Article 18: Legion Hives

While the True Legion race is primarily known for their ability to convert others into more Legion like them, that is not the only thing that separates them from the majority of humanoid races. In fact, to ask an individual Legion, they would generally care less about how it was that they became their current race and more about the ongoing benefits their communal race has to offer. Chief among these is their shared planetary telepathy, the ability to broadcast thoughts, feelings, and information over a planetwide area thanks to a bio-nanitic subsystem in their brain that transmits thoughts across a magically-tuned electromagnetic frequency outside the range of mundane receivers. While some refer to this as the "Legion Hive Mind", that term is inaccurate in describing exactly how their planetwide bond functions.

First off, the mental linking network is not a hive mind in the traditional sense. Whereas a nanoswarm being is a series of individual machines linked by a single controlling intellect and Hivers gain more personality and mental capacity as more of them gather in an area, each True Legion is a fully autonomous being and can survive as a somewhat normal person even when fully disconnected from their hive. Rather than sharing all thoughts, the True Legion in an area have supplemental mental access to a web of other Legion's own surface thoughts, emotions, and memories, each of which has various levels of access to different Legion within the network. Though they consider each other sisters, they still develop different bonds with each other. A single Legion may close themselves off to variable degrees from their hive at large or they may be completely open about everything, depending on their mood, and while another Legion with a strong force of will can choose to delve deeper, doing so is generally considered to be intrusive. The ability to limit the transmission of their thoughts in this way is, however, limited when it comes to certain interactions. Try as they might, a Legion will have difficulty concealing their surface thoughts from a cherished sister, and can rarely hold anything back from another Legion lover, making secret gifts a difficult prospect. Similarly, most Legion have a similar default openness with a Legion who had either converted them or been converted by them. The most difficult to block route of mental communication, however is that between every Legion and their Queen. While the mental network of most legion is defined as a series of links between those that care most about each other, there is more or less a direct line between all Legion and their hive's Queen. This huge amount of mental linkage is so mentally taxing on a Queen of any reasonable size that she must designate Princessess to act as mental go-betweens or risk hivewide trauma doing permanent mental damage. The connection interception done by princesses doesn't mean that a single Legion's thoughts will always be intercepted by the same princess, though many princesses do develop attachment to many of the Queen's particular daughters and pay closer attention to their thoughtlines. Because of their role in mitigating mental strain by constantly allowing themselves to remain open to others' mental pathways, Princesses are considered very caring Legion, and are often used as counselors or therapists when other Legion have issues they need to deal with. Likewise, being more directly connected to such loving and thoughtful daughters is said to have positive effects on the Queen herself.

A hive's Queen's thoughts will similarly be broadcast back to the rest of her hive, usually without intervention from the princesses, and this connection carries with it not just the Queen's will but also that of the planet itself, with which the Queen has a special and solitary connection. Since a planet is not a living, intelligent being in the same way as a person, it can be difficult for any Legion, even the Queen, to interpret the strange feelings a world will offer as guidance. The planet broadcasts its overall state, and the planet's Legion will be happier the healthier a planet is, and strong incidents of pollution, radiation, or other things directly harmful to the planet itself will inflict themselves as directed pain to the Queen herself (which is one of the few occasions in which the princesses will attempt to filter mental communication from the Queen), but some planets may seem to express desires which even the Queen is unable to truly understand. All of this leads into the logical question of where this element of the hive communication stems from. Some say the planet's central Hive Tree, which helps to add a sort of mental storage and telepathy boosting to the mental network, shares a planetwide root system that acts as a planetary nervous system, others claim that it is simply an extension of the telepathic network to envelop all plants and animals on the planet's surface, but most Legion themselves say that the planet itself has a spirit which communes directly with the Queen. It's possible that the true answer is a combination of all three, and aurology specialists say that it's hard to distinguish between a planet itself having an aura and all of a planet's inhabitants generating a combined aura, though there have been such readings from uninhabited planets which lends credence to the latter theory. Regardless of how the hive and its connection to the planet work, what is undeniable is the incredible boon this grants to a planet's Legion. Aside from the obvious tactical advantages of being able to secretly relay information anywhere on the planet, the societal benefits are plain to see. No Legion is without a role, and when they work together to improve their planet, they actually enjoy their "job". Conflicts are generally more easily resolved than between us normal, secret-keeping races, and when someone is as able as a Legion to see things from another's point of view, ideas like racism and prejudice tend to fade away. Legion societies tend to be more peaceful, caring, and open to outsiders than usual, but the benefits do not end there.

Legion who create close links with each other find that they're able to draw strength from the bonds they've made. While their bodies are much slower to develop as far as musculature and fitness go thanks to their relatively static nanite-driven anatomy, when assisted even by the memories of their sisters they can perform both physically and mentally better than they would be able to on their own. Additionally, the saying is that if you've told a Legion you've told the hive, and this shared pool of readily-accessible knowledge helps any Legion who wants to learn anything, be it history, magic, or the art of creating environmentally-adapted devices. The most practical use of these links, however, is that it grants the Legion functional immortality. Once a hive tree grows on a planet, the planet itself houses a massive neural network that echoes the very neural imprint of every Legion on it, and these imprints will persevere if a Legion stops transmitting them so long as the planet itself exists. The hive tree itself can store the most prominent and cherished memories and parts of a lost sister's personality, though in extreme cases Legion themselves can do this as well. This can lead to the use of an ability that Legion rarely speak of, their true means of reproduction. Using genetic data stored in the hive tempered with their own memories of a departed friend, their nanite-enhanced wombs can create viable embryos that can come to term as a legitimate pregnancy, and as the fetus gestates its enhanced brain will take in the memories and aspects of the lost sister, culminating in the full biological reincarnation of a previously deceased Legion. Though their new body will often take on traits ascribed to them from both their new mother and the feelings their closest friends had about them, there is no doubt that the new life they create is a continuation of the same spirit that they refuse to let leave. The only way to truly kill a Legion that is part of a hive is to kill not only every Legion on it, but also destroy the planet's hive tree, leaving a stunted planet haunted by the ghosts of many billions of imprinted final thoughts. It's said that even on a planet like this, a seed will somehow emerge and find a new Queen, who will have to create a new hive of confused Legion daughters who have lost their memories.

Many people harbor prejudices against Legion for their Hive mind, given the atrocities focused around its unchecked use. The days of Legion mindlessly converting everyone in their wake, however, have long ended, and it is my hope that helping someone to understand how their mental telepathy functions will also help them to see Legion as people, just like them, rather than a menace to the galaxy lying in wait. MSF High is a place to learn, and learning to accept your fellow students for their differences will go a long way toward bettering you as a person.