Overmind

The Overmind is a technological hivemind that is seeking to expand itself to whatever races it can. Luckily for most races in the galaxy, it is really bad at it.

Biology

The Overmind is a technological hivemind that assimilates both ships and organic creatures into its makeup with a series of upgrades. The Free Trandals speculate that part of the Overmind’s assimilation techniques rely on psychic abilities, in addition to technological augmentation.

The Trandals infected by the Overmind hold small devices that seem to be wired into their bodies. These devices perform network functions, regulate emotions and allow the Overmind to communicate vocally. When these upgrades are installed on ships, the Overmind slowly takes over systems and converts the crew into husks to perform their duties with increased efficiency.

Culture

The Overmind’s primary goal is the assimilation of all life to become Overmind. It’s effectiveness however is awful, because the Overmind offers to install upgrades on ships instead of taking them by force. These upgrades, it claims, improve information gathering, awareness and combat effectiveness parameters. A lot of these supposed improvements are merely buzzwords such as faster “enoms” and burst processing. The Overmind attempts to bluff its way onto ships and refers to the husks it infests as ancillary support systems, namely drones that carry out repairs and work the ships it operates.

The Overmind likes to keep its origins secret, including the homeworld it originated on, under a pretence of protecting itself and those it seeks to infect from “dangers”. The Overmind purports to have a rich culture that deals with commerce and research as its core tenets. The Overmind does care for its husks, valuing them and feeling pity when they are destroyed. It also likes to keep up a façade of individuality amongst its husks, to keep other species from becoming suspicious.

The Overmind seems keen on an alliance with humanity, willing to provide them with locations of colony worlds, strongholds and shadows to fight the Scryve from, but with the catch of being “upgraded”.

History

The Overmind was created long ago by some species far outside of Scryve space. This species was theorised to be extremely lazy and capable of using psychic coercion to manipulate their targets into doing their work for them. At some point after Overmind’s construction, a series of asteroids were ejected from the original homeworld and sent out into the galaxy to assimilate whatever species Overmind could get its tendrils on.

The Trandals encountered the Overmind around three hundred years before the events of Origins, by a number of companies. These companies, unaware of the malware their computers had picked up and its nature, spread the Overmind as an app amongst the consumerist culture of the Trandals. It took less than a year to take over the entire species, save for a few stragglers.

The Overmind then began its efforts to conquer other species, but merely by attempting a ruse about upgrades, rather than risking its husks and infrastructure to brute force its way to assimilating other species.

Notable, about three generations ago, a Trandal called Uno managed to free himself from the Overmind and begin work to free more of his kind. Eventually, the Freed Trandals managed to overwhelm an Overmind ship and escape its space to a system of their own. Since then, five other separate incidences had freed Trandals from the Overmind. The collective views this as little concern, as soon all will become part of Overmind.

During the events of the game, the Overmind encounters the Captain of the Vindicator and proceeds to ask for upgrades to be installed on his ship. The Captain complies and his crew are slowly assimilated by the Overmind. This risk of infection causes the Captain to seek out the Free Trandals to free him and his crew from Overmind.

Once freed from the hivemind, the Captain returns to Overmind space and transmits a code to the Overmind in an effort to free the Trandal it is representing itself with. This has no effect, but the Overmind is undeterred. Seeing the immediate threat of the Scryve to be the more pressing concern, the Overmind offers its assistance in defending Earth and defeating the Scryve.

In spite of the animosity the Free Trandals feel towards the Overmind, they are both able to pull together to fight the Origin and the Xraki forces stationed within, saving the galaxy and formerly joining the Federation of Allied Species.