Shalra

The Shalra were a pre-warp species native to a planet in the Gum Nebula.

Biology
The Shalra were essentially large gastropods with long, ridged shells. Emerging from the front of each was a flower of four tentacular arms and cabochon eyes around a four-beaked mouth.

Culture
The Shalra were a species that possessed minimal technology, no scientific knowledge and little physical prowess. But their culture consisted largely of intricate songs, linguistic experimentation, and abstract mathematical games.

History
The Shalra lived mostly in ignorance of the larger galaxy, mostly content with explore the local bounds of their world. That changed when a cosmoszoan creature, a harvester, attacked their world to feed on its bio-matter. The Shalra would have been rendered extinct, without the intervention of th Pa'haquel. However even with their aid the Shalra homeworld was devastated, but many of the Shalra were evacuated into their skymounts ensuring the species survival.

The Vomnin, an allied race of the Pa'haquel, would ensure that the surviving Shalra would find a new home on one of their colony worlds.(TTN novel: Orion's Hounds)