everyone's favorite (and mine) The Champion, or Deathknight. she stands at 7 feet tall with a sword as tall as some other units. the voice actor interpreted her as completely feral, so we didn't give her a radio. she just has handlers that point her in a direction to kill.

Vanimals are the building blocks of suffering-free ecologies, and suffering-free ecologies are the foundation of peaceful and harmonious relations between humans, morphs, and uplifts.

Vanimals are considered culturally indispensable throughout space. Human descended cultures use vanimal livestock to practice traditional pastoral lifestyles, or conduct religious sacrifices. Meanwhile, uplifts use vanimals to practice hunting or as symbiotes to control pests.

They are genetically essentially brain-dead, with the parent vanimal's nanosystems constructing a computer in the skull cavity. These computer systems are wirelessly monitored by central Eco-management systems, typically overseen by a local Power.

All vanimals are cyborgs- there were early attempts at purely organic vanimals, but observation of rapidly reproducing species like rats and mice evidenced genetic drift indicating independent re-evolution of pain sensory systems and intelligence.

Vanimals allow suffering-free ecologies that can operate more or less free of the need to carefully regulate reproduction demanded by other solutions, such as the herbivorization of predators.

They are not simply non-sentient- they are completely without any form of intelligence, essentially operated by sophisticated computers and ontological libraries along pre-programmed behaviours.

The brainchild of pre-Exclusion veterinarian neurologist, geneticist, ethical vegan, and animal rights activist Consuelo Silberberg, vanimals are "virtual animals", genetically engineered organisms created without the capacity to feel pain or experience stress.

“Damn your swamp must have a lot of geothermal vents!”

Dragon: *gets out of swamp* *bubbles stop immediately*

“Ooooooh myyyy g——d…”

Swamp dragons in the Bog of Eternal Stench do have a rancid sort of charm, dont they?