Myriad

General Information

Species Name: (The) Myriad
Base: Non-Mammalian Technologic Sentient
Mode Of Governance: Monarchy (High Executor, Court House’s (House Of Moths, House Of Suns, House Of Glass etc)
Tech Level: (Alpha: Pre Warp. Beta: Warp Capable. Delta: Able to harness ALL available resources. Gamma: Q level.) Beta/Delta.

Physical Descriptors

Many. The Myriad are an ‘Unbound’ race who shed their physical forms millennia ago, choosing to inhabit vast starships that could roam the stars. They can inhabit Proxies who act out their will with the races of the Bound, their term for traditional sapient life. These Proxies are generally tailored to best suit the ideals of beauty and perfection for the target species.

Proxies tend to have increased strength and stamina, being bio-mechanic constructs that are little more than remote-controlled drones for the Myriad. Their construction and manufacture are unknown to Starfleet at this time. Important note, whilst all Proxies are designed to interface ideally with a client species, they are all tailored to the same colour scheme to set them apart. Skin as white as comet ice, and hair like spun diamond thread, with eyes that burn like the embers of a heated forge.

Key Points

The Myriad control a vast swath of Messier 4’s edge that is facing the Milky Way. Their control stems from poisoning the wells of numerous starfaring civilisations. Some are visited by the Myriad before attaining warp flight, whilst other’s are sabotaged so their efforts produce negative results. This includes sabotaging their prototype warp vessels or causing an ecological disaster.

In either case, the Myriad are quick to step in to offer aid from an advanced and enlightened civilisation. They then control this civilisations access to higher technology and star travel, utilising their ships to uphold a brutal monopoly. This monopoly is further increased by the stories and factual accounts of civilisations that rose up against the Myriad. Most are wiped out, their worlds bombarded by comet fragments until the crust is molten. Some are merely brutalised back into a lesser state of society by gene targeting viruses, forever kept as a lesson to be paraded past the noses of those who grow restless under Myriad management.

Agreeing to take the Myriad as a patron for your species comes with a lot of contractual obligations, to avoid these terrible consequences. Access to resources, to the gathered knowledge of a society, to the future insights of their greatest thinkers is but the lesser end of the spectrum. The Myriad also do a roaring trade in transplanting the expertise of another civilisation to another by trading the lives of sentients, and in supplying cultures with various narcotics and technologies of ill-repute. All to keep the masses docile, to keep their pets in line.

Their reasons for this mode of control is unclear, though some Myriad have made references to the fact warp travel leaves behind an indication to other extragalactic parties that races have arisen to a point of being competition. This thin veneer of guardianship and protection does little to salve the atrocities the Myriad have committed against Messier 4.

Known Myriad Agents

• Abborax: Trader and privateer of the Myriad House Of Moths, and first point of contact for the USS Traveller and Starfleet within Messier 4. Ship name The Insessor.
• Lady Nyessix: Slave trader within the Sleepers Bazaar, and member of the House Of Foxes. The first point of contact for the crew of Canopus Station. Ship name Accession of Twilight.
• The High Executor: Leader of the Myriad Houses. Current location The Medina, high gravity space station amid a cloud of silent dead warp ships.

Known Myriad Houses

• House Of Moths: A collective of Myriad biologists and genegineer's responsible for the host of Myriad bio constructs. From tailor-made narcotics to gene designed animal species and designer viruses, these virtuosos can waro living matter to suit any need. They are also the house responsible for the creation of the Concordance faith implant, and its subsequent effectiveness.
• House Of Foxes: Traders and spies. This line could be used to describe the Myriad as a whole, but the House Of Foxes take it to a whole new level. They revel in the minutia of contracts, make a grand game of the deal, and could possibly sell starlight if the could figure out how to bottle it. They are also the diplomats of the Myriad, with the closest ties to their hidden ruler the High Executor.
• House Of Suns: This house of the Myriad is the technical brain trust of the group. Whilst all Myriad have access to the sum total knowledge of their kind, much in the same way that all Federation citizens have free access to information, the House of Suns is populated by those who understand it. These are their experts on the Priors and their chief ship and weapon designers. They are also the most cognitively & morally flexible of the Myriad, and in some cases have been known to act against the best interests of their kind in exchange for unique bequests.

Myriad Vassal Races

Reka Scouts and raiders
Ambulatory Hives Heavy infantry and enforcers
Shishimi Hedonistic pleasure seekers

Worlds Of Note

Perambulation, a world inhabited by a client species the Myriad killed off.
Medina, the star around which the fortress of the High Executor orbits along with their collection.
Morits Dis, homeworld to the Cordanti. A failed client species who have since risen up a major competitor and threat to Myriad rule in the form of The Concordance.

Apocrypha

Always take care when walking alone,
Lest you meet those monsters in the wood,
They look beautiful at first (like snow),
But then you see-
Their too long faces,
Their eyes aglow,
And hear their garbled words,
(Spoken in sing-song voices).
Like a parody of you.
It really is a terrible thing to know.

Unknown Author, graffiti found in the dead city of Perambulation