"To think, they've destroyed almost everything we knew and loved, and it could've all been avoided if we weren't so trigger happy."
A Drone-class Revenant, a common sight and one of the lesser threats making up their swarms.
Revenants are an alien 'faction' of sorts, with massive numbers and a penchant for expanding their territory. Generally insectoid in appearance, Revenant morphology is incredibly varied, with many 'classes' of distinguishable species ranging from humanoid pawns to massive wyrms making up their horde. Often intelligent but disorganized, their goal is not to conquer or consume, but rather to simply establish themselves and warp the ecosystem of whatever planet they invade to support what they see innately as natural and right.
Structure and Organization[]
The source of an initial infestation on a planet is a Hive, a titanic fungal mass which will quickly produce a legion of Revenants to protect itself as soon as it becomes established. Hives will eventually reach a 'critical mass' if their expansion is left unchecked for too long, releasing spores into the atmosphere of their host planet. Most spores will not survive their initial launch, burning up as they reach the skies, but invariably a few will make their way back down to the surface to establish more hives and expand the swarm's influence. Once a world has been fully terraformed, its Hives will once again launch a barrage of spores into the air, but rather than spreading across the ground, these are to spread the infestation to other planets abroad. In space, a spore may survive for centuries, even millennia in transit to their next host, and even those that find a planet to take root on are often destroyed by the landing process.
A human altered to adhere to Revenant biology, made part of their swarm
The first Revenant a Hive will produce is invariably a Sapiarch, the 'brain' of the horde. All other Revenants produced directly by the Hive share a storng mental link with their Sapiarch, subservient to its will and serving as its both its eyes and arms. As they expand, their offspring will lack this link, acting simply as wildlife in the warped nature provided for them. Such Revenants often have the capacity for intelligence on-par with that of humans, but lack the structure and central organization to act as a society, instead acting as cunning predators with an instinctual enmity for the world's original inhabitants.
Co-existence with a world's native denizens is not unheard of, though mutual cooperation is extremely rare. Revenants are not innately violent towards whatever civilization they intrude upon, only making enemies with them as a result of being treated as a threat. This is almost invariably the response they find, as few civilizations are willing to live with the risk of a hostile invasion from the powerful Revenant horde. Once attacked, a Sapiarch will imprint their entire race as a threat to the Hive, passing this on to all its Hive's children.