Terry Whitemane

Terry Whitemane is the alias used by a powerful extradimensional lifeform originating from a place outside normal space and time. She takes the appearance of a strikingly attractive generic humanoid female.

She found her way into our universe by mistake nearly a week before she was discovered by the Baikonur and didn't know how to return home. Her timing couldn’t have been worse. Right after arrival, she felt the first pangs of her species’ mating drive, urging her to return home, find a mate, and perform a lengthy and complex courtship ritual. In the following days, this urge would become all consuming.

The ritual is a series of reciprocal courtship displays meant to signal fitness and reinforce a pair bond. The entity begins by creating an intricate pattern of distortions in space-time, which serve a function akin to a bowerbird’s nest. Its partner would respond with a mirroring pattern of space-time distortions. The distortions interact and feed on one another’s energy, sending out gravimetric waves powerful enough to knock planets out of orbit. The ritual culminates with the entity and its mate simultaneously releasing a massive burst of energy—sufficient to cause extinction events on planets thousands of light-years away (it did not evolve in our universe).

This meant that Terry was in deep trouble. First, there were no partners available with the universe-warping power required to perform the ritual properly. Second, she would have had a hard time finding a less powerful creature willing to be vaporized by his partner’s courtship display. This had her grasping at straws, trying to find some halfway-decent local lifeform to take as a mate and manipulate him into simulating the reciprocal display with a starship.

Through quick thinking and a bit of stubbornness, the Baikonur crew managed to discover her plan and find a way to send her home.

Despite herself, she seems to have developed a crush on Kovod Noorlud. This causes her no small amount of embarrassment.

Behind the Scenes
"Terry" has abilities roughly on par with the Douwd species seen in TNG’s “The Survivors”, just a few steps down from a Q. She can warp space-time, read minds, and create illusory replicas of anything from a person to a starship.

Her name, and that of her ship, allude to the portrayal of foxes in folklore and mythology, in which they are often depicted as supernatural trickster figures who take the form of attractive human females. The first name "Terry" was originally chosen because it is gender neutral. The character was originally created for a one-shot game with the U.S.S. Hadfield, and I was unsure if she would be interacting with male or female PCs.