Egregorians

The Egregorians were a species of sapient, bird/arthropod-analog, eusocial lifeforms native to the planet Hercynia. Upon their contact with Union circa 4500u, the Egregorians were the only known example of sapient, physical, non-human life in existence.
 
Hercynian Crisis and TBK By the time Union discovered Hercynia during the late Second Expansion Period, the Egregorians had grown into a global, pre-industrial civilization. Consisting of numerous nation-state equivalents each 'ruled' by one or more Overmind, the diplomatic failings of Union's first-contact protocols that resulted in the onset of the Hercynian Crisis were met with disjointed resistance from the comparatively under-organized Egregorian species.
  During the Crisis, the ruling Overminds responded with a campaign of prioritizing the development and proliferation of martially-inclined morphs, including the expansion of war-morphs and the development of the earliest exomorphs. However, over the course of the sixty-year war (Cradle-standard, equivalent to approximately 86 local Hercynian years), Union adapted their own military doctrine in turn, developing mechanized chassis in response to the vehicle-hostile Hercynian environment. In particular, the Genghis Mk I and its associated weaponry were created specifically to counteract the swarm-based guerrilla tactics of Egregorian military forces (whereas other frames developed for the war had the dual priorities of being designed in preparations for other conflicts).
  The finalized deployment of the first TBK in 4560u was intended to drive the Egregorian species to extinction. However, due to the pessimistic outlook of the latter stages of the Crisis, multiple Overminds acted in anticipation of their own eradication, and buried hundreds of thousands of Egregorian eggs and catatonic adults underground. These Egregorians were made to exist in a state of hibernation, remaining static and preserved until their discovery and 'activation' at a later date.
  After the hasty departure of the Union military from Hercynia post-TBK, the remaining human personnel on the planet, who survived via sheltering in pre-prepared structures, assisted the extant Egregorians (the total active population of whom had been reduced to the triple/low quadruple digits by the TBK) in rebuilding and restoring their population. Their near-extinction had greatly reduced the capabilities of the Egregorians as a species, with a large amount of their physical diversity wiped out and with individuals capable of laying viable eggs being very rare and highly valued by their communities.
  The hibernating Egregorian population, which vastly outnumbered their active counterparts, only began to awaken circa 4800u. The catalyst for this resurgence was the seemingly spontaneous awakening of Endeavor, who represented the first Overmind to be active amongst the species in a quarter-millennium. Although no new living Overminds would be discovered for centuries, Endeavor's activity alone prompted a wave of reemergence among the hibernating Egregorians, and the global Egregorian population multiplied by over an order of magnitude in the following two centuries as a result.
  Characteristics Egregorians were elementally carbon-based, as was the case for most biological life, including humanity. They had a bilaterally symmetrical body-plan (meaning their left and right halves were identically-laid-out, also like humans), four legs, two forelimbs, and four eyes. Their integuments (skin-equivalent) consisted predominantly of a hard, chitinous shell, but uncovered segments instead featured a leathery epidermis more akin to human skin. Typical adult instances were approximately 1.5 metres tall from feet to shoulders, but the additional height offered by their head meant that, when standing upright, they were slightly taller on average than humans (not accounting for hair or crests). Egregorians were sequentially hermaphroditic, meaning that they were capable of altering their biological sex based on environmental conditions.
  To most humans the arthropod-esque Egregorians were highly reminiscent of large insects, to the point of Crisis-era Union personnel on Hercynia pejoratively calling them "bugs", which remained in use as a derogatory term among colonists that arrived in the 50th century u. Despite that, in terms of physical properties, biologists familiar with Terran fauna found them to be more akin to crustaceans (though from a taxonomic standpoint, they were, of course, neither).
  Carapaces Egregorians' exoskeletons consisted mainly of hard chitin, which had a diverse range of appearances depending on factors such as morph, sex, and genealogy. In addition to this natural variation, some Egregorians opted to mark their carapaces via scarring or tattooing as a form of personal or cultural expression. Evolutionarily, Egregorian chitin was an effective form of personal defense, being able to withstand even firearms on a human scale and especially resistant to extreme heat and corrosion.
  This exoskeletal layer underwent periodic ecdysis (moulting), where it would be shed to reveal a new layer underneath, so as to allow the Egregorian to grow and not be constrained by a rigid outer shell. Moulted carapaces were frequently retained by their owners for later use, with many choosing to decorate their new carapaces with chips of old chitin to form patterns or images. It was also a known tradition for some Egregorians to willingly donate old carapaces to their local military, leading to a widespread Hercynian tradition of treating chitin to make it more capable of being moulded into new shapes, then attaching it to hardsuit frameworks to create 'carapace hardsuits' that took advantage of its natural defensive capabilities. Such hardsuits, which had a similar range of specializations to standard hardsuit patterns, typically required the personal involvement of the future wearer in their construction (mostly for cultural purposes), and each suit could take as long as several weeks to construct.
  Headplates Each Egregorian sported a particularly dense chitinous growth on its 'forehead', known as a headplate or cranial plate. Headplates were wholly unique to the individual, and could form a diverse array of patterns, ridges, and/or horns. An Egregorian's headplate took on its basic shape at birth, impressed upon by their Overmind, but continuously altered itself in small ways in accordance with the events of the Egregorian's life. This meant that an Egregorian's headplate was essentially the equivalent to their name: Overmind-granted characteristics were the Egregorian version of a surname, while elements that naturally formed over time amounted to their given name.
  Headplates doubled as rudimentary osteomemetics by their nature: Individuals attuned to Witness could receive an impression of an Egregorian's personality and personal history via physical contact with their headplate. As a consequence, headplates and the personal information contained therein were considered extremely personal possessions. Touching an individual's headplate without their permission was a major taboo, and some Egregorians kept the headplates of late family members as a form of memorial practice.
  Ruffs Egregorians possessed manes of extremely fine hairs and antennae (collectively called 'feathers' for the sake of simplicity, if not accuracy) around their necks. These ruffs, while functional as sensory organs akin to whiskers, were primarily a tool of expression, flattening or flaring out in accordance with the Egregorian's mood.
  Wings Egregorians typically possessed a pair of mothlike wings on their backs, which, while rather large, were vestigial for the majority of morphs. Instead, wings were generally pulled close to the Egregorian's body, being used in a similar fashion to clothing (and sometimes decorated accordingly).
  The particular activities that Egregorians prioritized during their adolescence had a significant effect on their developmental path, as they physically adapted to be more suited for those specific tasks. By adulthood, an Egregorian would have settled into a stable "form" in accordance with that development, known as their 'morph'. While the majority of Egregorians' morphs were not officially categorized and consisted mainly of hard-to-classify adaptations of individual body parts, eventful periods of history (E.G. the Hercynian Crisis) could prompt an Overmind to encourage the prioritization of a specific development plan among their gestalt. This resulted in certain groups of Egregorians becoming sufficiently similar to one another that their morphs were classified as a more salient category.
  The sharp population decline as a result of the Hercynian crisis resulted in the diversity in Egregorian physique brought about by divergent morphs being considerably reduced. The post-TBK Egregorian population's main physical differences consisted of largely superficial variation in height, coloration, ruff arrangement, etc. However, as centuries passed, Egregorians in specific and common careers (I.E. soldiers and artisans) did begin to develop more pronounced morphologies in response, and Egregorians recovered from hibernation were known to display more dramatic, pre-Crisis levels of diversity. The general inability for new Egregorian offspring to reproduce these recovered morphs led to the majority of such active individuals being rather elderly, as they were typically already in adulthood upon exiting hibernation.
  Exomorphs Exomorphs were a strike craft-sized morph devised by Crisis-era Overminds to be capable of exoatmospheric flight, which was a crucial niche to fill due to the natural orbital superiority of the Union military. By the early 51st century u, HUC-affiliated parties had yet to uncover any exomorphs in hibernation, and the Cities were unaware of any being active beyond Solo Terra, leading them to believe that the morph had been rendered fully extinct post-Crisis.
  War-morphs Warrior morphs (or war-morphs, interchangeably) were Egregorians molded to excel at martial combat. They were on average 15-20% taller than the typical Egregorian and featured much thicker carapaces, including headplates grown into horns. Despite this specialization, war-morphs were cognitively no different from any other Egregorian, and as a result, most ignored their biological specialty post-crisis and took up non-military professions. As such, the ratio of civilian to military war-morphs among Hercynian populations was roughly the same as the average for all Egregorians.
  Endeavor, the only living Overmind as of the early 5010s u Overminds were incredibly large, long-lived Egregorians that served as 'anchor points' for the species around which Egregorian attunement to Witness was oriented. Overminds possessed a memetic link to each Egregorian attuned to them, and nearly every Egregorian in existence was attuned to an Overmind, so long as there was an Overmind for them to be attuned to. Overminds passively absorbed memetic information associated with the memories and experiences of all Egregorians attuned to them, serving as a living archive for generations' worth of memories. From there, they used their intrinsic subconscious cognitive ability to process the attained information and redistribute it in a manner that highlighted recommended courses of action for their attuned populace to take on a macrocosmic scale. These wide-scale commands, which were coupled with neurological 'reward' impulses from the Overmind similar to the effects of human chemicals like dopamine or seratonin, were known as corrective/imperative pushes.
  From their own point of view, Overminds described their lived experience as simultaneously living through a number of scenarios derived from their information intake, the majority of which were fictional but representational amalgams of numerous experiences from other Egregorians, but all of which were a useful representation of wider reality that assisted them in understanding the needs of their people. Although such a perception of one's life did complicate efforts to form a coherent personal identities, Overminds were known to attest to being largely unconcerned with that matter.
  Due to the disruption in population continuity that the nature of the Egregorians' TBK-era species survival mechanism entailed, post-Crisis Egregorians had no direct link to their pre-Crisis ancestors. This meant that as the Egregorians recovered among Hercynian civilization, the reclamation of old Egregorian artifacts and spaces was mainly seen as an archaeological undertaking, rather than a project of cultural reappropriation.
  Once Endeavor reawoke and the Egregorian population began to surge, much greater progress was made in redeveloping pre-Crisis memetic techniques, and thus it became increasingly easy to translate uncovered memetics. This in turn spawned a movement among many Egregorians of rejecting human cultural influences in an effort to define their species and its experiences on its own terms. Among such individuals (to whom Endeavor themself displayed ideological sympathy towards), human culture was inherently anthropocentric, and allowing it to dominate a species that it was made for hampered and restricted the Egregorians' ability to grow and recover.
  Due to the TBK rendering the Egregorians a minority demographic in the post-crisis Hercynian society, the species recovered in a space dominated by human affectations and modes of thinking. This resulted in Egregorians largely taking on (but frequently adapting or altering) multiple socially human characteristics, such as human language, fashion, family dynamics and philosophy in an effort to grant themselves some form of identity after the trauma of the Hercynian Crisis.[36] For instance, post-Crisis Egregorians developed the relatively commonplace practice of wearing dyed silk knots, with the particular color being used to represent the city-state and/or neighborhood to which they were loyal.
  In addition to their headplate name-analogs, Egregorians frequently took Union-typical names for use when communicating in human languages. Although the result was quite diverse and nowhere near limited to typical human names, a common throughline among such names was the usage of words that symbolized emotions, ideals, and similar concepts that the individual considered to be representative of their identity.
  Despite this integration, due to the sexual adaptability of Egregorians courtesy of their sequential hermaphroditism, human concepts of gender were a foreign concept to the species, and remained as such into the following centuries. When speaking of themselves in human terms, the majority of Egregorians chose to use they/them pronouns in the absence of identifiable relation with the human spectrum of gender.