The Skafraxians are a servant/slave race of the Cylons, but one that do not mind their position in life. In fact, the union with the Cylons was advantageous as the Skafraxians do not like the humanoid form and wish it destroyed. The Cylons use the Skafraxians for espionage, and in this, the Skafraxians are perfectly suited with their special abilities. They are not ground troops and have never been employed in that role. The Skafraxians have a natural form. A normal adult is about the same size as a human and has tentacles where a human has arms and legs. They can move upright, or they can move around by slithering on the ground. The tentacles are roughly one a half metres in length, and while more dextrous than a human arm or leg, they are slightly weaker. They do not normally tend to end in hands or feet, the tip of the tentacle wrapping around the object to be used, but they can do if desired. The natural form is stated because the aliens have advantages that other aliens do not have. The first is the ability of shape change. A Skafraxian can change their form at will to resemble any other form of the same volume. They will not necessarily be able to gain the abilities of this new form, but in the role of espionage, this is not always required. Another ability is that of not showing up on life sensors. Due to the unique structure of the Skafraxian body, normal sensors just can not pick up the Skafraxian cell structure and thus the Skafraxian just does not register on sensors. Ironically, while the normal adult form of a Skafraxian is a blob with tentacles, like the Cylons, they have also learnt that the most practical form is in-fact the humanoid form, and Skafraxian culture is built around the fact that a typical Skafraxian will spend most of their time upright, with tentacles for legs and arms.

They build homes, skyscrapers and other items like normal humanoids do, and if a human was to land on Skafrax without knowing better, they would probably identify the inhabitants as human, or close relatives to. This is ironic because the Skafraxians hate the humanoid form. Reasons for this are not clear, but it could have something to do with the fact that they have to use a single form for most of their lives, a form not their natural form.

Skafraxians have a second stage to their lives. When they reach old age (around 50 yahrens), the Skafraxian starts to grow. As they do so, they start to lose their shape changing ability as their body is no longer able to support this function. In fact, living on the ground no longer becomes an option to the alien and the elder Skafraxian goes to live in the sea for the remainder of their natural life. An elder Skafraxian will grow to have a body of around 10 metres of so in diameter with four tentacles of about thirty metres each. Elder Skafraxians do not live for much longer than about 10 yahrens more.

Skafraxian culture is not as advanced as the Colonial or Cylon societies. The Skafraxians were a sublight race until the arrival of the Cylons. At this point, the Skafraxians became a true hyperspeed race. However, despite this, the Skafraxians have not been given access to additional Cylon technology and indeed, their advancement has been subtly stilted by the Cylons. The Skafraxians are generally a tech level 9 society.

Not being as advanced as the Cylons or the Colonials, the Skafraxian navy is not that much of a threat to either race. The Skafraxians do not use fighters or small craft, instead relying on their heavy cruisers. In reality, fighters from either race easily defeat a Skafraxian heavy cruiser. However, this is not a problem as the navy is not built for attacking other races, but for defence of the Skafraxian home world itself. Combined with their Cylon allies, the Skafraxians think that their world is impervious from attack. What they do not seem to realise is that the Cylons do not seem to patrol their solar system much with their own ships, and most of the time, the local Cylon Baseships are in the area but not in the system...

The Cylons utilise the Skafraxians in a limited role. They do not really have too much use for a race of shape changing aliens as they prefer a more direct way to take out their enemies, but from time to time the aliens are employed in subtle raids, such as the poisoning of valuable water supplies and the assassination of certain people.
The Cylons keep a garrison based on Skafrax, complete with ground troops and planetary defence batteries. This is predominately for the aliens' protection in case enemies attack them, but also so that the Cylons can keep tabs on their allies. It is the rare race that would genuinely want to ally themselves with the Cylons, and the Cylons know this. So they keep track on what the Skafraxians are up, and in addition make sure that their tech level remains low. If they have to rely on the Cylons for transportation and equipment, so much the better. However, because the Skafraxians are allies and not just a slave race, the Cylons show a little more bit respect to them.

The Skafraxians are not well known in the universe. They seem to only leave their planet for missions into other cultures, and then only in small numbers and with the backup of Cylons. They do not leave their system in their own ships and their use the equipment and clothing of the race and culture they are about to infiltrate. Their missions are also quite rare. As a result of this, 95% of the Colonial Armed Forces do not even know about the existence of the shape changing race, and of the High Command members who do, they are not sure of the aliens true abilities, nor their home planet location, nor of how to counter the threat.

The Skafraxians were taken and adapted from the Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack annual.

Character Generation:

Points: 95
Attributes: ST -1 [-10], DX +1 [20], HT -1 [-10]
Advantages: Amphibious [10], Mimicry [10], Resistance to Sensors [20], Shape change [75]
Disadvantages: Intolerance (all humanoids) [-10]

Mimic:

A Skafraxian has the ability to be able to mimic any voice that they hear, and then repeat that voice, not parrot fashion, but with new words. Thus the alien has the ability to be able to listen to a human sounding voice, and then make their voice human sounding. If they listened to another race, they can mimic that race. They will not be able to narrow this down to a specific individual without a lot of listening to that individual, getting their voice and mannerisms down, but they can easily create a generic race voice. This will be good enough to fool an average citizen of that species 95% of the time.
This does not give the Skafraxian the ability to know the language spoken, just the correct sounding of the voice.

Resistance to Sensors:

A special advantage, this makes the Skafraxian immune to all life detection sensors of TL 10 or less. Simply put, the alien simply will not appear on life detection sensors. Scanning an empty craft with a Skafraxian on will register the empty craft, not the alien.

Shape change:

Shape change is a special advantage and is the source of the Skafraxian power. A Skafraxian may shape change their body into any other form provided it has the same volume as the Skafraxian. Only forms witnessed or known may be changed into but elements from one form may be combined into another. It takes a single turn to change form, and this does not produce any out of the ordinary sounds or noises. A Skafraxian may change form every turn if desired. Inorganic forms may also be changed into, but these will have none of the properties of the item, and will always remain attached to the alien. For example, a skilful shape changer can take the form of a human and their clothes, but these clothes would never be able to be removed and would seem joined in places. For these reasons, most shape changers prefer to use the clothes and items of the race they are mimicking.

So what can be shape changed and what does it allow?
As mentioned, a shape changer can change into any form that has the same volume as the Skafraxian. As a typical Skafraxian is human sized, this is the volume a Skafraxian can change into. But it does not need to be a human form, it could be a long tube of bioplasm allowing the creature to go through tubes and cracks, or it could be a suitcase. When a Skafraxian shape changes, they remain a Skafraxian - they do not get any of the abilities that of the form they changed into, nor do they any memories or mental powers of the new form. They remain a Skafraxian. They may resemble rock men, but they are as easy to damage as a Skafraxian, their change is appearance only. However, some forms grant innate abilities - if the new form has longer legs, then this may give the Skafraxian a slight movement advantage just because they have longer legs. Being wafer thin will allow the alien to creep under door cracks, and so on.
The Skafraxian will remain all its normal characteristics and statistics.

If the Skafraxian loses consciousness or is killed, the alien will lose any transformation and will revert back to their natural form.