Caal

The

Caal are actually invisible, but you get the idea

Caal are wraith-like beings able to take over the minds of other sentients. Once the Caal were a humanoid race which went extinct for reasons unknown. Also for reasons unknown, they refused to accept their demise and survived as a kind of ghost, a being of pure spirit, able to possess other sentient life. Beings controlled by a Caal gain supernatural strength and stamina. Their wraith-like existence has driven the Caal into a fearful psychopathic fury, and they are determined to destroy all other sentient life in the galaxy, especially their ancient race-enemies, the Horadrim.

First Caal Invasion

A Caal invasion in 2222 was not only defeated, but erased from history entirely by The Orb, wielded by "The Grey Man" (later revealed to be Hex, time-travelling from 2244).

Second Caal Invasion

A large force of Caal, seeking The Orb, invaded the Earth Federation in 2264, completely eradicating the populations of Edo, Khmer, Pyong, Hadley, and Jennifer's Star, but then bypassing Wilke's Star and New Paris to attack Avalon itself. In orbit above Avalon, the fleet of captured ships transporting the Caal and their possessed hosts was fought and ultimately destroyed by a joint force of Earth Fleet and Horadrim warships, with asssistance from Vin Dane wielding The Orb. When nearly all the allied warships perished in the battle, credit for the victory fell almost exclusively on Vin Dane's shoulders.

Behind the Scenes

The Caal were inspired directly by the movie Fallen with Denzel Washington, and of course similar beings exist in many other fantasy and science-fictions stories, notably Passengers by Robert C. Silverberg, and the final episode of the Babylon 5 spinoff series Crusade.

Season 9 (WIP)

Origins

Hundreds of millennia ago, the Caal were mortal beings whose physical bodies aged and died like any other species. Their civilization was highly disciplined and rigidly hierarchical. Their culture was relatively inward-looking, and prior to the great calamity, the Caal never wasted many resources exploring beyond their own homeworld. Despite this, they developed technology well beyond anything made by modern humans and even, in some respects, more advanced than the Horadrim.

Eventually, Caal scientists even believed they had discovered the solutions to true immortality, of both body and spirit. It was not an elegant solution, but the science did seem to point to the possibility of constructing a device that, wielding enough brute-force power, could enable the transcendence of the entire species.

The Caal's rulers ordered its immediate construction. No expense, in either manpower or raw materials, was spared to build the largest, most complicated, most powerful single machine in their history. Thousands of Caal were worked to death in order to complete the device as quickly as possible. The tremendous sacrifice was deemed worthy due to the project's final goal of immortality.

And when it was complete, and the device activated, the Caal became immortal. Unfortunately, the Caal's theoreticians had misunderstood the full implications of their work. While the spirit of every Caal did indeed become ageless and immortal, the Caal also lost their mortal bodies and all but the most tenuous link to the physical world.

Without the ability to touch their world or their tools, and unable to work even the simplest magick, every one of the Caal was rendered utterly helpless. The entire race wallowed in misery for millennia on end. A ferocious insanity had long since set in among the wraiths by the time explorers from another species finally set foot on the Caal homeworld.