Benu Wen |
| Capital | Vertenalith |
| Lifespan | 150 years. |
| Life Priorities | The W’hoorn place a great deal of store in maintaining their version of honor, specifically as respects conflict, whether in sport or war. |
| Likes/Dislikes | They have a strong dislike of small enclosed spaces, especially those underground. They can tolerate it – after all, they travel on starships like any civilized race – but doing so tends to cause them to be fairly touchy and ill-tempered. As a result, other races sometimes prefer not to serve on board long starship voyages with too many W’hoorn. |
| Spaceflight? | They achieved spaceflight about 23,000 years ago. |
| Historical enemies | Like many, they hate and fear the Ishvana, but their conflicts with the Ry’nari go back much further than that. |
| Sources of wealth | The W’hoorn count some of the greatest manufacturers of weapons systems and personal shielding among their races’ accomplishments. |
| Religion | Historically, they worshipped a pantheon of W’hoorn Gods, but barring a few cults, they’re no longer believed to be real. Their Gods included Sorass, God of the Hunt, Aes’ti, the Goddess of the Skies, Credador, the God of the Wind, and Aes’tun, sister of Aes’ti, and Goddess of War. |
| Architecture | They like to build vertically, with lots of open balconies and flat roofs to glide between. |