Vaadwaur

The Vaadwaur are a humanoid species native to the Delta Quadrant. They are characterized by their tall stature and segmented webbing-like crest around the neck.

History
The history of the Vaadwaur is a long but fragmented past, with a mixture of war and exploration.

Vaadwaur fleets were aided by their discovery of a network of subspace corridors that spanned much of the quadrant. Dubbing them "underspace", the Vaadwaur were quick to claim the network, and began using them to further expand their empire. With the help of the subspace corridors, the primitive Vaadwaur fleets could cross the quadrant in months instead of decades, and strike undefended worlds at their leisure.

For nearly 900 years the Vaadwaur Empire would rule a large section of the Delta Quadrant through the use of the subspace corridors, their battle fleets appearing seemingly out of nowhere and destroying unprepared alien fleets with ease, soon followed by ground invasion and occupation of the planet. The Vaadwaur were cruel taskmasters, treating all peoples they subjugated as third class citizens within their own lands - using them as slaves and sources of free labor. They extracted resources from all conquered worlds. At their height, the Republic included more than a thousand worlds, and stretched as far as Talax and Borg space, controlling all in between.

Downfall
Eventually the Vaadwaur's subjects rose up against them, a subject race; the Turei lead an alliance to attack the Vaadwaur, decimating the homeworld. However not all the Vaadwaur were killed, several hundred managed to survive in stasis pods.

Awakening
In 2375 the Federation starship USS Voyager discovered the Vaadwaur's homeworld. During explorations of the devastated planet, the Voyager's astrometrics officer, Seven of Nine, awakened one of the Vaadwaur battalion in stasis, a young officer named Gedrin. Persuaded by Gedrin that they would be helping a peaceful civilization to rebuild, Voyager's crew revived nearly 200 Vaadwaur troops before Neelix, a Talaxian officer uncovered the Vaadwaar's true history. Voyager's alliance with the Vaadwaar was broken when the Vaadwaur commander Gaul launched an attack on Voyager. Voyager barely, escaped while the Vaadwaur and vessels of the Turei resumed their nearly millennia old conflict. Realizing that today was not the day to reclaim their lost homeworld the reawakened Vaadwaur vessels used the subspace corridors to flee the battle and attempt to find a new world were they could rebuild in the hope of one day reclaiming their former glory.

(VOY episode: Dragon's Teeth)

Physiology
The appearance of the Vaadwaur is very distinct. Their skin color comes in all the same broad range of complexions found in Humans and the ridges on their face gives them very sharp features. They have small ridges on their chin and two horizontal ridges just above their nose. A large fin like crest runs across the center of their foreheads and gets wider as it reaches the top of their skulls. Their hair grows from around the mid-region of their skull, just were their fin ridge seems to end.

Neck ridges extend from their ears, along down along their neck and onto their shoulders where they curl in towards the center of their chest. This gives the neck ridges an cobra-like appearance overall. (VOY episode: Dragon's Teeth)