Asteray Creature 12

Thought to be merely mischievous tricksters, asterays are in fact fey born where the Void and First World overlap. Gifted with the innate ability to survive in space, asterays suffer from extreme wanderlust and an overwhelming desire to stave off boredom, with a desperate thirst for amusement being the prime motivation of most of their kind. They find themselves attracted to interesting stellar phenomena, from the swirls in gas giants to the interplay of stellar debris in an asteroid field. By floating through space, asterays gather enough sustenance to survive from their innate ability to consume latent cosmic radiation. However, asterays have one simple nutritional need that makes them a terror of the space lanes: organic matter. As space is all but devoid of organic elements for consumption, asterays resort to trailing starships, often by riding in their wake and tormenting the crew until they either abandon their posts or descend into chaos. Once an asteray has sufficiently driven a crew to despair, they enter the vessel and consume the corpses of the fallen.

Luckily—or perhaps not—for travelers, asterays typically find the consumption of living creatures distasteful, though their alien mindsets open them to using their vacuous ability to consume matter on active foes when threatened. Most asterays hibernate for months or even years at a time, floating in the wrecks of abandoned ships until the cosmic eddies of a passing ship stirs them from their torpor.