The Collective (Species)

The Collective
The Collective is an alien parasite that originated somewhere in Sector 2. The parasite infects the minds of it's hosts and takes full control of it. The Collective is transmitted trough bodily fluids, including sweat, saliva, urine, feces, reproductive fluids, vomit, and blood. Once the host is infected the parasite travels into the blood stream and stays dormant for between 1 hour-2 days until it reaches the brain, it then loges in the Cerebral Cortex and begins to grow. It reaches a size of between 1 and 6 mm in length, it then produces hundreds of thousands of spores that travel all over the body, the spores will infect other organisms. Around 4 days after infection the parasite begins to alter the hosts behaver, it will compel it to mate and spread the parasite. After around 1,000 to 10,000 organisms are infected in a 100,000 mile radius the parasites begin to behave like neurons and communicate with each other. This has created the entity known as The Collective, it wishes to infect all sentient life and become the universe.

History
The Collective parasite was first discovered when a asteroid, designated by the nearbye civilization the Nunrorg, as Zepher-232, crashed onto the primitive world known as Morog. The parasite spread through the population quickly and had infected all sentient life on the planet after 1.5 years after landing. It was around this time that the parasites became sentient and wished to spread off world. The Collective used it's combined intelligence and manpower to create simple rockets from which it landed on 3 nearbye habitable planets, none of which contained intelligent life. The Collective discovered the nearbye planet of Bespub VI, home to the Nunrorg. It build 12 warships with minimal defensive capabilities, their objective was the crash-land on Bespub VI and assimilate the population.

The Cellective's fleet destroyed the weak Nunrorg fleet and was able to land 1 ship on the surface, it assimilated 200,000 Nunrorg but the Nunrorg killed the infected and survived. The second fleet was of 200 ships filled with tens of thousands of infected, 38 of the ships were lost to the Nunrorg's artillery batteries 8 million infected made it to the surface. They infected millions more and destroyed hundreds of cities, unfortunately the Nunrorg used 300 nuclear warheads on the Collective and again exterminated the infected from Bespub VI.

The Collective again underestimated the Nunrorg and sent 200 more ships, thinking that they were on the verge of collapse. The Nunrorg had build a small fleet of their own and even though it was destroyed in the battle the Nunrorg captains fought well and destroyed 99 of the 200 attacking ships. Unkown to the Collective the Nunrorg had been working on a way to stop the Collective for good, they activated a planetary shield. 8 Collective ships were destroyed by the shield while 3 made it past, 2 of the ships were shot down but one made it to the surface. It killed 12,000 Nunrorg but the infected were killed.

The Collective placed Bespub VI under siege and focused it's resources on other worlds. The Collective learned from it's mistakes at Bespub VI and that if it gave the population time to prepare then they might find a way to defend against the Collective. It's swarmed over 33 small worlds, 12 of which had species that had not yet expanded past their homeworld. The Collective first encountered a multi-planetary species when it came into contact with the Terrians, 2 Terrain colonies were overrun. Terrian High Command had heard of the Collective before when they had received radio communicates from the Nunrorg, who had given the Terrians a way to detect infected.

The Terrians took back 8 worlds from the Collective and the Terrian fleet was for more advanced and experienced. However, the Collective managed to infect a few hundred Terrians and used their knowledge to advance it's fleet. The Collective was still out matched and lost thousands of ships and dozens of worlds.

The Collective, at the moment is loosing the war, but has made a little progress as of late because of the Terrians war with the Vaniak.