Generic Space Opera Bestiary: Space Vulture

 

 

I haven’t touched on birds for awhile, and doubtless, some people might wonder why not falcons? Or why not parrots, etc. Why vultures? Well, as noted previously, what I’m looking for are mostly the creatures a GM will seek to include in a typical space opera game, but mostly as background animals. Sure, I’ve done tigers and bears, but for the most part, these are meant to represent the sort of critters one would commonly see. And I would argue that vultures or, more specifically, vultures are classic creatures that characters will see. The image of the vulture floating serenely over a dying man while it waits for him to die in a desert before feasting on their remains is a classic one. It’s a psychopomp, a visual reminder of impending death, or a marker of a battlefield. A crow would work too and, frankly, has more mythical resonance with the average westerner, but the vulture is vastly easier to spot over large distances because of its large size and its ability to soar and high altitudes, making the impending death of a target visible for miles.

I may sometimes refer to it as a buzzard. This is because it’s a colloquial North American term for the turkey vulture, which is what I typically think of when it comes to vultures. It has no relation to the actual, common buzzard, though. It’s also sometimes called a carrion crow.

At the core, we’re talking about a relatively large, flying scavenger. The point of this particular animal is to be big, to be high up, and to be concerned about letting critters die before feasting on them. That’s the “guild” we’re looking for. The point is to have something circling the dying from high above.

 

Space Vultures in GURPS Space

Obviously, we’re discussing a scavenger. While a flying scavenger can work anywhere, we want something that benefits from the ability to see the dying from high up, which eliminates regions with lots of cover, so no woodlands, jungles or aquatic environments like swamps and they wouldn’t fair that well with island/beach either. We tend to associate them with warm environments, so that eliminates arctic. That leaves just plains, mountains and, especially, deserts.

When it comes to Mobility, we’re obviously looking at Winged Flight. In particular, we want a form of winged flight called soaring. There are multiple ways to achieve soaring, but vultures seem to have shorter wings with “slotted feathers,” gaps at the tips like finger, that allow for quicker take-off and the ability to catch thermals, but don’t allow quite the extreme long-distance flying of an albatross.

When it comes to Size, as typical with birds, size and mass have a pretty big disconnect from what we find in GURPS space. A turkey vulture clocks in at between two to five lbs, with a wing-span of between five and six feet. This puts the turkey vulture at between SM +0 (for size) and SM -3 (for mass). If we want bigger, the Andean Condor (a sort of vulture) has a wingspan of up to 10 feet, and a mass of up to 30 lbs. That’s an SM of between +1 (for wingspan) and -2 (for mass). We might split the difference for a “generic space vulture” and put it at SM +0 with 25 lbs, which gives it a mighty ST of about 6.

Winged fliers are going to be very unlikely to have anything bit bilateral symmetry, two limbs per side (a wing and a leg) and a tail with no special features. We also expect an internal skeleton, given its size, warmth, dryness of environment etc. However, combination or external skeleton do fall within the realms of a plausible roll in GURPS Space (Hydrostatic Skeleton is also just possible, but beggars the imagination).

When it comes to Skin, it’s hard to imagine a creature fitting this description without feathers. The slotting of feathers allows for the specific sort of flight that vultures do, which you can’t do with skin, scales, etc. However, if we’re looking at soaring broadly, then the pteranodon probably soared, but the way an albatross soars. That’s understandable for what looks to be an oceanic flier, as they would need to cover vast swathes of empty territory to go from one feeding ground to another. That’s not the same model as a vulture but it at least suggests that skin-covered fliers could plausible fill the same niche. The other major flier, insects, struggle to fill this role. To be sure, there are definitely scavenger insects, but (one of?) the largest flying insect seems to be the Meganeura, and it reached a wingspan of just over 2 feet and would have weighed about a third of a pound, which is staggering for an insect, but chump change compared to a vulture (It would be SM -4 at most, with an ST of 1.3). Furthermore, I’m not sure insects are even built for soaring. They seem to rely on their small size and rapid wing beats to remain aloft (a vulture typically flaws 1-3 beats per second, while a desert locust flaps 17-20 beats per second, and a mosquito 500-600). This seems like an extremely implausible strategy for an insect: to be large enough to be easily seen from far distances, it would exhaust itself trying to hover over a dying body. It might be possible to have an exoskeletal creature that soars over the dying, but it would likely look so different that we cannot draw on earth parallels.

Turkey vultures have two sexes, lay eggs and seem to be Strong-K: they often lay just one egg, their hatchlings are helpless, and they provide food (via regurgitation) for their young.

When it comes to Senses, we might expect Vision to be strongest; both Space and real biology agree on this point. Vultures have keen vision, which is how they spot the dying on a vast, empty wastelands. We might expect telescopic vision. From what I can find, their hearing is… fine. Their touch is… fine. And their taste is very weak (I can’t imagine why), but they seem to have a good sense of smell. Let’s assume a Normal sense of smell. They might have peripheral vision from what I can find and this makes sense of a plains/desert species. I can’t find anything on them having Absolute Direction, but it’s quite plausible for a Soarer to have.

When it comes to Alien Minds, we probably expect vultures to average out to “Low Intelligence.” They’re strong-K, but that alone won’t push them to high intelligence. On the other hand, crows tend to be quite clever creatures, so perhaps they do push towards higher levels of intelligence, and when you see their psychological profile, you may be persuaded for “clever space vultures.” When it comes to mating, as far as I can tell mating creates temporary pair bonds. And while they hunt in isolation, they roost in large groups. Let’s say a “Small Group of 2d Members.”

This gives them a generic Psychological Profile of Chauvinism +0, Concentration +1 (Attentive), Curiosity +1 (Nosy), Egoism +1 (Proud), Empathy +1 (Responsive), Gregariousness -1 (Uncongenial), Imagination +1 (Versatile) and Suspicion -1 (Fearlessness 1).

Generic Space Vulture Stats

There’s not much in the way of vulture stats in GURPS. We can sort of derive some stats from Giant Eagles in GURPS DF 5: Allies and maybe get some ideas from Hawks and Owls from the same book (why are there no ravens or crows in GURPS?!). From what I can find, they can fly up to 30 mph, and they might have superior ability to retain oxygen for when they fly at high altitudes, which I’ll just fold in with their likely high levels of disease resistance as high levels of HT

ST: 6	Basic Speed: 6.0	SM: -1
DX: 12	Ground Move: 2	Air Move: 15
IQ: 4	Perception: 12
HT: 14	Will: 10	DR: 0

Traits: Absolute Direction; Acute Smell 2; Appearance (Ugly); Avian; Cast-Iron Stomach 3; Peripheral Vision; Restricted Diet (Carrion); Sharp Teeth (Beak); Sharp Claws; Telescopic Vision 2;

Bite (14): 1d-4 cut

Claw (14): 1d-4 cut

Variations

Skin-Wing Vultures

Can we replace the feathers of a vulture with simple skin like a pteranodon? In principle, yes, but what do we lose? Feathers insulate the creature better than naked skin does, which means the skin-vulture is more vulnerable to sudden shifts in temperature. Skin also lacks the ability to create “gap-slot” wings like a vulture has, which means the skin-vulture has slightly less maneuverability and endurance. It’s also less efficient when it comes to weight-to-surface area, which means the skin-wing will need to be slightly lighter for the same size (megabats have wingspans similar to turkey vultures, but clock in at about 3 lbs rather than the turkey vulture’s 5). All told, this is an inferior vulture (though there’s a reason vultures don’t have feathers on their head, and it has to do with the accumulation of bacteria while feeding, so skin-wings would at least have that benefit).

To compensate, we might imagine something like a carrion-bat: a night-flier that takes advantage of superior nightvision to get to the kill first. It might have light fur on its wings and a thicker ruff of fur on its torso, for better thermal regulation. We might imagine slightly better senses, as compensation, though sonar isn’t nearly as useful to a carrion eater as it is to an insectivore (it seems likely that bats don’t actually use sonar to navigate, but as a “targeting sense” to accurately range-find and strike darting insects; you don’t need that if you’re eating dead things).

Lens (Skin-Wing): ST -2; HT -2; remove Feathers and replace Sharp Beak with Sharp Teeth.

Lens (Carrion Bat): ST -2; HT -2; remove Peripheral Vision and Feathers and replace Sharp Beak with Sharp Teeth. Increase Acute Smell to Acute Smell 4; Add Night Vision 7, Peripheral Hearing and Silence 2.

Corpse Locusts

There’s got to be some way to get chitinous vultures, right? Well, we can throw realism out the window, give them a light carapace and likely reduce their weight and their HT, because it’s a much less efficient build.

However, if we want a more realistic take, we need to stop and consider what it is we want out of our “chitinous vultures.” The point is to have something highly visible relatively high up that people can spot to recognize where someone might be dying, or as a way for the GM to highlight the presence of death (or impending death). Insects can totally do that. Flies, in particular, are consummate carrion eaters, and the buzz of flies is a great way to highlight how gruesome a battlefield is. The only problem with flies is that they don’t fly high enough. But locusts do. They swarm in a large enough cloud that it’s visible from miles away. We might imagine swarms of flesh-eating carrion-locusts that, when they smell someone on the verge of dying begin to swarm high above the corpse, out of the way of where land-based predators could get them (presumably there aren’t many aerial predators) and then descend when they sense the death of the target to strip their bones clean of their now dead flesh. That, I think, wouldn’t strain biology too much.

Lens (Unrealistic Corpse Locust): ST -3; DX-2; HT -3; SM -1; remove Feathers and replace Sharp Beak with Sharp Teeth. Add DR 1.

Lens (Realistic Corpse Locust): Treat as Swarm; Move 8, does 1d-2 cutting damage per turn; armor protects only if completely protected; dispersed after 12 HP. Generally won’t attack the living.

Banner Vulture

Vultures are gregarious, but they hunt alone. Why? This likely has to do with their large size and the vast terrain they have to cover. You may well have to fly 50 miles across the desert before you find a kill, and it may be difficult to signal to the rest that you’ve found something. Still, as high as they fly and as highly visible as they are, it seems likely they would have a very easy time coordinating. Given their stronger social bonds, they might be more intelligent too! These might make for excellent candidates for taming.

If we imagine a smaller bird that congregates in larger groups and has more brilliant, flashy colors to better signal to its fellows, and perhaps a a more penetrating voice, we might imagine a “pack scavenger,” a bit like aerial hyenas, or carnivorous seagulls (at least, more carnivorous than they already are).

Lens (Banner Vulture): ST -2; DX +1; IQ +1; SM -1; Add Chummy, Obvious 1 and Penetrating Voice and remove Appearance (Ugly).

Murder Vulture

It’s kind of strange that Vultures are gregarious at all. Many scavengers are “hijacker predators” and hunt alone, and vultures get quite big (see condors, for example), so we could imagine vultures as “bears of the air” that glide, waiting for a kill, and then descend to claim the corpse and fend off all comers with its hideous visage and screaming cries. If it gets big enough, it might not wait for the dying to die before feasting on them.

If we assume total loners, we might expect an R-type strategy, where the murder vultures meet to mate, lay a bunch of eggs on some distant roost, and then vanish, letting the young fend for themselves. That implies some quite large eggs, and young that are self-sufficient enough that they can hunt right away. This would also drop us straight into “Bloodlust” for Empathy. Murder vultures indeed!

Taken together, our murder vulture might more closely resemble a pteranodon, actually. It might have a four-legged posture, which means juvenile murder vultures are active predators that move on four legs and hunt for small game until they get large enough to learn to fly, and then leave what is likely a mountainous roost.

Lens (Murder Vulture): ST +3; IQ -1; SM +1; Basic Move (Ground) +2; Add Bloodlust (12), Cruel, Extra Legs (4; temporary disadvantage, cannot fly) and Loner (12)

The Balloon Vulture

A spherical vulture actually makes quite a bit of sense. If we swap out “winged flight” for “buoyant flight” a spherical flier makes a lot of sense. I had a complaint about my spherical songbirds that one might expect buoyant fliers to be larger than songbirds, and that’s not a problem here either, as we expect vultures to be quite large, so they can signal to our audience the presence of the dying. And a buoyant flier has little trouble keeping aloft, waiting for someone to die. There are only two problems with a spherical vulture: how does it find the dying, and how does it get to the dead body to eat?

Vultures have to cover a lot of ground: they often exist in nutrient poor regions and need to travels for many, many miles to find prey. A balloon vulture would just float along the air currents and have to hope that they just end up over a dead body. Once there, they’d have to drop from the sky, which implies some sort of way to rapidly deflate and control their dive (ideally a fairly quick dive, to get there before anyone else does).

To solve these problems, let us dispense with a truly spherical vulture, and go for radial symmetry, which is weird enough. We’ll need some sort of jet propulsion to aid our buoyant flight, but that’s not too hard to imagine: just suck in a breath and blow. But we could make it more aerodynamic than a big ball. So how about this:

A balloon vulture is configured like a pinwheel. It has a combination skeleton with a skin covering. It has five “wing” of membranous skin stretched out over a internal skeletal frame. It has an extended membrane its its center top that expands as it “breaths in.” When it breaths out, it can breath out through “jet exhausts” that both spin the creature and send it flying in a particular direction. With it breaths in, it can also inflate the balloon, adding some natural methane or other lighter-than-air gases (which are likely also found in smaller air pockets throughout the creature to make it more generally buoyant). It may have dark coloration to naturally absorb the sun’s heat and become warmer than ambient air, thus allowing itself to float more easily. It breaths and spins, breaths and spins until it spots the dying, and then just floats lazily above, spinning only to get back in place if currents draw it too far away. Then, which it judges the prey to have died, it descends, its skeletal frame pointed downwards to pin the dead prey once it lands, and vomit digestives and extend a proboscis to consume the dead corpse. Then, when it’s done, it can scuttle along on its give membranous “legs” while inhaling a great deal, and then leap into the air and rapidly deflate while spinning away like a pinwheel.

That seems plausible, right?

ST: 6	Basic Speed: 6.0	SM: -1
DX: 12	Ground Move: 4	Air Move: 8
IQ: 1	Perception: 10
HT: 12	Will: 8	DR: 0

Traits: 360° Vision; Absolute Direction; Acute Smell 2; Asteroid; Appearance (Hideous); Cast-Iron Stomach 3; Extra Legs (5; Temporary Disadvantage, Cannot Fly); Flight (Lighter than Air or Winged); Restricted Diet (Carrion);

Bite (14): 1d-4 pi

Digestive Vomit (12): 1d-4 toxic; Acc 0; Range 5; Area (1 yd)