Cryptos - The Motivations and Infiltrations of the Cryptos: The Cryptos dominate and control humans, using them with a callousness that is as cold as the void from whence they came. They have no lust for dominion over the weak and fleshy realm of Mankind; instead their infiltration of human communities offers them protection. None can guess at the terror from which they flee and perhaps even they can no longer recall its nature (except for a crawling dread embedded in their racial memory), but to this end secrecy and security are their overriding goals.Regardless of the cause of their fear, the fundamental motivation of the Cryptos has remained unknown to the Inquisition, though some subtle-minded savants serving more Radical masters within the Inquisition have begun to conjecture along the correct lines. Once they have taken human hosts, the Cryptos need to guard against Humanity itself and keep their presence utterly secret, as they know full well the lengths that the Inquisition will go to in order to root them out if discovered.Simply appearing to be the people they have taken as hosts does not suffice, and though they can mimic the knowledge, reactions and personalities of their hosts to an almost perfect degree, their need for safety drives them to build sanctuaries in isolated corners of human society for their long-term protection.The Cryptos are not a numerous species and operate in small groups ranging from a handful to perhaps as many as 20 individuals. When taking hosts, they seek to migrate to obscure and overlooked locations where any side effects of their infiltration will be easiest to control and where they can exert influence over normal humans by taking influential members of the community as hosts.Overseers, preachers, merchants and those in official positions are usually those taken by the Cryptos in the first stage of infiltration, as they are the keys to dominating the humans around them. Thus the Cryptos make their sanctuary more secure and their presence more difficult to detect. Small, self-contained communities are ideal for their purpose, particularly if physically isolated, although they have a distinct aversion to very primitive societies and dislike operating in space aboard vessels longer than they have to.After finding and infiltrating such a location, the Cryptos may migrate from body to body several times, leaving dead or damaged hosts along the way. They may spend several human generations acting as covert rulers and conducting culls to weed out any potential dissent or threat to them, before moving on once more if endangered or due to the urgings of their own inscrutable time table.While they are in control, the Cryptos will attempt to make the communities they hide in as stable and secure as possible so that no undue attention is directed towards them. Over time, the Cryptos are able to seed a psychic influence over those who are close to them. This influence gradually builds until the humans who have ignorantly dwelt with the Cryptos can be made to obey almost any command.This controlling effect is no literal puppetry but rather a power of suggestion that the Cryptos can wield to deadly effect in their defence or to carry out their wishes. The Cryptos also use the human predilection for hierarchy and authority to further secure their control by creating guilds and fraternities that gradually become more and more important to the community that they are part of. The control of such organisations extends and crystallises the Cryptos' dominion of their "sanctuary community" and allows them to create a network of spies and servants to enact their will.Such secretly dominated communities can exist for generations with the Cryptos passing to suitable new hosts when the flesh of the previous ones fail. Should their carefully constructed sanctuary be threatened or draw Inquisitional attention, the Cryptos will move to eliminate the threat using all available resources and then, once the threat has been eliminated, restore their human community to its "normal" state as if the threat had never existed.