Ca'oya
Nighthunter
Nighthunter
| NAME | Ca'oya (Mando'a; lit. "Hunter of the Night", translated "Nighthunter") |
| BIOLOGY | The Ca'oya, or Nighthunter as the majority of the galaxy had known them, is a large felid apex predator. Evolved from the Maalraas species hundreds of thousands of years ago upon Tracyn, the Ca'oya are heavily built felines that are truly massive in size. A fully grown male Ca'oya can stand as tall as 120 centimeters, as long as 395 centimeters in length, and weigh as heavy as 545 kilograms. Female Ca'oya tend to be noticeably smaller in build, usually growing to heights of 110 centimeters, reaching around 330 centimeters in length, and weighing roughly 306 kilograms. All Ca'oya are born with a deep crimson-red skin and black fur, although as they age, their fur sheds into a fine scarlet down. Ca'oya have characteristically powerfully large jaws, and are saber-toothed, and are endowed with a skeletal bone structure with natural fiber-density, allowing considerable strain upon the Ca'oya's body. This is due to the Ca'oya having evolved on the extremely volatile world of Tracyn; their bodies act as natural insulation to extreme heat and their bones and joints can withstand almost almost unbearable stress. Like all felid predators, Ca'oya possess large retractable claws, and possess a meter-long tail with a tuff of fur at the end. Supremely muscular felines, Ca'oya on average possess between 4% and 10% bodily fat, requiring them to hunt constantly, and true to their namesake, the Ca'oya are fully nocturnal predators. But perhaps the most spectacular aspect of the Ca'oya is their natural ability to cloak via the Force. Creatures naturally born with a connection to the Force, the Ca'oya are able to cloak themselves through the Force to render themselves undetectable to the naked eye of all but Force Sensitives or the most keenly trained individuals; the Mando'a Runi'naast, or Mandalorian Nightmen, are trained to hunt and defeat a Ca'oya without killing it at the conclusion of their training as ceremonial initiation to full membership of the Nightmen. On occasion, a Ca'oya's eyes will become visible while cloaked, manifesting as glowing amber-red eyes. Even without cloaking, Ca'oya are known to sometimes manifest glowing eyes and glowing mouths when angered or agitated, often preceding an attack. |
| SUBSPECIES | None. The Ca'oya itself is a subspecies of the much smaller Maalraas, native felid predators of Onderon and its moon, Dxun. |
| SAPIENCE | Negative. Although intelligent predators, the Ca'oya do not manifest signs or traits of sapience. |
| STRENGTHS | Ca'oya are exceptionally strong and fast felid apex predators. Even with their great masses, Ca'oya can reach speeds of about 74-91 kilometers per hour, although in such scenarios they can only do so in bursts as their stamina do not compensate for the demands of sustained high-speed engagements. Ca'oya often break their cloak before chasing down their prey, and only do so when they are close enough; modern theories suggest it is either to give full concentration to the chase, and not to their camouflaging. Another theory is that they simply break their cloak as their blitzing toward prey give away their location by the way they actively move through their environment, and thus is pointless to maintain. Ca'oya also possess great physical prowess, with some being recorded of being capable of horizontal leaps of up to 12 meters, and able to pull nearly a full metric ton, as evident by the predator when it drags its favorite prey, the stout Balkreg. Although they cannot mask their scent or conceal their physical movement against the environment, Ca'oya are also admirable in their ability to optically cloak themselves through the Force, by their ability to thrive in environments of extreme heat and temperatures, their environmental adaptability, and their fierce loyalty to entities accepted as part of their pride. |
| WEAKNESSES | Ca'oya are able to adapt to some environments, provided they meet certain standards, but are unable to survive in frigid cold or overly wet and humid environments, such as swamplands or marshes. In addition, having evolved on Tracyn, Ca'oya possess an extremely vulnerable immune system, and without genetic therapy, cannot survive in environments saturated with foreign agents and bacteria or pollution, such as tropical or urban planets or climates. |
| DIET | Due to the minority of creatures that can survive and thrive on the volcanic world of Tracyn, the Ca'oya is capable of eating - and often does - whatever other living creature it may come across. However, the Ca'oya is not cannibalistic, nor are scavengers. Nevertheless, a hungry Ca'oya will on rare occasions eat carcases they may come across. The foremost prey of the Ca'oya is the Balkreg, a bipedal behemoth often considered to be the "volcanic cousin of the Wampa", although no true genetic connection exists between the two species. As carnivores, Ca'oya tamed will eat whatever meat fed to them without prejudice, making them easy to maintain as far as their diet is concerned. |
| BEHAVIORAL TEMPERAMENT | Ca'oya are social felids and pack hunters. In the wild, Ca'oya live in prides across the surface of Tracyn, ranging from as few as three to as many as thirty. Infighting is seldom and almost exclusively among males seeking pride dominance and pack leadership, although external conflicts between rivaling prides is fairly common. Some Ca'oya prides have even been known to "feud", when sustaining prolonged conflicts with the same particular prides over a single generation. Lone Ca'oya are extremely rare and lead a dangerous life; Ca'oya view other Ca'oya not of their own pride as rivals, regardless of their being solitary. A lone Ca'oya is an easy victim for prides, and thus tread cautiously, unless the event of a lone male and female finding one another and establish a pride of their own. Male Ca'oya are the chief defenders of their prides, which are just as much their families as they are their fighting strength; the more males a pride has, the more powerful they are regarded by rivaling prides. As the ancient Taungs discovered however, the Ca'oya are unique in that they are loyal to a figure that dethrones the recognized head of their pride. While normally regarded among other Ca'oya - should the alpha male Ca'oya of one pride fall to another, the defeated pride often gets assimilated - the first Mandalorians found that Ca'oya follow whoever defeats the alpha male, regardless of the species. Consequently, so long as dominance is made evident, Ca'oya may willingly become domesticated to sapient beings, as many still are in the case of the Nightmen. |
| COMMUNICATION | |
| PLANET | The Ca'oya is native to the barren and volcanic world of Tracyn, which itself means "fire" in Mando'a. As the Ca'oya is believed to have evolved from the Maalraas, it is unknown when exactly the Ca'oya species came about on the world, or even how its ancestral progenitors ended up from the tropical jungles of Dxun to the volcanic wastes of Tracyn. |
| CULTURE | Not Applicable |
| TECHNOLOGY | Not Applicable |
| HISTORY | The Ca'oya's history is a sad one of abuse and near-extinction. Although revered by the Mandalorians and regarded as sacred by the Nightmen, the Ca'oya have been greedily sought after since their presence became widely known throughout the galaxy. Fierce and yet relatively easy to domesticate, the Ca'oya had been prized as guard cats or as beasts of war by many cultures, civilizations and criminal empires who had illegally exported the Ca'oya into the galactic black markets. By the time of the galactic era known as the Rise of the First Galactic Empire, prior to the outbreak of the Clone Wars, the Ca'oya had been casually used as war beasts and advertised as gladiatorial monsters to such an extent, they had been regarded as a nearly extinct species, with only a few dozen being confirmed as still living in the entire galaxy, mostly still upon Tracyn, although some existed on far-flung worlds, having been abandoned, such as on Parein II 4. As the Mandalorian Clans returned to power after being a largely fractured people for centuries upon centuries, and coupled with the believed extinction of the Ca'oya, travel within Mandalorian space became more and more sporadic, especially in regards to travel to Tracyn. By the time the Mando'a Runi'naast had become founded in Allit Kelborn, provisional laws to protect the Ca'oya had already been put into place, and the Ca'oya had slowly but surely begun to recover its numbers from decades of abuse and slaughter. In the current galactic day, the Ca'oya are not an endangered species, but are still considered to be mildly threatened. A large concentration are directly under the protection of the Mandalorian Nightmen, who have an empathic kinship with the creature of their namesake. Every fully-fledged Nightman owns a personal Ca'oya, which they gain the mastery of in their hunting and defeating it during their initiation into the Nightmen organization. |
| NOTABLE PCs | Dral'ijaat (Mando'a lit. "Powerful Honor" or "Strong Honor", translated as "Noble Strength"); Ca'oya of Kyr'orar |
| INTENT | Incorporated the Nighthunters in with the Nightmen already, but since Wookieepedia has almost nothing on them, wanted to flesh them out here. |
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