The Hive: The Great Enemy

Many organics follow a few rough, biological types. These being the most common of the space-faring sapience, people at certain points in history may sometimes forget that the universe is not anthro-centric. That the different beings of the universe may instead be truly alien, impersonal, and almost utterly incapable of experiencing the universe as we ourselves do.

For millennia, there was a period where no such organic could say otherwise.

As for a period of nine-thousand years, a totalitarian state spread across most of the galaxy, known enigmatically as the Hive. It is regarded as the perfection of an authoritarian collective, and regarded by some as the perfect model of a political state. As, for all their immutable differences from the common subsets of organics, the Hive held dominion over them all.

The rise of the Hive can be reliably traced to approximately nine-thousand years ago, with the final destruction of the Redeemer society - and their near complete genocide. With that, the Hive instituted itself as the strongest political entity within the galaxy in earnest, which slowly expanded thereafter. Almost immediately, the Hive displayed one of its very few characteristics which could be personally shared with humans - pride.

Almost immediately following the genocide of the Redeemers, the Hive started their own system of dates and times, which spread throughout their realm; they made sure to start it a few generations after their rule, conveniently at the one-millionth year since their 'ascendance'. This has been proven as demonstrably false, the space-faring origins of the Hive currently believed to be nine-thousand-five-hundred years ago, sparked by an unfortunate crash landing upon their home planet. Their first ships were shoddily repaired wrecks, and hastily grew from attacked and conquered systems.

The Hive employed a rigorous caste system, at the top of which were its pregenitors, from whom the Hive got its name. A species resembling Terran Hymenoptera, whose language was utterly inoperable by a typical tongue-bearing mouth. Simply regarded as High-Pteron in the working tongues that survive into the galaxy today. They had several subset-species, but all were poised at the very top of the caste hierarchy, with intricate politicking between themselves. Though, in the end, all deferred to Hive-Queens and Hive-Consorts, the penultimate members of their species.

The Hive, per each expansion through the galaxy, would operate in three ways upon contact with organics, with or without conquest. Dissolution, wherein the systems would be claimed, and those left would be cast out - either to enter Hive society, or flee. Uplifting, wherein the Hive would capture and integrate as close to the entirety of the species as was possible, into existing - or entirely new - castes within their society. And lastly, decimation. Not limited to just one-in-ten, and used with less restraint than many historians can easily rationalize, the Hive would cull an encountered species to 'desired levels.' This has resulted in some of the pre-eminent genocides of their historical period.

Moreover, the Hive had a natural hostility towards inorganic intelligences, which were justified under any number of convenient reasons. While some speculate to this day if members of the Hive truly experienced 'fear', they fundamentally understood that a sufficiently advanced inorganic intelligence could rival their Hive structure on the same merits as they excelled in. So, of course, such had to be opposed, while of course still utilized as so much as a basic positive-negative switch is technically an inorganic intelligence of fundamental levels. Nevertheless, they were harshly monitored. And any captured inorganic intelligences within a population were always rounded up and decimated, with very few survivors.

The destruction of the Hive came from within, when the complete subjugation of all other overt political bodies in the galaxy had been secured for a time, and the Hive became complacent and decadent. The preeminent militant caste, highest above all others before the High-Pteron, filled exclusively with Humans, began to chafe at their role in military defense and peace-keeping. When increasingly subjected to duties that were administratively above their caste rank, whose contributions had to be regularly unacknowledged or attributed to High-Pteron for prestige, and now subjected to the bounds of their caste without hope of advancement - the Humans finally contributed to the various insurrections that previously they had in the past quelled with extreme prejudice.

The almost complete union of the galaxy against the Hive, as well as incensed Human aggression in the face of retribution from the Hive, prompted the war known as the Galactic Reconquest. During the Reconquest, every single High-Pteron Hive was captured one after another, slowly liberating the galaxy.

It became known before long that many Human military commanders, while under the guise of military occupation, issued an order infamously known as the Terran Directive. This directive was to discreetly decimate, in some cases completely, every Hive their personal detachments got their hands on. This proved to be a startlingly high number, due to the spread of the faction-conspiracy amongst human military commanders. This was so destructive that once the High-Pteron hives not yet captured caught wind of this, they fought to the last man.

Its largely understood that this drew out the last stages of the war, blamed largely on Human aggression, and resulted in the sad fact that there are no High-Pteron survivors known.

And so the age of the Hive had ended. And soon after, many feared that they would be faced with a new threat. In the words of one historian at the time:
"I fear we have replaced the peerless administrative skill. The unmatched means of communication and deliberation. The firm, cold, but calculating hand. And in its place, we now have the fickle, vain, emotional, and violent clutches of the hairless, Terran Primate."