Article 43: Rogue Legion
At the end of the Legion war, many Queens had their personalities suddenly restored, and while they still felt the environmental imperative that drove the war in the first place, they no longer felt the need to convert everyone around them. This was the reason for the sudden cessation of conflict, with the war ending almost overnight. For years, the Queens did their best to make amends by staying silent and, on planets that they had not completely taken over, either move offworld to a previously-uninhabitable world that they could fix or make peace with the non-Legion sentients there. This policy of near-total submission worked well at first, but when the newly-forming CTS faction was subjected to an attempted annexing by the Golden Alliance, the Queens who had until that point rarely communicated with each other held their first "free-minded" meeting, eventually coming to the consensus that they had to assist the new Redeemed races as a part of their penance. To do this, Legion would have to formally announce their factionhood as well, and in doing so, they would need to introduce a set of conduct for the Legion worlds. To allay their own consciences and help to assure the rest of the galaxy of their good intentions, the first and most important rule on all Legion-faction worlds is that no sentient being shall be transformed without their consent. While the occasional emergency transformation exception has to be made for health or self-defense reasons, this rule has helped to lessen fears about any sort of new takeover plan from some of the other factions, especially those in the CTS and EL factions.
Of course, not all of the Legion Queens agreed to these rules. Whether out of fear that they could no longer utilize their best means of defending themselves or them being of a mindset that they were actually on the right side during the war, a few dozen Legion Queens refused the terms of the faction treaty, and it was decided by the other queens that they must leave what was to become Legion space. Taking up residence on new worlds closer to the edge of the galaxy, these Rogue Legion hives have been a source of terror and consternation for the rest of the galaxy.
In most cases, the transplantation of a Legion Queen is a near-impossible task. They are mentally linked with the planet they occupy on a level that is difficult to understand by any means, and removal can be damaging to both. To get around this, successors to the Rogue Queens were chosen by the other Legion Queens, they were given new Legion Seeds that had been heavily modified to allowed them to supersede the original Queen, and the Rogue Queens were removed, with their hive trees and anyone who still followed them, in huge transport ships that are to this day used in the largest Legion convoys. While a number of them were slightly less than stable to begin with, it's said that this forcible removal from their true homes has made them even more deranged. Many of them campaign to return to their homeworlds, though so far none of them have ever done so successfully.
When the Galactic Anarchists formally declared themselves a non-governmental superpower, a number of the Rogue Queens declared themselves as part of the new faction in order to garner the legitimacy that comes with being part of a galactic faction. The GAN, of course, simply rolled with it, and included these worlds in their various pirate sign-ups. When the Angelic Protectorate emerged from the galactic core to deal with the Anarchists, the Rogue Queens went as silent as they could manage, which some pirates say is what lost them the "war". The Rogue Queens are quick to point out that the GAN's loosely-written and mostly-unfollowed "rules" encourage precisely that type of behavior, and since then there's been no real argument between the other pirates and the Rogue Legion Queens.
The Rogue Queens are one of the largest dangers in their sector of GAN space, and not merely on the planets they control. There are a few other things to watch out for if you plan on heading anywhere near that area of the galaxy. First, uninhabited planets and moons. While they may seem like a prime location for mining or colonizing, many of them have been booby-trapped with one or more Legion seeds. These aren't as benign as normal modern Legion seeds, and they will without fail transform you into a queen subservient to the Rogue Queen who created it. Equally terrifying is the fact that more than one of these Rogue Queens decided after their uprooting that didn't need any particular planet. They've instead retrofitted their hives into massive carriers, and have taken up employment as pirates in the grand GAN tradition. These are some of the most dangerous pirates that can be encountered, as a loss to them can mean that you and your crew are forcefully transformed and put into service as new members of their fleet. Thankfully, they rarely seem to stray far from their home territory.
Most Rogue Legion Queens seem to have a prominent theme with their naming conventions, with both titles and actual names modeled after plants that are more harmful to sentients. Prominent Rogue Legion Queens include Queen Hemlock, Queen Ivy, Queen Kudzu, and Queen Nightshade. Their designs, not just for armor, but for structures and ships, tend to be wrapped in constricting, thorny vines, and are said to be slightly more advanced than most modern Legion ships. This is not technically true, as while they are usually faster and more powerful, this comes at the expense of their power sources being less environmentally friendly. In space, this is considered to be of little consequence, although it does render the ships much more prone to violent malfunction. Rogue Legion starships are said to explode at random, at little provocation, and their somewhat disposable nature has led to them being piloted by only the most skilled, ruthless, or insane Legion Pilots.
