On The Subject Of Metamorphosis And Evolution

[The Sage]

On The Subject Of Metamorphosis And Evolution

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Nomads, since their first appearance over 20 years ago, have been frantically researched and studied in hopes to unlock their secrets. In some areas, their secrets have become widely known and used to propel humanity into a new golden age of technology. In others, however, their secrets remain just that, secrets. The one thing that isn't known to any human, or at least no human free of Nomad control, is the structure and lifecycle of a Nomad.

Nomads, as part of their very nature, are almost incomprehensible to humans; their entire anatomy is like nothing humanity has ever been subject to. Nomads have many forms each with their own abilities and these forms have been given different names by different groups - and even have their own names among the Nomads.

Nomads can range from being extremely reclusive to adventurous and sociable. Each individual Nomad can possess its own personality and their speech reflects that. It would seem that depending on the form they take, the more developed they are. They are seemingly capable of switching between the forms once the individual has grown to be capable of using it. The criteria of what a Nomad must do to be able to take shape of a new form or how they switch between them isn't known to humanity and, given the lack of Nomads that prefer to talk about their species, there is a good chance that those secrets will never be unlocked.

Once a Nomad develops to take a larger form it still retains the ability to switch back into its former body, or shell. There appears to be exceptions to this, however. Once they have reached a certain stage in development they become seemingly stuck in that form or body until they grow the strength to continue on their path and evolve further. This would not only explain why the small warforms are significantly more common in Alien Space, but it would also explain why the larger forms take a significantly higher amount of punishment before shrinking into dust.

Expanding on this, we need to consider how Nomads are formed, created, and how they evolve. It a glance it would seem that Nomads are like us, with the exception that they are born spacefarers, in the sense of reproduction and sustainability. The core thought would be: 'If we kill one it will die, and that is how humanity will purge their species.' If that was how they worked and things were that simple, there is a good chance they wouldn't exist anymore as humanities numbers and firepower would quickly overwhelm them. This is, however, not how they work. Nomads are infinite and they continue to go on even after they are 'killed'.

Destroying a Nomad Warform is more akin to displacement over death. Once destroyed a Nomad momentarily loses its connection to the Nomad hivemind and it must spend a while to reconnect and rebuild itself. Depending on the warform, the longer or shorter the amount of time it must spend to reconnect and reassemble itself. A small navigator form can rebuild itself in a matter of hours, whereas the huge mind nodes like the "Marduk" have a detrimental blow when destroyed as they can take days or weeks to rebuild.

The Mindshare isn't just like a central hub that every Nomad connects to like a computer to the neural net, it's made up of a large network of different nodes that all lead to an epicentre where all commands and directives are given out from. Each small warform will 'connect' to the next warform in the chain. Its akin to a long line of wires, daisy chained from the main outlet. If you destroy the socket, everything connected to it will be rendered severely weakened until the connection is re-established.

The smaller forms, for this reason, tend to be more cautious and curious, entities that we'd refer to as Children. They are inexperienced and have yet to evolve into matured 'adults'. Nomads are created from Silicon matter are therefor do require raw material to be created and reformed, they are not made from an absence of materials or magically warped into existence. This creates the question of how they are created. While it's not strictly known, there are some very well accepted theories among top xenobiologists from around the colonies. The most common one to encounter is that the Nomad forms are weaved or grown into a particular shape for a particular purpose.

The idea of them being grown like plants for a Nomad to control like a drone is mindboggling as it goes against anything ever encountered before by humanity. One of the main reasons for this theory is that once a Nomad 'dies' in combat, it takes a while to rebuild itself, but then it will re-emerge from one of its hives as if nothing has happened and it will once again go about its duties, learning in the process.

As the Nomads grow older they undergo what is considered to be Metamorphosis rather than Evolution. They spend some time away, only to return a bigger and more powerful version of themselves, often with an increase in aggression as well. Due to retraining the same personality and consciousness, this is not true evolution, but rather a sudden transformation in body and form - hence Metamorphosis.

The evolution factor comes in when we take a broader look at Nomads on the whole and how they've changed over time. When first encountered they were simple beings only possessing a few forms among their entire species. In less than a decade that amount had doubled, and now it has almost quadrupled. The Nomads are adaptive and resourceful and realise their needs change as humanity does.

Their smaller strike craft have a very high range now, with each one serving a very specific purpose. Their larger warforms have taken on numerous extra roles both within the Mindshare and in terms of combat roles. As a result, the amount of combat-ready warforms has increased drastically and the shared load on the Mindshare has been divided up many times to accommodate for this. In recent times newer warforms are showing, ones never before seen by human eyes, and they are carrying a much stronger punch than expected.

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This is a RP alt