An ancient and immensely powerful feline people, said to be the oldest spacefaring race known, who recruit Kirk and Spock for a secret mission in The Jihad.
The Vedala appear in the animated episode The Jihad. They are a cat-like people regarded as the oldest spacefaring civilisation known to the Federation, with abilities that include transporting individuals across great distances and altering their memories.
A Vedala summons a team of specialists to her asteroid home: Kirk, Spock, the Skorr prince Tchar, the reptilian Sord, the nervous lock-picker Em/3/Green and the human huntress Lara. Their task is to recover the Soul of Alar, a stolen religious sculpture whose loss threatens to drive the warlike Skorr into a holy war against the rest of the galaxy.
The Vedala cannot enter the unstable planet where the object is hidden, which is why outsiders are needed. When the mission ends she returns the survivors to the moment they left, with no public record of what happened.