Drakh

Name: Drakh
Dice: 12D
Dexterity: 1D / 3D+1
Knowledge: 1D+1 / 4D+1
Mechanical: 2D / 4D
Perception: 1D / 4D
Strength: 1D / 4D
Technical: 1D+1 / 4D+1

Move: 10 / 12
Size: 1.5 - 2.0 m
Weight: 60 - 110 kg
Lifespan: Unknown

Special Abilities

• The Drakh have a +1D+1 racial bonus to Hide and Sneak checks when in shadowed areas and darkness.
• The Drakh have some mastery of organic technology and will likely develop much more as they investigate the weapons liberated from Z’ha’dum after the war. A Drakh begins play with one of these upgrades and can acquire more over time.

• Cloak: The Drakh can bend light around itself, making it harder to see. This gives the Drakh an additional +1D+1 bonus to Hide.
• Invisibility: The Drakh becomes virtually undetectable in the darkness, gaining an additional +1D+1 bonus to Sneak and Hide check made in areas of less than full illumination.
• Blast: The Drakh can project a burst of energy from its hand. This attack has a range of 9 meters and deals 4D damage. Firing a blast causes the Drakh to suffer one point of damage.
• Taint: By touching a living creature, the Drakh can inflict a nano-technological toxin that eats away at the victim’s biology. The victim must make a Toxin resistance save (difficulty 10 plus the Drakh's Strength) each day or take 1D points damage. This damage can be halted if three successful resistance checks are made in a row.
• Keeper: The Drakh can implant a Keeper – a small, invisible entity – on a victim. The Keeper is linked to the Drakh, and can be programmed to sense when the victim is acting contrary to the Drakh’s interests. The Keeper can cause pain or death almost at will by constricting the victim’s flesh. The Drakh can access the Keeper’s memories and experiences by touching it.
• Mindeater: The Drakh gains the ability to read the short term memories of a living creature by devouring its brain. Only the last six hours or so of the creature’s life can be accessed and the brain must be eaten while it is still fresh (or at least preserved cryogenically or chemically). The memories acquired in this fashion tend to be fragmented, like a telepathic deathbed scan, but unlike a scan the victim (being dead) has no way to stop the Drakh.

Description: ‘Who are we? What are we but a shadow of a shadow?’

The Drakh are the most active and vengeful of the Shadows’ servants. They were rescued by the Shadows millennia ago when their world was destroyed by the Vorlons and given a new home deep within the darkness. Over the next few thousand years, the Drakh slowly rebuilt. No other race had ever developed in such close proximity to the darkness and the Drakh were horribly warped by it. In many ways, the Shadows treated the Drakh like the Vorlons treated the other Younger Races. The Shadows experimented on the Drakh, augmented them, taught them and guided them towards the Shadow philosophy of chaos. To the Drakh, the Shadows were parents, teachers and dark angels with eyes of fire.

As the Drakh became more and more active in the darkness, they abandoned their second homeworld, building vast clanships capable of supporting hundreds of thousands of Drakh. These self-sustaining vessels took to the stars, hiding from the eyes of the Vorlons by waiting in the gulfs between systems for decades at a time. The Drakh Unity’s forces are likely the equal of the Earth Alliance or Centauri Republic but they have no borders or colony worlds to pin them down. The Drakh are a lurking threat on the fringes of the galaxy.

The Drakh never understood why the Shadows left the galaxy and the race was essentially driven mad by the abandonment. The loss of Z’ha’dum also hurt them deeply. They swore vengeance on the Interstellar Alliance and all the other Vorlon touched races, vowing to destroy their sacred worlds and tear down their gods just as the ISA had destroyed Z’ha’dum and driven away the Shadows.

Personality: The Drakh are dominated by the desire for cruelty and vengeance. They want to make the other races suffer as they have suffered, die as they died. The Shadows were grooming the Drakh to be lords of chaos, but their preparations were only half-complete when the Shadows left the galaxy. The Drakh have all the darkness and alien hate of the Shadows, but it is not tempered by wisdom or loyalty to Lorien. In many ways, the Drakh are much like what the other races think the Shadows are: nightmare monsters from beyond known space who want to destroy everything for their own frightful purposes.

The Drakh are telepathic to a degree, although their telepathy functions in a different manner to that of the other races. It stems from the races’ deep integration with organic technology – an undetermined part of a Drakh’s physiology is made up of engineered organs and implants and their telepathy comes from these implants communicating with one another. Physical Description: It is difficult to describe a Drakh; members of the race regularly augment and alter themselves for specific missions and they also employ cloaking fields and stealth technology. They are humanoids, slightly larger than the average Human, with scaly, faintly lizard-like features.

They have elaborate bone structures on their faces and heads, although these may be subcutaneous implants of some sort. Relations: Before the destruction of Z’ha’dum, the Drakh served the Shadows and worked closely with the Streib and other servants of the darkness. After the Shadows departed, the Drakh took up residence within the Centauri Republic, enslaving the Centauri government using keepers and fusion bombs.

Systems: The Drakh have not had a true homeworld in millennia. Their original planet was crushed by the Vorlons; Z’ha’dum was their spiritual home for the second age of their race, but they could only visit it rarely. These brief pilgrimages to Z’ha’dum were the holiest of events in the Drakh culture, and are now only a bitter memory.

Beliefs: The Drakh are students of chaos, the right hand of darkness. They were fanatically loyal to the cause of the Shadows when the Shadows were still active, and are searching for a new expression of that cause now. They are aware of the Three Principles, but also believe that they are essentially a dead race after the Vorlons’ ancient attack on them. As far as the Drakh are concerned, they have been removed from the natural order of the universe and so are uniquely free to act without regards to evolution. While other races are bound to grow, rise and fall in the slow movements of history, the Drakh simply exist.

Language: The Drakh primarily rely on telepathy for communication, speaking only when it is necessary. They have communicator-globes similar to those used by the Gaim, but can construct and implant speech organs as necessary when dealing with other races on a long-term basis.

Names: The one Drakh encountered called itself Shiv’Kala; it is conceivable that all Drakh have similar names, with one syllable denoting the Drakh’s personal name and the second denoting which clanship it comes from. In a race of telepaths, personal names are generally rather redundant.

Starfarers: The entirety of the Drakh race is starfarers, as the species dwells on its massive clanships. They go wherever they are required. The Drakh maintain a vast fl eet of ships and are adept at space combat.

Source:

• The Babylon 5 Project: Drakh
• Babylon 5 Darkness & LIght Sourcebook (pages 113-115)
• thedemonapostle