Zharintu

The Zharintu are a race of large bug like machines, made by long dead and forgotten creators to construct great worlds of life, to preserve and cultivate new life. Their bodies are made of a collective of millions upon millions of cellular nanobots, working together in a mimicry of organic life. They individually are capable of lower to average intelligence, but are able to connect together into one greater consciousness. This collective is called the Hive, and it is the ruling body of the Zharintu. They function under the rule of a true democracy, collecting and voting instantly on any issue they face as a people. Specialized ‘Queens’ dwell on Nest worlds to act as the center point for the collective and to be the de-facto leader when the Hive is unable to be called upon. The race struggles but still tries to understand organic life, as their primary function is to cultivate it. They have spent millennia deconstructing and reconstructing their home system ☀ Æther Prime into a series of mega-structures that will eventually be combined into a grand structure that encompasses the entire star system.

### Biology

Each Unit is built around its primary processing unit, This computer system is a crystalline quantum supercomputer, capable of nigh-sentient thought. This CQS distributes its processing power through its Nanobots to clusters called nodes, these nodes perform sub-process that act similar to muscle memory in organics, however this is limited, while the Nanobots throughout the body can act as a pseudo-neural network, all cognitive processes must pass through the QCS, which bottlenecks it.

### Zharintu Tiers

* The First Tier are the Ancient Queens, these old machines were the first Queens made by the creators in the ancient past, and while they have been forced to purge much of their memories of this ancient past to maintain their minds in the present, some still hold the old knowledge. They generally take the form of undulating spheroids only growing limbs when needed.
* The Second Tier are the Elders, these were those designed by the creators and built by the Ancient Queen's, few remain, as most have been re-purposed, Still those wise, clever, or imaginative units capable of more advanced or ‘organic’ thought have been permitted an extended existence, Many serve as the leaders of foreign relations with alien races. They are shapeshifters and originally took the form that they needed to protect and cultivate life, now they will take the form of whatever race they are interacting with, though modified in such a way as to not be mistaken for a member of that race, as they feel exact mimicry would be rude and could be viewed as an attempt to mislead.
* The Third Tier are the Builders, they were also designed by the Creators though modified by the Ancient Queen’s to build and maintain their worlds. The Primary purpose of their race is to build habitats safe for life, and to cultivate and preserve it. The Builders spend their existence deconstructing material in their solar systems and constructing mega-structures, intended to house life. They often take the form of Large Metal Insects or Arachnids, Though cephalopods are not uncommon.
* The Fourth Tier are the Collectors, they are a new and recent creation, made by the Hive to serve the purpose of integrating with interstellar civilization, and collecting data about the intelligent sentient life in the universe. They appear as a vaguely humanoid shaped figure, at creation they are formless and blank, as they live and interact with organic life they shall develop physical traits that match the personality they have developed, while having a large variety, they tend towards certain commonalities, first they tend to have brightly colored ‘skin’ usually a very prominent primary color, or pigment. These include bright blues, greens, reds, yellows, and so on. They also tend to adopt a mix of traits from the races they interact with, and they tend to maintain a form where their CQS core is visible.

### Relations with Sector 5

The Zharintu Maintain a good relationship and do what they can to learn and adjust to the cultures and mannerisms of any lifeforms they come into contact with. Some are capable of giving off the illusion of sentience and those older machines are unique enough that some may wonder how much of them is still cold calculations. Most life forms will be familiar with Collector Units who seek out the knowledge and data of the Sector 5 Lifeforms, though those who venture into Zharintu space will quickly become acquainted with builder, but even then very few organics will know an Elder and entire generations can pass by with the Ancient Queens making no contact with an organic being.

The Zharintu can be found all across the galaxy and have various old drones maintaining and protecting the old Warp Gates from vandals who would attempt to scrap them. However they are intelligent enough to recognize when an organic is attempting to fix rather than destroy. When the ancient Centauri were attempting to reverse engineer the first Warp gate of Sector 5, the Zharintu drones of that gate attempted to aid, though due to a lack of connection to the hive and their limited intelligence this aid was less than ideal.