Tos-Loven:

Names:Tos-Loven, Hive, Swarm
Capital System:Tos-Lena
Home System:Various, point of origin Klen’ta
Military Strength:Creeping super-power
Military Purpose:Absorbing all species and technology into the Swarm
Unity:Acts as a single mind, the Hive mind controls everything
Species Type:Various, heavily arthropoid
Telepathy:Forced link to the Hive, otherwise non-telepathic
Sleep:Sleep is only required to regenerate, though even drones need regenerative maintenance every few days
General Strengths:The ability to turn body and machine from enemies into tools of the swarm, massive available numbers, individual randomness
General Weaknesses:Fanatical thinking, stubbornness, slow to change direction or individual development independent of assimilation

Home World / Origins:
Though their origins trace back to Klen’ta 2, the Tos-Loven didn’t become an independent force until they were banished and showed up at a system they named Tos-Lena, colonizing the fourth and only immediately viable terrestrial planet. Two moons orbited Tos-Lena 4, one small and unassuming, the second extremely large and covered in a network of deep gullies that made construction of the Hive Mind extremely easy.

Tos-Lena 4 is a very ordinary planet, its atmosphere contains slightly more oxygen than Terra 3 and it has a faster rotational spin that makes the days shorter and creates stronger typical winds but otherwise has little to note, particularly for a space-faring race with access to a wide variety of resources. Tos-Lena 4a is more significant than its parent planet, being significantly large in comparison and having gullies throughout its entire highly homogenous surface. Despite its size, it holds a relatively small atmosphere heavy in silicate common on the upper layer of its surface. What makes Tos-Lena significant are extremely abundant supplies of endurium not only in the system but throughout the local region of their arm of the Milky Way.

Physical Description:
Their obsession with “absorbing” all species in the universe into the Hive has blurred all averages. Though they greatly prefer insectile forms, they are universal in merging living and machine. The modifications depend on purpose and calculated decisions with no regard to pain and little thought to common aesthetics. Having lived with MicroDroids for so long, the technology has been shrunk to the point that even the smallest man-sized drones have blood filled with the microscopic machines.

Their smaller units are extremely self-contained, most capable of surviving in the vacuum of space for extremely long periods of time. Strangely, their larger space ships are quite the opposite, being open and exposed like a skeleton; this has unintentionally become a great strength, a lacking of armor making them fearless against armor-piercing weapons.

Psychological/Intellectual Disposition:
Universally considered obsessive and fanatical, the Tos-Loven truly believe that division in the galaxy is a terrible travesty and think that their “unity” is the best thing for the universe.

Due to the one-track mindset, there has never been negotiation with the Tos-Loven. No reasoning, no bargaining, only surrender and submission or lethal resistance. And even through the second Galactic War, there showed few signs of this changing.

The entire Hive is guided by the “Hive Mind”, essentially a giant brain that directs the general motions of the Swarm. Control is sub-divided to province “Cerebrans”, which have the next highest level of autonomy, intelligence, and control, directing the lower functions and more precise actions. Below that come “command units” for groups of individuals fulfilling specific functions, and finally the individuals which, although technically possessing their own will, are essentially entirely guided by the hierarchy above. Due to this rigid structure which assigns virtually no value to the individual, assimilated individuals often remain resistant to the Hive for their entire lives, and the Hive generally depends on bringing up their spawn in its own image.

Territory:
Being aggressive in their desire to “unify the universe”, despite their methodical means they expand rapidly, building something at nearly every single star system they come across. This makes them extremely difficult to root out. Fortunately, they are paranoid about open space and ships rarely stop far from a star, keeping virtually all of their operations confined to the immediate vicinity of star systems.

Expanding relatively evenly in all directions, once they reached the void at the edge of their arm of the Milky Way, growth sped up towards the Kle’tak. Though more than half of their arm of the Milky Way remains uncolonized, most of their effort is being slowly diverted to their attempts to assimilate the Kle’tak and Terrans.

History:
The culture of Klen’ta is very rigidly structured by principles of honor, but as with all beings, those with power desire more power. Deep in the intellectual core of Klen’ta, after the first war against aliens, a number of elitists demanded that the empire “throw off the shackles of honor” in favor of saving lives and resources by just winning.

The typical way of dealing with rebels is to marginalize them, but these voices could not be silenced. Unwilling to dirty their own hands with their brothers’ blood, Klen’ta put all of the dissenters together and threw them through an unstable wormhole on the then-frontier of Imperial space (year ?). Miraculously, most of the ships survived, and they banded together to make a new beginning on the closest suitable planet. In this banding together, many Kle’tak with...unconventional ideas found themselves in positions of power, dictating policy and design.

They began construction of the Hive, a massive control brain in the second moon of Tos-Lena Prime. The Hive was activated prematurely, but as a test it was given some command of maintenance, security, and construction. It was successful beyond all expectations, more and more control was ceded to it until it soon directed the major movements of all Tos-Lena.

Many more changes had been taking place. Leaders in cybernetics, implants quickly went from being replacements for injuries to required installations. These additions expanded, becoming more invasive, until some began to protest. These people were sent to reeducation camps and never seen from again, but since they were seen as the few deviants, there was no widespread outcry.

Finally, the merging of man and machine, and the control of the Hive reached a critical point. The Hive took complete control and exterminated the core creators, making itself its own master. Since it had controlled many aspects of Tos-Loven life already, many obeyed the change in leadership without question, and it was a simple matter of waiting for the new generation until the Hive had virtually absolute control.

The Swarm grew rapidly, assimilating all space just as it assimilated every single species it came across. Though there was often resistance by foreign races that cost greatly to assimilate, but the Hive was obsessive about consuming everything, incorporating their strengths and attempting to cut out their weaknesses. Individuals became mere pawns to be modified or cast out to the betterment of the Swarm, cyborgs ruthlessly modified to serve whatever purpose the Hive needed.

Methodical expansion continued for centuries until the Swarm encountered the Kle’tak Empire (year ?), which by this point had been long forgotten by the Hive. The Hive determined that the Kle’tak made excellent soldier bodies, but breeding them was virtually impossible, and so began a long process of assimilating the Klen’ta Imperium.

Decades pass when a new species was discovered on the other side of the Swarm’s territory in a new arm of the galaxy, Terrans (year ?? Terran). After over a century of slow war against the Empire, scouts investigating the gap outside their arm of the Milky Way discovered the battered flank survey ships of an alien race (the Trintans). Following standard procedure, they were assimilated, but the Cerebran ?? had the idea of leaving the ships disguised as Trintan and used them to attack and divert Imperial fleets, provoking them until the greater Trintan fleet discovered Patrakiyan in ??, opening the first Galactic War and successfully splitting Imperial fleets until the Amfoid mediate an end to the GW1.

Initially, the Hive considered Terrans an unimportant ‘gnat to a giant’, they forcefully took the hive’s attention when they fought off the opening invasion fleets (year ?? Terran) in what the Terrans called the ‘Campaign of Light’. Since then, the Swarm has been attempting to assimilate both Klen’ta and the Terran Sons of Nod. Still with most of its focus on the Empire, Cerebran ?? tries to use manipulation to pit the coalition against itself again, but this time the Trintans and Kle’tak work together and expose Tos-Lena’s involvement, bringing the Amfoid, Bentuse, Halpar, Kle’tak, and Trintans (the first three working more with the Terran Sons of Nod) and opening the second Galactic War.