Collective

"The only way to prevent the heat death is to achieve 100% total energy efficiency. As such, sacrifices will have to be made."

―A Collective supporter

The Collective was an ancient polity that was contemporary to the Empire of Arckas. Thus, they have a history dating back at least one billion years.

History

Originally beginning as members of the board in the Omniverse Nexus, they split off as their own political party that campaigned against the Empire of Arckas' inefficient energy usage due to their focus on art. They were eventually removed from the board after they became incredibly strict on the creation of new civilizations to the point where it became nigh impossible. They pushed to impose heavy restrictions on technological advancement, forcing them down certain paths.

This ousted party eventually formed a defiant coalition of multiple worlds that supported a lifestyle of 100% efficiency, sacrificing all aspects that would be deemed a waste of energy. It is not known what the Collective species originally looked like as the only evidence of their existence has been their AI's. It is thought they once began as an amalgamation of various Arckasian species.

The Collective is a Kardashev class 3 that is believed to have originated from a galactic cluster beyond the immediate vicinity of the Crucible Galaxy. They are known to have attacked Arckasian structures that were deemed wasteful as well as targeted individual factions such as the Boneyard Necromancers who used nanotech to animate corpses. To help ward off attacks, the Empire of Arckas announced publicly to the Collective that they would better police themselves with the use of the Anathema that could remove creations which they deemed to be too damaging to the energy consumption or to not be a work of art.

In spite of the Empire of Arckas announcing this, the Collective were still known to have hacked the Anathema more than a few times on their crusade for 100% efficiency. After the Empire of Arckas agreed to abandon the universe in favor of multiversal exploration, the Collective mysteriously vanished as well. It is thought that they either traveled the multiverse or simply went back to their home galaxy.

Society

The Collective earned its name very early on after they discovered that individualism was inefficient. They reasoned that people making their own choices would often result in contradictions and arguments to the detriment of the cooperation required for a massive scale spacefaring civilization. As such, it was determined that more collective decision making would be a more efficient way to make decisions as each mind that was added would contribute to its intelligence. Members had their consciousnesses absorbed into an overmind that grew into its own god machine. While the Collective meets the definition of being known as a god machine, they refused to call it that as they also deemed religious beliefs and emotions to be inefficient.

The Collective realized early on that a hostile takeover would result in the Empire of Arckas teaming up against them. Instead, they would offer the choice for others to join the Collective while spreading propaganda, criticizing the energy usage of other members of the Empire of Arckas.

Over the years, they would eventually eliminate art and works of fiction. They would encourage other species that such things should be considered meaningless as they made no contribution to the sustaining of the Collective. As such, the purpose of creating new species to evolve became to serve the Collective rather than simply for the sake of introducing new life.

Notably, the Collective never killed during times of war nor did they use the death penalty. Rather, they would directly alter their prisoners' minds to overwrite their original personality as a means of rehabilitation and repurposing. In some respects, it was an indoctrination although the brainwaves were surgically altered so that the process was instantaneous.