Oma

The oma are space whales. 

Space.  Whales.

Space whales with lightning-trapping energy baleen.  Weighing in at Str 52!  That can capsize starships!

SPAAAAACE WHAAAAALLLLLESSSSS!!!

You can ride them, too!  And not just on their backs, like you would those punk-ass astral leviathans.  Naw, you ride Jonah-style inside the oma’s stomach!  (Assuming you survive its lightning maw and acid-washed first stomach.  And you have to Save to be…ahem…“safely excreted.”  But still!  Space whales!)

Sure, they’re kind of a space fantasy trope—so much so that Pathfinder has at least two of them (see above re: the astral leviathan)—but there are damn good reasons for that.  Space is big.  Your characters need an easy—well, kinda easy—way of getting from planet to planet.  And surely outer dragons need to eat something besides solar flares.  Plus energy baleen is awesome.  Bring on the space whales!

Powering the giant ring that holds the world of Shatterhome together requires lightning farmed on the gas giant Andropane.  But when oma begin feeding in the system, they pose a threat to the entire operation, particularly as they begin to breed.  Can they be reasoned with?  Driven off?  Or is it a choice between the space whales’ survival and Shatterhome’s?

Spacefaring adventurers come across a rogue oma, a great melanistic beast famed for smashing ships in the starry void. But close examination reveals the black beast’s movements and habits seem erratic and sluggish.  The oma is actually controlled from inside its gut by a yah-thelgaad (see Pathfinder Adventure Path #88: Valley of the Brain Collectors).  And ship-smashing is only one of the aberration’s schemes.  It has infected another oma with a weapons factory/tumor, and a third with a cyst of miniature black-hole-producing (treat as spheres of annihilation) prayer-bombs.

Chasing a contemplative thought criminal, adventurers are stymied when the brainy fugitive solar-sails away to another star system entirely.  A brethedan fixer offers a solution—hitching a ride on (or inside) an oma during the flare migration.  Surely the party can survive that?  And the rumors of a demodand war-spiral between here and there are probably nothing, right?

—Distant Worlds 62 & Pathfinder Bestiary 4 209

Last night’s Tumblr back-and-forth re: guyads was fun, but I’m actually kicking myself I didn’t play with the oceanid’s gender in some of the adventure seeds.  Lazy thinking on my part, even if explained by overwork.

Do I even need to link to the teaser for The Leviathan?  Of course I do. 

Also: Dragon Magazine space whales!  Other reasons to read that issue: suggestions for piracy-focused Spelljammer campaigns, the aranea nation of Herath, and some of the first linnorms ever in 2e AD&D.

Spelljammer fans, remember that I am sadly ignorant of your world(s).  (Though I do now own—but have not yet read—The Astromundi Cluster.)  So now is the time to educate me about Spelljammer space whales in your comments/emails.