Athallid Consciousness

Consisting of billions of drones with minimal free will, the bulk of the Athallid Consciousness exists for one purpose alone: the survival of the Great Mind.

No other goal is important bar self preservation, with drones being sacrificed in excessive numbers so that the greater whole may survive.

The neural structure of the Athallid Consciousness is called "the Great Mind". It comprises of the Synaptic Nexus, which exercises overall control from Tezhnar, and various Sub-Minds.

## History

### Early Galactic:

Early in their interactions with other species the Athallid were aggressive in their diplomacy with other species, threatening assimilation on one side, whilst also trying to persuade other species to accept assimilation.

They were present for one of the many Fefing coups, placing a mutant Fefing Queen on the surface to incite instability in the future. They were also one of the empires that prepared for war with the Zerep Union when the governor in charge of communications carried out a mass war declaration.

During this time, the Athallid were also carrying out large expedition into unexplored sectors of the galaxy, finding numerous phenomenom and documenting them for future study/exploitation.

### Late Galactic:

During another Fefing period of instability, the Athallid engaged the Gogan Imperium, attacking various colony worlds, before discovering psionic secrets of the Gogan's. Research of this caused an increase in deviant drone behaviour until the athallid had to turn to the Uthonian Swarm for aid in recovering their colonies, starting the alliance between the two Hive Minds.

As the galaxy developed and more empires took to the stars, the Hive found itself in a situation of being outnumbered gradually, as more defensive pacts and Federations formed the Athallid found themselves lacking the strength to take over another empire and fend off any retaliatory strikes. Additionally, the mutant Fefing Queen that had been being smuggled to Fefnor emerged, causing further diplomatic issues for the Hive.

As the death bell for the Hive tolled in the form of the Grand Imperium Emperor stating both the Athallid and Uthonians to be a severe threat, the athallid began development of a solution to their approaching issues.

## Structure (Goverment + Culture)

### Drones

The drones of the Athallid Consciousness are barely sapient, posessing minmal free-will or independant thought, with an intellignece about the same as an average beast of burden. They recieve their direction from controlling sub-minds and are seen as the most expendable components of the hive.

### Sub-Minds

Each Sub-Mind is specialised for a specific task, and often is assigned a drone population to manage and use to achieve that task. The Great Mind uses these to delegate tasks to the drone population without over-burdening itself. In circumstance where the duties of sub-minds overlap, the following hierachy is observed.

#### *Strategic:*

Strategic sub-minds hold the most weight in the Consciousness. Their role is to analyse the state of the galaxy and predict the result of various actions with a focus on ability to wage war. As such, they work closely Diplomatic sub-minds to predict how individual empires will react to hive actions.

#### *Diplomatic:*

Diplomatic sub-minds are next in the pecking order. Similar to the Strategic sub-minds, it is their goal to instead focus on the reaction of individual empires, rather than each empires ability to wage war by itself, these sub-minds focus on the likelihood of an alliance forming to oppose the hive. While more numerous than Strategic sub-minds, there tends to be no more than 10 at a time, with a few aimed at general inter-species diplomacy and the rest focused on species the hive has frequent contact with.

#### *Research:*

Research sub-minds are the driving force of the Consciousness’ development technologically. These minds choose what experiments research drones should execute and follow up on the discoveries of exploratory drones. These are the highest ranked sub-minds that have a permanent drone population to monitor.

#### *Administrative:*

Administrative sub-minds are the mainstay of the Consciousness. They manage the hiveworlds and starbases of the hive and generally tend to be the ones most active.

#### *Tactical:*

Tactical sub-minds are the most numerous, if only because at least one is present on every war vessel or accompanies a tactical hive. Outside of combat, these are mostly somnolent, only seeing to the maintenance of the hardware under their control. In combat these sub-minds beat even the administrative sub-mind in activity, hence why when a drone is under the direct control of one outside of combat it appears agitated.

## Military

Athallid Military doctrine is based around devastating counter-attacks, let the enemy wear themselves thin on Athallid defenses, before rallying their fleets to push back the hostile forces and carry on into their territory. The only time they'll start a war on the offensive is if the enemy fleet is already depolyed elsewhere.

### Navy

Athallid fleets are based around a mix of classes, with the great mind stating "Only flawed individuals would leave a flagrant flaw in their forces by leaning heavily on one class". As such, Athallid fleets are generally an even mix of vessel sizes.

Their corvettes are designed to swarm the enemy and whittle down their hull structure, with destoyers carrying kinetic artillery for a long range barrage whilst providing a flak and point defense screen for larger vessels. Cruisers serve as the mainstay line vessels of a fleet, carrying weaponry designed to fight smaller vessels, while battleships carrying potent spinal weaponry whilst backing that up with hordes of strike craft.

Larger vessels are rarely seen in athallid fleets, with large amounts of material redirected to other projects.

### Ground Forces

Athallid ground forces are still based around the soldier caste of drones from Tezhnar, with some effort to modernise into a force that can stand toe to toe with the standard ground forces of another space empire. As such, Athallid rarely excell in trench warfare due to a lack of effective ranged weaponry besides artillery strikes.

In urban and boarding operations, Athallid ground forces excel, coordinating groups of drones to launch pincer strikes on groups of enemies, using cover and terrain to their advantage for ambushes, similar to how the Hive defended itself in it's tunnels on Tezhnar.

## Diplomacy

The Great Mind sees empires composed of individuals as inferior to itself, with machine intellignces being an acceptable step up, but still inferior due to the fact that they were constructed by flawed individuals.

As such, throughout it's history, the Athallid Consciousness has struggled to maintain amicable relations with it's neighbors, exhibiting an armed truce with them whilst both sides hurl insults back and forth.

It has in the past managed to achieve positive relations and exchanges with Machine Intelligences, usually on the grounds of mutual self-interest. On the other hand, relations with Rogue Servitors are almost immediately strained by the Athallid desire to assimilate their biological populations.

The Athalid maitain their best relations with the Uthonian Swarm, a fellow hivemind and therefore "not flawed".

## Lore

* For a short period of time, Administrative sub-minds were terminated by the Synaptic Nexus. This decision was promptly reversed once the issues of removing these from the chain of control were discovered, namely large groups of drones walking in endless loops, into obstacles and each other.
* The least numerous types of sub-minds, Strategic and Diplomation, have no permanenet drone population to monitor. Their main purpose is to scheme and plot, to analyse the individual empires of the galaxy looking for ways to ensure the survival of the Great Mind.
* The Synaptic Nexus is generally unaware of how it's own existence began. By the time details of it's origins became important to the Nexus, most details were lost, due to drones from that era having died off and been recycled by the hive. As such, the Great Mind is fascinated by developing Hive-Minds as a way of understanding it's own origins.

Athallid Pet Drones