The Tavak are a mammalian species descended from creatures resembling a mixture of the Pangolin and Hippopotamus from Old Earth. Some find it surprising that the Tavak are actually herbivores and incapable of digesting meat. Just as some see their slothful movement when not threatened and assume a gentle giant.
Their seemingly innate aggression is theorized to come from their homeworlds ecosystem. The planet Tav was a hot world. One in which the equatorial regions were completely barren and only the polar savannahs supported complex life. Tavar ancestors fought ceaselessly amongst themselves for access to water and it's nearby plant life. When Tav was first discovered by Birrin explorers, it was already on the brink of ecological collapse due to over farming and industrial levels of warfare.
Rather than awe and a sense of insignificance, they experienced first contact as a brawl. The Birrin scientists who arrived were taken hostage, interrogated to learn the secrets of space travel and promptly enslaved to build warships.
From there the Tavak spread like a plague. They are unintelligent brutes compared to the rest of Commonwealth species but what they lack in skill they made up for through slavery. Brutal slave raids gave rise to a society where the Tavak were the warriors and rulers while the Birrin worked, the Simaris organized, and the Denebians ran the economy.
This all came came crashing down when the Tavak decided to take on the Ryleth and the Okkar at the same time. Outgunned on one side and outnumbered on the other, the Tavak empire collapsed. Most of their former slave worlds became free member states of the newly formed System's Commonwealth.
Many Tavak fled to create new empires in the frontier and harass the non-aligned worlds. Most however stayed near their ancestral homeworld and submitted to becoming citizens of the Commonwealth. War reparations ruined their economy and a lack of slaves left them with nothing to offer but their savage strength and brutality. So they have become the wandering mercenaries of the Orion arm.
- Hardy: A second Shaken result in combat does not cause a Wound.
- Frenzy: This allows them to make an extra Fighting attack per round at a –2 penalty to all Fighting rolls. This attack must be taken at the same time as another Fighting attack though it may target any two foes adjacent to the hero (Wild Cards roll two Fighting dice and one Wild Die). The –2 penalty is subtracted from all attacks.
- Strong: You start with a d6 in Strength at the beginning of Character Creation .
- Brutish: The Smarts Attribute can never advance beyond a d6.
- Outsider: Due to their history of slavery and reputation as hired muscle the Tavar are treated as second class citizens by the average Commonwealth sophont. -2 Charisma to all but own species.
- Hard of Hearing: -2 to all Notice rolls made to hear.