H'rulka

The H'rulka, referred to among themselves as All of Us, are a race of immense airborne creatures that inhabit gas giants. They are a client species of the Sh'daar.

Anatomy
An individual H'rulka is actually a collective organism, much like a Portuguese man-o-war. It is a gargantuan collection of smaller organisms with their own specialized functions, such as tentacles, sensory organs, food filters, and brains. Among these specialized parts are biological radios, allowing them to send and receive radio transmissions. The entire mass resembles an ivory-colored jellyfish between 200 and 300 meters across and weighing hundreds of thousands of tons, suspended in the air by gas bags. Its body also hosts numerous parasites and symbiotes, themselves on the same scale as humans.

Their nature as collective beings allows them to split into multiple smaller, but still functional, versions of themselves. When threatened, H'rulka can split into twelve sub-colonies. Called "divergence," process is irreversible and causes extensive loss of identity, knowledge, and memory, so H'rulka consider it highly traumatic and only do it when absolutely necessary.

Biochemistry
H'rulka breathe hydrogen and find free oxygen poisonous. They have some metabolic use for carbon, and can extract it from various compounds they consume.

Diet
H'rulka are filter-feeders, taking in and eating organic compounds and plankton from the atmosphere. They also feed off methane and ammonia taken in from the air.

Psychology
As collective beings, H'rulka lack a hard-and-fast concept of the individual. They have permanent names, but give numerical designations, subject to change, to virtually all other things. In addition, they do not occupy permanent jobs and have no leadership roles to speak of, instead deferring to the most qualified H'rulka when the need arises.

Their environment on gas giants also contributes strongly to their psychology. Closed spaces do not exist naturally on their homeworld, and as a result all H'rulka have a strong sense of claustrophobia. They also think of most other sentient creatures as "vermin." This has more to do with the enormous size discrepancy between the H'rulka and nearly every other sentient species than actual contempt or bigotry, though they do find most terrestrial creatures to be strange and disgusting.