Akestos
Surge Lord
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: Swarm Surge Drones, Massed Fodder
Image Credit: Starship Troopers Film | Custom Text
Canon: No
Links: [member="The Hive Mind"] | Akestos | [member="Kylraya"] | SwarmSurge | The Surge | The Swarm
GENERAL INFORMATION
Name: Surge Drone
Designation: Non-Sentient
Origins: The Hive Mind, also known as the Swarm's Will when speaking collectively.
Average Lifespan: 35
Estimated Population: Common
Description: The Surge Drone has a large hardened, pincer-like jaw, razor-sharp teeth capable of cutting into metal, legs capable of piercing metal and runs very fast when moving forward. Its large frontal head is the most protected, having a hardened natural armor capable of withstanding a shot from an average blaster, with a chitinous covering around its main body, that while not providing the same protection, might take a glancing hit from a weapon or at least provide cushioning to any shots.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VywKJSglL24
Breathes: Type IV Environments or Better
Average Height of Adults: 2.3 Meters | 7.5 Feet
Average Length of Adults: 3.6 Meters | 11.8 Feet
Skin color: Commonly Black, Dark Red, Yellow, Dark Green, and Orange. Their skin can be bred to match the environment more closely, usually over two generations.
Hair color: None
Distinctions: Huge hardened jaws are the main thing to note, and talons on the legs which are often used to great effect in battle. Communicating in simple high pitched roars, hisses or snarls. Often the drones that are bred will take on the color of the planet's landscape to better hunt after a generation or two. There are female drones but they are rarer, and more likely to let the many genderless drones die first if threatened. The female drones can reproduce on their own if left to do so of their own devices, or commanded to, but there are other Swarm species better capable of doing this on mass. Drones don't age often, they are sent to die in combat as a preference or eaten if they are approaching the end of their life. If there was an old drone around, reaching the end of its life, it would tend to be slower, and less aggressive unless commanded otherwise, usually with the scars of its years on its body. Female drones lay eggs which create other drones at a rate of 3 per month, given enough food supply, but there are significantly faster creatures in the Swarm for breeding drones.
Races: Swarm-Surge Drone
Force Sensitivity: Non-Sensitive
Strengths:
- Highly adaptable to different environments and Terrain. This is the go-to Swarm creature when they want to use masses of bodies to overwhelm their opponents, because they can exist almost anywhere, in any atmosphere, pressure or environmental toxin.
- There is usually so many of them, it is very rare to find one alone.
- Very, very dangerous jaw, and dangerous enough legs.
- Can survive in a vacuum or without air for up to 1 day.
- Utterly loyal. They have no fear or ability to resist the Swarm's will. When ordered to charge, they charge. When ordered to die, they die.
- They are very fast when moving across the ground, able to run across the sides of walls or ceilings with their sharp legs gripping for purchase.
- Inside the mouth itself, the bug is very weak when it tries to bite. The head is hardy enough around it, so it takes an aimed or close shot usually to hit the mouth. Misses however will hit the most armored part of the creature.
- The bug is non-sentient and reacts only to basic commands from the Swarm Mind or its closest connecting convergence. A convergence is a swarm node or a more intelligent commander closer to the Drone's proximity. Otherwise, it operates on basic animal intelligence alone, feed, sleep, defend itself and for the females, occasionally reproduce.
- The drone has no ranged attack.
- Moving sideways or back is not as fast for it.
- Though there are many of them, usually massively outnumbering their targets, they die quite fast under fire.
- If left to their own devices and with no Hive or Swarm direction, they will slowly breed out of control, not quickly, just consistently.
CULTURE
Diet: Omnivore. They eat most organic things with a preference for fresh meat but can survive on plants. This is their main strength, to adapt to where they are.
Communication: Hisses, snarls and a high pitched chittering of teeth in the back of their mouth, creating a loud insect rattling. The Hive Mind and the Swarm's Will also links their communication.
Technology level: None Existant.
Religion/Beliefs: The Swarm Mind is All. Exist. Expand. Follow.
General behavior: They hunt when hungry and not instructed to do something else. When out of contact with the Swarm Mind, female drones reproduce slowly alone. Drones often tunnel underground for the Swarm, creating underground hives, though other Swarm species can do it better, their talons can dig through rock if required and with enough time. Drones tend to rest at night, but if instructed to move or fight they will. They nearly always move in large groups, very rarely will you see less than six Drones together, more than likely dozens, hundreds or more.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
The Hive Mind has been expanding ever since the netherworld incident and perhaps even before. Starting very small and working outward, though drones were not its first creation, far from it. Much smaller creatures were used at first, as the Hive Mind thinks in small terms collectively. It was only when it started to connect with other intelligent creatures that it sort larger forms of life out.
While the Hive Mind itself usually takes the DNA of other species, to use what is already there, infect, alter or change a lifeform. The drones were bred to be a custom designed creature, something it had full control of from the very first moment, till the end of its life. This is because most times the Hive Mind tries to connect creatures to the greater Swarm Mind, they end up dying or being rejected. So having one or more creatures, that no matter where it goes will always be under its control, is very useful to the Hive Mind, not just the larger Swarm Collective.
It would take far too long to describe how the Hive functions here, suffice to say think of a conscious mind and a subconscious larger mind, the drones are part of the larger collective unconscious and being so numerous they form a good portion of it. The Hive sees and hears everything if linked through nodes or intelligent convergence, but it cannot possibly on its own direct everything well at the same time, which is why regional converences or Hive Lords are used. At first, this imbalance didn't work well, between the focused parts of the Hive Mind, and the subconscious aspects of the swarm collective, it was too one-sided. Like how humans have much greater capacities in their subconscious. So it took time for the Hive to adjust to having this imbalance weighted toward the subconscious even on a planetary scale, let alone beyond that.
Many drones wandered around aimlessly going about their lives at first. Eventually, rather than think of these two aspects of itself as separate, the Hive began to be able to balance them as one entity, but it was not easy and not without many failed attempts. Just as it often fails to make inroads into an entirely new eco-system on a new world. Being so adaptable, that is one thing at least the drone species can assist the Hive Mind with, it can be bred easily by a few different Hive Species, as well as its own females. It can also exist in a wider variety of environments or climates, meaning it became the perfect extension on mass of the Hive's simplest desires. Exist. Expand.
