The Collective

## BASICS

● Name: The Collective

● Homeworld: Unknown

● Lifespan: 200 - 500 years

## GENERAL INFORMATION

● Planet(s) Inhabited: None

● Current Status: Spacefaring Nomadic

## APPEARANCE

● Description: The Collective's appearance varies greatly depending on specific subspecies variables as well as the age of the members. Those oldest members of the Collective tend to have a more grotesque and insect-like appearance. They often times have many limbs and while they will stand upright in a bipedal format to facilitate communication with other races, they are often more comfortable falling to their stomachs and moving using alternating tripod ambulation on their multitude of legs. Alternatively, younger members of the Collective who have molted after the discovery and incorporation of human technology and culture tend to possess more 'humanoid' figures, often standing and walking using bipedal ambulation. Despite this most members of the species still possess four to six limbs on their upper-body, each of which are tipped with three to four clawed digits and capable of a remarkable amount of dexterity in most circumstances. Their bodies are almost universally covered in chitinous pseudo-armor instead of flesh, and they often possess a wide array of natural weaponry in the form of claws and large mandibles that are capable of crushing things within them. The Collective, due to their adaptive molting, possess a variety of subspecies that share some qualities and not others. This means that they are very diverse, with the only common thread being their insect-like features and connection to the Collective's world ship, The Abyss.

The exception to this are the Collective's Thinwing subspecies. These female Collective members molt far more often than normal Collective drones and warriors, and thus possess much more humanoid forms. This is partly to facilitate their interactions with other races as diplomats, but also due to their own preferences towards more efficient appearances. While they never quite perfectly emulate human females, they can sometimes get uncomfortably close to the finished product in ways that make the end result far more...uncomfortable.

● Height Range: 4" to 7"

● Weight Range: 110 to 350 lbs. Varies greatly.

● Genders: Binary (Primarily male)

## Bonuses

**Special Ability: Hive mind -** The nature of the Collective's hive mind makes them versatile and unpredictable. With countless billions of their kind operating within the Megacolony Abyss, as well as in other subfleets all over space, it is highly likely that somewhere, sometime, somehow, one of their kind has mastered a specific skill. By tapping into the sub-brain, the Collective member can temporarily utilize the knowledge and experience of their finest to perform a task to it's fullest. By doing this quickly and spontaneously, however, the result can be somewhat taxing.

At the cost of 20 stamina, a member of the Collective can make a roll using any skill and treat that skill as if it were a "5" regardless of their actual skill level.

## LORE

**Overview**

The Collective is an extremely old species. The exact details of their age are largely unknown, much like the great majority of their history. As a race they are largely secretive, surrendering few details concerning themselves besides those that are necessary for continued interaction and trade with other races. Beyond this they largely keep to themselves and refuse to actively participate in conflicts in an official capacity. Despite this, singular members of the Collective are encouraged to go their own ways and, despite their implied hive mind they do not appear to be in any way lacking in individuality or agency on a personal basis. Thus, some find themselves embroiled in battles and war despite the stance of their own race and it's matriarchy.

**The Swarm Wars**

What is known about the Collective is that they previously inhabited a singular planet where they were a middling species that's population was heavily regulated due to predation and natural competition. During this time, multiple factions sprung up within their species led by various 'Queens' who controlled their individual hives in an attempt to wipe out the others. This time of conflict and war became known as The Swarm Wars, and caused many of the Collective's subspecies to fight in bitter conflict against one another, deepening the divide between them and stunting their ability to develop or otherwise advance their culture and technology. Thus, during this time, the individual subspecies were largely in a position of using archaic weapons including ballistic slugthrowers and melee weaponry. The Swarm Wars are poorly documented with much of the information being passed down orally over generations due to the fractured factions and the lack of focus on history and archiving. It is believed, generally, that the Swarm Wars lasted for approximately one thousand years before ending abruptly due to the cataclysmic event that occurred next.

**The Sundering**

During the height of the Swarm Wars, a terrible catastrophe befell the homeworld of The Collective. A human Colony Ship launched by the Sol Republic entered the system and passed too close to the planet. Previously accumulated damage, as well as the gravitational influence of the two moons of the world, caused the Colony Ship, already severely weathered from time and travel, to shed it's back half. The engines, as well as cryopod storage, plummeted to the planet below. This was the cause of the event that The Collective called The Sundering. Not a sundering of their race, however, but a sundering of their home. The wreckage struck with such force that the damage was immense and irreparable. The sky became polluted, and the planet began to die slowly. This was not unknown to the Collective. The Queens came together, calling a truce in order to deal with the imminent extinction they faced. The solution came in the form of the very harbinger of destruction that had fallen from the sky. The Collective, numbering in the tens of billions, swarmed over the wreckage of the damaged Colony Ship and stripped everything of possible value.

**The Collective**

During this time the Queens of all of the factions met with one another for the first time in over one thousand years. They discussed the impending extinction of their race and, fearing their inability to act decisively in the few years they had before the planet became completely unlivable, they made a grim decision. A single Queen, among them, was chosen to represent the new order of their race. The remaining Queens submitted to their new ruler and allowed themselves to be killed and cannibalized. Consumed and integrated into the Great Queen to facilitate her molting, they gave up control of their individual swarms in order to allow for all of their factions to be linked to a singular Queen and her sub-brain. This was the true formation of The Collective. In the wake of the mass linking of their minds, the entirety of the instectoid race's bitterness, resentment, and hatred, dissolved into nothing but the grim determination of their Queen to survive. This linking also allowed the newly formed Collective to share the information that they began to harvest from the strange technology that had fallen upon their planet. In short order they worked to reverse engineer the massive engines that had started the clock on their species extinction. Remnants of data were quickly and efficiently distributed throughout the Collective. Things like language, schematics, and methods for colonization became common knowledge among the instects and gave them the necessary knowledge to begin quickly cobbling together a new ship to assist them in evacuating their planet.

**The Escape**

When the ship was finished, it was an unimpressive and wholly unreliable piece of technology. The Collective, which had only just gained the ability to use spacefaring technology, was lacking in the deep understanding necessary to develop any lasting equipment. They could only make the most basic preparations and send a small contingent of their race to the stars in hopes that they would live on. Thus the tens of billions of the Collective on the planet bid farewell to their Queen and a small collection of others before launching them in the rudimentary shuttle they had built upward. Their plan was to reach out for the remaining half of the ship, now trapped in orbit around the dying planet, attempting to reach it and get aboard before somehow making it once again serviceable and capable of travel. Only with this would they be able to survive into the future. In short, according to the known history, their plan was a success. The First Great Queen arrived on the broken husk of the human Colony Ship and immediately went about the task of populating it with workers. Egg after egg hatched into countless drones that began the process of sealing hull breaches, collecting and collating data, and restructuring the interior of the ship to better serve The Collective. Even as they watched their planet die beneath them, the atmosphere filled with thick debris and it's inhabitants all slain by the bitter cold, they worked tirelessly for long years until, finally, the ship was ready to launch.

**The Passage of Time**

Much of the history of the intervening period between their escape from their homeworld and arrival to where they are now is unknown. The Collective remains, for the most part, vague on this. What is known is that they grew in number, and in size. Using the data harvested from the Colony Ship the Collective set off into the unknown. They survived by eating their own, and by outbreeding death and disease. Their understanding of the technology that had both doomed and saved them grew, and then advanced. What had once been mere imitation and admiration became a hunger for more knowledge and understanding. They began to develop their own technologies borrowing the principles of the ship they had taken. Their course took them deep into space. At first they were merely drifting at high sublight speeds. Eventually, this changed when they used the information aboard the ship to find another similarly set-adrift Colony Ship. This one was set upon in the same manner as the first. They integrated it. Used it's more complete structure to build upon and merged it with their first ship. This began the formation of The Abyss. The Great Megacolony of The Collective. The Abyss became a rather horrible sight. A twisted hulk of metal and dense mucus, held together with a combination of welds and secreted materials from the various subspecies that worked upon it. It slowly began to look less and less like a human vessel and more like a deformed abomination made from the derelict hulls of the various ships that the Collective had come across. Humanity was the first victim of this rampant salvaging, but wouldn't be the last. A scholar need only take a few looks at the patchwork hull of the Megacolony to realize that it also incorporates technology and structural earmarks from other, more exotic sources. The Collective yields no information on these other races that they may or may not have encountered. It volunteers no explanation beyond the vague admission of 'Salvager's rights'.

**The Hive**

The last piece of information concerning The Collective has to do with their matriarchal government, as well as their theoretical hive mind. It is known, through independent study, that all members of the Collectives subspecies possess two brains. The first is the primary brain, or 'Kirkirriz', which is located in their heads. This brain is responsible for the same functions as a human brain and facilitates speech, reasoning, artistic expression, and various other 'normal' functions. These insects, however, also possess a second brain. A sub-brain known as 'Dazizrir'. This sub-brain appears to exist for the sole purpose of connecting them to the Hive Cluster of The Collective. It can interface directly with the primary brain under queries to allow for near-instant access to the hub of information that The Collective possesses. This sub-brain's order of operation, as well as the evolution that allows it to operate over such long distances as lightyears, is unknown. What is known is that it means that a member of The Collective can, at nearly any time, be in touch with other members of their species and even their Queen if necessary.

**The Queen**

The Collective is a race that contains binary genders. Male and female. However, the ratio of these races is largely disproportionate due to their physiology. The Queen, while not being the only female, is of a minority among the subspecies that make up the entirety of the race. Much like insect species on Earth, females of the Collective are born by using a special, and largely unknown, method of specialized breeding in order to increase the chances of one being born. Even when this ritual is performed the chances are not one hundred percent. A single Queen is always in control of the Collective, and acts as a singular hub for the hive mind that their sub-brains form. She is almost always kept deep within the Megacolony, never meeting directly with anyone outside of it and never disembarking the drifting hulk of a starship. This responsibility is, instead, delegated to the lesser females of the Collective. These "handmaidens", also known as Thinwings, are powerful and rare amongst the billions of the Collectives normal ranks. They are almost always seen as delegates of the Queen herself, who can act and speak through them using their sub-brains, or as powerful warriors and guards assigned to lucrative trading ships sent to interact with other races. On rare occasion, Thinwings operate outside of The Collective on various activities that may or may not be linked to the Queen's interest. The nature of these activities and their relation to the race as a whole is unknown.

**Goods for Sale**

As it stands in the modern era the Collective is a mysterious, albeit perfectly harmless, race. They have never actively participated in any conflict, and have never operated in a way that could be construed as harmful nor sinister towards any other race they have encountered. Instead, they seem wholly uninterested in the dull tedium of war and conflict and instead seek to settle or mediate that conflict through one of their favorite past times: Arms Dealing. Due to their odd amalgamation of technologies and their fascination with tinkering and innovation, they enjoy a rather unique role as a race wholly dedicated to the creation and peddling of new products. These products, while sometimes more innocuous things, tend to lean more towards the side of military-grade technology and unique, and sometimes dangerous, weapons. They are clever, quick-witted, and dexterous. One should never underestimate a Collective member who is trying to make a sale, as they will do anything in their power to secure the business of an unwary traveler or a repeat customer. They do not deal in most standard currency, preferring to barter or trade other technologies that they have either not seen or not yet had the opportunity to dismantle. Because of this they enjoy old tech the best, as outdated things tend to possess as great deal of value within their own subculture. It is not uncommon for a prestigious merchant of the Collective to proudly display an old chrome toaster as his prized possession, or for one of their warrior subspecies to openly carry an archaic double-barreled shotgun around as a badge of honor.

Be warned, however. Though these bits and bobs may seem normal at first, it is highly unlikely that their function, if not form, has not been drastically altered from the original product due to the Collective's natural habit of incessant over-tinkering.