Commonly encountered throughout the frigid regions of space, and usually in large familial groups, they are a simian people whose oversized ears, quick fingers and many arms have made them a thing of legend in the racing world. Despite being well suited to a fast paced life, they actually prefer to live rather sedentary lifestyles onboard house sized vessels of their own creation, literally spun from out of yarn. While it is common practice in the cold to adorn vessels with furs, insulating foam or gel, the Bandara take things a step further by knitting 95% of the ship's interstices. That means that aside from a simple engine, thrusters and heating filaments, every part of the ship has been sewn personally by one of its inhabitants, a fact that those familiar with their absent mindedness find deeply disconcerting. Owing to the flexibility of the construction process, and because precise planning doesn’t figure too prominently in their collective ethos, no two of these ‘nests’ are the same, being comprised of sloping hallways that intersect semi-randomly and travel at all sorts of strange vectors, some even forming vertical woolen shafts. These drastic inclines are no problem to the lithe denizens of the ship who scuttle up them without a second thought, but pose serious difficulties for a larger person to ascend. Many crews have learnt this and intersperse them to protect valuables or conceal their sleeping quarters.
Preferring the appearance of yarn to cheap mechanical components, families will take great care in hiding them wherever possible, leading to some complications when urgent repairs are needed and the crew is forced to rapidly unknit the careful job of submerging them in the walls. This lends the ship's interior a completely woolen finish, causing some visitors to wonder with befuddlement how it even moves, as the Bandara are notoriously terrible spell-casters. Much preferring to weave strings than magic. They also have a preoccupation with beads and charms, tending to incorporate them into their designs whenever possible, and meaning that the halls of their ships (usually shaped organically and maybe resembling the warren of a rabbit) are decorated with hundreds of tiny found objects, all threaded onto the yarn and spun into the walls. Further confounding navigation is their habit of sewing dead ends into the ships floor- plan, these seem superfluous but are actually storage places for treasured keepsakes, kept within pockets or just tossed onto the floor. Either way these places take on the function of a closet and are used to prevent items from floating haphazardly in zero-g. Although it is sewn into a dense mesh, the yarn used in construction is still very malleable and gives the impression to a regularly weighted person that they are fording awkwardly through mud, meaning that the crew is given ample time to scurry away from an intruder.
Being possessed of very thick insulating fur, they have no natural need for clothing or really any sort of decency. Instead their outfits are usually self-made and serve as a kind of instant resume, typically being an individual's finest piece of work and demonstrating the complex weaves that they can pull off. Placing particular emphasis on hoods that drape to cover their shoulder joints (which are naturally hairless), they have a peculiar distaste for pants and will usually only wear scarves, headdresses or tunics. This has made them very unpopular in fine dining establishments, who can’t turn them away for indecency owing to the volume of their fur, which protects their dignity. They are almost never encountered without string of some kind, and usually have it on their person in a variety of lurid colours and strange consistencies. Storing knitting implements in pockets or pouches, they can also quickly produce most tools needed for menial jobs. Some traditionalists prefer to use their fingernails for every part of the sewing process, and it is perceptible to experts whether a piece of their artwork was fashioned in this style.
In general a complacent and unbothered people, they are commonly insecure about any kind of baldness, hence the hoods which conceal the points from which their four arms spring. Individuals who are born with shoulder hair are considered naturally lucky, and often forego clothing entirely so that they can let others know. Sometimes boastful, a regular claim is that they can hold their breath for upwards of four hours, although this is a highly contentious assertion. Nevertheless there is speculation as to how they survive in the airless regions of space with their non-airtight ships, and while some fanciful stories are told in truth each of them carries a rebreather, usually hung from around their neck. This can be recharged via a network of sockets that abound throughout their ships, popularly concealed beneath a simple woolen flap. There are also machines who continually pump air around the cabin and others who draw it back in before too much can seep out, but faint trails of rapidly freezing oxygen usually betray their passage.
A unique and highly persistent problem that they face is parasitism from minute insectoid pests. While on most ships these would be quickly eradicated by filtration systems and the clinical nature of the interior, yarn hulls are a near perfect place for the things to hide, aided by the poor personal hygiene and slovenly maintenance habits of the families onboard. Not just warm, but tightly enclosed and never subject to inspections, they multiply secretly in the rarely visited parts of the ship. Those places where engines rest or pipes run are usually the most densely populated, with the mites loving the runoff from the analogue machinery. Those groups whose ships are infested are the laughing stock of their kind, secretly pitied by their fellows for having their labours ruined in such an incongruous fashion. Until the pests are eradicated they are unwelcome at cultural gatherings lest they spread the infestation, so instead redouble their artistic efforts to ensure a spectacular body of work upon their return. Evidence that an individual has dealt regularly with the creatures is sparse fur on the wrists and forearms, indicating where over a lifetime they have bitten when they plunge their hands into the wall to get access to the machinery inside. There is a custom of wearing gloves to disguise the effects, but although knitted to resemble a technician’s cufflets it is a shallow farce. Recently some particularly empathetic Bandara have taken to wearing the gloves in an effort to popularise them and so anonymise the inflicted. A frugal people, it is fortunate that they find most varieties of pest to be highly flavoursome, tingling their strange palettes. They also favour broths and tuber-like vegetables.