Vulpimancer

Vulpimancers are an extraterrestrial species of blind mammals from the garbage planet Vulpin.

Appearance
Vulpimancers seem to be canine when young and become more feline-like as they grow older. The males gain stripes on their backs, and both male and female vulpimancers grow tails. Vulpimancers have orange, light blue or red fur.

Traits and Behaviors
Vulpimancers are bizarre and beastly beings that are far more animal than humanoid. Ranging from human size to several times the size of a human, Vulpimancers share a few common characteristics. Vulpimancers do not seem too friendly with their own kind, but this is a common trait among animals that aren't family. Vulpimancers are very hostile, aggressive, and live for the moment, hunting down whatever they can find and move on to the next meal.

Some Vulpimancers, however, do live in tight family groups from ten to twenty individuals inside caves or the old wrecks of starships and old buildings. These Vulpimancers are more "civilized" and are known for collecting and recycling materials they find on their garbage planet and selling them to off-world cities and companies.

Vulpimancer technology comes from different ships and devices that have been dumped on Vulpin by other races. Vulpimancers have the ability to easily learn most languages, but lack the vocal structure to speak anything other than their own languages and to untrained ears, their words sound nothing more than a bunch of growls and snarls.

Abilities
Vulpimancers have an incredible athletic ability and heightened senses of smell, hearing, and taste, but no sense of sight. This is supplemented with the porcupine-like quills on their back, which serve both as weapons and finely tuned sense receptors that can sense things and "see" in ways most other creatures cannot.

Super-adept, Vulpimancers can use their quills to detect the slightest movement, heat signatures and some even say fear. Once prey is located, the quills on their backs can be fired off like projectiles, or the Vulpimancer can roll itself into a spiked ball to attack its enemies. Vulpimancers can only launch the quills on their back once they reach adulthood.

Having no eyes means that Vulpimancers have some trouble with finer movement, and a select few enemies have ways of getting close to them undetected or can get the drop on them fairly easily.

Vulpimancers have an incredible sense of smell. Unlike most mammals, a Vulpimancer relies on two sets of gills, each on a side of their neck, to smell the world around them and in combination with the quills on their back and their heightened hearing is able “see” the world around them in thermal vision, similar to pit vipers.

Weaknesses
Because they rely on their sense of smell, hearing, and quills to see, they are vulnerable to strong smells and loud noise and are rendered helpless if their gills or ears are clogged.

Etymology
Vulpimancer comes from the words "vulpine", which means fox, and "mancer", a Greek suffix meaning "to speak to". Thus, the name translates to "one who talks to foxes."