Beware the space leach! It lurks in the depths of space, amongst the asteroids, and ill traveled sectors waiting for passersbys to tag along with and suck their warp cores dry! The creature will ride along with you wherever you go…even through warp jumps…so you can act as a carrier for this leach.
Once the leach attaches itself to your ship it will suck your core dry unless removed….. The only way to remove a space leach is by being blasted off by another vessel. This however causes damage to your ship in the process, but it’s either accept an amount of damage proportional to the health and size of the creature or have your ship be destroyed when the core breaches as a result of the leaches ravenous appetite. This can take days or weeks.
Did I mention that the creature can sense when it has damaged the core beyond repair….when it determines the core is about to blow it will detach and search for more prey, and as it eats it gets bigger. It can get so big that it can even challenge space stations.
The really dangerous thing about space leaches are the juveniles. Juvenile space leaches swarm together and they take on prey as a unit. Like the adult, the swarm will attach itself to the vessel and travel with it as it goes along, but they too will destroy the ship unless removed in the same manner as the adult. Once the swarm grows to a certain size it will break up into single adults prowling the space lanes. Not all those in the swarm will split off into adult-hood. Many of them will be eaten by the larger leaches, so that normally only about three big leaches will emerge from the swarm.
No one knows where the mysterious space leach came from. Some say they are the result of a Shakturi Bio-engineering program…sort of a last gasp if you will. As Ahab would say “…for hates sake I spit at thee…” sort of thinking. The Haakonish say they are a curse from their god. Some actually call them gods, but as I said…no one really knows. What we do know is that they are dangerous and are not to be trifled with.
Edit: I have corrected the spelling of "Leech" from leach in honor of Kayoz. Thank you Kayoz! Good eye!
