Welcome one and all, I am Tockington Ticksworth, autognome preservationist, and this is my personal nature reserve. Here you will learn about the fabulous fauna of Wildspace. From scavvers to space swine, prepare to be amazed, shocked, and positively terrified. Follow me as I’ll personally take you to meet some of our most prestigious specimens.
Discover More Alien Creatures!
Spelljammer: Adventures in Space takes players into Wildspace and to the Astral Sea to encounter creatures not yet seen in Dungeons & Dragons. The three-book set introduces over 60 new creatures, as well as player options, an adventure for spacefarers, and more!
Scavvers
Wildspace is home to all manner of creatures that bear striking resemblance to fish. The shark-like scavvers are among such creatures. You'll find that they come in interesting varieties. Amongst our collection we have several gray scavvers, a bonded pair of night scavvers, and an exceptionally large brown scavver that the keepers have affectionately named Sarah.
Sarah is just over 10 feet in length—large for a brown scavver—but is still small when compared to the much larger night scavver. Nonetheless, she has established herself as something of a big fish. Most types of scavvers, including brown ones like Sarah, are actually quite placid and docile and prefer to follow behind larger creatures, and even ships, feeding off the scraps that fall into space.
Sarah has grown to be not only quite large but also friendly and will happily accept food from visitors. You should come back just after noon for her feeding time when she sometimes does tricks. But we do ask people to be careful when feeding her. Sarah’s stomach is filled with poisonous gas and she is more than capable of swallowing small humanoids and children whole.
What you won’t see here is the infamous void scavver. Coming in much larger than any of these specimens, a void scavver is a terrifying sight to behold and doesn’t possess the same scavenging nature of its smaller kin. A void scavver will often attack spelljamming ships directly, using a magical ray it can emit from its eyes that strikes fear into the heart of anyone caught in its gaze. Needless to say, I'm not eager to add any of those to our collection!
Space Eel
Next up, we have the graceful space eel.
Coming in at five feet long, these ethereal, serpentine creatures tend to avoid confrontation despite their intimidating appearance. They can often be found trailing behind spelljamming vessels, feeding off the scraps that fall overboard. They’ll take anything from spilled ale and bread, to the toes of any Wildspace sailor foolish to dangle their feet over the side!
But don't take these creatures for granted. When you're roaming Wildspace for weeks, months, or even years, you'll likely turn to astral fishing as a pastime—and out of necessity. For the spacefaring fisher, a space eel is an impressive catch, able to feed up to 12 people.
When confronting a space eel, expect it to put up a fight. Word to the wise: when facing down one of these creatures, watch out for their tails. They have a nasty, venomous sting!
Space Hamsters
Here we have one of our most popular creatures: the giant space hamster!
While they may be the size of a brown bear, these adorable creatures are plant-eaters and are much less aggressive. In fact, giant space hamsters make for delightful mounts and beasts of burden. If you have a means of speaking with animals, you may even find that giant space hamsters are quite the talkative bunch!
Now, you may be wondering about the infamous miniature giant space hamsters, sometimes just called space hamsters. These are the product of wizardly intervention and shrinking magic. Well, wonder no more as we venture to their specially designed habitat.
Don’t be fooled by their diminutive nature compared to their giant kin, for the miniature giant space hamster is a ferocious wee beastie. Smarter than their bigger siblings, space hamsters are known to go for the eyes when provoked, or sometimes just when they feel like it. That combined with their propensity to escape all but the most secure enclosures and you have a hamster that's a handful but that still fits in the palm of your hand.
Space Mollymawk
If you look up, you’ll see a flock of space mollymawks, a somewhat uninvited guest to the reserve. While not part of our official roster, it’s kind of impossible to get rid of them as they can be found everywhere throughout Wildspace. When out between worlds, space mollymawk like to perch on spelljamming vessels and take advantage of a free ride, hopping between air envelopes when they get the chance.
Fun fact, a lot of spelljamming sailors consider it bad luck to kill a space mollymawk. But seeing as these ones have proven not to be too disruptive as guests here, we’ve not had reason to find out.
Space Swine
Moving on to our final display, we answer the age old question of what happens when pigs fly. Well, the answer is that you get space swine. These winged boars have been bred for a variety of uses, from flying mounts to beasts of burden to consummate trackers. While they can eat basically anything, they happen to have a soft spot for truffles. However, you don’t get many of those in Wildspace, so they’ve become very good at rooting them out with their keen sense of smell. But watch out, because if you come between a space swine and their truffles, they have a mean bite!
Farewell, Kind Travelers!
This concludes our guided tour of the sanctuary. I do hope you come back again as I'm always expanding the collection. There are so many wondrous creatures out there in Wildspace, it would take a lifetime to see them all! Do beware, however, that there exist many creatures that are not as kind or loveable as those you saw today. I hope for your sake that you do not encounter them. That is, unless you're one of those curious adventurers I hear so much about!
Davyd is a moderator for D&D Beyond. A Dungeon Master of over fifteen years, he enjoys Marvel movies, writing, and of course running D&D for his friends and family, including partner Steph and his daughter Willow (well, one day). They live with their two cats Asker and Khatleesi in the south of England.
FIRST
Also this is really cool
Well done 👏
Are the Mollymawks a reference to Critical Role's Mollymauk Tealeaf?
In the real world, mollymawks are a group of albatross native to the southern hemisphere. That's presumably why space sailors think killing them is bad luck; they're literally space albatross, and some sailors felt superstitious about those in the in the real world.
While I really enjoyed this I'm hoping they write some more serious articles as well. I'm hoping that we can pull off a "Pirate of Dark Water in space" or "Star Trek + D&D". Most of what I've seen is space comedy.
This is awesome, new creatures to wildshape! Now I want to play a Circle of the Moon so bad.
Now watch them all be monstrosities.
transform into, GIANT SPACE HAMSTER!
my ranger (beast master,naturally)wants one of these so bad
This scratches my spelljammer itch so well, nice job.
That’s fascinating - here in Orkney (off the north coast of Scotland), Mallimacks (folk don’t have an agreed spelling) are the birds called Fulmars in English! I’d never known that the name wasn’t just used here!
Am I the only one familiar with starfinder who thinks spelljammer is pretty much a rip-off. Down to the hamsters. I dunno maybe it's just me
Well yeah, Starfinder is based off Spelljammer.
You've got it backwards, Spelljammer was originally released in 1989 for 2nd Edition AD&D.
Spelljammer is the original, Starfinder came out much, much later (Based off the brief google search, Starfinder was released in 2017 and Spelljammer was released in 1989 for AD&D 2nd edition. Predating Starfinder by 28 years
SPACE HAMSTERS ARE ADORABLE!!!
Other way around. Even most people that know about space hamsters are thanks to a (possible) miniature giant space hamster from the original Baldur's Gate game (1998). This stuff predate even Paizo, although it's been obscure enough for so long it's hard to understand the confusion.
Also, it's worth noting that Starfinder, (while it includes some versions of the fantasy races in it) is actually sci-fi, with laser guns, computers, armored suits, and many other high-tech items, even if it still has some magic in the game as well.
Spelljamer (at least in its AD&D 2e version) is literally D&D in space, using sailing ships as spaceships in many cases, powered by magic. Weapons are catapults, bows, and swords. A comparison could be made to Space:1889, a game about Victorian-era interplanetary space travel in flying "lift-wood" ships, where the people flying them do not have any high-tech weapons or technology (at least, not past Victorian-era tech like early rifles).
Molly was more of a Peacock.
Although his death really did change the whole tone of the show, and fortune and luck was definitely part of his character concept.
"Space albatross" isn't an *entirely* innacurate description of him, though! :)
Is this implying that void scavvers are astral dreadnoughts, and does that mean that lesser scavvers are also the creations of Tharizdun? Lore goes deep, damn.