Mindriders

The **Mindriders** are a race of First Ones that achieved interstellar travel some 500 million years ago, making them one of the youngest First Ones.

They are unique among the First Ones for being the only race among them to have finished the path of psionic transcendence, a path that was followed by other First Ones, though with a conscious effort to not finish it on the latter part.

## History

Nothing is known of the Mindriders from before the event that defines them. They refer to the moment of transcendence to "*beings of pure thought*" as "the Great Birth" and consider themselves to be an entirely different species from that which they were before.

Actually, the Mindriders transcended to Shadespace, the psionic realm, the highest step on Psionic Transcendence. After the Great Birth, they quickly discovered Hyperspace and the stars beyond their native system, joining the galaxy's other highly advanced species such as the Viatori, the Torvalus (with whom they sometimes clashed), the Vorlons, the Shadows, but mostly the Triad in a form of a galactic community. Deeply philosophical, they were anxious to learn all that they could from their more experienced brother. After a while, they separated into small groups, and investigated throughout the galaxy, joining together again every so often to exchange information, and then moved beyond.

Differently from other races that followed the path of psionic transcendence, the Mindriders were not able to foresee the adverse effect that reaching its highest level would have, almost total isolation from the physical realm. Thus, the Mindriders rely on their technology to travel through space and interact with the physical world. Mindriders are known to invade the minds of significant individuals of lesser species to observe and sometimes influence history. From a physical view, their homeworld, Animos, is a lush green and uninhabited world haunted by "ghosts" that expel anyone who tries to colonize it. Actually, Animos is inhabited by billions of Mindriders in the psionic dimensional plane.

The Mindrider government is the Infinite Consciousness. It is basically a mental network through which the Mindriders exchange information and govern themselves through consensus. However, it is not a collective or hive-mind such as the Triad, as the Mindriders have a level of individuality comparable to most other races.

## Technology

All known Mindrider technology works by manipulating telekinetic forces or, as Starfleet knows it, *morphogenic psion fields*.

Psions are the weightless particle that makes up much of Shadespace and, through which, information can be carried, being the quantum of psionic phenomena. Morphogenic psions, more specifically referred to as pushions, are psions that were destabilized by giving them more energy than they originally have, turning them into a morphogenic force that can affect normal matter. Because morphogenic psions are unstable, they do not exist for long in nature, releasing the excess energy and degenerating back into normal psions. Telekinesis is the psionic phenomenon that happens when a being is capable of energizing ambient psions to exert force onto normal matter.

The Thoughtforce is the only class of ship of the Mindriders that is known to the Younger Races. It's constructed of carbon molecules that were telekinetically-compressed within pushion lattices, and within its shell is a localized bubble of shadespace which contains the life energies of the Mindriders. Their ships are protected by a Morphogenic Psion Field or a "telekinetic" shield made of pushions, and their main weapon is the Morphogenic Psion Cannon, which fires large pushion shards that have a similar effect to Atlanti hard light weaponry.

The Mindriders are constantly projecting a telekinetic field to both protect and propel the ship. A field that is so powerful that only high-powered energy weapons have a chance of getting through the field without being deflected. Combined with the ship's self-repairing abilities, it makes the ship impervious to most of the Younger Races' munitions.

Because they exist in Shadespace, the dimension of reality related to psionic phenomena, the Mindriders cannot easily interact with the physical world. To travel between the stars, the Mindriders make use of their realm's own psion streams. The material element of their ships, however, are transported through hyperspace by unknown means. In essence, the Thoughtforce is disassembled and reassembled with every interstellar trip.