Cosmovores

> "*There can be no surrender to the Ecolore, no negotiation, no reason. We know them as the enemy - they know us as prey.*"
> ― Emperor Athdus III
>
>

The Cosmovores, also known as the World-Eaters, Ecolore/Ecolors and by many other names, were a collective of semi-intelligent species created by and enslaved to the Cosmovore Queen. Though each Cosmovore possessed autonomy and self-awareness, they were telepathically enslaved to their Queen through magical means and were incapable of disobeying her commands.

The Cosmovores were incapable of growing their numbers by normal means and instead relied on consuming and reprocessing the organic matter of other creatures into new Cosmovores, forcing them to slaughter and devour to survive. The Cosmovore collective attempted to consume Inecuria during the War for the World before their Queen was slain by the Flame-Bearer, leaving the Cosmovores aimless and scattered and ceasing the function of their Hive, preventing any further reproduction.

Although each Cosmovore species had a highly distinct appearance and unique function, they all shared similar physical traits. They all had grey or dark grey skin, extremely dark red (almost black) blood, dense muscles, black eyes with amber feline irises, a lean or gaunt appearance, and lustrous chitin-like armour plating across much of their body. Few of them had hair, but where they did, it was always coarse, thick and wiry.

## Name

The name "Cosmovore", which roughly translates as "World-Eater", is the common scientific name for these creatures. In Nesarian, World-Eater translates as Ecolor (plural Ecolore), which is a shortened form of Ecotulor. The shortened form gives the word a double meaning, as Ecolor can also mean "great eater".

Across Inecuria, the Cosmovores are known as the local translation of "World-Eater", and across most of Asia they are known by some variation of Ecolor. In the rest of the world, they are known almost exclusively as Cosmovores, or less commonly as Cosmophages.

## Hive Organisation and Reproduction

All of the information about the Cosmovore Hive and their manner of reproduction comes from the Elavitan scholar Colados Iafesa, the only known individual to see the Hive and live to tell the tale (or, at least, the only one to write about it). Although the Cosmovores did appear to have several secondary minor hives, their central Hive (usually capitalised) was where the Queen herself lived and where the bulk of their population production took place.

The exact location of the Hive is not known and likely never will be, though it was known to be an artificial island of sorts growing in the ocean to the north of Inecuria, which died and rotted away with the death of the Queen. Colados himself did not give details on how he actually reached the Hive, merely writing that he "sneaked under the waves", which most historians have taken to mean somehow manipulating the air using magic to create an underwater bubble in which he could breathe. How he achieved this is puzzling, given that this talent was known to only be possessed by the most skilled of air mages, whereas Colados had very limited air magic.

The main purpose of the Hive was reprocessing organic material into new Cosmovores, since no member of the Cosmovore collective could reproduce naturally. Colados wrote that he saw all manner of corpses being thrown into the giant biological vats of acid which appeared to digest and break down the organic matter into its basic components so it could be rebuilt anew, which included various animals, a few intelligent folk and Cosmovores who were deceased or past their usefulness. Modern scholars now believe that Cosmovores could theoretically sustain their numbers by continuously reprocessing the biomatter of dead Cosmovores into new living ones, but this would create stagnation and decline in the gene pool as it would functionally be no different from inbreeding, and over time would lead to a net decline in biomatter as a small amount would be lost with each generation.

Many scholars, ancient and modern, have theorised that the Cosmovores inherited some traits of the species they sourced their biomatter from. It is speculated that this is the reason why the Cosmovores were seemingly immune to all poison and venom, due to consuming the species which produced these substances in the first place and "learning" how the substances worked. It is also speculated that this is why the Cosmovore collective appeared to display progessively greater intelligence through the war, first acting in a highly animalistic manner but later developing more tactical sense and problem-solving capabilities, as they consumed large numbers of intelligent creatures (overwhelmingly Humans). This is perhaps why the Cosmovores targeted the intelligent species so strongly rather than only consuming less threatening biomatter, beyond the obvious reasoning that intelligent creatures were far more dangerous and so had to be removed as soon as possible; by consuming intelligent creatures, they would become more intelligent themselves.

## Types of Cosmovore

Classifications of Cosmovore species were developed by scholars from across Inecuria during the War for the World, and after the war's end these were compiled together and streamlined into a single list by an Onshian scholar, Manoru Teshiwa, whose names for the various species became the definitive versions. It should be noted that these names were not necessarily in use during the actual war.

### Commoner

The Commoner was by far the most numerous of the Cosmovores, but also the least intelligent and least autonomous, and they were the weakest of the front-line species designed for combat. It is likely that a well-trained soldier could slay an individual Commoner, but they were never seen alone; their strength came in their vast numbers and their total disregard for their own safety, enabling them to very effectively swarm enemies. Hordes of Commoners could overwhelm and destroy enemy formations on their own, but they would often take heavy losses doing so, and their role on the battlefield appeared to not be inflicting casualties but rather to hold the enemy in place to allow more powerful Cosmovores to do the real damage. Cosmovore armies became more adept at using this tactic as the war progressed, perhaps reflecting their ability to "absorb" intelligence from the intelligent creatures they consumed and reprocessed.

The Commoner was quadrupedal, roughly the size of a large wolf, with hoofed rear legs and front legs that ended in large curved blade-like claws, sharp and slightly serrated on the inner side and blunt on the outer side, enabling them to be used for crushing, slashing or stabbing blows. These claws were their primary weapons, but they also frequently made use of their sharp and durable teeth. Their leathery skin was dark grey, often splotched with darker patches, and they sported black chitin-like (but not actually chitinous) armour plates on their back, the top of the skull, the front of the thighs and essentially everywhere that would be facing the enemy, but they had none whatsoever at their rear. Some Commoners had tough, coarse and thick black or grey hair sprouting from the back of their head, but this was far from universal; it is thought to have been simply an uncommon mutation, or perhaps related to the biomatter the Commoner was produced from.

### Carrier

The Carrier was not expected to see combat, and instead contributed to the process of population production by transporting corpses to the Hive for reprocessing. Carriers ate the corpses of slain foes, but would not actually digest or consume them, merely keeping them in the belly to carry them. Once the Carrier reached the Hive, they would throw themselves - along with the contents of their stomach - into the digestion vats. Because Carriers did not digest anything they ate, they would remain ravenously hungry regardless of how much they ate, and began to starve from the moment of their creation. However, they were given ample reserves of fat to ensure they would survive long enough to complete the transportation process, and they were never intended to actually survive, as they always died upon completing their mission.

The carriers resembled massive worms with exceedingly wide mouths and a diverse array of teeth designed to deal with every possible food source. They possessed no armour plates like most Cosmovores due to the fact that they were never intended to see combat, leaving their pale grey, almost white skin bare. Unlike other Cosmovores, they did not have amber irises, but instead possessed wholly black eyes.

### Seeker

In every respect in form and function, the Seeker was a smaller variant of the Carrier, designed to eat (but not consume) biomatter and then throw itself into the ever-hungry mouth of a Carrier. The Seekers saved valuable time and energy for the Carriers by delegating the biomatter harvesting process to a different creature, allowing the Carrier to conserve as much energy as possible for the return journey to the Hive. Seekers were the only Cosmovore which appeared to not be produced within the main Hive at all, instead created in the smaller-scale biomatter reprocessing systems of the smaller secondary hives which were formed across Inecuria.